w northern end and a southwestern point formed by a regular
rabbit-warren of Chinese houses that push right up to the Legation
walls. It is precisely at these two points that the Chinese, with
their peculiar methods of attack, directed their best efforts.

Beginning in earnest at the northern end, after some inconsiderable
efforts on the southwestern corner, they set fire to the sacro-sanct
Hanlin Yuan, which is at once the Oxford and Cambridge, the Heidelberg
and the Sorbonne of the eighteen provinces of China rolled into one,
and is revered above all other earthly things by the Chinese scholar.
In the spacious halls of the Hanlin Academy, which back against the
flanking wall of the British Legation, are gathered in mighty piles
the literature and labours of the premier scholars of the Celestial
Empire. Here complete editions of Gargantuan compass; vast cyclopaedia
copied by hand and running into thousands of volumes; essays dating
from the time of dynasties now almost forgotten; woodblocks black with
age crowded the endless unvarnished shelves. In an empire where
scholarship has attained an untrammelled pedantry never dreamed of in
the remote West, in a country where a perfect knowledge of the
classics is respected by beggar and prince to such an extent that to
attempt to convey an idea would cause laughter in Europe, all of us
thought--even the pessimists--that it could never happen that this
holy of holies would be desecrated by fire. Listen to what happened.

To the sound of a heavy rifle-fire, designed to frustrate all efforts
at extinguishing the dread fire-demon, the flaming torch was applied
by Chinese soldiery to half a dozen different places, and almost
before anybody knew it, the holy of holies was lustily ablaze. As the
flames shot skywards, advertising the danger to the most purblind,
everybody at last became energetic and sank their feuds. British
marines and volunteers were formed up and independent commands rushed
over from the other lines; a hole was smashed through a wall, and the
mixed force poured raggedly into the enclosures beyond. They had to
clamber over obstacles, through tightly jammed doors, under falling
beams, occasionally halting to volley heavily until they had cleared
all the ground around the Hanlin, and found perhaps half a ton of
empty brass cartridge cases left by the enemy, who had discreetly
flown. From a safe distance snipers, hidden from view an untraceable,
kept on firing stead