A recent occurrence, thoroughly typical of the readiness with which the Court party snatched at every opportunity to “save face,” was alluded to. The British Minister in Pekin, at the humble request of Li Hung Chang, who was negotiating about the return of the Summer Palace to the Chinese, had removed the Field Battery garrisoning it to the capital. An Imperial Edict was immediately issued, which stated in grandiloquent terms that the Emperor had _ordered_ this removal. Sir Ernest Satow, who was fast proving himself a far stronger man than had been anticipated and well fitted to cope with Oriental wiles, promptly commanded the return of the battery as the fitting answer to this impudent declaration. It was almost the first strong action taken by our diplomats in a wearisome series of “graceful concessions”; and great satisfaction was occasioned among the officers of the British forces, who hailed it as a hopeful prelude to a firmer policy. After lunch we ascended the tree‐clad hill on which stood the Hall of Ten Thousand Ages. From the summit a beautiful view over the surrounding country was obtained. Below us was the confused jumble of yellow‐roofed buildings that constituted the residential portion of the Summer Palace. At our feet lay the gleaming lake, hemmed in by its white marble walls, the tiny island united to the shore by the graceful arches of the long bridge. The bright roof of the pretty little pavilion on it shone in the brilliant sunlight. Along the far bank stretched a tree‐shaded road that ran away to the right until lost in thick foliage or fertile fields. A thin line marked the crowded highway to the capital. The plain was dotted with villages or lay in a chessboard‐pattern of cultivation interspersed with thickets of bamboos or dense groves of trees. Far away the tall towers of the walls of Pekin rose up above the level sea of roofs, broken only by the lofty buildings of the Imperial city, the temples or the residences of the Europeans in the Legation quarter. Over the capital a yellow haze of smoke and dust hung like a golden canopy. Away to the right lay a long stretch of dark and sombre hills, among which nestled the summer residence of the members of the British Legation. Here in the hot months they hie in search of cooling breezes not to be obtained in the crowded city.