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naval demonstration became neces

sary. Lord Lansdowne has himself indicated the programme which any serious Power must follow if it means to intervene with effect. It would no doubt be worth while merely to confer executive authority upon the European gendarmerie officers. But this would lead to endless conflicts with the Turkish Prefects and Governors. It would be useless to arrest criminals unless the courts were reformed. And to compel the Turks to pay the gendarmerie without reforming their whole financial system would simply mean that the The Speaker.

officials and the soldiers would receive less pay than ever, and there would be no money to repair the roads. Moreover, nothing short of a final solution will ever induce the Bulgarian or Greek bands to disarm or persuade the Turks to reduce the colossal army which lives upon the country. The Sultan would oppose serious reforms of detail as stoutly as he would fight any general and immediate remedy. The only satisfactory course is to nominate a European Governor independent of the Porte, endowed with full powers and responsible only to Europe.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

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pathy the essential qualities of the Dutch artists. He especially combats the idea that Dutch painting is mere technique, taking as his text the somewhat dogmatic pronouncement to that effect in the first chapter of Ruskin's Modern Painters. The conclusion which he reaches is that the Dutch painters were as elemental artists as those of any other century, and that, although the nature which they chose to illustrate was inferior in beauty to that on which Titian and Giorgione embroidered their gorgeous decorations, no art may justly be condemned for the humbleness of its materials. The one weak point of the Dutch artists, in his view, is their incapacity to improve on the realities of external nature. The form chosen for the volume is a large, slender octavo, which admits not only of an ample and legible page for the letter-press but of the reproduction upon an adequate scale of some of the most striking examples of the Dutch school of art. Of these there are four photogravures, and twenty-four other full-page illustrations.

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PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

THE LIVING AGE:

A Weekly Magazine of Contemporary Literature and Thought.

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It is in the spring-time, the far-famed cherry-blossom time, when all Japan makes holiday beneath spacious canopies of pink and white bloom, or a little later, when the giant wistarias display their hanging mauve trusses, while irises, tree-peonies and azaleas create a riot of color in the land, or else in autumn, after rains and storms have passed away and the woods are arrayed in scarlet and gold, that the everincreasing army of tourists from the West is wont to overrun these pleasant Eastern resorts, testifying to its appreciation thereof in the shrill, nasal, or guttural accents of the divers nationalities which it represents. During the summer, travellers, save such as are bound for the mountains, are warned off from Japan by the guide-books. July and August are months of oppressive, damp heat and frequent rains; flowers, except the lotus, are few at that season, and the mosquito is a burden.

However, seasons vary, and on this * Written in 1903.

brilliant August day there is no rain nor sign of any in dusty Tokyo-has been none, they say, for weeks past. The Genza, that wide main thoroughfare of the Mikado's capital, with its incongruous tramcars and multitudinous perspiring foot-passengers, is baking and shimmering in the heat; the untiring little jinrikisha-man in the shafts, whose white mushroom hat goes bobbing along on a level with your feet as you sit beneath a sun umbrella, has to mop his brow continually, though he never relaxes his pace; the masons, busy over their work of demolition and deplorable reconstruction, have discarded all the clothing that can be decently discarded in a city so bent upon becoming European in aspect and habit. The transmogrifying process is being carried out only too rapidly and thoroughly. Everywhere the old wooden houses, with their overhanging tiled roofs, are coming down, to be replaced by meaningless, unsuitable, flimsy structures of brick and stucco; Europe, or rather America, is being re

produced here with a fidelity as unflattering as a photograph to the commonplace original. The transition effect is depressing. It does not, somehow, seem to imply progress, or at least not progress in the right direction. One has the impression (wrongly perhaps, yet unavoidably) of a vulgar degeneration. Happily, Japan is a land of almost incessant earthquakes.

For the rest, it is easy, and does not take very long, to escape from the dust and noise and bustle of the streets to the seclusion of the Shiba Park, where, girdled by overarching trees and enclosed by rotting black palings, are the mortuary temples of the Tokugawa Shoguns, who for two centuries and a half ruled Japan from the old Yedo, which has not yet been completely converted into new Tokyo. Here at least one has no sense of change, beyond that wrought by lapse of time, stress of destructive weather, and, unfortunately, lack of care. For the shrines of the Shoguns are not much frequented, and the priests in charge are said to be poor-so much so that repairs are visibly neglected. But the work of the patient, laborious artists who adorned these temples, into the 'twilight of which one penetrates through courts filled with the customary stone lanterns, is virtually imperishable. Employing only the very best materials, they could brave decay. Gold lacquer may have been a little rubbed here and there, colors may have faded somewhat; but the exquisite wood-carving remains sharp and clear, the metals and crystals and inlaying cannot crumble away. Here we have the last word of decorative art; not to be surpassed, nor ever again, one surmises, to be equalled; for never and nowhere again, if an ephemeral denizen of this hurried, narrowed world may venture to prophesy, will such years recur as those in which Japan, closed against foreigners and self-sufficing, could

carry out tasks in hand with so fine a disregard of the pecuniary value of the passing hours.

Of course, such conscientious finish of minutest detail does not make for general effect. Here, as everywhere in Japan, there is a suggestion of disdain for facile ostentation, a hint of secrecy, mystery, dignified reserve, characteristic of a people whose habitations are of the barest simplicity, whose treasured possessions are exhibited only to those who can appreciate them, whose elaborate and charming courtesy veils one knows not what sentiments, opinions, aims. If you wish to enjoy the beauties of the Shiba temples you must look for them, and look rather closely in that semi-darkness. Yet the general effect, whether designedly or not, is there: an effect at once glorious and mournful, which fitly commemorates departed rulers and an abolished system of rule. It is very quiet and still among these shrines and tombs; the clop, clop of wooden clogs is heard only at intervals in the courts that surround them; the hum of the living city comes but faintly and fitfully upon the breeze which sets the leaves overhead rustling; the one persistent sound is the peculiar dirge-like croakAh! ah! ah!-of ravens, hovering always above the temple roofs.

Ravens are long-lived birds, and to be old is to be conservative. If they lament the vanished magnificences of Ieyasu and his successors, of feudal daimyos and attendant samurai, of a civilization which needed not to borrow or imitate, unless from that neighboring civilization on the mainland whence it took its start, possibly they may have some human congeners in this abruptly revolutionized country. Possibly, and, one would imagine, probably; although there is not much to confirm conjecture in that direction. Something in the nature and genius of the race-patriotism, perhaps, or the

ingrained habit of obedience, or one of the many forms of Oriental fatalismseems to lead them towards a ready and cheerful acquiescence in the decrees of their rulers. Without audible murmurs they accept all that has been thrust upon them: the preposterous buildings, the greatly increased cost of living, the absurd European costume (which is now obligatory, at least at Court), the substitution of European laws, customs, and methods of government for those which, through long use and wont, must have become dear to their hearts. And for what equivalent? Once upon a time, when Napoleon III. passed for an ambitious would-be conqueror, and certain small States lived in fear of their formidable neighbor, a fire-eating subject of his was engaged in controversy with a Genevese professor upon the drawbacks and advantages of annexation.

"Mais, monsieur," he exclaimed at last, "ça vous est-il égal de pouvoir dire Je suis Fr-r-rançais ou d'avouer que vous êtes"-and here he dropped his voice to a demure whisper-"Suisse?"

Is it or is it not worth some sacrifice of personal convenience to belong to a great nation? Does patriotism necessarily mean ambition to see one's nation powerful, or will desire for the blessings of unobtrusive prosperity suffice? Be that as it may, the intense patriotism of the Japanese is beyond dispute, and when some forty-five millions of human beings are admittedly patriotic, intelligent, docile, and fearless, they are likely to go far, provided that they have capable leaders. Japan, we are assured, does not dream of becoming paramount in Asia; her legitimate aspirations have been formulated over and over again; if only these can be realized, she will not ask for more; the Yellow Peril is a ridiculous bogey. Perhaps so.

Meanwhile, on this sultry August day our Tokyo friends profess to be

They

seeking peace and ensuing it. have been told that they must really be reasonable, and have smilingly replied that if they are anything, they are that. Fight Russia single-handed? Oh, but of course not! Not, at least, unless their very existence as a nation should be threatened; in which case, naturally, they would have to defend themselves to the best of their poor ability. They quite understand that the Great Powers cannot and will not be drawn into a general war for the sake of their beaux yeux. Glittering, obliquely set, heavy lidded little bootbuttons of eyes, which reveal nothing, but see all that there is to be seen! If the Japanese are as inscrutable as diplomatists, merchants, and travellers unite in pronouncing them, they probably have not the same complaint to make of us, our ingenuous Western motives and methods lying so very much upon the surface-for the admiration or otherwise of the contemplative.

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Well, let us give ourselves the pleasure and amusement of watching them in their surface aspect, since we are not likely to penetrate far beneath it. A foreigner may watch them for a long time without ceasing to be pleased and amused. Simple, kindly, good-humored folk, one would say; devoted, as everybody has noticed, to children and boundlessly patient with them; not unlike good children themselves, and certainly most unlike descendants of the truculent warriors whom their artists love to depict. The well-knit little soldiers of to-day, in their clean white linen uniforms, look fit for work, it is true, but convey no impression of the suppressed cruelty and lust for blood which are so unmistakably legible upon the rascally visages of the Chinamen whom they put to confusion nine years ago. Numbers of them are strollinghand in hand generally-about the Ueno Park on the other side of the city, a

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