as
he. This excited the jealousy of the other officials, and they said to
each other: "If Prince Su is allowed to hold this position for any
length of time there will never be anything in it for any one else."
They therefore sought for a ground of accusation, and they found it, in
the eyes of the conservatives, in the fact that he rode in a foreign
carriage, built himself a house after the foreign style of
architecture, furnished it with foreign furniture, employed an
Englishman to teach his boys, and as we have seen opened a school for
the women and girls of his family. He therefore lost his position, but
it is to the credit of Prince Chun, the new Regent, and his progressive
policy, that Prince Su has been made chief of the naval department, of
which Prince Ching is only an adviser.

The most important person among either princes or officials that has
been connected with the new regime is Yuan Shih-kai. He was born in the
province of Honan, that province south of the Yellow River which is
almost annually flooded by that great muddy stream which is called
"China's Sorrow." As a boy he was a diligent student of the Chinese
classics and of such foreign books as had been translated into the
Chinese language, but he has never studied a foreign tongue nor visited
a foreign country. Here then rests the first element of his
greatness--that without any knowledge of foreign language, foreign law,
foreign literature, science of government, or the history of progress
and of civilization, he has occupied the highest and most responsible
positions in the gift of the empire, has steered the ship of state on a
straight course between the shoals of conservatism on the one hand and
radical reform on the other until he has brought her near to the
harbour of a safe progressive policy.

He has always been what the Chinese call the tu-ti or pupil of Li
Hung-chang, and it may be that it was from him he learned his
statecraft. Certain it is that he always basked in the favour of the
great Viceroy, and it may be that he had more or less influence with
him in his earlier appointments, for he rose rapidly and in spite of
all other officials.

On his return from Korea he was made a judge. He was then put in charge
of the army of the metropolitan province, and with the assistance of
German officers he succeeded in drilling 12,500 troops after the
European fashion.

It was about this time that the Emperor conceived the plan of
instituting an