ing to the Japanese mind in those long-withstood the fascination of the story drawn, much particularized stories, en feuilleton. The theatre even fails to which had some affinity with the volumi- resist the march of events. Every form nous tales which had been handed down of dramatic entertainment that ever from the Middle Ages; those stories flourished in the land is, it is true, to be which occupied volumes by the dozen seen there still, from the old Chinese in the telling; of the strife between the Bugaku dances and the Japanese SanHeiké and Gengi clans, for example, in gaku and No, down to the modern early times; of the forty-seven loyal theatre. Symbolism and realism flourRonins in later days. But few foreign- ish side by side; and both of them ers know much of modern Japanese brought to a pitch which is truly beliterature; their affection for the coun-yond our imagination. But at one try and the people stops there; and theatre in Tokyo the new desires of the those who have read tell us that appre- new Japan are gratified. The stage ciation, except in rarest instances, is management provide for its delight senimpossible. There is something so sational scenes of modern life in the different about it from all else Japanese, most approved London manner. On even from the other branches of litera- one occasion, after the visit of Mr. ture. Prosy narration takes, in the Spencer to Japan, a scene was intronovel, the place of the sharp philosophy duced in which a balloon ascent, folof the proverb, the delicate witticism, the insinuating double-meaning of the poem. Sparkle and concision give way to platitude and rigmarole. lowed by a parachute descent, were "managed" in most successful fashion, and daily gave satisfaction to crowded audiences. Also in the city, the restaurant is almost as much en évidence as the tea-house; the beer-bottle and tumbler as the saké cask and cup. And new Japan plays billiards - pool extraordinarily well, with a nervous sangfroid altogether remarkable and characteristic; torompo-whist, that is — not quite so well, the sangfroid in this case exercising unduly the partners' nerves; but poker admirably, and for the same reason. I could not stay to give a list of all the hundred Western books which new Japan has found best to translate. I have given but examples of them. Some modern novels have undergone the same sea-change, figuring, as I hear, in much strangely transliterated idiom. But the bookstall has come to Japan attendant on those who travel by her railways, and for those the Oriental "yellow-back" has made its appearance duly; and the price, being New Japan has not yet - with the low, and the style such as appeals to exception already mentioned - forgottravelling folk, they can scarcely now ten the politeness of Old Japan. The be numbered for their multitude. One obeisance is still as profound as in old who knows and, I verily believe, has days, when the head was innocent of read it, tells us that the hero of the felt hats; the new politeness indeed has most popular Japanese novel of recent invented ways of dealing with this unyears is Epaminondas, and takes the couth encumbrance during the moments whole field of Theban politics for its of an interview which are sacred to subject-matter; and that the success courtesy. The bow is as formal and was so great that the author did, out ceremonious as ever it was. Of these of the proceeds, the grand tour of the ceremonial bows the literate globeJapanese, England, and the rest of Eu- trotter has written much, deeming them rope, and built himself a house wherein subservient, too humble; yet in this he to rest when his travels brought him is, as usual, wrong. He will consider it back to the sunshine of the East. This as though a six-foot Western giant were and much other curious matter concern- to bow himself and "knock his head ing Japanese literature is set out for us by Mr. Chamberlain in "Things Japanese." The newspapers, too, have not against the floor; a prostration sixfoot deep, no patrician were worthy of it; to the level of a lady's hand is the deepest a Western man may give. Yet as if every paper and parchment that bears the signature or superscription of Gonzalo Perez or the Borgias must be of guaranteed authenticity—a witness, as think, these men of Japan and the little musumes, they sit upon the floor; that is their natural posture, and they bow from that, and they are five foot noth- it were on oath, to questions of circuming, something less; so that though they do indeed touch the floor in their reverence and respect, the prostration is but two feet six inches deep; and though your globe-trotter thinks the salutation"grovelling," yet it is not, it is only the obedience paid to the strict rules of bowing, which may not be relaxed no, not even to a Western. .F. T. PIGGOTT. stance, date, and place. If the archives of the State contain documents copied from the copies of copies, so the records of that unconscious palimpsest, the brain, are often edited and re-edited until the final picture is a mere ghost of the original fact. Many of the visions and voices which we take for unchanged impressions of the past are mere modern reminiscences of older recollections of earlier remembrances or traditions of events and persons. sequent embellishment and mutilation. P.S. There has been, during the last two months, an unusual amount of The cautions thus suggested must hold news from Japan, some of it, indeed, of no ordinary character; another dissolu- for the tablets of the memories from tion of the Diet ; a prosecution of judges which the following narrative has been for gambling; the return of Count Ito drawn. The statements here made have, to the office of minister-president, and however, been carefully tested by all the apparently abrupt termination of available means, witnesses have been Portuguese exterritoriality. This last, it questioned and cross-questioned with needs not to be said, is of great impor- Socratic rigor, and other precautions tance. The literal meaning of the tele-taken to preserve the data of actual gram from Yokohama is undoubtedly, contemporaneous knowledge from subas the press has very readily imagined, that Japan has abruptly rescinded her treaty with Portugal. With news from the far East it is safer to wait for the mail before treating it as historical fact. There is another possible construction of the telegram, in which something may depend on the recent withdrawal, for economical reasons, of the Portuguese chargé d'affaires. Also there has been a quaint letter from that roving Times' correspondent, Mr. Rudyard Kipling. He deals with new Japan in characteristic fashion and language. The criticism itself, however, needs criticism, and I have no hesitation in borrowing a word from his own letter, and in pronouncing it to be "skittles." The letters and "Reminiscences" of Thomas Carlyle contain minute accounts of his acquaintanceship with the Stracheys and Bullers, and their relative, Miss Kirkpatrick. During the first London, or Irvingite, period of his life, Mr. and Mrs. Strachey, my father and mother, were, with the Irvings and Montagus, his principal friends, and he was a constant visitor at my father's town house, as well as at his country place at Shooter's Hill, near Woolwich. The Irving chapter of the "Reminiscences" has a portrait of "Examiner ” Strachey, who in previous years had been in high employment in Bengal, and at the time in question was one of the examiners of correspondence at the East India House. Carlyle calls him a "genially abrupt " and taciturn utilitarian, "willing to speak, and doing it well, in an ingenious way," who inex-dulged at times in "a pretty vein of quiz," but, "beyond all things, loved Chaucer and kept reading him." He omits one feature of the examiner's individuality, which specially concerns From The Nineteenth Century. CARLYLE AND THE " ROSE-GODDESS." "COPIE, di copie, di copie ! claims an Italian expert, shaking his head at the confidence with which historians of the younger school quote the records of the Escorial, of the Vatican, us here. Candide's maxim, "Il faut wholly (though there lay silent in her a cultiver notre jardin," was my father's great deal of fine childlike mirth withal, guide in the material as well as in the and of innocent secular grace and gift) to mental sense. When he had drafted things sacred and serious - emphatically his despatches to Lord Hastings or Lord what the Germans call a Schöne Seele. Amherst, and analyzed the human mind Mrs. Strachey sympathized with the with his colleague, the elder Mill, and Hatton Garden "Message of Salvation," debated the "Canterbury Tales" with but she did not participate in the subtheir fellow third examiner, Peacock, sequent Pentecost of the Caledonian the novelist, it was his dear delight to Chapel when the building echoed to prune and water his roses. The results shrieks of "Lall, lall, lall." Hers were of this "scant manuring" were, how- the mixed motives of theological and ever, indelibly stamped on Carlyle's intellectual curiosity which attracted memory, for he calls the grounds of half London to the prophet's ministraShooter's Hill "an umbrageous little tions. The Scotch miniature painter, park with roses, gardens." Other allu- Robertson, brought Irving to her house, sions to this horticultural speciality of where he met her sister, Mrs. Buller, the place will be quoted presently, and who had been known in Calcutta as I hope to prove that the examiner's. "Titania," and also as the "Queen of maiden-blush, cabbage, and dark china the Ganges; ""a very beautiful, still roses deserves a corner in literary history, if not by the side of the mythical flowers of the Island of Rhodes, or the Whites and the Reds of the immortal scene of the civil factions in "Henry the Sixth," at any rate in company with "the roses of Bendemeer's stream." Carlyle's references, of whatever date, to the mistress of Shooter's Hill are in a uniform tone of veneration and affection. On her death, twenty-five years after these times, he called her, as will be seen, the oldest and dearest friend of his lifetime. After the lapse of another period of almost equal length he spoke with unabated warmth of her charms, faculties, and virtues. His matured opinion of my mother appears in the following passage from the "Reminiscences," which explains how Edward Irving was the pivot of Carlyle's intimacy with his Shooter's Hill friends: It was in these first months of Hatton Garden [Irving's first chapel], and its imbroglio of affairs, that he [Irving] got me appointed tutor and intellectual guide and guardian to young Charles Buller and his boy brother, now [1866] Sir Arthur and an elderly ex-Indian of mark.... Irving's preaching had attracted Mrs. Strachey, wife of a well-known Indian official of Somerset shire kindred then an 66 examiner" in the India House, and a man of real worth; for, diverse as his worth and ways were to those of his beautiful, enthusiastic, and still youngish wife, a bright creature, given 66 very witty, graceful, airy, and ingenu- compass. which I do not deserve." 66 was one 99 66 metamorphosed into a hard, frivolous | expend 500l. on Edward Irving's comfrump, and even into an "ancient fort. Carlyle remarks that "the noble dame," although she was hardly forty lady" (Mrs. Basil Montagu) "spread -the age when, in Plato's judgment, sofas" for the preacher. The Shooter's women come to perfection-and still Hill cousins did more, for they bought in full possession of the stately beauty them. Purchasing upholstery to the which led her admirers to compare her said amount, they installed it in the with Madame Récamier, to whom Mrs. preacher's half-furnished house at Buller bore a certain resemblance. "Ti- Islington during the absence of the tania" became "light, giddy, vain, and occupiers, who, on returning from a heartless," a piece of worldliness with journey, found their drawing-room re"fine lady ways, crotchets, and ca- splendent with inexplicable elegancies of prices," and "irresolute and foolish damask and rosewood. The "benefifluctuations," 66 a sort of heathen," a cent fairies" were quickly unmasked, fluttering patroness of routs and op- and Irving's gratitude was manifested eras," and, in fine, a member of the by a gift to the younger lady, to which "flaunting, painting, patching, nervous, we shall revert below. The mansion vaporing, jiggling, scolding race of thus beautified was shortly afterwards mortals." These suggestions of "the the scene of an incident, of which Carvile hag, dyspepsia," are strongly dep- lyle, writing some five-and-forty years recated by Mr. Froude, who objects that later, gave this account : Mrs. Buller "probably had never flaunted, painted, or patched in her life," and remarks that only a woman of her high discernment and forbearance would have tolerated the tutor's strange humors and pretensions. After an early dinner at Irving's house, there drove up in a brave carriage a strangely complexioned young lady, with soft brown eyes and floods of bronze-red hair, really a pretty looking, smiling, and amiable, though most foreign bit of magnificence and kindly splendor, whom they welcomed by the name of "dear Kitty" Kitty Kirkpatrick, Charles Buller's cousin, or half-cousin, Mrs. Strachey's full cousin, with whom she lived. The meeting at the Irvings paved the way for an invitation to Shooter's Hill, which Carlyle visited for the first time in the prophet's company. I remember [he writes] on our approach to the house, the effulgent vision of "dear Kitty" busied among the roses, and almost buried under them, who, on sight of us, glided hastily in. The Shooter's Hill family included a cousin of the house, Miss Kirkpatrick, the "dear Kitty" of whom the letters and "Reminiscences" constantly speak in such intimate, caressing language. Her father was Colonel Achilles Kirkpatrick, who was resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, in the Deccan, during the governor-generalship of Lord Wellesley. In conjunction with the Minister Meer Alum, Colonel Achilles weaned the nizam from his sympathies with Tippoo Sahib, brought him into alliance with the British power, and effected the disbandment of his French contingent. Meer Alum was of Persian blood, a Barmecide, a Saiad, or descendant of Mahomet, and he had a niece named Mehr-un-nissah. The Begum Nissah was married to "The Glory of Battle" (by this appellation the colonel is still remembered in called attractive (not slim enough for the Amiable, affectionate, graceful, might be Hyderabad), and one of their children was the Miss Kirkpatrick here in ques- ful"); had something low-voiced, languidly title "pretty," not tall enough for "beautition. Miss Kirkpatrick's wealth was harmonious; placid, sensuous, loved pernot that of Ormuz, but her surplus fumes, etc.; a half-Begum in short; inmoney sufficed for the gratification of teresting specimen of the semi-Oriental costly whims, and it was her pleasure to Englishwoman. Still lives, near Exeter The full-length likeness of the Rosegoddess in a subsequent page of the "Reminiscences" will bear comparison with Goethe's idyll in "Werther " of Charlotte cutting the bread and butter. It concludes: stood amidst rich foliage and rose clusters on umbrageous lawns. By the Frau Gräfin, Excellenz, Diogenes was invited to an "æsthetic tea," at which he met "the Rose-goddess," Blumine, who was "young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some one's cousin ; " also the dialectic marauder, Philistine. Between Diogenes and his Aurora, or Morning-Star, blissful bonds were soon forged, to be as rapidly dashed asunder by superior order, whereupon their lips were joined together, more majorum, for the first and last time, and Teufelsdröckh was "made immortal by a kiss." (the prize of some idle ex-Captain of Se- the Counts of Zähdarm, whose castle poys), with many children, whom she watches over with a passionate instinct. The style is by no means, as Buffon has been made to say, the necessary reflex of the man; and Carlyle, whose character and conversation, as Mr. Froude justly says, were entirely free from venom, had his pen full of it. It may be safely asserted that the written remark on "his singular dear" Kitty's husband would never have passed his lips. The said ex-Sepoy was an officer of Lord Anglesea's crack regiment, the 7th Hussars, a man of fine presence and unusual charm of personality, by whose side the half-Begum attained the happiness and harmony of life which was not predestined to any sharer of the lot of Thomas Carlyle - facts well known in Cheyne Row. Carlyle has explained that Diogenes T. is a type of his youthful self, and that Entepfuhl is his native village of Ecclefechan. A clue to the love story he has not furnished. Mr. Froude Miss Kirkpatrick will now concern us guesses that the Rose-goddess is Marin another way. On the death of my garet Gordon, a young person who father, not long posterior to these trans- squelched Carlyle's love for her in his actions, the family migrated to Clifton. schoolmaster days in a letter which is When "Sartor Resartus," which was extant, and throws more light on his published in the separate form in 1839, external individuality than on her own. arrived at our house, the volume came An earlier commentator thought otherinto the hands of the eldest resident wise: "The story of the book," said son, by whom, after some ineffectual Mrs. Strachey to her son, "is as plain as scrutiny of the mysteries of Baphometic a pikestaff. Teufelsdröckh is Thomas fire-baptism, and a baffled search on the map of Germany for Weissnichtwo and Entepfuhl, it was placed on the maternal reading-table without further comment. Having herself accomplished the perusal of the "Tailor Patched," Mrs. Strachey put the question to her son: "Do you know what all this is about?" The identities which were then plain The reply being in the negative, she to an expert with my mother's peculiar proceeded to expound the allusions to personal and topographical knowledge places and persons in the chapters of may be traced now by any one who Book II., entitled " Pedagogy," " Get- compares "Sartor Resartus" with the ting under Way," and "Romance," "Reminiscences." The "Waldschloss' which, she remarked, were as plain as of Graf Zähdarm, Excellenz, is a palnoonday. pable though glorified replica of Shoot himself. The Zähdarms are your uncle and aunt Buller. Toughgut is young Charles Buller. Philistine is Irving. The duenna cousin is myself. The rose garden is our garden with roses at Shooter's Hill, and the Rose-goddess is Kitty." 'Tis the place, and all around it as of old the curlews call The dramatis personæ of “Sartor Re-er's Hill. sartus" are, to some extent, to use Carlyle's language, "clothes-horses," on which the new symbolism of coats and breeches is hung. But the love episode is a story of itself. The young Diogenes Teufelsdröckh formed a friendship with Herr Towgood, or Toughgut, a young man of quality connected with - that is, the ancient odor of roses is there. Examiner Strachey's house, as was seen on a previous page, stood in "an umbrageous little park with rose gardens," and on Carlyle's first vision |