founded in reason. The respect felt for his talents was pithily expressed by a high Japanese official, who said to a friend of the present writer: "Sir Harry Parkes was the only foreigner in Japan whom we could not twist round our little finger." But courage, talent, and patriotism were not Sir Harry's only titles to lasting fame. We like him better still as a practical philanthropist labouring for the good, not merely of his own people, but of aliens. He it was who persuaded the Japanese to adopt vaccination, with the result that whereas the percentage of pockpitted persons was enormous only a quarter of a century ago, such disfigurement is now scarcely more common than at home. Lock-hospitals were another of his creations, as was also the elaborate lighthouse system which has so greatly lessened the chance of shipwreck on this dangerous coast. We cull but two or three items out of a score,—enough perhaps, though, to indicate the difference between this truly great man and the scurvy pack who used to yelp at his heels.
Even now, some twenty years after his disappearance from the Japanese political scene, the British residents in Japan and not they alone, but the "old hands" of all nationalities continue to hold his memory dear. How often, under every one of his successors, have we not heard the exclamation, "Oh! for an hour of Sir Harry Parkes!" But we incline to think that the comparisons made by local people are sometimes tinged with injustice, and that these critics fail to realise that the deterioration of which they persistently complain results partly from circumstances beyond the reach of any personality to control. Rapid transit, and especially telegraphy, have revolutionised diplomacy since about 1880, or rather they have killed it. There may, it is true, still be one great diplomat at headquarters, as minister for foreign affairs; but under existing conditions, he will
"Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne."
The title of "Plenipotentiary," with which the diplomat accredited to a foreign court continues to be nominally decorated, has become simple irony in days when the force of events has reduced him
