my having been so much of a wanderer, has prevented
me from acquiring some of those titles to their personal regard which
I might have hoped to establish if I had been constantly resident
among them.

[Sidenote: Royal Academy dinner.]

About the same time he was received with marked distinction at the annual
banquet of the Royal Academy in London; and the words which he spoke on
that occasion have more than a mere passing interest, as illustrating the
speaker's frank and straightforward manner of dealing with a question of
great delicacy, and also as containing some striking and suggestive remarks
on certain mental and moral peculiarities of the Chinese people.

I am especially gratified (he said) by the great and very unexpected
honour which you have done to me in drinking my health, because I
trust that I may infer from it that in your judgment, Sir, and in that
of this company, I am not so incorrigibly barbarous as to be incapable
of feeling the humanising influences which fall upon us from the noble
works of art by which we are surrounded. And, as I have ventured to
approach so nearly to the margin of a burning question, I hope that I
may be allowed to take one step more in the same direction, and to
assure you that no one regretted more sincerely than I did the
destruction of that collection of summer-houses and kiosks, already,
and previously to any act of mine, rifled of their contents, which was
dignified by the title of Summer Palace of the Chinese Emperor. But
when I had satisfied myself that in no other way, except, indeed, by
inflicting on this country and on China the calamity of another year
of war, could I mark the sense which I entertained, which the British
army entertained--and on this point I may appeal to my gallant friend
who is present here this evening, and who conducted that army
triumphantly to Pekin with so much honour to himself and to those
under his command--and which, moreover, I make bold in the presence of
this company to say, the people of this country entertained--of an
atrocious crime, which, if it had passed unpunished, would have placed
in jeopardy the life of every European in China, I felt that the time
had come when I must choose between the indulgence of a not unnatural
sensibility and the performance of a painful duty. The alternative is
not a pleasant one; but I tru