women keep their entire crop of hair standing,
and they make the most of it; they spread it
out into a turban, and stick through it not a
few pieces of polished tortoiseshell, as big as
office rulers.* Inviting admiration, the young
beauty of Japan paints her face red and white,
and puts a purple stain upon her lips; but the
remaining touches are forbidden to a damsel
till her heart is lost. The swain who seeks to
marry her, fixes outside her father's house
a certain shrub; if this be taken in-doors by
the family, his suit he knows to be accepted;
and when next he gets a peep at his beloved,
he watches with a palpitating heart the movement
of her lips, to see whether her teeth be
blackened; for by blackened teeth she
manifests the reciprocal affection. Only after
marriage, however, is the lady glorified with
a permission not only to have black teeth, but
also to pull out her eyebrows.

* Hats are not used by either sex except in rainy weather,
but every Japanese carries a fan; even the beggar yonder
holds his fan to that young lady, whereupon she drops her
charitable gift.

Those are not little beggars yonder trotting
by that lady who is so magnificently dressed;
they are her children. The children of the
Japanese are all dressed meanly, upon moral
grounds. Notice those gentlemen who bow
to one another; the ends of a scarf worn by
each of them exactly meet the ground, yet
one bows lower than another, and they go on
walking in the bowed position until each has
lost the other from his sight. Those scarfs
are regulated by the law; each man must
bow so that his scarf shall touch the ground,
and it is so made long or short, that he may
humble himself more or less profoundly in
exact accordance with his rank.

Of rank there are eight classes after the
Mikado and the Ziogoon, whom we shall
come to visit in our travels presently. There
are, one, the princes; two, the nobles, who
owe feudal service to the prince, or the
empire; three, the priests; and four, the
soldiers; these four form the higher orders,
and enjoy the privilege of wearing two swords
and petticoat trousers. Class five counts as
respectable; inferior officials and doctors
constitute this class, and wear one sword with
the trousers. Merchants and respectable
tradesmen form class six, whose legs may not
pollute the trousers, though, by entering
themselves as domestics to a man of rank,
they may enjoy the privilege of carrying one
sword. These are the only people by whom
wealth can be accumulated. Class seven—-
artists, artisans, and petty shopkeepers. Class
eight—- day labourers and peasants. Tradesmen
who work on leather, tanners, &c., are
excluded from classification. They are defiled,
and may not even live with other men; they
live in villages of their own, so thoroughly
unrecognised, that Japanese authority, in
measuring the miles along a road, breaks off
at the entrance of a currier's village, leaves it
excluded from his measurement, which is
resumed upon the other side. So, if we travel
post, we get through leather-sellers' villages
for nothing.

These houses in Nagasaki, which at a
distance looked so much like mansions, are
the store-rooms wherein tradesmen keep their
valuable stock, and families their valuable
furniture. For desolating fires are common
in the towns and cities of Japan; so common,
that almost every house is prudently
provided with a fire-proof store-room, having
copper shutters to the windows, and the walls
covered a foot thick with clay. Attached to
each is a large vessel of liquid mud, with
which the whole building is smeared on an
alarm of fire; and this method of fire-
insurance is exceedingly effective, where there
is nothing like a Sun or Atlas Company to
fall upon, and the most abstemious of fires
eats up, at any rate, a street.

That door is open, and there is no horse-
shoe over it—- there's not an iron horse-shoe
in Japan,—- so two ghosts slip into the house
unperceived. First, here is a portico for
palanquins, shoes, and umbrellas; into this
the kitchens open. In the back apartments
we shall find the family. We walk into the
drawing-room, and there the master sits. It
is most fortunate that we are now invisible;
for, did we visit in the flesh, we should
be teased by the necessities of Japanese
civility. That gentleman would sit upon his
heels before us; we should sit on our heels
before him; we should then all bow our
heads as low as possible. Then we should
make compliments to one another, the answer
to each being " He, he, he! " Then pipes and
tea would be brought in; after this we might
begin to talk. Before we left we should
receive sweetmeats on a sheet of white paper,
in which it would be our duty to fold up
whatever we did not eat, and put it in our
pockets. Eat what you like, and pocket
what remains, is Japanese good-breeding. At
a dinner-party the servant of each guest
brings baskets, that he may take away his
master's portion of the feast. This master,
however, is unconscious of our shadowy
appearance, and continues busy with his
book. It is Laplace, translated into Japanese,
through Dutch. The Japanese are thoroughly
alive to the advanced state of European
science, and on those fixed occasions when
the Dutchmen from the factory visit the
capital, the Dutch physician is invariably
visited by the native physicians, naturalists,
and astronomers, who display on their own
parts wonderful acumen, and most dexterously
pump for European knowledge. Scientific
books in the Dutch language they translate
and publish into Japanese. The country has
not been shut up out of contempt for
foreigners, and native men of science have
so diligently profited by opportunities afforded
from without, that they construct by their
own artificers, barometers, telescopes, make
their own almanacks, and calculate their