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Rh knowing only the heroes and events of his own country could make. It is not too much to call Tso the Froissart of China. The historical novel called ‘The History of the various States’ shows the use which can be made of his narratives. They lie necessarily in my pages so many , but some one may yet give, mainly from them, an account of the closing centuries of the feudal state of China that shall be found to have an universal interest.

6. Three more points in regard to Tso's Work have yet to be considered—the manner of his composition; how far his narratives are entitled to our belief; and whether there is reason to believe that additions were made to them by writers of the Ts‘in and Han dynasties. By the manner of Tso's composition I do not mean the general character of his style. There is but one opinion as to that. It is acknowledged on all hands that he was a master of his art. Condensed, yet vivid, he is eminently pictorial. The foreign student does not for some time find it easy to make out his meaning, but by and by he gets familiar with the style, and it then has a great charm for him. In the words which the foremost of French sinologues once used to me of him, Tso was un grand ecrivain. But the peculiarity which I have in view is the way in which Tso constantly varies the appellations of the actors in his narratives. Very often they are named by their sacrificial or honorary epithets which were not given to them till after their death, so that it is plain he did not copy out the contemporaneous accounts or records which we suppose him to have had before him, and some critics have from this contended that the narratives were entirely constructed by himself, not drawn from historical sources. But such a conclusion is more than the premiss will justify. Tso might very well call his subjects of a former time by the titles which had been accorded to them after their death, and by which 31]