AFTER an absence of nearly seventeen months, after going out as beggars and refugees, and returning with the pomp appropriate to the rulers of a great Asiatic Empire, the Emperor and Empress sre once more in their palaces at Peking. They will go back and they won't go back, we have said from time to time, and doubtless our uncertainty was only the reflection of that of the Empress Dowager herself. It does her intelligence credit that in spite of all the arguments made to her and for her, she kas had pluck enough to trust herself on the foreign railway and settle herself almost under the guns of the foreign fortress; for that at least we must respect her. It is a relief to us all that she has returned to Peking, and a further relief to know that the logic of events has proved to her thet she must yield to the oncoming wave of reform. Her return is one of the good auguries for 1902, for we cannot suppose that.she would have returned if there had been any probability of another outbreak against foreigners. It seemed at one time fuulish to expect what has happened; it seems foolish now to expect that she will once again retire and hand over the reins to her nephew and the rightful sovereign Kuang
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.