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178 annexed to provide Tls. 24,000,000 for the marriage of the Heir Apparent. For a quarter of a century before 1610, when one single public Court was held to celebrate the reconciliation of the Emperor with his heir, no one but eunuchs ever saw the sovereign. The Court was torn by several parties, half the offices were left vacant, memorials were not answered, and distress in the provinces went unrelieved. Meanwhile, the empire was harassed with special taxes, inquisitorially collected on petty household articles by eunuchs, to pay for mines, the proceeds of which went into the Privy Purse. The middle class were mostly ruined, and the people, finding life unendurable, took to brigandage. In 1583 Nurhachu appears in history, and before the end of the reign the Manchus had risen to power and were invading Korea and threatening Liao-yang, meeting with but a feeble resistance from the ill-paid soldiery and corrupt officers of the Mings. The Japanese invaded Korea in 1592; and when on the death of 平秀吉 P'ng Hsiu-chi they at last evacuated Fusan, China had lost incalculable sums and thousands of men. Aboriginal risings, Mongol incursions, Yellow River floods, droughts and famines, are recorded again and again; and the avaricious monarch left a ruined country to his feeble successors. Canonised as 神宗顯皇帝.

  Chu I-tsun 朱彝尊 (T. 竹垞). A.D. 1629-1709. A devoted student of archæology, who travelled far and wide to compare inscriptions on tombs and buildings with the records of them as given in books. He was also a clever essayist and a poet. In 1679 he was brought to the notice of the Emperor, and employed in historical and other work. He was the author of the 日下舊門 an archæological and historical description of Peking and its neighbourhood, of which an Imperial edition was published in 1774. Also, of the 經義考, a critical commentary on the Classics.