Page:The American encyclopedia of history, biography and travel (IA americanencyclop00blak).pdf/32

 that came into China. A religion, whose nature we cannot fix—probably Buddhism, ere it had assumed the form of Lamaism—was preached in it at an earlier date. About the time of the Tsin dynasty ( 248-206), a warlike king had incorporated all China into one and subdued the princes of the various provinces. While he was at war with his subjects, many of the roving hordes to the north of China pressed into the land, and with them appeared missionaries of the religion above mentioned. When peace was restored, the kings of the fore-named dynasty, as also later those of Han and the two following dynasties, extended the kingdom prodigiously, and the western provinces became known to the Greeks and Romans as the land of the Seres. As on the one side Tartary was at that time Chinese, so on the other side the Chinese were connected with India; whence came the Indian religion. It procured many adherents, but yielded at length to the primitive habits of the nations. In consequence of the introduction of the religion of Foë, the immense country fell asunder into two kingdoms. The south and the north had each its sovereign; and the wars of the northern kingdom occasioned the wanderings of the Huns, by whose agency the Roman Empire was destroyed. These kingdoms of the north and south were often afterwards united and again dissevered; great savage hordes roamed around them as at present; but all that had settled, and that dwelt within the Great Wall, submitted to the ancient Chinese civilization. Ghenghis Khan, indeed, whose power was founded on the Turkish and Mongol races, annihilated both kingdoms, and the barbaric element seemed to triumph; but this was changed as soon as his kingdom was divided. Even Kublai, and yet more his immediate followers, much as the Chinese calumniate the Mongol dynasty of Yeven, maintained everything in its ancient condition, with the single exception that they did homage to Lamaism, the altered form of Buddhism. This religion yet prevails, accommodated skillfully, however, to the Chinese mode of existence—a mode which all subsequent conquerors have respected, as the example of the present dynasty proves.' The dynasty alluded to is that of Tatsin Mantchou, a mixed Mongol and Tartar stock, which superseded the native Chinese dynasty of Ming in the year 1644. The present emperor of China is the sixth of the Tatsin dynasty.

From the series of dry facts just given, we arrive at the following definition of China and its civilization: As the Roman Empire was a great temporary aggregation of matured Caucasian humanity, surrounded by and shading off into Caucasian barbarism, so China, a country more extensive than all Europe, and inhabited by a population of more than 300,000,000, is an aggregation of matured Mongolian humanity surrounded by Mongolian barbarism. The difference is this, that while the Roman Empire was only one of several successive aggregations of the Caucasian race, each on an entirely different basis, the Chinese empire has been one permanent exhibition of the only form of civilization possible among the Mongolians. The Jew, the Greek, the Roman, the Frenchman, the German, the Englishman—these are all types of the matured Caucasian character; but a fully-developed Mongolian has but one type—the Chinese. Chinese history does not exhibit a progress of the Mongolian man through a series of stages; it exhibits only a uniform duration of one great civilized Mongolian empire, sometimes expanding so as to extend itself into the surrounding Mongolian barbarism, sometimes contracted by the press