summarily a thousand years before, dwindled and disappeared.

Then the Hideyoshi expedition, designed as much for the purpose of effecting conquests on the mainland of Asia as for chastising a refractory vassal, at length started on its terrible way. Whereas the records of the first expedition belong to the semi-mythical period, it requires no writings to prove the authenticity of the Hideyoshi campaign. The history of the invasion, which lasted for six long years (1592-1598), is written on the face of the country, and is clearly to be read to this day in the ruined cities, the absence of all art treasures, and the mean and humble huts which, scattered all over the country, sometimes in small numbers, sometimes in larger ones within old Chinese walls, are dignified with the name of villages and towns. It is the Hideyoshi campaign which earned for Japan that opprobrious epithet "the accursed nation" in Korea, and gave the islanders a reputation which they certainly no longer deserve.

Freed from the presence of the Japanese before the beginning of the seventeenth century by the sudden death of Hideyoshi and the appearance across the Yalu of large Chinese armies sent by the Mings to reinforce the defeated Korean forces which had attempted to stay the progress of the Japanese, the Koreans were pleased to resume the despatch of embassies bearing tribute to the Shogun's court.

But whilst Hideyoshi at least

succeeded, even though it was at a hideous cost, in forcing the Korean rulers to resume the position of vassals towards Japan, they never forgot that since the Mings had placed the Ni Dynasty on the throne, China was the real suzerain power, whilst Japan was merely a country which had conquered but had been forced through exhaustion to withdraw.

For two and a half centuries relations remained on this vague footing, and the opening of Korea in 1876 to the trade of the world did nothing to alter the attitude which had been adopted towards China and Japan for so many countless decades. It is true that many nations followed the Japanese example of 1876 and concluded, as rapidly as circumstances would permit, identical commercial treaties with the Seoul Government, which gave birth to new interests and fashioned new relations with the outer world. But in spite of this, Korea, exactly as China had done before her, refused to allow modern developments to interfere with her archaic view of things, and so continued to regard the Peking Throne as the real suzerain power, whilst Japan remained a detested country to which it was merely necessary to pay certain stipulated respects in order to avoid reprisals. It was the knowledge of this which constantly served to irritate Japan and make her more and more determined, when circumstances would permit, once and for all to define her disputed paramountcy so clearly that it would be impossible to ignore it any longer.

To the Korean, saturated with Chinese culture and Chinese writings of the Ming period, the modern Japanese, who had so definitely and resolutely abandoned their ancient civilisation and gone over to the side of Europe, appeared not only as oppressors but also as traitors; and therefore to oppose, trick, and besmirch them in every possible way were things which every self-respecting Korean should undertake to the best of his ability.

The extraordinary history of the two decades which elapsed before the Chino-Japanese war inaugurated a new period, and introduced an almost entirely new set of chessmen on the Korean board, is most easily understood when the things briefly touched upon above are kept clearly in view. Korea, secretly goaded on by China, herself too weak to undertake anything but a policy of pinpricks, constantly opposed Japan at every step, and sought to humiliate her and discredit her by steady and consistent opposition and retaliation. What a record twenty years of this policy show. Riots, burnings, murders, attacks, and plots of every description, in which the Japanese were invariably the victims of this strange hatred, fill every record. Listen to a few facts picked hap

hazard from a great mass of data.

In July, 1882, the Japanese Legation in Seoul was destroyed by a mob. Seven Japanese were killed, together with many of the Progressive Koreans. On their way down to Chemulpo, whither they were forced to flee, five more