ent families, numbering in all thirteen emperors, whose reigns were very brief, most of them having died by some kind of violence. Yet it was in these turbulent times that printing began to be practiced in China-an event which occurred about five hundred years before that art was known in Europe. The method first adopted in China was to engrave the characters on stone; consequently, when the impressions were taken off, the ground of the paper was black and the letters were white. But this mode was shortly superseded by the invention of wooden blocks, cut in such a manner that the letters were raised instead of indented, and thus were impressed in black on a white ground. This mode of printing from wood is still practiced in China, and is well adapted to the written language of the Chinese, as its words are not formed of vowels and consonants like those of Western languages; but a single character, of which there are many thousands, expresses a whole word. Yet it is necessarily very slow; and for this reason must yield in the end to the use of divisible metal type and of our swift machinery. The superior beauty of the typography of our books already wins the wonder and praise of the Chinese. Before the invention of printing there must have been a vast number of Chinese constantly employed in writing, as they were always a reading people, and even the poorest peasants were able to obtain books in manuscript, while in Europe a book was a thing unknown among the lower classes, and seldom to be met with except in monasteries or the palaces of princes.

The troubles that followed the fall of the Tang dynasty encouraged the Eastern Tartars to make new irruptions 1 Paper had been invented during the first century of the Christian era.

into the empire, and one of their chieftains having aided a fresh usurper to mount the imperial throne, received from him in return the grant of a large territory in the province of Pe-che-lee, with an annual tribute of silks; and thus the Tartars gained a footing in the north of China which laid the foundation of those long and terrible wars that ended in the first Tartar conquest. But ere these wars commenced there was an interval of reof the downfall of the last usurppose, in consequence ing family of the five petty dynasties, and the elevation of a race called the Sung, of which there were eighteen

emperors.

The founder of the Sung dynasty was a popular minister, who had also had the command of the armies, and had distinguished himself by his courage no less than by his ability in affairs of state; therefore, as the emperor was dead and his son was but a child, it was decided by all the military leaders and other great men that it would be better to place on the throne a man who was able to defend the country against its enemies. They accordingly fixed on the chief minister, and sent a deputation to his palace to invest him with the yellow robe, and he was proclaimed, by the title of Tai-tsu, in the year 950. The names assumed by the emperors usually had some appropriate meaning; thus Tai-tsu signifies "Great Sire." The conduct of the new monarch justified the high opinion which had been formed of his virtues and abilities, and he holds a place in the history of China as one of the greatest of its sovereigns. His mother, too, is reckoned among the illustrious females of the empire, for the Chinese annals have preserved the names of many women distinguished by their superior

understanding, whose wise sayings and exemplary conduct are recorded as examples for others.

1

Under the first and second sovereigns of the Sung line the art of printing was improved, and still farther disseminated. Books were greatly multiplied, and to these causes may be attributed the increased fullness of the records of this period, from which the most interesting portion of Chinese history commences. "Our lights now multiply fast, and the Tartars begin to take a great share in the national transactions. In fact, the whole history of this polished but unwarlike race is a series of disgraceful arts of compromise with the Eastern Tartars, called Kin (the origin of the Manchus, or present reigning family), until the Mongols, or Western Tartars, took possession of the empire under Kublai Khan." The emperors were even content to purchase temporary cessations from war by the payment of tribute-a plan which was pursued by the Saxon king of England at that very time, in order to keep off the invasion of the Danes; and in both cases it proved equally ineffectual. Yet the commercial intercourse with Arabia and Persia had continued to increase, and great portions of the empire might be said to be in a prosperous condition. The first emperor of this line paid great attention to the improvement of his army, but it was not possible either to give that army a good organization or to revive in it a martial spirit.

In the reign of the third emperor of the Sung dynasty were established the famous porcelain furnaces at Kingti-chin, a large village in the province of Kiang-si, where all the best china is still made. These manufactories

1 SIR J. F. DAVIS, The Chinese, etc.

were erected about the year 1000 A.D., and still afford employment to many thousands of people. At that time porcelain was one of the principal articles of export, to which were added silks and spices; for although the Chinese had no spices in their own country except coarse pepper, still they were able to obtain abundance of the finer sorts of them in their trade with the neighboring islands; and about this time they took possession of the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, which they retained above sixty years, when they were dispossessed by the. Malays, who were soon obliged to give them up to the Arabs. Tea had not yet become an article of foreign trade, although it was in very general use among the natives of China.

In the reign of Chin-tsung, the third emperor of the line of Sung, the Kin, or Eastern Tartars, laid siege to a town near Peking; they were obliged to suspend the siege and to enter into negotiations; yet they obtained from their unwarlike foes very advantageous terms, with a large annual donation or tribute of money and silk. Under Jin-tsung, the fourth emperor, the Chinese entered into a still more disgraceful treaty. Ten extensive districts within the Great Wall were claimed by the Eastern Tartars, who received an annual quit-rent of two hundred thousand taels,1 and an enormous quantity of silk. This emperor even submitted to be styled, and to call himself, in his treaties with the Tartar chiefs, a tributary.

Under each succeeding ruler of the Sung family the decline of the empire was more and more accelerated. There was nothing but vice and effeminacy in the 1 Equal to $280,000 in specie with us.

2

palace, and rank cowardice in the field. Large armies took to flight at the first distant appearance of a few squadrons of Tartar horse. Wei-tsung, the eighth emperor of this line, enslaved himself to conjurors and impostors, who promised him longevity and wealth, and to those old pests of the country-the eunuchs of the palace who were again found in incredible numbers, and in possession of all the keys to honor, promotion or public employment, whether military or civil. Encouraged by the weakness and imbecility of this ruler, and the spiritless, abject attitude of his people, the Eastern Tartars advanced at a rapid pace, took possession of a good part of Northern China, and threatened the whole empire with their iron conquest. In this extremity the Chinese applied for aid to the Mongols, or Western Tartars, who had already conquered India, and who now inhabited the vast elevated plains which extend from the north-west of China to Tibet and Samarkand. These hardy warriors eagerly accepted the invitation, and in brief space of time they subdued both the Eastern Tartars, who were their rivals for dominion, and the enervated Chinese whom they had been invited to protect. It was now found that trade, wealth, literature and refinement cannot defend a state, that pacific habits do not ensure peace or exemption from foreign conquest, and that every country which would preserve its tranquillity, its riches, its independence and its other blessings, must keep alive its martial ardor and be at all times ready to maintain a war.

In the very populous cities of the empire which attempted to stand sieges the slaughter was terrific, and was estimated by the Chinese annalists at millions of