CONTENTS. PAGE 1 NOTES ON NOTE-WORTHIES, OF DIVERS ORDERS, EITHER SEX, AND EVERY XV. THOMAS PELHAM, DUKE OF Newcastle XVL RACHAEL, LADY RUSSELL XVII. THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN. THE success of Lord Elgin's mission to Japan was so signal and so unexpected, that it took many persons quite aback. Enthusiastic journalists wrote on every side as though the British envoy and his staff were Columbians discovering a new continent, Spaniards "staring at the Pacific," or Jesuit pilgrims entering the gates of another Quinsai. We were told of the gigantic palaces, the crowded streets, the aristocratic suburbs, and the golden opulence of the capital of Japan, as if it were previously utterly unknown; and most absurd of all, pictures were drawn with amusing simplicity of primitive manners and modest virtues, almost too pure for contact with the vicious and besotted nations of Christendom. Some credulous persons have even gone so far as to pity the Japanese for having been deluded into association with a scapegrace community like the English. These are the same who opposed the civilising labours of Brooke in Borneo, and who would have left India to the Sepoys. The Japanese empire has not, however, been always hidden from Europe like the Cloud Mountains of Arabian Mythology. Marco Polo described the island of Zipangu, the fame of whose riches had in his time attracted the Tartar hordes under the renowned Kublai Khan. Mariners, since the time of Fernando Mendez Pinte 1 ominous name) to that of Golovin, have been wrecked on its inhospitable coasts, and have survived their cage discipline to narrate their experiences and sufferings. Some of the imperial ports have been open to commerce ever since the sixteenth century. Nations, such as the Dutch and the Portuguese, the Russians, Americans, and English, have rivalled one another in obtaining privileges from a haughty and obstinate monarch. For upwards of a century the Dutch had to send an annual mission, accompanied by a numerous suite, with tribute and presents to Yeddo, till in 1792 this expensive ceremony was mitigated to once in four years, and at last the tribute was paid at Nagasaki itself. Occasional envoys have ventured into the harbours of Japan from the days of Hagenaar to those of Laxmann, Krusenstein, Elliot, Paniatin, Perry, and Lord Elgin. Missionary deputations have been sent from Rome, and curious Jesuits, like Charlevoix, have caught glimpses of rich plains, dotted with cities and traversed by imaginary armies of one hundred thousand horse and foot, armed with steel battle-axes. Adventurous spirits, as a Langedorff and a Broughton, have penetrated into the forbidden interior, and even naturalists, and artists, and men of science have followed in their footsteps. Now is the time, we are told, for abridging or translating Jan.-VOL. CXV. NO. CCCCLVII. B Cardim, Charlevoix, and Fisscher; for condensing Kampfer; for reprinting Thunberg, Klaproth, and Titsingh; for collecting the valuable tracts in the Chinese Repository; and for reproducing, in a form adapted for English circulation, the admirable narrative of Commodore Perry. By far the most important of all works on Japan is, however, that of Siebold, or Siebolt, but which is not yet completed. It is the account of a journey made to Japan in the years 1828 to 1830, and it comprises, besides a narrative of his voyage and personal adventures, every topic connected with the history of the country and with its physical and geographical features. Is is indeed impossible, on contemplating this magnificent work, not to feel that as yet Japan has been essentially Dutch. The learned of different countries in Europe may be truly said to have distributed among themselves, by nations, the several regions of Asia, as the respective fields of their enterprise in literary and scientific exploration. China may in that respect, and in the face of our progress in arms and the labours of our travellers and scholars-Staunton, Barrow, Ellis, Abel, Morrison, Davis, and others-be viewed as hitherto the especial province of France; for nobody will dispute the fame which Gerbillon, Gaubil, Visdelon, Premare, Mailla, Amiot, and other missionaries of the last century acquired; nor that of Du Halde, Grosier, De Mailla, De Guignes, De Glemona, and Huc in later times, and which the Chinese scholars of France, with Abel Rémusat at their head, still maintain. Anquetil, Du Perron, and other Orientalists have honourably disputed the literature of Iran and her magian hierarchy with the English. Till within a very recent epoch the literature and the monumental records of a country contiguous to their great Asiatic empire had also been abandoned by Englishmen to foreigners. But in India Britain has vindicated her fame. The soil on which the black antelope feeds is the Holy Land of the Brahmans, and it is the field where England has formed her heroes to the highest glory of arms, and where all Europe envies the fame of her Oriental scholars, who in the space of forty years have explored the admired mysteries of the Vedas, and Sastras, and Puranas, and of that ancient and elaborated language which the disciples of Aristotle heard without perceiving that it was cognate with their own. In India, our countrymen have unfolded the doctrines of ancient schools of philosophy which challenge a comparison with those of Democritus and of Zeno. They have discovered a dramatic literature as refined and embellished, and nearly as ancient, as that of the Athenian stage, and they have detected the secret system of those astronomical calculations which eluded the scrutiny of Baillie. Even the great and glorious victories of our generals over a nation in insurrection can scarcely earn for them greater renown than attaches itself to the names of Sir William Jones, of Colebrooke, and of Wilson. Germany claims not one foot of land in Asia, yet her scholars come in everywhere for a large share in the honour of literary discovery. Schlegel and Bopp have taken the lead in the criticism of Indian philosophy and the structure of language, and Klaproth, and Schmidt, and Schote, and Neumann in Chinese, and the former in Japanese and Mongolian history.* Klaproth has edited a Mythological History of Japan, as also Titsingh's Annals of the Emperors of Japan, with additions. |