ld not help feeling some gratitude to those who so
conveniently echoed his pretensions to the Throne at the same time
that they pleaded extenuating circumstances for acts of cruelty and
brigandage often unsurpassed in their infamy.

If he found the foreigners thus willing to accept him at his own
estimate, it would have been very strange if he had not experienced
still greater success in imposing upon the credulity of his own
countrymen. To declare that he had dreamt dreams which showed that he
was selected by a heavenly mandate for Royal honours was sufficient to
gain a small body of adherents, provided only that he was prepared to
accept the certain punishment of detection and failure. If Hung's
audacity was shown by nothing else, it was demonstrated by the lengths
to which he carried the supernatural agency that urged him to quit the
ignominious life of a Kwantung peasant for the career of a pretender
to Imperial honours. The course of training to which he subjected
himself, the ascetic deprivations, the loud prayers and invocations,
the supernatural counsels and meetings, was that adopted by every
other religious devotee or fanatic as the proper novitiate for those
honours based on the superstitious reverence of mankind, which are
sometimes no inadequate substitute for temporal power and influence,
even when they fail to pave the way to their attainment.

Yet when Hung proceeded to Kwangsi there was no room left to hope that
the seditious movement would dissolve of its own accord, for the
extent and character of his pretensions at once invested the rising
with all the importance of open and unveiled rebellion. After the
proclamation of Hung as Tien Wang, the success of the Kwangsi rebels
increased. The whole of the country south of the Sikiang, with the
strong military station of Nanning, fell into their hands, and they
prepared in the early part of the year 1851 to attack the provincial
capital Kweiling, which commanded one of the principal high roads into
the interior of China. So urgent did the peril at this place appear
that three Imperial Commissioners were sent there direct by land from
Peking, and the significance of their appointment was increased by the
fact that they were all Manchus. They were instructed to raise troops
_en route_, and to reach Kweiling as soon as possible. Their movements
were so dilatory that that place would have fallen if it had not been
for the courage and military capacity shown by