Tue times when the classics were writ ten were the quiet evenly lowing days when wise kings and sages occasionally appeared and taught the people by the exhibition of a lofty example of But those were not the days of art. The history and literature whioh. art would afterwards adorn and expand were then being slowly formed. The long succession of admired. persons on which Chinese thotight has sit ice loved to dwell without ever growing weary, was then slowly moving across the stage of life, Since the days of Yao and Shan, down through the. times of the Hsia, the Shang, and the Chou dynasties of Confucius, the a whole, quietly age after age attended to farming and the worship of their ancestors, The scene was as tranquil as that of ancient Italy, when a Tityrus under the shade of a wide-spreading beech sang his ditty to an audience of admiring shepherds. The sonic things happened each year. The historian added a chapter to the Book of History when the northern barbarians made an lion, but he closed his record when they disappeared, and there was a long interval before he again took his paint-brush and t in baud. The Court poet wrote an ode to be used at the time of some sacrifice. The village batd invented a simple tale, whioh it pleased th people to sing after the work of the day was done. The ner with the help of a bundle of leks foretold the future, record of the conolusio: had arrived by help of his art in nura. velling the mysteries of the future and the unknown, So it was that the three great classies grew to their present form, each of them the work of long centuries, During all this time, the impulse to art and invention was wants ing, Uhrough the isolation of Ohina and the slowness of the march of political revolution in the western world, Confucius had iden that a new age wis beginning in his time, an age whioh was to be marked by literary inveutiveuess, mythological expansion, and pictorial art, He was a represoutative man in the light of primeval book without mentioning the names of any of the ancient sages, a feat which no other Chinese author has ever succeeded in achieving, The eye of this old philosopher was fixed on the west, from which be believed that light and hope were to come to his country. So it really happened. The Persian Empire was founded, the silk trade rapidly increased. The merchant the iuterchange of ideas, and within two cou-turies China was quite o different country. Literature became something of an entirely new and original stamp. The dead level of the proveding times was changed for quite a surprising i Tutelleotual, productiveness exhibited itself in poetry, philosophy, and history. Art revealed its magic power in all these departments of mental activity, and painting and soulpe
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.