out of his place. So death prevailed against him and he passed; his countenance was changed, and he was sent away.' 10. I flatter myself that the preceding paragraphs contain a more correct narrative of the principal incidents in the life of Confucius than has yet been given in any European language. They might easily have been expanded into a volume, but I did not wish to exhaust the subject, but only to furnish a sketch, which, while it might satisfy the general reader, would be of special assistance to the careful student of the classical Books. I had taken many notes of the manifest errors in regard to chronology and other matters in the 'Narratives of the School,' and the chapter of Sze-ma Ch'ien on the K'ung family, when the digest of Chiang Yung, to which I have made frequent reference, attracted my attention. Conclusions to which I had come were confirmed, and a clue was furnished to difficulties which I was seeking to disentangle. I take the opportunity to acknowledge here my obligations to it. With a few notices of Confucius's habits and manners, I shall conclude this section. Very little can be gathered from reliable sources on the personal appearance of the sage. The height of his father is stated, as I have noted, to have been ten feet, and though Confucius came short of this by four inches, he was often called 'the tall man.' It is allowed that the ancient foot or cubit was shorter than the modem, but it must be reduced more than any scholar I have consulted has yet done, to bring this statement within the range of credibility. The legends assign to his figure 'nine-and-forty remarkable peculiarities [1],' a tenth part of which would have made him more a monster than a man. Dr. Morrison says that the images of him which he had seen in the northern parts of China, represent him as of a dark, swarthy colour [2]. It is not so with those common in the south. He was, no doubt, in size and complexion much the same as many of his descendants in the present day. Dr. Edkins and myself enjoyed the services of two of those descendants, who acted as 'wheelers' in the wheelbarrows which conveyed us from Ch'u-fau to a town on the Grand Canal more than 250 miles off. They were strong, capable men, both physically and mentally superior to their companions. 1 四十九表. 2 Chinese and English Dictionary, char. 孔. Sir John Davis also mentions seeing a figure of Confucius, in a temple near the Po- yang lake, of which the complexion was 'quite black' (The Chinese, vol. ii. p. 66).