a heap of ruins by an earthquake too violent, even, for such constructions to resist, and completed by fire, which inevitably follows. We need not look for architecture, then, here; and nothing, accordingly, can be more mean or miserable-looking than the streets of Yeddo, one of the largest cities in the world. The Daimios' Yaskis are merely a low line of barracks of the same construction, rather higher in the roofs, and occasionally they venture upon a modest attempt at a three-storied pagoda. The temples are more ambitious, and, moreover, afford safer ground for architectural experiments or pretensions, as people do not usually live under their roofs. These furnish the only specimens of Japanese architecture. The wood-cut on the opposite page is from a photograph of the belfry at the temple where we were lodged at Osaca, and is a very fair specimen of all their temple and gateway architecture.

It will be seen that no fair criterion of their civilization or advance in the arts can be drawn from such a source, the special conditions of the soil exercising an absolute controlling power over all architectural development. In all the mechanical arts the Japanese have unquestionably achieved great excellence. In their porcelain, their bronzes, their silk fabrics, their lacker, and their metallurgy generally, including works of exquisite art in design and execution, I have no hesitation in saying they not only rival the best products of Europe, but can produce in each of these departments works we can not imitate, or perhaps equal. It is quite true that Europe may also make a similar boast with justice. There is much, especially in the province of art properly so called, to which the Japanese can not make the slightest pretensions. They can not produce, by any effort, works to be compared with the noble specimens of Repoussé carving, from the chisel of a Vechte, a Morel Ladeuil, or a Monti, which the Great International Exhibition showed; yet the Japanese bronze castings are, some of them, scarce inferior in skilled workmanship and mixture of metals to any thing we can produce of the same kind. No Japanese can produce any thing to be named in the same day with a work from the pencil of a Landseer, a Roberts, or a Stanfield, a Lewis, or Rosa Bonheur, whether in oil or water-colors; indeed, they do not know the art of painting in oils at all, and are not great in landscape in any material. Their knowledge of perspective is too limited, and aerial effects have scarcely yet entered into their conception. But in figures and animals, I have some studies in Indian ink, so graphic, so free in outline and true to nature, that our best artists might envy the unerring touch and facile pencil so plainly

indicated. In the rendering of animals, whatever the material employed, they seem to have studied not only the mere forms, but the habits and character of each, with such accuracy and closeness of observation that they gain a perfect mastery over their subject, and by a few lines and a dash of the brush, pro

duce a faultless imitation of nature. This is especially true of the stork, the emblem of longevity, and nearly as much admired and revered by the Japanese as ever was its kindred ibis in Egypt. Hence, on porcelain, lacker, in enamels, on ivory, in basso-relievos, in steel and iron, in bronzes, it is every

where to be met, and with a marvelous perfection of workmanship and artistic power. On the preceding page is a rough

specimen cut out of a common picture-book, of which it formed the fly-leaf. Whoever has seen a flight of these birds must be struck with the fidelity of the sketch.

Here, again, is a wild goose in flight, than which nothing can be better.

I need say nothing of the lacker-ware. The Japanese are, in all probability, the originators of the manufacture, and have never been approached in Asia or in Europe. Neither Soochow, Canton, nor Birmingham appear to possess either the material or the skill necessary, and certainly have yet to show that they can even make a near approach to some of the fine specimens of old lacker which I collected for the Exhibition, to illustrate the progress of the Japanese in the mechanical and higher industrial arts, and as evidences of their civilization.

Perhaps in nothing are the Japanese to be more admired than for the wonderful genius they display in arriving at the greatest possible results with the simplest means, and the smallest possible expenditure of time and labor or material. The tools by which they produce their finest works are the simplest, and often the rudest that can be conceived. Wherever in the fields or the workshops nature supplies a force, the Japanese is sure to lay it under contribution, and make it do his work with the least expense to himself of time, money, and labor. To such a pitch of perfection is this carried, that it strikes every observer as one of the moral characteristics of the race, indicating no mean degree of intellectual capacity and cultivation.

They have been familiar with the art of printing in various colors by blocks of wood-a process similar to our lately-discovered art of lithochrome printing-from an unknown date; similar, at least, so far as the employment of several blocks in the same design for different colors. They do not seem, however, to print one color over another, to produce depth or richness, as we do. Mr. Leighton, an artist himself, who saw some of these color-prints in the Japan Court at the Exhibition, informs me that he has discovered, upon close examination,' that they have the power of reducing their prints by some process,

as doubtless of enlarging also-a thing patented by us some few years since, and used by Mr. Leech in his enlarged pictures from "Punch." If this be true, it is only one more instance in which, by their own unaided genius and ingenuity, they have anticipated by centuries some of the most recent inventions and discoveries of Europe. Another improvement in color-printing, only lately patented, also is evidently known to them-graduated shading.*

They meet the popular taste for pictures and bright colors at the cheapest possible rate. There are countless works on drawing, filled with illustrations of the styles of their different masters, from which it would be easy to select any number of groups and figures worthy of Teniers, Van Ostades, Jan Steens, or any of that school of Dutch Painters; and much in the same style of broad farce, of humor and fidelity in the representation of the life of the people, too faithful, in many instances, like their Dutch compeers, to be always very delicate or refined. But on this subject I may as well say, en passant, and not to revert to it, that, although there is no doubt a widespread taste for gross and obscene productions (of which evidences will occasionally thrust themselves upon those who seek them least, proving how widely the demand exists for such things, since the supply is so large and various in type), yet, upon the whole, they are not usually obtruded upon a casual observer, either in real life, or their books and toys, although they do exist in these last to an extent that speaks ill both for their taste and system of juvenile education. In the ordinary run of illustrated works and pictures, however, of which I made a large collection, the scissors of the censor are but rarely required, unless in very prudish hands. Of course, where the customs of the country present quasi-nude figures every where to the eye, in the streets and houses, without any consciousness of indelicacy attaching to such absence of costume, a painter of popular manners will necessarily reproduce what he constantly sees, and in attitudes ill suited to European notions;

*The following opinion of artistic characteristics, as exemplified in the specimens sent to the Great Exhibition, will be interesting as coming from an artist. Mr. Leighton writes to me on this subject:

"The quaintly-picturesque seems to govern all in Japan-harmony of color with extraordinary finish, avoiding symmetry and delighting in sharp angles-just the reverse of all other nations. They have many things in common with the Chinese, but a far finer touch. A great deal of this comes, I think, of their buildings being of wood, having a wooden architecture rather than an enduring one in stone; had they been masons, then would they have worked on a grander scale. They seem fond of sensations; the sweet, the soft and pretty, is heightened by the grotesque, yet all is in harmony.'