From the throne to the end of the wall, ranged so as to form an alley, stood the great officers of state, attired in large flowing robes of silk, flounced with gold, and bearing on their breasts the insignia of their different dignities; those belonging to the military department wearing golden buttons on their caps and tigers or lions on their breasts, while the civil officers, who were of higher rank, wore birds in place of beasts. At the back of these mandarins were other officers, bearing umbrellas of silk brocade, fringed with gold; there were also many who wore the button of an inferior rank, and who wore large fans of silk, embroidered with gold; others with large standards, sprinkled with golden stars, dragons, the sun, and the moon in all its quarters, to represent the twenty-eight mansions of the heavens, and their conjunctions and oppositions with the sun, as they appear in the intersections of the circles, which the astronomers call the dragon's head and tail. Near the walls stood a number of mandarins of inferior rank, both civil and military, bearing maces, axes, hammers, and swords. Upon the steps of the throne stood the princes of the blood, attired in the costumes of their civil or military rank, the only tokens of their imperial blood, being the large yellow or red girdle, and the circle instead of the square in which the bird or beast is worn upon the breast. The left hand being the place of honor in China, on that side of the throne stood the imperial but unfortunate Prince, Yong-Li, a youth of fifteen years of age, near to whom stood the aged Woo, whose office, that of a colao or censor, was at once the most dangerous and most popular in the empire, his duty being to check the great mandarins, and even the Emperor himself, in the wrong exercise of their authority. This officer may be termed the representative of that public opinion in China which moulds its irresponsible despotism somewhat to the shape of a constitutional government. One step lower, in the full costume of tsong-tou (a great viceroy), stood the Prince Woo-san-Kwei. This prince was the son of the censor Woo, and one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was tall and stately, and, like the rest of the nobles of the Ming dynasty, wore his hair in long and luxuriant tresses; moreover, like his parent Woo, he wore the circle upon his breast, and around his waist the girdle of red, which betokened him to be of the second rank of the princes of the blood. Upon the opposite side of the throne, and one step nearer, as became his closer relationship to the monarch, stood the first prince of the yellow girdle, Li-Kong, a man whose influence upon those tempestuous times was as remarkable for bad as that of Woo-san-Kwei was for good; he was also a tang-tou.