an imperial park. All business was excluded from the precincts, and
here the emperor spent much of his time, wandering solitarily on foot
among the trees, amusing himself with the friends of his youth, or
sailing, with some of the ladies of his family, along the mimic
rivers.

According to traditional usage, the monarch must perform a pilgrimage
to the tombs of his ancestors. The astronomical, or rather
astrological board having ascertained the month, the day, the hour,
even the minute, when the stars would prove propitious, the cavalcade
set out. The princes of the blood, the ladies of the palace, and the
favourite ministers of the court, formed part of the train, which was
attended by at least 2000 camels. But even an emperor cannot travel
through waste and desert lands without inconvenience; and though great
preparations had been made beforehand in erecting temporary dwellings
where no villages were to be found, yet his Celestial majesty, with
his court, had often to bivouac under tents in the open air. The
people crowded in thousands to see their sovereign--a liberty which,
it is well known, may not be used in Peking, where every one must
hasten to hide his head as from the fabled Gorgon. The ancestral tombs
at Mookden, where the imperial manes repose under care of a large
garrison, were at length reached. And now Taou-Kwang became a family
man, abandoning the forms of state and the pomp of empire, and
mingling in familiar intercourse with his relatives and attendants.
Such particulars prove that we must receive at very considerable
discount the descriptions hitherto published concerning the extreme
sacredness of the emperor's person, the monotonous routine of ceremony
to which he is condemned, and the impossibility of his 'indulging in
the least relaxation from the fatiguing support of his dignity.' Turn
we now to public events.