they are natural children, are well amused with the pleasures proper to their age, and have no wish to be thought above them. They will run after the strolling player with his droll monkey at his back, and desire no higher happiness than such pleasures give.

As to the games in vogue for the amusement of children of larger growth, I can not pretend to be sufficiently initiated to give any complete description. They have great variety of games with forfeits, often played by cards, which require verses to be made or written. There is also a game of the 'Fox,' which consists in the attempt to seize a piece of cake or a sweetmeat through a loop; if they are caught in it they pay a forfeit, which, if men alone are engaged, is generally to drink a cup of saki, and when both sexes are engaged the forfeits are more varied, without, if report speaks truly, being more decorous.

They have also a game similar to the Moro in Italy. Their musicians and jugglers are much patronized, and acrobats with strolling bands of masks are to be met with in all festive seasons in the streets. Nor must we forget the story-teller, who generally has a gaping audience.

Still less must we omit the wrestlers, for wrestling is to the Japanese what the ring is to us, and something especially national. Every prince has a whole troop of them, and their pride is to have the biggest, heaviest, and fattest, so that they generally look as bloated, overfed, and disgusting as prize oxen for the butcher at Christmas. This so utterly confounds all our ideas of training, that I am at a loss to understand how such masses of flesh and fat can put out any great strength. They strip, and then, squatting opposite each other, look ex

ceedingly like a couple of white-skinned bears or well-shaven baboons. The pit is covered with sawdust. There is a judge of the sport seated in front just outside a circle made by wisps of straw, victory being his who pushes his antagonist, if but a foot, outside. They grapple very fiercely, but seldom seem to throw each other.

Of feasts and festivals, religious and secular, there really seems to be no end. Besides the great annual feast of the new year, kept pretty much as it is in China, there are Matsuris for every town and village, and every month of the year, I believe. Their picture-books are full of illustrations. Then springtime, when the peach-blossoms are out, is a time for universal rejoicing, feasting, and picnics in the country and in tea-gardens for ten miles round. And withal there is a due regard for economy, as is proved by the collector of empty present boxes constantly to be seen with a load of them at his back gathered from the recipients, who do not part with them for nothing.

The Japanese have undoubtedly a very rural taste, and seem to enjoy their games with the greatest zest, even where the saki is sparingly indulged in. Festivals are high days for the temples, and they seem to take it in rotation to hold a sort of fair. Formerly lotteries were held there, of which I have many illustrations, but they have for some time been prohibited as immoral on the same ground as gambling with cards or dice, to which, however, the Japanese are greatly addicted. Dice are made so minute as to be concealed in a small scentbottle worn at the girdle, the cube being scarcely more than a tenth of an inch.

The officers have a game on horseback, which consists in taking up a ball with a sort of racket, and throwing it through a hole at the end of the list. The players are divided into two parties, distinguished by their colors, and the fun consists in knocking the ball out of their rival's racket as he is approaching at speed to the throwing point. They play with great spirit, and, it must also be said, great good-humor, though they have such wretched horseflesh and heathenish saddlery. A light snaffle only is loose in the mouth, and great leather saddle-flaps effectually prevent their wheeling their horses by the touch of the heel, even if Japanese ponies had any mouths; but as their riders generally hold on by the reins, one in each hand, the beasts, to resent such heavy usage, generally go with their heads in the air, and become at last proof against any thing short of a Mexican bit.

Of their theatres I have already given some description. With this glance at the popular games, festivals, and amuse

ments, the reader must be content. For seeing many of these, my position as a Minister was unfavorable, as it precluded much personal observation, and it would serve little purpose to describe at second-hand what I had not myself witnessed.

In describing their temples, I ought not to omit some notice of their cemeteries, by far the most remarkable and pleasant part of their religion, and the one which is most in harmony with our own feelings of the sanctity due to a place of rest for the dead. They are generally beautifully situated, planted with fine trees, and admirably kept. The graves are for the most part simple tablets, sometimes recording the names and dates, at other times a single name only, as 'True-heart!' which marks the grave of some one at Tozengee. The cemetery attached to the Legation temple is one of the finest and most picturesque in Yeddo. In front of each grave is always a vase for flowers and another for water, and it was pleasant to see how constantly these were renewed. They reminded me of the 'Field of God,' the cemetery outside of Copenhagen, where each grave is made a little garden, the resort of the families of all whose loved ones have been consigned to their rest. Some of our extra-mural cemeteries, I am glad to think, are fast becoming equally worthy of admiration, that of Highgate more especially perhaps, aided by its picturesque situation on the side of a hill, and the beautiful view it commands of the valley of the Thames.

The temple of Tozengee, the grounds and cemetery, cover an immense area. It was formerly, I have understood, the palace of a small Daimio called Ito-sciuridaibu, who made a present of it to the priests, having built a better one in a more suitable place in Yeddo. It is in consequence of this that he alone is allowed to go under the portico in his chair, while the Princes of Xendai and Bisen (two other patrons who give large supplies of rice and undertake all repairs, etc.), though much higher and powerful Daimois, are obliged to get out of their chairs at the gate where the steps are.

The Government gave us this temple after having received the consent of the former Daimios, though it is well known that the other two, who had but an indirect voice in the matter and were not consulted, disliked exceedingly the idea of our occupying it even temporarily.

One morning, after the attack on the Legation, the Prince of Xendai sent an officer with a retinue of a hundred men or more, to remove one of his ancestors' tablets to another temple. The common people believed he did this because he was displeased that the temple should be contaminated with our

presence, and the 'unclean' food we use, by killing sheep and fowls. My informant, however, thought he had taken this very unusual step to show his displeasure that the Legation was not removed, and his hatred to foreigners, which is commonly spoken of as something generally known.

Certain it is, that, the evening before the tablet was removed, our chief of the Yaconins on service came to inform me of what was about to take place, with a sort of vague intimation that it would be as well if our own guard were on foot. They came, as it happened, at a much earlier hour than was announced; so that, as far as any preparation on our part was concerned, they might have had us at a disadvantage; but it was observed that all our Japanese guards were mustered, and stood to their arms, lining the palisade which surrounded our court-yard and the entrance.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Western Diplomacy and Eastern Policy.

THE borders of the Mediterranean, with Asia Minor and Syria as the farther limit, long constituted the East in common acceptation. The 'Levant' (le soleil Levant), as the region thus defined was styled in the Middle Ages, nearly marked the extent of European traffic and intercourse. Later, when the discoveries of Vasco da Gama opened a sea route to India, though China and Japan were added to the countries with which we .maintained certain relations of commerce, India monopolized to itself all popular conceptions of the East.' It is only within the present generation that we have been compelled to acknowledge an East far beyond the Ganges.

The West and the East, in this more extended sense Europe and Asia, present a moral and political antithesis and an antagonism quite as real as the geographical bearings at opposite sides of the globe. The general character of the relations which have existed since the beginning of history between the East and West, whether in the original circumscribed limits, or now along the whole sea-board of Asia, bears the unmistakable impress of antagonistic and apparently irreconcilable tendencies, pointing to certain conditions which would seem inseparable from any intercourse between the two races. If this not only be true, but admit of demonstration, it obviously behooves all European Powers to keep in view a fact of