varying forms of religion of the Christian world, so Confucianism has underlain all the phases of Chinese doctrine. That it admitted of being overlaid with new growth is not its least virtue. It trammeled the progress neither of religion nor of science, for it was not based upon any system of religious belief, nor identified with any scheme of physical or metaphysical philosophy. If the Chinese have fallen later into idolatry and superstition, and have made little valuable progress in knowledge, it has not been owing to the enslavement of the national mind by Confucius, but to defects more radical in the national character.

Before going on to present our views of the Chinese character, we will briefly sketch the history of the empire since the epoch of the great philosopher.

The dynasty under which Confucius lived eked out its existence for more than two centuries after his death, or until B. C. 255, without any marked change in the conditions of the country. The Confucian school flourished in high esteem; about a hundred years after the death of its founder it produced its next most eminent sage, Mencius, the record of whose wisdom is included in, and closes, the sacred canon. Under the following dynasty, however, the Confucian doctrines and their representatives suffered a severe persecution, which, had their hold upon the popular mind been less firm, might have extinguished them forever. About 250 B. C., the princes of the kingdom of Tsin, in the northwestern part of the empire, rebelled against the imperial authority, extinguished the dynasty of Chau, and seated themselves upon the throne. The second emperor of the new dynasty of Tsin, Chi-hoang-ti, is one of the most remarkable figures presented by Chinese history. A great statesman and warrior, he destroyed the independent power of the petty sovereigns of provinces, and made the whole empire once more submissive to the imperial scepter; he carried his arms far to the west, extending the dominion of China over nearly all central Asia; he chased the Huns across the northern frontier, and, to check their incursions for the future, he built the Great Wall, which has ever since remained one of the wonders of the world. But, in spite of his

great deeds, his memory is execrated by the Chinese. His temper and spirit were thoroughly un-Chinese. He abhorred the servitude to usage and precedent to which even the imperial power had been wont to be subjected. He detested the authority of the past; he wished to blot out all memory of it even, and to begin on white paper a new history of the empire. To this end he sought to annihilate the existing literature, especially the Confucian, and to destroy its sectaries. The books he burned, all that the strictest requisition could bring into his power; the philosophers he buried alive, or sent to work upon the Wall. This state of things, did not, however, endure long. Hardly was the great Emperor dead when his family were hurled from the throne, and one of the first acts of the founder of the dynasty which succeeded was to make a solemn pilgrimage to the grave of Confucius.

The dynasty of Han held the great fabric of the empire together for about four hundred years, or during the two centuries that preceded, and the two that followed, the birth of Christ. Such was the general wisdom of their rule, and the happiness of the country under it, that the Chinese even yet love to call themselves sons of Han. During the first century after Christ, Buddhism was introduced from India, and made immense progress among the people. To this great event in the history of the country we can give but a passing mention here; its fuller consideration belongs to another department of our subject. As had been the case with its predecessors, however, the power and success of the dynasty waned at last, and about 200 A. D., the empire was rent into three independent kingdoms, and a new era of intestine war and commotion began. Yet even this was not without its glories. The period of the San-Kwo, or Three Kingdoms, is the heroic age of Chinese history, prolific of striking character and startling incident, the source whence the novelists and dramatists of after times have drawn their best materials.

We pass over the five following dynasties, which, together, lasted only a little more than three hundred years, from 264 to 588 A. D., and which held under their dominion only a part, now greater, and now less, of the empire, noticing only that

the invention of printing from wooden blocks, as at present practiced by the Chinese, was made about the close of this period.

The dynasty of Sui, which next obtained the control of affairs, once more united the dismembered empire, but, after only thirty years of power, was forced to yield the scepter to the founder of the great dynasty of Tang.

Now followed a period of internal order and prosperity, of outward power and glory. The limits of the empire were again carried to the Caspian. Lyric poetry was revived, and attained its highest perfection. The drama arose. The examinations for literary dignity and political office were placed upon the footing which they have from that time maintained. The Chinese Academy, which has since played a conspicuous and important part in both the literary and political history of the country, was founded. During the reign of the Tang, China was probably the most enlightened and happy country on the face of the earth. But this dynasty, too, degenerated, and, after a period of weakness and misery, became extinct at the beginning of the tenth century. During the fifty-three years of civil war which succeeded, five different dynasties arose and fell. At last, in A. D. 960, the house of Sung seized the reins of authority, and reëstablished peace and order throughout the empire.

A new enemy, however, had appeared, to vex the Chinese state. The Tatar and Mongol tribes of the great plateau of Central Asia were beginning those restless heavings which not long after poured them, like a deluge of destruction, over all the countries of the east, the south, and the west. By the year 1127, they had wrested from the empire all the territory north of the Hoang-ho, and were pressing on to the conquest of the rest. In this time of internal and external misery and danger, appeared the last great representative of Chinese philosophy, the sage Chu-hi. In wisdom and virtue he is accounted almost another Confucius; he is universally regarded as the man who has best comprehended, and most truly reproduced, the spirit of the Confucian doctrines; his interpretation and explication of the canonical and classical books has had, for all after time,

an authority only inferior to that of those books themselves. Like his master and exemplar, he devoted himself, as statesman and as teacher, to the restoration of virtue and the salvation of the state. But the march of events was not to be arrested; China was doomed to pass, for the first time in her history, under a foreign yoke. The Mongols, under Genghis Khan, invited in at first as auxiliaries against the Tatars, seized upon the empire for themselves, and in 1279, Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis, became the first emperor of a new Mongol dynasty, to which he gave the name of Yuen.

That was a splendid vassalage in which the Chinese empire was now held. From his throne at Pekin, Kublai swayed the affairs of all the countries from the eastern seas to the very borders of Germany. The Emperor of China was sovereign of the most enormous empire which the world has ever seen. Kublai was a great ruler, too, and he had especially at heart the welfare of China, the richest and most populous part of his dominions, and his residence. He reformed the abuses which under the Sung had crept into every department of the administration. He executed great and beneficial public works: the Grand Canal is a monument of his wise policy. Literature flourished under him: the period of the Yuen is that of the highest perfection of the drama. Altogether, the country enjoyed greater prosperity under his government than for centuries before. Yet was the nation impatient of foreign rule, and when, under the successors of Kublai, weakness and tyranny began to usurp the place of vigor and justice at the capital, a general insurrection took place, which expelled the intrusive dynasty before it had completed its first century of dominion. With the dynasty of Ming, which mounted the throne in 1368, begins the modern epoch of Chinese history. Founded by a man of various and remarkable genius, who was the son of a common laborer, and had been a Buddhist priest before he became a soldier of fortune, it upheld for a time the glory and prosperity of the empire, but later, lapsing into imbecility, it met with the fate of the Sung. Early in the sixteenth century, the Manchus, another branch of the same family with the Tatars and Mongols, began to harass the northern frontier,

and, between foreign invasion and internal oppression and rebellion, the country was reduced to a state of extreme misery. Though the Manchus doubtless aimed at making the whole empire their own, it was not as conquerors that they actually possessed themselves of the throne. They were called in by a faithful servant of the Ming, to save the dynasty from destruction by successful rebellion: but they reached Pekin too late; the last Ming emperor had slain his family and hung himself, to avoid falling into the hands of the rebel leader. Advantage was at once taken of so favorable a conjuncture; the Manchu chief seated himself upon the vacant throne, and China once more saw a dynasty of foreign birth. This was in 1644. The new dynasty gave itself the name of Ta-Tsing, or Great-Pure. It was not firmly and peaceably established upon the throne until after fifty years of struggle; then, the last grand rebellion was repressed by the wisdom and valor of the illustrious Kang-hi, the greatest of the Manchu line of monarchs, and his descendant is still Emperor of China.

The Manchu conquest is to be looked upon rather as a blessing than as a misfortune to the country. China had never been in such a condition of anarchy and distress as during the last years of the Ming. Civil war and oppression ran riot in the land. It almost makes one's blood run cold to read of horrible massacres and devastations, by which whole provinces were turned into deserts. The Manchus were a hardy race of northern warriors, greatly superior to the Chinese in warlike prowess, and they soon established comparative order throughout the empire. Like the Mongols, they attempted no revolution, no great and sweeping change even, in the order of the state. The submission of these wild tribes to the superior enlightenment of the people whom they had brought under their sway is remarkable. It would have been, indeed, no light undertaking for a horde of warlike barbarians to force into new ways the teeming millions of the Chinese population, more inflexibly attached than any other race on earth to their own institutions, of immemorial antiquity; but we should hardly have expected them so fully to realize this truth, and so wisely to govern themselves by it. Aided by the all-con