his southern neighbour, and in 1267 he took the field against the armies of the Sung dynasty.

Formidable opposition was long offered to the Mongol arms, but with the death of this last scion of the Imperial house, the Sung Dynasty, which had occupied the throne for 300 years (960-1280), came to an end, and the Mongols, after a struggle of half a century, became masters of all China.

From this time forth the Mongol Khans were virtually Chinese Emperors. The disputes which had ushered in Khubilai's reign, ended in the severance of the hordes of his uncles Oghotai and Jagatai from his rule, and the western provinces which had yielded to the armies of Jenghiz and Oghotai, gradually ceased to be more than tributaries to him. Thus Mongolia and China alone acknowledged his immediate sway; and with these modifications, Mr. Howorth's statements may be accepted, that he was the sovereign of the largest empire that was ever controlled by one man,' and that 'China, Corea, Tibet, Tung-king, Cochin-China, a great portion of India beyond the Ganges, the Turkish and Siberian realms from the Eastern Sea to the Dnieper, obeyed his commands.' Towards the close of the year 1293 a comet, which in China as in other countries is regarded as a sign of ill-omen to sovereigns, appeared in the sky, and at the same time the Emperor was seized with an illness which ended fatally in the beginning of the following year. Thus died this mighty monarch in the eightieth year of his age, and the thirty-fifth of his reign.

With the death of Khubilai the Mongol fortunes began to decline, and the empire which had been created at so great a cost of life and treasure showed signs of decay. Under the remaining sovereigns of the Mongol Dynasty, Jenghiz's prophecy as to the luxury to which his successors would give way was amply fulfilled, and during the reign of Toghon Timur, who was canonised in the Chinese calendar as Shun Ti, the love of pleasure which had characterised these degenerate rulers reached its height. The Chinese historians tell us that during this period many notable signs appeared in the sky foreshadowing the impending ruin of the reigning house. Among the Chinese, with whom astrology is a science, such omens are apt to accomplish their own fulfilment, by disturbing the minds of men and suggesting to them the probability of their seeing the desired downfall of the sovereign brought about. To readers of Chinese history it appears to follow naturally that with these signs there should occur outbreaks in different parts of the empire. Yunnan first raised the standard of revolt, and shortly afterwards, two pretended scions of the Sung Dynasty appeared,

appeared, who gathered together large followings, and captured some important towns, including Hang-chow Foo, in the central provinces. But a far more formidable adversary than either of these was shortly to appear. In 1355, a Buddhist priest, named Choo Yuen-chang, left his cloister, and placing himself at the head of a band of rebels, proclaimed himself the destroyer of the Mongol Dynasty. Unlike the other rebel leaders, he allowed no plundering, the lives of his captives were spared, and all wanton destruction of property was strictly forbidden. This wise clemency gained him many adherents, and before long, Nanking, Chin-kiang, Chang-chow and a number of other cities fell into his hands. Meanwhile, insurrectionary movements broke out in all parts of the empire; the proverbial discipline of the Mongol troops began to give way, and so rapid and well assured was the success of Choo Yuen-chang, that in February, 1368, he assumed the Imperial Yellow. To his dynasty he gave the name of Ming, i. e. Bright, and he adopted for his reign the title of Hung Wu, or Fortunate War.

Fitfully, and with diminishing success, the partisans of the Mongols carried on a show of resistance for some years. Their Khans continued to assume the title of Emperors, but their rule was little more than a shadow, and before the close of the fourteenth century they were completely driven out of China. Thus ended the great Mongol Dynasty, the remnants of which, after undergoing various vicissitudes, were destined eventually to pass under the yoke of the present Manchoo Emperors of China.

The rise and fall of the Mongol Empire would be like a dream, were it not for the hideous ruins on which it left its marks. Mr. Howorth believes the results it effected were beneficial, in that though it created a tabula rasa, a fresh story was writ upon the page. But where are we to look for this fresh story? Surely not in the desolated districts of Eastern Russia, surely not in the ruined states of Central Asia, nor in the devastated provinces of North-Western India. In China alone can it be said that its rule, especially during the reign of Khubilai, was not prejudicial to the State; but this is to be accounted for less by the virtues of the Mongols than by those of the Chinese system of government, which became theirs only by adoption, and which has been the property by inheritance of more than twenty dynasties.

ART.

ART. III.-1. The Life of Julius Cæsar, English Translation. By Louis Napoleon. London, 1865.

2. A Letter addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, on occasion of Mr. Gladstone's recent Expostulation. By John Henry Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. London, 1875.

3. Das Kapital. Von Carl Marx. Hamburg, 1872.

MA

AN, while goodness remains in him, must have an ideal. Rather let us say, that in proportion as goodness is in him, man will have an ideal; for that goodness entirely dies out in any man, is a view that we cannot contemplate. What is an ideal? It is the prospect of the future, according to the best hopes we can form; that is, not according to any brilliant idle imaginations, framed in carelessness of realities; but the best prospect that we can rationally conceive accomplished, our own will aiding thereto, and whatever other powers, human, natural, or divine, we can gain over as auxiliaries to our own purpose.

Ôf ideals there has been no lack in the world, conceived in the hearts and intellects of men of varied ability and character. Some, we might say most, have been limited in their prospect to this life which we know, and to the form of things existing on this visible earth. One great ideal, which, by those who first had the courage and strength to support the thought of it as a reality not wholly outside the will and purposes of man, was named the kingdom of heaven, extends into the infinite and into eternal time. Nor has this last, perhaps, been entirely absent from the minds of any that have heard of it, since the determinate practical thought of it first found expression in words; though the form of this too has varied much, according to the disposition of those that have accepted it. There have been and there are ideals in these modern times professing limitation to the visible and tangible sphere; whether some of their elements have not been derived from that outlook into the eternal which preceded them, is a question not lightly to be answered in the negative.

Ideals that have any soundness in them, that are the offspring of practical minds and based on a recognition of realities, never remain mere ideals. If they are not put to work, they die; rather, they are dead from their birth, if they do not push forward of themselves and fashion the world around them. They may, it is true, be long before they come to birth; they gather substance and being in the souls of many, and before

the

the different elements have gathered together, it is uncertain what their perfect shape will be; but there comes a time when they must move, and act, and transform mankind; the way of action alone is then the way of life.

But ideals, when put to work in the world, never remain pure. The imperfections of humanity commingle with them and stain them; and harmful associations perform the double work of deterring some from the reception of the truth, and corrupting, as far as they extend, the morality of those who do receive it. Little by little, the ideal sinks down from its first virtue, while yet the honour in which it is externally held among men may even become augmented, from the growing memory of what it has been in the past. The same words are used to describe it that described it in times past; but the inner spirit is altered; yet men do not perceive the alteration. It is a mechanical honour in which it is held, a mechanical love with which its disciples regard each other; and hence it comes to pass that the words and phrases of the noblest of mankind may be used as instruments of the vilest tyranny. But when the ideal, in its historical course, has descended to this depth, then, often, there will suddenly come a change. Some one arises, on whose pure spirit the meaning of the original phrases flashes; and the shock of the perceived difference between the first purity and the present corruption is tremendous. He who first feels this can never contain it himself, but must give it to the world; and then, amid the clash of strife and battle (for corruption will not give way readily) the true ideal revives to its rightful sway.

Concrete systems of belief and of government (for the two go together) almost invariably show a combination of the vivid truth in which they first arose and of error subsequently inherited. And sometimes the admixture is truly extraordinary, and there is a necessity of being tender and sparing towards the grossest evil, because of its close union with some good which exists too plainly for denial, and which it would be fatal to destroy.

Three uncompromising ideals, and of wide dominion, have sway over society in modern Europe. These are, the military ideal, of which the culminating expression is in Cæsarism; the ideal of the Church of Rome; and the Socialistic ideal. It is needless to say how immense a field is covered by these three developments of humanity. But our present purpose is to mark in each of them the pole of truth, and the pole of error, leaving out the great range of their associated features. Never is it right to disdain, but never either ought we to be abjectly sub

servient

servient to, the great forms in which the spirit of humanity has flowed, and more especially those which continue to dominate and rule men's minds in the present age. These erring forms, if we can but avoid their errors, will teach us much of the lineaments of the true ideal; they are the elements of truth seen distortedly, and from antagonistic points of view; amidst their mutual antagonism, we shall find there is yet something in which they harmonise both with each other and with the reality.

The military ideal is the one that we will first speak of. It is, in the records of history, by far the oldest of the three; it existed for thousands of years before Papal Rome or Socialism were dreamt of. It takes its basis on this principle, which Mr. Carlyle has in the present generation proclaimed so extravagantly, that the strongest has a right, within certain limits, to control the actions of others. And this opinion has an element of deep truth in it; but it is easily capable of being distorted and misunderstood; and it is a profound distortion of it to suppose that material strength or intellectual power does by itself add one jot to a man's right of interfering with others. This is the rock on which the military ideal split, in those ages when it claimed exclusive dominance. It reached its culmination two thousand years ago; it fell; and though the truth in it must and will revive, in its exclusive form it is gone for

ever.

The first and greatest Cæsar, in whose character self-asserting will and strong intellect held a supremacy more than in any other man of whom history makes record, is the eternal example of militarism. In him the type was truly dangerous to mankind; dangerous, not by what it contained, but by what it lacked; dangerous, because the splendour of the power that was in it dazzled men's eyes, and made them forget that the excellence of a man consists not primarily in his commanding quality, but in his helping the labours and increasing the vital energies and adding to the happiness of men. Let us not be unjust to Julius Cæsar; clemency, trustfulness, and mildness of temperament were not wanting to him by comparison with other men who have attained the same high station; but they were wanting to him by comparison with his other qualities, his force of temperament and understanding. And his example to posterity, and to his successors, was an example of unalloyed power. Hence was the empire of Rome doomed to self-destruction; for no electric chain of sympathy connected the rulers of the world with the vast populations under their dominion. The best emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius, knew indeed that their

duty