"It is necessary for us to make preparations for a war with Japan, and consequently we must develop our naval armaments in order to be able to carry out this object. For some years past we have already been actively engaged on these preparations, and our best efforts have been directed toward reorganization of our navy and army. Enormous sums of money have been spent in order to enable us to display our power, and to assert our superiority over our neighbor, whenever the favorable moment for this attempt shall have arrived. . . . In one of the ancient maxims it is said, 'Nothing is so dangerous as to expose one's scheme before it is ripe.' . . . My humble opinion is, let us not lose sight of our plan of invading Japan, but let us not commit the mistake of doing this in a hurried manner. First of all our navy must be thoroughly organized before we can think of an invasion.

...

If your Cabinet Ministers and Viceroys will agree together, and your Majesty will rule over them all, in conformity with your august decisions, then the invasion of Japan can be thought of; but it is decidedly better not to place the responsibility of this enterprise on my shoulders alone."

The foolishness of such dreams of conquest ought to have been apparent to Viceroy Li. Perhaps they were; but he was in the difficult position of trying to fight off France, satisfy the Japanophobes at Peking, and justify the vast expenditure for war implements which he was making. But in 1894 the Chinese broke the treaty with Japan of 1884 by landing troops in Korea without notice. The rag-tag armies were annihilated; Li's own troops were defeated; his fleets at the Yalu and at Wei Hai Wei were sunk; and his fortress of Port Arthur was taken by assault. Thus did Li Hung Chang invade Japan. A year later, this veteran of seventy-two summers was forced to visit Japan to sign a humiliating peace after a humiliating fuddle of a war.

be,

Again Marquis Ito and Earl Li were supreme in the negotiations; and the treaty that resulted was the most humiliating among sovereign powers since the Germans withdrew from Paris in 1871. Li, of course, was in the dust. Where else could he be? But, however that may he was soon to change sackcloth for embroidered silk. Li encouraged such diplomatic manœuvres as Japan underwent with Germany, Russia, and France, as a result of which she was obliged to relinquish the territory in Manchuria and Shantung which China had made over to her. Li was again in the ascendant. But he was outreached, or sold out; in any case he went down the scale again. He saw Russia and England slip into the place Japan vacated, and Germany occupy a well-located domicile. Li's Korean policy may have been a very good thing for himself, but as diplomacy it was a fizzle. He lost Korea, Liaotung, and Port Arthur, Wei Hai Wei and Kiaochow, Formosa and $133,000,000 of his country's money.

The race of this fallen statesman was not yet run. He was persona grata at the Tzar's coronation in 1896, and undertook a sort of trium

phant tour around the world - General Grant style. There was a notable difference, however: General Grant was victor, Earl Li was a vanquished hero. On his return he was kicked and cuffed about by the palace clique to compensate them for his foreign-gotten honors. Then he went back as Grand Councillor, and member of the Tsungli Yamen, better called the Board for Befooling Foreign Statesmen. But in 1898 he was removed from the Yamen. Sir Claude MacDonald explained this action in a dispatch to Lord Salisbury in the following words: "He has recently shown himself markedly antagonistic to our interests.

People said that this was the last of Earl Li. But those who ventured so sanguine an opinion were chiefly newcomers on the Asiatic stage of action. Within fifteen months Li went to the rich Viceroyalty of Liang Kwang. He quietly withdrew from the northern storm centre. The Manchu Mandarins called the tornado about their heads; and now Li has been sent for, to gather up and preserve the remains.

Li is now in his seventy-eighth year; and, seated in the Council Chamber at Peking, he studies the faces of the younger statesmen opposite him. China thinks she has no other statesman upon whom to place the first responsibility; and, though Britain would have none of him, there he is as Chief Peace Commissioner. He is the most unique living Oriental personage the most trusted and the most distrusted, the most liberal and the most bigoted, the most successful and the most often defeated statesman of the Chinese Empire. He has borne a greater load of government than any, but has the respect of few. Such a man is the Chinese Machiavelli, undimmed though white with age.

ROBERT E. LEWIS.

THE CAREER OF KING EDWARD VII.

THERE were popular rejoicings in England when the Prince of Wales was born, in 1841. There was wide popular gratulation when the heir to the throne married, in 1863, the charming daughter of the Danish King. There was rejoicing throughout the land, and there was a sympathetic thrill of pleasure through the Empire of the Queen, when he recovered from his serious illness in 1872. There have been great popular receptions given to the Prince in Canada, in India, indeed in every important place within the bounds of the United Kingdom, as well as in the United States. For over half a century he has, in fact, been the centre of observation, the theme of constant discussion, in the press, or the platform, in the pulpit, and in private. The light which illumines a throne has continuously shone upon him during all these years with intensity.

If, during this period, the British nation has given much, it has also exacted much. If the people, as a whole, have rejoiced with the Prince in his rejoicings, and sorrowed with him in his sorrows, they have also awarded him the sternest criticism. sometimes with that undue severity which is fairly characteristic of British prejudices and British convictions when once fairly aroused. But, as a rule, the people of the United Kingdom understood the responsibilities and limitations of the Prince's position. They knew the burdens he had to bear in acting upon multitudinous occasions as the representative of his royal mother. They appreciated the importance of his duties as leader of society and the nature of his success as a leader in British sports. They knew his skill as a public and after-dinner speaker, and realized something of his wonderful tact and distinct diplomatic achievements at home and abroad.

No heir to royal power in Great Britain or elsewhere has ever had such beneficial and bright surroundings as those which blessed the early career of the Prince of Wales. Reared amid the domestic life of a home which has ever since been a pattern to the people of the realm; trained by parents who were imbued with the loftiest ideals of Christian life and morality; educated under the watchful supervision of a princely father whose knowledge was as wide as his experience was varied and valuable;

surrounded by tutors such as Charles Kingsley, and by guardians such as General Bruce; brought up amidst the advice of men like Bishop Wilberforce, Baron Stockmar, and others of high attainment and character, who were frequently consulted by the Queen-in view of all this it is apparent that everything possible was done to make him a prince among men as well as a prince in rank and position.

Every opportunity of travel was given to him. As a child he accompanied the Queen and Prince Consort to Scotland and Ireland, to the Channel Isles, and to the English Lake country. In 1857, with the Hon. F. Stanley - now Earl of Derby - he travelled through Switzerland and Germany, under the care of General Grey, Colonel Ponsonby, and his tutors. After his return he again visited Ireland, and especially the Lakes of Killarney. In 1858 he went to see his sister, the Crown Princess of Prussia, at Berlin. Early in the next year he visited Rome, and was received by the Pope with great courtesy. From thence he went to the south of Spain, saw the Alhambra, and was entertained by the King of Portugal at Lisbon. Then came education of another kind, which completed his academical course-a year at the University of Edinburgh; a period at Christ Church and Pembroke College, Oxford; and another at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1860 he made a tour of Canada and visited the United States, under the care of the Duke of Newcastle.

Then came the great misfortune of his life. The death of the Prince Consort, amid all its far-reaching consequences, had no more important one than the leaving of the young Prince without a father's guiding hand. As Harriet Martineau well said three years afterward :

"It seemed as if he, on reaching manhood, was fated to lose his best and most needed personal friends. He has lost his father, and General Bruce, his governor, and now the guardian and companion of his early travels [the Duke of Newcastle]."

Very wisely, however, and despite the distraction of a personal sorrow which was far too intense for words, the Queen at once arranged a foreign tour for him; and the young Prince was sent to the East for five months, attended by his governor, Colonel Keppel, Major Teesdale, and Dr. Minter. The Nile was visited, together with Cairo, the Pyramids, Thebes, and Karnac. Then came a month in the Holy Land, accompanied by Mr. (afterward Dean) Stanley; and this was succeeded by a visit to the Viceroy of Egypt and to the Sultan at Constantinople.

It was about this time that Laurence Oliphant met the Prince at Vienna en route; and, after accompanying him as far as Corfu, he made

an interesting reference to his character and attainments. Said the genial author:

"I was delighted with him, and thought he was rarely done justice to in public estimation. He is not studious, nor highly intellectual, but he is up to the average in this respect, and beyond it in so far as quickness of observation and general intelligence goes. Travelling is, therefore, the best education he could have, and I think his development will be far higher than people anticipate. Then his temper and disposition are charming. His defects are rather the inevitable consequences of his position, which never allows him any responsibility or forces him into action."

Since that time the Prince of Wales has assumed an ever-increasing load of responsibility, and has never been accused, even by his sternest critics, of inaction or of indifference to his endless routine of public duty and ceremonial. Meanwhile, also, the training of the heir-apparent in constitutional matters had not been neglected. To Prince Albert this had naturally been a congenial part of his son's education, and one which he personally supervised. Men like Canon Kingsley were employed for instruction in purely historical matters; but the practical application of these teachings lay in the wise advice, and no doubt frequent conversations, of the Prince Consort. So far back, indeed, as 1849, when the boy was only eight years old, his father asked Baron Stockmar to prepare a memorandum on the subject; and the views pronounced in the following paragraph may be fairly said to have constituted the basis of the Prince's training in this connection:

"The Prince should early be taught that thrones and social order have a stable foundation in the moral and intellectual faculties of man; that by addressing his public exertions to the cultivation of these powers in his people, and by taking their dictates as the constant guides of his own conduct, he will promote the solidity of his empire and the prosperity of his subjects. In one word, he should be taught that God, in the constitution of the mind, and in the arrangement of creation, has already legislated for men, both as individuals and as nations; that the laws of morality which He has written in their nature are foundations on which, and on which alone, their prosperity can be reared; and that the human legislator and sovereign have no higher duty than to discover and carry into execution these enactments of divine legislation."

Such were undoubtedly the constitutional principles taught to the youthful Prince; and, though not perhaps immediately applied or practised by him, they have borne the most ample fruit during the last three decades of a public life which formally opened in February, 1863, when the heir to the throne took his seat in the House of Lords amid every sort of pomp and ceremony. A month later his marriage with the Princess Alexandra was celebrated, and thus marked the introduction into his life of an influence which cannot be over-rated. The manifestation of