confessed that the artistic type of the female face is more conventional and unreal than the male countenance. The group of people looking at a juggler's performance, drawn by Hoksai, will give the reader a fair idea of the artist's power of conveying an expression by a few simple lines. This cluster of five heads certainly shows considerable individuality, and it should be remembered that it is an accessory in a larger picture; the artist has only cared to make us feel that the people who compose this side group are interested, if not absorbed, in the feats of the juggler. So have I seen in the face of a figure, not so large as these, and printed on a common fan, an admirable expression of senile pleasure. An old man is standing with a child on a high platform overlooking a scene on the Inland Sea. The feeling of height is produced by soft tints below the bold color of the platform. A high horizon gives a bird's-eye view of the bay or gulf, and in the group of figures gazing on this charming panorama, is noticeable the chubby face of the child, whose eager curiosity is expressed by a few slight lines. The old man, with both hands resting on his staff, is wrinkled and brown; but there is no mistaking the air of grandfatherly fondness. and delight with which he regards the urchin beside him. And all this is a slight work done on a cheap fan. Moreover, it is one of a series of panoramic views on the Inland Sea, and curious labels on, or over,

are pleased to call "the comical lack of perspective" in the ornament. The Japanese artist does not undertake to produce aërial effects or linear perspective on plates, bowls, and vases. We must look to European art for such absurdities as landscapes and architectural drawings on spherical surfaces. In a Japanese workshop, the decorator feels just where a bright mass of color or a flowing line is wanted. He knows exactly where a single spot of gold or crimson will be most effective. He seems to have an intuitive appreciation of the relation which color and line have to the general mass before him. Therefore he makes no

mistakes. The bunch of brilliant azaleas, the flight of storks, or the floating butterflies, are each placed where they belong on the object; with unerring accuracy, each ornament finds its true position in decorative art. The space left undecorated is only an intellectual balance to the weight of color or mass on the other side. Precisely what geometrical rules determine the value of these lines, or govern the disposition of masses, we may not be able to say. But we may be sure that such agreeable, harmonious, and complete designs as those furnished by Japanese artists, are the result of serious study of certain fixed principles.

The apparent disregard of the commonest ruies of perspective, for mere decorative effect, may mislead superficial critics. The Japan

of the village street, to the dim vacuity of the distance, and the vague uncertainty with which the sail-boats melt into the mists of the bay, everything is drawn with a nice. firmness of touch which reveals the hand of the true artist.

In these misty effects, the work of a most refined taste and skill, the Japanese artists greatly excel. In one of Hoksai's books of birds and animals is a group of water-fowl sporting in a sequestered pool bordered by reeds. The drawings are printed in black ink with a single half-tint, but so delicately is this done that one discerns under the flowing lines of the water the shadowy forms of those parts of the birds that are below the surface. The head of a duck feeding on the plants on the bottom is not

ese painter does not aim to fix a landscape on a plate; if it happen that the familiar lines of the cone-like peak of Fusiyama, or the feathery sprays of a willow grove, best suit his design, he seizes these with absolute freedom, but with equal truth of outline. How tenderly and feelingly he can manage aërial and isometrical perspective is shown in the accompanying view of the village of Omori, drawn by a native artist of renown. The hard surface of our paper cannot give the reader a correct idea of the delicacy and lightness of touch with which the Japanese draughtsman has printed this pretty little landscape on the soft mulberryfiber paper of the Japanese picture-book. But, from the mechanically exact drawing

cut off. It re-appears beneath in a half-tint that defines the shape with sufficient distinctness; and this is merely a common print stamped from a wooden block. have seen in a cheap colored picture, printed on joined sheets of mulberry fiber, a moonlight view thrown carelessly into the distance and framed by an open window. The full moon is partly vailed by a floating cloud, which is faithfully repeated in the lake below. Vague masses of trees loom large against the sky, and their forms are weird and shadowy where they melt into the darkened horizon. The feeling of distance, somberness, and gloom in such a scene is perfect. Yet this simple bit of color, with the vivid group of lamp-lighted figures in the fore

print bearing that name. The original drawing gives the air of mistiness and uncertainty of night. The belated passengers seem to hurry. The lantern-bearer is not needed to show that this is "at night," but his single spark of light has its true value in the picture.

This ghostly effect in drawing is repeated over and over again in Hoksai's works. He delights in hobgoblins, specters, and spooks. Indeed, Japanese literature is full of themes that must engage the pencils of artists who have the least inclination to the grotesque and weird. The ghost of Sakura, a murdered retainer, fastened to the fatal cross, rises and confronts his tyrannical lord. The wife of the murdered man, accompanied by their infant, both uttering piteous cries and presenting a cup filled with Sakura's blood, appears in the air, is seen on the floor of the guilty man's chamber, and crawls to the feet of the fear-stricken nobleman. Or, the unsatisfied spirit of Kasana, an avaricious old woman, appears in the

rible head and shadowy, claws above him, turns about and argues with the goblin damned, while he fingers his rosary by way of exorcism. Or the ghost of some poor woman who died in childbed rises with her infant in her arms, crying to the belated traveler, "Take my child, that I may rest."

In "A Lantern Feast Interrupted," the artist has seized on one of these uncanny incidents as a subject for his pencil. In some parts of Japan, once a year, the people assemble in the cemeteries with lanterns painted with roses. These are placed over the graves of the dead, and, with much innocent diversion, eating and drinking, the "Feast of the Rose Lanterns," as it is called, goes on for the night. Next night the lanterns are again lighted, and a glittering procession descends from the hill of burial to the shore of the bay, where frail barks, like toy ships, are prepared with flowers, incense, and small coin, to bear away again the spirits of the dead. Each bark carries a lantern and a soul. The fleet

of tiny craft is lost in the night or melted in the sea. By daylight no trace of the ghostly argosy remains. Once upon a time, a hypocritical fellow of the Samourai or two-sworded class, offering his rose lantern at the grave of his deceased wife, was unexpectedly confronted by the spirit of that lady, who, according to all accounts, had led a hard life with him when on earth. The husband, somewhat alarmed, attempted to draw his sword, when the reproachful ghost reminded him that even the best steel of Kioto was of no avail against spirits of the air. So saying, she sunk into the sea, leaving her faithless spouse in "a state of mind." The gentle humor which pervades almost every popular historical work in Japan modifies the tragedy of this scene. The servant who takes to his heels, dropping his master's votive lantern, is an element of the grotesque. This, the artist thinks, will prevent his sketch from being too horrible to look upon.

The Japanese artist is most completely at home with the animal creation in its seclusion from the haunts of men. There is solitude itself expressed in his charming sketches of lonely streams, flowery thickets, and quiet fields. Here are all the field-mice in council, or the birds marshaled by twos and threes, or hares and foxes holding a mock council of war under a temporary armistice. A few simple touches give a sense of animal abandon that is most delightful. We know by the attitude of the romping badger that he is fearless of human interruption. The quails and pheasants walk deliberately about their leafy alleys, secure from man's intrusion and perfectly at home. Somehow, and at some time, the artist has seen these pretty creatures in their native haunts; he has studied their manners, motions, and employments, and we feel that he has given. us as accurate and honest a picture of home life as if he had gone into a foreign land with camera and photographic apparatus.

Not only so, but even the time of day is told us accurately by means of a few tints or lines. A moon floating in the midst of a pale sky, washed with India ink, looks down. upon a night-prowler, which, seated on its haunches, beats its white breast and emits a prolonged howl, which we can almost see coming out of the open jaws. A few graceful reeds and water-plants show us that this is a desolate swamp, and a drifting cloud approaching the moon adds to the lugubriousness of the scene. It is hardly fair to call that people, to whom so much

delicate and subtile sentiment is addressed, "semi-barbaric."

In the decorative art of Japan we see a constant repetition of lines, figures, and patterns suggested by natural and animated objects. A casual examination will show in a single design for mosaic work the waves on the beach, the leaves of trees, petals of flowers, and flying birds. Ages ago, the Japanese adopted (or invented) the socalled Greek fret," the honeysuckle pattern" of Western art, and used the lotus leaf and flower in art. One of the princely families

credit the latter with a wonderful faculty for discovering fine artistic forms in the commonest natural objects. A flight of migratory birds, high in air, instantly suggests a combination of lines. The outline of a bit of paper flying in the wind recalls to the imaginative observer a bird. So he gives us a skillful juggler, whose airy sheets of paper turn into flying storks as he blows them upward. The gradual transformation of the floating sheets into birds is precisely the transition which the unreal makes from the real in the human imagination. It is a practical illustration of that puzzle of the fancy which sees the drifting cloud "backed like a weasel."

The

This fertility of imagination of the Japanese has peopled earth, air, and sky with a multitude of beings. Even their story of creation and the origin of the human species is a fantastic myth. Anciently, they say, the heavens and the earth were not separated. germ of all things, in the form of an egg, was tossed on the troubled sea of chaos. From this egg arose vaporized matter; the pure and transparent formed the heavens, while the opaque and heavy fell downward and coagulated into the form of earth. A divine being, born in the midst, was the first of creation. An island of soft earth swam like a fish on the terrestrial waters. At the same time, betwixt heaven and earth was born something resembling the tender shoots of a plant. It was metamorphosed into a god, and became the first of the Seven Celestial Spirits. He and his successors each reigned a fabulous number of years, reproducing their kind, male and female, by mutual contemplation. Finally,

ASKING FOR WORK.

a male and female spirit descended and dwelt upon the soft island which swam in the waters below. The story of their meeting, courtship, and union, is unique and highly

66 REVENGE."

interesting. From this primal pair came the rivers, mountains, forests, and, in fact, all earth. The sun and moon were at first created to govern the world; but the first was too mighty, and he was sent above to govern the day of the sky; the second was too beautiful, and she was sent to rule the night of the sky. The stars are the offspring of other deities. The first ruler of Japan was, therefore, of divine origin; and in Japan was the pillar of heaven by which the Celestials descended to earth.

The divine essence, Japanese philosophers believe, is everywhere and in everything. The pantheism of the Greeks was not more universal-nor, we may add, was it more poetic. Does it thunder? Raïden, the Thunder God, is drifting through the upper air, angrily beating his immense drums which circle around him. When a gale arises, Faten, God of the Winds, has opened one end of the bag he bears upon his back, holding its outlets by his hands. And when the dreadful typhoon. bursts upon

sea and shore, Latsmaki, the Dragon of the Typhoon, descends miles beneath the waves, upheaving great masses of water; he shrieks in the upper air, or smites with tail and claw forests, villages, cities, and fleets of