e so much authority all over the
country as to actually rule the King himself; and, as the reverend
gentlemen were ready with the sword as well as with their bead
prayer-rosaries, they became an unparalleled nuisance and dangerous to
the constitution. After having, by their great power and capacity for
agitation, roused the country to revolution and internal disputes, it
was found necessary to put them down, and from that time forward, they
became mere nonentities. The chief instrument which brought this about
was a law, still in existence, by which no religion is, under any
circumstances, tolerated or allowed within the walls of Corean cities,
and all bonzes are forbidden to enter the gates of any city under pain of
losing their heads.

The influence which the priests had gained over the Court having been
thus suddenly destroyed, and the offenders against the law in question
having been most severely dealt with, Buddhism, so far as Corea was
concerned, received its death blow. This was so: first, because, although
it had prevailed without restraint for nearly five centuries, many of the
primitive old superstitions were still deeply rooted in the minds of the
Coreans, and because, with the fall of the priests, these sprang up again
bolder than ever; then, too, because the law above-mentioned was so
strictly enforced that many temples and monasteries had to be closed
owing to lack of sufficient funds, the number of their supporters having
become infinitesimal in a comparatively short time.

Shamanism is at the present time the popular religion, if indeed there is
any that can be so designated. The primitive worship of nature appears to
be quite sufficient for the religious aspirations of the Corean native,
and with his imaginative brain he has peopled the earth with evil and
good spirits, as well as giving them to the elements, the sky, and the
morning star. To these spirits he offers sacrifices, when somebody in his
family dies, or when any great event takes place; and to be on good
terms with these invisible rulers of his fate is deemed necessary, even
by well-educated people who should know better.

There are spirits for everything in Cho-sen. The air is alive with them,
and there are people who will actually swear that they have come in
contact with them. Diseases of all sorts, particularly paralysis, are
invariably ascribed to the possession of the human frame by one of these
unwholesome visitors, and when a death