Two other kings, Li and Yu, are pointed at with the finger of scorn as examples of what a king ought not to be. The latter set aside his queen and her son in favour of a concubine and her son; and so offended was high heaven by this unkingly conduct that the sun hid his face in a total eclipse. This happened 775 B. C.; and it furnishes the starting-point for a reliable chronology. For her amusement the king caused the signal-fires to be lighted. She laughed heartily to see the great barons rush to the rescue and find it was a false alarm; but she did not smile when, not long after this, the capital was attacked by a real foe, the father of her injured rival. The signal-fires were again lighted; but the barons, having once been deceived by the cry of "Wolf," took care not to expose themselves again to derision. The other king has not been lifted into the fierce light that beats upon a throne by anything so tragic as a burning palace; but his name is coupled with that of the former as a synonym of all that is weak and contemptible. The story of the House of Chou is not to be disposed of in a few paragraphs, like the accounts of the preceding dynasties, because it was preëminently the formative period of ancient China; the age of her greatest sages, and the birthday of poetry and philosophy. I shall therefore devote a chapter to the sages and another to the reign of anarchy before closing the Book of Chou. [Page 89] CHAPTER XVII THE SAGES OF CHINA _Confucius--Describes Himself as Editor, not Author--"Model Teacher of All Ages"--Mencius--More Eloquent than his Great Master--Lao-tse, the Founder of Taoism_ I shall not introduce the reader to all who justly bear the august title of sage; for China has had more and wiser sages than any other ancient country. Some of them may be referred to in the sequel; but this chapter I shall devote chiefly to the two who by universal consent have no equals in the history of the Empire--Confucius and Mencius. These great men owe much of their fame to the learned Jesuits who first brought them on the stage, clad in the Roman toga, and made them citizens of the world by giving them the euphonious names by which they are popularly known. Stripped of their disguise they appear respectively as K'ung Fu-tse and Meng-tse. Exchanging the _ore rotunda_ of Rome for the sibillation of China, they never could have been naturalised as they are now. CONFUCIUS Born in the year 549 B. C., Confucius was contemporaneous with Isaiah and Socrates. Of a respectable but not opulent family he had to struggle for his [Page 90] education--a fact which in after years he was so far from concealing that he ascribed to it much of his success in life. To one who asked him, "How comes it that you are able to do so many things," he replied, "I was born poor and had to learn." His schoolmasters are unknown; and it might be asked of him, as it was of a greater than Confucius, "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?"