The Emperor of China, though delicate, is not dead, the
news of his murder circulated in the beginning of the week being a mere Shanghai invention. They are quite capable in Shanghai of saying and believing that the Empress-Dowager had eaten Sir Claude Macdonald for breakfast, but on a re- monstrance from the Secretary of Legation had thrown him up again. A story from Pekin, however, is often confirmed„ and the last bit of unpleasantness from China must therefore, we fear, be accepted as true. According to this, the Dowager- Empress is drawing troops from Manchuria and elsewhere into Pekin. These troops are undisciplined and unpaid, and on October 23rd they attacked the British engineers who were building a bridge at Lnkochiao, ten miles from Pekin. They were driven off by a Norwegian engineer who happened to be armed, but it has been necessary to call the engineers into Pekin to preserve their lives. The Dowager - Empress has promised redress, and doubtless some soldiers,or camp-followers,. will be executed; but one would like to know what is really going on. Is there a chance of civil war in Pekin ? or is there an anti-foreign movement? or are the soldiers—said, by the way, in one telegram to be flying before Russians—obeying the usual Chinese instinct to attack anybody who disturbs the genii of the earth ? Or have the engineers been disturbing a cemetery ?
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