heat of the day set in. It was a
glorious place for a morning walk. The wall is some forty feet high,
and along the top runs a broad path enclosed by crenellated parapets.
From here your vision ranges north and south and east and west; no
smoke, no tall chimneys, no towering, hideous buildings to break and
spoil the view.

North you look over the Tartar City, which is really three cities, all
walled, and one within the other like the boxes of a puzzle, the Tartar
City enclosing the Imperial City, and that in turn the Forbidden City.
If you stand under the many-storied tower that surmounts the Chien-Men,
you look straight along the road that leads through the vermilion walls,
right into the Purple City, the heart of Peking. In Marco Polo's time
the middle door of the great portal was never opened save to admit the
emperor, and that was still true a few months ago, but last winter a day
came when the bars rolled back, and there entered no emperor, no ruler,
but the representative of the People's Assembly, and then a placard was
posted announcing that hereafter the door was open to every one, for all
China belonged to the people. For a matter-of-fact man the Chinese has a
very dramatic way of doing things.

Turning southwards from the top of the wall you look beyond the Chinese
City, which is nothing but a walled suburb, to the gleaming white walls
of the Temple of Heaven, half buried in the trees. There each year the
emperor comes to offer sacrifices to his ancestors, the crowning
expression of China's truest religion, ancestor worship. In a few months
only, Prince Ch'un, the Regent, whom you have just met driving in state
through the Imperial City, standing among his ministers, and acting for
the baby emperor, will take the oath, not to the people of China, nor to
any representative assembly, but to the imperial ancestors to accept and
obey the new constitutional principles. "I, your descendant, P'u Yi," he
will say, "have endeavoured to consummate the constitutional programme,
but my policy and my choice of officials have not been wise. Hence the
recent troubles. Fearing the fall of the sacred dynasty I accept the
advice of the National Assembly, and I vow to uphold the nineteen
constitutional articles, and to organize a Parliament.... I and my
descendants will adhere to it forever. Your Heavenly Spirits will see
and understand."

[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_

TARTAR WALL, PEKING]

[Illustration: _Underw