riches legally, and not be obliged to dance
attendance on uncertain carracks, not always
to plunder. William Adams was their
chief negotiator at court, and it was owing
to his exertions and representations that
they obtained their famous commercial
treaty, which, in sixteen hundred and thirty-
nine, culminated in the expulsion and murder
of the Portuguese, and in the establishment
of their own trade monopoly. Poor Adams
died in sixteen hundred and twenty, bearing
to the grave a sore heart for the loving wife
and two dear children he left behind him in
England, to whom he sometimes wrote, but
of whom, and of their ultimate fate, we, his
readers, know nothing.

The Dutch have not had a very flattering
time of it in Japan. They are tolerated only
at Nagasaki; and even there are allowed
only a very circumscribed area, where they
may walk and circulate, accompanied by
police spies (whom they are obliged to fee
and feed), and followed by a rabble of boys
shouting after them, Horanda! Horanda!
which is the Japanese version of Hollander.
Thus, a visit to an acquaintance in Nagasaki
is an expensive matter for a Dutchman; for
police spies are as rapacious in Japan as they
are elsewhere, and with the appetite typical
of their class. Various other annoyances
mynheer has to undergo from his contemptuous
hosts, whose horror of European morals and
religion is to be overcome only by the
extreme of submission and self-abasement.
But things are not quite so bad as they have
been represented; and old Middleton's picture
of a Dutchman in Japan trampling on
the cross, and offering further indignities to
the several symbols of his religion, is an
exaggeration, to say the least of it. Yet it is true,
that the Dutch have all to make a solemn
declaration that they are not Roman Catholics,
or of the religion of the Portuguese; and
are certainly not encouraged, or even allowed
to show, any very profound reverence towards
their own form of the Christian religion.

Many attempts have been made by
European nations to obtain a footing in Japan;
but all failed, as a matter of course, until
eighteen hundred and fifty-two, when the
great expedition fitted out by the United
States during Filmore's presidency, and
commanded by Commodore Perry, got the
promise of trade, protection, and comparative
freedom for all ships showing the stars
and stripes. And the other day, as we all
know, Lord Elgin procured even a more
liberal treaty for ourselves. Russia, who has
long been hovering about Japan, and has
blandly suffered many repulses, notably from
the Americans, to whose skirts she was
anxious to pin herself in the expedition of
eighteen hundred and fifty-two, has at last
got her first holding there. Other nations
will follow; so that the mysterious
exclusiveness of this most secret and conservative
country, bids fair to come to a speedy end,
and the roll-call of the nations to be
augmented by one recruit the more.

What the Japanese were in the days of
William Adams of Gillingham, that are they
at this present time. Government, arts,
sciences, and manufactures, all stand pretty
much where they did when the brave old
Englishman died at Firando. They have
still the same anomalous combination of
royalty in their duplicate kings, the heavenly
and the earthly, the contemplative and the
executive, the Mikado and the Ziogoon. The
Mikado lives in holy seclusion and royal
confinement at Miako; the Ziogoon holds
his brilliant court at Yeddo: the Mikado
is first in nominal rank; the Ziogoon supreme
in political power; the first has not a particle
of influence,—has no army, no resources,
must be content with the inadequate revenues
of his small principality of Kioto, added to
the presents sent him by the Ziogoon, for
which he returns a bundle of prayers and
blessings: the second holds the revenues of
the state, has the army in his pay and keeping,
and surrounds his brother sovereign
with pairs of unsuspected police spies, who
take care that no political movement shall be
inaugurated at Miako, and no political
ambition suffered to express itself in action. The
Mikado is supposed to be the lineal descendant
of the sun-goddess; and is held so holy
that he is not suffered to stir from his own
palace, excepting on the shoulders of men,
lest he should be polluted by contact with
the earth; while in his palace he walks only
on the finest and most exquisitely wrought
mats, so as to keep his sacred feet from the
unblessed ground. The sun may not shine
on him, nor the wind blow upon him; he
may neither pare his nails, nor cut his
hair; but, when he sleeps, his attendants
steal from him these exuberances of nature.
At one time the Mikado was obliged to
sit on the throne in royal state for many
hours daily, during which time he was
required to assume the rigidity of a statue,
and was not suffered to move a member
or a muscle. This was because, if he
looked toward any part of his dominions,
or turned to the one side or the other, war,
famine, fire, or some terrible disaster, was
sure to follow. At present the crown, as the
symbol of the safety and sovereignty of the
empire, is pilloried in his stead; and the
Mikado escapes one of his many irksome
duties. He eats only rice, day by day
precisely the same quantity; every grain
being carefully selected by a proper officer,
dressed in a new vessel, and served on
new ware. When once used, both cooking
and eating vessels are destroyed.
The Mikado and his twelve wives are so
swathed in cumbrous clothing, that they can
hardly move: which is again a state precaution:
no dress is used twice for him, and the
old ones, after being kept for a certain time,
are destroyed, as too sacred for the possible