Confucius was in no great sense a reformer. He did not look forward but back. When in his twenty-second year he began to have pupils he never refused any man because he had no money, but said with Yankee shrewdness, "If I have offered one corner of a subject to any one and he cannot find the other three, I do not repeat my lesson." How loyal he was to "The Proprieties" he showed in a remarkable manner at the time of his mother's death. He wished to bury both father and mother in the ancestral town of Fang, but it would be sacrilegious to move the body of his father, interred elsewhere for twenty years. An old women came to his relief, asserting that the arrangement had been temporary, and that the religious rites had never consecrated the first grave. So Confucius moved the body, and that he might the more easily recognize it on his occasional visits, adopted a modern custom and raised a mound four feet high over it; a heavy rain swept away the bank. When Confucius heard of it he burst into tears, and said, “ They did not build so in antiquity."

Was there not once a man who said, "Let the dead bury their dead?” Five hundred and seventeen years before Christ, a state minister died; he had all through his life felt the want of ceremonial knowledge. "A knowledge of propriety is the stem of a man," said he, dying. "Carry my son to this Kung of whom I hear so much." This, son, if we read the characters rightly, became the Mang-E. of the Analects. His wealth was of great advantage to Confucius. He put a carriage and horses at "the Master's" disposal, which enabled him to execute a long cherished desire to visit the Court of Chow, and to confer on music, his favorite study, with its great professor there, Laou Tan. The emperor of China at that time was called its king, but this was only nominal sovereignty; thirteen principalities and innumerable duchies, had each a sort of feudal power, strongly controlled by the central power in its vigorous youth. Now there had come weakness and decay. Laou Tan was not only a musician, he was the founder of a Rationalistic sect, which has kept its place in opposition to the school of Confucius. Confucius consulted him about ceremonies. They could not agree, but when he saw the reverence for the past, which prevailed in Chow, he drew the attention of his disciples to it, as the source of all greatness. He also pointed out with delight a metal statue, with three clasps upon its lips, and its back covered with a homily upon the duty of keeping watch over one's words. A magnate of the Court, said of him, "He moves along the path of humility and courtesy." After his return, the tradition is, that he had three thousand disciples. Very soon the quarrels of three ducal families drove him from his native state. On the way he found a woman weeping on a grave, and sent his disciple to see what was the cause of her excessive sorrow. "On this very spot," she answered, " my husband's father was killed by a tiger, then my husband, and now my son, has met the same fate." Why do you not remove?" asked Confucius. "Here," she answered, "the government is not oppressive;" whereupon the Sage turned

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to his disciples, "See, my children, oppression is fiercer than a tiger." He refused endowment from the Duke, it is said, because the Duke would not follow his counsel. Perhaps the Duke might have done so, but one day when there had been a consultation about economy, the prime minister said, "These scholars are impracticable. Confucius has a thousand peculiarities. It would take generations to exhaust all that he knows about the ceremonies of going up and going down. This is not the time to examine into his rules of propriety," a criticism which seems to us thoroughly well deserved, and which undoubtedly reflects the cotemporary feeling; so the teacher went back to his native Loo.

One of the disiples once asked Le, if he was favored with any peculiar instruction from his father. "No," answered Le, "once I found him alone, and was passing with hasty steps, when he asked me if I had read the Odes? 'No,' I answered. Then,' he said, if you do not, you will not be fit to converse with.' On another occasion he said, 'Have you read the Rules of Propriety on my replying, 'Not yet;' he responded, Without them, your character will never be formed."" The infatuated disciple replied, “I asked one question and have received three answers. I have heard about the Odes; I have heard about Propriety; I hear also that the superior man keeps himself reserved before his son." When the divorced wife of Confucius died, the half-starved heart of Le kept on weeping for his mother. Confucius sent him word, that the tears must be dried, and the obedient son yielded! Only once in his own life is Confucius said to have forgotten propriety! What a record for a reformer!

In 501 B. C., Confucius became magistrate of Chung Too. All that he did seems to have been to multiply ceremonies. What people should eat; that men and women should be kept separate; that anything dropped on the road should not be picked up; that there should be no fraud in carving; and that coffins should be so many inches thick; is the sole record of his administration. Yet we are told that all the surrounding states wished to imitate him, and he was promoted to the post of "Criminal Minister." When a father complained against a son, he kept both parties in prison for three months; had the father done his duty, he thought, the son would never have offended. Two feudal cities of Pe and Hon, added greatly to the national troubles, by their strength and their insubordination. Confucius succeeded in destroying them. "He strengthened the Ducal House and weakened the private families; he exalted the Sovereign and depressed the ministers." Here we have a reformer after Carlyle's own heart! But the surrounding States began to fear that they should be swallowed up. A present of eighty courtezans easily undermined reforms founded on no loftier wisdom; and very reluctantly, with "slow steps, hoping for recall," Confucius wandered into thirteen years of hopeless exile. Once, when attacked by a mob through a mistake, he said, "When heaven does not let the cause of truth perish, what can the people of Kwang do to me," the most remarkable utterance associated

with his name. At the Court of Wei, his carriage followed that of the King's mistress. "I have seen no one," he said, "who loves virtue as he loves beauty," and went away.

Once in travelling, he was obliged to give his word of honor to an officer that he would not go to Wei, but he broke it instantly, excusing himself to his disciples by saying, ' "The spirits take no note of a forced oath." When he found that the Duke paid no more attention to his words than before, he complained, "In three years I could have perfected the Government!" Had he put his trust in the right quarter, he need never have murmured about princes and potentates.

It was not until the year 483 B. C., that the successor of the old King of Loo, who had banished him, recalled him to his native state. He had no longer any weight in the State, and wisely devoted himself to literary affairs. He reformed the national music and poetry, and collected and edited the Shoo King. About this time he probably supplied his disciples with the materials for the works which have passed under his name. When he demanded retribution for the rebellion of Ching Hang, and did not succeed in obtaining it, he said: "Following in the rear of great officers, I did not dare to represent such a matter!" Just before his own death, he lost his favorite disciple Tsze-loo, a brave and noble man, who had never failed to reprove him. This was the man of whom he said in the Analects: "He will not die a natural death," and he did not. Confucius died, with a strange piece of arrogance upon his lips. "No intelligent ruler arises; there is not one in the Empire who will make me his master!" which was not strange when we consider that his diploma had been made out by no higher power than the "Proprieties." He died 478 B. C. He is said to have been more than nine feet in heightbut if true, this conferred little dignity-for he was once spoken of, to his own amusement, as resembling a stray dog." We shall find, in the Analects, a minute account of his habits and manners-but we will not anticipate it.

Immediately after his death, imperial pilgrimages were made to his tomb, and Confucius has ever since received divine honors. In most school-rooms there is a tablet sacred to him, and every pupil is required to bow before it, on the 1st and 15th of every month. The finest temple in the Empire now rises over his grave. One thing may be distinctly said of him. He owes the reputation he has had to no claims put forth by himself, but to the devotion of his disciples and the ignorance of foreigners. Of himself he said, in the VIIth Book of the Analects: "The character of the superior man is what I have not yet attained to." "I am a transmitter and not a maker." "I was not born in the possession of knowledge, I only seek for it in antiquity." He believed that he had a mission, but it was only "to preserve what already existed." He threw no light on the great problems of human condition and destiny. He taught poetry, history and propriety. He asked nothing about the origin nor the end of Man. "Of spiritual beings he did not like to talk." (Ana. VII, XVII.) In some respects he fell far short of the ancients he so

much admired. In the She-King and Shoo-King the name of God is commonly used. If Confucius referred to any spiritual cause, he evaded this, and said "Heaven." His people connected with the worship of ancestors a faith in the existence of spirits: "Respect them and keep aloof from them," was all that he would say on the subject. His character was not stainless. He falsely declined to see his guests, on the plea of illness; he deliberately broke one oath. He compromised his own principles whenever the temptation was strong. He was as full of trivialities as Lord Chesterfield.

Of women, he said: "No instruction must issue from the harem — woman's business is merely to prepare wine and food." Of the relation between superiors and inferiors: "The grass must bend when the wind blows across it." The duty of blood revenge he inculcated in the strongest manner. He threw no light on any question of world-wide interest; gave no impulse to religion, and had no sympathy with progress. Whether he moulded his people, or the popular life moulded him, is still an open question. Of the eighty-six disciples of Confucius, it seems hardly worth while to record anything. The only one whom we respect is he who did not "die a natural death," and never wanted the courage to rebuke "the Master."

With this understanding of the life of Confucius, we are prepared to examine the works heretofore associated with his name. In a general sense this includes the whole of Chinese literature, for Confucius is supposed to have revised and annotated the ancient classics, and stands in relation to his own people, and in connection with the books relating to himself, as Moses has always stood in relation to the Jews and in connexion with the Pentateuch. A relation and connection to be accounted for in the same way, and just as far from the literal fact.

Nor are our own sacred books the only scriptures that have been supposed to suffer from traditions, glosses and commentaries, with such accidental injuries as must always be imminent when a language is constructed of wedgeshaped or pictorial characters, and the meaning of a word may be entirely changed by the addition or omission of a single point.

Previous to this century, twenty-three commentaries published in China, on the works of Confucius and the records preserved by him, were known to foreign scholars; and of late, the work of denial and criticism has progressed with still greater rapidity. The Hindus are at this moment asking the English government to assist them in breaking down idol worship, and this effort is entirely independent of Christian conversion. The Emperor of China, who represents the critical and advanced party in the Celestial Empire, is said to have solicited foreign intervention, to protect himself against insurgents. The reign of ceremony is over-the "superior man" no longer rules his native land, and within the present century it is very probable that the literary and religious ideas of his countrymen will be shaken to the foundation. (Continued in our next number.)

GAMESTER: one who games. SONGSTER: one who sings. SPINSTER: one who spins out a single thread of blessedness. SHYSTER One who

ASHYSTER is a monster

There is no such thing in nature. It is a

base product of the black arts of despair. But the compounds work freely, and there is a glut of Shysters in the market. Now: wait a minute,I know what you are going to say about my digestion, the blues, and all that lingo. I remember what you said before when I ventured to speak of a certain fungoid growth in society, and let me tell you once for all, that my digestion is perfect, and that I am in perpetual humor for racing you around the block at the first sound of your boots upon the pavement. Still, in the very best of spirits, I persist in saying that we are over-stocked with Shysters. Suppose I were a doctor, and mildly noted the fact that cholera