I have remarked that the past year was an uneventful one for us, but we fare so intimately bound up with China that we must naturally follow, with great and sympathetic interest, the strivings of its Government and people to find their place in the midst of the steadily-increasing pressure from the world ontside'them, and this we may do without indulging in such comparisons between Chinese and foreign doings and methods as were made at a recent social meeting of the Association. What may really be taking place within the walls of the Forbidden ty can be known but to few, but enough transpires to indicate that the impelling forces of progress and reaction are doing their work there as much as everywhere else. Much has been heard, during the year, about Constitutional Goveroment' and representative institutions, constracted more or less on alien, that is Western systems; when one would, perhaps, rather have learnt that the powers that be in China wore deriving inspiration from their own past for the lines on which to reorganize the Government of the country, for there was undoubtedly period during which China reached a high scale of civilization and prosperity, and that was under what appears to have been an essentially democratic form of government.
The important question of the suc-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.