The British Legation, as I first saw it before it was pulled about and vulgarized, was certainly a very striking place, with huge courtyards shaded by trees, among them the famous lace-bark pine[54] which is such a feature in Northern China; immediately inside the courtyard, mounting guard over a picturesquely roofed stately hall or pavilion open to the winds of heaven, were two great stone _shi-dzŭ_ (lions), grinning vain defiance at the foreign devils who had invaded the sanctuary over which they watched, then a space, beyond that a second open hall, and after that the minister’s quarters decorated in the most classical Chinese fashion—the last word of Pekingese art. In one of Lord Elgin’s picturesque despatches—to Lord Malmesbury if my memory serves me—but that is immaterial—he wrote that he could not better describe the desolation of Nanking, the ancient Southern Capital, than by saying that while riding through the city he flushed a cock-pheasant. Had he been as well acquainted with China then as he was afterwards, he would have known that this was but evidence of the great luxury of space which the Chinese nobles allowed themselves—their palaces were surrounded by grounds as broad as, or broader than, the gardens of suburban villas at Putney or Richmond. That of the old Dukes of Liang was exceptionally rich in elbow room. One night—to follow Lord Elgin’s lead—one of our escort men, who kept fowls and had been sorely tried by depredations, shot two foxes close to his quarters. There was no hunt and no poultry committee at Peking, so he had to take the law into his own hands. There was a legend that even wolves had been seen in Peking in severe winters. I at once fell in love with the old Liang Kung Fu and I was savage when the great open halls—such a picture of the past—were bricked up and turned into chanceries and offices, which might well have been placed elsewhere. No wonder the very stone lions tried to growl! The beautiful Liang Kung Fu! I wonder what it looks like now after fifty years of vandal ministers and the Boxer siege! Saurin and I dined with Wade that night—an excellent dinner; the Chinese are first rate cooks—for cooking is a fine art in which they excel, probably because it does not involve a knowledge of perspective. What a host he was! so light in hand, so delicate in his wit, so full of conversation, the edge of which was sharpened by reading in many tongues. For Wade was no dried up sinologue—skilled as he was in the learning of the Chinese, he had kept himself well on a level with the times by reading all that was best in the literature of the West; but the memories of his long and varied experiences gave to his talk a flavour rich, varied, and outside of the common.