dynasties, the duration of all of which was crowded into about half
a century. Then, in A.D. 960, began the rule of the Sungs (pronounced
_Soongs_), to last for three hundred years and rival in national peace
and prosperity any other period in the history of China. The nation
had already in a great measure settled down to that state of material
civilization and mental culture in which it has remained to the present
time. To the appliances of ordinary Chinese life it is probable that but
few additions have been made since a very early date. The dress of the
people has indeed undergone several variations, but the ploughs and
hoes, the water-wheels and well-sweeps, the tools of the artisans, mud
huts, carts, junks, chairs, tables, chopsticks, etc., which we still
see in China, are probably very much those of two thousand years ago.
Mencius, of the third century B.C., observed that written characters had
the same form, and axle-trees the same breadth, all over the empire; and
to this day an unaltering uniformity is one of the chief characteristics
of the Chinese people in every department of life.

In spite, however, of the peaceful aspirations of the House of Sung,
the Kitan Tartars were for ever encroaching upon Chinese territory, and
finally overran and occupied a large part of northern China, with
their capital where Peking now stands. This resulted in an amicable
arrangement to divide the empire, the Kitans retaining their conquests
in the north, from which, after about two hundred years, they were in
turn expelled by the Golden Tartars, who had previously been subject to
them.

Many volumes, rather than pages, would be required to do justice to the
statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, poets, historians, art critics, and
other famous men of this dynasty. It has already been stated that the
interpretation of the Confucian Canon, accepted at the present day,