of the great central Government; and her authority now can never be properly felt and acknowledged in the more distant portions of China, until each remotest province of that vast kingdom shall have been united to Peking by railways and by a network of telegraphic nerves.
Perhaps the most grave and distinguished-looking member of the group now before me was Maou-cheng-he. This man's schol- arly attainments had won him the highest post of literary fame, and formerly he had been chief judge of the metropolitan Uter- ary examinations.
Extraordinary is the honour which the Chinese attach to literary championship, and to the achievement of the Chong-iin or Han-lin degree, which is conferred by the Peking examiners. At the triennial examination of 1871 a man from Shun-kak district, in the Kwang-tung province, carried off the Chong-iin. His family name was Leung. Now this literary distinction had been obtained by a Kwang-tung scholar some half a century before, and he was the first who achieved that success during a period of 200 years. Thus the new victory of their own candidate was hailed by the men of Kwang-tung as a great historical event. It was reported, however, that Mr. Leung had after all obtained the honour by a lucky "fluke." As one of a triad of chosen scholars of the Empire, he produced the com- position which was to decide his claims. There were nine es- says in all, and these, when they had been submitted to the Han-lin examiners, were sent by them to the Empress Dowager (the Emperor being under age) to have their own award for- mally confirmed. The work of greatest merit was placed upper- most; but the old lady, who had an imperial will of her own, felt anxious to thwart the decision of the learned pundits ; and, as chance would have it, the sunlight fell on the chosen manuscript,
