Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/51

Rh and along a level string, and the like;—the father performing in the presence of his two children, who encouraged him continually with short sharp cries, like those of animals. Then there was some fairly good sleight-of-hand juggling of little interest; ending with a dance by the juggler, first as an animal, and then as a goblin. Now, there was this great difference between the Japanese masks used in this dance and our common pantomime masks for beasts and demons,—that our English masks are only stupidly and loathsomely ugly, by exaggeration of feature, or of defect of feature. But the Japanese masks (like the frequent monsters of Japanese art) were inventively frightful, like fearful dreams; and whatever power it is that acts on human minds, enabling them to invent such, appears to me not only to deserve the term "demoniacal," as the only word expressive of its character; but to be logically capable of no other definition.

27. The impression, therefore, produced upon me by the whole scene, was that of being in the presence of human creatures of a partially inferior race, but not without great human gentleness, domestic affection, and ingenious