the same earnestness and steadiness of purpose as before.

It is true that his efforts to induce the rulers of the feudatory states to adopt his principles of government had not met with much success; but his doctrines had nevertheless gained ground, and it is probable that his wandering life had caused them to receive a far wider dissemination than would have been the case if he had succeeded in obtaining office, or had remained fixed at the court of some petty sovereign.

His wanderings had, too, the effect of bringing him into more direct contact with the masses, so that his views had become popularized, and so widely known, that numbers flocked to him for instruction from all parts of the empire. It may be that he found his pupils more ready to discuss his doctrines than to adopt them in their daily lives; but, when the momentary mortification, which this may have caused, had passed away, he would have had the consolation of knowing that it is only through discussion that any new political or social ideas can be brought within the area of practical action.

In addition to this, in a comparatively rude age, when there were but a few speculative thinkers, any mode which would exercise and bring into play the latent powers of the mind must have been useful;

THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE.

157

whilst a protracted course of oral teaching possessed the great advantage, over other and shorter methods, of enabling Confucius to place his doctrines before his hearers in a form, which would better ensure their being preserved and handed down in all their integrity.

Within a year of his return to Wei, he had to mourn over the loss of his favourite disciple, Yenhwui; and a few years later, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and the eleventh of his exile, he suddenly received the intelligence of the death of his wife. Some forty years had rolled by since their separation, yet he was deeply moved. Perhaps some longslumbering recollections were awakened of the youthful bride of his spring-tide days—those distant days which in age seem as yesterday. Could it be that the bright young being, which his fancy so vividly recalled, had become old and had died? "Yes"said Confucius, as if in answer to his own thoughts— "her span of existence is terminated, and it will not be long before mine comes to an end."

Perhaps it was under the influence of these melancholy reflections, that he looked with longing eyes towards the state he loved so well. His residence in Wei had become distasteful to him. He had been asked to take part in a personal feud, which he resented as beneath his dignity, and he was just about

to remove into some other state, saying, “It is the bird which chooses the tree, not the tree the bird," when messengers arrived, bearing appropriate gifts, and a message from Gae, Prince of Loo, inviting him to return. This was in the year B.C. 483, and in the thirteenth year of his exile.

Confucius was sixty-nine years old when he turned his now faltering footsteps towards his fatherland. Since he had last left it, death had been busy amongst his opponents, whilst time had done much to mitigate, if it had not quite done away with, the hostile feelings of those who remained. There is reason, too, for believing that its softening influence, and the lessons learnt in adversity, had not been without effect on Confucius himself, and that, if his conviction of the truth of his opinions was as strong as ever, he had learnt to advance them with greater moderation. He had grown calmer in his old age, and the excitement and turmoil of public life had lost its charm. Although he entered freely into conversation with the prince and his ministers, he ceased to endeavour to influence their opinions, or to regain any of the power he had once possessed. Indeed, with the exception of an attempt to elevate the tone of the national music, his withdrawal from any participation in state affairs was final and complete.

Every moment of his time was now spent in putting

RETURN TO HIS NATIVE STATE.

159

the final touches to the revision and collocation of the ancient classics, and in conversing with his friends and disciples, on those all-absorbing topics which had reference to the right performance of man's higher duties. And so, we shall find, he continued to be a teacher to the very end, giving grandiloquent utterance to those ideas which, however commonplace they may seem to us, procured for him, amongst succeeding millions of his fellow-countrymen, the lofty title of "The most holy teacher of ancient times."

But his joyousness of spirit had departed, for Age was beginning to lay his hand heavily upon him.

CHAPTER X.

Last days and death.

OLD age had come at last. The bright day-dreams, which had inspired the philosopher's youthful efforts, had, as we have seen, been long since dissipated by the experience of his riper years; yet he had continued to work on cheerfully and hopefully. But now that the infirmities of old age began to press more and more heavily upon him, the occasional fits of depression, to which he had always been subject, became more frequent, and in those dark days he saw, or fancied he saw, that his long life of laborious endeavour had been but a failure. It seemed to him that just at the moment when his preparations for the task had been made complete, and he had become most capable of executing it, his strength had failed him, and that he had been reminded by the inexorable hand of time, of the few moments of existence which still remained to separate him from that dark interval "when none can work."