Any man who is in office under the Government is called a mandarin. It must be understood, however, that he is actually in its service to get this honourable title for whilst many, through courtesy, are addressed as mandarins, it is only those who are in the bonâ fide employment of the country that really can be considered as such.

The mandarins as a class are the privileged men of the Empire. They have large and extensive powers. In the exercise of their functions a wide discretion is allowed them, and in their decisions as magistrates, whilst they have to keep themselves within certain general laws recognized as the statutes of the dynasty, they are left very much to their own wit and common-sense as to how they shall reach the conclusions they may finally come to. In addition to the above, the mandarins have almost unlimited opportunities of making money and of enriching themselves and their families.

ENTRANCE GATE
(NANKIN).

This latter has a fascination for the Chinaman, which explains the intense longing that every youth, who has any ambitions for the future, has to some day become a mandarin. I presume there is hardly a son born in this wide Empire, about whom the father does not at once begin to have his dreams. He pictures to himself the time when the little fellow whose cries are awakening new echoes in the home shall have taken his degree and have qualified himself for some Government appointment. His visions widen and he sees him advanced from one post to another, and growing in power and in wealth, until he finally returns to his ancestral home to build a magnificent mansion and to enrich every member of it.

As the mandarins all spring from the people, without any reference to class or social position, the dreams that the parents often have about their sons are not the fairy creations of fancy like those of Aladdin’s wonderful lamp, but in countless instances are real romances that are more marvellous than any writer of fiction has ever conceived. In one of my travels in the interior of China in passing along a great thoroughfare, I came upon a magnificent grave. I saw at once it was the tomb of a man that had been a great mandarin, for only such could possibly have had such a splendid monument erected in connection with his last resting place.

The tomb, that stood high and conspicuous far back from the highway along which a constant stream of travellers passed to and fro, was situated at the end of a great avenue flanked on both sides by huge stone figures larger than life. The whole was intended to represent the official residence and court of a high mandarin. There were stone lions guarding the approaches to where the great official was supposed to be visiting, and granite horses with their riders waiting patiently for the coming of their lord, and stone footmen who had been standing for more than a century for one whose footsteps would never again be heard by human ears.

There was quite a romantic story connected with this grave. Nearly two hundred years ago, the ground occupied by it was a poor little farm, cultivated by a family who could barely get enough out of it to keep body and soul together. A son was born, and as the lad grew up, the parents seeing that he was a child of uncommon natural abilities, determined that he should be a scholar, and that he should retrieve the glories of his house which tradition declared had in former years been most conspicuous, and should bring back the good fortune which had been vanishing slowly from their home.

He was accordingly kept at school when he should have been helping on the farm or going out as a labourer to earn a few cash to ease the poverty that held the family within its grip. To do this meant a struggle for them all, and ceaseless self-denial both for the parents and for the young scholar himself, but after years of a stern struggle to keep the wolf from the door, the faith and patience of them all were rewarded by the success of the son.

He passed his examinations with such brilliant success, that he was soon made a mandarin, and he was appointed to the control of a rich county where he had ample opportunities of showing the Government how well fitted he was to rule. From this time the shadow that had rested on his home lifted, for he was now in a position to send sufficient money to his parents to enable them to live in luxury. The old house, battered by the weather and falling into decay, was rebuilt and enlarged. Fresh fields were bought and added to the farm, and servants and field hands were employed to gather in the harvests that filled their home with abundance.