Things Japanese. By Basil Hall Chamberlain. (Kogan Paul, Trench, and
Co.)—Mr. Chamberlain puts his book into the severely practical form of a dictionary. Things Japanese are treated in their alphabetical order, sometimes with an almost ludicrous effect. But the value and solidity of the information with which the volume supplies us is beyond all doubt. The author knows the country well; he estimates the people fairly, without extravagant praise or blame. Now and then he is a little cynical. We can hardly allow that "all our Christian and humanitarian professions are really nothing but bunkum." Every Eastern nation "knows " it, he says, because "the history of India, of Egypt, of Turkey is no secret to them." Still, there are things even in this history that seem to show something better than bunkum. Apart from this, the volume is interesting and often entertaining. One of the best stories is from the " Book of Paragons." One " paragon, though seventy years old, used to dress in baby's clothes and sprawl upon the floor. His object was piously to delude his parents, who were really over ninety years of age, that they could not be so very old after all, seeing that they had still such a puerile son." Filial affection could no further go.
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