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Rh remark of Confucius, praising Tung Hoo, who made it his rule in what he wrote 'not to conceal!' and praising also Chaou Tun who humbly submitted to a charge of such wickedness. 'Alas for him!' said our sage. 'If he had crossed the border of the State, he would have escaped the charge.' The historiographers of Loo had entered the record in their Ch‘un Ts‘ëw as they received it from Tsin; but I submit whether Confucius, in revising their work, ought not to have exercised his 'pruning pencil,' and modified the misrepresentation. A sage, as we call him, he might have allowed something for the provocations which Tun had received, and for the wickedness of the marquis's government; he ought not to have allowed Tun to remain charged with what was the deed of another.

Let us take a second case. In X. xix. 2 we read—'Che, heir-son of Heu, murdered his ruler Mae.' This, if it were true, would combine the guilt of both regicide and parricide. According to all the Chuen, Che was not the murderer in this case. He was watching his sick father, and gave him a wrong medicine in consequence of which he died. We have no reason to conclude that there was poison in the medicine which the son ignorantly gave. Some critics say that he ought to have tasted it himself before he gave it to his father. He might have done so, and yet not have discovered that it would be so injurious. There is no evidence, indeed, that he did not do so. The result preyed so on the young man's mind that he resigned the State to a younger brother, refused proper nourishment, and soon died. Even if it were he himself who insisted on the form of the entry about his father's death, Confucius, if he had feeling for human infirmity, would have modified it, and not allowed poor Che to go down to posterity charged with the crime of parricide, which, if we had only the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, there would be no means of denying.

Let us take a third case. It may seem to come properly under the preceding count of concealment of the truth, but I introduce it here, because of its contrast with the record in the next case which I will adduce. In X. i. 11, it is said,—'In winter, in the 11th month, on Ke-yëw, Keun, viscount of Ts‘oo, died.' The viscount, or king as he styled himself, was suddenly taken ill, of which Wei, the son of a former king, was informed, when he was on his way, in discharge of a mission, to the State of Ch‘ing. He returned immediately, and entering the palace as if to inquire for the king's health, he strangled him, and proceeded to put 46]