Thus came to a disastrous end, through the aid of foreign arms, the most remarkable insurrectionary movement that China has ever known. What would have been its result had the Chinese been left to themselves it is not easy to say. The indications are strong that the Manchu dynasty would have fallen and the Chinese regained their own again. And the Christian faith and worship of the rebels, with their marked friendliness to foreigners, might have worked a moral and political revolution in the Chinese empire, and lifted that ancient land into a far higher position than it occupies to-day. But the interests of the opium trade were threatened, and before this all loftier considerations had to give way. [Illustration: A BRONZE-WORKER'S SHOP.] _COREA AND ITS NEIGHBORS._ We have thus far followed the course of two distinct streams of history, that of Japan and that of China, flowing near each other, yet touching at very few points in their course. Near the end of the nineteenth century these two streams flowed together, and the histories of the two countries became one, in the war in which their difference in military skill was so strikingly displayed. Japan made use of the lessons which it had well learned in its forty years of intercourse with Europe. China fought in the obsolete fashion of a past age. As a result, the cumbersome mediaeval giant went down before the alert modern dwarf, and the people of Eastern Asia were taught a new and astounding lesson in the art of war. Between China and Japan lies the kingdom of Corea, separated by a river from the former, by a strait of the ocean from the latter, claimed as a vassal state by both, yet preserving its individuality as a state against the pair. It has often been invaded by China, but never conquered. It has twice been invaded by Japan, as described in preceding tales, and made tributary, but not conquered. Thus it remained until the end of the nineteenth century, when it was to become the cause of a war between the two rival empires.