Now China is a vast democracy: the most democratic country in the world. Perhaps I shall come to proving that presently; for the moment I must ask you to let it pass on the mere statement, satisfied that it is true. Despite this radical democracy, then, she has had two noble families. One is descended from a famous Patriot-Pirate of recent centuries, known to Westerners as Koxinga; with it we have no concern. The other is to be found in the town of K'iuh-fow in Shantung, in the ancient Marquisate of Lu. There are about fifty thousand members of it, all bearing the surname K'ung; its head has the title of 'Duke by Imperial Appointment and hereditary right'; and, much prouder still, 'Continuator of the Sage.' Dukes of England sometimes trace their descent from men who came over with William the Conqueror: a poor eight centuries is a thing to be proud of. There may be older families in France, Italy, and elsewhere. Duke K'ung traces his, through a line of which every scion appears more of less in history, to the son of this K'ung Shuhliang Heih in the sixth century B.C.; who in turn traced his, through a line of which every scion appeared in history, and all, with one possible exception, very honorably, to a member of the Imperial House of Shang who, in 1122 B.C., on the fall of that house, was created Duke of Sung in Honan by the first of the Chows. The House of Shang held the throne for some five centuries, beginning with Tang the Comnpleter in 1766, who traced his descent from the Yellow Emperor in mythological times. Duke K'ung, then, is descended in direct male line from sovereigns who reigned beyond the horizon of history,--at the latest, near the beginning of the third millennium B.C. The family has been distinguished for nearly five thousand years. The matter is not unimportant; since we are to talk of a member of this family. We shall understand him better for remembering the kind of heredity that lay behind him: some seventy generations of nobility, all historic. Only one royal house in the world now is as old as his was then: that of Japan.