was creating endless difficulties for herself in Korea, besides serious complications with the Powers outside the scenes of her activities. Before she had realised the potentialities of her position, she had committed herself to a design by which she hoped to secure the King and Queen and to direct herself the reins of government. But her _coup d’état_ was to recoil disastrously, and at once, upon her own head. The Queen fell a victim to the plot, and although the King was imprisoned, he, together with the Crown Prince, contrived in a little time to find refuge in the Russian Legation. The escape of the King only emphasised the failure of Japan, and despite her subsequent treaties with Russia, in respect of Korea, the balance of power in the Far East as between Russia and Japan has never quite recovered from the blow which Japan administered herself to her own prestige upon this occasion. Japan still wields material influence of a high order in Korea. But, within the paramount position which she fills, there is the rift caused by the spread of the antagonistic and insidious influence of her great opponent. Curiously enough, the position which Russia holds to-day is not nearly as assertive as that which she occupied in 1896, yet there is little doubt that her influence is more commanding, if less conspicuously aggressive. Japan has turned aside upon occasion from the political issues to develop her commercial interests. Russia, again, has pursued unswerving the policy which revealed with the fall of China the fact that Manchuria was within her grasp and that Korea was its entail. [Illustration: ON THE YALU RIVER]