And this conservatism is an almost immovable one. For a century England has been pouring new thought and new enterprise into India, yet the Hindoos cling stubbornly to their remotely ancient beliefs and customs. For half a century Europe has been hammering upon the gates of China, but the sleeping nation shows little signs of waking up to the fact that the world is moving around it. As regards the other early civilizations--Babylonia and Egypt--they have been utterly swamped under the tide of Turkish barbarism and exist only in their ruins. Persia, once a great and flourishing empire, has likewise sunk under the flood of Arabian and Turkish invasion, and to-day, under its ruling Shah, is one of the most inert of nations, steeped in the self-satisfied barbarism that has succeeded its old civilization. Such was the Asia upon which the nineteenth century dawned, and such it remains to-day except in one remote section of its area, in which alone modern civilization has gained a firm foothold. [=The Seclusion of China and Japan=] The section referred to is the island empire of Japan, a nation the people of which are closely allied in race to those of China, yet which has displayed a progressiveness and a readiness to avail itself of the resources of modern civilization strikingly diverse from the obstinate conservatism of its densely settled neighbor. The development of Japan has taken place within the past half century. Previous to that time it was as resistant to western influences as China. They were both closed nations, prohibiting the entrance of modern ideas and peoples, proud of their own form of civilization and their own institutions, and sternly resolved to keep out the disturbing influences of the restless west. As a result, they remained locked against the new civilization until after the nineteenth century was well advanced, and China's disposition to avail itself of the results of modern invention was not manifested until the century was near its end. [=The Opening of China=]