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• Metropolitan Province of Chikli, and Grand Secretary of the Empire, who is generally styled "the 'Bismarck of China'." He told me, among other things, that he personally was strongly in favour of the extension of Telegraphs and railways throughout the Empire, but that he had to contend with much opposition from the prejudices of the "country gentry" and the literati. I encouraged His Excellency by remarking that, within the memory of men still alive, Electric telegraphs had not been invented, while, even in England, the country gentlemen and the literati had formerly been generally opposed to the extension of railways; that, indeed, within the last fifty years the two most famous Universities of England had petitioned Parliament against Railways being allowed to approach Oxford and Cambridge; but that all such obstructions and prejudices had now been swept away;