I remained firm, gazing at the white clouds floating
over my head, and bearing in my heart a sorrow boundless as the sky.

"The sun of those dead heroes has long since set, but their record is
before me still. And, while the wind whistles under the eaves, I open my
books and read; and lo! in their presence my heart glows with a borrowed
fire."

At length, Wen T'ien-hsiang was summoned into the presence of Kublai
Khan, who said to him, "What is it you want?" "By the grace of his late
Majesty of the Sung dynasty," he replied, "I became his Majesty's
minister. I cannot serve two masters. I only ask to die." Accordingly he
was executed, meeting his death with composure, and making a final
obeisance toward the south, as though his own sovereign was still
reigning in his capital.

May we not then plead that this Chinese statesman, equally with Lord
Granville, at a crisis of his life, recurred to the great thoughts and
images of the literature in which he had been trained, and found there
what braced and fortified him, a comfort, an inspiration, an utterance
for his deeper feelings?

Chinese history teems with the names of men who, with no higher source
of inspiration than the Confucian Canon, have yet shown that they can
nobly live and bravely die.

Han Yue of the eighth and ninth centuries was one of China's most
brilliant statesmen and writers, and rose rapidly to the highest offices
of State. When once in power, he began to attack abuses, and was
degraded and banished. Later on, when the Court, led by a weak Emperor,
was going crazy over Buddhism, he presented a scathing Memorial to the
Throne, from the effect of which it may well be said that Buddhism has
not yet recovered. The Emperor was furious, and Han Yue narrowly escaped
with his life. He was banished to the extreme wilds of Kuangtung, not
far from the now flourishing Treaty Port of Swatow, where he did so much
useful work in civilising the aborigines, that he was finally recalled.

Those wilds have long since disappeared as such, but the memory of
Han Yue remains, a treasure for ever. In a temple which contains his
portrait, and which is dedicated to him, a grateful posterity has put
up a tablet bearing the following legend, "Wherever he passed, he
purified."

The last Emperor of the Ming dynasty, which was overthrown by rebels
and then supplanted by the Manchus in 1644, was also a man who in the
Elysian fields might well hold up his head among monarchs. He