and disgust; and he
was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "I have not seen one who loves
virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
Oriental idea.

In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, "You should
have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." How seldom is it
that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
describes himself truly and impressively.

At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
propriety alone.

The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although