CONFUCIUS.

Ah important place most be granted to Confucius in any list of the illustrious lawgiveio and exemplars of mankind. ' He also deserves mention among the great lonely men in the history of the world. At the age 'of three year* he Was deprived of "his father, ' received public office at twenty, began his course as a teacher and reformer at twenty-two, and lost his mother at twenty-four. He is represented aa weeping bitterly for bis mother, and paying her every possible tribute. He was grieved by the cruelty and injustice of the rulers, and by the irreverence and Tioiou«Q«H of the people, and laboured hard to

teach both classes thnir dutits, as well by example as by precept. Hia moral purity, his learning and vigour, while drawing attention and disciples, also provoked the envy of riral teachers, and the distrust of the officials over him. He was dismissed from office ; and in disfavour, he in private life continued his studies and labours for fifteen years— from his 35th to his 50 th year. Then for five years he was restored to the confidence of his Sovereign. He at length lost his post as Minister of the Court in Loo, through the influence of some wantons who induced the ruier to violate and reient the austere precepts of the sage and abase him from his honours. We catch impressive glimpses of his character in the sayings he has left. The Master said : " The superior man has dignified ease without pride ; the mean man has pride without dignified ease." The Master said : " Some men of worth retire from the world because of disrespect and contradictions." In his 56th year the injured Confucius turned from the seat of his fond hopes and started upon his exile. As he went along he looked back on Loo with a melancholy heart, and gave vent to his feelings in these verses : " O, how is it azure Heaven, From my home I thus am driven, Through the land my way to trace, With no certain dwelling-place ? Dark, all dark the minds of men ! Worth comes vainly to their ken Hastens ou my term of years ; Desolate, old age appears." For thirteen weary years he wandered from province to province, using his faculties and his renown to the utmost, but lamenting the want of Court position and patronage to give bis teachings more effect. Once he said : " If any of the Princes would employ me, in the course of twelve mouths I should have dove something considerable." At another time he sad : "Am I a bitter gourd ? Am Ito be hung up out of the way of being eaten ? " The world did not deal kindly with him, for in every province which he visited he met disappointment ; now suffering from poverty, now from desertedness, now from persecution. Once he piued so sorely for home and frieuda that he cried aloud : " Let me return, let me return." Again he is said to have been several days without anything to eat. While tarrying in Wei, he wai so annoyed by applications to solve petty questions and settle disputes that he exclaimed : "The bird chooses its tree, the tree does not chase the bird," and prepared to depart. Just then came his recall to Loo. He was 69 years old. The remaining five years of his life he spent in peace ; but not as he would have preferred. Denied any place of rank or authority, big counsels set at naught, he reluctantly turned away from his plan' of tranquillising and perfecting the State through the Sovereign and the law, and devoted himself to the slower moral accomplishment of the same end by completing and transmitting his literary works;. Perhaps one may understand something of bis disappointment in being obliged to abandon a legislative and executive mission for a purely didactic and moral one, from the following tribute paid to him during his life by Tsz^kung, one of his disciples. Tsze-kung sa,id \ " Were our master in the position of prince of State, he would plant the people, and forthwith they would be established ; he would lead them on, and forthwith they would follow him ; he would stimulate them, and forthwith they would be harmonious ; he v?oaW make them happy, and forthwith multitudes would resort to bia dominions ; while he lived, he would be glorious; when he died, "he would be bitterly lamented;" Early one morning, it is said, he rose and, with his hands behind his back dragging his staff, moved abqut by his door crooning j •' The great mountain must crumble, the strong beam must break, and the wise man wither away like a plant. In all the provinces of the Empire there arises not one intelligent Monarch who will make me his master. My time has some to die." He went to his couch and never left it again. He expired on the 11th day o£ March, 478 years before the birth of Jeauq. Legge, the best of his English biographers — from whose great work on the Qninese classics the chief data for this sketch have been drawn — has painted the closing scene Well, and moralized on it nob unkindly, though possibly in a tone a little too pvoieiiional and conventional. If the end of the great sage of China, as he sank behind the cloud, was melancholy, it was not unimpressive. He had drunk the bitterness of disappointed hopes ; the great ones of the Empire had failed to accept his instructions. But hia mind was magnanimous and his heart was serene. He was a lonely old man — parents, wife, child, friends, all gone — but this made the fatal message so much the m.ore welcome. Without any expectation of a future life, uttering no prayer, betraying no fear, he approached the dark valley with the Btrength and peace of a well-ordered will wisely resigned to Heaven, beyond a doubt treasuring in his hearb the assurance of having served his fellow- men in the highest spirit he knew and with the purest light he had. For twenty-five centuries he has been as unseasonably venerated as he was unjustly neglected in his life. His name is on every lip throughout China, his person in every imagination. The thousands of his descendants are a titled and privilege^ class by themselves. The difFusjqq »,nd. intensity of the popular ar^mir^tion a.nd hqnqur fo,r. him are wonderful. Countless temples are reared to him, millions of tablets inscribed to him. His authority is supreme. Be is worshipped, by the pupils of the schools, the magistrates., the Emjveror himself in full pomp. Y^ftuld that a small ahare of this superfluity had replaced some of the lonesome hours he knew while yet alive. — Alger'a "Genius of Solitude."