Rowovrs of too precise a nature to be" treated as altogether idle, have been lately current in the Settlement, that Mr. Robert Hart is to be promoted to a more lofty position in the Chinese service then that ocoupied by him at present, and that his successor as Inspector-General of Customs is to be no less a personage than Chunghow. At present, so far as we know, the proposed arrangement is only rumour; but there -are circumstances which would seem to show that such a proposition is not unlikely to meet with favour at Peking. It is known for instance, that the Chinese Government have lately had pressed upon them the advisability of appointing a Representative at London and it is nob at all improbable that, feeling instinctively that the arts of persuasion which have for a series of years proved successful against British Representatives in the afternoon of Peking, may not be equally effective in the busy world of London, some such scheme as anew Burlingame Mission may really have presented itself as a desirable interlude pending the educa. tion of a Chinese diplomat. A good thing may, however, be tried too often. The farce of the Burlingame Mission was an undoubted success on its first representation; but the world saw that it had little in it, and that it was only caused by the intense personality of the principal actor. Ibis hardly likely that a repetition with a different, and probably inferior, caste
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.