Peking, according to an Imperial edict of the 31st July-Inst, has lost a well-known personage in the death of Li Hung-tsao, Assistant Grand Secretary and President of the Board of Civil Appointments,. on the 30th ultimo after a lingering para. lytic illness of many months. The late Assistant Grand Secretary was a native of Chihli province, which therefore loses two out of three of her most prominent men, vis:—The late Grand Secretary Chang Chih-wan (cousin of the Viceroy Chang Chih-tung at Wuchang) who died last June, and the subject of the present sketch—the third and most famous being the well-known Chung Chih-tung, Viceroy of the provinees of Hunan and Hupeh.
Through the similarity of his name to the brothers, the ex-Viceroys Li Han-chang and Li Hung-chang, Li Hung-tsao has frequently been mistaken for a brother also of their's—even Chinese who do not keep in touch with mandarindom have been apt to make the same mistake—but the latter are natives of Anhui, on the Yangtze, while the deceased official was a native of the Tmperial Province. Li Hung-tsao, since becoming a Metropolitan official in 1861, had made quite a name in the capital as a man of high literary abilities, possessed of an irasciple temper (which came near ruining his cosets,) bull tagged honesty aod bigoted conservatism of the rigid Confucian School of the capital. For many years he held the post of President of the Board of Rites which suited admirably the character and tastes of the man. His Sovereigns—T'un, Chih, the Dowager-Empress Regent, an Kuang Hsii—séldom took any notice of him or gave him chances to benefit his pri-vote purse; but whenever there happened to be matters to be investigated which deity to do it, they never failed to appoint required a man of ability and strict inter
Li Hung-tsao to the post. Also, when literary questions occurred which required delicate fondling in order to keep firm the loyalty of the great body of literati of the Empire, the abilities and profound literary talents of the deceased were always to the fore, specially selected for the occasion, but seldom rewarded after the crisis was over. But the time came when even the proverbial short memory of a Court felt ashamed to pass him by unacknowledged any longer, Li Hung-tsao was elevated late last year to the dignity of an Assistant Grand Secretary, and in order to give him better emoluments of office, he was also transferred from the Presidency of the Board of Rites to that of Civil Appointments. For in spite of his. thirty odd years of high office, Li Hung.tsao wes a comparatively poor man with nothing
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.