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shape under my own supervision, against any European troops in existence. The Chinese have not the fighting instinct that is to say, they do not relish coming to blows just for the fun of the thing' but they are not afraid of death, and they have no little honest pride, gratitude for kindness, and sympathy with brave and disinterested leaders such as Gordon. For all these reasons I do not hesitate to stick up' for the poor Chinaman and to assert that he has in him the makings of a soldier." Other competent judges have expressed similar opinions, and the writer of these pages has seen individual China-men behave with conspicuous gallantry, if he has also seen them conduct themselves in an essentially craven manner. The balance of testimony is in their favour, and when it is affirmed, on the one hand, that they have frequently gone down before foreign invaders, it must be remembered, on the other, that during many centuries of their early national existence they raised and maintained on their northern frontiers an effective barrier against the inflow of the militant tide that swept to and fro in central Asia, a tide including such elements as the Turks and the Huns whose onsets Europe found itself unable to resist successfully.

But whatever may be said of the Chinese themselves, it is certain that the Manchus and the Mongols when they marched to the conquest of the Middle Kingdom in the seventeenth century were men of prowess and pluck, and that