st that there is no man serving the Crown
in a responsible position who would hesitate when it is presented to
him as to the decision at which he should arrive.[2] And now, Sir, to
pass to another topic, I have been repeatedly asked whether, in my
opinion, the interests of art in this country are likely to be in any
degree promoted by the opening up of China. I must say, in reply, that
I do not think that in matters of art we have much to learn from that
country, but I am not quite prepared to admit that even in this
department we can gain nothing from them. The distinguishing
characteristic of the Chinese mind is this--that at all points of the
circle described by man's intelligence, it seems occasionally to have
caught glimpses of a heaven far beyond the range of its ordinary ken
and vision. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to military
supremacy when it invented gunpowder, some centuries before the
discovery was made by any other nation. It caught a glimpse of the
path which leads to maritime supremacy when it made, at a period
equally remote, the discovery of the mariner's compass. It caught a
glimpse of the path which leads to literary supremacy when, in the
tenth century, it invented the printing press; and, as my illustrious
friend on my right (Sir E. Landseer) has reminded me, it has caught
from time to time glimpses of the beautiful in colour and design. But
in the hands of the Chinese themselves the invention of gunpowder has
exploded in crackers and harmless fireworks. The mariner's compass has
produced nothing better than the coasting junk. The art of printing
has stagnated in stereotyped editions of _Confucius_, and the most
cynical representations of the grotesque have been the principal
products of Chinese conceptions of the sublime and beautiful.
Nevertheless, I am disposed to believe that under this mass of
abortions and rubbish there lie hidden some sparks of a diviner fire,
which the genius of my countrymen may gather and nurse into a flame.

[Sidenote: Dinner at the Mansion House.]

A few days afterwards, at a dinner given at the Mansion House in his
honour, he was again greeted with more than common enthusiasm. In
responding, after giving an account of the objects that had been sought and
the results that had been achieved in the East, he concluded his speech by
impressing on