of another mishap, wanted to give word to the engineer to return; but Her Majesty would not hear of this, and insisted upon completing the excursion as she had at first planned it. We had several other mishaps, and the launch finally ran aground; and no effort of the engineers, no putting on of extra steam, was able to get us off again. Her Majesty kept her good humor, ordered her barge brought alongside, and we were all transshipped. We finished our tour on the lake as she had planned it, but in the barge instead of the launch. She is too intelligent not to use any means at hand to attain her ends, and she is intelligent enough to see that these ends can be attained, by some means or other, before she fixes upon them.
The Emperor of China, with the usual Chinese tolerance—and the Chinese are the most tolerant people in the world as to religious faith—is not only the head of one church, but of all the churches in China. He is, as Emperor, the Great High Priest of Heaven, the High Priest of Buddhism and Taoism, and is, of course, a Confucian; though this is a philosophy rather than a religion. But though a philosophy, there are certain rites and ceremonies observed by the Confucians. All the great ceremonies of the different cults are celebrated in the Palace temples with rigid impartiality and equal pomp. Whatever may be the individual leanings of the Emperor, and, of course, he must have his own preferences, he participates in each of these celebrations. But his official, public exercise of religion, is limited to the worship of Heaven and Earth, to which he makes annual public sacrifices in the Great Temple of Heaven at Peking.
The afternoon of our first steam-launch excursion, finished in Her Majesty’s barge, there was a splendid ceremony in the chapel at the foot of the hill crowned with the Temple of the Ten Thousand Buddhas, to the memory of Confucius, the great Sage, whose philosophy has directed the lives and laws of the Chinese people for nearly twenty-five hundred years. Though a philosopher like Plato, he is appreciated and his