observer far beyond the point to which the most adept fingers can reach.
This again is the secret of the charm of Japanese poetry. In three lines, or in five, a beautiful image can be evoked, a haunting, elusive idea can be expressed which leaves one with thoughts for a whole day, and which, in double the space, cannot be adequately translated. Finesse is saved always from preciousness by suggestion.
In other arts it is the same. China fails in inspiration, although she inspired Japan. Her own artists, in the days of the Ming Dynasty, exhausted it. Where the designs and the shapes, the colours and the decorations of porcelains, bronzes, and sounding brass (for how truly rings the metal of those days!) are not imitated, the work is feeble, stiff, and uninspired. And naturally in imitation the original impulse is lacking, and the craft itself is of an inferior kind. Japan, on the contrary,—where she is not warped and spoilt in her artistic feelings by the influence of Western nations,—turns out, every day, and in every part of her land, works not to be despised by the prophets of art, not unworthy to be placed beside the classic models. Her modern ceramics compare, in all that is good, with those of the early makers. Her brocades and embroideries (when manufactured for her own people, not for the cheap and barbarian tastes of foreign tourists) vie, in
