pleasure-grounds and the Mikado's Shishinden, or Hall of Audience, have something of the forlorn melancholy of an abandoned stage, it is not, after all, very difficult for the imagination to repeople them with the sumptuously attired daimyos who in days of yore used to come flocking thither along the Tokaido, attended by numerous retinues of two-sworded Samurai, to pay their respects to the sovereign recluse. Strangely fated recluse who, after a slumber of centuries, woke up one fine morning, at the bidding of a Yankee sea captain, to find that the actual business of governing was in his hands, and who now, arrayed in a French-looking uniform, prances forth to review troops armed with the latest pattern of rifle!

We may pardon his gallant soldiers their European uniforms, acknowledging that these were demanded by the sheer exigencies of the case; we may grant that his honorable Ministers must sit henceforth at pigeon-holed writingtables on suitably upholstered chairs; it was time, perhaps, to give up sitting on the floor. But we may also hope, not without confidence, that in due season he and his people will perceive what is worth retaining and what is best rejected out of the extraneous civilization which they have seized with both hands. Surely they will; for whether they deserve or not the epithets of incomprehensible, contradictory, inscrutable, and the like, which one grows a little weary of hearing applied to them, it is not intelligence nor the sifting faculty that will be denied them even by their least flattering critics. Only the other day a sage newspaper scribe observed that "although the Japanese disdain perspective in their pictures, there is no lack of it in their policy." One is a little reminded of the boarding-school young lady who, in an essay on natural history, alluded to the "strange and pa

thetic circumstance that the tortoise, which provides us with such beautiful combs for our back hair, has no back hair of its own." However, if the journalist meant to call the Japanese perspicacious, who shall gainsay him?

They have originated nothing, say the captious. No; but they have very seldom imitated without improving upon the original, and a wise eclecticism is in itself a form of originality, being so rare. Even supposing the worst comes to the worst, and their cities are destined to approximate more and more closely to the utilitarian model that we know too well, they themselves can never quite sink to a corresponding plane of dreary uniformity. The land, to say nothing of the natural temperament of its inhabitants, will not suffer that. In the future, as in the past, plum and cherry trees will burst forth with each recurring spring into acres of blossom, bamboos will sway and rustle by quiet pools, white foam of mountain torrents will flash between the red boles of lofty cryptomerias, strings of wild geese will take their flight across the pale disc of the moon, the snow-capped cone of Fuji will hover, delicate and phantomlike, in a blue haze between earth and sky. If the Japanese are wanting in originality (but of course they are not), no such reproach can be brought against Japan, which has a character and essence so distinct, so distinguished, so refined, and so inherent that one cannot conceive of it as liable to be vulgarized by any incursion of barbarians.

Viewed from the Kiyomizu heights this evening, Kyoto shows as Japanese and as unspoilt as anybody could wish the ancient capital to be. The rainclouds have dispersed; the last rays of the setting sun fire tiled roofs, pagodas, and the Kamogawa stream, with its bridges and riverside tea-houses; one gazes down at the groves and avenues of monastery grounds and at a many

colored crowd which is ascending by stairways or by the sharp acclivity of Teapot Hill, where vendors of cheap pottery and porcelain have their booths, to the high-perched temple of the Thousand-handed Kwannon. It is a shrine of great antiquity, and in much favor with the populace, who wend their way hither to toss pebbles on to the stone lanterns which surround it or coins into the extended sheet beside which a parchment-visaged Buddhist priest squats and taps his insistent gong. Should the cast pebble alight on the lantern and remain there, the suppliant is in luck and will obtain the object of his desire; but perhaps here, as at other shrines, it is a surer plan to employ cash, which cannot miss its mark and should be entitled to its equivalent.

The sun sinks, the brief afterglow and twilight of late summer follow; then on a sudden the whole city, spread out beneath the spectator's feet and sloping up towards them, breaks, as if by enchantment, into a galaxy of tiny sparks, some stationary, some darting hither and thither, like ä swarm of fireflies. East and west, Longman's Magazine.

north and south, the illumination extends until the entire prospect is a blaze of light. Every householder hangs out a string of paper spheres or cylinders, every man, woman, and child carries one suspended at the tip of a bamboo cane, and presently bonfires leap up into flame on the wooded hillsides; for the Bon matsuri has begun, and processions are starting, with measured chant and beat of drum, from all quarters in honor of this annual feast of lanterns. Witnessed from above, it is the most charming, fantastic, fairy-like spectacle that can be imagined; seen at closer quarters in the thronged, narrow streets, it resolved itself into a popular carnival, noisy and hilarious, but perfectly good-tempered. There is no drunkenness, no quarrelling, nor will there be any cracked heads, although the merrymaking is to be prolonged for many hours to come. Not before the night is far spent will lanterns and torches be extinguished, one by one, and the climbing moon look down out of a mother-of-pearl sky upon a city and a population which seem to smile still in their sleep. W. E. Norris.

The Slav has been reproached with leaving but a faint mark on history; he is thought to have done little for "liberty" and "progress." Perhaps he is judged too much by the higher political and administrative organs of the Russian Empire, which does not seem to yield the fruits of a good tree. It may be argued, however, that the Slav has been disabled by circumstances from developing on natural lines and preserving in their purity his primitive traditions.

In the things of this world, in mili

tary and political matters, he has had less success than the Teuton, though he has perhaps fared better than the Celt. The Celts have been thrust back into the extreme west of Europe; and the lands on which they live form part of the territory of States shaped on Teutonic lines. There never has been a Celtic State; but the Slav at least has founded various States, and some of them have struggled through to the present time. It is true that all have had great vicissitudes, and some have lost their independence, and even

し

their identity. Thus the Slovenes gave way before the Magyars, an Asiatic people. The Slavs in Mosia were overwhelmed by the Bulgars, a "Finnish" horde. In like manner, Servia fell, after several attacks, before the Turks, just as Russia itself for a time was under the Tartars, another Mongolian people. Poland was dismembered by Teutons and unnatural Slavs. Bohemia long found the hand of its Teuton neighbors heavy on it, but never lost its national spirit. Various Slav peoples were subdued by the Teutons who shaped Prussia into a Power.

It might be inferred from such a record, that there is something naturally servile about the Slav. But the secret of his weakness has also been that of his Celtic brother's subjection-a too great impatience of control, a too indiscreet love of liberty. The native temper of the race seems set against authority. In the traditions of more than one Slav people the beginnings of the State are ascribed to an inspired peasant. The form of their early societies seems to have been a democratic collectivism. It is curious to observe, in the case of Russia and Poland after the Law of 1863, how easily the foreign institutions of a later growth fell off, and how naturally the peasant took to the ways of his remote forefathers. Democratic tendencies, however, were not aids to "success" for communities in the ages of force.

The Slav, like the Celt, labored under two disadvantages in his warfare with the Teuton: he did not invent or take kindly to the feudal monarchy; and he did not like city life or the occupations which town dwellers fol

low.

The hereditary feudal monarchy implied a sacrifice of liberty; and if the Teuton claims to have done anything for human liberty, he had better point to other achievements than this. It was before all things an organ of force,

and, though it strengthened German peoples, just as the modern organization of the German Empire has strengthened them, it did so at the expense of liberty. The Anglo-Saxon had freer institutions before the Norman Conquest; it has often been pointed out that this event substituted a "strong" rule for the "weak" rule of the Saxon kings. It also substituted a lower ideal; for the Witan was the instrument of a higher type of State. The Slav, who never developed feudal kingship, remained more free and more democratic. It may not be an accident that, just as the Normans gave greater coherence to the Saxon realm, so, too, Northmen laid the foundations of the Russian Power, which has attained greater success than other Slav States. Bohemia was a country in which the difference was made manifest between Slav notions of elective rulers and Teutonic notions of the position of a people as the "estate" of a dynasty. Poland again held out against making the succession to the crown hereditary, almost to the end; but sometimes organisms have to revert to a lower type in order to survive. The proud prefer to perish.

The fate of Poland is also a measure of the value of cities. We are apt to think of the City State as important only in the ancient world. The Teutons, however, would have made little mark without urban communities in the Middle Ages. From Basel, down the Rhine to the Low Countries: over the east of England and Scotland: in the north of Italy, whose republics reproduced the good and bad of Greek life, the influence of the Teutonic City State was plain. They might degenerate-like the Scotch Royal burghsinto close and jealous bodies, keeping to a few the franchise and trading rights; but earlier they stood for liberty and security in the following of peaceful labor, as against the force

and idle robbery of the medieval baron. The Celt and the Slav lacked them-in Ulster it was remarked that, before the Plantation, there was no city but Armagh. In like manner, Argyll may be contrasted with Fife. If Poland had had such an element in her society, her nobles would not have been able to enslave the peasantry and make the royal power a shadow. Certainly on Polish soil there are and have been towns enough, but they were full of Teutons and Jews; there were no native burgesses, no stuff to fashion into a Third Estate.

The case of Russia is unlike that of Poland; there the Czars strengthened themselves at the expense of the nobility, like our Tudors, and the modern bureaucracy is made up of men whose claim to nobility is the fact that they serve the crown. Unlike our Whigs, they are not necessarily drawn from the native aristocracy. The political development of Russia has indeed not proceeded on democratic Slav but on bureaucratic Prussian lines. The latter model is fit for a true empire; and in Prussia there is that signal mark of empire-predominance of race. If we leave out the Rhenish Provinces, the rest of Prussia is built on the débris of crushed Slav peoples. The recent attempts to drill the Baltic Provinces, Finland, and the Armenian Church into a uniform pattern, are modelled on the Prussian policy pursued in Alsace-Lorraine and the German part of Poland. Indeed, the partition of Poland has kept the three Eastern illiberal Powers together by a community of interests and fears. It is a matter of history, that Russian statecraft has been largely borrowed from German oracles; the chief difference being, that in Russia there is not, as in' Prussia, a ruling class of non-Slav race. It is indeed as safe to affirm the "Teutonic" character of the Tsardom as it is to speak of the "Latin" civilLIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1378

ization of France, Spain, and Italy. All that is meant is, that these countries yet retain the impress of the time when they were provinces of the Roman Empire. In Russia, Slav ways and ideas must be sought lower down in the social and political scale-in the "mir," with its communal ownership of land, in the "aztel," or co-operative workshop, in the organization of local self-government.

In spiritual, as in secular things, the Slav spirit is not well reflected by the institution which stands for it in the eyes of the world. The Greek Church has been imposed on the Slav; it is not a spontaneous expression of his habit of mind. Indeed, it was a geographical accident that brought him within its: fold. The Russian Slavs were converted by Greek missionaries, while the Balkan Slavs lived within the sphere of the Greek Empire. The Poles and Bohemians were gathered into the Latin Church. No Church could have a close connection with two such systems as the Byzantine and Russian Empires, and yet suffer no reaction. Yet the Greek Church is not SO "Erastian" as a Western Church would have been under like condition; in each case the State has been in a mould Oriental enough to enable the Church to give it a theocratic tinge. Russia is the only country in Europe where "Procurator of the Holy Synod" could be the title of a high officer of State. If the Greek Church had set store by being Catholic, like the Latin, it would have been more detached from these two political systems, and SO have been more of a free Church. Its ambition, however, has been to be Orthodox, not Catholic. Now, there is nothing Slav in such an aspiration; it is Greek, but, as understood by the Greek Church, sought to be realized on impossible conditions. The Greek genius, in its prime, desired to think

rightly; but such thinking was recognized as implying growth and progress. The Greek Church wished an impossibility to think rightly, but without growth or change. The very name Byzantine is a by-word for soulless verbal dialectics. In Russia, the close connection with the State, joined to this enforcement of formal orthodoxy and the policy of keeping human beings in tutelage, makes the Greek Church a persecuting Church. Notwithstanding this, there are millions of Dissenters in Russia, who seem to find the Greek Church alien from their temper, just as the Celts with one accord have rejected the Anglican Establishment. Yet the Greek Church has bent to humor popular leanings. The use of pictures is conceded to the objective mind. The rejection of instrumental music from divine service, if not maintained on Puritan grounds, as among the Presbyterians, has the effect of making the service more congregational. Again, as in the Roman but not in the Anglican communion, the bulk of the secular clergy is drawn from the people. The Orders of regulars lead a cloistered contemplative life, about which there is something Eastern, but little akin to the feverish, missionary zeal of Jesuits and other brotherhoods in the Latin Church.

Bohemia was the one Slav country that espoused the Reformed doctrines. Jerome and Hus borrowed much from Wiclif; the success of their movement was partly due to the fact that it blended with an outburst of Czech nationalist feeling against the Germans. It could hardly have done this, however, if it had not a democratic character. The Reformed doctrines, which prevailed in Bohemia for two hundred years, might have been established there for good, but for the Austrian conquest and persecution: nearly all the Protestants were killed, driven out, or overawed by the Viennese Em

peror in the Thirty Years' War. The evangelical Christianity yet surviving in Moravia, and the quality of much Russian Dissent, show a clear strain in the Slav, which is at home with early Christianity. The note of this Slav "heresy" is an unwillingness to make that compromise with the world, to which the Western Churches have more or less yielded. His temper is the "Christianity of the Gospel." To such a temper it is not a conclusive reason for not obeying the Sermon on the Mount, that such obedience would be fatal to the survival of the State. The Western State is not so dear to the heart of the Slav. This spirit has become articulate in Tolstoy; but it animates all those Russian believers who find that they cannot give military service to the State.

These traits should be remembered when we are disposed to think of the Slav as a Cossack. Perhaps more than most of us, he retains the stamp of our early Aryan forefathers. The unit of his society-the village community-is common to him and the Hindu. And, like the Hindu, he has a certain Eastern acquiescence in destiny; and in war he seems ready to be shot. He does not try to subdue the forces of Nature to himself, and has little share in mechanical contrivances. Moralists remind us that action is hindered by too much feeling; certainly the Slav seems to have too much feeling. He is as melancholy as the Greek; but shows it through music, even more than through literature. He is as impressionable as the Celt, with this dif ference-that his home has rarely been amid mountains or by the sea, except the Baltic, which is less inspiring than the Egean or the Atlantic. Hence, his art deals more with human kind than with Nature. His temper might have remained unknown to us, if we had had to go out of our way to study Slav folk-lore, dances, and airs; but in