Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/48

 between the state of things which then existed and that of the early ages. Here he made a mistake; for Shih Huang Ti plumed himself, above all, upon his character as an innovator and an original, and nothing seems to have exasperated him so much as being continually pestered about antiquity. On the present occasion, breathing the incense of flattery and surrounded by a myriad realisations of his triumphs, he found it impossible to put up with such remonstrances, and, placing a strong restraint upon his rage, he interrupted the would-be Nathan, and told him not to waste his breath. "These points," he said, "have long ago been discussed and settled; and you have no business to bring them up again. Still, since you have been so ill-advised as to do so, I am ready to go into them once more, and listen to all that can be said upon both sides." Then he called upon Li Ssŭ for his opinion; and Li Ssŭ replied, in a somewhat lengthy speech, which embodied the famous proposal for burning all antiquated books whatever. The effect of such a suggestion, made in the presence of the Emperor and all the nobles, princes, and men of letters, in the midst of an imposing ceremonial, must have been dramatic in the extreme, and would furnish a grand theme alike for painter or for poet. But, whatever may have been the immediate circumstances which led to the adoption of the proposal, and whether it was "inspired" in the first instance by the Emperor or not, we know that it was put in force, and that it was the embodiment and culminating-point of the one great policy of change which was the guiding principle of this mad monarch from the beginning to the end of his reign.

The next enterprise undertaken by the Emperor of