merely the style of his reign, adopted in order that the people should
not profane by vulgar utterance a name they are not even permitted to
write.[*] Until the new monarch, the late Emperor's cousin, had been
duly installed, no word of what had taken place was breathed beyond
the walls of the palace; for dangerous thoughts might have arisen had
it been known that the State was drifting rudderless, a prey to the
wild waves of sedition and lawless outbreak. The accession of a child
to reign under the style of Kuang Hsu was proclaimed before it was
publicly made known that his predecessor had passed away.

[*] Either one or all of the characters composing an emperor's name
are altered by the addition or omission of certain component
parts; as if, for instance, we were to write an Alb_a_rt chain
merely because Alb_e_rt is the name of the heir-apparent.
Similarly, a child will never utter or write its father's name;
and the names of Confucius and Mencius are forbidden to all alike.

Of the personal history of the ill-fated boy who has thus been
prematurely cut off just as he was entering upon manhood and the
actual government of four hundred million souls, we know next to
nothing. His accession as an infant to the dignities of a sensual,
dissipated father, attracted but little attention either in China or
elsewhere; and from that date up to the year 1872, all we heard about
His Majesty was, that he was making good progress in Manchu, or had
hit the target three times out of ten shots at a distance of about
twenty-five yards. He was taught to ride on horseback, though up to
the day of his death he never took part in any great hunting
expeditions, such as were frequently indulged in by earlier emperors
of the present dynasty. He learnt to read and write Chinese, though
what progress he had made in the study of the Classics was of course