25 JANUARY 1908, Page 18

Mr. Birrell, who throughout his speech assumed an attitude of

depressed but impeccable self-righteousness, may take con- solation from a passage in Sir Charles Eliot's article on "The Religion of Japan" in the Quarterly Review. It appears that in the Japanese Pantheon there is a divinity named Tenjin, between whose career and that of Mr. Birrell Sir Charles Eliot notes a curious parallelism. Tenjin was a personage famed for his calligraphy who got into difficulties while organising the education of his country, and was transferred to the governor- ship of a neighbouring island. The services which Mr. Birrell is rendering to Ireland, according to his own estimate, surely deserve some minor form of apotheosis.