output of such fables
may afford a hint as to the magnitude of the designs which the fables
are intended to cover.

The Chinese people have had a more extended experience in peace of this
order than all others, and their case should accordingly be instructive
beyond all others. Not that a European peace by non-resistance need be
expected to run very closely on the Chinese lines, but there should be
a reasonable expectation that the large course of things would be
somewhat on the same order in both cases. Neither the European
traditions and habitual temperament nor the modern state of the
industrial arts will permit one to look for anything like a close
parallel in detail; but it remains true, when all is said, that the
Chinese experience of peace under submission to alien masters affords
the most instructive illustration of such a regime, as touches its
practicability, its methods, its cultural value, and its effect on the
fortunes of the subject peoples and of their masters.

Now, it may be said by way of preliminary generalisation that the
life-history of the Chinese people and their culture is altogether the
most imposing achievement which the records of mankind have to show;
whereas the history of their successive alien establishments of mastery
and usufruct is an unbroken sequence of incredibly shameful
episodes,--always beginning in unbounded power and vainglory, running by
way of misrule, waste and debauchery, to an inglorious finish in abject
corruption and imbecility. Always have the gains in civilisation,
industry and in the arts, been made by the subject Chinese, and always
have their alien masters contributed nothing to the outcome but misrule,
waste, corruption and decay. And yet in the long run, with all this
handicap and misrule, the Chinese people have held their place and made
headway in those things to which men look with affection and esteem when
they come to take stock of what things are worth while. It would be a
hopeless task to count up how many dynasties of masterful barbarians,
here and there, have meanwhile come up and played their ephemeral role
of vainglorious nuisance and gone under in shame and confusion, and
dismissed with the invariable verdict of "Good Riddance!"

It may at first sight seem a singular conjuncture of circumstances, but
it is doubtless a consequence of the same conjuncture, that the Chinese
people have also kept their hold through all history on the Chinese
lands. They