Page:China and the Manchus.djvu/49

Rh the historical commission, pleaded that three of the princes above mentioned, who were veritable scions of the Imperial stock, should be entered as "brave men" and not as "rebels," and that the Emperor, to whose reign we are now coming, graciously granted his request.

In the year 1661 Shun Chih, the first actual Emperor of the Chʽing dynasty, "became a guest on high." He does not rank as one of China's great monarchs, but his kindly character as a man, and his magnanimity as a ruler, were extolled by his contemporaries. He treated the Catholic missionaries with favour. The Dutch and Russian embassies to his court in 1656 found there envoys from the Great Mogul, from the Western Tartars, and from the Dalai Lama. China, in the days when her civilization towered above that of most countries on the globe, and when her strength commanded the respect of all nations, great and small, was quite accustomed to receive embassies from foreign parts; the first recorded instance being that of "An-tun" = Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, which reached China in A.D. 166. But because the tribute offered in this case contained no jewels, consisting merely of ivory, rhinoceros-horn, tortoise-shell, etc., which had been picked up in Annam, some have regarded it merely as a trading enterprise, and not really an embassy from the Roman Emperor; Chinese writers, on C