THE PALACE OF DELIGHT.

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and heroes of the first two dynasties. For this assumption of superiority, as well as for the indifference he showed to established etiquette, Hwangti incurred the hostility of the lettered classes, and his subsequent acts embittered rather than mollified their feelings. During his lifetime they could not refrain from expressing how much their sentiments were shocked by his acts, and after his death their rage was indulged uncontrolled. Nevertheless, Hwangti had accomplished his wish. He ruled a united China, and the people had peace.

Like most Chinese rulers, he patronized astronomy and revised the calendar. Undeterred by opposition, he abolished many useless ceremonies, striving to attain the practical in all things with the least possible outlay-these measures being intensely unpopular among the officials, accustomed to attend to the minutest forms, and to act on every occasion in obedience to precedent. The embellishment of his capital should not be lost sight of among his other undertakings. One of his first edicts was to the effect that, as the people had no longer any apprehension on the score of civil war— "peace under his reign being universal "—all weapons should be sent to Hienyang, where was stationed the elite of his army as well as the national arsenal. It was written, and it is not difficult to understand why such was the case, that "the skilful disarming of the provinces added daily to the wealth and prosperity of the capital." The Hall of Audience in the palace was ornamented with twelve statues, made from the spoil of his numerous campaigns, and each of these weighed twelve thousand pounds. Outside the city he constructed another palace, on a vast scale, or rather a series of palaces, with magnificent gardens attached, and this became known as the Palace of Delight. The character of the Emperor revealed itself more clearly in the fact that ten thousand men could be drawn up in order of battle in one of its courts.

Hwangti at once divided the Empire into thirty-six provinces, and, when the preliminary arrangements had been completed, he made preparations for visiting the possessions which, the first time for centuries, recognized a common

master under his sway. One of his ministers suggested that he should divide the provinces among his children and blood relations by bestowing fiefs upon them. The suggestion did not find favour in the eyes of the Emperor, and showed that the man who made it had but very faintly perceived the significance of his master's policy. Lisseh had little difficulty in exposing the evils of such a course, and in an eloquent address described the troubles the people had to endure from a divided country. The Emperor put the question in a nutshell when he said, "Good government is impossible under a multiplicity of masters." Governors and sub-governors were then appointed in each of the provinces, and the organization thus drawn up exists, with very few modifications, at the present time, a work alone sufficient to stamp Hwangti as a great ruler.

During the Emperor's journeys throughout his dominions the main features of the country and the condition of the people came under his eye. Recognizing that one of the best ways to increase the prosperity of his people was to improve the means of communication between one part of his Empire and another, the Emperor gave orders that highroads should be laid down in all directions. His attention was the more drawn to the matter because in the East it is the custom when a great man visits a district to repair all the roads in it, and Hwangti, while enjoying the benefit of this rule, knew that, outside his line of march, the roads were of a very different description from those which had been hastily prepared for his arrival. Wishing to see with his own eyes, he may even have diverged from his route for the purpose of observing the naked reality. His own words sum up the situation: "These roads have been made expressly for me, and I am indeed well satisfied. It is not just that I personally should benefit by a convenience of which my subjects have more need than I can have, and one also which I can procure for them. Therefore I decree that roads shall be made in all directions through the Empire." The autocrat's orders were carried out, and the grand roads still remain, often, indeed, in ruins, but two thousand years after his death, to testify to the splendour of his genius.

MEN OF LETTERS.

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It was at this period (B.C. 219-218) that the collision which had been long imminent between Hwangti and the literati occurred. In those days it was customary for the kings of China to ascend lofty mountains, for the purpose of offering sacrifices on their summits; and the learned classes were not unnaturally anxious that this should be done in accordance with form. Their representation of what the early Emperors had done became tedious by repetition, and their admonitions roused the ire rather than inspired the devotion of the impatient Hwangti. These discussions he cut short by saying that, "You vaunt the simplicity of the ancients; but I act after a still simpler fashion than they did." The Chinese literati have always been noted for the obstinate courage they have shown in expressing their opinions at all hazards; but in Hwangti they encountered an opponent too powerful, and too free from prejudice and superstition, to be vanquished by the stock weapons in their armoury.

The contest had not yet reached its crisis. The resentment of the king against his enemies was slumbering, and the literati were only biding their time for a favourable opportunity to reassert the rights of which they considered they had been wrongfully deprived. The occasion offered itself five years later (B.C. 213), when Hwangti had summoned to his capital all the governors and principal officials for a General Council of the Empire. The scene, we may well imagine, was imposing. The men who had made China a single Empire by their valour and ability, assembled in the magnificent palace, erected from the spoils of kingdoms, to do honour to the Emperor who had inspired their efforts; and side by side with these representatives of practical politics a small body of theoretical observers, wedded to their own. beliefs and traditions, containing all the book-learning of the country in their ranks, defiant and hostile, holding Hwangti to be a dangerous and unscrupulous innovator, and not refraining from expressing their opinion in words. It was only in consonance with human nature that the long pent-up hostility of the two classes, the practical man of affairs, and the theoretical student, who was nothing if not the devotee of antiquity, reduced to a focus within the walls of this

palace, should reveal itself in acts. Hwangti may be credited with sufficient knowledge of men to have anticipated what took place; and he shrewdly suspected that the literati would be unable to curb their feelings. His anticipations were fulfilled, and his opponents put themselves forward as the aggressors.

Hwangti called upon those present to express their candid opinion of his government, and of the new legislation which he had inaugurated. Upon this a courtier rose, and delivered a panegyric on what he had accomplished. "Truly you have surpassed the very greatest of your predecessors, even at the most remote period." This eulogium brought matters to a climax. The literati, unable to tolerate this last insult to their heroes, broke into murmurs, and one, more courageous than the rest, gave vent to his disapproval. He began by styling the former speaker "a vile flatterer, unworthy of the high position which he occupied," and, proceeding to heap praise on the earlier rulers, he concluded a speech not less remarkable for its bad taste than for its weakness in argument, by advocating the division of the Empire into principalities. Hwangti cut short the admonitions of this no doubt highly respectable individual by reminding him that that point had been already discussed and decided. But as the point was one of the first importance, he called upon Lisseh to state over again the reasons which rendered the maintenance of the unity of the Empire advisable.

Lisseh's speech is very remarkable, both as an exposition of policy and as a defence of the reasons which dictated the burning of the books. The following is the substance of this great speech :-"It must be admitted," he said, "after what we have just heard, that men of letters are, as a rule, very little acquainted with what concerns the government of a country-not that government of pure speculation, which is nothing more than a phantom, vanishing the nearer we approach to it, but the practical government which consists in keeping men within the sphere of their proper duties. With all their pretence of knowledge, they are, in this matter, only ignorant. They can tell you by heart everything which has happened in the past, back to the most remote period,

THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS.

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but they are, or seem to be, ignorant of what is being done in these later days, of what is passing under their eyes. . . . Incapable of discerning that the thing which was formerly suitable would be wholly out of place to-day, that that which was useful, perhaps necessary, in the past would be positively injurious in the time in which we live, they would have everything arranged in exact imitation of what they find written in their books." Lisseh then went on to denounce the learned classes as enemies of the public weal, and as a class apart and uninfluenced by the national feeling. "Now is the time or never," he concluded, "to close the mouths of these secret enemies, to place a curb upon their audacity."

The Emperor expressed his entire approval of Lisseh's remarks, and ordered him to lose no time in carrying out his propositions. All books were proscribed, and the authorities burnt every work except those treating of medicine, agriculture, etc. By these violent measures Hwangti hoped to root out from the memory of his people the names of the early Emperors. Before condemning this as an inexcusable act of Vandalism, the hostility of the literati to every act from the commencement of his tenure of power must be taken into consideration. Nor can it be truthfully said that this was a struggle between "light" and "darkness," "knowledge" and "ignorance," in which brute force gained the upper hand. For if the situation is thoroughly grasped, if we make allowance for the antipathies of the rival classes, surely it will be admitted that the "light" and the "knowledge" were on the side of Hwangti and his ministers, and not of Chunyuyue and the chroniclers. While the former perceived the necessities and true wants of the nation, the latter were foolishly clamouring for the observance of idle forms with the same breath that they advocated measures inevitably entailing the dismemberment of the Empire. Hwangti's extreme remedy of destroying the written record of his predecessors' virtues was one that cannot be expected to receive the approval of civilized people. On the other hand, there was much to justify such a course in the eyes of Hwangti and his ministers, and although all subsequent generations of Chinese historians have piled obloquy on their heads, they have failed to obscure

VOL. I.

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