and courage to the
block; when there are none left but sheep and donkeys, the State will
have been saved. But a man must not think to cope with a revolution; nor
a minister, however fortified with guards, to hold in check a country
that had given birth to such men as Yoshida and his soldier-follower.
The violence of the ministerial Tarquin only served to direct attention
to the illegality of his master's rule; and people began to turn their
allegiance from Yeddo and the Shogun to the long-forgotten Mikado in his
seclusion at Kioto. At this juncture, whether in consequence or not, the
relations between these two rulers became strained; and the Shogun's
minister set forth for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful
sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to precipitate events. It
was a piece of religion to defend the Mikado; it was a plain piece of
political righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. To
Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have arrived. He was himself
still confined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelligence; but
with that he sharpened a sword for the Shogun's minister. A party of his
followers were to waylay the tyrant at a village on the Yeddo and Kioto
road, present him with a petition, and put him to the sword. But Yoshida
and his friends were closely observed; and the too great expedition of
two of the conspirators, a boy of eighteen and his brother, wakened the
suspicion of the authorities, and led to a full discovery of the plot
and the arrest of all who were concerned.

In Yeddo, to which he was taken, Yoshida was thrown again into a strict
confinement. But he was not left destitute of sympathy in this last hour
of trial. In the next cell lay one Kusakabe, a reformer from the
southern highlands of Satsuma. They were in prison for different plots,
indeed, but for the same intention; they shared the same beliefs and the
same aspirations for Japan; many and long were the conversations they
held through the prison wall, and dear was the sympathy that soon united
them. It fell first to the lot of Kusakabe to pass before the judges;
and when sentence had been pronounced he was led towards the place of
death below Yoshida's window. To turn the head would have been to
implicate his fellow-prisoner; but he threw him a look from his eye, and
bade him farewell in a loud voice, with these two Chinese verses:--

"It is better to be a crystal and be broken,
Than to re