Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/405

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

however, to make enemies among his superior officers, and within three years he was impeached for insubordi- nation and thrown into prison. His case was subse- quently laid before the Emperor, who not only set him free, but appointed him to be Prefect at Canton, bestow- ing upon him at the same time some valuable medicine, an autograph copy of verses, a sable robe, some joss- stick, and other coveted marks of Imperial favour. But all was in vain. He died of a broken heart one month after taking up his post. His complete works have been published in twenty small octavo volumes, of which works perhaps the best known of all is a treatise on the proper training of women, which fills two of the above volumes. This is divided under four heads, namely, Virtue, Speech, Personal Appearance, and Duty, an extended education in the intellectual sense not coming within the writer's purview. The chapters are short, and many of them are introduced by some ancient aphorism, forming a convenient peg upon which to hang a moral lesson, copious extracts being made from the work of the Lady Pan of the Han dynasty. A few lines from his preface may be interesting :

" Good government of the empire depends upon morals ; correctness of morals depends upon right or- dering of the family ; and right ordering of the family depends upon the wife. ... If the curtain which divides the men from the women is too thin to keep them apart, misfortune will come to the family and to the State. Purification of morals, from the time of the creation until now, has always come from women. Women are not all alike ; some are good and some are bad. For bringing them to a proper uniformity there is nothing like education. In old days both boys

�� �