are ladies renowned for their charming manners in society who use their maids as safety-valves for the innate rudeness which they contrive to repress and conceal in public. Doubtless they are hurt when, in dressing their heads, their maids drag the hair with the brush; but that is no excuse for pretty mouths permitting ugly words to escape from them. The master may be very fond of his horse, but, after speaking to the animal in tones of the gentlest affection, it is scarcely the sign of a courteous gentleman to swear at the groom because his stirrup leathers are too short. Courtesy at home, like other virtues, cannot be practised too constantly, or be too well fortified by undeviating habit. Even when a man is alone, it is not well to throw aside too freely the restraints and observances of social usage. We do not hesitate to say that no one can, when alone, discard all customary forms and ceremonies in dress, meals, or the like, without incurring danger of self-degradation. A man who neglects his toilet when he is going to spend the evening in his own society is decidedly wanting in self-respect, and the bachelor who only makes his rooms comfortable and attractive when he expects visitors must be pronounced unworthy of promotion to the more dignified state of life to which all bachelors presumably aspire.
THE CHINESE RECONQUEST OF EASTERN TURKESTAN.
The campaign which commenced with the sieges of Urumtsi and Manas in the autumn of 1876, and which was brought to a close with the fall of Kashgar in December last, is beyond doubt the most remarkable military enterprise which has been attempted by any Asiatic nation within the present century. If we simply consider the enormous distances over which large bodies of men have been transported, the feat must be admitted to have been no ordinary one, but when we have added thereto such difficulties as those caused by the barrenness of the region in which the war was to be carried on, the reputed strength of Kashgar, the hostility of the Mahommedan population, and the scarcely concealed distrust of Russia, we find that the task which a Chinese general and a Chinese army have accomplished is one that deserves to rank with many of the most celebrated of European campaigns. But during its progress we have remained in the most profound ignorance of its exact details. No adventurous correspondent accompanied the army either of the conqueror or of the conquered, and the public, which received no thrilling description of the sack of Manas or the fight at Turfan, refused to believe that Chinese valor in central Asia was more real than the myth-land in which it was being demonstrated. At last, however, we have an authentic official account of one portion of this little-understood campaign, in the "memorial" report of the governor-general of Kansuh, and by supplementing that document with the more recent information received through Tashkent and Semiretchinsk, wre are able to arrive at a tolerably clear idea of the whole campaign. We propose, therefore, to describe as a connected whole that war of which the Pekin Gazette published in detail on January 4th the narrative of one portion.
In the year 1875, the Chinese government resolved to chastise the rebel powers which had broken away from its control in the country lying beyond the province of Kansuh. The chief of these were the Tungan rulers of Urumtsi and Manas, and Yakoob Beg, the ameer of Kashgar. At Lanchefu, the capital of Kansuh, troops were accordingly collected in large numbers, and the necessary stores and supplies of cannon and ammunition were forwarded with as little delay as possible to the same place. Chinese movements are proverbially slow, and it was not until the year 1875 had closed that the army, under the nominal command of General Kin Shun — now Liu Kin Tang — but really controlled by Tso Tsung Tang, the governor-general of Kansuh, advanced westwards. Its headquarters were, some months later, established at Guchen, and from this place the sieges both of Urumtsi and of Manas were conducted. Of these, Urumtsi was the first to fall, and in November, 1876, after having held out for more than two months, Manas shared the same fate. Several of the leading men of the Tungan movement perished in the course of the latter siege, or in the massacre that ensued upon the surrender of Manas. Before the close of the year 1876, therefore, the first of the rebel powers had been overthrown, and Chinese influence and prestige restored in what, for want of a better term, may be called the region of Ultra-Kansuh. It now only remained for the Chinese army to deal with the second and more formidable
