ainst harm, and the stars bowed
themselves before him. He married a wife, but, finding that she
hindered him in his pursuit of knowledge, he put her away. He lived to
the age of seventy years, when he died of a broken heart at beholding
the evils around him. The highest honours were paid to him after
death.

Hogs were offered in sacrifice to the gods. Wine was poured on the
animals' ears, and if they shook their heads at this operation they
were deemed proper objects to be offered, but if they remained
motionless they were rejected.

On the 14th August of every year sacrifices were offered by the people
to their ancestors, and all who assisted them at the solemn ceremonies
were assured that they would receive particular favours from their
dead relatives. Vast numbers of beggars constantly went about the
country. If those mendicants were refused alms, they told the people
that their souls would pass into the bodies of rats, mice, snakes,
toads, and such other creatures as they knew the Chinese abhorred.
Those mendicants told fortunes, and, if report speaks true, could
raise the wind by striking the earth with a hammer of magical virtue.
A ship captain, on going to sea, might have a fair wind and a
prosperous voyage for a moderate sum. Divination was practised by
means of household gods, of which there were many in the empire.

Conjurers and fortune-tellers were by law forbidden to frequent the
houses of civil or military officers under the pretence of prophesying
impending national calamities or successes, but the prohibition was
not understood to prevent them telling fortunes and casting nativities
by the stars in the usual manner. Whenever signs of calamity were
observed in the heavens by the officers of the astronomical board, and
they failed to give faithful notice thereof; they were punished with
one hundred and twenty blows and two years' banishment. In later times
a law was passed against sorcerers and magicians, prohibiting them,
under pain of death, from employing spells and incantations,
calculated to agitate and influence the minds of the people. Killing
by magic was by statute placed among the most serious classes of
offences. Magicians who raised evil spirits by means of magical books
and dire imprecations, or who burned incense in honour of the images
of their worship when they assembled by night to instruct their
followers, were strangled.

It was enacted by the Chinese laws, that if any members of a