created in Shanghai, and seemed likely to extend to other ports, especially after the treaty of Shimonosaki. China herself, profiting by this lull, returned to her old sleepy habits: she had learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing. When her chief statesman, Li Hung-chang, was sent to Europe and America in 1896, it was not only because he was better equipped than anyone else, by his long intercourse with foreigners, to treat with them, but principally because he was in disgrace. This mission had been offered to Prince Kung, and even to Prince Ching, the Emperor’s uncles. ‘What have we done,’ these illustrious personages probably exclaimed, ‘that we should be subjected to this humiliation, and sent on a mission to the barbarians?’ The tour of Li Hung-chang was, therefore, intended as a severe punishment, supplemented by the loss of his peacock’s feather and his yellow jacket. If the observations which are attributed to him with respect to progress are true, his influence must incontestably have diminished, possibly owing to the vicissitudes to which he has been subjected since his return to China. Be this as it may, one thing is clear: he has not hitherto been able to overcome either the Court prejudices or those of the overwhelming majority of the literati. The only progress made has been permission for the construction, under the direction of English and American engineers, of a line from Tien-tsin to Peking, to slightly prolong beyond the Great Wall the one which starts from Tien-tsin and the mouth of the Pei-ho, and ascends northwards along the coast of Pe-chi-li, and to authorize the reconstruction of the little line from Shanghai to its deep-water port, Woosung. These works organized in those parts of the Empire most frequented by Europeans, in the great open port of Shanghai, where half the foreign population of China lives, and in the capital, the residence of the diplomatic corps, were calculated to create an illusory effect. The English may also have wished to unite Peking to the sea, which they dominated in the Far East as elsewhere, to spite Russia for having installed herself in Manchuria. A longer railway from Peking to Hankow, traversing over 650 miles of the heart of China, had been projected since 1889, and a Chinese railway director named Sheng had been commanded to collaborate in the matter of its construction with Li Hung-chang and his rival, the celebrated Chang-Chih-Tung, Viceroy of Hankow. Much more progressive in all probability than Li Hung-chang, Sheng seemed really desirous of building this line; but he insisted that the material should be manufactured in China, and to this effect he had erected at Hanyang, near Hankow, and his capital Wu-chang, three towns which in reality form one vast city, an immense foundry, which was not likely, at any rate for many years to come, to supply the necessary material. After the War the united efforts of the Ministers of France