surper, named Wang Mang (pronounced
_Wahng Mahng_), who had secured it by the usual means of treachery and
poison, to lose it on the battle-field and himself to perish shortly
afterwards in a revolt of his own soldiery. But the most remarkable of
all events connected with the Han dynasty was the extended revival of
learning and authorship. Texts of the Confucian Canon were rescued from
hiding-places in which they had been concealed at the risk of death;
editing committees were appointed, and immense efforts were made to
repair the mischief sustained by literature at the hands of the First
Emperor. The scholars of the day expounded the teachings of Confucius as
set forth in these texts; and although their explanations were set aside
in the twelfth century, when an entirely new set of interpretations
became (and remain) the accepted standard for all students, it is mostly
due to those early efforts that the Confucian Canon has exercised such
a deep and lasting influence over the minds of the Chinese people.
Unfortunately, it soon became the fashion to discover old texts, and
many works are now in circulation which have no claim whatever to the
antiquity to which they pretend.

During the four hundred years of Han supremacy the march of civilization
went steadily forward. Paper and ink were invented, and also the
camel's-hair brush, both of which gave a great impetus to the arts of
writing and painting, the latter being still in a very elementary stage.
The custom of burying slaves with the dead was abolished early in the
dynasty. The twenty-seven months of mourning for parents--nominally
three years, as is now again the rule--was reduced to a more manageable
period of twenty-seven days. Literary degrees were first established,
and perpetual hereditary rank was conferred upon the senior descendant
of Confucius in the male line, which has continued in unbroken
succession down to the present day. The head of the Confucian clan is
now a duke, and resides in a palace, taking rank with, if not before,
the highest provincial authorities.

The extended military campaigns in Central Asia during this period
brought China into touch with Bactria, then an outlying province of
ancient Greece. From this last source, the Chinese learnt many things
which are now often regarded as of purely native growth. They imported
the grape, and made from it a wine which was in use for many centuries,
disappearing only about two or three hundred yea