signed, and the square-rigged vessels persist in
visiting the Japanese harbours.

One great difficulty with which the consuls
and merchants have had to contend, is the
excessive contempt felt in Japan for all "akindos"
or traders. A native merchant may not ride on
horseback, and our consuls and merchants had
to obtain a special exemption from this civil
disability. A native merchant is admitted only
through the small side doors of the official
residence—the great or centre gates being opened
only to the daimios or grandees; but the
Americans or Russians—Consul Hodgson does not
know which, nor do we—insisted on a change
in this, and kicked open the great centre gates
for the consuls of all succeeding time, thus
establishing another line of demarcation between
themselves and the native akindos. The contempt
for trade is as intense now in Japan as it ever
was in our own days of Ivanhoe and the Knights
Templars. These akindos, so despised and humiliated,
are almost the only Japanese men who
ever enter a place of worship. Save, indeed, for
certain important public or private matters, which
cannot be performed without priests and bonzes,
the daimios, or two-sworded dignitaries, are
never seen inside a temple; but women, children,
akindos, and beggars, congregate there to pray,
feast, or beg, according to their needs and
nature. The temples, indeed, are the favourite
pic-nic places; and whole families, laden with
the Japanese version of the Ascot hamper, come
up to them to pass a long day in alternate praying
and feasting, if the bonzes are amiable and
disengaged, and will perform the needful ceremonies.
Sometimes they are disobliging, and
say that the gods have all gone out to visit the
Mikado at Miako, when the poor pic-nic-
makers have to go home again, and eat their
good things unexcitedly, behind their own straw
mats and paper windows.

The Japanese are not very religious, nor yet
very superstitious; a combination, however, to
be found among their slit-eyed neighbours, the
Chinese; and though the priests have great
power, and the demi-godhead of Mikado is
known and confessed by even the most
enlightened of the daimios, yet the temporal
government restrains the spiritual, and the highest
bonze, like the meanest akindo, is absolutely
subject to the power of the law. Those proud
and independent daimios, who, like our own
old feudal barons, are always warring against the
encroachments of the Tycoon, and who will some
day force a Japanese Magna Charta out of a
Japanese Kong John, submit to the pretensions
of their Pope at Miako—that State doll which
is pulled by strings and moves as it is bid—
more out of conservatism than respect, and
because they dread the unknown more than they
dislike the known.

Of the bonzes there are many sects and degrees.
One sect being allowed to marry and eat meat;
a second forbidden wives and meat, and
confined to rice, vegetables, fish, and sweetmeats;
a third bound to one particular spot, and so on;
but all dressed alike in the half- womanly costume
which priests have ever delighted in—long
black gowns, falling to their feet, and loose
hanging sleeves—black, if for every-day wear,
but of the brightest and gayest colours when
ihe grander services of the temple are to be
performed. When they are in their finery they
will not condescend to speak to a Christian or a
foreigner; but, armed with crook and mosquito-whip,
drive him away, as they have just been
driving away the evil spirits from the neighbouring
cemetery or temple. They teach the doctrine
of one Supreme and ineffable Being,
unapproachable by man save through the mediumship
of many minor gods, each of whom has his
special and peculiar province; one ruling the
sea, another the air, a third the flowers, a fourth
all manner of beasts, a fifth mankind, a sixth
the sun, a seventh the corn, and so on; one for
each separate circumstance or attribute of
nature. To influence these gods, and obtain
their blessings, the Japanese use the prayer-
wheel, and grind out a certain length of written
supplication by means of a handle and a
cylinder. These prayer-wheels are in great
request, and to be met with everywhere like the
crosses in Roman Catholic countries; especially
at every cemetery, where a good vigorous turn
helps to release the poor suffering souls from the
grasp of the evil spirit. The Japanese build
their cemeteries by private subscription, and
always choose some more than usually beautiful
position—a grove, or the brow of a hill, or by
the side of a running stream, or anywhere else
that a poet and an artist would approve. They
keep the temple and buildings attached scrupulously
clean; and in the inner sanctuary, where
they range the urns containing the dust of the
dead, and the marble, jade, and soapstone tablets
of loving record, a light is always burning, and
the whole is placed under the special charge
of a priest specially attached.

Death stalks through Japan accompanied by
great pomp. First, just before the sick man dies,
or immediately after, that subtle and mysterious
powder, called " dosio," is dropped into his mouth
and ears, whereby the body is rendered perfectly
pliable after death, so that it can be bent into any
position, and made to fit into a kind of square tube
about three feet high, which answers the purpose
of our more bulky coffin. This coffin is
then placed in a sedan-chair or norimon, and
carried by four men into the yard of the tera
or cemetery temple, where the bonzes have
arranged an avenue of straw or reed candle-
sticks decorated with white paper, each stick
holding its real or imitation candle. Up this
avenue the poor dead limp thing, enclosed in its
square tube, is carried by the bearers, escorted
by a few women dressed in their brightest robes,
but wearing white crape veils over their heads,
and by some officers of the police in full official
costume—two swords, silk trousers, and stiff
blue and white wings. Here, the procession is
met by the chief bonze and his inferior priests,
and then begins the most diabolical din and
noise possible to imagine. Tomtoms beating,
shrill voices screaming, and a big kind of bell,