which are driven by the Queen herself. |lowing our guide, we passed through one The high carriage in which I was driven room after another, until at length we whirled along with the rapidity of lightning, reached the ball-room. The size of this and in a couple of hours I had traversed every corner of the domain. I was reminded of the verse in Li Ch'ang-ke's poems, where he says:

In the favouring airs of Spring, swift my courser

speeds his way!

All the blooming sights of Ch'ang-ngan* I will witness in a day!

I also visited the great college (Eton), where the director of studies invited me to partake of refreshments. On returning in the evening, I dined by invitation with the Marquis (or Earl) M— at his public residence, where a feast of the most recherché character was given; and towards midnight I proceeded to the same nobleman's private residence, where a great gathering of ladies, not less than from one to two hundred, was assembled. The lady [of the house] was stationary in the midst of a forest of gorgeously apparelled guests, and the introduc

tions left not a moment's leisure.

apartment is about fifty or sixty feet in breadth by more than one hundred in length. It is, moreover, upwards of fifty feet in height. From the ceiling, and on with glass shades, to the number of 8,560 all sides of the room, there are hung lamps (?) burners altogether.

The

Of late years, the Queen has held but few consort have been commissioned to disreceptions, and the heir-apparent and his charge on her behalf the courtesies of State entailed by foreign intercourse. There were present at court this evening four hundred of the nobility and high functionaries of the Government, besides eight or nine hundred ladies of rank and position. The Prince and Princess sat facing the south, with seats arranged on either side of them, in three gradations. All the guests in attendance may stand or sit down as they please. I had a place opposite together with my companions. A band was stationed in a gallery, and the male and female guests 6th. Early this morning an officer of the went through some ten or a dozen dances. palace sent a card stating he was com- Officers of the army were in scarlet uniforms, manded by the Queen to invite [us] to a and civilians in black coats, in all cases State ball and banquet, specifying half-past ornamented with gold embroidery. ten o'clock P. M. as the time. The officers ladies wore dresses of a variety of colours, accompanying me and the interpreters were red, green, &c., with bare shoulders, arms, to go also, and dresses of ceremony were and bosoms. They wore clusters of jewels worn [by the interpreters] with swords. and diamonds upon their heads -a gorOur preparations were not completed until evening, and at the appointed time we pro-to the sight! This spectacle is the ne plus geous array of ornament literally dazzling ceeded together to the palace. On alight- ultra of elegance, luxury, and abundance! ing from our carriage at the gateway we At midnight the Prince and Princess left saw some hundred or more of troops under their seats and repaired to another saloon, arms, and drawn up in rank. They were when the whole assemblage stood still, all dressed in scarlet. After passing through forming ranks on either side. Shortly afterthe doorway we discerned a line of officers, wards a palace official brought word that drawn up, erect and motionless, holding the Prince had invited me to see him, and I halberds in their hands. At each doorway forthwith went [to be introduced]. The four of these were stationed. After enter- Prince and Princess both stood up, and put ing, and turning to the left, we traversed a questions to me, such as - What did I long corridor, making four or five turns. think of the appearance of this country? The whole was flooded with a blaze of light, It was a pity China is so far off, so that the marble pavements richly carpeted, and travelling backward and forward is not both sides of the staircase lined with floweasy; had I enjoyed a comfortable voyage? ering plants in bloom, the perfume from Was I pleased with my visit to the Royal which impregnated the entire atmosphere. park yesterday? The Princess asked me The lamps shone with such splendour that how the climate of China was in comparison not a nook or cranny was left unilluminated. with that of England; and whether I had The flight of stairs we ascended numbered been pleased with the places I had seen. more than a hundred steps, and was crowded To all these questions I made answer, in with a continuous stream of ladies of rank addition to which I also said: "Envoys proceeding to the presence-chamber. It is from China have never as yet reached your the ceremonial usage that a court is held by the Queen twice during each month. Fol

If the writer is reckoning by Chinese measurement, this passage should read, "seventy or eighty One of the most celebrated among the ancient feet," as the chang of ten Chinese feet is equal to capitals of China. fourteen feet English. — Trans.

Trans.

I cannot help feeling that for a mere traveller like myself to have been favoured with repeated manifestations of courtesy, and to have had an interview vouchsafed and condescending expressions addressed to me, is an honour of the very highest degree.

honourable country; and now having been | to me by the Queen, through which I had ordained to travel abroad, I have learnt for been enabled to enjoy the sight of her beauthe first time that such beautiful lands exist tiful domains. The Queen deigned to rebeyond our seas. Moreover, by the ex-ply saying that she hoped after my return to tremely gracious welcome accorded to me China, on the termination of my travels, the by the Queen and your Royal Highness, I concord and amity prevailing between the feel honoured in an unparalleled measure." two countries might be still further inHereupon the Prince and Princess, both creased. I bowed profoundly, testifying smiling, permitted me to withdraw, for the my homage, and withdrew. purpose of proceeding to the banquetingroom, where a profusion of costly wines and elegant viands was laid out. The servitors of the entertainment, decked in gold lace, carried trays about, moreover, and handed refreshments to the guests. I almost fancied I had been transported bodily to the Lake of Gems in heaven, that the crowd around me were the golden-armoured Gods, or the Immortals of fairy-land, and that I had bid farewell to the world below! A message came shortly with the Queen's commands that I should repair to the palace on the following afternoon to be presented to her Majesty. It was near morning when I got back to the hotel.

8th. Cloudy. Left the hotel at halfpast 9 A.M., and at 10 o'clock took the train and travelled sixty miles northward to Oxford, where I visited several great colleges. An elegant luncheon was laid before us; and at 3 P.M. we went on to Birmingham, another journey of sixty miles. It is the custom in England for each town to elect an individual as director of the local affairs, like the "prefects" in our own ancient sys7th. A fine day. At about 3 P.M. I ar- tem. There was here a [gentleman] named rived at the palace gateway. Guards were Y-, occupying the office in question, drawn up inside and out the same as last who, having heard I was to visit the place, evening, with the addition of a band num-received me with great attention, invited bering some scores of performers, clad in me to dinner, and accompanied me on a scarlet uniforms. A palace official, decorat- tour through all the manufacturing estabed with gold lace, led me to an apartment lishments. where I seated myself to await the summons 13th. Arrived at London at 5 A.M. The to the Royal presence. At three o'clock streets begin to be familiar, and on returning several officers of the Household made their to our previous lodgings in Cha-urh-sze Szeappearance, and led me through one door ti-li-ti (Charles Street), the landlady of the after another into the presence-chamber. (United) Hotel and the attendants all welThe Queen was standing facing the door-comed us like old acquaintances. The way, and on entering the apartment I drew flowers in the vases looked smilingly at the myself up in a respectful attitude, and of guests, and the bird in its cage chirruped fered an expression of homage (lit.: of its note of recognition. Truly is it said in grateful feelings). The Queen asked me Tu Yew's poems: how long I had been in this country - how I liked what I had seen, everything being so different from the manners and customs of China. I replied, saying that I had already been here a fortnight, and that in what I had seen of the buildings of London, and the various kinds of machinery in use, the skill and excellence of workmanship displayed were in advance of China, whilst, in respect to matters of government and administration, I had found much to admire. I added that I felt honoured beyond measure by the gracious treatment vouchsafed

In the above complimentary outburst, the narrator ingeniously combines the various Chinese and Buddhist legendary ideas of celestial magnificence into one picture. The Lake of Gems is the fabled abode of the "Queen of the Fairies," Si Wang Mu; the golden-armoured Gods are the attendants of India in the Buddhist pantheon; whilst the immortals are part of the Taoist mythology. - Trans.

K'iuan ying tsêng suh k’êh. (The dog goes forth to greet the stranger who

has once slept in the house).

Our rooms are on the third story, and are tolerably lofty and airy. The dining-room is an elegantly furnished apartment, different from the one we first occupied. This hotel ranks as one of the second class, yet it is five stories in height, with some dozens of rooms on each floor. At night, it is brilliantly illuminated, not a single landing or winding gallery left unprovided with a flood of light, which is continued throughout the whole night. There are some ten or more large dining-rooms, and upwards of 130 bedrooms. In every apartment there is a means of communication for summoning attendants fixed on the wall. By pressing this with the finger, it is made known im

first led to associate them with the qualities | the combination of two special forms of of chlorine gas; but he soon found that oxygen- the positive and the negative; they are perfectly distinct.

Suppose, for instance, that we have one hundred cubic inches of oxygen, and that by any process we reduce it to a combination of oxygen and ozone occupying ninetyfive cubic inches. Now, if the mercury absorbed the ozone, and we found, say, that there only remained eighty-five cubic inches of oxygen, we could reason in this way: Ten cubic inches were occupied by And now we have to deal with the diffi- the ozone before the mercury absorbed it; cult and still-vexed questions of the way in but these correspond to fifteen cubic inches which the change from oxygen is brought of oxygen: hence, ozone must be denser than about, and the actual distinction between oxygen in the proportion of fifteen to ten, the two forms of the same gas. Schönbein or three to two. And whatever result holds that common oxygen is produced by might have followed, a real absorption of

the ozone by the mercury would have as satisfactorily solved the problem.

But the result actually obtained did not admit of interpretation in this way. The apparent absorption of the ozone by the mercury, that is, the disappearance of the ozone from the mixture, was accompanied by no diminution of volume at all. In other words, returning to our illustrative case, after the absorption of the ozone from the ninety-five cubic inches occupied by the mixture, there still remained ninety-five cubic inches of oxygen; so that it seemed as though 0 cubic inches of ozone corresponded in weight to five cubic inches of oxygen. This solution, of course, could not be admitted, since it made the density of ozone infinite.

The explanation of this perplexing experiment is full of interest and instruction. We follow the account recently given by Mr. C. W. Heaton (Professor of Chemistry at Charing Cross Hospital) in the pages of a scientific contemporary, slightly modifying it, however, so that it may better suit our columns.

cubic inches of oxygen gave up their atoms, each atom combining with one of the remaining oxygen doublets, so as to form a set of ozone triplets. Clearly, then, fifteen cubic inches of oxygen were transformed into ozone. They now occupied but ten cubic inches; so that the mixture, or ozonized oxygen, contained eighty five cubic inches of oxygen and ten of ozone. When the mercury was introduced, it simply transformed all the ozone triplets into oxygen doublets, by taking away the odd atom from each. It thus left ten cubic inches of oxywhich, with the remaining eighty-five, constituted the ninety-five cubic inches observed to remain after the supposed absorption of the ozone.

It follows, of course, that ozone is half as heavy again as oxygen.

But, as Mr. Heaton remarked, "this beautiful hypothesis, although accounting perfectly for all known facts, was yet but a probability. One link was lacking in the chain of evidence, and that link M. Soret has supplied by a happily devised experiment. Although mercury and most substances are only capable of converting ozone into oxygen, oil of turpentine has the power of absorbing ozone in its entirety. Thus, when the experiment was repeated, with oil of turpentine in the place of the mercury, the ozone was absorbed, and the remaining oxygen, instead of occupying ninety-five inches, occupied but eighty-five. After this, no doubt could remain that Dr. Odling's ingeniously conceived hypothesis was the correct explanation of Messrs. Andrews and Tait's experiment.

Modern chemists adopt, as a convenient mode of representing the phenomena which gases exhibit, the theory that every gas, whether elementary or compound, consists of minute molecules. They suppose that these molecules are of equal size, and are separated by equal intervals so long as the gas remains unchanged in heat and density. The view serves to account for the features of resemblance presented by all gases. The features in which gases vary are accounted for by the theory that the molecules are differently constituted. The molecules are We recognize, then, in ozone a sort of supposed to be clusters of atoms, and the concentrated oxygen, with this peculiar qualities of a gas are assumed to depend on property, that it possesses an extraordinary the nature and arrangement of these ulti-readiness to part with its characteristic third mate atoms. The molecules of some elements atom, and so disappear as ozone, two-thirds consist but of a single atom; the molecules of its weight remaining as oxygen. of others are formed by pairs of atoms; those of others by triplets; and so on. Again, the molecules of compound gases consist of combinations of different kinds of atoms.

It is to this peculiarity that ozone owes the properties which render it so important to our welfare. We are indeed, as yet, in no position to theorize respecting this element, our knowledge of its very existence being so recent, and our information respecting its presence in our atmosphere being of still more recent acquisition.

Now, Dr. Odling, to whom we owe the solution of the perplexing problem described above, thus interpreted the observed phenomena. A molecule of oxygen contains two atoms, one of ozone contains three, and Indeed, it is well remarked by Mr. Heathe oxydizing power of ozone depends on the ton, that we had, until quite lately, no reaease with which it parts with its third atom son for confidently adopting Schönbein's of oxygen. Thus, in the experiment which view that ozone exists in our atmosphere. perplexed Messrs. Andrews and Tait, the The test-papers which Schönbein made use mercury only seemed to absorb the ozone; of turned blue under the influence of ozone, in reality it converted the ozone into oxy-it is true, but they were similarly influenced gen by removing its third atom. And now by other elements which are known to exist we see how to interpret such a result as we in our atmosphere, and even the sun's rays considered in our illustrative case. Five turned them blue. However, Dr. Andrews