the Huns, under their great Khan
Mehteh, were at the height of their power. Khan Mehteh made
advances to the Empress: "I should like," said he, "to exchange
what I have for what I have not." You and I may think he meant
merely a suggestion for mutual trade; but she interpreted it
differently, thanked him kindly, but declined the flattering
proposal on the score of her age and ugliness. Her hair and
teeth, she begged him to believe, were quite inadequate, and made
it impossible for her to think of changing her condition.--I do
not know whether it was vanity or policy.

But it was she, or perhaps her puppet son the emperor, who
started the great Renaissance. A commission was appointed for
restoring the literature: among its members, K'ung An-kuo,
twelfth in descent from Confucius. Books were found, that
devotion had hidden in dry wells and in the walls of houses; one
Fu Sheng, ninety years old, repeated the Classics word for word
to the Commissioner, all from his memory. The restrictions gone,
a mighty reaction set in; and China was on fire to be her
literary self again. A great ball was set rolling; learning
went forward by leaps and bounds. The enthusiasm, it must be
said, took directions legitimate and the reverse;--bless you, why
should any written page at all be considered lost, when there
were men in Han with inventive genius of their own, and a pretty
skill at forgery? The Son of Heaven was paying well; to it,
then, minds and calligraphic fingers!

So there are false chapters of Chwangtse, while many true ones
have been lost. And I can never feel sure of Confucius' own
_Spring and Autumn Annals,_ wherein he thought lay his highest
claim to human gratitude, and the composition of which the really
brilliant-minded Mencius considered equal to the work of Ta Yu in
bridling China's Sorrow;--but which, as they come down to us,
are not impressive.--The tide rolled on under Han Wenti, from 179
to 156: a poet himself, a man of peace, and a reformer of the
laws in the direction of mercy. Another prosperous reign
followed; then came the culmination of the age in the Golden
Reign of Han Wuti, from 140 to 86.

The cyclic impulse had been working mainly on spiritual and
intellectual planes: Ssema Tsien, the Father of Chinese History,
gives gloomy pictures of things economic.*

"When the House of Han arose," says Ssema, "the evils of their
predecessors had not passed away. Husbands still went off to the
war