ject all the delicate subtlety of the Orient. Their work is little known in Europe and America. Only now and then some rash collector hoards a few priceless pictures, at which his friends stare superciliously, valuing them, as Macaulay valued Celtic manuscripts,—sixpence for the lot. Fifty years ago, however, the drawings of Fo-Kou-Say, or, as the Parisians christened him, Hok'sai, aroused great enthusiasm throughout France; and M. Champfleury, in a somewhat fantastic spirit, likens the Japanese to the Spanish painter, Goya, finding in both the same capricious fancy, the same wanton grace of outline, the same exquisite conception of the waywardness of women and of cats. Several of Hok'sai's beautiful sketches have been reproduced—though with little skill—in M. Champfleury's volume; and their finely imaginative character suggests to the sympathetic mind those charming Oriental stories, so different from the sombre legends of mediæval Christendom. The sinuous and light-limbed pussies that Hok'sai copied so daringly must surely have attended the midnight dances, held in flowery gardens heavy with perfumes and soft with scattered petals, where—so says an ancient Japanese tradition—assemble under the round white moon such cats as are able to pay the entrance fee,—a stolen silken handkerchief. Or perhaps, in calmer mood, they may plod
