After the Queen had said many kind things to me personally, showing herself quick-witted as well as courteous, she said something to the King, who immediately took up the conversation and continued it for another half-hour. At the close of the audience I asked leave to photograph the Lake Pavilion, and the King said, “Why that alone? come many days and photograph many things,” mentioning several; and he added, “I should like you to be suitably attended.” We then curtseyed ourselves out, after a very agreeable and interesting hour, and as it was dusk, the King sent soldiers with us, and a number of lantern-bearers, with floating drapery of red and green silk gauze. Two days later the “suitable attendance” turned out to be an unwieldy and embarrassing crowd, consisting of five military officers, half a regiment of soldiers, and a number of Palace attendants! I was greatly impressed by a certain grandeur and stateliness in the buildings, the vast Hall of Audience resting on a much elevated terrace ascended by a triple flight of granite stairs, the noble proportions of the building, the richly carved ceiling with its manifold reticulations, painted red, blue, and green, the colossal circular pillars, red with white bases, and in the dimness of the vast area fronting the entrance, the shadowy splendor of the Korean throne. Grand, too, in its simplicity and solidity, is the Summer Palace or “Hall of Congratulations,” on a stone platform approached by three granite bridges, in a lotus lake of oblong form beautified conventionally with two stone-faced islands, and by a broad flagged promenade carried the whole way round it on a stone-faced embankment. This palace is a noble building. The upper hall, with its vast sweeping roof, is supported on forty-eight granite pillars 16 feet in height and 3 feet square at the base-all monoliths. The situation and the views are beautiful. [Illustration: SUMMER PAVILION, OR “HALL OF CONGRATULATIONS.”]