hibit, in the miniature gardens of the towns, fullgrown trees of various kinds three feet high, with heads three feet in diameter. These dwarf-trees are reared in flower-pots, as alluded to in one of the poems given in a former chapter; and when they bear luxuriant branches upon a distorted stem, the very acmé of perfection is attained; or, to speak more correctly, it might be supposed attained, had not President Meylan, in the year 1826, seen a box, which he describes as one inch in diameter by three inches high, but which Fischer represents, somewhat less incredibly, as four inches long, one and a half wide, and six high, in which were actually growing and thriving a bamboo, a fir, and a plum-tree, the latter in full blosThe price of this portable grove was 1,200 Dutch gulden, or about 1007.

som.

As examples of the success of these horticulturists in the opposite branch of their art, Meylan describes plum-trees covered with blossoms, each blossom four times the size of the cabbage-rose-of course, not producing fruit, which the Japanese appear not greatly to value — and of radishes weighing from fifty to sixty pounds; radishes of fifteen pounds weight he speaks of as of common occurrence. This gigantifying art, to coin a word, is more beneficially applied to firtrees: many of these growing in the grounds of temples are represented as extraordinarily large.

No dimensions of trunks are stated, but we are told that the branches springing at the height of seven or eight feet are led out, sometimes across ponds, and supported upon props, to such a length, that they give a shade of three hundred feet in diameter.

It may here be added that Japan is said to abound in cedar trees, which rival in magnitude the far-famed cedars of Lebanon.

nor asses.

The empire contains neither sheep, goats, swine The universal cultivation affords little room for wild animals; deer however are found there, venison being the meat most used at the Japanese table; and so are foxes, which are considered as emblems, if not incarnations of the Evil Principle, and sedulously destroyed.

CHAPTER XIII.

RELIGION OF JAPAN.

Sinsyu.-Cosmogony.-Celestial and terrestrial gods.-Temples. -No idols.-Future state.-Precepts.-Impurity.—Purification.-Form of worship.-Priests.-Pilgrimages.-Orders of the blind. Their romantic origin.-Sects.-Buddhism.-Its introduction.-Acts by which established.-Letter from the Corean prince.-Tumult by Anti-Buddhist's. — Buddhism blended with Sinsyu.-Siutoo.-Consequences of the aversion to Christianity.- Present state of the three religions.— Strange story of a former fourth religion resembling Christianity.

THE history of Japan is, in its commencement' at least, so intimately connected with the religion of the country, that, in the little here intended to be said of either, the latter seems naturally, to take precedence of the former.

The original national religion of Japan is de nominated Sinsyu, from the words sin (the gods) and syu (faith); and its votaries are called Sintoos. Such, at least, is the general interpretation; but

Dr. von Siebold asserts the proper indigenous name of this religion to be Kami-no-mitsi, meaning, the way of the kami,' or gods, which the Chinese having translated into Shin-tao the Japanese subsequently adopted that appellation, merely modifying it into Sintoo.

The Sintoo mythology and cosmogony, being as extravagantly absurd as those of most oriental nations, possess little claim to notice, except in such points as are essential to the history of Japan and the supremacy of the mikado.

From* primæval chaos, according to the Japanese, arose a self-created supreme god, throned in the highest heaven-as is implied by his somewhat long-winded name of Ameno-mi-naka-nusimokami and far too great to have his tranquillity disturbed by any cares whatever. Next arose two creator gods, who fashioned the universe out of chaos, but seem to have stopped short of this planet of ours, leaving it still in a chaotic state. The universe was then governed for some myriads of years by seven successive gods, with equally long names, but collectively called the celestial gods. To the last of these, Iza-na-gi-mikoto, the only one who married, (though all his six predecessors had female partners of their state, as sisters rather than wives), the earth owes its existence. He once upon a time thus addressed

* Siebold; the authority for nearly the whole of this chapter.

his consort, Iza-na-mi-mikoto: "There should be somewhere a habitable earth; let us seek it under the waters that are boiling beneath us." He dipt his jewelled spear into the water, and the turbid drops that trickled from the weapon, as he withdrew it, congealing, formed an island. This island, it should seem, was Kiusiu, the largest of the eight that then constituted the world, alias Japan. Iza-na-gi-mikoto next called eight millions of gods into existence, created the ten thousand things' (yorod-su-no-mono), and then committed the government of the whole to his favourite and best child, his daughter, the sungoddess, known by the three different names of Ama-terasu-oho-kami, Oo-hiru-meno-mikoto, and Ten-sio-dai-zin, which last is chiefly given her in her connexion with Japan.

With the sovereignty of Ten-sio-dai-zin began a new epoch. She reigned, instead of myriads, only about 250,000 years, and was followed by four more gods, or demi-gods, who, in succession governed the world 2,091,042 years. These are the terrestrial gods; and the last of them, having married a mortal wife, left a mortal son upon earth, named Zin-mu-ten-wou, the immediate ancestor of the mikados.

But of all these high and puissant gods, although so essentially belonging to Sintoo mythology, none seem to be objects of worship