Talien-wan, which are free of ice, and are situated at the extremity of the peninsula of Liao-tung, which would provide her access to an open sea at the back of Korea and other advantages. At the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Pe-chi-li and only 50 miles from the opposite coast of Shan-tung, are ports which offer great advantages as naval stations, whence a rapid transport fleet could easily convey troops in twenty-four hours to Ta-ku, and thence in four days’ march to the Chinese capital. Once established at Port Arthur, and having plenty of elbow-room in Pe-chi-li, Russia could exercise over the Chinese Government, in its present capital, even a more irresistible pressure than could England have done had she been able to induce the Imperial Court to transport itself to the banks of the Yang-tsze. Unquestionably the dreams of Russian aggrandizement have become much more ambitious since she has discovered how very weak the Sick Man of Peking is. She no longer seeks an open port on the Pacific, but apparently pursues her object, unostentatiously however, towards the complete domination of the Middle Kingdom, especially over her vast dependencies in Turkestan, Mongolia, and Manchuria—in a word, over the whole of North China. And as the Muscovite temperament is ever a dreamy one, who knows but that on the shores of the Neva the heir of Peter the Great does not already picture himself on the throne of the Sun of Heaven, commanding the latter’s multitude of subjects, who are accustomed to submit to a foreign yoke, and might obey the Tsar as unresistingly as they did Ghengis Khan, even as to-day they pay homage to a degenerate Manchu, and as indeed they would have done to the Mikado, had not Europe put a stop to further advances on the part of the Japanese? The Mikado, too, who had been driven into the war by the repeated insolence of the Chinese and also by the justifiable desire to protect his commercial interests in Korea, may also, when intoxicated by his surprising successes, have entertained the thought that it might be possible for him one day to annex China. If this war had taken place fifty, or even twenty-five, years ago, when Europe paid less attention to foreign affairs, it is probable that the Manchu Dynasty would have been replaced by that of Japan. Possibly then the ‘Yellow Peril’—the military ‘Yellow Peril’—which to-day is but a mere chimera, might have become a very evident reality. The Japanese, after having thoroughly reorganized and disciplined the Chinese army, might at a given moment have let loose its innumerable hordes upon the Western world; but if in 1895 they had allowed themselves for a moment to dream of placing their Emperor upon the throne of Peking, the Japanese were not allowed to indulge in this pleasant vision for long, and were soon made to feel how intently and jealously their movements were watched by European diplomacy.