the mountains and forests of romance, she had some heart in her for poetry and mysticism, whereas Ts’in’s was all for sheer fighting.  Laotse probably had been a Ts’u man; and also Chwangtse and Ch’u Yuan; and in after ages it was nearly always from the forests of Ts’u that the great winds of poetry were blown.  Still—­he had immense territories and resources, and the world looked mainly to her for defense against the northern Tiger Ts’in.  Soon after Su Tai told his master the parable of the mussel and the oyster-catcher the grand clash came, and the era of petty wars and raidings was over.  Ts’u gathered to herself most of the rest of China for her allies, and there was a giant war that fills the whole horizon, nearly, of the first half of the third century B. C. New territories were involved:  the world had expanded mightily since the days of Confucius.  “First and last,” says Ssema Tsien, “the allies hurled a million men against Ts’in.”  But to no purpose; one nation after another went down before those Hun-trained half-Huns from the north-west.  In 257 Chau Tsiang king of Ts’in took the Chow capital, and relieved Nan Wang, the last of the Chows, of the Nine Tripods of Ta Yu, the symbols of his sacred sovereignty; —­the mantle of the Caliphate passed from the House of Wen Wang and the Duke of Chow.

The world had crumbled to pieces:  there had been changes of dynasty before, but never (in known history) a change like this.  The Chows had been reigning nearly nine hundred years; but their system had been in the main the same as that of the Shangs and Hias, and of Yao, Shun, and Ta Yu:  it was two millenniums, a century, and a decade old.  A Chinaman, in Chau Tsiang’s place, would merely have reshaped the old order and set up a new feudal-pontifical house instead of Chow; which could not have lasted, because old age had worn the old system out.  But these barbarians came in with new ideas.  A new empire, a new race, a new nation was to be born.

Chau Tsiang died in 251; and even then one could not clearly foresee what should follow.  In 253 he had performed the significant sacrifice to Heaven, a prerogative of the King-Pontiff:  but he had not assumed the title.  Resistance was still in being.  His son and successor reigned three days only; and his son, another nonentity, five years without claiming to be more than King of Ts’in.  But when this man died in 246, he left the destinies of the world in the hands of a boy of thirteen; who very quickly showed the world in whose hands its destinies lay.  Not now a King of Ts’in; not a King-Pontiff of Chow;—­not, if you please, a mere wang or king at all;—­but Hwangti, like that great figure of mythological times, the Yellow Emperor, who had but to sit on his throne, and all the world was governed and at peace.  The child began by assuming that astounding title:  Ts’in Shi Hwangti, the First August Emperor:  peace to the ages that were past; let them lie in their tomb; time now should begin again!—­Childish boyish swank and braggadocio, said the world; but very soon the world found itself mistaken. Hwangti;—­but no sitting on his throne in meditation, no letting the world be governed by Tao, for him!