hes--very dirty--and peaked cap completed the outfit. I
surveyed the man with interest, and would have made further examination
of him but for fear of the big bayonet. His arms were well kept,--not
speckless by any means,--but his uniform would have made an English
colonel swear. There was no portion of his body except the neck that it
pretended to fit. I peeped into the quarter-guard. Fans and dainty
tea-sets do not go with one's notions of a barrack. One drunken
defaulter of certain far-away regiments that I could name would not only
have cleared out that quarter-guard, but brought away all its fittings
except the rifle-racks. Yet the little men, who were always gentle, and
never got drunk, were mounting guard over a pile that, with a blue fire
on the bastions, might have served for the guard-gates of Hell.

I climbed to the top of the fort and was rewarded by a view of thirty
miles of country, chiefly pale yellow mustard and blue-green pine, and
the sight of the very large city of Osaka fading away into mist. The
guide took most pleasure in the factory chimneys. "There is an
exposition here--an exposition of industrialities. Come and see," said
he. He took us down from that high place and showed us the glory of the
land in the shape of corkscrews, tin mugs, egg-whisks, dippers, silks,
buttons, and all the trumpery that can be stitched on a card and sold
for five-pence three farthings. The Japanese unfortunately make all
these things for themselves, and are proud of it. They have nothing to
learn from the West as far as finish is concerned, and by intuition know
how to case and mount wares tastefully. The exposition was in four large
sheds running round a central building which held only screens, pottery,
and cabinet-ware loaned for the occasion. I rejoiced to see that the
common people did not care for the penknives, and the pencils, and the
mock jewellery. They left those sheds alone and discussed the screens,
first taking off their clogs that the inlaid floor of the room might not
suffer. Of all the gracious things I beheld, two only remain in my
memory,--one a screen in grey representing the heads of six devils
instinct with malice and hate; the other, a bold sketch in monochrome of
an old woodcutter wrestling with the down-bent branch of a tree. Two
hundred years have passed since the artist dropped his pencil, but you
may almost hear the tough wood jar under the stroke of the chopper, as
the old man puts his back