n its rags as though there had never been a siege, a
surrender, and a revolution. Beggars display their stumps and their
sores, grovelling on the ground like brutes. Ragged children run for
miles beside the carriage, singing for alms; and stop at last,
laughing, as though it had been a good joke to run so far and get
nothing for it. One monument in all this scene of squalor arrests
attention--the now disused examination hall. It is a kind of
rabbit-warren of tiny cells, six feet deep, four feet broad, and six
feet high; row upon row of them, opening on narrow unroofed corridors;
no doors now, nor, I should suppose, at any time, for it would be
impossible to breathe in these boxes if they had lids. Here, for a week
or a fortnight, the candidates sat and excogitated, unable to lie down
at night, sleeping, if they could, in their chairs. And no wonder if,
every now and again, one of them incontinently died and was hauled out,
a corpse, through a hole in the wall; or went mad and ran amuck among
examiners and examinees. For centuries, as is well known, this system
selected the rulers of China; and whole lives, from boyhood to extreme
old age, were spent in preparing for the examinations. Now all this is
abolished; and some people appear to regret it. Once more, what _do_ the
foreigners want?

The old imperial city, where once the Ming dynasty reigned, was
destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion. The Tartar city, where before the
revolution 3000 mandarins lived on their pensions, was burnt in the
siege of 1911. Of these cities nothing remains but their huge walls and
gates and the ruins of their houses. The principal interest of Nanking,
the so-called "Ming tombs," lies outside the walls. And the interest is
not the tombs, but the road to them. It is lined by huge figures carved
out of monoliths. Brutes first--lions, camels, elephants, horses, a pair
of each lying down and a pair standing; then human figures, military and
civil officers. What they symbolise I cannot tell. They are said to
guard the road. And very impressive they are in the solitude. Not so
what they lead to, which is merely a hill, artificial, I suppose, piled
on a foundation of stone. Once, my guide informed me, there was a door
giving admission; and within, a complete house, with all its furniture,
in stone. But the door is sealed, and for centuries no one has explored
the interior. I suggested excavation, but was told the superstition of
the inhabitants forbad