When I was at Peking Tsŭ Hsi was a mystery; no foreigner even knew what was her origin—some went so far as to say that she was a mere slave girl; as a matter of fact her birth is now known[57] to have been of the highest. She was a lady of the Yeho-nala clan, a family descended from Yangkunu, the great Manchu Prince whose daughter married the founder of the Manchu Dynasty in China. She was therefore of right royal descent, and her pedigree was without a stain, though her father had held no higher rank than that of an officer in one of the eight banner corps. The first wife of the Emperor Hsien Fêng died before he ascended the Dragon throne. When the period of mourning for his father, Tao Kwang, came to an end in 1852, a number of maidens from the chief Manchu families were sent for, out of whom the widow of the dead monarch was to choose a certain number suitable for the harem of the Son of Heaven; among them were the two ladies who as Tsŭ An and Tsŭ Hsi, Dowager Empress and Empress Mother, were to play such conspicuous parts in Chinese history. Those who are interested in studying the last phase of the great Ching Dynasty must seek its story in Messrs. Bland and Backhouse’s pages. It will repay them. Few princes have left this world in more dramatic fashion than the Empress Tsŭ Hsi—the Old Buddha, as she loved to be called—whose last bequest to her people was the advice never again to allow a woman to exercise the Supreme Power, and not to allow the eunuchs of the Palace to interfere in affairs of State; she who had been ruled by such scoundrels as the two favourite eunuchs, Li Lien Ying and An Tê Hai!—a mass of contradictions to the last. That she was a woman of amazing ability is certain; competent authorities have praised her scholarship and held up her edicts as models of style; she was witty, though her wit sometimes was cruel, as when she told the murderous Governor of Tai Yuan Fu that “the price of coffins was going up”—a hint to commit suicide without delay, lest worse befall him; as, in spite of her protection, it ultimately did. She was tyrannical and vindictive, yet she contrived to inspire affection and to persuade the people that she was kind-hearted; she was false and treacherous, but her power of attraction was supreme and the love between Jung Lu and herself, dating from boy-and-girl days, long before she entered the Palace, never waned. Unless she has been much maligned she had much the worst side of the character of Catherine the Great; like our own Elizabeth she was terrible in her rage, irresistible in her gentler moments. Altogether a woman of infinite variety, a scholar, a stateswoman, and an artist.