. New China and old : personal recollections and observations of thirty years. avenly Dynasty of Great Peace. Calamities followedfast and thick on the decrepit Manchu power. Pekingwas occupied by the English and French in i860; andin 1861, the Taipings, who had previously occupiedNankin, swooped down and captured by a gallant rushthe port of Ningpo, which brought them at once intoclose contact and semi-friendly relations with foreigners. China seemed so entirely without cohesion—the rulingdynasty tottering to its fall, and the usurping Taipingsdevoid of governing power—that the tripartite divi
. New China and old : personal recollections and observations of thirty years. avenly Dynasty of Great Peace. Calamities followedfast and thick on the decrepit Manchu power. Pekingwas occupied by the English and French in i860; andin 1861, the Taipings, who had previously occupiedNankin, swooped down and captured by a gallant rushthe port of Ningpo, which brought them at once intoclose contact and semi-friendly relations with foreigners. China seemed so entirely without cohesion—the rulingdynasty tottering to its fall, and the usurping Taipingsdevoid of governing power—that the tripartite divisionof the Empire between Russia, England, and France,appeared imminent to very many careful observers. Andthen partly through the intervention of foreign skill andenergy under Admiral Sir James Hope, Colonel Gordon,Captain Roderick Dew, and other illustrious leaders,but largely also through her own indomitable patienceand resolution, the tide turned; the Taipings werevanquished; the storm-cloud cleared; and since thenthe great Empire, one and undivided, has been slowly. .M i-^ Re-union. Consolidation. 15 renewing her youth. She has consohdated her power,crushing with stern and relentless severity the twoMahometan insurrections in Kashgar and Yunnan ; shehas centralized her control over her fleets and armies,making them national instead of provincial forces;although gross cases still occur of semi-independentpolicy on the part of Chinese Viceroys ; independenton the one side of Imperial edicts, and selfishly inde-pendent on the other as regards the wants and woes ofa neighbouring Viceroyalty^ She has purchased abroadin Germany and England a large ironclad fleet offormidable ships of war ; she has secured the eminentservices of an English captain for the organizing andtraining of her northern squadron (an adviser andinstructor from whom with surely suicidal haste theGovernment has recently parted) ; China builds in herown great arsenals at Shanghai, Foochow, and elsewhereves
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