eded by a tiny grandson of five. The regent
appointed by the Manchu nobles owed his final success to the fact that
he was called in by the Chinese generals commanding the coveted
Shan-hai-kwan gates to rescue Peking from the hands of Chinese
insurgents, who had everywhere arisen; and in 1644, after seventy
years of warfare, the Manchus seated themselves on the Dragon Throne,
in defiance of the wishes of the people, but backed up by a vast
concourse of Manchus and Mongols, and half the fierce blades of
Eastern Asia.

The history of all these centuries of warfare is eloquently written on
all the buildings, the fortifications, the monuments, the palaces and
temples of Peking which surround us. Peking is the Delhi of China, and
the grave of warlike barbarians. Four separate times have Tartars
broken in and founded dynasties, and four separate times have Chinese
culture and civilisation sapped rugged strength, and made the rulers
the _de facto_ servants of the ceremonious inhabitants. In the Tartar
city there are Yellow Lama temples, with hundreds of bare-pated lama
priests, the results of Buddhist Concordats guaranteeing Thibetan
semi-independence in return for a tacit acknowledgment of Chinese
suzerainty. Near the Palace walls is a Mongolian Superintendency,
where the Mongol hordes still grazing their herds and their flocks on
the grassy plains of high Asia, as they have done for countless
centuries, are divided up into Banners, or military divisions, showing
the enormous strength in irregular cavalry they possessed two hundred
and fifty years ago. Round the Forbidden City are the Six Boards and
the Nine Ministries, the outward signs of those bonds of etiquette
and procedure which bind the Manchu Throne to the eighteen provinces.
The walls of the Tartar city heave up fifty feet in the air, and are
forty feet thick. The circumference of the outer ring of
fortifications is over twenty miles. Each gate is surmounted by a
square three-storied tower or pagoda, vast and imposing. Round the
city and through the city run century-old canals and moats with
water-gates shutting down with cruel iron prongs. In the Chinese city
the two Temples of Heaven and Agriculture raise their altars to the
skies, invoking the help of the deities for this decaying but proud
Chinese Empire. Think of the millions of dead hands that fashioned
such enormous strength and old-time magnificence! On the corner of the
Tartar Wall is the old Jesuit Observat