Mocu and well-deserved praise has been. given tothe article' in the November. Blackwood.; on "The Empress-Regent of China," -who is really, now that she-has taken to: signing decrees' in her own. name; "except when she wishes' to' humiliate: her nephew-still farther, the Empress of China, though it is: convenient to adhere' to the well-known -title of Empress' Dowager.. It i understood
that is, the wife of: the practically that the legitimate Empress of China, Emperor, is: still.' alive. However inaccurate it' might be, any account of.thé. Empress. Dowager would: be: eagerly. received.by. the public at home if it was: written with" an air of authority, and we may say at.once of the account in Blackwood that—as far as any foreigner can judge—it is fairly.: accurate until: we.come to the last page." As to the'events of the present year, the' writer of the article has evidently trusted. to not very reliable or unbiased reports, without the -direct'.knowledge of events on which the earlier portion is based.
We have said that' as far as any foreigner can judge, the earlier portion' of the aeédunt of: the- Empress Dowager is fairly accurate'; but, as the writer of the account, himself says, "what transpires in an. Oriental palace is filtered through such miasmatic media that every. separate de-ordinary suspicion, and host impres-tail is open to, something. more than
sions may form a distorted, picture. Bit in the long-run, after' cancelling out contradictions and threshing the residue, approximations to the trath may-be arrived at, more or less definite according to the force.of the personalities concerned." It must be remembered that until the: visit of 'Prince Henry of Prussia to' Pekiny this year, no foreigner had' a3, mud as seen the Empress Dowager; no portrait of her, has ever been, made public; not even such tive one as that of the Emperor, which the sage Spectator recently, accepted in good faith as the key to his character.
tically no one knows, except the eunuchs, what really goes on in the forbidden city, and the stories told by the eunuchs are always to be received with suspicion.. Bystanders at Peking have to infer from: the results' they see what the causes and motives have been,. from "the seen tli¢y "have to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.