Without carrying the exhaustive process further, it is safe to say that whatever concrete statesmanship there has been in China during the past generation has been embodied in the person of Li Hung-chang. He alone has a continuous record, has followed a definite line, and kept his ideals, like a captive balloon, strictly attached to the earth on which he had to work. He also was a literate of distinction, having taken the highest degree, that of the Hanlin College. But though his literary tastes have not been left wholly uncultivated, they have never intruded themselves into his conduct of affairs, so that an estimate of his position cannot be based upon his writings, but only on his actions. He indulged in no speculations, propounded no theories, but was eminently a man of fact. Contrary to all Chinese tradition he laid himself out for personal intercourse with foreigners, from whom he was never weary of learning, and in doing so he braved the odium of his peers, and incurred the charge of treason as a truckler to barbarians. Living in the eyes of the world, both of his own and foreign countries, for a period of nearly forty years, he has been the one familiar figure in modern China. His accessibility has afforded to travellers and visitors endless opportunities of delineation, so that if ever a Chinese of rank was known throughout the world it must be Li Hung-chang. The interest attaching to this statesman consists in his having in his own person, and without a party, stood between the Old World and the New, having devoted his life to working out in practice a _modus vivendi_ between them. His methods have been wholly empirical and opportunist, and hence no synthesis of his plan of operations is available, except such as we may compose out of the facts themselves. A few cardinal principles, nevertheless, stand out clearly in the life-work of this statesman. One is that of reorganising the defensive forces of the empire in accordance with the lessons learned from foreign raids; a second has been so to observe the treaties made with foreigners as to afford them no ground for complaint; and a third, when causes of difference arose, whether by inadvertence or by design, to agree with the adversary quickly. The following out of the first two might very well have entailed upon Li the reproach of favouring foreigners; the following out of the third may with greater justice have earned for him the character of a peace-at-any-price man. So consistently did he follow the line of action dictated by these principles, that no attacks on foreigners or on Christian missions have ever been tolerated within his jurisdiction. During the twenty-four years of his governor-generalship of Chihli, whose population is one of the most turbulent in the empire, there was not a single missionary outrage, his instructions to his district officials being peremptory, that, right or wrong, they must have no questions with foreigners. Had the other viceroys