Massacres of Christians by heathen Chinese, and horrors of the Boxers; containing a complete history of the Boxers; the Tai-Ping insurrection and massacres of the foreign ministers; manners, customs and peculiarities of the Chinese .. . ed theTsung-li-Yamen thattheir august patient couldnot recover unless thedome of the Catholicchurch at Petang weredestroyed. This churchis not far from the wall ofPekin and its dome, whichhad recently been con-structed, was an eyesoreto many court missionaries con- Chinese mandarin. nected with the church were duly informed by the Tsung-li-Yamenth
Massacres of Christians by heathen Chinese, and horrors of the Boxers; containing a complete history of the Boxers; the Tai-Ping insurrection and massacres of the foreign ministers; manners, customs and peculiarities of the Chinese .. . ed theTsung-li-Yamen thattheir august patient couldnot recover unless thedome of the Catholicchurch at Petang weredestroyed. This churchis not far from the wall ofPekin and its dome, whichhad recently been con-structed, was an eyesoreto many court missionaries con- Chinese mandarin. nected with the church were duly informed by the Tsung-li-Yamenthat the dome must be removed, whereupon many discussionstook place, during which the Emperor died. A few days afterwardthe missionaries received private information that no more wouldbe said about the dome as the cause of the monarchs death hadbeen discovered, the court astrologers, after many laborious cal-culations, having come to the conclusion that this lamentable eventhad been caused by the passage of Venns over the sun, which hadjust taken place. The belief that some very important event willtake place whenever there is a transit of Venns shows how inclinedthe Chinese mind is to superstition. The astrologers profit by this,. THE INFLUENCE OF LEGENDS. 87 THE SUN AND VENUS RESPONSIBLE. It was not alone the Emperors death which impelled theastrologers to spare the Petang dome, but also the fact that a fewdays later the young Empress committed suicide. That two eventsof such magnitude could be due to natural causes Chinese sooth-sayers would not believe, and therefore they unhesitatingly heldthe sun and Venus responsible for the untimely decease of theEmperor and Empress. That some very unusual events would occur about this timeseems to have been clearly foreseen by the young Emperor ofChina. According to the Manchester Guardian, his distress ofmind began in December, 1897, when the astronomical board ofPekin reported to him that there would be an eclipse of the sun onthe next
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