which we of the present age have come to connect with the idea of a bombastic luxury, comparable only to the extravagances of Rome when Rome's moral fibre was beginning to be relaxed? But it seems likely that instead of Japan's converting us, we shall pervert Japan. Contact has already tainted the dress, the houses, the pictures, the life generally, of the upper class. It is to the common people that one must now go for the old tradition of sober beauty and proportion. You want flowers arranged? Ask your house-coolie. There is something wrong in the way the garden is laid out? It looks too formal, and yet your pro posed alterations would turn it into a formless maze? Call in the cook or the washerman as counsellor.
To tell the whole truth, however, the Japanese have not escaped the defects of their qualities. Their sobriety tends to degenerate into littleness. Grandeur in any shape, rugged mountain ranges, the storm-tossed sea, wide sweeps of moorland, make no deep impression on them. They love to expatiate on the natural beauties of their country. Nevertheless, with so much to choose from, their taste in almost every instance singles out views of limited extent and a kind of polished loveliness partly dependent on human aid. In short, they admire scenes, not scenery. He who has visited Matsushima, the "Plains of Heaven" near Yokohama, or any other widely celebrated spot, will appreciate what we mean. Again, they do not set their houses on heights commanding distant prospects. They build preferably on the flat or in a hollow, where the fence of their dainty garden shuts off the outer world.
Tattooing. Long before Japan was sufficiently civilised to possess any records of her own, Chinese travellers noted down their impressions of this "mountainous island in the midst of the ocean." One, writing early in the Christian era, gives various interesting scraps of information,—among others that "the men all tattoo their faces and ornament their bodies with designs, differences of rank being indicated by the position and size of the
