If you have read that delightful book Through Hidden Shensi, by Mr. F. A. Nichols, the city of Hienfang, or Changan, or, by its modern name, Singanfu or Sian-fu in Shensi, will be much more than a name to you.  Thither it was that the Dowager Empress fled with her court from Pekin at the time of the Boxer Rebellion; there, long ago, Han Wuti’s banners flew; there Tang Taitsong reigned in all his glory and might; there the Banished Angel sang in the palace gardens of Tang Hsuantsong the luckless:  history has paid such tribute of splendor to few of the cities of the world.  At Hienfang now this barbarian boy and Attila-Napoleon among kings built his capital;—­built it right splendidly, after such ideas of splendor as a young half-Hun might cherish.  For indeed, he had but little and remote Chinese heredity in him; was of the race of Attila and Genghiz, of Mahmoud of Ghazna, Tamerlane, and all the world-shaking Turkish conquerors.  —­Well, but these people, though by nature and function destroyers, have been great builders too:  building hugely, monumentally, and to inspire awe, and not with the faery grace and ephemeral loveliness of the Chinese;—­though they learned the trick of that, too,—­as they learned in the west kindred qualities from the Saracens.  Grand Pekin is of their architecture; which is Chinese with a spaciousness and monumental solemnity added.  Such a capital Ts’in She Hwangti built him at Hien fang or Changan.  In the Hall of audience of his palace within the walls he set up twelve statues, each (I like this barbarian touch) weighing twelve thousand pounds.  Well; we should say, each costing so many thousand dollars; you need not laugh; I am not sure but that the young Hun had the best of it.  And without the walls he built him, too, a Palace of Delight with many halls and courtyards; in some of which (I like this too) he could drill ten thousand men.

All of this was but the trappings and the suits of his sovereignty:  he let it be known he had the substance as well.  No great strategist himself, he commanded the services of mighty generals:  one Meng-tien in especial, a bright particular star in the War-God’s firmament.  An early step to disarm the nations, and have all weapons sent to Changan; then, with these, to furnish forth a great standing army, which he sent out under Meng-tien to conquer.  The Middle Kingdom and the quondam Great Powers were quieted; then south of the Yangtse the great soldier swept, adding unknown regions to his master’s domain.  Then rorth and west, till the Huns and their like had grown very tame and wary;—­and over all these realms the Emperor spread his network of fine roads and canals, linking them with Changan:  what the Romans did for Europe in road-building, he did for China.