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and true to her lover in all his misfortunes, poor little wretches in England a purgaand dying on his grave, is the fine, pure character of the tale; but to a Japanese reader, Kompachi, the robber and murderer, the cold and heartless villain, is the claimant for admiration and sympathy.

Woman-with the Japanese as with the Chinese, as with, indeed, most Oriental nations-is very far from sharing the importance of man in human creation. Newlymarried couples pray for male offspring; and though it is admitted that woman is necessary in the formation of society, she is regarded rather as a privileged slave than as an equal-much less as invested with the attributes of superiority lavished on her by Western romance writers. So subordinate a part, indeed, does woman take in the every-day affairs of life, that till quite lately-till 1875-women were never allowed to appear on the theatrical stage, and men invariably played the female parts. The great difference, then, between the poetry and romance of the Japanese, as compared with our own, is that whilst our creations treat generally of love, chivalry, and the human sentiments, the Japanese devote themselves to the worship of nature and the supernatural. A reason for this may be found in the fact that Japanese life is altogether of an out-of-door character. To them the word "home". —or the nearest approach to it in their language-conveys none of the simple poetry so touching to Englishmen. There is nothing homely in a Japanese house. By the shifting of a few shutters it can be thrown open to the four winds of heaven; and although the greatest care is taken to keep the woodwork and matting spotlessly clean, a man is far prouder of the possession of a few square yards of garden, than of the noblest palatial residence without a tree or a shrub. Of snugness, cosiness, the charm of family meetings round a common board, they have no idea. A Japanese household is conducted in an irregular, disjointed style, very contrary to our notions of what a happy, comfortable home should be. Men and women eat when they are hungry, sleep when they are tired; if, after the labour of the day, the goodman goes out and stops away all night, there is no anxiety on his behalf; and the same independence of action characterises the life of the women. As for the children, Japan is a very paradise. They are suffered to tumble and wander about without any restriction from the apron-string and perambulator machinery, which makes the lives of many

tory. In this absence of any sentiment of attachment to home, as we understand the word, the Japanese resemble the French; but by the poetry with which they invest everything beyond the walls of their houses they amply atone for the want. The average Englishman, who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, is perfectly contented to accept the pleasures of home and little else. For the lower classes, four or five holidays a year are amply sufficient to soften the monotony of daily toil; by the classes just above these, more than the statute holidays, with a fortnight or so in the summer, is never demanded. English Sundays we can hardly introduce into the category of holidays. With the Japanese, on the contrary, in addition to the innumerable festivals of which their religion commands the observance, every sixth day is given up to perfect rest from labour, whilst the imagination is ever fertile in inventing excuses for additions to the holiday list. The innate feeling of poetry in the nation is well shown at these holiday makings. We in England are said, too truly, to take our pleasures sadly, and the recollections of Whit Mondays, Boxing Days, and statute holidays, as celebrated by our masses, is coloured with a tint doubly funereal when we call to mind the simple, pleasant town and village festivals of the Japanese. In this faculty of completely throwing aside all worldly cares and considerations in the pursuit of pleasure, they resemble, closely, the French; and but for the costume, the mummers of the New Year's fêtes in Yedo might be of the same race as the "mirliton" players of the Fair of St. Cloud.

The influence of this constant intercourse with the world of nature is plainly visible in the manners, customs, and habits of the Japanese people. The soughing of the wind through the pine trees, the roaring of the mountain torrent, the song of the bird, they weave into the thread of everyday life by a thousand pretty conceits. For a single poetical expression, used by an Englishman in the course of ordinary conversation, the Japanese will employ twenty. The names of their women, their villages, their tea-houses, are redolent of country life; and to the foreigner, well acquainted with the language, nothing can be prettier than the way in which Japanese of all classes clothe the most ordinary commonplaces in a garb of picturesque epithet and simile.

and abuses; but, in viewing Japan as the last stronghold of romance, the feeling is difficult to repress. The country is too deeply saturated with old world habits and prejudices to be transformed in a short time; but the influences of the nineteenth century are hard at work, and even now we must travel far into the country to have our love of the romantic and poetic gratified. When the country is entirely thrown open to the world, then we may look for the transformation, but not till then. Wherever foreign influence has been allowed a foothold it has left an indelible mark; but its base of operation in Japan is as yet extremely limited; and to the thousands who have ideas of Western civilisation, there are tens of thousands in complete ignorance even of its meaning, and other tens of thousands who, although they have an imperfect conception of it, are determined to resist its spread to the last.

THE BALL AT THE GUILDHALL.

The traveller in Japan cannot fail to remark the way in which the inhabitants take advantage of every pretty spot, or bit of striking scenery, to embellish it by art. The results are generally very happy. On the continent of Europe we should run up a huge hotel, and placard the beauties of a waterfall or valley to the world by advertisements. Consequently the most lovely scenes of Europe have lost a great deal of their romance; they are annually infested by crowds of tourists; the one hotel expands into several; lime-lighting and midnight parties reduce the special feature of the place to a peep-show and a centre of attraction for the votaries of gaiety and fashion. The era of spas and watering-places has probably to come in Japan; Biarritz, Monaco, and Brighton may be imitated in miniature on the shores of the Gulf of Yedo; but as yet nature is suffered to remain undisturbed. A beautiful view may be enjoyed from the turf seat of a modest tea-booth; the climb up an especially picturesque hill is generally rewarded by rest in a quaint old temple; cherry-gardens and waterfalls have generally their little circle of tea-houses; but nothing offensive I MAY say at once that I was present at to the eye or taste is ever introduced to the ball given by the city of London to destroy the harmonies of nature. As the H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and that I was Japanese wishes to realise during life the present as an invited guest. I read the idea of travelling through a pleasant garden, accounts of that ball in the daily papers so does he delight to invest death with as on the following morning. Previous to much poetry as possible. In China the that time I had entertained a respect for coffins and graves studded about every hill the press; I had read newspaper accounts and field are repulsive in the highest de- of balls and festivities, with the belief gree; in Japan one is never in the presence that, next to going to these things, the of death, or reminded at the turn of every best thing was to study the accounts of corner of our inevitable end. The grave- our special reporters. After reading the yards are invariably hidden in groves of accounts in question, these ideas were bamboo and cryptomeria away from the dissipated. The description of the decohigh roads, silent and peaceful in solitude rations, and the general aspect of the and calm. Even in the midst of the great place, were correct enough. But these busy capital, there are dotted about are the dry bones of the ball; of the flesh, picturesque burial-grounds, beneath the the human nature of the affair, there is, shade of brown old temple eaves or in the reports, not a shred. I think it solemn elm trees, which would remain as well that the world at large should unnoticed by the traveller unadvised how and where to look for them.

THINGS WHICH THE REPORTERS DID NOT

TELL US.

know something beyond the carpentry and upholstery of an occasion like this; and as reporters, although no doubt estimable persons in their way, and able to take down speeches by the yard, have no-what I may call-soul, I sit down to let the public know what a ball at the Guildhall really is.

One cannot help regretting that modern civilisation will not run hand in hand with poetry and romance; that the path of improvement and reform must be cleared of all obstructions in the shape of old world customs and habits; and that innovation demands the utter extirpation of I was not at the dinner. My father, what it replaces. It is absurd, of course, to an alderman of his ward, was there; I wish that a country should never advance, had tickets for the ball. I that for the sake of a sentiment it should with me went my father's sister-that rot away in its own world of backwardness is, of course, my aunt-whom I shall

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call for I do not wish the author- ingers' offices. Until we arrived at the ship of this article to be traced-Aunt entrance to Cheapside, there were no policeEuphrosyne, and a lady—as I am conceal- men whatever present at any rate I did ing her name and mine, I may state the not see one in Newgate-street-and beyond truth-to whom I was engaged, and whom this there were so few that they could I will call Phillis. We, that is my aunt not interfere to protect us from insult. I and I, called in the neighbourhood of remember once, when I was a little boy, Bryanston-square for the third person of sitting on what was called a stool of peniour trio, at half-past eight o'clock. My tence, and hearing the nasty things which father, as I thought at the time, and a number of other little boys and girls, have since told him, was thoughtless with an almost diabolical frankness, said enough to take our carriage and pair, and about me; but that was as nothing to that we had hired a neat brougham. The passage to the ball at the Guildhall. In third person of the trio was—and I mention Newgate-street girls constituted the largest this fact to show that she is no ordinary portion of the crowd. They came up to the person-ready when we called, and we side of the carriage, put their faces against proceeded on our Eastward journey without the windows, laughed and nodded to us impediment or delay until we had crossed freely, and were, I thought—although I am Holborn Viaduct. Here we fell into the bound to say that neither Phillis nor my line, and were three-quarters of an hour aunt agreed with me-really rather good traversing the short half mile to the Guild- fun than otherwise. When, however, we hall. That three-quarters of an hour have got into Cheapside, and the throng was altered the future of my existence. I composed chiefly of men and boys, things entered upon the passage a happy man, became more unpleasant. "Hollo, here's my sole care, my sole anxiety being a a hired trap!" shouted one. "Oh, I say," tendency, a slight tendency, upon the part said another, with his face pressed hard of my figure towards corpulency. Per- against the window, "this ain't fair, two to sonally, I think that a certain fulness of one, you know." "Fatty is heavy enough form adds to a man's dignity, and that for the two of 'em," said a third. "If I slight curves are more graceful than was that nice-looking gal, I wouldn't put angles. I object, only to the tendency, up with such a duffer as that, not for a because men who call themselves your moment." "Oh, I say, look at the old friends are constantly making coarse and 'un in the corner.' This was my aunt. silly jokes upon the subject, in which an "Ain't she been a painting of herself up. absence of wit and of good breeding are "She means to captivate the prince, she equally manifest. does." "I expec's the prince would rather dance with the young 'un." "You oughter be ashamed of yourself at your age, and with shoulder-bones like them to be in a low dress." "Call the police!" gasped my aunt. I opened the window and looked out; there were policemen scattered along the line ahead, but not sufficient to keep off the crowd, who were saluting the occupants of all the carriages with chaff similar to that which was greeting us. "My dear, I blow a kiss to you," said one to Phillis. This was too much. "Henry James, are you going to get out to that fellow ?" Phillis said she had kept herself in up till now, but she blazed out like a spitfire. "Get out to him, Phillis! What for?" "To knock him down-to thrash him," she said. "Are you going to listen to two ladies being insulted like this, and say nothing? I do believe you are a coward, Henry James." "Oh, come, nonsense; that's too much, Phillis. If I were to get out and hit one of them, I should have a hundred pitch into me; and, bless

From the commencement of Newgatestreet, until turning up King-street, the streets were crowded with people, who, for the most part, appeared to consider us, shut up as we were in the carriage, and stationary sometimes for five minutes at a time, as placed there for their special amusement and delectation, and as being as open to remark and comment as if we had been dummies in a hairdresser's shop. I have travelled a good deal, for my father's house has correspondents in most large towns of Europe; and I can safely say that the vulgarity, the impudence, the insolence of that crowd could not have been equalled in Europe. I should analyse that crowd as composed of one quarter of young roughs, of from sixteen to twenty years old; of a third of shop and warehouse girls; of one twelfth of quiet and respectable people, who kept upon the pavement and behaved themselves; and of another third of young men from shops, warehouses, and wharf

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me! I should get a black eye, and shouldn't be able to show myself." "Show yourself!" she says, with a sort of scornful tone that made my clothes feel too large for me "show yourself! What does it matter about your showing yourself? Here you are with two ladies; you hear them insulted by this low set of blackguards——" Blackguards!" repeated I in astonishment at hearing such a word in a lady's mouth. "Yes, sir, blackguards!" she went on, all on fire; "and you talk about showing yourself. The City is to blame, in the first place, for inviting ladies to come to their ball, and then taking no steps to prevent their being insulted. But that does not excuse you; you have shown you are a coward, Henry James, and from this moment I have nothing whatever to do with you." Nothing can describe the rest of that journey. Phillis leant back in one corner of the carriage, obstinately silent. My Aunt Euphrosyne leant back in the other and cried quietly, and the tears made two long streaks through the pearl powder on her face, and made her an object for the rest of the evening. There being nothing to say, I sat stoically, while I was called fatty," and " dough face," and "the claimant," and a dozen other names; and did not even pull up the window, for fear of exciting even more remarks, until the ruffians who had us at their mercy began to squirt at us with the abominable engines which have become of late fashionable in ruffianly circles, and which are called, I am given to understand, "tormentors."

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When we turned into King-street our sufferings came to an end the public were kept out here - and we drove unmolested up to the entrance. I got out first, and offered my arm to the ladies. Neither of them took it. Both got out without assistance. We went in at the door without speaking, and just as we got inside there was young Gubbins, the tea-taster, a fellow I have always hated; and as he came up to speak to us, Phillis walked up to him and said, "Mr. Gubbins, I'll take your arm, if you please; it is awkward being here without a man;" and off she walked, as if I wasn't in the world at all. Now, considering that Phillis will have thirty thousand pounds on the day she marries, that was nice for me, wasn't it? "Well, aunt," says I, "perhaps you'd like to run away too.' "I don't see anyone to run with," she said, "else I don't know what I might do. However, it does not

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matter; when it comes to being insulted for an hour, and your own flesh and blood sitting by quiet, and just nodding at hussies outside the window, it is about time I were gone. There, you need not say anything. I will sit down here while you take my cloak to the cloak-room, and bring me a ticket for it." I took the cloak; I made my way up to a sort of counter, and, after waiting ten minutes, handed over my own coat and hat and the cloak to one of the attendants. He took the hat and coat and returned the cloak, saying, "Ladies' room next door." I tried to get into the ladies' room with the cloak, and was repulsed by an attendant; and I then returned to my aunt, who was even more angry than before at this delay of a quarter of an hour. She was really terrible to see when she found I had brought the cloak back again, though she said nothing, but walked off with it with a sort of stage appearance which spoke volumes. If I had heard slow music play as she dis appeared, I shouldn't have been the least surprised. When she came back she took my arm, and we went up, without speaking a single word, into the dancing-room over the entrance; and here, by the greatest good luck, she came across my father, and I saw no more of her. I was not in much of a humour to enjoy myself, especially when I saw Phillis waltzing away with that young Gubbins. I had made up my mind that I should have to dance, although I have doubts whether dancing shows off my figure to advantage, and am inclined to think that a dignified pose is more in keeping with it. However, I was now free to do as I chose to look on at the humour of the scene, as the poet calls it-and to criticise, from a serene mental elevation, the behaviour of all around. It is entirely owing to the close and critical examination that I made during the evening, that I am able to supplement so exhaustively the superficial observation of the reporters of the press.

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I do not know that it ever struck me before, that at City balls you do see more strange-looking people, and more extraordinary dancing than at place in the world. Having danced at the Kursaals of Baden and Homburg, the hotel balls at Scarborough, and the assembly balls at Dieppe, Havre, Ostend, and other places, I think that I can speak with authority upon this point. In the first place, age appears at the City to be no obstacle whatever to dancing. Else

where, people, when they pass middle age, pressed any stranger with the idea that retire from dancing, and take to cards or they had never been in evening dress scandal. Not so in the City. In the before. Of course, they get their clothes quadrilles, you see couples whose united in the West End; but why do not their ages would far exceed a century, going clothes look the same on them that they through the figures with an accuracy of do on West End people ? Somehow step which would delight a dancing there was a want of ease and commistress. In fact, the assumption is over- fort, which was only the more marked whelming that their dancing was alto- when covered by an assumption of a gether neglected in youth, and that it was loud, hearty manner and a boisterous only after attaining to mature age that jollity. This observation does not apply they placed themselves in the hands of to women. They somehow seem always some professor of the dance. The steps at home in fine garments, however unthey go through are wonderful; the way accustomed to them. The chief point they pirouette, bring up one foot to the observable about ladies' attire was the exheel of the other, and point their toes, treme variety of dress. Some were magis a thing to see. Not that the perform-nificently dressed, with diamonds equal to ance appears to give them the smallest any which would be seen West; some were satisfaction or pleasure. Their faces in half-high dinner dresses; and there were are set and anxious; not the ghost some in simple high dresses, which would of a smile ever flits across them; they not have been out of place at a Quaker eschew talk, and give their whole atten- meeting. Were I to give you one tithe, tion to the work in hand. The style of or, indeed, a hundredth part of the redancing of the younger men and women marks which I heard made by ladies upon may be described as bouncing. They other ladies' dress as I wandered about, I bounce across and round; they consider should be considered as libelling human it absolutely de rigueur to turn their nature. The most offensive feature in the partners round twice, instead of once, evening-you will understand the word upon every occasion. Altogether, they offensive here is not my own, but that of impress you with the idea that, after all, a gentleman in a deputy- lieutenant's a little of the stiffness and precision of uniform, who, after struggling with great the elders, of whom I have spoken, would perseverance, could not get near enough not altogether come amiss in their case. to see what was going on inside the But the square dances were as nothing charmed circle, was the rush to see the in comparison with the round. This Prince and Princess dance their first was not my first impression, but it grew quadrille after entering the Guildhall. upon me gradually as I went from ball- The crush was tremendous, and people room to ball-room, and looked on at the stood twenty deep around the barrier. Of gyrations of the dancers. In galops they course, only the first few ranks could see; got on fairly; in polkas they were stiff but the curiosity of the rest was somewhat and awkward; but in waltzing they were satisfied by the information retailed by a -well, they really were-wonderful. To number of ill-bred people-please observe say that one in twenty had the faintest that again the word is not my own-who idea of dancing a trois temps in time, were mounted on chairs and benches in would be going well within the margin; the middle of the hall, and who retailed the and the faces of anxiety, of labour, of result of their observations to the less painstaking care on the part of the males, fortunate crowd below. "There, the dear of simple anguish on that of the females, Princess is talking with the Lord Mayor." during the performance of the waltzes, "The Prince has just said something to were enough to give a philosopher cause the Duke of Edinburgh." "There, the to meditate upon the why and the where- Duke of Cambridge is crossing now." "How fore people should voluntarily suffer mar- pretty she looks." "Yes; her dress betyrdom in essaying an exercise, of the comes her admirably." And so on. Soothnature of which they are absolutely igno- ing as was the receipt of all this informarant. Then, again, I was led to wonder as tion, some ill-conditioned people—again to men's clothes. There are no end of the word is not my own-were not satisfellows I know by sight in the markets, fied. One lady, and a pretty heavy one too, and generally in the City, who look lifted herself above the crowd by placing natural enough on ordinary occasions, her hands on two gentlemen's shoulders, but who here certainly would have im- while they fairly hoisted her up. In

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