She never forgot her good friend and protector, Thomas the
Nestorian. During her long reign of almost fifty years,
Christianity strengthened in the kingdom, and obtained a footing
that only the great Mahometan conquests of five centuries later
entirely destroyed; and the Empress Woo, so the chronicles
declare, herself "offered sacrifices to the great God of all."
When, hundreds of years after, the Jesuit missionaries penetrated
into this most exclusive of all the nations of the earth, they
found near the palace at Chang-an the ruins of the Nestorian
mission church, with the cross still standing, and, preserved
through all the changes of dynasties, an abstract in Syriac
characters of the Christian law, and with it the names of
seventy-two attendant priests who had served the church
established by O-lo-pun.
Thus, in a land in which, from the earliest ages, women have been
regarded as little else but slaves, did a self-possessed and wise
young girl triumph over all difficulties, and rule over her many
millions of subjects "in a manner becoming a great prince." This,
even her enemies admit. "Lessening the miseries of her subjects,"
so the historians declare, she governed the wide Empire of China
wisely, discreetly, and peacefully; and she displayed upon the
throne all the daring, wit, and wisdom that had marked her
actions when, years before, she was nothing but a sprightly and
determined little Chinese maiden, on the banks of the turbid
Yellow River,
EDITH OF SCOTLAND.
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