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And if Kang Yu-wei had been as great a statesman as he was reformer, Kuang Hsu might never have been deposed. The crisis came during the summer of 1898. I had taken my family to the seashore to spend our summer vacation. A young Chinese scholar a Hanlin who had been studying in the university for some years, and with whom I was translating a work on psychology, had gone with me.
In this he received the cordial support of the Chinese themselves, who had been kept in the background by their late conquerors, whose administration was essentially military. Hongwou also patronized literature, and endowed the celebrated Hanlin College, which was neglected after the death of Kublai.
In the absence of the master, who was away in the country reading with his tutor for the Hanlin degree, we were received by the caretakers, who showed us the handsome guest chambers, the splendid gilded tablet, the large courts, and garden rockeries. A handsome residence is this, solidly built of wood and masonry, and with the trellis work carved with much elaboration.
They had to clamber over obstacles, through tightly jammed doors, under falling beams, occasionally halting to volley heavily until they had cleared all the ground around the Hanlin, and found perhaps half a ton of empty brass cartridge cases left by the enemy, who had discreetly flown.
But although he conquered their country, he never vanquished the prejudices of the Chinese, and the Mongols, unlike the Manchus, failed completely to propitiate the good will of the historiographers of the Hanlin. Of Kublai they take some recognition, as an enlightened and well-meaning prince, but for all the other emperors of the Yuen line they have nothing good to say.
But these temporary and local measures could not improve a situation that was radically bad, or allay a volume of popular discontent that was rapidly developing into unconcealed rebellion. An imperial proclamation was drawn up by the Hanlin College in which Hienfung took upon himself the whole blame of the national misfortunes, but the crisis had got far beyond a remedy of words.
This Hanlin was not a radical reformer, but one of a long line of officials who were deeply interested in the preservation of their country which had weathered the storms of so many centuries, storms which had wrecked Assyria, Babylonia, Media, Egypt, Greece and Rome, while China, though growing but little, had still lived.
On his nomination the present writer was called to the head of it, and Wensiang proposed to convert it into a great national university by making it obligatory on the members of the Hanlin Academy, the Emperor's "Forest of Pencils," to come there for a course of instruction in science and international law.
Beginning in earnest at the northern end, after some inconsiderable efforts on the southwestern corner, they set fire to the sacro-sanct Hanlin Yuan, which is at once the Oxford and Cambridge, the Heidelberg and the Sorbonne of the eighteen provinces of China rolled into one, and is revered above all other earthly things by the Chinese scholar.
He had committed the indiscretion of returning without waiting for the Edict authorizing his return, and as the consequence he had to accept suspension from all his offices, while his treaty was submitted to the tender mercies of the grand secretaries, the six presidents of boards, the nine chief ministers of state, and the members of the Hanlin.
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