it was the pride of some of the little duchies and marquisates to keep up a reputa-tion for orthodoxy:  there was Lu in Shantung, for example,-very strict.* (As strictness went, we may say.) And if you wished to study ritual, you went up to Honanfu to do so; where, too, was the National or Royal Library, where profitable years might be spent.  But who, except enthusiasts, was to treat religion seriously? —­when one saw the doddering Head of Religion yearly flouted, kicked about and hustled in his own capital by his Barbarian Highness the ’King’—­so he must now style himself and be styled, where in better days ‘Count Palatine’ or ‘Lord Marcher’ would have served his turn well enough—­of Ts’in or Tsin or Ts’i or Ts’u, who would come thundering down with his chariots when he pleased, and without with-your-leave or by-your-leave, march past the very gates of Honanfu;—­and lucky if he did march past, and not come in and stay awhile; —­on his way to attacking his Barbarian Highness the ‘King’ of somewhere else.  The God that is to be sincerely worshiped must, as this world goes, be able now and then to do some little thing for his vicegerent on earth; and Heaven did precious little in those days for the weakling King-pontiff puppets at Honanfu.  A mad world, my masters!

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* Ancient China Simplified: E. Harper Parker;—­also much
drawn on.
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Wherein, too, we had our symbols:—­the Dragon, the Sky-wanderer, with something heavenly to say; but alas! the Dragon had been little visible in our skies of Chu Hia these many years or centuries;—­the Tiger, brute muscularity, lithe terrible limbs, fearful claws and teeth,—­we knew him much better!  This, heaven knew, was the day of the Tiger of earthly strength and passions; were there not those three great tigers up north, Ts’in, Tsin, and Ts’i; and as many more southward; and all hungry and strong?—­And also, some little less thought of perhaps, the Phoenix, Secular Bird, that bums itself at the end of each cycle, and arises from its ashes young and dazzling again:  the Phoenix —­but little thought of, these days; for was not the world old and outworn, and toppling down towards a final crash?  The days of Chu Hia were gone, its future all in the long past; no one dared dream of a time when there should be something better than Yen diddling Lu, or Ts’u beating Ts’i at a good set-to with these new sixty-warrior-holding chariots.  Who should think of the Phoenix—­and of a new age to come when there should be no more Yen and Lu and Chow and Tsin and Ts’in, but one broad and mighty realm, a Middle, a Celestial Kingdom,—­such a Chu Hia as time had no memory of;—­to whose throne the Hun himself should bow, or whose hosts should drive him out of Asia;—­a Chu Hia to whom tribute should come from the uttermost ends of the earth?  Who should dream of the Secular Bird now,—­ as improbable a creature, in these dark days of the Tiger, as that old long-lost Sky-wanderer the Dragon himself?