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278 caused is no greater than what may be experienced at home in England. From the philologist's standpoint, the most interesting dialects are those of the extreme South and West, which preserve archaic forms. The speech of the more recently settled North is for the most part a mere patois, an omnium-gatherum produced by the concourse of immigrants from other provinces. (See also Articles on Things Japanese/Literature and Things Japanese/Writing.)

 Law. Dutifully obedient to authority and not naturally litigious, the Japanese are nevertheless becoming a nation of lawyers. Few branches of study are more popular than law with the young men of the present generation. Besides being often a stepping-stone to office, it seems to have for them a sort of abstract and theoretical interest; for (and more's the pity) Japanese law has at no time been the genuine outcome of the national life, as English law, for instance, is the outcome of English national life, a historical development fitting itself to the needs of the nation as a well-made glove fits the hand. Twelve hundred years ago Japan borrowed Chinese law wholesale. She has borrowed French and German law (that is to say, practically, Roman law) wholesale in our own day. It is hard to see what else she could have done; for she would never have been admitted into the so-called comity of civilised nations unless equipped with a legal system commanding those nations approval, and those