upon this *' Model Settlement," and perceive that a handful of outer barbarians have, within the space of sixty years, done more with the little quagmire that was grudgingly allotted to them, than they themselves, with their highest efforts, have achieved anywhere in their own wide Empire during all the untold cen- turies of its fame. As I have said already, there is a finish about the whole settlement, a splendour and sumptuousness about its buildings, its wide roads and breathing spaces, its spacious wharves and elegant warehouses, that stand as a solemn rebuke to the niggardliness and grinding despotism which within the adjoining native city have penned thousands of struggling beings in the most temporary abodes; there to carry on a ceaseless strife for existence, breathing the fetid air of narrow polluted alleys, exposed to the constant risk of fearful conflagration and the grim horrors of pestilence or famine.
Su-kwang-ki, or *'Paul Su," celebrated as the pupil of Matthew Ricci, the great Jesuit missionary of the sixteenth century, appears to have been a man who mourned over the condition of his country. He was a native of Shanghai, a scholar of great renown ; and he not only aided Ricci in his translation of a number of the books of Euclid, but left behind him many valuable original works; notably one on agriculture, which is still highly prized. But although admitted by the Emperor Kia-tsing and his suc- cessor to be man of singular ability and foresight, his wise counsels were disregarded, and he himself was repeatedly treated with suspicion, due to the intrigues of jealous rivals. Accord- ingly his counsel was set aside, and his measures for the preser- vation and defence of the last Chinese dynasty were systematic- ally neglected. But to this day he occupies a shrine in one of the temples of Shanghai, and there his fellow-townsmen pay him reverent worship as a sort of divinely-inspired sage.
