e dying in the middle of a snowy street in the dead of
night, pale-faced and wretched-looking, with ten thousand pounds' worth
of jewellery on her fingers? Such a scene would drive the artistic and
consistent Japanese manager into the nearest lunatic asylum. At the same
time he would be unutterably shocked at seeing a red moon (red, let us
trust, with the blush of shame at its creator's folly) rising hurriedly
behind some stage bank of roses, swiftly and unnaturally hurrying across
a purple sky, and shamefacedly setting in the East, in the West, in the
North, in the South, within the brief hour of an English stage, as if
glad to escape the rapturous applause of an inartistic public.

But perhaps nowhere is the difference between European and Japanese art
so sharply accentuated as it is in the teaching of it in the great
schools of the West and of the East. Let us take the art schools of
Paris, which is considered by a vast portion of the artistic world to be
the very paradise of art. You enter the crowded studio of some
well-known master, and you see before you a large white statue, the
first and predominant impression of which is its exceeding whiteness;
and to your mingled amusement and amazement you discover that the
unfortunate pupils are engaged in a futile endeavour to render an
impression of exceeding whiteness by the aid of thick black chalk or
charcoal. As to how this is to be done with any degree of verisimilitude
you are no less at fault than they are, poor dears, themselves; and
therefore you will not be surprised that, dazed and wearied as they must
be from the steady contemplation of this never-ending pose, their work
at the close of a day resembles the figure from which they have been
drawing as closely as the work of Michael Angelo, or any of the great
Japanese masters.

[Illustration: A SUNNY TEMPLE]

From the antique you pass to the life room. Here another shock awaits
you. In the middle of the room stands a young girl, strapped up in the
attitude of Atalanta of classic fable running her immortal race. These
pupils are taught first of all to sketch the figure in the pose of
running as a skeleton. When the hideous skeleton has been carefully and
laboriously committed to paper, it is with equal care imbued with nerves
and muscles and flesh. When all this is done, a light Grecian drapery is
flung on her, regardless of the folds and movement that would eventually
have resulted from the fluttering of the