The death is announced of the eldest male descendant of
Confucius, the only hereditary noble in China, or rather, we should say, the only hereditary noble according to European ideas. The editor of the "Almanach de Gotha" ought to in- elude him in his lists, for Blank° was the lineal male heir of a descendant of Confucius ennobled by the founder of the Han dynasty, B.C. 202. His representative was, again, according to the Celestial Empire, raised to the highest rank in China short of the throne in A.D. 550; and the title, the Governorship of the district surrounding the tomb of the Sage, and an estate of 165,000 acres are still enjoyed by the representative of the House, who, moreover, controls all the family, now numbering more than eleven thousand persons. He is entitled besides to royal honours, and receives them even from the highest officials. The case is curious, as the only one in which a great family has retained a grand position owing to a pedigree derived from a thinker, and not from a soldier, a statesman, or like the P1 antagenets, from a brigand. The descendants of Mahommed are still separate in the East, and still enjoy an exemption from capital punishment, bat they are not nobles.
Previous page
