ediately
preceding the French Revolution; the absorption of the European
nations, for the following quarter of a century, with the universal
wars, involving questions chiefly political and European; the
beginning of the great era of coal and iron, of mechanical and
industrial development, which succeeded the peace, and during which it
was not aggressive colonization, but the development of colonies
already held and of new commercial centres, notably in China and
Japan, that was the most prominent feature; finally, we have, resumed
at the end of the century, the forward movement of political
colonization by the mother countries, powerfully incited thereto,
doubtless, by the citizens of the old colonies in different parts of
the world. The restlessness of Australia and the Cape Colony has
doubtless counted for much in British advances in those regions.
Contemporary with all these movements, from the first to the last, has
been the development of great standing armies, or rather of armed
nations, in Europe; and, lastly, the stirring of the East, its
entrance into the field of Western interests, not merely as a passive
something to be impinged upon, but with a vitality of its own,
formless yet, but significant, inasmuch as where before there was
torpor, if not death, now there is indisputable movement and life.
Never again, probably, can there of it be said,

"It heard the legions thunder past,
Then plunged in thought again."

Of this the astonishing development of Japan is the most obvious
evidence; but in India, though there be no probability of the old
mutinies reviving, there are signs enough of the awaking of political
intelligence, restlessness under foreign subjection, however
beneficent, desire for greater play for its own individualities; a
movement which, because intellectual and appreciative of the
advantages of Western material and political civilization, is less
immediately threatening than the former revolt, but much more ominous
of great future changes.

Of China we know less; but many observers testify to the immense
latent force of the Chinese character. It has shown itself hitherto
chiefly in the strength with which it has adhered to stereotyped
tradition. But stereotyped traditions have been overthrown already
more than once even in this unprogressive people, whose conservatism,
due largely to ignorance of better conditions existing in other lands,
is closely allied also to the unusual stayin