ould end," and
in which "we should expect the beginnings of a downfall." The
Empire, as empires go, is very old now: four hundred and forty
odd years since Ts'in Shi Hwangti founded it; as old as Rome was
(from Julius Caesar's time) when the East and West split under
Arcadius and Honorius; nearly three centuries older than the
British Empire is now;--the cyclic force is running out,
centripetalism very nearly wasted. In these one-nineties we find
two non-entitous brothers quarreling for the throne: who has
eyes to see, now, can see that the days of Han are numbered. All
comes to an end in 220, ten years before the third half-cycle
(and therefore second 'day') of the Eastern Han series; there is
not force enough left to carry things through till 230. Han
Hienti, the survivor of the two brothers aforesaid, retired into
private life; the dynasty was at an end, and the empire split in
three. In Ssechuan a Han prince set up a small unstable throne;
another went to Armenia, and became a great man there; but in
Loyang the capital, Ts'ao Ts'ao, the man who engineered the fall
of the Hans, set his son as Wei Wenti on the throne.

He was a very typical figure, this Ts'ao Ts'ao: a man ominous of
disintegration. You cannot go far in Chinese poetry without
meeting references to him. He rose during the reign of the last
Han,--the Chien-An period, as it is called, from 196 to 221,--by
superiority of energies and cunning, from a wild irregular youth
spent as hanger-on of no particular position at the court,--the
son of a man that had been adopted by a chief eunuch,--to be
prime minister, commander of vast armies (he had at one time,
says Dr. H. A. Giles, as many as a million men under arms),
father of the empress; holder of supreme power; then overturner
of the Han, and founder of the Wei dynasty. Civilization had
become effete; and such a strong wildling could play ducks and
drakes with affairs. But he could not hold the empire together.
Centrifugalism was stronger than Ts'ao Ts'ao.

The cycles and all else here become confused. The period from
220 to 265--about a half-cycle, you will note, from 196 and the
beginning of the Chien-An time, or the end of the main Han
Cycle,--is known as that of the San Koue or Three Kingdoms: its
annals read like Froissart, they say; gay with raidings,
excursions, and alarms. It was the riot of life disorganized in
the corpse, when organized life had gone. A great historical
novel