Tuan fang was a member of the Mission to Foreign Countries in 1905, and has received decorations and honours at the hands of several European sovereigns. In private life he is distinguished by his complete absence of formality, a genial, hospitable man, given to good living, delighting in new mechanical inventions, and fond of his joke. It was he who, as Viceroy of Nanking, organised the International Exhibition. As Viceroy of Chihli, he was in charge of the arrangements for the funeral of the Empress-Dowager, and a week after that impressive ceremony, for alleged want of respect and decorum, it {255} was charged against him that he had permitted subordinate officials to take photographs of the cortège, and that he had even dared to use certain trees in the Sacred Enclosure of the Mausolea as telegraph poles, for which offences he was summarily cashiered; since then he has lived in retirement. The charges were possibly true, but it is matter of common knowledge that the real reason of his disgrace was a matter of palace politics rather than funeral etiquette, for he was a protégé of the Regent, and his removal was a triumph for the Yehonala clan at a time when its prestige called for a demonstration of some sort against the growing power and influence of the Emperor Kwang-Hsu's brothers. {256} CHAPTER XVIII SOME REVOLUTION FACTORS Revolution is endemic in this land of great movements. The particular spirit that sways the feelings of the sensuous populace manifests itself now in the sporadic riotings that seem to occur everywhere and everywhen, and from no conceivable cause; again in the more widespread upheaval to which we give the name of "rebellion"--an abortive revolution; but ever and anon, gathering momentum from varying petty upheavals, the torrent of passions aroused bursts all restraining bounds and the country is swept from end to end by the onrushing flood. All erstwhile authority is at an end; fire and sword are the only "powers that be"; the land drinks deeply of the life-blood of its sons and daughters; and then, when the torrent of fury has spent its strength, Nature reclothes herself in a new garb, new homesteads and teeming villages spring into existence, and a new authority takes to itself power and grows on to greatness. Decades and centuries roll by; and this Dynasty also, like the effete Government it displaced, totters through a long period of hoary childishness to its terrible fall. Even the casual observer realises that the last scene of a last act is being played out before our eyes. Full soon the curtain will fall and the Ta Ts'ing Dynasty exist in history only. Its "cup of iniquity" seems long to have been full.