As to monuments, there are very few in Peking worth the seeing, and into these foreigners are never allowed to enter. Twenty-five or thirty years ago visitors were admitted into a great number of the temples: that of Heaven, which is now being restored, and where the Emperor goes annually to make a sacrifice, and the Temples of the Sun, the Moon, and of Agriculture, and they were even allowed to peep into the Imperial Gardens; but since the entry of the Anglo-French troops into Peking, in 1860, the Chinese have been very reticent with respect to their monuments, doubtless a consequence of the salutary lesson they then received, which they are philosophical enough to endeavour to forget, as all wise folk should do things that wound their pride. To-day the people affect to believe the official story invented on that occasion to save appearances, wherein it was stated that the Emperor Hien-feng, instead of fleeing before the allies, merely went on a hunting excursion in his park at Johol in Mongolia. Their usual insolence towards foreigners had completely returned, to be modified, however, so soon as they heard of the successes of the Japanese, and they were seized with absolute terror at the prospect of beholding the Mikado’s army marching through their gates. When I was in Peking in the autumn of 1897 Europeans were very rarely insulted in the streets. Before the War it was otherwise, and I myself, like many another, did not escape the impertinence of the Chinese at Canton. All the same, they took good care to close their monuments to the inspection of the ‘foreign devils,’ and the only temple now open for our inspection is that of Confucius, an immense but rather commonplace hall with a steep roof supported on pillars painted a vivid red. Foreigners are also permitted to visit the place where the literati undergo their examinations. It consists of some thousands of little cells lining several long, open corridors, wherein the unfortunate candidates for law and medicine are shut for several days while they answer the questions set them. Then there is the old Observatory, wherein are two series of highly useful instruments. The first dates from the time of the Mongol Dynasty in the thirteenth century, and lies scattered half buried among the weeds at the bottom of the courtyard; the second series is less antiquated, having been made under the direction of the Jesuit Verbiest, who was astronomer to the Emperor of China in the early part of the seventeenth century. They are shown on the walls. After seeing these thoroughly up-to-date astronomical instruments, one has visited all there is to be seen in the Imperial city of Peking.