At length the great procession reached the place where the illustrious dead was to be laid. The whole country round had gathered to witness the proceedings, for never before, in this region at least, had such a magnificent funeral been witnessed by any one. There were civil mandarins of various ranks, dressed in their official robes, with their retinues and attendants and gorgeous sedan chairs. There were also the highest military mandarins of the province, with long lines of soldiers, that had been ordered by imperial edict to do honour to the dead by their presence. And now the coffin was lowered into the grave amid the blare of trumpets and the loud wailing of the mourners dressed in sackcloth, whilst crowds gazed on the scene from every little rising ground, and the proud and haughty officials pondered with solemn faces upon the honour that had been done that day to a man who had risen from such a humble condition in life. One would have imagined that as the mandarins, or rulers of the country, are all recruited from the ranks of the people, they would naturally be in sympathy with them, and would do their utmost to deliver them from the tyranny and oppression from which they too often suffer, but this is not the case. The fact is the mandarins, as a whole, are the great curse of the nation. They are rapacious and exacting. They have no regard for justice or mercy, when these conflict with their own self-interests, and they are the bitter opponents of any plans of reform, knowing that the carrying out of such would endanger their own vested interests, and deprive them of the arbitrary powers they now possess. In order to give the reader some practical idea of what are the duties and responsibilities of a mandarin, I propose to select one and describe him as graphically as I can, so that one may have a picture of him before the mind's eye. For this purpose, I shall take the "County Mandarin," for though there are many others that are superior to him in rank, there is not one whose duties are so multifarious, or who is so responsible for the order and good government of his district as he is.