Page:China and the Manchus.djvu/102

86 anew on the lines, but not in the spirit, of the old. Thus, the Trimetrical Classic, the famous schoolboy's handbook, a veritable guide to knowledge in which a variety of subjects are lightly touched upon, was entirely rewritten. The form, rhyming stanzas with three words to each line, was preserved; but instead of beginning with the familiar Confucian dogma that man's nature is entirely good at his birth and only becomes depraved by later environment, we find the story of the Creation, taken from the first chapter of Genesis.

By 1857, Imperialist troops were drawing close lines around the rebels, who had begun to lose rather than to gain ground. An-chʽing and Nanking, the only two cities which remained to them, were blockaded, and the Manchu plan was simply to starve the enemy out. During this period we hear little of the Emperor, Hsien Fêng; and what we do hear is not to his advantage. He had become a confirmed debauchee, in the hands of a degraded clique, whose only contribution to the crisis was a suggested issue of paper money and debasement of the popular coinage. Among his generals, however, there was now one, whose name is still a household word all over the empire, and who initiated the first checks which led to the ultimate suppression of the rebellion. Tsêng Kuo-fan had been already employed in high offices, when, in 1853, he was first ordered to take up