be some to demur to this judgment, Professor Saintsbury's praise of Matthew Arnold is not unreasonable. For the author of 'Culture and Anarchy' always held the banner of literature aloft. When other men found pleasure in the last new book, he hied him to Homer and Dante, to to Milton and Wordsworth, and came forth, with all his eloquence, and irony, and wit, the champion of the grand style. Oftentimes he provokes you to disagreement. It is impossible to follow him when he tells you that "all depends upon the subject." Rather would we accept the assertion of Dryden that "the story is the least part." Moreover, when Mr Arnold discoursed of Celtic Literature, a subject which he partially understood, he gave a splendid opportunity to the fool. Ever since an infinite amount of folly has been talked and written concerning the Celtic genius. A certain school of critics, having made up its mind in what this genius consists, has claimed as Celts Shakespeare, Keats, and all the poets. But the argument is wholly unsound; and they would be wiser, these critics, if they first proved their poets Celts, and then discovered by comparison and elimination what qualities were common to them all. However, we must not hold Matthew Arnold responsible for the folly of his disciples, and no man of his generation did more than he to discredit caprice and to prove that a new fashion was not always the best.

Professor Saintsbury's history, one thing is evident to us: the critic is great in proportion as he discovers to us not the subject of his criticism, but himself. With him also "the story is the least part"; and he lives beyond his own day for precisely those gifts of style and imagination which give the great creative minds their immortality. When we read Pater we think not of Winckelmann nor of Mirandola, but of Pater. Charles Lamb does not hide his own fanciful personality behind the masks of the old actors. Coleridge cannot help talking philosophy even when Wordsworth prompts the argument; and Hazlitt, himself, prejudiced and alert, gruff and enthusiastic, is visible in the least of his essays. We have heard many definitions of criticism, obscure and contradictory. We have been told that it is the art of enjoying masterpieces, and we have seen that it is & method of chastising the evildoer.

own

But we believe that the critic best fulfils his function when he reveals himself through the work of another. For the critic, if he be honest and sincere, can give his opinion, and his own opinion alone. If he calls to life the writers of another age, as Pater calls them to life with his exquisite art, he shows them as they appear to his eyes, and not to the eyes of another. In brief, the best criticism is that which tells us what the critic is, as well as what he thinks, and reminds us that life, lived and seen, is the best touchstone

WILL ADAMS THE

WHEN the history of these times comes to be written, with the sober impartiality which distance alone makes possible, the present year will doubtless be recognised as the beginning of a new epoch. The sudden rise of Japan to a foremost place among the military nations of the world is an event which cannot be matched save in the remote past. When Athens, in the splendour of her youth, came forth the jealous guardian of liberty against the vast might of Persia, she achieved no more than Japan is achieving to-day. In one respect, indeed, the achievement of Japan is the more remarkable, since she is popularly supposed to be inferior in blood and energy to her great opponent. But, whatBut, whatever be the issue of the war, there is now a new factor in politics, and, as the Pacific is probably the battlefield of the future, in half a century Japan may be a serious menace to Germany, to America, or even to Great Britain herself.

And Japan is not merely young in prowess, she is young in time. It is but fifty years ago that she emerged from the same state of secrecy and aloofness which until yesterday held in thrall the sacred city of

VOL. CLXXVI.-NO. MLXVIII.

Lhasa. Between the journey of Marco Polo and Lord Elgin's mission Japan was sealed against all the world. The one link which connected her with Europe was the Dutch factory, which was permitted to conduct a lucrative trade upon arduous and insulting conditions. But in Marco Polo's day the Japanese were already civilised and courageous. As he tells us, they successfully withstood the invasion of so stout a foe as Kublai Khan's own Tartars.

Their wealth, more

over, was enormous, and they took care that their hoard of gold should not decrease, by forbidding its exportation, a policy which they pursued for many centuries. Unhappily Marco Polo tells us little of Japan, and after him there is silence, until William Adams, the first Englishman who entered Japan, sent his letters home. And in the history of adventure a more amazing career cannot be found than that of this old Kentish pilot. He set sail from the Texel in 1579 on the ship Erasmus, and after hunger, sickness, and mutiny bravely endured, he and his friends resolved to go for Japan; "for, by the report of Derrick Gerritson, who had been there with the Portugals,

20

came

woollen cloth was in great estimation in that island." So they went for Japan, and on the 12th of April "we came hard to Bungo"-to quote the pilot's own words "where many country barks aboard us, the people whereof we willingly let come, having no force to resist them, and at this place we came to an anchor.' So Will Adams was brought before the Tai-coon, and his mother-wit not only saved him from the crucifix but marvellously advanced him. He told the Emperor the name of his country, and declared that his land had long sought out the East Indies. And when the Tai-coon asked him whether his country had wars, he replied: "Yea; with the Spaniards and Portugals, being at peace with all other nations.' Now the Japanese hated the Portugals with fierce hatred, they were presently to send back a British Embassy on the ground that Charles II. had married Portuguese wife, and Adams' answer instantly procured him the Emperor's favour. He was

a

a

should share his prosperity, and, as we have said, he sent home flourishing accounts of trade. In Japan and its answer, the East India Company appointed Captain Saris to the command of the Clove, who, under Adams' auspices, prospered for a while, sold his "Bantam - pepper ungarbled," and did his best to establish an English factory at Hirado. But it was not long before a coldness showed itself between Saris and Adams. The pilot, or Anjin, "considerer of the needle," as the Emperor called him, presently refused to see his countrymen, and when at last he consented to dine with them, he rose directly after dinner, and declined their company when he took his leave, as though he "thought them not good enough to walk with him. Doubtless a pride in his lordship and his eighty slaves persuaded him to look down upon the simple captain, and it is certain that a lack of amiability on one side or the other hindered the establishment

of a trade between England and Japan. And, though a treaty was made between James I. and the Taicoon, Saris returned to England having accomplished nothing, while Adams continued so prosperous in the Emperor's favour that to-day a street in Yeddo bears his name, and every year his memory is honoured.

But Japan once more closed her ports, and pursued the policy of seclusion with yet greater energy. some seventeen Adams'

In 1637

after

years death the famous

interdict was

published, of

which the following is one clause: "No Japanese ship or boat whatever, nor any native of Japan, should presume to go out of the country; and who acts contrary to this shall be put to death, and the ship and goods shall be forfeited; and all Japanese who return from abroad shall be put to death." Nor was this all: to make assurance doubly sure, the merchant fleet of Japan consisted entirely of junks, which could not cross the sea, which, in fact, were only fit to hug the coast; and if by accident a junk were driven off the shore, no happier fate could overtake it than to sink. Thus for centuries a high wall was built round Japan-a wall which not merely excluded the stranger, but prevented the islands' the islands' wealth in gold and men from being dissipated abroad. It was not a question of free trade or protection. It was a case of no trade at all, if we except that carried on by the Dutch, under the watchful eye of the Tai-coon.

So as the years went on, Japan, resolute in her conservatism, learned nothing of the world which lay across the sea, and when in 1858 Lord Elgin went on his famous mission he found Japanese civilisation precisely what it was in the time of Marco Polo. But that mission marks the end of Japan's seclusion. She had already made a treaty with the United States, and now, under pressure to be sure, she granted similar privileges to Russia and Great Britain. But а nation cannot be transformed in a day, and though Japan

amiably entertained the visitors who had thrust themselves upon her in the name of progress, she still clung with a staunch fidelity to her ancient customs. It was, for instance, impossible that the Japanese, who had for many centuries governed their lives by the strictest etiquette, should accept the bluff manners of Europeans; and after the signature of the treaties there followed a series of murders, prompted as much by imagined breaches of courtesy as by the old deep-seated distrust of foreigners. The ferocity of the Japanese culminated in the attack made in 1861 upon the British Legation. The story has been told many times, and never better than by Laurence Oliphant, who faced a Japanese assailant with no more deadly a weapon than a hunting-crop, and who owed his life to a small beam or rafter, beneath which he stood, and which on the one side was "as full of deep swordcuts as a crimped herring,' and on the other was indented with "the shape of the handle of Oliphant's huntingwhip." It had, indeed, borne the brunt of both attacks, and had saved the lives of Englishman and Japanese alike.

The animosity, however, was presently assuaged, and henceforth Japan lived on terms of friendship with the strangers within her gates. And with characteristic prudence she set about making the best possible use of the intruders. If in her own despite she was asked to play the game of politics, she would master the rules without

loss of time, and above all she would create such an army and such a navy as should secure her against the attacks of her new-found friends. Now the Japanese had always been apt for warfare. In 1281 they had defeated the army which Kublai Khan sent against them, putting 30,000 to the sword, and making slaves of 70,000 Koreans and Chinese. With years of seclusion their martial ardour had not cooled. The Japanese knight was so finely skilled in the use of his two handed sword that with one movement he could draw it from the scabbard, and strike a fatal blow; and Captain Sherard Osborn noted as early as 1858-in his 'Cruise Japanese Waters' the "childish love of arms which dominated the people. "With all disposition," said he, "to approve of everything Japanese, certainly a man with his dress, straw sandals, and clean-shaved poll, with a long ugly musket in his hand and a British grenadier's belt and pouch over his shoulders, did not cut a martial or imposing figure." Assuredly he did not, though the mere fact that he carried a

in

long ugly musket proved that he was discontented with the weapons that had hitherto served him. But the transition was not easily made, and in 1864 some Japanese troops appeared upon the parade - ground of Yokohama, clad in chain-mail, and armed with bows and arrows. Nevertheless, the mind of the Japanese was made up.

At the first contact with foreigners, a feeling of nationality modified the feudalism

which hitherto had exclusively governed their policy. It was as though they said to their unwelcome visitors, "We did not ask to become part of your system, but now we have emerged from our seclusion, we are determined to rival, if not to surpass, your civilisation." They received their first instruction from the Lancashire Fusiliers, and as late as 1867 the Samurai were learning the rudiments of warfare from toy-models, with no better exercise-ground than the mats in Я small room in а Japanese lodging - house. "There, day after day," says the correspondent of of 'The Times,' these grave Samurai met and pored over the intricacies of battery and brigade drill, performed with fragments of wood resembling the contents of a Noah's Ark." And in little more than thirty-five years these same grave Samurai, or their descendants, are able to hold their own against one among the greatest of the Western Powers both by land and sea.

Since 1867 the Japanese have never been idle. They have travelled all the world over, these men who forty years ago might not leave their country on pain of death, and they have learned all the lessons the world has to teach them. Of course it is impossible not to regret the surrender of an exclusive race to the modern passion of uniformity; yet the skill wherewith the Japanese have made the difficult arts of war and diplomacy their own will always appear miraculous. Maybe their great gift is imi