forward a measure of this nature. We heartily wish it success, convinced that even of itself it would be an inestimable boon, and that nothing would be of greater use in enabling all parties among the clergy to consider calmly, whether for acceptance or rejection, the further changes that are called for.

We will briefly notice in conclusion the singular charge brought so repeatedly against the advocates of a revision of the Liturgy, that their real object is not the extension, but the narrowing, of the limits of Church Communion.' Even Dr. Vaughan, we regret to see, gives his sanction to this unfounded suspicion; and in the debate of the House of Lords it seemed to be assumed as a certainty by the speakers on the episcopal side. Let those who entertain it only read what the leading advocates of revision say for themselves; and observe too with how little zeal the cause is seconded by those who are most active in antagonism to the High Church Party.

But (it has been said more plausibly) if comprehension be sought, it is at least all on one side.

A moment's reflection will show the futility of this observation. For whom on the other side should the Church seek to draw into her communion? Not surely the Roman Catholics. No one dreams that this would be possible, unless the Church became Roman Catholic itself. And if not the Roman Catholics, who is it to be? Does not the Church already comprehend men who are Romanists in everything except avowed allegiance to the Pope? While on the other side there are millions of our Protestant fellow-countrymen excluded from the communion of the Church by barriers for the most part wholly unnecessary, barriers which it is not too late, even yet, to throw down in the name of Charity and of Truth.

That it is not too late even yet to bring large and increasing numbers of Nonconformists within the pale of the National Church by such concessions as we have advocated in part,— large and increasing numbers of the more educated, the more thoughtful, and therefore the most influential among them—we conclude confidently not only from the language of Dissenters themselves, and of men like Mr. Taylor, who have peculiar opportunities of judging; but still more from the very nature of the case, from the effects which must necessarily follow a generous and liberal line of conduct, and fearless exchange of a narrow traditional policy for one of simple trust in the broad principles of Christian truth. Bishop Ollivant indeed cites sundry expressions of Mr. Binney's to prove that not even he, and the high-minded and moderate Dissenters whom he represents, would be won over to the Church, though it were thus amended.

It

may be so. For us it is enough to conclude (as we do with far greater certainty) that from such a Church Mr. Binney would never have been a Dissenter at all.

But if in many cases we find ourself disappointed,-if, after all, large numbers of Nonconformists, even those whom no doctrinal difference separates from the Church, shall be unwilling to abandon their present position, we are not of those who could venture to condemn them. We think it bad feeling, as well as bad taste, to talk, as we regret to find even liberal-minded Churchmen doing, of 'waging a vigorous and aggressive warfare in that case against Sectarianism in all its forms,' or even of dealing a deadly blow to the prosperity of Dissenters,' by salutary measures of reform. There is great need of patience in this matter, that, even after we have done what is right, we should inherit the blessing of returning unity. Much has to be retrieved, much to be forgiven. The result must be a work of time, of more than one or two generations, carried on with gentleness and respectful forbearance.

Nor do we desire to see any negotiations entered into, between the Church and the various bodies of Dissenters, for the purpose of maturing the proposed measures of comprehension. The proper dignity and self-respect of all parties, the cause of truth independent of expediency, will be much more satisfactorily furthered by conducting all changes purely on considerations of reason and justice. And if the result shall eventually be union, and the absorption of some of the denominations into a more comprehensive National Church, it will be a result at which all will rejoice together, Dissenters no less than Churchmen. For what nobler end could a true-hearted Dissenter desire for the body to which it is his pride to belong, than that it should have witnessed through reproach and obloquy for a truth which was in danger of being cast out and lost; and, after labouring not in vain to vindicate the rightful limits of Christ's Church, should be enabled to enter at last into joint possession of an enlarged inheritance - an inheritance confessedly enlarged by efforts remembered with gratitude by all?

ART. II.-1. Correspondence with Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Japan. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty. 1860.

2. First Elements of Japanese Grammar for the Use of Beginners; with an Introductory Chapter on the Construction of the Language. By RUTHERFORD ALCOCK, Esq., C.B., Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Yeddo. London: 1861.

*

ABOUT eight years ago we passed rapidly in review in the pages of this journal all that was then known of the geography, the political constitution, the social condition, and the commercial relations of Japan." Our information was at that time almost exclusively derived from travellers and writers of no very modern date, Kompfer, Siebold, old Will Adams the Pilot, Golownin, and some of the Dutch adventurers. But we already anticipated that an opening was about to be made in the impenetrable barriers of the Japanese Empire, which would bring these old authorities to the test, and enable us greatly to extend our own field of observation. This anticipation has already been realised and surpassed. We were enabled twelve months ago to lay before our readers the results of Lord Elgin's short but eventful visit to Yeddo, as related by Mr. Oliphant; and we are now in possession of materials, collected by those who have had access to the country since the arrival of the foreign missions and the partial opening of trade, which far exceed in interest and accuracy all that was previously known of this surprising country. Without reverting, therefore, to the earlier connexion of Europeans with the Japanese, which may be said. to have terminated by the expulsion of foreigners and the extermination of the Christian proselytes in 1637, we shall at once proceed to enter upon this new matter; and we begin with that, which is of all things the most necessary and the most obscure, namely, the language of the people.

First among these fruits of a permanent residence of educated Europeans in the capital of Japan, we have to welcome an elementary grammar of the language, and we are indebted to the British Minister himself for the contribution. The work itself is very unpretending, and does not affect to be more than an attempt to give the first elements of Japanese grammar

*Ed. Rev., Oct. 1852, vol. xcvi. p. 348.

to aid beginners, Mr. Alcock having found the want of such a work one of the greatest difficulties in the way of the student interpreters to the Legation who accompanied him to Japan, in whose philological progress, on political grounds, he evidently takes a very lively interest. In one of his earliest despatches to the Foreign Office he tells Lord Malmesbury:

'It will no doubt be up-hill and laborious work to make any decided progress for a long time to come; and the first and greatest difficulty to be overcome consists in our ignorance of their language. So long as this exists, there can be nothing very satisfactory, either in our intercourse or relations. It is bad enough, in discussing a wide range of subjects involving all the technicalities of trade and the provisions of Treaties, that whatever is said by each of the principals must go through the process of interpretation into another tongue; but here the last recipient of any ideas sought to be conveyed by us to a Japanese authority, offers not the slightest guarantee for fidelity in rendering even as much as he understands of such new matters, and that I believe is often very little. I am so penetrated with this conviction, that no good is to be done here until we can ourselves speak to the authorities, and in their own tongue, that I shall not hesitate to devote every spare hour to the acquisition of the language.' (Correspondence, p. 2.)

To this excellent example Mr. Alcock has now added an attempt to smooth to others the difficulties he had himself to overcome; for it must be confessed that to face on landing all the horrors of Japanese syntax, is a serious aggravation of a position already sufficiently embarrassing.

In the introductory chapter on the genius and construction of the language in connexion with the history of its formation, a rapid survey is taken of many leading characteristics, indicative of habits of thought and action in the nation employing it. There is much to interest the general reader, as well as the philologist, in this view. If books are the transcripts of national taste, as has been not unaptly said, much more may a language be considered a true mirror of the national character. Of especial interest are the questions involved in the use of a borrowed hieroglyphic language in Japan, and the spontaneous adoption at a later period of a phonetic system, without the latter displacing the former. The Japanese are the only nation, Mr. Alcock observes, who, so far as is known, Ever frankly adopted as their own, and at one effort, the language and the literature, together with a whole system of morals and ethics, from a neighbouring people (in many respects essentially 'different), without any pressure from conquest, and while in 'possession of a civilisation of rival pretensions, a marked nationality and strongly developed spirit of independence.'

Yet such seems to have been the fact beyond a doubt; although the relations of China with Japan from the earliest ages were hostile, and no approach to fusion has ever taken place between the two nations, yet the Japanese did adopt, at some distant period now unknown, the system of writing of the Chinese. And although the Japanese invented for themselves long subsequently a system of phonetic symbols, consisting of a syllabary, or alphabet of forty-seven letters, which, with the addition of certain accents, suffices to convey all the sounds in the language, and notwithstanding it has been in general use now some eight centuries, they have not relinquished the hieroglyphic written language adopted from the Chinese. So the two languages and systems of writing exist side by side to this day.

Indeed, they seem fond of duplicates in all things. Something of a dual principle we know enters into man's organisation and pervades all nature, but in the Japanese idiosyncrasy this seems to find a more elaborate development than elsewhere. If it be true, as a learned physician has maintained, that we all have two perfect brains enclosed in our sculls, as we have two eyes and two ears on the outside, each capable of performing all the functions of both combined, and even capable of carrying on independent trains of thought simultaneously, then, it would seem the Japanese duality of brains has been productive of all sorts of binary combinations and devices running through and duplicating, as it were, all existence, political, social, and intellectual. There is no dealing with a single agent in Japanfrom the sovereign to the postman they all run in couples. You ask for your interpreter, and finding him long in coming, you demand the reason, and receive for conclusive answer, that He 'could not come without his shadow!' If the objection strikes you as singular or novel, it is explained that his shadow is an 'ometsy,' literally, the eye that sees through'-in plain English, a spy, without whom it is not safe for him to enter on the performance of his functions, for the 'ometsy' is supposed to be a witness to the loyalty of his action.

6

It is the less surprising, therefore, that they should have adopted two wholly different systems of writing, the one ideographic, and the other phonetic-the one borrowed, and the other original. But not content with this double complication (which it might be thought would have satisfied the most strongly-marked dual conformation), they have invented not one, but two, complete alphabets to express the same sounds. Again, the Chinese, from whom they borrowed the hieroglyphics, having among many varieties two distinctive modes of writing their interminable series of symbols-one called the square or printed character,