that, too,--as they learned in the west kindred qualities
from the Saracens. Grand Pekin is of their architecture;
which is Chinese with a spaciousness and monumental solemnity
added. Such a capital Ts'in She Hwangti built him at Hien
fang or Changan. In the Hall of audience of his palace within
the walls he set up twelve statues, each (I like this barbarian
touch) weighing twelve thousand pounds. Well; _we_ should
say, each costing so many thousand dollars; you need not
laugh; I am not sure but that the young Hun had the best of
it. And without the walls he built him, too, a Palace of
Delight with many halls and courtyards; in some of which
(I like this too) he could drill ten thousand men.

All of this was but the trappings and the suits of his sovereignty:
he let it be known he had the substance as well. No great
strategist himself, he commanded the services of mighty generals:
one Meng-tien in especial, a bright particular star in the
War-God's firmament. An early step to disarm the nations,
and have all weapons sent to Changan; then, with these, to
furnish forth a great standing army, which he sent out under
Meng-tien to conquer. The Middle Kingdom and the quondam Great
Powers were quieted; then south of the Yangtse the great soldier
swept, adding unknown regions to his master's domain. Then rorth
and west, till the Huns and their like had grown very tame and
wary;--and over all these realms the Emperor spread his network
of fine roads and canals, linking them with Changan: what the
Romans did for Europe in road-building, he did for China.

He had, of course, a host of relatives; and precedent loomed
large to tell him what to do with them: the precedent of the
dynasty-founders of old. Nor were they themselves likely to have
been backward in reminding him. Wu Wang had come into possession
of many feudal dominions, and had made of the members of his
family dukes and marquises to rule them. Ts'in Shi Hwangti's
empire was many times the size of Wu Wang's; so he was in a much
better position to reward the deserving. We must remember that
he was no heir to a single sovereignty, but a Napoleon with a
Europe at his feet. Ts'in and Ts'u and Tsin and the others were
old-established kingdoms, with as long a history behind them as
France or England has now; and that history had been filled with
wars, mutual antagonisms and hatreds. Chow itself was like an
Italy before Garibaldi;--with a papacy more inept, a