by all accounts they must have been wonderful and splendid.  Very little of the art comes down:  there are some bas-reliefs of horses, fine and strong work, realistic, but with redeeming nobleness.  How literature had revived may be gathered from this:  in Han Wuti’s Imperial Library there were 3123 volumes of the Classics and commentaries thereupon; 2705 on Philosophy; 1318 of Poetry; 2528 on Mathematics; 868 on Medicine; 790 on the Science of War.  His gardens at Changan were famous; he had collectors wandering the world for new and ornamental things to stock them; very likely we owe many of our garden plants and shrubs to him.  He consecrated mountains and magnificent ceremonies; and for the sake of the gods and genii appeared as flaming splendors over Tai-hsing and the other sacred heights.  For the light of Romance falls on him; he is a shining half faery figure.—­Outwardly there was pomp, stately manners, pageantry, high magnificence; inwardly, a burning-up of the national imagination to ensoul it.  The Unseen, with all its mystery and awe or loveliness, was the very nearly visible:  not a pass nor lake nor moor nor forest but was crowded with the things of which wonder is made.  Muh Wang, the Chow king, eight centuries before, had ridden into the West and found the garden of that Faery Queen whose Azure Birds of Compassion fly out into this world to sweeten the thoughts of men.  Bless you, Han Wuti married the lady, and had her to abide peaceably in his palace, and to watch with him

     “The lanterns glow vermeil and gold,
          Azure and green, the Spring nights through,
          When loud the pageant galeons drew
     To clash in mimic combating,
          And their dark shooting flames to strew
     Over the lake at Kouen Ming.”

From about 130 to 110 Han Wuti was Napoleonizing:  bringing in the north-west; giving the Huns a long quietus in 119; conquering the south with Tonquin; the southern coast provinces, and the lands towards Tibet.  Ssema Tsien tells us that “mountains were hewn through for many miles to establish a trade-route through the south-west and open up those remote regions”; that was a scheme of Chang Ch’ien’s, who had ever an eye to penetrating to India.

There was a dark side to it.  Vast sums of money were eaten up, and estravagance in private life was encouraged.  Says Ssema: 

“From the highest to the lowest, everyone vied with his neighbor in lavishing money on houses and appointments and apparel, altogether beyond his means.  Such is the everlasting law of the sequence of prosperity and decay....  Merit had to give way to money; shame and scruples of conscience were laid aside; laws and punishments were administered with severer hand.”