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7, 1860.] self and the wild and beautiful Miss Bonner were being recalled.

“I remember!” he said savagely, and reaching the door hurled out: “And I remember the Bull-dogs, too!—servant, my lady.” With which he effected a retreat to avoid a ringing laugh he heard in his ears.

Lady Jocelyn had not laughed. She had done no more than look and smile kindly on the old boy. It was at the Bull-dogs, a fall of water on the borders of the park, that Tom Cogglesby, then a hearty young man, had been guilty of his folly: had mistaken her frank friendliness for a return of his passion, and his stubborn vanity still attributed her rejection of his suit to the fact of his descent from a cobbler, or, as he put it, to her infernal worship of rank.

“Poor old Tom!” said her ladyship when alone. “He’s rough at the rind, but sound at the core.” She had no idea of the long revenge Old Tom cherished, and had just shaped into a plot to be equal with her for the Bull-dogs!

Japanese Ambassadors are in the United States. The slavery and anti-slavery members have ceased squabbling about that line over which they may use very unparliamentary language, but must not stride. Bowie knives and gouging apparatus have been sheathed pro tem., and shooting at sight deferred, in order that the Envoys of H.I.M., the Taikoon of Japan, be properly received, and that a favourable impression be made on their eastern intellects of the culminating civilisation of American institutions. What a charming relief it must be for that grey-headed chief magistrate of the Great Republic to forget the perils of a committee of both houses especially delegated to destroy a reputation founded on forty years of public service, and to explain to the fresh untutored ambassadors of an Eastern Potentate the blessings of universal suffrage, and the absence of hereditary right. They will come here to England, it is to be hoped,—and before all England has gone to bathe, shoot, and yacht. But if not, we must take them to the Isle of Wight, and show them our big Trafalgars and pretty Blue-bells. We can take them to our great marts of Liverpool and Manchester. We can show them Aldershott and Portsmouth, Oxford and London—but London out of season. They must go to the North, and if we can only get the Kamis into knickerbockers, we may show them Ben Nevis, and remind them feebly of their own beautiful mountain scenery, and we can at least send them away convinced that we are not, all, robbers of gold, or defrauders of foreign customs, as their countrymen very naturally suppose; and that although we possess an uncommon good opinion of ourselves, and do most things with a high hand, except where Americans, French, or Russians are concerned, that still we are not such a bad set of fellows after all: and half-pay officers and workhouse paupers excepted, are fairly clothed, fairly fed, and fairly governed.

It is necessary, however, that we should rub up our knowledge of the people whose ruler has thus sent an embassy to report upon European manners and customs; and as the Japanese have for three centuries refused all intercourse with Europe, we are obliged to go back to ancient documents for much of what we wish to know touching that empire, or of the singular and interesting people dwelling within its boundaries.

Comparing that information with the observations and notes made by us and other recent visitors to Japan, we are struck with the strange immutability of many of the characteristics of the people, and of the institutions under which they have lived for three centuries, whilst, unlike the Chinese, the arts and sciences, the manufactures and industrial produce of the country have advanced considerably. The little compilation, a “Cruise in Japanese Waters,” which was so favourably received by the public, was written under all the advantages on the one hand of fresh impressions, and on the other hand, amidst the multifarious duties of an officer commanding a man-of-war, it was consequently impossible to embody in it all the notes hastily thrown together, or to correct and enlarge upon them from old works that I was well aware existed in abundance, touching the condition of the people and country, at a time when it was unreservedly open to Europeans of all denominations. Here in England, in the noble library of the British Museum, we have a fund of valuable information which may, I believe—and the reader shall be my judge—be profitably explored, and I bring to that ancient knowledge modern information, and, what is better still, a series of native illustrations procured in the city of Yedo itself, which will bring before us in vivid relief the scenery, the towns and villages, the highways and byways of that strange land—the costumes, tastes, and, I might almost say, the feelings of the people—so skilful are Japanese artists in the Hogarth-like quality of transferring to their sketches the characteristics of passing scenes.

It is many centuries since Europe heard of Japan, yet our information of her is still fragmentary. The early traders, like our modern ones, did not willingly impart their knowledge lest it should interfere with large profits. The missionaries of that day, the followers of Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis, looked to little else than the ecclesiastical points involved in their discoveries or progress, and, with rare exceptions, it was not until the Hollander and Englishman commenced to supersede the Portuguese and Spaniards that reliable or valuable information touching the geography, the polity, and social condition of the Japanese Empire begun to be recorded—and then in such forms! Such huge tomes, such ponderous volumes wrapt in quaint language and mouldy learnedness. One turns in despair from the endless miracles recorded by worthy fathers who lived surrounded by raging heathens and affrighted bonzes, to the wonderful dissertations of worthy John Ogilby, master of the revels to our Charles II. of glorious memory. He insists upon travelling to and fro between Miaco and Thebes, Yedo and Ancient Athens, or