of families, to whom, in their several degrees, belonged the performance of the sacerdotal functions.

Even in what we have called "the traditionary period" of their history, they were separated by so great a space of time from the revolting and cruel practices which would seem inseparable from man's first endeavours to make himself acceptable to his deities, that the fact of human sacrifices having been at one time offered up by them is only made known to us through its being on record that, at some very remote period, a block of wood, rudely shaped as a man, had been established as a substitute.

Yet we learn from history that human sacrifices were at one time so prevalent, that the practice may almost be considered to have been universal, not only with the most debased, but amongst the most highly cultivated and refined nations. Thus we find it existing, down to the time of which I am about to write, amongst the Persians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Thracians, Scythians, Greeks, Romans, and -to a certain extent-Jews. It seems to have had no limits or boundaries, for it was found equally in the New World, as the culminating act of an ornate ritual, and in the scattered islands of the Pacific Ocean. It was practised by our own ancestors; in India, under the form of self-immolation, it is almost within the reach of living memories; and at this

A FAVOURABLE CONTRAST.

27

moment it is largely indulged in by the negro races of Africa.

A few instances will serve to accentuate the remarkable contrast between the Chinese and other contemporary nations, with regard to this long-lived and deep-rooted superstition. Whilst they had even ceased to burn the wooden semblance of a man, we find Themistocles offering up three youths; the wife of Xerxes seeking to appease the anger of the gods by burying twelve victims alive; the Carthaginians, as the highest act of propitiation, offering up their firstborn sons, and casting their most beautiful children into the glowing outstretched arms of a brazen image, from which they fell into the fiery furnace over which it stood; Aristomenes, the Messenian, slaying three hundred Lacedæmonians on the altar of Jupiter at Ithome; and later, Augustus Cæsar immolating three hundred victims to the manes of his uncle Julius. Even Aurelian was accused of having been guilty of it; and Porphyry asserts that, in his time, a man was sacrificed yearly at the shrine of Jupiter Latialis; and this notwithstanding that a law had been passed so far back as A.U. 657, under the consulship of Lentulus and Crassus, forbidding human sacrifices.

But though the Chinese had thus early shaken themselves free from this most terrible of all supersti

tions, they had not the less a deep-seated belief in many others. It is doubtful, however, whether in China superstition has not increased rather than diminished with the growth of years. Much that belongs to it may indeed be traced back to the earliest times, but it was greatly strengthened and enlarged, long after the advent of the great teacher, by the Taouists, who had strangely degraded the doctrines which their master, Laou-tsze, had sought to inculcate; and by the introduction of Buddhism, with an ignorant priesthood incapable of explaining its subtleties, with divinities brought down to the level of the lowest intelligence by being represented infrequently hideous and grotesque material

forms.

CHAPTER III.

Birth, parentage, childhood, and youth of Confucius.

IN the north-east of China, washed on its eastern and northern shores by the muddy and storm-vexed waters of the Yellow Sea and the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, is the great modern province of Shan-tung, or east of the mountains-with its population of three millions.

The western portion of this territory consists of a wide and fertile plain, now intersected by the grand canal and its tributaries, but, towards the centre, the country gradually loses its level character, and is broken up by ranges of hills, increasing in height as they approach the north-eastern extremity of the province, which juts out boldly as a promontory to divide the waters of the two seas.

The climate of this region is marked by very great changes of temperature, the summers being much hotter and the winters much colder than is experienced in many other parts of the world having the same latitude, such as the south of Spain and California.

The soil is rich and fruitful, and the productions varied. Nowhere is there to be found a more vigorous, industrious, or frugal people.

At the beginning of the tenth century B.C. the celebrated Woo-wang, on ascending the imperial throne after the death of the tyrant Chow and the extinction of the dynasty of Shang, had divided large tracts of this territory amongst his followers. The tenure upon which these grants, or fiefs, were held, elevated the owners of the larger ones to the position of sovereigns, ruling over semi-independent states, and one of the most important of these newly constituted states-occupying the southern central portion of the territory just described-was a principality which received the name of Loo.

In a little town, of the third order, belonging to this state, called Tseaou-y, which is generally identified with the modern Kinfoo-hien, or Tseaou-hien, at some date in the winter solstice of the year B.C. 551, there were great rejoicings in the "ya-mun" of its prefect, on the occasion of the birth of a child to his old age, a much-wished-for son.

How little could it have been foreseen that this child -this Tartar-faced babe-was destined, in the course of time, to become the great instructor of his race, to be loved and revered by countless generations of his fellow-countrymen, as Kung-foo-tze-the great teacher