escaped by a stratagem to be related in another connexion. There were
in addition wars with Korea, the ultimate conquest of which led to the
discovery of Japan, then at a low level of civilization and unable to
enter into official relations with China until A.D. 57, when an embassy
was sent for the first time. Those who are accustomed to think of the
Chinese as an eminently unwarlike nation will perhaps be surprised to
hear that before the end of the second century B.C. they had carried
their victorious arms far away into Central Asia, annexing even the
Pamirs and Kokand to the empire. The wild tribes of modern Yunnan were
reduced to subjection, and their territory may further be considered as
added from about this period.

At home, the eunuchs gave an immense deal of trouble by their restless
spirit of intrigue; besides which, for nearly twenty years the Imperial
power was in the hands of a famous usurper, named Wang Mang (pronounced
_Wahng Mahng_), who had secured it by the usual means of treachery and
poison, to lose it on the battle-field and himself to perish shortly
afterwards in a revolt of his own soldiery. But the most remarkable of
all events connected with the Han dynasty was the extended revival of
learning and authorship. Texts of the Confucian Canon were rescued from
hiding-places in which they had been concealed at the risk of death;
editing committees were appointed, and immense efforts were made to
repair the mischief sustained by literature at the hands of the First
Emperor. The scholars of the day expounded the teachings of Confucius as
set forth in these texts; and although their explanations were set aside
in the twelfth century, when an entirely new set of interpretations
became (and remain) the accepted standard for all students, it is mostly
due to those early efforts that the Confucian Canon has exercised such
a deep and lasting influence over the minds of the Chinese people.
Unfortunately, it soon became the fashion to discover old texts, and