arrangements with a more than satisfactory result," when he might so easily have used his great and growing personal influence with the Chinese (he was a persona grata with them from the beginning) to undermine his chief.

How the fleet "of genuine materials" came out with all despatch under the celebrated Captain Sherard Osborne and various other officers lent by the Admiralty, is a matter of history. The reputations of its commanders—for all were men of distinction—should have ensured its success if anything could have done so. But from the very moment the fleet reached Shanghai there were misunderstandings. Captain Osborne found himself subject to local officials whose control he resented.

The truth was Lay had somewhat altered the regulations drawn up by Robert Hart and approved by Prince Kung, and had then told Captain Osborne that of course the Chinese would agree to anything he wished. Subsequent events proved him wrong, and showed that he had made the fatal mistake of committing his employers too far. Perhaps this was not unnatural considering that he was just then receiving the most flattering notice from the British press and a C.B. from the British Government for his services—yet it was none the less disastrous.

In May 1863 Lay returned to Shanghai, and, Robert Hart's acting appointment having come to an end, he was made Commissioner at Shanghai, with charge of the Yangtsze ports, the position being specially created for him by Prince Kung in order to give him more authority than would belong to the simple Commissioner of a port. That same autumn the Sherard Osborne affair came to a crisis. Returning from a trip up the Yangtsze, Hart found Lay and Li Hung Chang at daggers drawn. The former had just peremptorily demanded a large sum of money to provision the fleet, and the latter had flatly refused to put his hand in his pocket without official orders to do so, Robert Hart, who very shrewdly guessed at the real cause of the misunderstanding, offered to go and see Li and explain. Very tactfully he told Li that all Lay and Captain Osborne wanted was his formal sanction to present at the bank, as without this the transaction would not have the necessary official character. Li agreed readily enough when the matter was presented in this light; what he had objected to was Lay's abrupt demand to pay so many thousand taels out of his own pocket immediately.

But no small manoeuvre such as this, however successful, could arrange the larger matter. The fleet had been an utter failure. Osborne himself was disgusted; the Chinese were dissatisfied. They therefore made the best of a bad bargain, and sent the ships back to be sold in England in order to prevent their falling into the hands of the independent and quarrelsome Daimios of Japan, or, as Mr. Burlingame, the United States Minister, greatly feared, into the hands of the Confederates.

Thus ended a very curious incident which, by closing as it did, undoubtedly set back the clock of reform in China. It may be that from the political point of view this was as well; that, had the venture been an unqualified success, the Chinese might have thrown themselves too much into the arms of foreign Powers and tried to reform too fast by slavish imitation instead of slowly working out their own salvation.

As far as he was personally concerned the disastrous and expensive failure long preyed upon Robert Hart's mind. He reproached himself bitterly for the mistake. But the Chinese never attached the least blame to him; they showed him no diminution of respect, rather an increase. It was on the Inspector-General H.N. Lay that their wrath fell. They considered that he had treated the whole matter too high-handedly, and within three months they had dismissed him and offered the post to Robert Hart. Of course the change gave rise to much discussion, and Sherard Osborne went frankly to Hart and told him how ill-natured people were hinting that he had intrigued against Lay. The malignity of idle gossip, however, could not turn him back. Knowing that he had worked as loyally for his chief as for himself, he simply replied that if the public looked at it in that way, instead of refusing he would certainly accept the post. I wonder if any instinct told him that the great day of his life was when he did accept it, or if he had any premonition of the useful and romantic career before him?

The characters of the two Inspector-Generals, the one outgoing, the other incoming, contrasted very strangely. Lay was inclined to be dictatorial and rather impatient of Chinese methods; an excellent and clever man, but with one point of view and one only. Hart, on the other hand, was tactful, patient, and, above all else, tolerant of other people's prejudices. "To grow a little catholic," says Stevenson, "is the compensation of years." But Robert Hart was catholic in this broad sense even when he was young. He would sometimes say that the habit of toleration he acquired at college, and through the most simple incident.

Seven or eight of the Belfast students were one day asked to describe what would seem to be the simplest thing in the world to describe—a packing-case. And yet every man, after stating the simple fact that he saw a packing-case, had something different to say about it. One, who stood on the right, described an address written in black letters; another, who stood at one end, dwelt on the iron hoops that bound the box; a third gave prominence to the long nails studding a corner. Thus each, according to his view-point, saw that same commonplace packing-case in a different way. After this practical demonstration Robert Hart never in his life could grow impatient with a man who did not see exactly what he saw when both were standing on opposite sides of a question.