With the morning light of March 27th began first observations of the physical conditions and more obvious social peculiarities of Seoul—the place which has been fitly styled “an encyclopædia of most of the features of Korean so-called city life.” It is impossible to describe Seoul, however, in any such fashion as to satisfy the conflicting opinions of all—whether transient foreign observer or old-time resident. The former will base his estimate upon the particular aspects or incidents concerning which his missionary or diplomatic friend has given him presumably, but by no means always actually, trustworthy information; or upon what his own uninstructed eye and untrained ear may happen to see and hear; while the more permanent indweller in Seoul is pretty sure to conceive of it, and of its inhabitants, according to the success or the failure of his schemes for promoting his own commercial, political, or religious interests. This difference is apt to become emphatic, whenever any of the patent relations of the two peoples chiefly interested, the Koreans and the Japanese, are directly or even more remotely concerned. The point of view taken for comparison also determines much. Approached from Peking or from any one of scores of places in China, Seoul seems no filthier than the visitor’s accustomed surroundings have been. But he who comes from Old or New England, or from Japan, will observe many things, greatly to his disgust. The missionary who compares his own method in conducting a prayer-meeting with that pursued by the guard in clearing the way at the railway station, or with that to which the policeman or the jinrikisha-runner on the street is compelled by the crowd of idle and stately stepping pedestrians, will doubtless complain of the rudeness shown to the Koreans by the invading Japanese. And if he is disposed to overlook the conduct of the roughs in San Francisco, or to minimize the accounts of the behavior of American soldiers in the Philippines, or has forgotten his own experiences at the Brooklyn Bridge, he may send home letters deprecating the inferior civilization of the Far East. On the other hand, he who knows the practice of Korean robbers, official and unofficial, toward their own countrymen, or who recalls the sight of a Korean mob tearing their victim limb from limb, or who credits the reports of the unutterable cruelties that have for centuries gone on behind the palace walls, will, of course, take a widely divergent point of view. But let us—laying aside prejudice—glance at the externals of the capital city of Korea, as they appeared during the months of April and May, 1907.