en shown, to the coming of the navies of Europe
and America, bent on breaking down the barriers that had been raised
against the civilization of the West and forcing these remote empires to
enter the concert of the nations and open their ports to the commerce of
the world. Concerning all this we have no tales to tell, but a brief
account of the effect of foreign intercourse upon China and Japan will
fitly serve to close our work and outline the recent history of these
two great powers of the East.

There are marked differences of character between the Chinese and the
Japanese, and these differences have had a striking effect upon their
recent history. In the Japanese we find a warlike and aggressive people,
a stirring and inquisitive race, not, like their neighbors on the
continent, lost in contemplation of their ancient literature and
disdainful of any civilization but their own, but ready and eager to
avail themselves of all that the world has to offer worth the having. In
the Chinese we find a non-aggressive people, by nature and custom
disinclined to war, asking only, so far as outer nations are concerned,
to be let alone, and in no sense inquisitive concerning the doings of
the world at large. Of their civilization, which goes back beyond the
reputed date of the Deluge, they are intensely proud, their ancient
literature, in their conception, is far superior to the literatures of
all other nations, and their self-satisfaction is so ingrained that they
still stand aloof in mental isolation from the world, only the most
progressive among them seeing anything to be gained from foreign arts.
These differences in character have given rise to a remarkable
difference in results. The Japanese have been alert in availing
themselves of all things new, the Chinese torpid and slow, sluggishly
resisting change, hardly yielding even to the logic of war.

There is nothing in the history of the world to match the phenomenal
progress of Japan since the visit of Commodore Perry in 1853. If it had
been the people of the United States, instead of those of that
archipelago of the Eastern seas, that in this way first gained a
knowledge of the progress of the outer world, they could not have been
readier in changing their old institutions and ideas and accepting a new
and strange civilization offered them from afar than have been the alert
islanders of the East.

When the American fleet entered the Bay of Yedo it found itself in the
he