It may naturally be supposed that the popular and fascinating young Chinese nobleman was the devoted object of much matrimonial speculation.  Managing mammas and aspiring daughters gave the whole of their minds to him.  To look forward to the possible hope of sharing through life his fortunes and his fame was the continual employment of many a high-born damsel.  And they the more readily and unreservedly indulged these fancies, as nothing in the laws of China could prevent Mien-yaun from taking as many wives as he chose, provided he could support them all, and supply all their natural wants.  But our hero knew his value.  He was fully conscious that a member of the Tse, a son of an ex-censor of the highest board, a nephew of a personal noble and the Secretary of War, and, above all, the brightest ornament of aristocratic society, was by no means the sort of person to throw himself lightly away upon any woman or any set of women.  He preferred to wait.

His family had high hopes of him.  He was largely gifted with filial piety, which is everything in China.  Politics, religion, literature, government, all rest upon the broad principle of filial piety.  Being very filially pious, of course Mien-yaun was eminent in all these varied accomplishments.  Consequently his family had a right to have high hopes of him.  The great statesman, Kei-ying,—­who has very recently terminated a life of devoted patriotism and heroic virtues by a sublime death on the scaffold,—­undertook his instruction in Chinese politics.  One lesson completed his education.  “Lie, cheat, steal, and honor your parents,” were the elementary principles which Kei-ying inculcated.  The readiness with which Mien-yaun mastered them inspired his tutor with a lively confidence in the young man’s future greatness.  He was pronounced a rising character.  His popularity increased.  His name was in everybody’s mouth.  He shunned society more sedulously than ever, and assumed new and loftier airs.  He was seized with fits of ambition, each of which lasted a day, and then gave place to some new aspiration.  First, he would be a poet; but, after a few hours’ labor, he declared the exertion of hunting up rhymes too great an exertion.  Next, he would be a moral philosopher, and commenced a work, to be completed in sixty volumes, on the Whole Duty of Chinamen; but he never got beyond the elementary principles he had imbibed from Kei-ying.  Again, he would become a great painter; but, having in an unguarded moment permitted the claims of perspective to be recognized, he was discouraged from this attempt by a deputation of the first artists of the empire, who waited upon him, and with great respect laid before him the appalling effects that would inevitably follow any public recognition of perspective in painting.  Finally, he renounced all ambition but that of ruling his fellow-creatures with a rod more tyrannical than that of political authority, and more respected than the sceptre of government itself.