child,
and which can under no circumstances be delegated to any other person
as long as there is a son or a daughter living. The route along which
His Majesty was to proceed was lined with closely-packed crowds of
loyal subjects, eager to set eyes for once in their lives upon a being
they are taught to regard as the incarnation of divinity; and when the
Sacred Person really burst upon their view, the excitement was beyond
description. Young and old, women and children, fell simultaneously
upon their knees, and tears and sobs mingled with the blessings
showered upon His Majesty by thousands of his simple-minded,
affectionate people.

The next epoch in the life of this youthful monarch occurred a few
months ago. The Son of Heaven[*] had not availed himself of western
science to secure immunity from the most loathsome in the long
category of diseases. He had not been vaccinated, in spite of the
known prevalence of smallpox at Peking during the winter season. True,
it is but a mild form of smallpox that is there common; but it is easy
to imagine what a powerless victim was found in the person of a young
prince enervated by perpetual cooping in the heart of a city, rarely
permitted to leave the palace, and then only in a sedan-chair, called
out of his bed at three o'clock every morning summer or winter, to
transact business that must have had few charms for a boy, and
possessed of no other means of amusement than such as he could derive
from the society of his wife or concubines. Occasional bulletins
announced that the disease was progressing favourably, and latterly it
was signified that His Majesty was rapidly approaching a state of
convalescence. His death, therefore, came both suddenly and
unexpectedly; happily, at a time when China was unfettered by war or
rebellion, and when all the energies of her statesmen could be
employed in averting either one catastrophe or the other. For one
hundred days the Court went into deep mourning, wearing capes of white
fur with the hair outside over long white garments of various stuffs,
lined also with white fur, but of a lighter kind than that of the
capes. Mandarins of high rank use the skin of the white fox for the
latter, but the ordinary official is content with the curly fleece of
the snow-white Mongolian sheep. For one hundred days no male in the
Empire might have his head shaved, and women were supposed to eschew
for the same period all those gaudy head ornaments of which the