found expression in all the national histories.

The struggle, which had been in progress for some years, reached its
culminating point in the year 213 B.C., when a Grand Council of the empire
was summoned at Hienyang. At this council were present not only the
emperor's chief military and civil officers from the different provinces,
but also the large literary class, composed of aspirants to office and the
members of the academies and College of Censors. The opposing forces in
China were thus drawn up face to face, and it would have been surprising
if a collision had not occurred. On the one side were the supporters of
the man who had made China again an empire, believers in his person and
sharers in his glory; on the other were those who had no admiration for
this ruler, who detested his works, proclaimed his successes dangerous
innovations, and questioned his right to bear the royal name. The purpose
of the emperor may be detected when he called upon speakers in this
assembly of his friends and foes to express their opinions of his
administration, and when a member of his household rose to extol his work
and to declare that he had "surpassed the very greatest of his
predecessors." This courtier-like declaration, which would have been
excusable even if it had had a less basis of truth than it unquestionably
possessed in the case of Hwangti, was received with murmurs and marks of
dissent by the literati. One of them rose and denounced the speaker as "a
vile flatterer," and proceeded to expatiate on the superior merit of
several of the earlier rulers. Not content with this unseasonable eulogy,
he advocated the restoration of the empire to its old form of
principalities, and the consequent undoing of all that Hwangti had
accomplished. Hwangti interrupted this speaker and called upon his
favorite minister Lisseh to reply to him and explain his policy. Lisseh
began by stating what has often been said since, and in other countries,
that "men of letters are, as a rule, very little acquainted with what