sound advice and urging bold and comprehensive measures, it is only superior minds that can receive foreign counsel of this kind and act upon it. With Japanese it might well have been feared that they would have felt but little disposed to accept such guidance or appreciate its value. In tracing the progress of events and the results, we cannot doubt, however, that they both sought and willingly accepted the best advice within reach in their efforts to mould their own institutions into forms analogous to the best in Europe and in harmony with the principles of European civilisation, in preference to their own with which they were more familiar. Among the many radical changes which they succeeded in carrying successfully through in those short three years, some were precisely of that class from which the boldest innovators are apt to shrink as beyond their power. When the Tartar conquerors of China had swept through the vast empire like a simoom, devastating and depopulating whole provinces and levelling populous cities, they determined to compel the conquered race to adopt the Tartar costume, shave their heads and wear the tail with which in modern days all Chinese are associated in our minds; and no measure so severely tried their strength. Laws, institutions, taxes, all were borne with patience by the much-enduring Chinese; but the change of costume was more than they could or would bear patiently, and many desperate revolts were due to this cause. Yet nothing daunted, the Mikado has dared to abolish all distinctions in dress between the different classes-one of the most fondly cherished privileges of the nobles and military; to make them lay aside their swords-also serving as insignia of rank and privilege. Even in this he seems to have borrowed from us what we are familiar with as permissive legislation. They were allowed to lay aside their side arms. The exclusive right to ride has in like manner been withdrawn from the upper classes. The proscription of the poorest classes has been abolished, and also the prohibition against women going abroad. These are changes which try the power and influence of the strongest Governments in all countries, but more especially perhaps in the East. And they have all been effected in Japan in the brief space of a couple of years. Nor must we omit in this rapid glance the two greatest of the fundamental changes adventured upon-the disestablishment of the Buddhist religion and the withdrawal of all prohibitions against Christianity, to which we have already alluded.

Perhaps if there be any secret misgiving as to the wisdom. of so many and such vast changes, and a doubt of their perma

nence, both arise not unnaturally from the fear that the pace is too fast to be safe, and the progress making since the first great strides has been in some instances both uncertain and unsteady. Japan has doubtless passed, and so far safely, through a great crisis in her existence. The old polity under which her people have lived for more than 600 years, has been replaced by another, which if similar in some essentials to the one subverted is obviously and necessarily totally different in many more. It has been truly observed in the Japan press that, in this restored polity there are two new elements of enormous force, both revolutionary, but not on that account necessarily dangerous, yet requiring the most sagacious con'trol. One is the presence in the Government of new men, possessed of undoubted intelligence, but deficient in that con'servative spirit which is never so much required as at a time when States are undergoing changes in their institutions. The other is the infusion from without into the minds of these men, and more or less into the mind of the nation, of ideas 'which are novel, potent, and, unless properly controlled, dangerous.'

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The writer of the very able summary in the Japan Mail,' from whose article the above extract is taken, goes on to point out with great clearness the danger to which we refer in the following paragraph full of practical knowledge and wisdom:

'It is wise to reduce into harmony, as far as possible, the new with the old political structure; to deal tenderly with rooted institutions, rights, sentiments, and even prejudices; to reduce the pace of the change to a safe and sober one; to distrust the future somewhat, and to apply every possible test to the ground which is being approached. We have no hesitation in saying that the proximity of this country to America is a source of danger to it, not because many of the principles of American institutions are otherwise than sound and good, but because they are utterly unsuited to this country, the antecedents of which do not permit of the safe application of American ideas to its polity. The sound progress of nations is a process of evolution, and there are certain stages which must be gone through before other advanced stages can be reached. It is possible, of course, to reduce the period requisite for the advance from one stage to another, but it is not possible to dispense with the various steps and phases of the evolution. And it is not possible to pass from Feudal institutions to the freedom of Republicanism by one step, even were Asiatic capable of ever being moulded into a Republican form. It is the wildest and most pernicious of errors for the Japanese to imagine that, they can travel along a royal road which shall bring them abreast of European nations, without any of the toil those nations have undergone in attaining their present position. They require above all things patience,

sobriety, and prudence at this moment. Their faces are set in the right direction, but their steps are uncertain, wavering, and distracted.'

How entirely we agree with this writer in every word and sentiment we need hardly say, since the whole tendency of this article is to urge similar views in the interest of the Japanese themselves, and in that of the whole civilised world in relation with them. We believe one of the greatest dangers to Japan in its present progressive state, eagerly seeking to assimilate all the stimulating food supplied them by the more advanced civilisation and ideas of the Western world, lies in one direction and springs from a single root-and that is Corruption. In spite of the very general spirit of patriotism among the Japanese as a nation and a love of Fatherland' which no German can vie with, they are infected from top to bottom with this canker worm of corruption. This, which it is painful to think has in no sense diminished by foreign intercourse-but rather the contrary, must be extirpated with uncompromising severity. Those who have lived the longest with the Japanese, best know how universal and all-pervading is this vice; and they alone, perhaps, are in a position to fully appreciate the difficulty of dealing with it, and the impossibility of regenerating the country and its administration without it can be banished from the public offices and Government. Especially is great care required in the administration of public works and of finance. There is a great deal of reckless expenditure at present which is pregnant with danger to the new order of things, and difficult to separate from this national vice of corruption.

Nearly all the useful work hitherto done in Japan has been carried out with the assistance of Englishmen, and is mainly if not exclusively due to their aid. Railways, telegraphs, mint, lights and lighthouses, have all been the work of English hands and in great part of English capital. We do not quarrel with the wish of the Americans to be regarded by the Japanese as their best friends. We may safely leave the Japanese to find out for themselves who are their best friends among the nations or governments of the West. Our desire should be, that they will find good and reliable friends among them all. The great fault of the Japanese character, as we have already shown, is their conceit; and a certain flightiness and want of steadiness in following out any course. They They are subject also to sudden fits of distrust and suspicion-all of which tends to a certain unreliability in everything they undertake. This comes out in a hundred shapes, and ridiculously enough in the difficulty the authorities at home have in keeping their students

in foreign countries under sufficient control. This is partly due to the conceit of the youths, no doubt; but greatly also to a want of intelligence on the part of the Government in the arrangements they make for their education and the supply of the funds required. Where these are not under good control there can be no discipline or regularity maintained, and without it much of their time is likely to be wasted. The number of students now educating in various countries, and the high rank of some, makes it a subject of great importance that their time should be well spent, and that the knowledge they take back with them is not of the superficial kind which is most apt to find favour with them. In the present state of the country and the position they will be likely to hold on their return, it is to the last degree important that they should gain a solid education, for a little knowledge may well prove a dangerous gift in such circumstances.

The approaching revision of the treaties will test the sincerity of the Mikado much better than ceremonial speeches, and also the soundness of the knowledge acquired as to the wants of Japan and the means of meeting them while taking into account the wants and the interests of other countries. We cannot here enter on so wide a subject as the revision of treaties. But it is clear that what foreign countries want of Japan is something more solid than empty privileges. Liberty of travel will probably be no longer withheld, but there is more need of improved Customs administration. Nothing can well be more imperfect than the present, or more corrupt. Improved Courts of Justice are much wanted. There is nothing yet in the country deserving the name or into which foreigners can carry any cases. A civil code seems not less required. A settled currency free from all tampering, such as has hitherto occurred, is a primary necessity. There is still a remnant of the old vexatious system of official surveillance and interference with foreigners to be got rid of Some check to the wide-spread and deep-seated corruption of all the official classes, to which we have already alluded, is much to be desired. If to these general heads be added encouragements or facilities for the introduction of foreign enterprise, as in the working of mines and for the increased production and improvement of silk, tea, and other articles of export, we shall have enumerated all the leading points regarding which we may hope in the forthcoming negotiations, it may be possible to secure real and substantial progress. Of one thing we may be certain, that it is the interest of every treaty Power with commercial relations and desiring the

development and progress of Japan in the new path it has chosen, to instruct their representatives at the Court of the Mikado to use whatever influence they may possess in high places to set before the Ministers of the Mikado the advantages of steady progress rather than of undue speed. It should not be difficult for Sir Harry Parkes on his return to his post, to convince them of the impossibility of adopting at once, in a country like Japan, the institutions of a foreign land which have been evolved by a slow and natural process from European minds, and probably therefore are in no sense adapted without great modification to Japanese character and wants. These institutions, which it has taken European nations many centuries to work out and establish, cannot without great danger be suddenly transplanted in their full exotic growth to the soil of Japan. We can only hope that Japanese statesmen will profit by a careful study of the history of European Constitutions and attempts by revolution to suddenly establish other systems, and steadily refuse to be hurried recklessly on to uproot everything that is ancient and to plant in their place without preparation or adaptation the institutions of other countries, even though they should be certified as the last new thing from the most advanced nation of the West, or the most valuable developments of modern civilisation and the science of Government. We sometimes make mistakes ourselves, and do not find it easy, or always safe, to step from the foundations of one century to those of another, without a good deal of preliminary preparation. Neither is there such perfect agreement among legislators and political economists in respect to the best forms of government and systems of administration as to justify foreign representatives in assuming that it rests with them to say for the guidance of an Eastern people in a stage of transition, what is either wisest or best. Constitutions so created or imposed by foreign influences, never take root in any soil.

We need only say, in conclusion, that to all who take any interest in Japan, or in following in all its phases one of the strangest revolutions in history, the work which has been placed at the head of this article will well repay perusal. It supplies interesting information, and the essays of the students, constituting the second part, give many glimpses of the influence of European ideas on the Japanese mind, and the peculiar form which these take in passing through the medium of Asiatic traditions and habits of thought. We have had nothing like it, in this point of view, since the Memoirs of 'Hagi Baba' delighted the world some forty years or more ago.