means of preventing the father's threat from being carried into effect The guilt of both the prince and his priestly instigator met with its fitting reward. Lew-senen, half-brother to the prince, raised a powerful army, and attacked Lew Chaou, who with his whole family were beheaded, and all his palaces razed to the ground. Fei-le King-Ho has been aptly enough compared to the Caius Caligula of Rome; bloodshed appeared to be his greatest delight; to be privileged to approach him was at the same time to be in constant peril of being butchered; and he was no less ob scene than cruel, an immense and gorgeously decorated hall being built by him, and exclusively devoted to the most disgusting and frantic orgies. The reign of so foul a monster could not be otherwise than short. The very officers of his palace could not tolerate his conduct, and in the year following his accession to the throne he was dispatched by one of the eunuchs of his palace.

Ming-te Tae-che succeeded to the throne, A. D. 466. What he might have proved if his accession had been unopposed we can but guess; but, being opposed, he was aroused to a rage perfectly ungovernable. Those of his relatives who actually took up arms against him were not more hateful than those of them who did not, and many of the latter were put to death by him. His whole reign was passed in warfare with one or more of the princes of his family. This state of things lasted for nearly six years, and caused so much misery to the people, that there would have been a general rising for the purpose of dethroning him, but for his opportune death. Anarchy and war marked the two following reigns, of Chwang-yu-wang, and Shun-te; the former was dispatched by a eunuch employed by an aspiring general, who also compelled Shun-te to abdicate in his favour, and soon afterwards assassinated him. In 479 the aspiring and reckless general, Seawu-Taduching, ascended the throne, under the title of Kaou-te-now; he reigned but two years, and the succeeding princes of this dynasty, Tsi, which terminated in 502, were engaged in continual war with the prince of the north, but performed neither warlike nor peaceful services to merit notice.

A new dynasty, the Leang, was now commenced by Woo-te, who as cended the throne in 502. Under him the old wars between the northern and southern empires were continued. Nevertheless, though warlike and active at the commencement of his reign, he showed himself a great admirer and patron of learning. He revived some learned establishments that had fallen into decay, and founded some new ones; but probably the most important service that he did it was that of publicly teaching in person. We may fairly doubt whether such a prince was not better skilled in the arts of war, as then practised, than in studious lore; but his example tended to make learning fashionable, and he may therefore be said to have afforded it the greatest encouragement. Whatever his actual at tainments, his love of study seems to have been both deep and sincere; for while yet in the prime of mental and bodily vigour, he abandoned the pomp and power of the throne, and retired to a monastery with the avow. ed intention of devoting the remainder of his life to study. This, however, had such mischievous effect upon public affairs, that the principal mandarins compelled him to quit his peaceful retirement and re-ascend the throne; but the rest of his life was passed in strife and tumult, which eventually broke his heart. His son and successor had scarcely commenced his reign, when he was put to death, and succeeded by Yuen-te. This emperor also was fond of retirement and study, and greatly neglected the affairs of his empire, which, distracted as it constantly was by the violence and intrigues of the princes of the empire, required a stern and vigorous attention.

Shin-pan-seen, who was not only a prince of the empire, but also prime minister to the emperor, raised a rebellion against his confiding and peace

ful master, whose first intimation of his danger was given to aim by the fierce shouts of the rebel force at the very gates of his palace. On hearing those boding sounds, the emperor, awakened from his delicious reveries, calmly closed the book he had been so intent upon, put on his armour, and ascended the ramparts. A single glance showed him that it was too late for resistance; he returned to his library, and, setting fire to it, abandoned his sword, and resigned himself to his fate. The library of this unfortunate monarch, who would probably have been both powerful and glorious had he ruled over a less divided and turbulent people, is said to have contained one hundred and forty thousand volumes; an immense number to have been collected even by royalty at such a time and among such a people. The next emperor worthy of any mention, however slight, is Wan-te, whose short reign was so vigorous, prudent, and successful, that he must be considered to have been the chief cause of the re-union which occurred soon after his death between the northern and southern empires. He died in 566, and was succeeded by his son, Pe-tsung, who was speedily dethroned by his uncle and the empress dowager.

The throne was then filled by Suen-te. During his short reign, of less than three years, he fought boldly and constantly against his opponents, and did much towards promoting the fast approaching union of the two empires. On the death of Suen-te, in the year 569, he was succeeded by How Chow, a mere sensualist and idler, whose debauchery and indolence disgusted and angered his people more, probably, than hardier and more active vices would, even though they had been productive of a fiercer and more obvious kind of tyranny. A powerful and warlike noble, Yangkeen, put himself at the head of the disaffected nobles and their followers and laid siege to the imperial city. The inhabitants, who, as might be expected, were even more disgusted with the effeminacy and profligacy they had witnessed, than the beseigers, threw open the gates almost without a struggle. The immediate advisers of the emperor and the notorious companions of his profligate revels were sternly put to death, and search was then made for the emperor. That cowardly sensualist had taken refuge with all his family in a dry well, whence he was dragged out half dead with terror, and expecting no less than instant death at the hands of the victorious rebel leader. But Yang-keen, either in mercy, or with the politic view of placing an additional obstacle in the way of all other pretenders that might arise, spared both him and his family.

On usurping the throne, A. D. 572, Yang-keen's very first act was to consolidate the northern empire with the southern. In this he found little difficulty. Wei, the last really great prince of the northern empire, was both so well able to war, and so little inclined to do so without occasion, that he made his state at once feared without, and peaceful and prosperous within. He was poisoned by his own mother, a woman of high but cruel spirit, and of great talents but most restless disposition. Both she, while she acted as regent to her grandson, and the latter when he had taken the reins of government into his own hands, plunged the state into all the venomous and mischevious wars of the imperial princes; and this fatal departure from the peaceful polity of the former ruler, and the absence of any improvement in his military power, struck a blow at the safety and integrity of the northern empire, which, after a separate existence of upwards of a century and a half, was re-annexed to the southern empire, almost without an effort,

CHAPTER II.

YANG-KEEN having been so successful in obtaining the throne and con solidating the empire, turned his attention to restraining the violence and

rapine of the Tartar chiefs. His reputation for skill, valour, and firmness, here did him good service. Boid and rapacious as the Tartars were, they were too well aware of the character of the monarch whom they now had to deal with, to hope that he would overlook any of the advantages he possessed. They professed themselves desirous rather of his friendship than his enmity; and to show the sincerity of what they called their amity, but what would have been far more correctly termed their terror, they went so far as to pay him homage. With his usual shrewd policy Yang-keen gave one of the imperial princesses in marriage to the principal Tartar chief. Nor was he ill-rewarded for the facility with which he permitted himself to substitute alliance for strife. During his reign, his people remained free from the incursions of the Tartars, which had previously been as frequent as the natural tempests, and far more destructive. On the death of Yang-keen, in 604, the heir to the throne was strangled by a younger brother, Yang-te, who, having committed the fratricide and removed all other obstacles from his path, ascended the throne in 605. The means by which this prince cbtained the throne, common as such means are in despotic and but partially civilized nations, deserve all the detestation that we can bestow upon them; but if he obtained the throne shamefully, he filled it well. Though eminently a man of taste and pleasure, he was no less a man of judgment, enterprise, and energy. In the early part of his reign he formed extensive gardens, which for magnitude and tastefulness were never before witnessed in China; and in these gardens it was his chief delight to ride, attended by a retinue of a thousand ladies, splendidly attired, who amused him with vocal and instrumenta. music, and with dancing and feats of grace and agility on horseback. This luxurious habit did not, however, prevent him from paying great attention to the solid improvements of which China at that time stood so much in need. It would be idle to remark upon the importance (to both the prosperity and the civilization of a people) of good and numerous means of communication between all the extremities of their land. Many of his canals and bridges still exist, as proofs both of his zeal and judg ment in this most important department of the duty of a ruler. But his talents, energy, and accomplishments, could not save him; he had been on a tour, not improbably with a view to some new improvement in the face of the country, when he was assassinated. This melancholy event, it seems probable, arose from the successful artifices of Le-yuen: he was both powerful and disaffected; had previously signalized himself by the most factious conduct, and immediately after the assassination, put himself forward to place King-te upon the vacant throne. What motive Leyuen had in making this man the mere puppet of sovereignty for a brief time it is difficult to conjecture; but it is certain that King-te had scarcely ascended the throne, before Le-yuen caused him to be strangled and assumed the sovereign power himself.

It is strange that ill-acquired power is sometimes used with wisdom and moderation, as though in the struggle to obtain it the evil portion of the posessor's nature had been exhausted. Le-yuen, or rather Kaou-tsoo, which name he took on ascending the throne, was a remarkable instance of this. Nothing could be more sanguinary or unscrupulous than the course by which he became master of the empire; nothing could be braver, more politic, or, as regarded his internal administration, milder, than his conduct after he had obtained it. For some years previous to his usurpation, the Tartars had returned to their old practice of making incursions into the northern parts of China, on some portion of which they had actually proceeded to settle themselves. Kaou-tsoo attacked them with great spirit, and in many severe engagements made such slaughter among them as to impress them with a salutary fear of pushing their encroachments farther. Looking with a politic and prescient eye at the

state of other nations, Kaou-tsoo was extremely anxious about that singular and ferocious people, the Turks, who about the commencement of his reign began to be very troublesome in Asia. Dwelling between the Caspian sea and the river Hypanis, the Turks were a sylvan people, hardy, and living chiefly upon the spoils of the chase. Thus prepared by their way of life to the hardships of war, and having their cupidity excited by the rich booty of the caravans, which they occasionally rushed upon from their peninsular lair to plunder, this people could not fail to be otherwise than terrible, when, under a brave and politic leader, they went forth to the conquest of nations instead of the pillage of a caravan, and appeared as a great multitude instead of a mere isolated handful of robbers. To China they were especially hateful and mischievous; for they were perpetually at war with the Persians, with whom just at that time, far the most valuable part of Chinese commerce was carried on. The Persians fell before the Turkish power, and that restless power en deavoured to push their conquests into China. It might probably have effected this had a different man ruled the empire; but the emperor not merely repulsed them from his own territory, but chastised the disaffected Thibetians who had aided them and pushed forward into China, whence he expelled the Turks. After a victorious and active reign of twenty-two years and a few months, this brave and politic emperor died, and was succeeded by Chun-tsung, whose effeminacy was the more glaringly disgraceful from contrast with the brave and active character of his predecessor. The single act for which his historian gave him any credit, is that of having made it necessary for the literati, who by this time exercised pretty nearly as much influence in both private and public affairs in China as the clergy did in Europe during the middle ages, to sustain a rather severe public examination.

Of the next seventeen monarchs of China there is literally nothing recorded that is worthy of transcript; nor during their reigns did anything of moment occur to China beyond the civil dissensions, which were frequent, and indeed inevitable, in a country where effeminate princes committed their power to intriguing eunuchs, who scarcely ever failed to prevent a resumption of it, by the dagger or the poisoned cup. Chwangisung, son of a brave and skilful general, founded the How Tang dynasty, and, at least at the outset of his reign, was a bright contrast to his predecessors. He had from mere boyhood shared the perils and hard ships of his father, whom he had accompanied in many of his expeditions At the commencement of his reign he gave every promise of being the greatest monarch China ever saw. In his apparel and diet he emulated the frugality of the meanest peasant and the plainest of his troops. Lest he should indulge in more sleep than nature actually required, he was accustomed to have no other bed than the bare ground, and, as if this luxurious way of lying might lead him to waste in sleep any of that precious time of which he was a most rigid economist, he had a bell so fastened to his person, that it rang on his attempting to turn round, so loudly as to awaken him, and after it did so he immediately rose, to repose no more until his usual hour on the ensuing night. Extremes are proverbially said to meet; but certainly one would never have suspected that so Spartan a youth would have heralded a manhood of exceeding luxury and even licentiousness. But so it was; his companions were among the most profane wassailers in his empire, and he emulated their conduct. Yet though he departed from the, perhaps, too rigid severity of his manners, he was to the last a brave and active man, and was slain at the head of his troops in a battle fought in 926, having in spite of some personal defects of character already noted, been on the whole one of the most respectable of all the native Chinese empe

cors

The next was Ming-tsung, who reigned for only seven years But if his reign was short it was active and beneficent; and if there are many greater names in the imperial annals, there is not one more beloved. His people looked upon him as a parent, and his whole reign seems, in fact, to have been the expression and achievement of a truly kind and paternal feeling. He died in 933, with a character greater monarchs might envy. Min-te succeeded to the throne in 933. He only reigned one year; but in that very brief space of time he contrived to deserve, if not to obtain, the execration of the Chinese women, not only of his own time, but up to the present hour. He it was who established the truly barbarous practice of confining the feet of female children in such a manner that the toes are bent completely under the soles of the feet, which are, it is true, rendered very diminutive in appearance by this abominable method, but are at the same time rendered almost useless. The loitering and awk ward gait of the women would be sufficient to make this practice deserving of all abhorrence as a matter of taste merely, but when we consider the exquisite torture which the unhappy creatures must have suffered in girlhood, it is really wonderful that such a practice should so long have existed in any nation possessing even the first rudiments of civilization.

Min-te died in 934, in the first year of his reign, and was succeeded by Fei Tei, who paid the fearful price of fratricide for the throne. He possessed, it would seem, a great share of merely animal courage, and like the generality of persons who do so, he was distinguished for his exceeding barbarity. Even the Chinese, accustomed as they were to despotism in all its varieties of misrule, could not endure the excess and wantonness of his cruelty. A formidable revolt broke out; and finding himself hard pressed by his enemies, and abandoned every moment by his troops, he collected the whole of his family together, and, like another Sardanapalus, set fire to his palace-his wealth, his family, and himself being con sumed in the flames. Kaou-tse now ascended the throne, being the first of the How-tsin dynasty. He was more the nominal than the real monarch, his minister, Hung-taieu, usurping a more than imperial power. The minister, in fact, is in every way more worthy of mention than the monarch, for according to the most credible accounts the invention of printing from blocks was a boon conferred by him upon China in the year 937. Both this reign and that of Chuh-te, which closed this short-lived dynasty, were occupied in perpetual battling with the restless Tartars, who for ages seem to have had an instinctive certainty of having, sooner or later, the rule of China, as the reward of their determined and pertinacious inroads.

In 960, Kung-te, a child of only six years of age, being upon the throne, the people arose and demanded his abdication. Of maternal and eunuch misgovernment they certainly had for centuries past had abundant experience. How far the successful aspirant to the throne was concerned in rousing their fears into activity and fervour does not appear; but it is certain that the revolt against the infant emperor, and the election of Chaou-quang-yin as his successor, were events in which the people showed great unanimity of feeling. This founder of the Sung dynasty did not commence his reign under the most promising circumstances; for on the ceremonial of his acceptance of the throne, he actually ascended in a ztate of intoxication. Nevertheless, this prince, who on his elevation to the throne took the name of Taou-tsoo, was in reality one of the best of the Chinese monarchs, both as a warrior and a domestic ruler. The imbecility or infancy of some of his predecessors, and the pernicious habit into which others fell of leaving the actual administration of affairs in the hands of eunuchs, and other corrupt favorites, had caused the cour expenses as well as the court retinue to be swelled to a shameful extent. The new emperor, immediately after his accession, caused the mos