8. Kiyoto's streets are delightful, and Kiyoto of all towns in Japan that I saw is the most attractive. All the world is in gala attire, for high holiday is being kept in honour of the great exhibition. The girls are beautifully dressed and look lovely; they are famous in this province for their beauty, and they deserve to be, being fairer-skinned and prettier than their sisters of Yedo. Their dresses are very rich scarlet petticoats and dressing gowns of gorgeous colour and fantastic patterns, the turned back cuffs and collars. being scarlet, and worked with gold thread. In some streets almost every house is a shop-photographers, tobacconists, and toy-shops; of these last there is a wonderful number, full of little figures of doll-Buddhas. They make dolls, also, which are amazingly like babies. I was very much deceived on one occasion, when I was travelling from Yedo to Yokohama in the same carriage with a girl carrying what I felt sure was a real baby, but after some time, surprised at its silence, I examined it, and found out my mistake, much to the girl's amusement, for it was only a doll. One street is full of fairs, theatres, archery-galleries, teahouses and jugglers, and here we spent a whole day and never felt tired. In one fair is a show containing figures of men and women, made of bamboo and wax, in all sorts of positions, who move their arms at intervals, fanning, fighting, and playing spasmodically.1 9. The archery-galleries are very numerous, and are typical of the childish character of the people. We enter a room at whose further end are a number of small targets of different sizes, some made of metal, 1 Spasmodically, by 'fits and starts,' or jerks. some of parchment. Two girls appear out of a side door, and hand us miniature bows made of whalebone, and ornamented with silver. The arrows are about a foot long, and beautifully made, with blunt ends. Our attempts at straight shooting are ludicrous,1 but now we give our bows to one of these girls and ask her to shoot. Her every shot is fatal, flying straight to the mark, and a small target, the size of a saucer, she hits with surety every time. This game is much played in private houses. 10. We returned to Osaka by a different route. We rode the first twenty miles, accompanied by running bettos, or grooms, who kept pace with us easily. We went through a fertile tea-growing district, where the land was almost entirely cultivated with the teaplant, growing in different sizes from large bushes to quite small thick shrubs. Over a considerable extent of ground these tea-fields were sometimes covered with a roof of matting to protect the bushes, we supposed, from the sun. The country was, as usual, very pretty. Numbers of women were working among the teabushes, picking the leaves and putting them into large baskets. II. In the little villages, and outside all the cottages, tea-leaves were laid out on the road to dry; inside the cottages we saw heaps of green tea-leaves, and in the tea-houses they gave us most excellent tea to drink, and the air everywhere seemed redolent of tea. The soil of the land was a bright red colour, and the cottage walls were red-coloured too, because plastered with this red soil. Adapted from Lord G. CAMPBELL's Log Letters from the Challenger, by permission of Messrs. MACMILLAN and Co. ! Ludicrous, laughable. THE BENDED BOW. [It is supposed that war was anciently proclaimed in Britain by sending messengers in different directions through the land, each bearing a bended bow; and that peace was in like manner announced by a bow unstrung, and therefore straight.] 1. THERE was heard the sound of a coming foe, 'Heard you not the battle horn? And the reaper armed, like a freeman's son; 2. 'Hunter! leave the mountain-chase, Let the wolf go free to-day, Leave him for a nobler prey; Let the deer ungalled go by Arm thee! Britain's foes are nigh!' And the hunter armed ere the chase was done; And the bended bow and the voice passed on. 3. 'Chieftain quit the joyous feast-- Arm thee! Britain's foes must fall.' And the chieftain armed and the horn was blown; And the bended bow and the voice passed on. 4. 'Prince! thy father's deeds are told Give our bards a tale of thee!' And the prince came armed, like a leader's son ; And the bended bow and the voice passed on. 5. 'Mother! stay thou not thy boy, Britain calls the strong in heart!' And the bended bow and the voice passed on, And the bards made song for a battle won. V. & VI. MRS. HEMANS THE BEGINNING OF THE 'MIDDLE AGES." PART I. I. THE world in the West, as known to us in history, was surrounded by a vague and unexplored waste of barbarism. During the first three centuries of the empire all in the South seemed settled; all in the North was unstable,2 and in movement. In the eyes of civilised mankind there were in the world two great empires, of very unequal force: the eternal empire of Rome, secure as nature itself, and the Asiatic empire of the East, at one time held by a Parthian, then by Persian dynasties 3-often troublesome, but never a real rival to Rome for the allegiance of the nations around the focus of civilisation, the Mediterranean Sea. 2. India was still wrapped in mystery and fable. Outside the Roman and Persian borders, northwards and north-eastwards, there was a vast, dimly-known chaos of numberless barbarous tongues and savage races, from which, from time to tinie, strange rumours reached the great Italian capital of the world, and unwelcome visitors showed themselves in the distant provinces on the Rhine and the Danube; and contemporaneously with the beginning of the empire had begun a shaking of the nations, scarcely perceptible at first, but visibly growing in importance as time went on. 1 The Middle Ages, the period between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries. 2 Unstable, likely to undergo change. 3 Dynasties, lines of kings. • Contemporaneously, at the same time. |