always wins in the end. Biography shows that
all that neglect, stupidity, and even the fiendish
malice of foes and critics could invent, while it
never yet destroyed a line worth saving, really
adds more lustre to his renown, as the blackness
of the cloud lends beauty to the lightning
and the rainbow. But the picture of his life is
saddened with the decaying hues of autumn, the
fame of his triumphs is borne to us on the hollow
voice of the winter wind, and his glory is like
the lone and mournful beauty of the evening star.

Perhaps, after all, it is better thus, for though
not so inattentive to business as is generally
supposed, men of genius seldom attain to such
independence as to finish their labours in comfort and
maintain a family at the same time. To their
honour, be it said, that they are almost totally free
from crime, a fact of itself sufficient to upset the
abominable doctrine lately maintained, that out
of a given number of people a certain number of
criminals must arise; a most mischievous deduction;
for nothing could be more likely to determine
a hesitating scoundrel than to represent
him as the victim of fate. It is true that
we may here an there find an incurably
perverse spendthrift like Savage; a free-handed
insolvent like Steele, who, when asked to return
money, could implore, flatter, complain, cajole, or
anything else but pay it; a muddler like dear old
Goldsmith; and a cowardly villain like Rousseau;
but these are only scum on the mighty
stream. Men of real genius are above such
miserable folly, just as they are, as a class,
above the debauchery and mischief so often
vulgarly attributed to the character. The writer's
creed is that true genius may give way to folly
now and then, but that it will shake off all
depravity, like " dewdrops from the lion's mane."

OUR LATEST EDEN.

LATEST of our Utopias, and youngest of our
earthly Edens, is Japan. It was a new sensation
to us, in coaly, foggy, conventional England, to
hear a long-known country newly described as a
lovely scene, with a magnificent climate, where
the men were gentle, proud, and brave, chivalrous
in their ideas of honour, heroic in their
self-respect; where the women were free and
honoured, and the ties of home and family
strictly kept; where the arts were cultivated,
science understood, politeness studied, and all
the outward forms of civilisation in rich allowance:
a country, nevertheless, in which not a
germ of Western culture had taken root, and
religion, laws, literature, and language were
all as different as if a second family of the
human race had been saved in an independent
ark of its own—a family not even on speaking
terms with that of Noah. Everything in Japan
was strange and foreign to our notions. Its
double government of spiritual and temporal
autocracy—its Mikado and Tycoon; its Harikari
or Happy Despatch—the accepted form of paying
debts, acknowledging errors, or getting out
of a scrape; its public bathings, where men and
women splashed together like so many Tritons
and naiads, in sweet unconsciousness of shame;
its paper pocket-handkerchiefs and two-sworded
dignity; its isolation, pride, and contempt of
foreign goods, both moral and commercial—all
was so unlike anything to be found behind the
starched neckcloth of European society, that
people went wild with curiosity and the desire
to hear more of this strange new land, which
came always before us, like one of the fairy-tale
countries of our childhood. Nothing would
have surprised us as part of the natural life
of Japan. Fiery dragons, salamanders whose
habitat was a flaming furnace, birds that talked,
and flowers that walked—we would have accepted
them all as quite of possibility in the land
which the Pusiyama shadows and the demi-god
Mikado governs. As for the people—proud as
Paladins, simple as Arcadians, and subtle as the
subtlest rabbinical schoolmen—not Voltaire's
Huron or Rousseau's Primitive Man would have
created more excitement at a west-end soirée,
than did the first announcements of what they
were like, and how they lived and talked and
transacted the ordinary business of life. It
was the unveiling of the shyest and most reluctant
of all the virgin nations; but, poor beautiful
innocent Japan!—she was happier when her
veil was drawn close around her from brow to
foot than she will ever be again when free to
every hand and revealed to every eye.

The latest of our Japanese interpreters is Mr.
Consul Hodgson, who gives us, in a few hundred
pages, his adventures during a year's consulship
at Hakodate; his impressions concerning the
treaty, how it has worked and how it will work;
and some account of the country and islands
neighbouring Hakodate; so far, that is, as he
was allowed to visit them. Mr. Consul Hodgson
might have done more for his hungry readers
here in England; but, though it is provoking to
be served with only a few half-ripe hedge-row
fruits when a whole orchard full of the finest
kinds hang within reach of plucking, yet we
must be thankful for even Lenten fare, when
otherwise we should go empty-handed.

Japan is both hotter and colder than England;
at least, so much of Japan as is contained in the
towns and districts of Nagasaki and Hakodate.
It is frozen to its very heart when the north-
west winds, blowing over the wide ice-plains of
Siberia, bring their burden of frost and snow;
but, when the warm south comes up from the
Pacific, then Japan is all on fire, and only to be
quenched by the deluges which pour down
incessantly during the rainy mouths. Months by
no means pleasant or satisfactory; for the
heated earth steams up like a vapour-bath,
rusting your metals, and mildewing your finery,
and eating into your body and bones with
rheumatism and all the other diseases to be
found in a perpetual vapour-bath. Then the
snakes and scorpions and rats swarm out in
crowds; then centipedes hide in your shoes, and
crawl up your wife's white muslin dress as she
sits tranquilly in her drawing-room; and beetles
bury themselves in your pockets; and serpents
look in at your paper windows while you are