faith; and these he safely conveyed to China by sea from India, via
Ceylon (where he spent three years), and Sumatra, arriving after an
absence of fifteen years.

In the year A.D. 618 the House of T'ang entered upon its glorious course
of three centuries in duration. Under a strong but dissolute ruler
immediately preceding, China had once more become a united empire,
undivided against itself; and although wars and rebellions were not
wanting to disturb the even tenor of its way, the general picture
presented to us under the new dynasty of the T'angs is one of national
peace, prosperity, and progress. The name of this House has endured,
like that of Han, to the present day in the popular language of the
people; for just as the northerners still delight to style themselves
"good sons of Han," so are the southerners still proud to speak of
themselves as "men of T'ang."

One of the chief political events of this period was the usurpation
of power by the Empress Wu--at first, as nominal regent on behalf of a
step-child, the son and heir of her late husband by his first wife, and
afterwards, when she had set aside the step-child, on her own account.
There had been one previous instance of a woman wielding the Imperial
sceptre, namely, the Empress Lu of the Han dynasty, to whom the Chinese
have accorded the title of legitimate ruler, which has not been allowed
to the Empress Wu. The latter, however, was possessed of much actual
ability, mixed with a kind of midsummer madness; and so long as her
great intellectual faculties remained unimpaired, she ruled, like her
successor of some twelve centuries afterwards, with a rod of iron. In
her old age she was deposed and dismissed to private life, the rightful
heir being replaced upon his father's throne.