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Rh "The world," he says, 'was fallen into decay, and right principles had dwindled away. Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds were again waxen rife. Cases were occurring of ministers who murdered their rulers, and of sons who murdered their fathers. Confucius was afraid, and .' He describes the work as of equal value with Yu’s regulation of the waters of the deluge, and the duke of Chow's establishing his dynasty amid the desolations and disorder which had been wrought by the later sovereigns of the dynasty of Shang. 'Confucius completed the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, and rebellious ministers and villainous sons were struck with terror.’ Going more particularly into the nature of the Work, and fortifying himself with the words of the Master, Mencius says, ‘The subjects of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw are Hwan of Ts‘e and Wăn of Tsin, and its style is the historical. Confucius said, "Its righteous decisions I ventured to make."' And again, 'What the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw contains are matters proper to the son of Heaven. On this account Confucius said, "Yes! It is the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw which will make men know me; and it is the Ch‘un Ts‘ew which will make men condemn me." The words of Mencius, that 'Confucius made the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw,’ became thereafter part of the stock phraseology of Chinese scholars. If the Work itself had not been recovered under the Han dynasty, after the efforts of the tyrant of Ts‘in to destroy the ancient monuments of literature, we should have regretted its loss, thinking of it as a history from the stylus of the sage of China in which had been condensed the grandest utterances of his wisdom and the severest lessons of his virtue.

3. The making of a history, indeed, is different from the making of a poem, the development of a philosophy, and other literary 2 ]