into English, French, and German. Japan's Volkswirthschaft und Staatshaushalt, by K. Rathgen, ranks as the standard authority on Japanese financial and economic questions. Maurice Courant has written learnedly on a variety of subjects in the Journal Asiatique and elsewhere. Morse's Japanese Homes is a delightful account, not only of Japanese architecture, but of every detail of Japanese domestic life, even down to the water-bucket and the kitchen tongs. The only drawback is the author's set purpose of viewing everything through rose-coloured spectacles, which makes those who would fain be instructed feel that they are listening to a special pleader rather than to a judge. Unfortunately for sober science, the fascination exercised by Japan is so potent that a similar fault impairs the value of several otherwise first-rate works. Ogawa's albums of collotypes will delight every lover of the beautiful. For coloured illustrations of scenery and the life of the people, the traveller is recommended to the native book-shops and print-stalls:—no foreign artist has succeeded in rendering the peculiar Japanese colouring.
Among books of reference, may be mentioned Bramsen's Chronological Tables, by which the exact equivalent of any Japanese date can be ascertained; the China Sea Directory, Vol. IV; the various Memoirs of the Imperial University; the British Consular Trade Reports; the Resumé Statistique de l'Empire du Japon, issued yearly; and the annual reports of the various departments of the Imperial Government on such matters as education, railways, posts, etc., etc. We advert to these last, because not a few of them appear in English as well as in the vernacular. Several Japanese educated abroad have written books in European languages. The work of this class that has made most noise of late years is a little volume by Nitobe entitled Bushido, the Soul of Japan, which sets forth in popular style the system of practical ethics that guided the conduct of the Samurai of old. In somewhat amusing contrast to the patriotic enthusiasm of this author, is the gloomy picture of native family life drawn in Tamura's Japanese Bride. How I Became a Christian, by Uchimura Kanzō, should interest a large
