We discussed after tiffin the scheme for a University and the relations between Confucianism and Christianity. His Excellency was much pleased that I should take such interest in things Chinese, and immediately said that as I had come all the way to China to inquire into these things, I ought to receive every information. Turning to his secretaries, he told them that on the next day they were to provide scholars learned in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism to give me all the information that I required, and arranged that the Consul and I should return next day. He then suggested that we should go and inspect the school that was next his palace, and in which his own daughter was being educated. The school was for children of the highest class, and contained only about thirty boys and thirty girls. He conducted a sort of informal examination which I should have thought must have been extremely trying for the children. His Excellency and myself came first, then two interpreters, and then about twenty officials. When the scholars were examined in Western knowledge, we were asked to put a question or to look at a copy-book; when they were examined in Confucian knowledge, His Excellency put the question, and the interpreters translated to me both the question and the answer. The intelligence of the children was of a very high order, and they were very attractive. The uniform of the boys resembled that of a French schoolboy, though the cut of the trousers showed that the {176} costume had been made by a Chinese tailor, probably after a Japanese model. The girls were dressed in grey coats and trousers and had natural feet; this was perhaps not quite so remarkable as it at first appeared when one remembers that the Viceroy is a Manchu, and the Manchus have never admired the distorted foot of a Chinese woman; but as they went through their musical drill one could not help thinking that the neat coat buttoned across and reaching to the knees over loose trousers was about as ideal a dress as has ever been invented for women. His Excellency did not fail to make his own daughter stand up, and asked her many difficult questions, which she answered very well in a calm and collected manner. After showing us these schools His Excellency said that we must stop a third day and see many of the other schools in Nanking. Next morning I was most distressed to find that my friend Mr. King, His Majesty's Consul, was too unwell to attend the interview which I was to have with the learned men of Nanking, and so with some trepidation lest I should make sad faults in my manners without his kindly guidance, I drove up to the Yamen. There I was received by a crowd of officials, among whom were two great Confucian scholars with the Hanlin Degree, an authority on Buddhism and an authority on Taoism, whose knowledge subsequently proved to be extremely small.