the Western world, was inspired not by religious bigotry, but by the deathless patriotism of the nation's soul.

And herein, it will at once be admitted, lies another and even more striking temperamental resemblance between the two peoples under consideration. The name of Greece ever suggests Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopyla. It was the one land of the ancient West in the hearts of whose people burned with peculiar intensity the fires of patriotism. But now, while those fires have there become mere smouldering embers, the glories of Marathon and Thermopyla have been almost wholly eclipsed by the deeds of desperate daring before the ramparts of Port Arthur and on the fields of Manchuria, where countless thousands, inspired solely by love of country, rushed onward to certain destruction. In all the annals of warfare and chivalry, it is now conceded, there is naught else which can even bear comparison with the patriotism there put to the test and there crowned with its gory triumph.

Even the uprising of the North in our Civil War, stirring as it was, bore evidence of no such call of the country as that which sounded in the hearts of the Japanese when their beloved land was menaced by the mighty power of the Muscovite. We, it should be remembered, had our draftriots in the North, and throughout the Western world the word conscript has ever called up the image of a man torn from home and family to fight the battles of ambition and greed. The name bears no such meaning in Japan. There, during the Russian War, I have many a time beheld a festive procession passing along the streets with drums beating and colors flying, escorting to the station a conscript, his family and neighbors vying with each other to evince their great rejoicing that one of

VOL. 110-NO. 3

their own had been honored with the vast privilege of dying in the service of his emperor.

Yet another and even more conspicuous evidence of an ancestral heritage shared in common by Japan and Greece is manifest in the unparalleled development of the art instinct in the two peoples. That development in ancient Greece made her the leader of the world in the past in so superlative a degree as to confer upon her a unique glory. But the opening of Japan has revealed to the lovers of art another world of cultured beauty bearing the impress of the same spirit of refinement, the same delicacy of line, the same fidelity to nature, and the same feeling of restraint which characterize the masterpieces of Hellenic art. Quite true is it, indeed, that those masterpieces have not yet been surpassed, or even equaled; but in one respect, and that the most important which can be named, the Japanese have surpassed the Greeks in the development of the art instinct, in that with them it has become the possession of a whole people. As an art critic of our own day has said: 'It is one thing to produce a Phidias or Michelangelo, whose works, isolated by transcendent genius, are above the comprehension of the multitude; and quite another to invent innumerable lovely objects which all can appreciate and enjoy, but which could not have existed unless there were numberless competent artists and a national capacity of invoking their happiest efforts.'1

Possibly the Greeks may have been endowed with such a universal instinct for art-production and art-appreciation, but certain it is that there is no other nation to-day living in which artistic taste and aptitude are more generally diffused than in Japan. Not only are the commonest kitchen 1 JARVES. A Glimpse at the Art of Japan.

utensils moulded into forms of exquisite beauty by Japanese artisans, but it is also very unusual to find even a coolie who is not in some way a capable artist. To this so competent an authority as Professor Chamberlain 1 bears testimony in saying that it is to the common people that, 'the foreigner in Japan must go for those lessons in proportion, fitness, and sobriety which Greece once knew so well. Do you want flowers arranged? Ask your house coolie to arrange them. Is something wrong in the laying-out of your garden? Call in the cook, or the washerwoman, as counselor. It makes little difference whom you consult, so universal is the development of the art instinct among the common people throughout the entire empire.'

III

Of course, from these manifest evidences of temperamental qualities shared in common by the Greeks and the Japanese, it is by no means to be argued that the unique people of the Far East had their origin in the land of Greece. Such a conclusion would be almost as absurd as the popularlyheld impression of the meaning of Darwinism. Doubtless nine people out of ten still think of that theory as teaching man's descent from the monkey, whereas its only claim is that man and the simian were derived from a common ancestor. So, likewise, while the evidences above adduced point to a marked degree of kinship, they by no means answer our question as to the common source from which the ancient leaders of the Western world and the people who are to-day engaged in regenerating the Orient derived the ancestral qualities which have so conspicuously fitted them for their respective tasks.

1 Things Japanese, p. 450.

Upon the solution of this ultimate question so much light has of late been cast, and there is now in regard to it such a consensus of scholarly opinion, that it may be considered as virtually settled, so far at least as the primal habitat of everything we have a right to call a civilization is concerned. As the three dominant religions of the world have originated in the Orient, so every leading civilization, that of the West as well as that so recently revealed in the Farthest East, must needs be referred to a purely Asiatic source, whence great tides of migration, eastward as well as westward, have borne its spirit and its great ideals, practically the same, to the uttermost confines of the earth.

Since Max Müller's day the land which he called Arya in Central Asia has been generally recognized as the ancestral home whence flowed the great westward wave which, lifting upon its crest successively the empires of Persia, Greece, Rome, and Britain, at last, with the Cavaliers and the Pilgrims, crossed the stormy Atlantic and raised up the new Empire of the West.

To-day a scholarly service, similar to that of Max Müller, has been rendered by an Eastern savant who has indicated the course of another great migration in the opposite direction, which, passing through the semi-barbaric hordes. of northern and southern Asia, found its final retreat in Japan, where, in safe isolation, undisturbed by the dynastic struggles and barbarian incursions which swept away the old-time civilization of the Orient, the Island Nation became the real repository of ancient Asiatic thought and culture.

In his masterly work on The Ideals of the East, Professor Okakura, the foremost living authority on Eastern art and archæology, while not claiming Müller's Arya as the ancestral home of his people, and not presuming to locate

Of the scope of his work and of its bearings upon the resemblances we have noted, one may gather an idea from a comment made upon it by an Indian savant who ascribes to the author the discovery that the reason for such art affinities as have been observed is to be found in the 'existence of a common early Asiatic art which has left its uttermost ripple-marks alike on the shores of Hellas, the extreme west of Ireland, Etruria, Phoenicia, Egypt, India, and China. In such a theory a fitting truce is called to all degrading disputes about priority, and Greece falls into her proper place as but a province of that ancient Asia to which scholars have long been looking as the Asgard background of the great Norse sagas.'

1

As to the purely ethnological evidence in support of this theory, there are many curiously interesting facts derived from students in this special field.

There is first of all a consensus of Oriental traditions in regard to an ancient eastward migration from western Asia. There is also the testimony of a large body of folk-lore common to Europe and Japan. In Volume III of the Transactions of the Asiatic

1 Introduction to The Ideals of the East. By NIVEDITA of Ramrakrishna Vivekananda. Calcutta.

Society of Japan may be found a collection of Japanese legends, manifest replicas of those anciently current in Europe, the most striking being the identity between one of Mitford's Tales of Old Japan and the Irish legend of Knock-grafton.'

·

Comparative mythology also reveals numberless examples of similar bearing. Dr. Edkins, in the Transactions just mentioned, points out the marked Persian elements in the early Japanese scheme of the universe; while any reader of the Kojiki1 will find in it not only plain versions of the stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, but also replicas of the Greek myths of Orpheus, Mars, and Venus, the national goddess bearing the closest resemblance to the latter being represented in art as rising from the sea.

The testimony of language is not so strong, because merely negative. Professor Chamberlain points out the sharp line of demarcation between the Japanese and the languages of the neighboring continent, the inference from which would be that the islands were acquired by a migration distinct from that which peopled northern and southern Asia.

The only remaining ethnological field to be considered is that of physiognomy, which it is needful to consider because, while actually the least important, it is held in popular estimation to justify the stolid race-prejudices to which the Western world is still obstinately clinging. The eyelids of the Japanese show the Mongol obliquity. Therefore the nation is of Mongol birth. That may have been the verdict of the ethnologist before he had command of all the data of his science; just as now it is that of those

1 Records of Ancient Matters. Complete literal translation by PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN, in Supplement to Vol. x, Transactions of Asiatic Society of Japan. London: Trübner & Co.

who have never studied it at all. To correct this impression, it is only necessary to consider that the Japanese are a long way from their original home, so long that they may have been centuries on their journey, during which time there could have been ample opportunity for admixture of alien blood. Tradition also assigns to their journey a route trending northward, and it is now known that obliquity of the eyelids merely suggests a long lingering in high latitudes, where nature protects the eyes of animals in the

same way.

As to complexion also, on the ground of which ethnologists used to jump at their conclusions, any one who has had opportunity to come into contact with the dominant race in the islands, the descendants of those who drove the aborigines into Yezo, must hold it to be a misnomer to call the race yellow, its complexion being actually as white as that of any of the peoples of southern Europe.

Ordinarily, ethnological inquiries do not enlist popular attention; but, as already intimated, there are in connection with the particular question of the origin of this extraordinary people two

considerations of commanding interest. One is its bearing upon international relations. The framers of our naturalization laws, sharing in the ethnological ignorance of their day, denied the privilege of American citizenship to all except men of Caucasian or Negro blood. The former designation being now absolutely without meaning, opportunity for changing it is manifestly offered; and in making the change it might be well for our legislators, in simple courtesy, to recognize the claims of a people who, if not indeed of our own kin, are far more closely allied to us, by right of their high civilization, than many of the races to whom we are to-day freely granting the privilege of citizenship.

Of an importance even greater than this point of international comity is the question whether Occidental society, so-called, is determined, at the bidding of ignorant race-prejudice, to perpetuate the evidence of its own lack of breeding by excluding from its borders a people who, if not wholly of our blood, can trace back their ancestry to as lofty a plane of ancient civilization as that upon which we are so complacently priding ourselves.

MILFORD, Friday Eve. At Capt. Pond's. SHALL I commence my journal, my dear Elizabeth, with a description of the pain I felt at taking leave of all my friends, or shall I leave you to imagine? The afternoon has been spent by me in the most painful reflections, and in almost total silence by my companions. I have thought of a thousand things unsaid, a thousand kindnesses unpaid with thanks that I ought to have remembered more seasonably, and the neglect of which causes me many uneasy feelings. My neglecting to take leave of Sally, has had the same effect I hope she did not feel hurt by it, for it proceeded from no want of gratitude for her kindness to me. I did not imagine parting with any friend could be so distressing as I found leaving your Mama. I did not know, till then, how much I loved her, and could I at that moment have retraced my steps! but it was too late to repent. Deacon Wolcott and his wife are very kind, obliging people, and Miss Wolcott is a very pleasant companion; I do not know what I should do without her. We came on to Butler's this afternoon, and I came immediately down to Uncle Pond's and drank tea. Miss W. came

with me and both Uncle and Aunt invited her to stay and sleep with me, which she accordingly did. Cousin Patty has been with me, to say goodbye to all my friends, and to-morrow we proceed to Stamford.

Sat. night. D. Nash's Inn, MIDDLESEX. We had a cold, unsociable ride today, each one of us being occupied in thinking of the friends we had left behind and of the distance, which was every moment increasing, between them and us. We stopt to eat oats at a Tavern in Fairfield, West Farms; an old Lady came into the room where Miss W. (whose name, by the way, is Susan, not Hannah, Sally, or Abby) and we were sitting. 'Well! gals where are you going?' 'To New Connecticut.' 'You bant tho' - To New Connecticut? Why, what a long journey! do you ever expect to get there? How far is it?' 'Near 600 miles.' 'Well, gals,you gals and your husbands with you?' 'No, ma'am.' 'Not got your husbands! Well, I don't know Well, I don't know they say there's wild Indians there!'

The poor woman was then call'd out to her daughter (the mistress of the house), who she told us has been ill five months with a swelling, and she