pire of islands which
had hitherto enjoyed no recognition in the Christian world other
than its name upon the map. No history, as far as we know,
illuminated it; no ancient time-marks told of its advancement, step
by step, in the march of improvement. There it has rested for
thousands of years, wrapped in the mysteries of its own
exclusiveness--gloomy, dark, peculiar. It has been supposed to
possess great powers; and vague rumors have attributed to it arts to
us unknown. Against nearly all the world, for thousands of years
Japan has obstinately shut her doors; the wealth of the Christian
world could not tempt her cupidity; the wonders of the Christian
world could not excite her curiosity. There she lay, sullen and
alone, the phenomenon of nations. England and France and the other
powerful governments of Europe have at various times tried to
conquer this Oriental exclusiveness, but the Portuguese only partly
succeeded, while all the rest have signally failed. At length we,
bearing at our masthead the glorious old Stars and Stripes, approach
the mysterious portals and seek an entrance. Not with cannon and
the implements of death do we demand admission, but, appreciating
the saying of Euripides, that

"Resistless eloquence shall open
The gates that steel exclude,"

we peacefully appeal to that sense of justice which is the "touch of
nature that makes the whole world kin," and behold! the
interdiction is removed; the doors of the mysterious empire fly
open, and a new garland is added to our commercial conquests! Who
shall set limits to the gain that shall follow this one victory of
peace, if our government shall be perpetuated so as to gather it for
the generations? Who shall say that in an unbroken, undivided
union, the opening of the empire of Japan shall not accomplish for
the present era all that the Reformation, the art of printing,
steam, and the telegraph have done within the last three hundred
years? New avenues of wealth are thrown open; new fields are to be
occupied; arts new to us, perhaps, are to be studied; and science,
doubtless, has revelations to make us, from that arcana of nations,
equal to anything we have ever learned before. Fifty millions of
people are to be enlightened; the printing press is yet to catch the
daily thought and stamp it on the page; the magnetic wire must yet
tremble along her highways, and Niphon yet tremble to her very
centre at each heart-beat of our ocean steamer