Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/43

 the cost of the materials and labour, the time occupied in the work, and such like trivial details. The bare fact is all we have: that, in the thirty-third year of Chêng's reign, Meng T'ien built the Wall. And if this is sufficient for the Chinese, it does not behove a European to be hypercritical.

Nor are we much better off when we approach the great achievement, par excellence, of this extraordinary person. That a man of letters should deem a vulgar piece of bricklaying beneath the dignity of his pen, we can well conceive; but that he should pass over the Burning of the Books with almost equal laconism is wonderful indeed. All we are told is, that, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign, the Minister Li Ssŭ presented the following memorial to the Emperor. "In former times," he wrote, "when the empire was divided, and all the feudal princes were fighting among themselves, the peripatetic Sages were in great request. But now that the empire is settled and brought under a single sway, the services of these men are no longer required. The energies of the people should be directed simply to tilling the ground for their livelihood; the educated classes should devote themselves to studying law and the decrees of Government. But instead of this, they guide themselves, not by the present, but by the past, condemning the present order of things as wrong; they put erroneous notions into the heads of the common people, and thereby promote much disorder. If they hear of any decree having been promulgated by your Majesty, each man takes upon himself to discuss its merits and criticise it by the standard of his own erudition; in private, their hearts are disloyal, while in public they make the laws of the realm the subject of their talk in all the streets of the