SIR EDWIN ARNOLD'S TRAVELS.*

IT is to the papers upon Japan that the reader will turn first when he opens the volume before us. Sir Edwin Arnold has been known for a long time as a devotee of that fascinating country, which has lately taken so serious a place in the world's esteem, after its long connection in our insular minds with tea-trays and prettinesses. That the success of Japan in the great conflict was foreseen by wise observers, himself among the number, he testifies on the evidence of an article written by him in the New Review, when first the war was breaking out. That was at a time • East and west being Papers Reprinted from. The Daily Telegraph," and ether 3111ICII. By Bit* Main arno/d, MA., Sc. London : Longman., Green, ,nd

when the majority believed that it would be a repetition of the phenomena of the American War, the success at first of dash and daring, worn down by patience and by numbers, and the "sombre strength" of China, and

when Mr. Curzon declared that the war was chiefly begun to please a Parliamentary opposition at Tokio. "Until recently," Sir Edwin writes, "the Western mind generally cherished an erroneous idea about Japan and the Japanese. Its conception was derived from such sources as M. Pierre Loti's clever but superficial Madame Chrysantheme, and from various similar publications by globe-trotters' who had seen and understood no more of the country than ficineurs or curio-hunters can get at." He proceeds to charge Gilbert and Sullivan with having a good deal to answer for in The Mikado, in which, for instance, the young ladies crossed their " kimonos " over their bosoms from right to left, instead of left to right, whereas it is only in death that it is really worn in the first way. We

should have doubted any one having been the worse for that ingenious burlesque, had not the present writer been once

asked by the hairdresser of a country town, where a bill of The Mikado was in the window, whether it was worth seeing. On being assured that it was, the hairdresser expressed his astonishment on the ground that an old customer of his had just been with him who had come back from Japan,

and said angrily that he had seen nothing like it out there. We believe that many of the Japanese in Europe

really did take offence at the play, and certainly have our doubts if its recent revival, since the occurrences of the war, was exactly wise or justifiable. Countries like " Ruritania " or " Gobang " are perhaps safer geo- graphical investments. "Little Japan" was gently laughed at in Punch and the rest of the English Press for daring the Middle Kingdom as she did; but an Empire of four thousand two hundred islands, nearly one hundred and fifty thousand square miles in area., and with a population

of more than forty-one million of souls, whom Sir Edwin describes as "as homogeneous as a sack of rice," with a history more than two thousand five hundred years old, and with all the solidity of an island Power,—is not to be lightly held either as friend or enemy. We have heard, on the other hand, on good authority that, whereas the Japanese sent constantly to Europe for their iron bridges made in the West, the Chinese after having pat up their first were con- tent to import the iron, one example having been enough to teach them how to put the materials together. But Sir Edwin speaks in the highest terms of the Japanese railway, as well as of their electric lighting, educational, sanitary, and medical departments. Of their military training and capacity he writes with the same enthu- siasm, contrasting their " fearless lieutenants, captains, and colonels, who rejoice in getting back to their old chivalric life, and the Chinese generals and com- manders, with spectacles and long silver finger nail guards, carried into the field in sedan-chairs with opium- pipes in hand instead of swords." The traditional quarrel

between the English and French is not as old as the fend between these uncomfortable neighbours, for at about the date when the Saxons first landed in Britain, the Empress Jingo Kogo, anticipating our modern filibusters in her very name, successfully invaded the Corean peninsula; and in

1269 Kubla Khan retaliated with a descent with hundreds of ships and thousands of fighting men :—

" The memorable event," writes Sir Edwin, "is the Armada story of Japanese history, and the land has never forgotten either its perils or its glories at that epoch. Aided by a mighty typhoon, the islanders managed to shatter and disperse the argosy of the Chinese conqueror, and cut off thousands of the invaders' heads, after the barbarous fashion towards prisoners then prevailing, which China would still follow, though Japan has long ago adopted the Geneve Cross, and astonished her pig - tailed enemies by tenderness and humanity towards the wounded and captives."

The feebleness and failure of China, the incompetence of her

officers, and the cowardice of her soldiers and sailors, are due not only to the weakness of her Central Government, but are the natural result of the respective religions of the two countries, if we are to trust the interesting parallel which Sir Edwin Arnold draws. The war was a prodigious collision between Confucianism and Buddhism, and we know that the author has inquired very closely into these faiths :—

"Behind the disgraceful defeat of the troops and ships of Pekin lie the nnspirituality, the narrowness, and selfishness of the old Agnostic's philosophy, while behind the successes of Japan are the glad and lofty tenets of a modified Buddhistic metaphysic, which has mingled with the proud doctrines of Shintoism to breed reverence for the past, to inculcate and to produce patriotism, loyalty, fearlessness of death, with happiness in life, and, above all, self-respect"

In the last word lies Sir Edwin's key to the Japanese character, which has given them a life full of grace, and charm, and refinement, strongly contrasted with the dirty, ill-regulated, struggling, atheistic existence of the average Chinese. Capable, clever, and indefatigable, the Chinaman has forfeited his self-respect, and what results from it, by his cold and changeless unbelief.

We have dwelt at this length upon the essay upon the late war because it seemed to us so much the most interesting part of the volume, and supplies such strong additional evidence of the fascination exercised by Japan over her many lovers at the present time. But Sir Edwin Arnold has been too much of a traveller in the East to allow us to limit our study by the annals of any single one of the Empires he has

visited. Egypt and India supply their quota to his story, and the realm of natural history is the province of much of his

research. The description of a flight of locusts, often as we have heard of the phenomenon before, is as vivid as the conclusion to which it leads :—

" In Cyprus the English Government has waged a long and costly war with this Gryllus migratorius ; but if anybody had sat with us at lunch upon that day upon the hill in Esdraelon, it seems to me he would have backed the locusts against the strongest and richest Government that ever went to war with its winged hosts."

As interesting is the study of the maternal instinct as a kind of parable of the world and its meaning ; while Sir Edwin's acquaintance with the creeds of the East is full of the suggestiveness which at the present time it cannot fail to bear.

To us at least it is a new story how King Alexander beard of the sage Daudamis dwelling in the forest ; and being desirous of seeing him, sent Callicrates to command his presence before "the son of the mighty God Zeus, Alexander, sovereign

lord of all men," promising splendid gifts if be should come, and desth if he refused. But-

" Daudamis, without raising his eyes from the ground, made a placid reply to the Greek envoy, in these words,—' The Supreme God is nowise author of insolent wrong, but the creator of peace, of life, of water, of the bodies of men and of their souls, which He receives at death. He abhors slaughter, and instigates no wars. Alexander cannot be a God, since he must die, nor master of the world, since he has not yet reached even the Ganges, where there are nations which have never even heard his name. The gifts he offers me are useless. What things I prize are all here at hand - the leaves which make me a green and pleasant house, the blossoming plants which give delicious food, and the fair water which I drink. Any other possessions appear vain to me, nor will I go to Alexander for his gold and jewels. If he shall cut off my bead, he cannot touch my true life. My body will lie where it belongs, upon the earth ; my soul will go its way. Let your King seek to terrify with death those who dread it. A Brahman has no fear of that which ends life only that it may begin again.'"