to the new order of things, or perish—­even if that new order was in contradiction to her ancient traditions as much as the change of sunrise to the west.  He saw and felt that knowledge is power, a maxim laid down by Confucius before the days of Bacon; and he set about inculcating his new ideas by issuing a series of lectures for the instruction of his subordinates.  Collected into a volume under the title of “Exhortations to Learn,"[*] they were put into the hands of the young Emperor and by his command distributed among the viceroys and governors of the Empire.

[Footnote *:  Translated by Dr. Woodbridge as “China’s Only Hope.”  Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai.]

[Page 226] What a harvest might have sprung from the sowing of such seed in such soil by an imperial husbandman!  But there were some who viewed it as the sowing of dragons’ teeth.  Those reactionaries induced the Dowager Empress to come out from her retirement and to reassume her abdicated power in order to save the Empire from a threatening conflagration.  It was the fable of Phaeton enacted in real life.  The young charioteer was struck down and the sun brought back to his proper course instead of rising in the west.  The progressive legislation of the two previous years 1897-98 was repealed and then followed two years of a narrow, benighted policy, controlled by the reactionaries under the lead of Prince Tuan, father of the heir-apparent, with a junta of Manchu princes as blind and corrupt as Russian grand dukes.  That disastrous recoil resulted in war, not against a single power, but against the whole civilised world, as has been set forth in the account of the Boxer War (see page 172).

Affairs were drifting into this desperate predicament when Chang of the Cavern became in a sense the saviour of his country.  This he effected by two actions which called for uncommon intelligence and moral force:  (1) By assuring the British Government that he would at all costs maintain peace in Central China; (2) by refusing to obey an inhuman decree from Peking, commanding the viceroys to massacre all foreigners within their jurisdiction—­a decree which would be incredible were it not known that at the same moment the walls of the capital were placarded with proclamations offering rewards of 50, 30 and 20 [Page 227] taels respectively for the heads of foreign men, women, and children.

It is barely possible that Chang was helped to a decision by a friendly visit from a British man-of-war, whose captain, in answer to a question about his artillery, informed Chang that he had the bearings of his official residence, and could drop a shell into it with unerring precision at a distance of three miles.  He was also aided by the influence of Mr. Fraser, a wide-awake British consul.  Fraser modestly disclaims any special merit in the matter, but British missionaries at Hankow give him the credit.  They say that, learning from them the state of feeling among the people,