sustained incessant diplomatic fence.'

[12] It certainly was not without truth, that one of the local papers most
opposed to him remarked that 'Lord Elgin had, beyond all doubt, a
remarkable faculty of turning enemies into friends.'

[13] Spencerwood, the Governor's private residence.

[14] Sir Edmund Head, who succeeded Lord Elgin as Governor-General of
Canada in 1854, had examined him for a Merton Fellowship in 1833.
Those who knew him will recognise how singularly appropriate, in their
full force, are the terms in which he is here spoken of.

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST MISSION TO CHINA.--PRELIMINARIES.

ORIGIN OF THE MISSION--APPOINTMENT OF LORD ELGIN--MALTA--EGYPT--CEYLON--
NEWS OF THE INDIAN MUTINY--PENANG--SINGAPORE--DIVERSION OF TROOPS TO INDIA
--ON BOARD THE 'SHANNON'--HONG-KONG--CHANGE OF PLANS--CALCUTTA AND LORD
CANNING--RETURN TO CHINA--PERPLEXITIES--CAPRICES OF CLIMATE--ARRIVAL OF
BARON GROS--PREPARATION FOR ACTION.

'The earlier incidents of the political rupture with the Chinese
Commissioner Yeh, which occurred at Canton during the autumn of 1856, and
which led to the appointment of a Special Mission to China, were too
thoroughly canvassed at the time to render it necessary to renew here any
discussion on their merits, or recall at length their details. As the
"Arrow" case derived its interest then from the debates to which it gave
rise, and its effects on parties at home, rather than from any intrinsic
value of its own, so does it now mainly owe its importance to the
accidental circumstance, that it was the remote and insignificant cause
which led to a total revolution in the foreign policy of the Celestial
Empire, and to the demolition of most of those barriers which, while they
were designed to restrict all intercourse from without, furnished the
nations of the West with fruitful sources of quarrel and perpetual
grievances.'

These words form the preface to the 'Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's
Mission to China and Japan,' by Laurence Oliphant, then private secretary
to Lord Elgin. To that work we must refer our readers for a full and
complete, as well as authentic, account of the occurrences which gave
occasion to the following letters. A brief sketch only will here be given.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Mission.]

On October 8, 1856, a _lorcha_ named 'Arrow,' registered as a British
vessel, and carrying a British flag, was boarded by the authorities of
Canton, the f