pagodas and other ornaments, overthrown during the fearful raid of the allies. Enough yet remained, however, to give some faint notion of the untold wealth and labour that must have been lavished on this Imperial retreat. The Summer Palace lay in ruins within its boundary walls, just as it was looted and left. It is a pity that redress for a breach of treaty obligations was not sought by some less destructive mode than this; by some real achievement, which would have impressed the Chinese with exalted ideas of our civilisation as much as it terrified them with the awfulness of our power. If, for example, the capital had been held long enough to show what improvements a wise and liberal administration could, even in a short time, accomplish in the condition of the people and the country; then after a suitable indemnity had been paid for the lesson which we had been forced to convey, we might have withdrawn.
Wang made not a single allusion to the wreck around him. He admired, indeed, what little was left of the former splen- dour of the palace; but it was impossible to fathom his real sentiments, for a Chinaman, when interrogated, will never disclose what he thinks. The buildings were of purely Chinese design and conception.
At the monastery of Wo-foh-sze, or "the Sleeping Buddha," we found a resting-place for the night. The old Lama here was complaining of bad times. There was not enough land, he said, to support the establishment, and that though every monk enjoyed a yearly grant of twelve taels (equal to about £jt los, of our money) from the Peking Board of Rites. But of late years there have been but few of the members of the Imperial family to bury — a ceremony for which this esta- blishment receives a fee of some 300 taels. A remarkably beautiful
