270 THE LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS 



Sir Joseph Banks to Sir George Staunton. 



" SOHO SQUARE, May 7, 1806. 



" MY DEAR SIR GEORGE, The bearer, Mr. Manning, 

 has for some time back destined himself to the almost 

 impossible task of travelling in China, in order to gain a 

 real and substantial knowledge of all that that enig- 

 matical nation are acquainted with ; and has long 

 resolved that obstacles shall be surmounted, difficulties 

 despised, and even Death itself held in contempt ; in 

 pursuit of an enterprise more hazardous, perhaps, than 

 any which the sons of Science have engaged in during the 

 period of our lives. 



" To you, my dear Sir, I beg leave to recommend him, 

 as a man for whom I feel a warm friendship, which I 

 trust nothing but real merit could inspire. He possesses 

 much talent, much information, and much real Science, 

 as well as a disposition eminently suited to the sur- 

 mounting of difficulties.^ And, beside this, as many 

 amiable dispositions of temper and conduct as any idle 

 sons of the town with whom I happen to be acquainted. 1 

 . . . You are, I understand, to be visited by a missionary 

 either this year or next. I have not been able to learn 

 much about him, except that he belongs to the eclectics, 

 who are an association of every kind of person that 

 dissents from the rites of the Established Church. . . . 



1 Banks was rewarded for the pains he took to forward Manning's 

 enterprise, in securing a new and interesting correspondent. Sir 

 George Staunton showed the greatest attention to Manning, " giving him 

 instruction and assistance in the most obliging manner " ; he was thus 

 enabled to get in closer touch with the Chinese than was usual for an 

 Englishman. He persevered in his attempts on the language, but amid 

 much opposition, for the natives would not help him. Among other 

 troubles with the Mandarins were the repeated efforts to make him cut 

 off his long and ample beard ; " I would rather go and live in the Bonze 

 house over the water, and see no Europeans at all, than part with my 

 dear beard." He offered his services as Astronomer to the Emperor and 

 Physician to the Empress, but the Mandarins withstood him. Mann- 

 ing's journal to Lhasa, with some notes of his life, was published by 

 Admiral C. R. Markham (London, 1876). A very entertaining volume. 



