By common consent of Chinese and native tradition, Ki Tsze is the founder of Corean social order. If this tradition be true, the civilization of the hermit nation nearly equals, in point of time, that of China, and is one of the very oldest in the world, being contemporaneous with that of Egypt and Chaldea. It is certain that the natives plume themselves upon their antiquity, and that the particular vein of Corean arrogance and contempt for western civilization is kindred to that of the Hindoos and Chinese. From the lofty height of thirty centuries of tradition, which to them is unchallenged history, they look with pitying contempt upon the upstart nations of yesterday, who live beyond the sea under some other heaven. When the American Admiral, John Rodgers, in 1871, entered the Han River with his fleet, hoping to make a treaty, he was warned off with the repeated answer that “Corea was satisfied with her civilization of four thousand years, and wanted no other.” The perpetual text of all letters from Seoul to Peking, of all proclamations against Christianity, of all death-warrants of converts, and of the oft-repeated refusals to open trade with foreigners is the praise of Ki Tsze as the founder of the virtue and order of “the little kingdom,” and the loyalty of Corea to his doctrines. In the letter of the king to the Chinese emperor, dated November 25, 1801, the language following the opening sentence is as given below: “His Imperial Majesty knows that since the time when the remnants of the army of the Yin dynasty migrated to the East [1122 B.C.], the little kingdom has always been distinguished by its exactness in fulfilling all that the rites prescribe, justice and loyalty, and in general by fidelity to her duties,” etc., etc. In a royal proclamation against the Christian religion, dated January 25, 1802, occurs the following sentence: “The kingdom granted to Ki Tsze has enjoyed great peace during four hundred years [since the establishment of the ruling dynasty], in all the extent of its territory of two thousand ri and more,” etc. These are but specimens from official documents which illustrate their pride in antiquity, and the reverence in which their first law giver is held by the Coreans. Nevertheless, though Kishi may possibly be called the founder of ancient Chō-sen, and her greatest legislator, yet he can scarcely be deemed the ancestor of the people now inhabiting the Corean peninsula. For the modern Coreans are descended from a stock of later origin, and quite different from the ancient Chō-senese. From Ki Tsze, however, sprang a line of kings, and it is possible that his blood courses in some of the noble families of the kingdom. As the most ancient traditions of Japan and Corea are based on Chinese writings, there is no discrepancy in their accounts of the beginning of Chō-sen history.