spector-General of Maritime Customs, by whom I was recommended
for the presidency. Professors of English, French, and Russian
were engaged; and later on German took a place alongside of the
three leading languages of the Western world.

At first no science was taught or expected, but gradually we succeeded
in obtaining the consent of the Chinese ministers to enlarge our
faculty so as to include chairs of astronomy, mathematics, chemistry,
and physics. International law was taught by the
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president; and by him also the Chinese were supplied with their
first text-books on the law of nations. What use had they for books
on that subject, so long as they held no intercourse on equal terms
with foreign countries? The students trained in that school of
diplomacy had to shiver in the cold for many a year before the
Government recognised their merits and rewarded them with official
appointments. The minister recently returned from London, the ministers
now in Germany and Japan, and a minister formerly in France, not to
speak of secretaries of legation and consuls, were all graduates
of our earlier classes.

In 1898 the young Emperor, taught by defeat at the hands of the
Japanese, resolved on a thorough reform in the system of national
education. It would never do to confine the knowledge of Western
science to a handful of interpreters and attaches. The highest
scholars of the Empire must be allowed access to the fountain of
national strength. A university was created with a capital of five
million taels, and the writer was made president by an imperial
decree which conferred on him the highest but one of the nine grades
of the mandarinate.

Two or three hundred students were enrolled, among whom were bachelors,
masters, and doctors of the civil service examinations. It was
launched with a favouring breeze; but the wind changed with the
_coup d'etat_ of the Empress Dowager, and two years later the
university went down in the Boxer cyclone. A professor, a tutor,
and a student lost their lives. How the cause of educational reform
rose stronger after the storm, I relate in a special
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chapter. It is a far cry from a university for the _elite_
to that elaborate system of national education which is destined
to plant its schools in every town and hamlet in the Empire. The
new education was in fact still regarded with suspicion by the
honour men of the old system. They looked on it, as they did on
the railway,