own eclipses. Hovering about this
gentleman, our eyes detect at once that the
impression on his page is taken from a wood-cut
imitation of hand-writing; moveable
types are not yet introduced into Japan.
The writing, like Chinese, is up and down
the page, and not across it. Three or four
different characters seem to be used
indiscriminately, and some of them are certainly
Chinese. The good folks of Dai Nippon are
indebted to the Chinese for the first strong
impulse to their civilisation; not being
themselves of Chinese origin, but a distinct branch
of the Mongolian family. Their language is
quite different, and has exceedingly long
words, instead of being built up, like Chinese,
of monosyllables. Japanese written in Chinese
character is understood by any Chinaman; but
so would English be, since Chinese writing
represents ideas. So, if a Spaniard writes
five, an Englishman reads it as "five," and
understands correctly, yet the Spaniard would
tell you that he wrote not " five," but " cinco."

Hovering still about this gentleman, and
beguiled, by the strangeness of all things we
see, into a curiosity like that of children, we
admire his sword. The hilt is very beautiful,
composed of various metals blended into a
fine enamel. This enamel is used in Japan
where Europeans would use jewels, because
the art of cutting precious stones is not known
to the Japanese. For the blade of this sword
it is not impossible that a sum has been given
not unlike a hundred pounds; the tempering
of steel is carried to perfection in Japan,
where gentlemen are connoisseurs in sword-
blades. Young nobles lend their maiden
swords to the executioner (who is always
chosen from the defiled leather-selling race)
that they may be tried upon real flesh and
blood; as executions in Japan are generally
cruel, and some criminals are hacked to death,
rather than killed outright, the swords on
such occasions are refreshed with a fair taste
of blood. The mats upon the floor are the
next things we notice; a thick matting of
straw forms a substratum, over which are
spread the fine mats, elegantly fringed. To
see that lackered work inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
which we familiarly call Japan, in its
perfection, we must evidently visit it at home.
Anything of the kind so exquisitely beautiful
as this little table, is not to be found in
Europe. Whatever trinkets pass out of these
islands into Europe, do so nayboen,—- that is,
with secret connivance,—- but the first-rate
manufactures are in no way suffered to come
to us. Without nayboen, life would be
insupportable in a minute wilderness of rules
and customs. People even die nayboen; that
is, a man lies unburied, and is said to be alive,
when his death otherwise would lead to
disagreeable results. Here, as elsewhere, when
rules are made intolerably strict, evasion is
habitual. The amount that cannot be evaded
is astonishing enough, as we shall see ere we
return to England; now we are in the house
of this gentleman at Nagasaki. His wife
enters, and by their mutual behaviour, it is
evident that ladies in Japan are to their
husbands very much what ladies are in England.
This lady passes to the garden; the room
ends with a projecting angle open to the garden
on each side, a sort of bay, which every house
has; and if there be no more ground than just
the supplementary triangles on each side to
complete the square, still there is always that;
and that is always quite enough, for want of
more. It is enough to spend a fortune upon, in
dwarf trees and vegetable curiosities. The
Japanese shine like the Chinese in monstrosities.
They can dwarf trees so well, that in a little
box four inches square, President Meylan saw
growing, a fir, a bamboo, and a plum-tree, in
full blossom. Or they hypertrophy plants if
they please, until a radish is produced as large
as a boy six years old. Their gardens,
however small, are always laid out in landscape
style, and each is adorned with a temple, not
a mere ornamental summer-house, but the
real shrine of a household god. Into this
garden walks the lady, and returns with a few
flowers. She takes these to an elegant shelf
fixed in a recess of the apartment, upon which
a bouquet stands, and is engaged upon her
nosegay. An act of taste? O dear, no; every
drawing room in Japan has such a shelf with
flowers placed upon it; every lady entering
who found her husband there, and meant to
talk with him, would in the first place make
the nosegay talk, and say, "The wife and
husband are alone together." If company
arrive, the flowers must be otherwise adjusted;
the position of every flower, and even of green
leaves, in that bouquet, is fixed by custom,
which is law, to vary with the use to which
the room is put. One of the most difficult
and necessary parts of female education in
Japan, is to acquire a perfect knowledge of
the rules laid down in a large book on the
arrangement of the drawing-room nosegay, in
a manner suitable to every case. It is the
Japanese "Use of the globes" to ladies' schools.
To boys and girls, after reading and writing,
which are taught (hear, England!) to the
meanest Japanese, the most necessary part of
education is an elaborate training in the
ceremonial rules of life. Bows proper for every
occasion, elegant kotoos, the whole science
and practice of good-breeding, have to be
learned through many tedious years. To boys
there is given special training in the hara-
kiri, or the art of ripping one's self up.
Many occasions present themselves on which
it as much concerns the honour of a Japanese
to cut himself open, as it concerned an Englishman
some years ago to fire a pistol at his
friend. The occasions are so frequent, that a
Japanese boys' school would be incomplete
in which instruction was not given in this
art of suicide. Boys practise all the details
in dramatic fashion, and in after life, if a day
come when disgrace, caused often by the
deeds of other men, appears inevitable, he