important of which perhaps are these:--(1) In De Quincey's paper it is
Kien Long himself who first descries the approach of the vast Kalmuck
horde to the frontiers of his dominions. On a fine morning in the
early autumn of 1771, we are told, being then on a hunting expedition
in the solitary Tartar wilds on the outside of the great Chinese Wall,
and standing by chance at an opening of his pavilion to enjoy the
morning sunshine, he sees the huge sheet of mist on the horizon,
which, as it rolls nearer and nearer, and its features become more
definite, reveals camels, and horses, and human beings in myriads, and
announces the advent of, etc. etc.! In Kien Long's own narrative he is
not there at all, having expected indeed the arrival of the Kalmuck
host, but having deputed the military and commissariat arrangements
for the reception of them to his trusted officer, Chouhédé; and his
first sight of any of them is when their chiefs are brought to him, by
the imperial post-road, to his quarters a good way off, where they are
honorably entertained, and whence they accompany him to his summer
residence of Gé-hol. (2) De Quincey's closing account of the monument
in memory of the Tartar transmigration which Kien Long caused to be
erected, and his copy of the fine inscription on the monument, are not
in accord with the Chinese statements respecting that matter. 'Mighty
columns of granite and brass erected by the Emperor Kien Long near the
banks of the Ily' is De Quincey's description of the monument. The
account given of the affair by the mandarin Yu-min-tchoung, in his
comment on the Emperor's Memoir, is very different. 'The year of the
arrival of the Torgouths,' he says, 'chanced to be precisely that in
which the Emperor was celebrating the eightieth year of the age of his
mother the Empress-Dowager. In memory of this happy day his Majesty
had built on the mountain which shelters from the heat (Pi-chou-chan)
a vast and magnificent _miao_, in honor of the reunion of all the
followers of Fo in one and the same worship; it had just been