CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ENGUSH COLLECTION THE GIFT OF JAMES MORGAN HART PROFESSOR OF ENGUSH PUTNAM'S MONTHLY A MAGAZINE of LITERATURE ART AND LIFE VOL. Ill JANUARY, 1908 NO. 4 AN IMPRESSION OF THE FIFTIES By MARY MOSS With Portraits from "The Knickerbocker Gallery" N any library a gen- eration old, there may be found — tucked away upon top shelves, rele- gated to dark cor- ners — certain iso- lated volumes which, no matter in what they differ, all show one common trait. Their covers vary from sentimental rosy silk, faint with age, to a gorgeousness of black and gold. Like that famous Spring Annual in which one Arthur Pendennis made his first bow to the public, the contents may bear the stamp of high fashion. Did not Lady Blessington herself stoop to the graceful task of editing one? Their illustrations, pseudo-classical engrav- ings and fancifvd vignettes, possess no small charm and deHcacy (the plate for Mr. Pendennis's verses cost Bacon sixty pounds). But, judging by their invariable state of preservation — Annuals, Souvenirs, Mementos, Gal- leries, whatever their titles — no hu- man being seems ever to have read them. If Sterne had never seen a dead donkey,, certainly no living mor- tal can produce a dog-eared Book of Beauty. To this rule there is no exception, and the substantial volume which has drifted to my table, with its discreet binding, fine gilt edges and admirable typography, is as innocent of human desecration as Robinson Crusoe's island. "The Knickerbocker Gallery," New York, 1855. At that date the Knickerbocker ^Magazine had lived a quarter of a cen- tury and was the oldest monthly of its class in America. Nevertheless, the editor, Louis Gaylord Clark, received an inadequate salary, so the preface to the Gallery informs us. Consequently fifty-five of his leading contributors each gave " a piece," and this miscellany was edited by John W. Francis, one of our earliest liter- ary doctors, George P. Morris, Rufus Griswold, Richard B. Kimball and Frederick Shelton, into a tome (no lesser word answers) of some five 389 39° PUTNAM'S MONTHLY hundred pages. The proceeds of this were destined to buy for Mr. Clark a cottage on the Hudson — an appropri- ate locaHty, since the Hudson River School predominates in the Gallery, ture (unless Benjamin Franklin's life be so classed) as America has yet produced. Barnum tells how Clark came one day in great haste and began, " Friend Barnum, I have come /:^-^'.^^^ii?-.'-^. as in the pages of the magazine itself. Did these gentlemen succeed, did the cottage pass from a dream to reality? Nothing easier than to ask, but, fearing disappointment, I would rather happily believe that the cottage had a double coach-house and that Mr. Clark there ended his days in peace and plenty. He merits our good-will from his humane habit of letting his magazine writers sign their articles (an unusual indulgence both in Eng- land and America), and in the pleas- ant wit shown by the only surviving anecdote of him. This story, by the way, may be found in a remarkable publication of the year '55, the too little known- autobiography of P. T. Barnum, as fine a specimen of picaresque litera- to ask if you have got in the Museum the club that Captain Cook was killed with?" Barnum naturally had the very thing, and bidding Clark wait, he proceeded to overhaul a lot of clubs, "selecting a heavy one that looked as if it might have killed Captain Cook or anybody else with whose head it came in contact. Having afhxed a small label on it reading 'The Captain Cook Club,' I took it down to Mr. Clark, assuring him that this was the instrument of death which he inquired for." Together the two examined it with intelligent sympathy, Barnum growing quite sad at picturing the brutal scene in which that club had played a part. Finally Clark prepared to take leave, AN IMPRESSION OF THE FIFTIES 391 shaking Barnum's hand and assuring him, "I had an irrepressible desire to see the club that killed Captain Cook. ... I have been in half a dozen smaller museums, and as they prophecy of the romantic movement, and of the growing taste for Shake- speare. Then comes the delightful, quizzical visage of Dr. Holmes, looking as if he all had it, I was sure a large establish- ment like yours could not be without it." Needless to say, Jenny Lind's im- pressario evened the score in a later chapter; but having wandered so far from the Gallery to prove Mr. Clark's claim to his cottage, I must go back to the fifty-five authors who sharpened their pens to procure it. The list opens, as it should, with Washington Irving, who, having passed his three score years and ten, and needing rest from the recent effort of "Wolfert's Roost," is content to send jottings from an early common- place book. This "Conversation with Talma" gives some fairly interesting notes upon the French stage, with a were at that moment relishing the humor of "Concerning Homeopathy and Kindred Delusions," but facing an interminable copy of verses, "A Vision of the Hoosatonic," in Words- worth's best Peter Bell manner. After this, the real instruction be- gins : instruction on the mutability of Fame, on the uncommonly small pro- portion of celebrities of one genera- tion whose names even survive a short half century. Samuel Osgood! Who remembers him? Yet, he was an original Brook Farmer, and not only an important divine in his day, but an author of excellent repute. After reading his present contribu- tion, "A Reminiscence of Kentucky," one wonders just why his literary 392 PUTNAM'S MONTHLY claims were regarded, unless for his skill in dodging a certain question then forcing itself upon public notice. Kansas and Missouri, however, take no part in this laudatory sketch of slave- holding Kentucky, but Osgood's work bears one unmistakable mark of its era. Whether Httle Eva or Little Nell be responsible for the fashion, the fact remains that in the fifties no female child ever appeared upon one page without sadly and sweetly dying, usually at the turn of the leaf. Such a company of Herods as the mild mid- Victorian writers! The mortal- ity among little girls throws an or- dinarily kind-hearted person into a panic at the first indication of a blue eye and a golden curl. (Is it because boys are tougher that Paul Dombey's influence can show no more than a semi-occasional death-bed? ) Of course Donald Mitchell sent a "tale" to the Gallery. His "Bride of the Ice King" must simply be for- given, on the score of the ambrosial portrait accompanying it and because of his miraculous youth. Judging by this tragedy of a lovely but mournful Swiss Maiden, Ik Marvel at twenty- three possessed a fund of immaturity entitling him to gentle treatment at the hands of adults. George Lunt! O twentieth-century reader! Is it possible that you have forgotten George Lunt? Yet he wrote novels, lyrics and historical sketches and was noticed in the North American Review! Then Boker, handsome and worldly, in a coat the perfection of which rather suggests the diplomat than the poet, sends a fragment of his " Francesca da Rimini," then unpublished and un- played. There is a ring of talent in his verse, with odd falterings, as of a gift not quite sustained enough to lift his feet permanently from the ground. Then an Indian Legend, by that Frederick Shelton whose "Letters from Up the River" so pleased his contemporaries. "Such ripe, juicy, diction as flows from his pen," the reviewer declares "could alone do justice to his rich and jocund fan- cies." To us it merely seems that, like too many amiable gentlemen of that date, this excellent divine placed undue confidence in the personal note. Their idea of personal was something highly intimate, a microscopic view of daily life, in style reminiscent of Irving, of Sterne (sterilized), of the Tattler, of Charles Lamb. Hence a multitude of rambling confidences, such as "The Reveries of a Bachelor," "Prue and I." Truly, the despised Willis's " Letters from Idlewild " come nearer bearing the test of time than many more pretentious pictures of contemporary life. The difficulty with literature of this type is that not every one has the gift to be Charles Lamb ! To venture so engagingly into personalities, one must needs be quite sure of having an engaging personality to reveal. Consequently when Mr. Shelton lingers so confidently over the Atridean banquets of his Shanghai rooster, and over what he himself had (or went without) for dinner in his humble cot, we rather yawn than ad- mire — not half so wearily, however, as if a taste for curios had led us to dip into his novel, "Chrystalline," a mid- Victorian "Zenda," of portentous dulness. Bayard Taylor gives a "Day at Saint Helena." This bears a faint thrill. It seems a link with a past then sufficiently recent for something of it to hover about that desecra- ted tomb. Napoleon's emptied grave. Taylor talked with the caretaker who, though never getting an answer, act- ually had said "Good morning, sir," to Napoleon! The assemblage in the Gallery now grows as ghostly as that company in the moon which Eaton Barrett made up of heroes and heroines whose tenure of spirit-life was measured by their popularity on earth. Worthy citizens, many of these, largely asso- ciated with some useful work, but dim in our minds after fifty years. Epes Sargent, with schoolbooks to his credit, biographies and transla- tions, here branches into an Indian tale, wooden as a cigar Pompey. Bethune brings another infant death- bed. William Pitt Palmer, for- gotten! Tuckerman, whom nobody reads. Thomas Ward (Flaccus), wickedly kept ahve by a quotation from his chef d'ceuvre preserved in the Literati. Like all young gentlemen in the fifties, Ward discovered Europe, but, unique among them, he wrote a serious poem upon sea-sickness: the most "disgust- ing" picture in literature Poe calls it, and makes good his assertion by producing these lines: But most of all good eating cheers the brain, Where other joys are rarely met — at sea — Unless indeed we lose as soon as gain. Ay, there 's the rub, so bafiding oft to me. Boiled, roast and baked — what precious choice of dishes My generous throat has shared among the fishes ! And he ends by sentimentally re- marking My briny messmates ! Ye will mourne my loss ! More than enough, as Poe declares, to damn any book — and this at a period which for refinement would put to the blush all the precienses from 393 394 PUTNAM'S MONTHLY Scudery to Madelon! Perhaps Byron may be held accountable for this as- tounding ease of manner; but, while many of these "poets" doubtless saw a likeness between themselves and " Don Juan, " as a rule there is a scru- pulous avoidance of any such sug- gestions in their eminently virtuous writings. To the Gallery, Ward con- tributes a long poem, "The Bards of Parnassus." This opens with the amazing statement (taken from Gris- wold) that there were then in Amer- ica "Two hundred genuine and immortal bards." Ward, however treats some of these immortals with a fairl)'- lively and satirical characteriza- tion. William^ Henry Cuyler Hosmer claims mention here, if only to show how a poet was permitted to wear his beard, in the fifties — also a bit of his verse is artless enough to be pre- served: Dryden wasruined when he tuned his string To gain the guerdon of a heartless king, Amuse a gay hcentious Court with lays Mocking at virtue, and indecent plays. Bow at the footstool of anointed sin Less sure of royal favour than Nell Gwynne. Then among the forgotten comes Donald McLeod, looking terribly like a country town dentist and not in the least as if he had written a sensational romance of secret societies in Ger- many, or had steeped himself in Fou- quet, Tieck, Richter and "Wilhelm Meister." He also discovered Europe and described it in "Pynnshur.st," a series of mediocre letters with some good observation and an occasional infant grave. (I count only white graves, brown and red babies begin at a discount in the fifties.) McLeod stood well in his day, but the present sketch, "Anteros," ends with: "The fires faded from his eyes, and his lips froze upon mine. I care not what doctors tell me, Mark is dead, and I am dying also; but slowly, too slowly." Minor authors of the twentieth cen- tury! Who can be sure that in fifty years we may not sound as rococo as McLeod? Of course, Saxe contributed a ooem, a brisk little lament upon growing old (he was nearly forty at the time) , with the queer blend of Tom Hood and piety which taste permitted in the fifties. Charles Astor Bristed's neat coun- tenance (looking as if he had never heard of Murger, much less translated him) accompanies some dapper satiri- cal lines upon currentmagazine litera- ture. Cozzens sends a long humorous sketch. Has any one born later than the sixties ever tried his famous " Sparrowgrass Papers?" A whole nation once responded to their mild- drawn pleasantries — the beginning of the suburban joke! James T. Fields then shows a young face charming with its air of kindness and wisdom. No wonder budding writers enjoyed visits to their Boston publisher, when they were received by this encouraging and sympathetic presence. Old Dr. Francis is here too, looking as if he might lately have taken wine with Diedrich Knickerbocker. His un- pruned sketch of a curious sort of city tramp, one Christopher Colles, is full of valuable, undigested facts, of random references to Francis's store of New York legend and history. The next author of importance is George P. Morris. All adults who have been blessed with grandmothers will at once automatically exclaim,- " Woodman, spare that tree!" But how many guess the extent of his fame? Even Poe (not a particu- larly lavish man with praise) calls him our best writer of songs, and goes on to affirm that by two poems, "Woodman " and " By the Lake where Droops the Willow," if by nothing else, Morris is immortal! Alas! If to Lowell's taste Willis seemed inspira- tion and water, to us Morris sounds very like Tom Moore and whey. Nevertheless Morris's biogi apher com- pares him to Moore and Byron, con- siderably to their disadvantage, and describes him as performing "gigantic labors as a literary pioneer." Per- haps he did! He certainly edited the New York Mirror, and the Home Journal, wrote a play which ran forty iUrkyr^ Ciyrnji^ ,r/L£yC€L/ 395 396 PUTNAM'S MONTHLY nights, endless poems, and books of humor, and was quoted in the House of Commons when Sir Robert Peel was about to bury his axe in the tree of the British Constitution. Balfe wrote music to some of his songs. The biograplier does not quote Ward's disrespectful lines on a brother poet, setting forth how " General Morris" . . . stood the fire on Independence Day, And braved the muddy perils of Broadway. The Gallery contains a quantity of sketches, to be frank, of the un- pubUshed manuscript kind — Knick- erbocker tales after Irving, mystery tales savoring of Poe, owing much to Wilkie Collins, wavering attempts to use the wonderful French material lying fallow in the Missouri Basin, more Indian sketches, stories of pa- troons, a genuine effort after Ameri- can subjects by men like T. B. Thorpe, whose "Bee Hunter on the Missis- sippi" is even now readable by any one who has a real curiosity about early days in the Southwest. There are notes of travel, more or less over- shadowed by Bayard Taylor's "Views Afoot." All are excellent in inten- tion, but all are hampered by the stereotyped phrase, and by an un- frank, insincere point of view. They seem separated from us by illimitable distance. Could it have needed the Civil War to shake people up, to hurry them, to destroy that sense of un- bounded leisure? Look at the mere number of words in Theodore Fay's "Norman Leslie," one of the early New York society novels (published in '69, but written years before) which introduced the foreign adventurer seeking an American heiress. Fay talks of "sable" crows, a really prize instance of tautology, and makes a fashionable club man describe his horse in these words: " No more will he paw the valley and rejoice in his strength. His noble fleetness, his grace- ful beauty, his docile love — where are they now?" No wonder Blackwood remarks, in '55, that "The American language has gained a certain right, by its own peculiar elegancies, to be distin- guished from the mother tongue." George William Curtis was a Knick- erbocker contributor. The engraving accompanying his feebly Hawthorn- esque story of Italy (the Italy of Udolpho and Otranto) neither looks Hke the "young Greek god" who visited the Ripleys at Brook Farm, nor the beautiful and distinguished orator whose noble memory is still fresh among us. This whiskery por- trait with eyelashes and a dimpled chin is probably the very one he men- tions in a letter as having been sent by mistake to Hueston. Longfellow and Lowell are of course represented. Charles G. Leland gives a northern saga, rather in the spirit of Hans Breitman. Dear old Henry Schoolcraft, leaving his Indians alone, writes a Biblical history of the United States, not so condensed but that he finds room for a panegyric, more Mar- tin Chuzzlewit. Sunset Cox forgets all about his Congressional labors and the New York Post-OfRce, to contribute an essay on the Satanic in literature, which unfortunately contains no such good things as abound in his study of American humor. That forgotten volume, "Why We Laugh" is a per- fect quarry for the origin of jokes current to-day. His definition of pa- tent medicines (which he credits to General Nye), "half poison and half profit," only lately appeared in a reputable weekly as newly minted. I could wish for time to linger over George D. Prentice, that transplanted Connecticut Yankee who took such firm root in the soil of Kentucky. His biographer, Turnbull, remarks, "The life of this distinguished poet and journalist has been a crown of glory to the world." In the Gallery, Prentice contributes a most uncharac- teristic set of verses "To a Beautiful Girl." This, however, is accompanied by a picture the expression of which entirely confirms Turnbull's statement that "Some of Prentice's controversies led to personal encounters," as when ' ' George Trotter of the Louisville Ga- zette fired at him on Market Street, >J% ^/^ at present. Prentice describes a journalistic opponent as having "the malignity of an assassin and the nerves of an old woman." He waged lifelong war with Shadrach Penn of the Louis- ville Advertiser. Hearing that there was a member of the Arkansas Leg- islature named Buzzard, Prentice delicately prints in his paper, the Jotir- nal, "Let him subscribe to the Louis- ville Advertiser : it will be a feast for him." "Villainy is afoot" another rival paper proclaims. "Has the editor lost his horse?" asks Prentice, with that wit which gives his Prenticeana a place as fore- runner of the genuine American humor of elision, which twenty years - nous writer, edited Putnam's Month- ly, was one of the three editors simul- taneously to accept Poe's "Raven," and is said to have been the in- spirer of "The Potiphar Papers." John Treat Irving (a brother of Washington Irving), whose seat in a New York club became vacant only a few years since, wrote for the Gallery "Zadoc Town" — not a Vol- tairean revival, as the title suggests (the fifties in America let Voltaire prudently alone), but a ghost story of a pot-valiant rustic bearing that name. Whittier put in his word for Clark's cottage, and Bryant, and Halleck; Willis writes a charming letter ex- plaining why he cannot write, and AN IMPREvSSION OF THE FIFTIES 399 Seward sends a long article upon the physical development of the United States — expansion we now should call it. Till the last paragraph, this sounds remarkably like a boastful Minor literature of this whole era leaves a queer impression of having been old-fashioned (though imma- ture) even in its heyday. Only remember! Turgenieff was already ^n""^, y ^^ /^■■■; ^^^^z^::^^::^^^. physical geography, then casually, ligiatly, he slips in his word. In all this volume, he is the only one who ventures to speak (and he speaks merely incidentally) of slavery. Richard Henry Stoddard, with characteristic lack of economy, gives of his best — a little "Serenade" with almost the charm of some of his gifted wife's neglected lyrics — a sere- nade so ripe for singing that it de- serves a better fate than oblivion. It is impossible even to name all the Gallery-makers — ^J. M. Legar6, ' ' better known " (so the encyclopedias say) "as a relative of Hugh Legar^, " a slim enough hold on immortality, Hamilton Myers, Henry Brent, George Wood — forgotten, all of them one fears, and with reason! writing. France had produced "Ma- dame Bovary." Balzac and Stendahl were accomplished facts. Trollope had published "The War- den"; DisraeH was at his strange pranks in English fiction; Charles Kingsley was established and Charles Reade was beginning. And with all this happening, literature in America neither grasped life in the raw, like the Russians, and reflected it, nor did it follow the freshest European inter- preters. Influence crossed the water so slowly that, while Tennyson, Browning and the Pre-Raphaelites were coming to the fore in England, America still lay under the dominion of pseudo-Byronism (trimmed down for family use), Moore, Hood, the Germans who inspired Coleridge, 400 PUTNAM'S MONTHLY Pope and the eighteenth-century humorists. Art seems iniled by the Rogers Group and the Greek Slave; "so un- dressed," as Henry James says, "so refined, so pensive in sugar-white alabaster, exposed under little domed glass covers in such American homes as could bring themselves to think such things right." "Literature, "the same master truly points out, "was small. . . and cool." Hawthorne, like Poe, stands in the strange position of being an exotic, of springing perfect into the world, without forerunner among his com- patriots. The dark, irregular genius of Herman Meh'ille gave out occa- sional flame. Judd's wild tale of " Margaret" struggled for life, smoth- ered in the torrent of his polysyllables. Sheer inspiration charged Mrs. Stowe, like a prophetess, to deliver her mes- sage with a passion which conquered all weakness of style and expression. Theodore Winthrop, underrated and forgotten, belonged in his mental pro- cesses to our world rather than his own. Provincialism was the note ap- pallingly struck, even by those world- lings who strove hardest to prove the actual, not the comparative finish of American manners. Open Bristed's "The Upper Ten Thousand," avow- edly written to convince England that America was not all swamps and — spittoons. Claiming to show a thor- oughly cosmopolitan society, he per- mits his fashionable hero to use this formula, in asking a friend to dine: "Four sharp. The grand-governor is ill, I have the cellar key and the butcher's book. There is a bottle of Cordon Blue on ice; our cook makes a good oyster soup; smelts are prime now; and I laid in a tall Philadelphia capon this morning." To speak, in fact, much more like Hobson New- come of the City than Lord Kew or the Marquis of Steyne. As a picture of manners this may be correct. As a brief for American elegance it leaves an unpleasing sense of artless- ness posing as savoir vivre. In looking back upon it, of all periods this is the most puzzling. Poised on the brink of chaos, the majority of these people looked upon literature as a nursery for small beer and mild virtues. Judged in mass, they are perfectly expressed by Long- fellow's "I hate everything violent." Henry James points out: "If they were pleased with themselves and each other, they were pleased for the most part with every one else, from Goethe to Lydia Maria Child." " We were easily captured," a recent auto- biographer confesses. " It was a senti- mental time in American history. We all sang about the little girl and the flowers that grew on her grave." And all this with such mischief brewing that only Gettysburg could mend it! It seems as if one great passion of the period exercised a strange elimina- tion upon general literature, deleting it of all fire except such as could flame out upon one special subject. You have constantly to remind your- self that some of these gently spo- ken poets, these minor authors of ladylike sketches, went out to defy the laws of their country, braving per- sonal danger and loss. There was no lack of manhood. It may even have been easier to shoulder a knapsack and march, in '6i, than to join a mob attack on the Boston court-house in '54, but the fibre of general literature showed nothing of this. The standard of propriety was set so high that Thackeray gave seri- ous offense in his " English Humor- ists " lectures. Did he not stand up before a cultured, refined, family au- dience, and show distinct tolerance for a low character like Dick Steele, an acknowledged tippler? George William Curtis himself had a scandal to live down. His own father actually felt distress over certain passages in "A Howadji on the Nile." It is worth opening that pleasant volume to find an exact gauge of the sen- sitiveness of the 'sos. True, he speaks of dancing girls, but so dis- creetly that our only criticism would be a fear that, under his guidance, Paterfarnilias from Boston might has- ten to take Mother and the Girls to witness this edifying diversion. It AN IMPRESSION OF THE FIFTIES 401 is a long cry from the public which looked coldly upon the Howadji to that which responded so cordially to Chicago's Midway invitation to " Come in and see the Muscle Dance." Muse upon it long enough, sym- pathetically enough, and you. will see, however, that all this mildness had a cause. Literature dealing with sla- very absorbed the entire excitement of the period, gave it an outlet. The restless discontent of creative art was forced into a practical channel. With the exception of Winthrop, the poets did not eat their bread with tears. They wrote "The Biglow Papers." The active and stirring found vent for their energy in attacking slavery. The others were honorably and inocu- ously imitative of the best European modes, English and German. The relation between men and women re- ceived even less attention than it does in American fiction to-day. Speaking of the limits of American literature, Poe complains that "Our necessities have been mistaken for our propen- sities." But, with perspective, we may rather conclude that our neces- sities have crystallized our propen- sities into characteristics. The fact that during adolescence a great cause engulfed the imagination, the fer- vor, the ,best talent, inevitably re- stricted the scope of our fiction. It restricted the highest energies to practical issues. Mr. G. Lowes Dick- inson points out that America "is the only great nation that has not pro- duced a single love lyric worth re- cording." This he deduces from the fact that America has never felt fear, forgetting that when America did feel fear it was of so poignant a na- ture as to focus effort of every kind upon external, objective matters. This formative period was one of in- tense struggle, of immediate danger. Consequently conflicts of the soul, the eternal question of man and woman, lapsed out of literature. The effect has been so abiding that in America to-day even the new religions are largely occupied with the practical side of things. Christian vScience, Christian Healing, and so on — all these treat the soul indirectly, largely for the sake of its infliuence upon the body. Therefore, in any search for a clew to the enigmas of American liter- ature to-day, such forgotten relics as this Gallery throw sudden gleams into twilight corners. What the great men did, we all know — Whit- tier, Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow — but from the small and unconsidered much is to be learned: not from their best work, but from their average product, from what was only good enough to — give away. Here we may still catch a hint of tendencies, see the cause of such marked traits as the sexlessness of American fiction, the unemotionalism of an art which, in its infancy, was fed on so great an emotion that mere personal convul- sions of the spirit have never since found expression in it. From the essential nature of criti- cism, all such diagnoses must be in a measure empirical. But for those who care to study the history of their kind in old photograph albums, to whom the pages of an obsolete maga- zine never cease to be a respected record, for the patient, the observing and the curious, there will always be matter for thought and a light upon the present, even in such shadowy relics as " The Knickerbocker Gal- lery." SOME JAPANESE STATESMEN OF TO-DAY Notes on the Powers behind the Mikado's Throne By W. G. FITZ-GERALD n HE little group of Japanese states- men to whom the world owes an- other "Great Power" is fast passing away. They are those who stood by when the nation awoke from her centuries of sleep ; who saw her needs and opened her eyes to the supreme question of either accepting modern conditions or being swept away by their inexorable tide; far- seeing pioneers in short, who risked all — the displeasure of the Emperor, the fury of the mob; reputation, for- tune and even life itself — to compass the rise of Japan as we know it to-day. Most foreigners have forgotten al- together the elder school of these men: Okubo, Mori, Kido, Itagaki and the rest. Of these reformers the first two lost their lives in the conflict; but Ito, Inouye, Yamagata and Oku- ma are looked upon to-day as the leaders of New Japan. Senior in years is the scholarly and gentle Marquis Inouye, loved and re- spected all over the Island Empire to-day from Yezo to Kiu Shiu. As a fighter he began his career supporting his lord the Prince of Choshiu against the Shogun forces in 1863. When the Choshiu clan was beaten, Inouye made the forbidden journey to England with his friend Ito, and thenceforward for some time the history of both pioneers is identical. Inouye, in particular, was marked 402 out for the ferocity of his fellow- clansmen. Having advocated foreign intercourse, this patriot was set upon and almost murdered. By a miracle he recovered from his wounds, how- ever; filled many important govern- ment posts, and retired from public life ten years ago. Inouye, like Ito, was a pupil of the late Reverend William Morrison, who taught both of them English in London, and trans- lated for them the greater part of the Code Napoleon, which forms the basis of the Japanese legal system. Baron Suyematsu, too, learned his English from Mr. Morrison. That Count Inouye was considered a commanding figure was seen from the fact that at the outbreak of the late war he was ordered by the Emperor to attend all important Councils, especially to give advice on finance. Only two years younger than In- ouye is Count Itagaki. He, too, earned brilliant laurels in the Japan- ese war of Restoration, when he proved himself a subtle strategist as well as a great fighting man. In the subsequent adjustment of affairs he served in the Ministry, but retired over the Korean split in 1873. The Koreans had wantonly fired on a Japanese warship that called at Kokwa Island for water. Itagaki de- clared they should be punished by force, but he was outvoted, and retired t6 preach the gospel of mili- tarism and liberty to his own clan in the Toso province. PS 203.M9™" ""'""''*' '■''•™^ An impression of the fifties. 3 1924 021 975 358