better illustrated one
half of the cynical Chinese saying: "We love our own compositions,
but other men's wives." He disliked missionaries, and forbade the
propagation of the Christian religion.

After ten years of internal reorganization, his reign became a
succession of wars, almost all of which were brought to a successful
conclusion. His generals led a large army into Nepaul and conquered the
Goorkhas, reaching a point only some sixty miles distant from British
territory. Burma was forced to pay tribute; Chinese supremacy was
established in Tibet; Kuldja and Kashgaria were added to the empire; and
rebellions in Formosa and elsewhere were suppressed. In fifty years the
population was nearly doubled, and the empire on the whole enjoyed peace
and prosperity. In 1750 a Portuguese embassy reached Peking; and was
followed by Lord Macartney's famous mission and a Dutch mission in 1793.
Two years after the venerable emperor had completed a reign of sixty
years, the full Chinese cycle; whereupon he abdicated in favour of his
son, and died in 1799.

CHAPTER XI--CHINESE AND FOREIGNERS

A virtue which the Chinese possess in an eminent degree is the rather
rare one of gratitude. A Chinaman never forgets a kind act; and what
is still more important, he never loses the sense of obligation to his
benefactor. Witness to this striking fact has been borne times without
number by European writers, and especially by doctors, who have
naturally enjoyed the best opportunities for conferring favours likely
to make a deep impression. It is unusual for a native to benefit by a
cure at the hands of a foreign doctor, and then to go away and make no
effort to express his gratitude, either by a subscription to a hospital,
a present of silk or tea, or perhaps an elaborate banner with a golden
inscription, in which his benefactor's skill is likened to that of the
great Chinese doctors of antiquity. With all this, the patient
will still think of the doctor, and even speak of him, not always
irreverently, as a foreign devil. A Chinaman once appeared at a British
Consulate, with a present of some kind, which he had brought from his
home a hundred miles away, in obedience to the command of his dying
father, who had formerly been cured of ophthalmia by a foreign doctor,
and who had told him, on his deathbed, "never to forget the English."
Yet this present was addressed in Chinese: "To His Excellency the Great
English Devil, Consul X."

The Chi