In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became famous.  He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the people with his doctrines.  A certain one of his followers was questioned by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was afraid to give a true answer.  The sage hearing of it, said, “You should have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows, and who does not perceive that old age is coming on.”  How seldom is it that any man reaches such a height!  In a single sentence the philosopher describes himself truly and impressively.

At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State.  The philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt kindly with him.  It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.  The world will not bear rebukes.  Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely venture to tell another friend his faults.  Confucius told the truth when pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much offence.  Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from those whom Confucius sought to influence.  Conventional, polite, considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the Chinese sage.  A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks; whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same as they are at the present day,—­a people governed by the laws of propriety alone.

The few remaining years of Confucius’ life were spent in revising his writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the evils of the world that he could not remove.  Disappointment also had made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from different causes.  He survived his son and his most beloved disciples.  As he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no apprehension.  Death to him was a rest.  He died at the age of seventy-three.

In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the philosopher.  He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about his dress and appearance.  He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.  He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly.  He drank wine freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this indulgence.  I do not read that tea was then in use.  He was charitable