In 1868 the quickly accomplished revolution occurred, which overthrew a feudal aristocracy which had endured for nearly seven hundred years. At its close, the Mikado emerged from the sacred seclusion, in which he had been purposely kept, to take the reins of government and lead the half unwilling nation into the ways of the western world. In a few years, Japan had fitted herself out with a constitution, a bureau staff, an army and navy, post office, railroad and telegraph facilities, customs houses, a mint, docks, lighthouses, mills and factories, public schools, colleges and schools of special instruction, newspapers, publishing houses and a new literature written by Japanese students of European life and history; Ambassadors and consuls were admitted to Japan and sent to the other nations; scholars sought the western schools and returned to put into practice western ideas; European ships established commercial relations with the islands; and Christian missionaries hurried into this promising new field. Japan, in thirty years had passed from obscurity to fame, and no longer doomed to be the prey of other nations, she had a voice in that great council, which decides the destinies of mankind. By a not unnatural coincidence, she has been attracted to that other island power, Great Britain, and it is to England that her debt is greatest; for in political and economic progress, England is the model of the world. About the middle of the fifth century, the Roman armies, after a military occupation of Britain which lasted for four hundred years, were recalled to Rome. That imperial city, fattened upon oriental plunder, and intoxicated by hundreds of military triumphs, was now falling amidst the ruins of her temples and theatres, before the onslaughts of barbarian hordes. Meanwhile the same drama, though upon a smaller scale, was being enacted in the deserted province. The Romanized Britons, their vitals eaten out by the corrosive civilization which they had adopted, were slaughtered like sheep on their borders, by the uncivilized tribes, until in desperation, they invited North German pirate chiefs to Britain to protect them. To protect them! What bitter irony! By the end of the next century, bones and ashes were about all there was left to protect, and England was peopled afresh by the devastating hosts of her protectors. While in their native forests four centuries earlier, these Germans had won the admiration of Tacitus by the simplicity of their manners and the integrity of their lives. Lovers of freedom, they were loyal followers of their leaders in battle: accustomed by the severity of their winters to the greatest hardships, and hardened by lives of war into cruelty, they were tender, almost reverential in their attitude toward women. "They had no use for laws," said Tacitus "their good customs sufficed."