It is true that they were busy spreading the T`ai-p`ing conception of Christianity, in establishing schools, and preparing an educational literature to meet the exigencies of the time.

They achieved the latter object by building anew on the lines, but not in the spirit, of the old.

Thus the Trimetrical Classic, the famous schoolboy's handbook, a veritable guide to knowledge in which a variety of subjects are lightly touched upon, was entirely rewritten.
The form, rhyming stanzas with three words to each line, was preserved; but instead of beginning with the familiar Confucian dogma that man's nature is entirely good at his birth and only becomes depraved by later environment, we find the story of the Creation, taken from the first chapter of Genesis.
By 1857, Imperialist troops were drawing close lines around the rebels, who had begun to lose rather than to gain ground.

An-ch`ing and Nanking, the only two cities which remained to them, were blockaded, and the Manchu plan was simply to starve the enemy out.

During this period we hear little of the Emperor, Hsien Feng; and what we do hear is not to his advantage.