ment was recommended for general imitation throughout the empire. There were two grades of local schools and two of higher colleges, and many scholars are commemorated in later ages in connection with their care for these schools in their native places or in the districts under their government. In less than 150 years, twenty edicts were issued, urging the importance of employing capable persons in the public service; and the informal review of all the talents and all the virtues of a district, which would enable a provincial governor to present" such persons to the emperor, seems to have been the germ out of which the present examination system grew.

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There was an intermediate stage, when the State aimed at conducting the higher education of its future employees; and then success in the provincial examinations was the most obvious qualification for selection as an imperial scholar. Subsequently the examination test was retained and used more and more widely, without reference to the imperial colleges. The number of students allowed to be recommended for examination was limited in proportion to the population, as the number of degrees to be conferred annually is now. In the reign of Ping-ti (1-6 A.D.), we are told. that forty of the first class of competitors became officers, twenty of the second class were joined to the household of the Heir Apparent, and forty of the third class entered the department of the Minister of Rites. One of the innovations of Wang-mang was that he obliged the sons of superior officers to pass the public examination as a condition of receiving office.

It is clearly explained that under the Eastern Hans there were two alternative modes of entry to the public service: promotion from inferior posts, in which the aspirant was the employee of an officer, not of the State; and appointment to office as a reward for success in the examinations, besides the casual admissions granted on the ground of birth or favour. An empress in the 2nd century A.D. founded a school for the education of royal children of both sexes, and as it was to be open to the "four families" 1 of external relations, it would seem that the empress had some intention of assailing the established mode of tracing relationships in the male line only; and as the logical result of this would have been to enable women to reign in their own right—which the empress mothers often felt well able to do-it is not surprising that the scheme for the higher education of women met with little favour, and was allowed to perish with its originator.

Up to this time the jealousy felt by the race of practical politicians for the trained men of letters, who had begun to compete with them for the spoils of office, seems to have resembled the natural rivalry between

the lay and the clerical element in other countries. But towards the close of the 2nd century the intrusion of a third set of competitors resulted in a sort of triangular duel, for which it would be hard to find a parallel or

1 In the genealogical tree (App. K), to give four separate families it is necessary to go back to the great-grandfather; whereas if the mother's family is also counted, the four families would be found within the three generations.

precedent in history. The emperor Ho-ti (89-105 A.D.) was the first to raise eunuchs to the highest office, and for long afterwards their employment as generals or in other posts of authority outside the court was regarded as a grave scandal. But the elaborate forms and ceremonies of the Chinese court gave these official chamberlains peculiar opportunities for entangling their imperial master in a maze of etiquette, of which none but themselves had the clue, so that even duly appointed ministers could only obtain access to the emperor's person by their favour. The literati had more reason to resent this innovation than the nobles, because the weakness of the royal power, of which the influence of these palace slaves was a symptom, gave to the holders of provincial governorships the very opportunity they most desired, for re-establishing the hereditary character of their charges and therewith their own feudal independence.

The literati had no such compensation, and their disaffection showed itself in cabals, not to say conspiracies, of which the importance may be measured by the fact that a private "authors' association" was made the subject of criminal prosecution in the year 166 A.D.1 The party, however, was not broken up by the attack, for twelve years later the attempt to found a new imperial academy broke down, because of the refusal of all the leading scholars to take part in the project, private schools under their direction being preferred to the imperial establishment with a staff of mediocrities. The discontent was not limited to the orthodox school, for the insurrection of the "Yellow caps," which was not suppressed without great bloodshed, was headed by three brothers, who professed an ardent devotion to the doctrines of Lao-tsze.

2

In the latter half of the 2nd century A.D., the double demand for copper, for religious images and weapons of war, left so little available for the currency that its depreciation followed as a matter of course. At the same time (165-185 A.D.) the land tax had been raised to 10 tsien per mow, which would make the burden of the tenant, with 100 mow, five times as heavy as in the earlier years of the dynasty. Over-taxation, civil war, and a pestilence which raged between 170 and 175, combined to desolate the provinces, and during the reign of the last Emperor (190-220 A.D.) the virtual dismemberment of the empire had gone so far that the generals, who founded the three kingdoms, did so at the expense of other rebels, rather than at that of any legitimate ruler.

With all its social and political vicissitudes, the reign of the Han sovereigns remains one of the most important epochs in the history of China, as the fact that the whole race has been called by their name-the sons of Han-sufficiently proves. The Middle antiquity of China ends with the Chow Dynasty. The modern history of the empire must be said

1 Biot, L'Instruction publique, p. 189. De Mailla, iii. p. 473. Secret societies have always been a danger in China. Chuang-tze (p. 272) instances, among the results of the appointment by Wen Wang of a minister who "issued no unjust regulations," that in three years "all dangerous organizations were broken up."

2 Journ. As., .., p. 279.

to begin with the Tang Dynasty, but its foundation may be attributed to the Hans, who codified its law, edited its classics, extended its renown, and witnessed the invention of its most distinctive manufacture, the porcelain, which was first made during this period, in lieu of common earthenware, till then used in China as elsewhere.

CHAPTER XI.

FROM THE three KINGDOMS TO THE SOUY DYNASTY.

(221-620 A.D.)

THE history of the next 400 years may be passed over briefly, not that it is wanting in matter of human interest, but because the enduring features of Chinese civilization are elaborated in the flourishing days of a united empire. Yet we must not exaggerate the extent to which the country as a whole is affected by the intervening periods of comparative anarchy or disruption. Of course the people suffered severely from the outbreaks of rebellion and civil war which heralded and succeeded every change of dynasty, but outside the actual seat of war, life went on as usual, and there was seldom a time when, taking the empire all through, disorder was not the exception and peaceful industry the rule; so that, even during the most inglorious periods, the habits of settled application, which had always characterized the peasantry, were able to go on gradually and silently gathering the strength of a second nature, till they appear as the essential and dominant feature of the whole social body.

Ssema-tsien, and later historians and philosophers after him, speak as of an everlasting law, of the sequence of prosperity and decay; but on looking back over the 2,000 years during which the history of China has been recorded at length, we see that in each period of prosperity, the standard of civilization and well-being stands a degree higher than that of the last corresponding period. The proportion of the population untouched by the horrors of civil disorder was greater during the period of the three kingdoms, which followed the fall of the Eastern Hans, than in the days of the Warring States before the reunion of the empire under Chi-hoang-ti. The prosperity of the Tang Dynasty was wider spread and more deeply rooted than that of the Hans, and the reaction under the Five Posterior dynasties did not reproduce all the anarchy of the Three kingdoms.1 Chinese literature reached its golden age under the Sung Dynasty, which in most other respects was an advance upon that of Tang, and henceforward the whole empire was never broken up into disordered fragments. The Mongols sought to keep the empire in the state they found it, since in no other could its sovereignty be so rich a prize. The native Ming Dynasty, which succeeded the warlike Yuen, was, as compared with the latter, as the politic Tang emperors compared to the

1 For the order of the dynasties see Appendix L, and for specimens of the materials available for the history of China even in its obscurer periods, Pfizmaier, Nachrichten aus d. Geschichte d. Nördlichen Thsi.

military Hans, exercising with less effort a more potent sway; while there can be little question that the founders of the Mantchu Dynasty were centuries ahead in civilization of Genghis and Kubla.

Whether the civilization of the masses in China proper has made much progress between the days of Marco Polo and of Father Ricci, or between those of Ricci and Dr. Legge, is not so easy to determine; but the civilization, such as it is, has never ceased to spread over a wider area, and, while its volume does not detract from its vitality, there is always the presumption in human affairs that the quantity of a force will in some measure re-act upon its quality. It is a reasonable conjecture that there has been as much progress, in regard to the minor details which constitute the finish of material civilization, during the last five or six centuries in China as during the last five or six decades in Europe. This kind of progress, like the motion of a glacier, is easily mistaken for a state of rest; but 2,000 years of it are no more than sufficient to account for the positive level of general culture and comfort in the Middle Kingdom of to-day.

After the fall of the Hans the empire was divided, for forty-five years, into three kingdoms. This is the period celebrated in the San-kwo-chi, a vast historical romance with a large substratum of fact, from which Chinese dramatists are chiefly wont to derive the plots and incidents of their historic plays. Of the three kingdoms, the most powerful bore the name of Wei, and included the northern provinces of China with Loyang for its capital. The second, of which the capital was ultimately fixed at Nanking, embraced most of the south; while the after Hans, who alone claimed the throne by inheritance, were restricted to the provinces of the south-west, of which Tching-tu-fu was the natural capital. The empire was reunited in 265 A.D., after which six minor dynasties reigned in succession ; the fourth of these bore the name of Sung, but must not be confounded with the great dynasty which preceded the Mongols. The empire was again divided on its accession, 420 A.D., and the Sung and successive imperial dynasties ruled over Southern China; while a Tatar dynasty, which had taken the name of Wei, was supreme in the north. This period lasted from 420 A.D. to 589 A.D. and is called the age of the Northern and Southern Empires.

It was in the year 335 A.D., in one of the seventeen small kingdoms which divided China during the short and feeble rule of the T'sin Imperial Dynasty, that natives of the empire were first allowed to take Buddhist monastic vows. Fifteen years later there were as many as forty-two pagodas enumerated at Loyang, and the Taoists began to deprecate the antagonism of the religion, which they saw was likely to prove a dangerous rival, by claiming Buddha as an incarnation of Lao-tsze; but the overture was met by a revision of the elastic Buddhist chronology throwing the date of Prince Sakhya Mouni far enough back to exclude the possibility of such a derogatory hypothesis. In 400 A.D., the first of the string of Chinese pilgrims to the land of Buddha began his recorded travels, and from Fahien and his successors, the Brahmans quoted by the Armenian Cosmas,