here is to be found the all-pervading element of art and
beauty. A rainy day in Japan is not, as it is in London, a day of gloom
and horror, but a day of absolute fascination. What a joy is the
spectacle of all those lovely yellow paper umbrellas unfurling
themselves beneath a shower like flowers before the sun, so different
from the dark shiny respectability of our ghastly gamps at home! John
Bunyan has written and talked of the house beautiful; but the Japanese
have given to the nation not only the house beautiful, but also (what is
even more important to the community at large) the street beautiful, and
that is where Japan differs so widely from Europe. As I walk through the
London streets at night, how prosaic is the flicker of each gas-jet,
within its sombre panes of glass, in some "long unlovely street," and
how different from the softened rays that shine from out the dainty
ricksha lanterns illuminating the streets in Japan! There a poem meets
your eye with each step you take; and how pretty is every street corner,
with its little shop, its mellow light and dainty arrangements, with the
smiling face of some little child peeping out from the dim shadow
beyond! It is a terrible thing to live in a country where art is the
luxury of the few, and where the people know as little of what
constitutes the beauty of life as a Hindoo knows of skating. What would
a Japanese gentleman say, I wonder, if he passed into a room in the
depths of winter and saw a quantity of those pretty fans, which in his
country help to modify the heat of the golden summer days, viciously
nailed, without rhyme or reason, upon a bright red wall, or those
fairy-like umbrellas, upon which he has seen the rain-drops glisten so
brightly, stuck within the gloomy recess of some lead-black hideous
grate, or (with still less sense of the fitness of things or regard for
the uses for which it was made) glued to a white-washed ceiling?

[Illustration: BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN]

We sometimes talk of the deteriorating influence of European ideas upon
Japanese art; but we have failed to perceive the ghastly
inappropriateness of applying the Japs' delicate flights of fancy to our
homes of discomfort. That usefulness is the basis of all righteousness
is the moral code by which a man's position is gauged in Japan, and by
which things are made. It does not matter how beautiful an article may
be, or how trivial--whether it is a penholder, a snuff-box, or a
pipe-