You, of course, know that Kung Chao-yuan, formerly Taotai of Shanghai and now Fantai of Szechuan, is appointed Minister to England and France. The native gentlemen hest able to judge speak of him as an honest administrator and an amiable man, but distinguished neither by exceptional ability nor by diplomatic finesse: they seem to think that beyond an affable address he has no special qualification for so import. ant.a position. On dit that it is none of his seeking, and that some pressure has had to be applied to His Excellency to remove his diffidence. He will leave Szechuan this autumn, spend the winter in Peking and Tientsin, and will leave in the spring. As longas Sir Holliday Macartney is at Portland Place, the personality of the Min is not so important as it would be absence of that able and indefatigable vant of the Chinese Government. He inspires unbounded confidence at the Foreign Office, and China steadily reaps the benefit.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.