I7th Dec.
A WELL-INFORMED correspondent writes
different sources that the young Emus that he heard on Wednesday fonts peror.of China commenced the study of the English language at the beginning of this month, two students from the Ting Wen Kuan, the Imperial Coll at Peking, being his instructors. Ihe news seems too startling and at the same time too good to be true; and yet truth is often stranger than fiction.
know that the tide of progress is irresistible; that not even the walls of the Forbidden City can keep it out, nor the stolid conservatism of old China, intensified as it seems to us to be in the statesmen that surround the throne, check it permanently: but we are not prepared to hear that the Emperor himself is learning a western language. His advisers must be wiser than we thought. He and they must honestly desire that China shall take her full place in the circle of civilised nations. Perhaps after all he intends to govern as well as reign, and sees the importance of knowing the language of the Power that is China's natural ally in Asia, the language that bids fair to be the commanding, as it is now the leading tongue of the world. If the news is true, it means the opening of a gate that has been closed for thirty centuries; the Jetting-in of a flood, beneficent not destructive, on which China will rise to a level she has never yet attained, with the young Emperor controlling and directing it. As a political step it would be one of incalculable value to China, for nothing could better conciliate the friendship of the English speaking peoples; and its consequences would be almost too vast to conceive.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.