taire remarked of Peter the Great, "They civilised
their people, but themselves were savages." The world forgets how
much the great czar was indebted for education and guidance to Le
Fort, a Genevese soldier of fortune. Pondering that history one
is able to gauge the merits of those foreign chancellors, perhaps
also to understand what foreigners have done for the rulers of
China in our day.

Shi-hwang-ti was the real founder of the Chinese Empire. He is one
of the heroes of history; yet no man in the long list of dynasties
is so abused and misrepresented by Chinese writers. They make him
a bastard, a debauchee, and a fool. To this day he is the object
of undying hatred to every one who can hold a pen. Why? it may
be asked. Simply because he burned the books and persecuted the
disciples of Confucius. Those two things, well-nigh incredible
to us, are to the Chinese utterly incomprehensible.

Li-Sze, a native of Yen, was his chancellor, a genius more daring
and far-sighted than any of the other five. The welding together
of the feudal states into a compact unity was his darling scheme,
as it was that of his master. "Never," he said, "can you be sure
that those warring states will not reappear, so long as the books
of Confucius are studied in the schools; for in them feudalism is
consecrated as a divine institution." "Then let them be burned,"
said the tyrant.

The adherents of the Sage were ejected from the
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schools, and their teachings proscribed. This harsh treatment and
the search for their books naturally gave rise to counterplots.
"Put them to death," said the tyrant; and they went to the block,
not like Christian marytrs for religious convictions, but like the
Girondists of France for political principles. Their followers
offer the silly explanation that the books were destroyed that the
world might never know that there had been other dynasties, and
the scholars slaughtered or buried alive to prevent the reproduction
of the books.

The First Hwang-ti did not confine his ambition to China. He sent
a fleet to Japan; and those isles of the Orient came to view for
the first time in the history of the world. The fleet carried,
it is said, a crew of three thousand lads and lasses. It never
returned; but the traditions of Japan affirm that it arrived, and
the islanders ascribe their initiation into Chinese literature
to their invasion by that festive company--a company not unlike
that with which Bacchus w