All comes to an end in 220, ten years before the third half-cycle (and therefore second ‘day’) of the Eastern Han series; there is not force enough left to carry things through till 230.  Han Hienti, the survivor of the two brothers aforesaid, retired into private life; the dynasty was at an end, and the empire split in three.  In Ssechuan a Han prince set up a small unstable throne; another went to Armenia, and became a great man there; but in Loyang the capital, Ts’ao Ts’ao, the man who engineered the fall of the Hans, set his son as Wei Wenti on the throne.

He was a very typical figure, this Ts’ao Ts’ao:  a man ominous of disintegration.  You cannot go far in Chinese poetry without meeting references to him.  He rose during the reign of the last Han,—­the Chien-An period, as it is called, from 196 to 221,—­by superiority of energies and cunning, from a wild irregular youth spent as hanger-on of no particular position at the court,—­the son of a man that had been adopted by a chief eunuch,—­to be prime minister, commander of vast armies (he had at one time, says Dr. H. A. Giles, as many as a million men under arms), father of the empress; holder of supreme power; then overturner of the Han, and founder of the Wei dynasty.  Civilization had become effete; and such a strong wildling could play ducks and drakes with affairs.  But he could not hold the empire together.  Centrifugalism was stronger than Ts’ao Ts’ao.

The cycles and all else here become confused.  The period from 220 to 265—­about a half-cycle, you will note, from 196 and the beginning of the Chien-An time, or the end of the main Han Cycle,—­is known as that of the San Koue or Three Kingdoms:  its annals read like Froissart, they say; gay with raidings, excursions, and alarms.  It was the riot of life disorganized in the corpse, when organized life had gone.  A great historical novel dealing with this time,—­one not unworthy, it is said, of Scott,—­remains to be translated.  Then, by way of reaction, came another half-cycle (roughly) of reunion:  an unwarlike period of timid politics and a super-refined effeminate court; it was, says Professor Harper Parker, “a great age of calligraphy, belles lettres, fans, chess, wine-bibbing and poetry-making.”  Then, early in the fourth century, China split up again:  crafty ladylike Chinese houses ruling in the South; and in the north a wild medley of dynasties, Turkish, Tungus, Tatar, and Tibetan,—­ even some relics of the Huns:  sometimes one at a time, sometimes half a dozen all together.  Each barbarian race took on hastily something of Chinese culture, and in turn imparted to it certain wild vigorous qualities which one sees very well in the northern art of the period:  strong, fierce, dramatic landscapes:  Nature painted in her sudden and terrific moods.  China was still in manvantara, though under obscuration; she still drew her moiety of Crest-Wave souls:  there were great men, but through a lack of co-ordination, they failed to make a great empire or nation.  So here we may take leave of her for a couple of centuries.  Just why the vigor of the Crest-Wave was called off in the two-twenties, causing her to split then, we shall see presently.  Back now to Rome, at the time of the death of Pan Chow the Hun-expeller and the end of the one glorious half-cycle of the Eastern Hans.