s for multitude; they would have founded a power, and be
thundering down on an empire-smashing raid in Persia or China or
India: Whether Huns, Sienpi, Jiujen, Turks, Tatars, Tunguses,
Mongols, Manchus: God knows what all, but all destroyers. But
as far as the old original Huns were concerned, Pan Chow settled
their hash for them. Bag and baggage he dealt with them; and
practically speaking, the land of their fathers knew them no
more. Dry the starting tear! here your pity is misplaced. Think
of no vine-covered cottages ruined; no homesteads burned; no
fields laid waste. They lived mainly in the saddle; they were
as much at home fleeing before the Chinese army as at another
time. A shunt here; a good kick off there: so he dealt with
them. It is in European veins their blood flows now;--and prides
itself on its pure undiluted Aryanism and Nordicism, no doubt. I
suppose scarcely a people in continental Europe is without some
mixture of it; for they enlisted at last in all foraying armies,
and served under any banner and chief.

Pan Chow felt that they belonged to the (presumably) barbarous
regions west of the Caspian. Ta Ts'in in future might deal with
them; by God's grace, Han never should. He gently pushed them
over the brink; removed them; cut the cancer out of Asia. Next
time they appeared in history, it was not on the Hoangho, but on
the Danube. Meanwhile, they established themselves in Russia;
moved across Central Europe, impelling Quadi and Marcomans
against Marcus Aurelius, and then Teutons of all sorts against
the whole frontier of Rome. In the sixties, for Han Mingti, Pan
Chow set that great wave in motion in the far east of the world.
Three times thirteen decades passed, and it broke and wasted in
foam in the far west: in what we may call the Very First Battle
of the Marne, when Aetius defeated Attila in 451. I can but
think of one thing better he might have done: shipped them
eastward to the remote Pacific Islands; but it is too late to
suggest that now. But I wonder what would have happened if Pan
Chow had succeeded in reaching his arm across, and grasping hands
with Trajan? He had not died; the might of China had not begun
to recede from its westward limits, before the might of Rome
under that great Spaniard had begun to flow towards its limits
in the east.

Through the bulk of the second century China remained static, or
weakening. Her forward urge seems to have ended with the death