incident which, by closing as it did,
undoubtedly set back the clock of reform in China. It may be that from
the political point of view this was as well; that, had the venture
been an unqualified success, the Chinese might have thrown themselves
too much into the arms of foreign Powers and tried to reform too
fast by slavish imitation instead of slowly working out their own
salvation.

As far as he was personally concerned the disastrous and expensive
failure long preyed upon Robert Hart's mind. He reproached himself
bitterly for the mistake. But the Chinese never attached the least
blame to him; they showed him no diminution of respect, rather an
increase. It was on the Inspector-General H.N. Lay that their wrath
fell. They considered that he had treated the whole matter too
high-handedly, and within three months they had dismissed him and
offered the post to Robert Hart. Of course the change gave rise to
much discussion, and Sherard Osborne went frankly to Hart and told him
how ill-natured people were hinting that he had intrigued against
Lay. The malignity of idle gossip, however, could not turn him back.
Knowing that he had worked as loyally for his chief as for himself, he
simply replied that if the public looked at it in that way, instead of
refusing he would certainly accept the post. I wonder if any instinct
told him that the great day of his life was when he _did_ accept it,
or if he had any premonition of the useful and romantic career before
him?

The characters of the two Inspector-Generals, the one outgoing, the
other incoming, contrasted very strangely. Lay was inclined to be
dictatorial and rather impatient of Chinese methods; an excellent
and clever man, but with one point of view and one only. Hart, on the
other hand, was tactful, patient, and, above all else, tolerant
of other people's prejudices. "To grow a little catholic," says
Stevenson, "is the compensation of years." But Robert Hart was
catholic in this broad sense even when he was young. He would
sometimes say that the habit of toleration he acquired at college, and
through the most simple incident.

Seven or eight of the Belfast students were one day asked to describe
what would seem to be the simplest thing in the world to describe--a
packing-case. And yet every man, after stating the simple fact that he
saw a packing-case, had something different to say about it. One, who
stood on the right, described an address written in black letters;