Her full name, including honorific epithets added by the Academy, was Tse Hi Tuanyin Kangyi Chaoyu Chuangcheng Shoukung Chinhien Chunghi. A few hours before her death, which occurred on the day after the Emperor's, she named his nephew as successor, and the present ruler, Hsuan-Tung, who was born in 1903, began to reign November 14, 1908. Let the Dowager be taken as a type of the Manchu woman. The late Emperor, though handsome and intelligent, was too small for a representative of a robust race. Tuan Fang, the High Commissioner, is a more favourable specimen. The Manchus are in general taller than the Chinese, and both in physical and intellectual qualities they prove that their branch of the family is far from effete. Prince Kung, who for fifteen years presided over the imperial cabinet, was tall, handsome and urbane. [Page 277] Despite the disadvantages of an education in a narrow-minded court, he displayed a breadth and capacity of a high order. Prince Ching, who succeeded him in 1875, though less attractive in person, is not deficient in that sort of astuteness that passes for statesmanship. What better evidence than that he has kept himself on top of a rolling log for thirty years? To keep his position through the dethronement of the Emperor and the convulsions of the Boxer War required agility and adaptability of no mean order. Personally I have seen much of both princes. They are abler men than one would expect to find among the offshoots of an Oriental court. Wensiang, who from the opening of Peking to his death in 1875 bore the leading part in the conduct of foreign affairs, showed great ability in piloting the state through rocks and breakers. His mental power greatly impressed all foreigners, while it secured him an easy ascendency among his countrymen. Such men are sure to be overloaded with official duties in a country like China. Physically he was not strong; and on one occasion when he came into the room wheezing with asthma he said to me: "You see I am like a small donkey, with a tight collar and a heavy load." The success of Prince Kung's administration was largely due to Wensiang. Paochuin, minister of finance, and member of the Inner Council, was distinguished as a literary genius. Prince Kung delighted on festive occasions to call him and Tungsuin to a contest in extempore verse. To enter the lists with a noted scholar and poet like Tung, showed how the Manchus have come to vie with the Chinese in the [Page 278] refinements of literary culture. I remember him as a dignified greybeard, genial and jocose. On the fall of the Kung ministry, he doffed his honours in three stanzas, which contain more truth than poetry: "Through life, as in a pleasing dream, Unconscious of my years, In Fortune's smile to bask I seem; Perennial, Spring appears. "Alas! Leviathan to take Defies the fisher's art; From dreams of glory I awake,-- My youth and power depart.