but a fanciful
analogy to the division between men and animals. But in the sphere of
such fanciful analogy there are even human beings whom I feel to be like
eats in this respect: that I can love them without liking them. I
feel it about certain quaint and alien societies, especially about the
Japanese. The exquisite old Japanese draughtsmanship (of which we shall
see no more, now Japan has gone in for Progress and Imperialism) had a
quality that was infinitely attractive and intangible. Japanese pictures
were really rather like pictures made by cats. They were full of
feathery softness and of sudden and spirited scratches. If any one will
wander in some gallery fortunate enough to have a fine collection of
those slight water-colour sketches on rice paper which come from the
remote East, he will observe many elements in them which a fanciful
person might consider feline. There is, for instance, that odd enjoyment
of the tops of trees; those airy traceries of forks and fading twigs, up
to which certainly no artist, but only a cat could climb. There is that
elvish love of the full moon, as large and lucid as a Chinese lantern,
hung in these tenuous branches. That moon is so large and luminous
that one can imagine a hundred cats howling under it. Then there is the
exhaustive treatment of the anatomy of birds and fish; subjects in which
cats are said to be interested. Then there is the slanting cat-like eye
of all these Eastern gods and men—but this is getting altogether
too coincident. We shall have another racial theory in no time
(beginning "Are the Japs Cats?"), and though I shall not believe in
my theory, somebody else might. There are people among my esteemed
correspondents who might believe anything. It is enough for me to say
here that in this small respect Japs affect me like cats. I mean that I
love them. I love their quaint and native poetry, their instinct of easy
civilisation, their unique unreplaceable art, the testimony they bear
to the bustling, irrepressible activities of nature and man. If I were
a real mystic looking down on them from a real mountain, I am sure I
should love them more even than the strong winged and unwearied birds
or the fruitful, ever multiplying fish. But, as for liking them, as one
likes a dog—that is quite another matter. That would mean trusting
them.

In the old English and Scotch ballads the fairies are regarded very much
in the way that I feel inclined to regard Japs