Prince Ch'un, journeying by the Haean to Wei-hei-wei inst summer, was, as he h reconed, so fortunate as to see' a mi He describes his sensations at the sight and the reflections which it gave rise to in the following lines "Thave heard much about the mirage, Bat I never read of it without a certain doubt, What a coincidence! On the very day I sail I get a glimpse of fairy-land.
Houses and towers eosne and go, Mountains and trees appear and disappear As though I were conversing with the spirits.
Ah me life is just as fleeting."
That is the translation of the stanza which we recently gave in the rude English language, but a_possible reading of the penultimate line in the more subtle tongue of China i "It seems to me that the spirit(s) (or god fre whispering me frawatar,"
This may make somewhat clearer the following account of the excitement, which we are told, has existed for some time among officials in the north. The story goes that as the Prince stood watching the cloud capped towers in the air he saw wonderful forms of unearthly beauty and majesty, moving among them and standing in reverential attitudes, The Prince applied to a foreign councillor and friend, who accompanied him id who with the readiness which Western knowledge furnished him, at once replied that they were Sea Fairies (this being the nearest foreign words to the Chinese terms) who had left their august abodes to pay their homage to the Father of the Emperor of China, and through him to the Hwang-ti, the Son of Heaven, the Sacred Sovereign, "The Prince was," naturally, pleased, and his satisfaction became greater when the foreigner offered further explanitions as to the manners and customs of the Sea Fai and their exclusiveness, and explained that in the whole history of the verid no instance of the Sea Fairies coming into the upper air for the purpose of worship had been recorded. Turning to HE. Li Hung-chang the Prince asked if this was so, The Viceroy of Chihli and the Senior Guardian of the Throne promptly corroborated all that the foreigner hnd said of Sea Fairies, and especially his historian) facts. To say that the Prince was gratified is but faintly to describe the mingled feelings of ancestral, dynastic and personal pride, and the humility with which the occa. sinn and the obeisances of the submarine good people, filled him. He retired to his cabin to meditate, and did so, with the happy results which the readers of his poenis have admired, a Returning in due course to Poking, the Prince found the Empress full of Imperial solicitude and womanly curiosity. He described to her all he had seen, his journey, the forts, the arsenals, the men-of-war, the prodigious evidences of the might of China, and of the valour of her war-riots and the virtue of her children. The curious ways of foreigners were not forgotten, and the Empress was graciously pleased to show some interest in them, She heard and still hungered to hear more, Then the Prince reverently unfolded to her the mystery of the mirage and the hone of the Sea Fairies, Nothing he had related pleased her like this, nothing she had heard excited so greatly her Inperial imagination, Tt became a matter of absolute and pressing necessity that she should go down into the sea ina ship and behold the Sea Fairies for herself. The Prince must look to it immediately; fitting, Hiuhy hang, in whose hands the manayepreparations should be made at once, Li
ment of min Affairs is placed, must arrange with the Sea Fairies, which of course he could do at once and without difficulty. Or if any foreign aid was required, the higher education of her people having unfortunately been neglected in late centuries, there was one foreigner, whose superior knowledge of everything on earth and of the waters under the earth had been often manifested and never so wonderfully the appearance of the mirage. Not only had he rightly interpreted these apbearances in the Upper Air, but he had been of use Jast year in wiping away the absurd pretensions of the French.
There was instant consternation among the great Boards and officials in the capital. The Board of Revenue quaked. terribly as it had made calculations of the expenditure, which would be required for the imperial progress to the abodes of the Sen Fairies, which reduced the President to an almost hopeless condition, It-will cost five millions of taels if the Empress leaves Peking on this complimentary visit to the Sea Fairies, the officials quavered. Wise men applied themselves diligently to search the Ancient Books. In vain; no precedent was found in them of an Imperial visit to the Sea Fairies, Various representations were made
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.