son out of the temptations of London, earnestly entreated his lordship to take him to China. "The only condition," said his lordship, "on which I can possibly allow him to go is a most solemn pledge, on his honour, that he will not touch either cards or dice or other instruments of gambling, either on board ship or at any place where we may stop." He gave the pledge and broke it-lost to one of the lieutenants of the 'Lion,' it was said, some thousand pounds, not any part of which could he pay; and it was also said he had compounded the debt for an annuity of as many hundred pounds as he had lost thousands. My cabin on the passage home was on the lower deck, and scarcely a night passed in which I was not disturbed by the rattling of dice, or by Mr. Crewe's scraping on the bass-viol. He was a most gentlemanly, good-natured young man, and was urged on by an old Scotch lieutenant, who ought to have known better. Mr. Crewe succeeded his father, who had been created a baron in 1812, and died in 1835.

Before the embassy left England, it was generally understood that great pains had been taken in the selection of the gentlemen who had the good fortune to be included in the suite of the ambassador. The brief description I have here given of them does not exactly correspond with such a notion; but I believe Lord Macartney had, in some respects, to listen to the gentry of Leadenhall Street. If I except the able and interesting account of the proceedings and result of the British embassy to the court of the Emperor of China, by the late Sir George Staunton, (the vigour of whose intellect was not more remarkable than the liberality of his sentiments,) nothing of a scientific, physical, ethical,

or ethnical character appeared from any of them. When, indeed, it was understood that Sir George Staunton had undertaken it, any other work would have been a supererogation. In fact, he alone, who had cognizance of all that was or was intended to be transacted, and the reasons thereof, could have done justice to the subject.

I thought so then and think so still, yet ten years after the return of the embassy to England I was induced to write and to publish a volume, to show the view which I had taken of the great empire of China and its very extraordinary overflood of population, by drawing such a sketch of the manners, the state of society, the language, literature, and fine arts, the sciences and civil institutions, the religious worship and opinions, the population, and the progress in agriculture, the civil and moral character of the people, as my own observations enabled me to do; and the present Sir George Staunton had the kindness to allow me to look over the mass of notes and observations, which I had put into the hands of his father when employed on his 'Narrative.' With these and my recollections on the passage home from the Cape, I endeavoured to settle, in my own mind, the point of rank which China may be considered to have attained in the scale of civilised nations.

Three years after the publication of this work, and thirteen after the return of the embassy, I had permission to publish the manuscript journal of the Earl of Macartney, entitled 'A Journey of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794. It was annexed as an appendix to my account of 'The Public Life' of the

Earl of Macartney. The journal is exceedingly interesting, and details circumstantially all that occurred on his introduction to the emperor at his palace of Gehol, in Tartary, with his observations and reflections on the country and people, and on the events that took place on that occasion.

That which I am now about to relate is chiefly what happened to me individually, or in which I was personally concerned, taken either from loose notes written. fifty years ago, or from a recollection of particular occurrences chiefly in Pekin, at the palace of Yuenmin-Yuen, and on our journey by the Grand Canal through the heart of the empire; the whole affording to myself the most interesting episode in the history of a prolonged life.

SECTION II.

The Embassy proceeds in H.M.S. 'Lion' and the E.I.C. Ship Hindostan,' and passing through the Yellow Sea, disembarks on the Continent of China, at the Mouth of the River Pei-ho.

THE ships appointed to carry out the ambassador and suite were the 'Lion,' of 64 guns, under the command of Captain Sir Erasmus Gower, and the Hindostan ' Indiaman of 1300 or 1400 tons, commanded by Captain Mackintosh, an old and highly respected officer of the East India Company. Two more suitable and efficient commanders could not have been selected,

and each of them was personally known to the Ambassador.

The Lion,' with her officers, stores, presents, and large quantities of baggage, was so completely filled, that part of the suite were obliged, and I may say delighted, to go in the roomy 'Hindostan ;' they consisted of Colonel Benson, Dr. Scott, Dr. Dinwiddie, and myself; and most comfortable we were, being infinitely better accommodated than were any of our colleagues in the 'Lion.' We left Portsmouth on the 26th of September, 1792; had a quick and pleasant passage to Madeira, where the 'Lion' anchored in the Bay of Funchal, an open and dangerous roadstead-as Mackintosh, on a former occasion, had been taught by fatal experience, his ship having been wrecked, and every soul having perished, himself and cook only excepted, who being on shore escaped the melancholy fate of their companions.

Pass we on to the island of Teneriffe, a pleasant sail of four days from Madeira. The town of Santa Cruz, on the eastern side, affords but little that is inviting. The town of Oratava, on the opposite side, is much the same; but the Peak is a majestic object, up which we scrambled as far as to the base of the cone, when a violent storm of thunder and lightning, with torrents of rain, drove us down again. Our next halting-place was the miserable Porta Praya, in the island of St. Jago; and, passing thence to the Brazil coast, we opened out and entered the magnificent bay or inlet of Rio de Janeiro, unequalled, I believe, for its splendid and variegated scenery, by any other of a similar kind in any part of the world.

We passed the curious island of Tristan da Cunha, without landing, and gave a good berth to the Cape of Good Hope, making the best of our way to the curious volcanic island of Amsterdam, whose large crater unites with the sea by a passage over a pebbly beach.

From hence we reached and passed through the Strait of Sunda, and, by the Thousand Islands, came to Batavia, and here enjoyed the gaieties and the luxurious living of the Dutch. But, that which was of more importance to us was, that while here the Ambassador received a dispatch from Canton, announcing the agreeable intelligence that his Imperial Majesty of China had issued a public edict, declaring his satisfaction at the approaching embassy, and directing that pilots should be stationed at every port on the coast of the Yellow Sea to convey his Excellency and suite to Tiensing, the nearest port to the capital, or to any other that should be found most convenient for the British ships. By this intelligence the embassy was relieved from the necessity of calling at Canton, which was most desirable on many accounts--among others, that of obviating a delay of eight or ten days. A dispatch was therefore sent to Canton to announce his Lordship's intention of proceeding direct through the Strait of Formosa to Chusan.

It was deemed expedient, however, as it was little or nothing out of our way, to look into Turon Bay, in Cochin-China, that being, as it were, a part of, or in close connexion with, the Chinese empire, and the inhabitants being in all respects, except less civilised, similar to the Chinese. They, however, received us well, and with great courtesy; and here, having refreshed our ships'