acy shall have done all that they can legitimately
effect, the work which has to be accomplished in China will be but at
its commencement.

When the barriers which prevent free access to the interior of the
country shall have been removed, the Christian civilisation of the
West will find itself face to face, not with barbarism, but with an
ancient civilisation in many respects effete and imperfect, but in
others not without claims on our sympathy and respect. In the rivalry
which will then ensue, Christian civilisation will have to win its way
among a sceptical and ingenious people, by making it manifest that a
faith which reaches to Heaven furnishes better guarantees for public
and private morality than one which does not rise above the earth.

At the same time the machina-facturing West will be in presence of a
population the most universally and laboriously manufacturing of any
on the earth. It can achieve victories in the contest in which it will
have to engage only by proving that physical knowledge and mechanical
skill, applied to the arts of production, are more than a match for
the most persevering efforts of unscientific industry.

The journal proceeds as follows, under date of the 29th of March:--

I shall be a little curious to see my next letters. The truth is, that
the whole world just now are raving mad with a passion for killing and
slaying, and it is difficult for a person in his sober senses like
myself to keep his own among them. However I shall be glad to see what
Parliament says about Canton.

[Sidenote: Baths for the million.]
[Sidenote: Malevolence towards Chinese.]

_March 30th._--Baron Gros arrived to-day. I forgot to mention that I
visited the town of Shanghae yesterday, and among other things went
into a bathing establishment, where coolies were getting steamed
rather than bathed at rather less than a penny a head, which penny
includes, moreover, a cup of tea. So that these despised Chinamen have
bathing-houses for the million. With us they are a recent invention:
they have had them, I believe, for centuries. I am told that they are
much used by the labouring class. I was struck by an instance of the
malevolence towards the Chinese, which I met with to-day. Baron Gros
told me that a boat with some unarmed French officers and seamen got
adrift at a place called