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should have the assurance to "desire intercourse, to and fro, by documents and letters with the officers of the Central Flowery Land." His Excellency's language derived an additionally insulting tone from the vagaries of an English sinologue whose translation of the term applied by the viceroy to Lord Napier was "barbarian eye," and who made the Chinese magnate refer frequently to foreigners as "barbarians." It may be stated here once for all that the Chinese term habitually translated "barbarian" has in reality no such significance. Precisely the same term used to be commonly employed in Japan and is still commonly employed, and there, too, it has often been regarded as the equivalent of "barbarian." Of course, both Chinese and Japanese vocabularies do include the term "barbarian," and in both countries there have been many supercilious applications of it to outside peoples. But the ideograph used by the Canton viceroy to describe Lord Napier's official title and to designate his lordship's nationals was not "barbarian." The viceroy spoke of Lord Napier as the "alien inspector" and of Lord Napier's countrymen as "aliens."^[1] That was the sum of his offence against the rules of politeness. Lord Napier, in a despatch to Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, dubbed the viceroy "a presumptuous savage," accused him of "base conduct," and declared that he cared nothing for