is the
natural privilege of every true-born Chinese subject. His friends
declared that he came out high at each of the periodical examinations,
but their statements may have been false in this as in much else. The
fact is clear that he failed to obtain his degrees, and that he was
denied admission into the public service. Hung was therefore a
disappointed candidate, the more deeply disappointed, perhaps, that
his sense of injured merit and the ill-judging flattery of his
admirers made his rejection appear unjust.

Hung was, at all events, a shrewd observer of the weakness of the
Government, and of the popular discontent. He perceived the
opportunity of making the Manchu dynasty the scapegoat of national
weakness and apathy. He could not be the servant of the Government.
Class contempt, the prejudices of his examiners, or it may even have
been his own haughty presumption and self-sufficiency, effectually
debarred him from the enjoyment of the wealth and privileges that fall
to the lot of those in executive power in all countries, but in
Asiatic above every other. To his revengeful but astute mind it was
clear that if he could not be an official he might be the enemy of the
Government and its possible subverter.

The details of his early career have been mainly recorded by those who
sympathised with the supposed objects of his operations; and while
they have been very anxious to discover his virtues, they were always
blind to his failings. The steps of his imposture have therefore been
described with an amount of implicit belief which reflected little
credit on the judgment of those who were anxious to give their
sanction to the miracles which preceded the appearance of this
adventurer in the field. Absurd stories as to his dreams, allegorical
coincidences showing how he was summoned by a just and all-powerful
God to the supreme seat of power, were repeated with a degree of faith
so emphatic in its mode of expression as to make the challenge of its
sincerity appear extremely harsh. Hung, the defeated official
candidate, the long-deaf listener to the entreaties of Christian
missionaries, was thus in a brief time metamorphosed into Heaven's
elect for the Dragon Throne, into the iconoclastic propagator of the
worship of a single God, and the destroyer of the mass of idolatry
stored in the hearts and venerated in the temples of the Chinese
people for countless ages. Whether Hung was merely an intriguer or a
fanatic, he cou