which through some 2,000 years of past history has been the expensive and bloody enemy, and the political seducer and corrupter of Korea. The division of the history of Korea, made by Mr. Homer B. Hulbert, into ancient and modern—the latter period beginning in 1392, with the founding of the present dynasty—is entirely without warrant. “Modern history” can scarcely be said to have begun in the so-called “Hermit Kingdom” previous to the time when a treaty was concluded between Japan and Korea by General Kuroda, acting as Plenipotentiary, on February 26, 1876. Even then, the first Korean Embassy under the new _régime_, having arrived at Yokohama by a Japanese steamer on the following May 29th, when it started back to Korea a month later, refused all overtures of Western foreigners to communicate with their country. From the time when the present kingdom arose by the union of the three previously existing kingdoms, the doings of the Korean Court and of the Korean people have been substantially the same. When threatened by foreign invaders or by popular uprisings and official rebellion at home, the Court—a motley crowd or mob, of King, palace officials, eunuchs, concubines, blind men, sorceresses, and other similar retainers of the palace—has, as a rule, precipitately fled to some place of refuge, deserted by efficient military escort and in most miserable plight. Only when behind walls and compelled to fight, or when aroused to a blind fury in the form of a mob, does the average Korean show the courage necessary to defend or to avenge his monarch. The saying of the Japanese that “the Koreans are kittens in the field and tigers in the fortress” characterized their behavior during the Hideyoshi invasion; it is characteristic of them to-day. Three centuries ago, when the king was in flight from Seoul to Pyeng-yang his own attendants stole his food and left him hungry; and the Korean populace, left behind in Seoul rose at once and burned and looted what the Court had not carried away. “Before many days had elapsed the people found out that the coming of the Japanese did not mean universal slaughter, as they had supposed, and gradually they returned to their lands in the city. They reopened their shops, and as long as they attended to their own affairs they were unmolested by the Japanese. Indeed, they adapted themselves readily to the new order of things, and drove a lucrative trade with the invaders”![5] In these respects, too, the voice of Korean history is a witness with a monotone; as it was in 1592 and earlier, so it has been down to the present time.