Our Tientsin correspondent writes in a letter which will be found in another column: "I learn that the Times correspondent passed through a few days ago on his way to Corea, expressing the opinion that for the nonce there will be little of importance occurring in Peking, but that matters of some importance are likely to come to the front in the Hermit Kingdom." That the Times correspondent is right about Corea we do not doubt for a moment. Asa valued correspondent there writes t us under date the 11th inst.: "Politi. cally, Corea is dead. Compared with the sick man of Europe or any other invalid she is a mass of putrefaction;" and we can realise the truth of this when we see the Minister of Justice, the man who assassinated Kim Ok-kirin in a Japanese hotel in Shanghai, arresting his colleague, the Minister of Public Works, on a false charge of attempted assassination. The Times correspondent has shown over and over again how well posted he is in affairs at Peking, but to us it seems that there is plenty of chance of affairs of importance occurring there. Tt is quite possible, however, that the Times correspondent sees certain indications that in Corea to be the beginning of the ap-Japan and Russia. arently inevitable conflict between Tt does not seem possible, though we know by experience that things do not go in China as they do anywhere else in the world, that the present Government can' maintain itself at Peking. We do not forget that the old commercial maxim which was current here before the days of telegraphs, "make up your mind from all the information you can get what you ought to do, 1 then do the opposite," is as appli to political as to commercial affairs in China. But how in such a distracted country as China is now can a Government stand whose sole object is money-making? The Foreign Office of China is—and our authority for this statement is no less a person than Li Hung-chang—as grossly and completely ignorant of the condition of China and her most imperious necessities as our own Tsungli Yamen in Downing Street so ably satirised in the London Letter of the 14th ult. If any member of the Teungli Yamen at Peking really gets to know any nopelotale truths and does not keep them locked up in his own breast, he is promptly got rid of, and some utterly ignorant old fossil put in his place. It is having to struggle in vain against the dense and self-satisfied ignorance of the Tsungli Yamen that makes the task of the Foreign Ministers so heart-breaking, and those who are not tempted by the failure of all their efforts to give up their endeavours and let things slide, break down altogether las Sir Harry Parkes did. We need only read' the Echo de Chine to see that M. Pichon has no better success than Sir Claude Macdonald. The Russian Minister represents semi-Oriental Power and knows better how to deal with Orientals; the German Minister, too, represents a thoroughly masterful ruler, who will be obeyed; and their method is to say this has to be done, and it is done, the members of the Yamen wondering all the time in their pitifal ignorance what it all means.
under the usurping Empress Dowager The leading men_of Ching to-day are Jung Lu and Kang Yi, both Manchus. Except for a brief visit to Tientsin, the former has spent all his life in Peking, notwithstanding which he is understood to have a much more liberal mind than most of his countrymen round him and behind him. But
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.