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Rh dispatched in January and March, 1863, Mr. D. Lapraik acting as Honorary Treasurer. On the other hand an official appeal by the London Committee of the Shakespeare Memorial Fund (October 16, 1863) for monetary contributions met with scant response on the part of the community, although Sir H. Robinson strongly supported the movement. The community of Hongkong, while holding Shakespeare's memory as sacred as a king's, had their own ideas as to how to pay tribute to the English King whom no time or chance or Parliament can dethrone and how to preserve the memory of the one who is 'a monument without a tomb and is alive still while his book doth live.' It was noteworthy, but not noticed at the time, that this appeal to the community was signed by Richard Graves MacDonnell, as one of the London Committee's Secretaries, who perhaps himself did not anticipate the fact, any more than the colonists, that he was to be their next Governor.

Hongkong's social life was, in the early part of this period, more or less affected by the excitements and the influx of strangers connected with the renewal of the war with China. The defeat of the British fleet at the Peiho (June 25, 1859), while it depressed the foreign community of Hongkong, appeared to evoke no feeling of any sort among the Chinese population. Indeed, those Chinese who gave any thought to the matter, seemed rather to regret this temporary success of Mandarin treachery. But the capture of Peking in 1860 and particularly the flight of the Emperor, whose tablet has ever since been removed from the altar of his ancestors, was felt by all but Triad Society partisans as a national disgrace. In the early part of the year 1860, the Kowloon camp with its military parades, and most particularly the war games and evolutions performed by Probyn's Horse, were an object of general attraction for sightseers, both native and foreign. The return of the Allied troops in November and December, 1860, gave to Hongkong society for a while quite a martial aspect. By a grand levée held by Lord Elgin at Government House (January 10,