Tibet, when that functionary, the spiritual ruler of Tibet, as opposed to the Dalai Lama, who is the secular ruler, proceeded to Peking to be present on the seventieth anniversary of Chʽien Lung's birthday. Two years later, the aged Emperor, who had, like his grandfather, completed his cycle of sixty years on the throne, abdicated in favour of his son, dying in retirement four years after. These two monarchs, Kʽang Hsi and Chʽien Lung, were among the ablest, not only of Manchu rulers, but of any whose lot it has been to shape the destinies of China. Chʽien Lung was an indefatigable administrator, a little too ready perhaps to plunge into costly military expeditions, and somewhat narrow in the policy he adopted towards the "outside barbarians" who came to trade at Canton and elsewhere, but otherwise a worthy rival of his grandfather's fame as a sovereign and patron of letters. From the long list of works, mostly on a very extensive scale, produced under his supervision, may be mentioned the new and revised editions of the Thirteen Classics of Confucianism and of the Twenty-four Dynastic Histories. In 1772 a search was instituted under Imperial orders for all literary works worthy of preservation, and high provincial officials vied with one another in forwarding rare and important works to Peking. The result was the great descriptive Catalogue of the Imperial Library, arranged under
