The "sublime" emperor, the supreme head of the great realm of China and its hundreds of millions of people, dwells in a magnificence and seclusion unknown to the monarchs of other lands. His palace enclosure within the city of Peking, the "Purple Forbidden City," as it is called, covers over half a square mile of ground, and is surrounded by a wall forty feet high and more than forty feet thick. Within this sacred enclosure the Chinese ideas of beauty and magnificence have been developed to the fullest extent, and the emperor resides in unapproachable grandeur and state. Outside the city, a few miles to the north, lies the Summer Palace, another locality on which the Celestial architects and landscape artists have exhausted their genius in devising scenes of beauty and charm, and which is similarly walled in from the common herd. Beyond the Great Wall, on the borders of Tartary, exists another palatial enclosure, the hunting and pleasure grounds of the emperor, in the midst of an immense forest abundantly stocked with game. To the latter his supreme majesty made his way with all haste on hearing of the rapid approach of the English and French armies. In truth, the great monarchs of the Manchu dynasty had passed away, and the feeble reigning emperor lacked the courage to fight for his throne. On the 5th of October, 1860, the allied armies of England and France approached the Celestial capital, the officers obtaining their first view of its far-stretching wall from the tops of some grass-grown brick-kilns. On the next day the march was resumed, the French force advancing upon the Summer Palace, where it was hoped the emperor would be found, the English directing their course towards the city, where a Tartar picket was driven in and preparations were begun for an assault in force. The Summer Palace was found in charge of some three hundred eunuchs, whom Prince Kung, who had left in all haste the evening before, had ordered to make a gallant defence. But the entrance gave way before the impetuous assault of the French, a few of the defenders fell dead or wounded, and the remainder beat a hasty retreat, leaving the grand entrance to the Yuen-ming-yuen, the famous imperial residence, in the hands of the daring and disrespectful "barbarians." Into the grand reception-hall, which none had heretofore entered except in trembling awe, the irreverent foreigners boldly made their way, their spurred heels ringing on the broad marble floor before the emperor's sacred throne, their loud voices resounding through that spacious hall where silence and ceremony so long had reigned supreme, as the awed courtiers approached with silent tread and voiceless respect the throne of the dreaded Brother of the Sun and Moon.