land and water, the overthrowing of unjust kings, wise, kind action in family relationships, and the expression of moral doctrines in an intelligible, impressive way-these are the claims to reverence of the heroes of the Chinese Pantheon. The (miscalled) Celestial is a narrow-minded, but exceedingly practical, sort of being. He wants an ordered world, but one ordered only in a certain kind of way. Before his rapt celestial vision lie the fruitful plains of the Great Flowery Land, lively and bright with the normal life of China, guarded on the north by snowy deserts, which are happily far away from him, and on the south by stormy seas, with great winds and waves, which he does not tempt. His ideal is a happy family life, with age benignant, youth reverential, three or four generations living contentedly under the same roof; the fish-pond in front well stocked; grain abundant; tea fragrant; the village harmonised; the school well taught; the young Confucius of the family preparing for competitive examinations; the ancestral tablets going far back, and recording honoured names; the ancestral hall well gilded, and a fit meeting-place for the wise elders; the spirits of deceased ancestors comforted with offerings and loving remembrances, not left to wander friendless in the air; the holidays cheerful, with bright silks and abundance of savoury dishes; the Emperor benevolent; the people obedient; Foreign Devils far away or reverential; evil appearing only in the forms of impossible demons, and hideous wicked emperors, painted on the walls of his house as a warning to foolish youth; no change in old customs to perplex the mind; the sacred books reverentially read and remembered; the present definitely arranged; the fruitage of the past stored; behind, sages and emperors; around, happy families; beyond, a darkness with which he little con

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cerns himself, but into which his spirit may occasionally float a short way on some Buddhist or Tauist idea.

We may now understand the position in which a Chinaman finds himself when he has very serious reason to complain of the condition of his country. All the most revered literature of that country, all the ideas which have possessed his mind from childhood, and even the language of the Imperial rescripts of his day, point to the conclusion that the existing authorities rather than the people are to blame. I have looked through the Classics in vain for any indication of a belief that, where great calamities befall the country, the mass of the people may be considered as the guilty cause. The authorities undoubtedly are in the habit of throwing the blame off themselves, but they do so only by accusing certain sections of the populace of living in guilty opposition to the will of Heaven, and so cut off from the rest of the people. The history of China also has been of such a character as to sustain the notion that the responsibility of national disaster rests chiefly with the Government. While admitting the extraordinary longevity of the Chinese State regarded in its essentials, we must not leave out of view the fact that its life has been broken, but also preserved, by innumerable rebellions and changes of dynasty. Revolution is to the Chinaman something more even than it is to the modern Parisian. It is, so to speak, the constitutional means of getting rid of bad governments, and is associated in his mind with deeds of heroic daring, of noble self-sacrifice, and with some of the brightest periods of the national history. De Guignes, in his Tableau de l'Histoire Ancienne de la Chine,' correctly enumerates twenty-two imperial dynasties, commencing with the Hea, founded by the Great Yu, and ending with the Ta Tsing, the

present Manchu reigning family; and many of these were overthrown by violence, to the great advantage of China, or of those portions of it over which they reigned. The 'Historical Classic' is full of "oaths" and "announcements" and "chastisements" of revolutionary leaders, to whom was delivered "Heaven's exterminating decree” against cruel or too luxurious princes. At a later period the famous Han, Tang, and Sung dynasties, with many others of less note, were founded by revolutionary violence; and the Ming, or "Bright," dynasty, which established itself for a time against the Tartars, excited patriotic feelings in the breasts of the Chinese. Thus, the Tai-ping rebellion was no novel phenomenon in the history of China, but had intimate relationship with the national ideas and history; and Hung Sew-tsuen, its leader, was influenced to his terrible and unsuccessful, yet perhaps beneficial, movement, not less by the ideas which float in the Chinese mind than by the actual events which, as we shall presently see, led him up to that movement, on into his terrible career, and to its final catastrophe.

In some most important respects the present state of China is very much what it was in the earliest recorded times. The cities exercise but little influence, and power lies in the balance between the Emperor with his Ministers and the country people. Bold warriors, ambitious priests, and designing statesmen play no great part in the national history. It is out of the country people, the innumerable owners of the land, that the ruling power has arisen, and it is their wants that must be attended to. So long as they are well off they are contented with the existing dynasty; but when they suffer greatly then Heaven appoints some one to exterminate the dynasty. This is the leading point in the whole history

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of China. The dynasties are always established by men of lofty virtue and great force of character, perhaps aided by able and devoted Ministers; but as generations pass away their successors deteriorate in character, and finally reach some one who combines debauchery and cruelty, so that he injures public affairs as much by his interference as by his neglect. Then comes ruin over the country; there are signs and portents in the heavens, and there rises some patriot to say, like Tang, who destroyed the most famous Hea dynasty, "I dread the Supreme Ruler, so I dare not refuse to destroy the wicked sovereign."

Such a period in China was that when Hung Sewtsuen, the Tai-ping chief, arose. There were many circumstances which had tended to throw the country into a state of disorganisation, causing widespread misery; and there were even special circumstances which tended to ascribe the evil to the ruling dynasty, and called upon a patriot to remove it from the throne. As regards the latter point, it is only necessary to note here that the Imperial family, as is well known, was Manchu. In the thirteenth century the immediate descendants of Genghis Khan conquered China in a sort of way, and established the Yuen dynasty, which ruled the country till A.D. 1368, but was then overthrown by a native line, the Ming, or "Bright." This latter reigned till the year 1664; but the last thirty years of their government, which had been moved from Nanking to Peking, was a continual strife with the tribes of Manchu Tartars on the frontier, and with insurrection in the interior. In 1664, a native Chinese, Le Taiching, entered Peking with his insurgent forces, and on his arrival the last Emperor of the Mings committed suicide. Le proclaimed himself emperor, but was

soon driven from the capital by the Manchu Tartars, who were invited into the country by a Chinese general, Woo San-kwei, who had been defending the frontier against them, but who, looking on the usurpation of the throne by the rebel Le as intolerable, now begged their assistance against the usurper. The Manchus having entered the country had no intention of leaving it. They proclaimed Shun Chi, their chief, Emperor; and in a few years contrived to gain the government of China, and even compelled the people to shave their heads after the Tartar fashion. This was long resisted, especially in the south-east, but after a time all open defiance of the Tartar ceased, though in that part of the country secret societies were formed for the purpose of throwing off the foreign yoke, and defied the power of the Government to extinguish them. The Manchu Government, however, reigned with great moderation and justice up to the end of last century, and in fact on to about 1830; it had become quite Chinese in character, and was chiefly composed of native Chinamen, so that in the beginning of this century resistance to it had almost entirely ceased, or when it existed, was confined to those disorderly classes which, from early times, have infested the innumerable islands which fringe the southern seaboard of the Flowery Land. The Manchus as nominally ruling the country, and supplying the Imperial family at least, were always open, on account of their being Tartars, to an extra share of odiam in the event of the Government failing very grossly; but up to 1830 there was no appearance of such failure, except the existence of certain illegal associations in the shape of secret societies, such as that of the Triad and of the Water Lily.

There can be no doubt that these societies had some