the dynastic histories. Its scope, however, has been limited in later
times, so far as the Historiographer's Department is concerned, to such
officials as have been named by Imperial edict for inclusion in the
national records. Consequently, there has always been a vast output of
private biographical literature, dealing with the lives of poets,
painters, priests, hermits, villains, and others, whose good and evil
deeds would have been long since forgotten, like those of the heroes
before Agamemnon, but for the care of some enthusiastic biographer.

Among our eight or ten collections of this kind, there is one which
deserves a special notice. This work is entitled _Biographies of
Eminent Women_, and it fills four extra-large volumes, containing 310
lives in all. The idea of thus immortalising the most deserving of his
countrywomen first occurred to a writer named Liu Hsiang, who flourished
just before the Christian era. I am not aware that his original work is
still procurable; the present work was based upon one by another writer,
of the third century A.D., and is brought down to modern times, being
published in 1779. Each biography is accompanied by a full-page
illustration of some scene in which the lady distinguished herself,—all
from the pencil of a well-known artist.

Three good-sized encyclopædias, uniformly bound up in ninety-eight large
volumes, may fairly claim a moment's notice, not only as evidencing the
persistent literary industry of the Chinese, but because they are all
three perfect mines of information on subjects of interest to the
foreign student.

The first dates from the very beginning of the ninth century, and deals
chiefly with the Administration of Government, Political Economy, and
National Defences, besides Rites, Music, and subordinate questions.