t that of ruling his fellow-creatures with a rod more
tyrannical than that of political authority, and more respected than the
sceptre of government itself.

II.

Satiated with success, Mien-yaun at length became weary of the ceaseless
round of flattering triumphs, and began to lament that no higher step on
the social staircase remained for him to achieve. Alas that discontent
should so soon follow the realization of our brightest hopes! What, in
this world, is enough? More than we have! Mien-yaun felt all the pangs
of anxious aspiration, without knowing how to alleviate them. He was
only conscious of a deep desolation, for which none of the elementary
principles he had learned from Kei-ying afforded the slightest
consolation. He now avoided publicity from inclination, rather than from
any systematic plan of action. He dressed mostly in blue, a sufficient
sign of a perturbed spirit. He discarded the peacock's feather, as
an idle vanity, and always came forth among the world arrayed in
ultramarine gowns and cerulean petticoats. His stockings, especially,
were of the deepest, darkest, and most beautiful blue. The world of
fashion saw, and was amazed; but in less than, a week all Pekin had the
blues. Annoyed at what a few months before he would have delighted in as
another convincing proof of his influential position, Mien-yaun fled
the city, and sought relief in a cruise up and down the Peiho, in his
private junk. As he neared the Gulf of Pe-tche-lee, the sea-breeze
brought calm to his troubled spirit and imparted renewed vigor to his
wearied mind. A degree of resolution, to which he had heretofore been
a stranger, possessed him. His courage returned. He would go back to
Pekin. He would renounce those vain pursuits in which he had passed his
unworthy life. Henceforth he would strive for nobler aims. Something
great and wonderful he certainly would accomplish,--the exact nature of
which, however, he did not pause to consider.

As he reentered the city, he was obliged to pass through that quarter
which is inhabited by the Kung,--the working and manufacturing classes.
His attention was suddenly arrested by feminine cries of distress; and,
turning a corner, he came upon a domestic scene so common in China
that it would hardly have attracted his notice but for a peculiar
circumstance. A matron, well advanced in years, was violently beating
a young and beautiful girl with a bit of bamboo; and the peculiar
circumstance th