Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/768

762 deepened she began to look on the conditions of public life as so many rivals that had already inflicted on her this first miserable day of existence by robbing her of her lover. She began to lose her enthusiasm about grateful constituencies, triumphant majorities carrying great measures through every stage, the national thanksgiving awarded to the wearied statesman. It may seem absurd to say that a girl of eighteen should begin to harbor a feeling of bitter jealousy against the British House of Commons, but stranger things than that have happened in the history of the human heart.

 

 From The Spectator.

may not be generally known in England that of the many and great changes which the influx of Western civilization into Japan has made in the manners and customs of the Japanese, not the least in magnitude or importance is the revolution in the calendar, by which the Western method of computing time has been adopted in its entirety. And the Japanese, so often styled the "French of the East," in nothing more justify the title than in the prominence they give to the festival of the New Year's Day, which is now, as with us, the 1st of January. And indeed, Yedo becomes a pretty sight, when decorated in holiday attire, to usher the new year in. A people in whom a natural taste for decorative art is perhaps more developed than anywhere else in the world, throw all their enegies into the task of dressing up their city with evergreen. Rich and poor alike have the taste, and all do something. Before the poorest house will be planted a couple of stalks of the omnipotent bamboo, which, having furnished our houses, nay, almost built them, clothed us, and to a small extent, even fed us, throughout the old year, now lends its delicate leaf, and the graceful pliancy of its stem, to help the city to be gay in welcoming in the new. A street in Yedo this day looks like an avenue of bamboos. But much greater things than this can be done by the more prosperous citizen. Here the bamboo is only used to be bent into, the framework of arches, and every other kind of device, and then covered with green leaves, with small oranges at intervals, thus supplying by art the absence of England's holly, with its natural contrast of red and green. And then the climate of Japan peculiarly lends itself to festivities at this season. With the exception of one slight fall of show, we have had the most glorious weather for many weeks, and the snow itself did not arrive until the new year had fairly begun with a cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine.

If the city is so pretty, it would be natural to suppose that the people would themselves appear in their best attire. And this also is well worth seeing, and worthy of some admiration, as far as the native dresses go. Groups of men and girls are scattered about the streets, playing, with no great skill, it must be confessed, the game of battledore and shuttlecock, a favorite pastime of the Japanese, who play this game as a game of forfeits, wherein the unlucky swain who drops the shuttlecock must submit to have a big streak of black paint drawn across his face by one of the competitors of the other sex, who in this game generally seem to get the best of it, and take huge delight in the infliction of the forfeit. The girls have on their gayest kimono or silk robe, which is often very tastefully decorated, and their best wooden sandals, which are generally lacquered. This attire, and a liberal allowance of powder to whiten the neck, which is left bare by the kimono, and rouge to color up the lips and cheeks, often enable the Japanese girl to put in an appearance, wanting in natural charms, but artistically a success. But when we come to the European costumes, then no pen but the pen of Dickens could do justice to the subject. For on this day everybody calls on everybody else, and the mikado holds a great reception for his ministers; and the correct dress to be worn by all not actually entitled to a uniform is simply European evening dress, surmounted by a tall hat. Surely such hats have never been seen elsewhere. For so long as anything is worn which has once been a tall hat, it does not matter what is its present condition, and such trifles as the fact that it has been persistently brushed the wrong way, or sat upon a few times, are beneath the notice of the statesman whose head it adorns. Nor do the dress-suits fail to come up to the same high standard. A pair of inexpressibles that once were black, made on a plan past mortal ken, so wonderfully tight and short are they, have their commencement about an inch above the tops of a pair of lady's boots. How these have been wriggled into no man shall say; the feat has been performed once more in safety, and the 