1

momentous subject of the divorce should have | ties, each of whom he found inflexible.

He

been meagre, partial, and unsatisfactory. is on his knees before Catherine, urging, surThe printed materials he has used diligently; plicating, beseeching her to adopt more wholethe unprinted materials he has scarcely some counsel. "Domine Reverendissime," he repeats in anxious accents to Campeggio,

touched.

We have not space for further extracts" beware lest, as the defection of a great part from this curious volume. But if any doubt of Germany from the Catholic faith and the could exist as to Wolsey's sincerity in pro- See Apostolic was owing to the unrelenting moting the divorce, it is entirely dispelled by sternness of one Cardinal, it should be said Campeggio's letters. It was the sole engross-that another Cardinal gave the same occasion ing topic of all Wolsey's thoughts. He was to England.” (P. 31.) up early and late, writing letters to Rome, What impression, if any, this prophetic applying all the incentives of threats, bland- warning of the great minister left on the ishments, and promises, to induce the Pope mind of the legate we have no means of deand the legate to comply with the king's ciding. A little more than two years after wishes. Before daybreak he presents him- he writes to a correspondent from Cologne, self at the bedside of the suffering legate," I received yesterday a packet from England, who is tormented with the gout (non poco and heard of the death of the most reverend tormentato della gotte), and with the less tol- York. May his soul rest in peace! et sic erable agonies of mediating between two par- transit gloria mundi!”

CRAVING FOR LUXURIES.-The rebel soldiers | The same disposition was made of this paper as at Fredericksburg rig little boats of pieces of the other. plank and send them across the Rappahannock to our soldiers, bearing requests to exchange coffee and sugar for tobacco or greenbacks. A correspondent of the Philadelphia Inquirer says, under date of 7th March :

"On Monday they launched quite a fleet' of little vessels, made out of board planks, two or three feet long, on which they rigged little sails, and then sent them on a voyage to this side. One was brought into the Lacy House, on Monday, which had sailed across from the opposite side. It was sloop rigged, with mast, jib, and mainsail, made of old cotton cloth, apparently having been once part of a man's shirt. In the sail was fastened a copy of the Richmond Examiner of the previous Saturday, dry and in good order. There was also a letter written with pencil, requesting our people to send over sugar and coffee, and they would send tobacco in return; or if that would not suit us, then they would send 'greenbacks' in lieu of the tobacco; or, in other words, they wanted us to sell them coffee and sugar for Union money. Both the paper and the note were handed over to the field-officer of the pickets, to be forwarded to head-quarters.

Scarcely had the curiosity occasioned by this incident subsided, when another little boat was seen to start from the opposite bank, and making a diagonal trip across the river, it came to on this side, near the piers of the Commerce Street bridge. The pickets captured the prize, and brought it up on the lawn in front of the house. It was schooner rigged, with sails made of bedticking. The little craft capsized on the way over and wet the sails, but on examining the folds closely, a copy of the Richmond Enquirer was found looped inside, dry and in good order.

Both boats were broken up in full sight of the rebels, who could not fail to see by this that our officers are not very willing to hold communication with them. Notwithstanding this, however, they sent over other vessels on Tuesday, with to wade' and exchange newspapers." small quantities of tobacco, with renewed requests

JAPANESE ODDITIES.-One great peculiarity of the people is their mania for squatting; they seem to do everything in this position, and even when a man is plowing in a field he looks as if he wanted to squat. Their habits in many things seem to be so often exactly the opposite of ours, that it almost resolves itself into a rule that everything goes by contraries. When they cook a goose, instead of putting the goose on the fire, they put the fire in the goose, thus making a great saving of fuel. In planing or sawing a board, they plane or saw toward themselves instead of from themselves. When you go into a house, instead of taking off your hat, you take off your shoes. Instead of saying John Smith, they would say Smith John, and instead of Mr. Brown, Brown Mister. The country is rich in flowers and in vegetable productions. They have carried the art of making paper to great perfection. Dr. Macgowan showed an overcoat made of paper, perfectly strong and serviceable. In this country we have paper collars, but in Japan they go further, and have paper handkerchiefs, which are very beautiful and soft, and of very fine texture. But they are more delicate than we, in one respect. After they have used a handkerchief they throw it away, and are thus saved the trouble of washerwomen. They even weave their paper, and make what may be called paper cloth of it.

From The Spectator.

THE CAPITAL OF THE TYCOON.*

THE Capital of th Tycoon has but one fault-intolerable verbosity. Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister in Japan for five years, probably knows both the country and its capital better than any living European, and he has poured out his stores of knowledge with unreserved profusion. All things small and great, native feudalism and European discomforts, the tricks of the Tycoon's Government and the drift of English diplomacy, Japanese women's immodesty and European merchants' aggressiveness, the system of agriculture and Japanese toilettes, the policy of the oligarchy and native caricature, all are described with a fulness which leaves on the reader's mind the impression of acquiring exhaustive knowledge. The author's style is clear and simple, his mind has few prejudices, and he has a pictorial power, not perhaps great in degree, but easily and incessantly applied. His book will be read with almost excited interest by all men who have time, and they will concur with us in annoyance at the diffusive garrulity by which its permanent value has been so greatly reduced. Sir Rutherford Alcock has caught the oriental official disease. Everything is related at length, nobody is supposed to know anything, and there is as total a want of perspective as in a Chinese picture. The book almost begins with two pages about his furniture, and the Japanese habit of dispensing with chairs and tables is alluded to some twenty or thirty times in the volumes, always in lengthy and carefully worded paragraphs. Then the man's mind is full of bottled ideas. He has been thinking for twenty years with no better opportunity for getting rid of his thoughts than consular and vice-consular despatches might afford, and he has sprung at his opportunity with an eagerness almost comical. From page 23 to page 29 we have, for example, instead of words on Japan, two capital leading articles on the expediency of supplying English officials to direct all Chinese efforts at reform. Whole essays on civilization and Government might be picced together out of these volumes, and might, for aught we know, be exceedingly valuable

*The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in Japan. By Rutherford Alcock, Two Vols. London: Longman, Green,

K.C.B. and Co.

to mankind. Sir Rutherford has lived many years among many and very strange races of men, and thoroughly understands the oldest social polity now existing on earth. His views on civilization, therefore, are entitled to a respectful hearing, but somehow, scattered through a work on Japan, they seem to stand between us and the subject, to suggest only thoughts which distract attention, and resemble too closely those insufferable speeches in which the chorus of the old Greek drama tries to educate the spectator's eyes.

This, however, is our single objection to the work, which is by far the best yet produced on Japan, in many departments exhausts existing knowledge of the subject, and in all creates the strongest impression of authenticity and trustworthiness. It is, too, in almost all readable, for the author's garrulous diffusiveness, his wholly colloquial tone, however wearisome on many subjects, on others rather increases than diminishes the ordinary reader's enjoyment. It is "nice" to be told minutely what one may buy in a Japanese bazaar, and if the "reflections" are tiresome, why the reader, unlike the critic, is under no law which compels him to abstain from skipping.

It is, of course, hopeless to give in the compass of a review an idea of the different subjects touched or discussed in a work so desultory and so exhaustive. Articles might be written on Sir R. Alcock's adventures, on his narrative of official massacres, on his theory of Japanese government, on his account of Japanese civilization, and each, if it borrowed freely from him, would be a contribution to our existing knowledge. But we must perforce rest content with a less complete analysis, and confine ourselves, one The entire book will leave, we think, on the flection" excepted, exclusively to results. mind of the careful reader just two distinct impressions.

66 re

1. Japan is the seat of an old civilization, highly organized, and very successful, but of the Pagan type. The people are fairly well off, hunger and want being apparently unknown in Japan. They are governed by laws pretty fairly administered, which ensure steady obedience, and reduce the relations of man to man to a complex but endurable form. They have made great progress in some arts, architecture and painting, agriculture and me

chanics, erect magnificent buildings, sketch | over steady on his legs, the terror of all the any scene in a satirical or a pathetic spirit, unarmed population and street-dogs. Happy farm on the principle of using all the manure for the former, when he is content with trying we waste, and have actually built a working and many a poor crippled animal is to be seen the edge of a new sw on the quadrupeds; steamer from the sight of Dutch drawings limping about slashed over the back, or with alone. Sir R. Alcock vouches for that fact, more hideous evidences of brutality. But at absolutely unique in the history of progress, other times it is some coolie or inoffensive on the evidence of his eyes. They have built shopkeeper, who, coming unadvisedly between mighty cities, and govern them rigidly; have the wind and his nobility,' is just as merciconstructed grand roads, and kept them in lessly cut down at a blow." order, and have covered the country with The people cannot seize these men, and the splendid though too often fortified chateaus; police are afraid of the lords whose insignia have made their populace a law-abiding peo- the bravoes wear, and of the camaraderie ple, and have perfected a system of govern- which induces them to avenge each other at ment which, in its searching despotism and any cost. Life under such circumstances is minute kindliness surpasses that of Venice- not pleasant for the nine parts of society who the only European form to which it presents are not yakonins, the populace, even in Yeddo, even a partial analogy. On the other hand, for example, always dreading to go abroad they have, like the Chinese stereotyped their after dark. Then every law is enforced by system, and, like all Pagans, have succeeded death, and the people are drilled by terror in destroying the instinctive reverence for into an abject obedience, of which Sir Ruthlife, the savage regard for truth, and the de- erford Alcock gives one amusing, and many sire for female purity. If a common man very shameful examples. kills a common man, even by accident, he is executed, Japan not desiring murder; but Yeddo is crowded with bravoes who, for anything Sir R. Alcock could detect, take human life at will.

As for purity, the Japanese have adopted the oriental idea that the value of chastity is not moral but social, as preserving the family bond, and have carried out that theory to its logical conclusion. The wife who commits adultery is put to death, but with this single "These are the classes which furnish suitexception license is unrestricted. Girls are able types of that extinct species of the race in Europe, still remembered as Swashbuck- sold by respectable parents for a few years of lers,'-swaggering, blustering bullies; many prostitution, then marry, pass under a strict cowardly enough to strike an enemy in the law of chastity, and are received as modest back, or cut down an unarmed and inoffensive and excellent members of society. Men seem man;-but also supplying numbers ever ready under no restriction whatever. Prostitution to fling their own lives away in accomplishing is legalized, the pictures of leading prostitutes a revenge, or carrying out the behests of are exhibited in the great temple, "to honor their chief. They are all entitled to the priv- them," and the whole land teems with a ilege of two swords, rank and file, and are saluted by the unprivileged (professional, half-grotesque obscurity. Sir R. Alcock seems mercantile, and agricultural) as Sama, or to doubt whether, after all, the women are lord. With a rolling straddle in his gait, re- not modest, and no doubt the habit of bathing minding one of Mr. Kinglake's graphic de- naked in public does not prove the contrary. scription of the Janissary, and due to the The notion that modesty is matter of clothes same cause, the heavy projecting blades at his waist, and the swaddling-clothes round belongs only to cold climates and to very rehis body,―the Japanese Samourai or Yaconin cent times, the lower classes of Italians, for moves on in a very ungainly fashion, the hilts instance, till lately sleeping naked, and the of his two swords at least a foot in advance Burmese, whose women are, on the whole, of his person, very handy, to all appearance, perhaps, the purest in Asia, being as carefor an enemy's grasp. Such a fellow is a less in the matter of bathing as Japanese man to whom all peace-loving subjects and dames. But the rule about unmarried girls prudent people habitually give as wide a berth is fatal to the very existence either of modas they can! Often drunk, and always insolent, he is to be met with in the quarters of the town where the tea-houses most abound; or returning about dusk from his day's debauch, with a red and bloated face, and not

esty as a habit, or chastity as anything but a social convenience, and must gradually brutalize society by destroying the possibility at once of real love, of healthy passion, and of

instinctive respect for womanhood. Society | 728, of whom seventeen are more or less incan exist, and repeatedly has done so, with-dependent, and some dozens of smaller magout chastity; but it cannot improve without nates, ranging from the lower sum down to it, or develop any of the higher and more seven and eight thousand a year. The greater complex advantages which should belong to magnates maintain a council around the Tyhigh civilization. The extraordinary filth of coon, and it is by the fluctuations of opinion Japan, too, which so permeates society that in this council that the "haute politique” children's toys and schoolbooks must be care- of Japan is really carried on. There is no fully scrutinized before they are sent to Eng-party, Sir R. Alcock inclines to think, in faland, must tend to keep up the passions at a vor of the admission of foreigners, but one is level very fatal to the physical or mental de-afraid of their hostility, and the other is not. velopment, even of orientals. Then as to The former granted the treaty, as they truth, the Japanese lie habitually, without thought, under menaces, but they, from the any sense of shame, officials, for example, day the council discovered that Europe would when taxed with falsehood, remarking that not go to war without cause, the latter, or their business is to obey orders, not to tell Conservative party, has been rapidly gaining truth. To this day it would seem almost certain that the legal sovereign has never even heard of the European treaties, which he is officially held to have ratified, and no statement whatever from a Japanese official can be trusted, unless confirmed by circumstantial or other evidence. A civilization which produces no personal manliness, no respect for truth, no reverence for human life, and no sense of the value of sexual purity, must be held to have failed in most of the objects for which human society exists.

ground. It is this party which succeeded in isolating the British settlement at Yokohama, which encouraged the various attempts at assassinating foreigners, and which has now broken up Yeddo, and apparently transferred the nominal government to the powerless hands of the Mikado and all real power to their own. Its secret object, thinks the British minister, is so to disgust Europeans that Japan may return to its old isolation with new guarantees for retaining it an perpetuity. This party will never be favorable to foreign 2. The Government of Japan, apparently commerce, which they have intelligence one of unparalleled complexity, is really sim- enough to perceive would ultimately emanciple, being an oligarchy complicated only by pate their people, unless, indeed, they find it the efforts of the central Government to re- excessively profitable to themselves. Hitherduce it something like civilized order. to, they have not found it so, the Tycoon There was and is but one king, the Mikado, absorbing all the duties, of which part beoriginally a powerful sovereign, but now kept longed to the nobles, and intriguing to pre-much like the long-haired Merovingians-vent open ports in territories under the ima state prisoner in his own palace, yet invested mediate government of the peers. It is with with some legal power and excessive traditionary respect. He has, like those Merovingians, a mayor of the Palace, the Ziogoon, or Tycoon, who has a right apparently to all authority, but who practically passes his life in maintaining a system devised to keep the great nobles in order. These latter are the real rulers of the country, governing their estates with absolute power and by sheer brute force, their revenues from the soil enabling them to keep up small armies of soldiers, through whom they oppress or govern the provinces around them. Sir R. Alcock We have noticed one "reflection " made publishes in an appendix a kind of Japanese by Sir Rutherford Alcock as deserving more peerage, giving the revenues, fortresses, and than a passing word. We allude to chapter official position of all the greater peers.. There xi., which though devoted to Japanese affairs are twenty-three of these Daimioss, whose is really an able essay on the feeling of Asiatics revenues range from £115,000 a year to £769,- towards Europeans. It would be difficult to

this class our Government will ultimately have to deal, and the whole narrative leaves the impression that Japan is only to be opened in one of three ways-the re-assertion by force of the Mikado's original power, using him as we used the Mogul; the conquest of the country; or alliance with two or three of the greater princes. The latter course would be the easiest, while the first will probably be the one ultimately adopted, if not by us directly, at least by our AngloChinese allies.