for scores of others. China
itself--a very small country then--southern Shansi, northern
Homan, western Shantung--was first divided up under the feudal
system; the king retaining a domain, known as Chow, in Homan,
for his own. Then princes and nobles--some of the blood royal,
some of the old shang family, some risen from the ranks--were
given warrant to conquer lands for themselves from the barbarians
beyond the frontier: so you go rid of the ambitious, and
provided Chow with comfortable buffers. They went out, taking a
measure of Chinese civilization with them, and conquered or
cajoled Huns, Turks, Tatars, Laos, shans, Annamese, and all that
kind of people, into accepting them for their rulers. It was a
work, as you may imagine, of centuries; with as much history
going forward as during any centuries you might name. The states
thus formed were young, compared to China; and as China grew old
and weak, they grew into their vigorous prime. The infinity of
human activities that has been! These Chow ages seem like the
winking of an eye; but they were crowded with great men and
small, great deeds and trivialities, like our own. The time will
come when our 'Anglo-Saxon' history will be written thus:
England sent out colonies, and presently the colonies grew
stronger and more populous than England;--and it will be enough,
without mention of the Pitts and Lincolns, the Washingtons and
Gladstones, that now make it seem so full and important.

By 850 the balance of power had left or was leaving the Chow king
at Honanfu. His own subjects had grown unwarlike, and he could
hardly command even their allegiance; for each man's feudal duty
was first to his own duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron;--
strangely enough, there were those five degrees of nobility in
ancient China as in modern England. Of these nobles, each with
his court and feudal dominion, there were in what we may call
China Proper some unascertainable number between thirteen and a
hundred and fifty: mostly small and insignificant, but mostly,
too, full of schemes and ambitions.

But it was the Lords Marchers that counted. One after another of
them had wrested from the Chow the title of _Wang_ or King; it
was not enough for them to be dukes and marquises. Then came a
time when a sort of Bretwalda-ship was established; to be
wielded by whichever of them happened to be strongest--and
generally to be fought for between whiles: a glorious and
perpetual