All had some element of attraction; a favourite wandering was through the romantic gardens and grounds of what had been the Summer Palace—and yet it was sad to see the charred ruins of what must once have been a succession of scenes each one more beautiful than the last, the final masterpiece of gorgeous Oriental luxury and splendour. The Summer Palace really consisted of three parks, of which Yuen Ming Yuen, “the round, bright garden,” was one, and the name became among foreigners the generic name for all three. The park that we used to visit was called Wan Shao Shan, “the Hill of Ten Thousand Longevities.” It was strictly forbidden ground, but the soldiers in charge were a poor tatterdemalion crew, and a silver key opened the gates. The third park had an even more poetic name that might fit an extravaganza in a Western theatre, Yü Chuan Shan, the “Hill of the Fountain of Jewels.” In the gardens of the Hill of the Ten Thousand Longevities we passed from court to court, from terrace to terrace, where the wicked fire had hardly spared a stone—carvings, the loving handiwork of consummate artists, had all fallen in scales, gradually being ground to powder, lurking places for scorpions and lizards and centipedes. Crazy and crank were the steps that led from one level to another, steps that had once been trodden by the eunuch-guarded beauties of the Court of a magnificent Ch’ien Lung. All was one tangle of climbing plants, brambles, wild vines; such stones as remained were overgrown with mosses and lichens, silver-backed ferns, wild asparagus; strange, sweet-scented herbs peered from out of the crannies and chinks. Here and there a tiny pavilion, and just one little bronze shrine, a miracle of art, which had defied the devouring flames, only served to accentuate the devastation. At our feet lay the great lake, the surface almost smothered with the pink blush of the lotus flowers, now at their best, and on it were a few humble fishermen casting their nets for such poor, muddy fish as the waters of North China can produce. To think of the gaudy court that once housed here an Emperor like Solomon in all his pomp, surrounded by ladies “all glorious within,” gorgeously-clad eunuchs, officers, ministers, and then to look upon the squalor and filth of its present guardians!—wretched, half-starved, hardly clothed creatures, with such small pay as should have been theirs probably no more than an arrear never to be realized. No wonder they fell and betrayed their trust before the seduction of a Mexican dollar, even though it was offered by a foreign devil.