capital I had become well
acquainted with Chang's brilliant career; but it is only within
the last three or four years that I have had an opportunity to
study him in personal intercourse, having been called to preside
over his university and to aid him in other educational enterprises.

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Whatever may be thought of the rank and file of China's mandarins,
her viceroys are nearly always men of exceptional ability. They
are never novices, but as a rule old in years and veterans in
experience. Promoted for executive talent or for signal services,
their office is too high to be in the market; nor is it probable
that money can do much to recommend a candidate. A governor of
Kwangsi was recently dismissed for incompetence, or for ill-success
against a body of rebels. Being a rich man, he made a free use
of that argument which commonly proves effective at Peking. But,
so far from being advanced to the viceroyalty, he was not even
reinstated in his original rank. The most he was able to obtain by
a lavish expenditure was the inspectorship of a college at Wuchang,
to put his foot on one of the lower rounds of the official ladder.

Chang was never rich enough to buy official honours, even in the
lower grades; and it is one of his chief glories that, after a
score of years in the exercise of viceregal power, he continues
to be relatively poor.

His name in full is Chang Chi-tung, meaning "Longbow of the Cavern,"
an allusion to a tradition that one of his ancestors was born in
a cave and famed for archery. This was far back in the age of the
troglodytes. Now, for many generations, the family has been devoted
to the peaceful pursuit of letters. As for Chang himself, it will
be seen with what deadly effect he has been able to use the pen, in
his hands a more formidable weapon than the longbow of his ancestor.

Chang was born at Nanpi, in the metropolitan
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province of Chihli, not quite seventy years ago; and that circumstance
debarred him from holding the highest viceroyalty in the Empire,
as no man is permitted to hold office in his native place. He has
climbed to his present eminence without the extraneous aids of
wealth and family influence. This implies talents of no ordinary
grade; but how could those talents have found a fit arena without
that admirable system of literary competition which for so many
centuries has served the double purpose of extending patronage
to letters and of securing the fittest m