Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/246

 the Japanese, this idea was extended to presents; they were fastened to a branch of some flowering tree. Then the same fancy received obscure development at the hands of poetasters, who, in sending a couplet to a friend or a lover, accompanied it by a blossom suitable to the season. If an article was too large to be hung from a flower-spray, convention must be complied with by tying the spray to the article. The same custom found another form of expression in the despatch of letters: they were placed in a split bamboo held aloft by the messenger as he ran. Social etiquette delighted in this language of allegory. Thus, in the epoch under review it was customary to place in a hall, at times of feasting or couplet-composing, a miniature ship carved in the perfumed wood of the agallochum. It stood upon a tray strewn with sand among which glistened fragments of rock-crystal, coral, jade, carnelians, and other brightly coloured minerals. This was the ship of fortune arriving at the isle of elysium. In later times it often took the form of the mountain of paradise with the symbols of longevity, the crane, the tortoise, and the pine.

The development of singing, dancing, and music is among the most remarkable features of the Heian epoch. It would be an extravagance to say that the era produced any great scholars in the Occidental sense of the term, for the range of accessible knowledge was extremely narrow.