nded him of Miss
Bisland. He pronounced Matthew Arnold to be "one of the colossal humbugs
of the century; a fifth-rate poet, and an unutterably dreary essayist,"
because at the moment he was animated by one of his intense enthusiasms
for _Edwin_ Arnold, whose acquaintance Hearn had made during one of
Arnold's visits to Japan. "Far the nobler man and writer, permeated with
the beauties of strong faiths and exotic creeds; the spirit that, in
some happier era, may bless mankind with the universal religion in
perfect harmony with the truths of science, and the better nature of
humanity."

But in spite of all his whimsicality, and when uninfluenced by pique or
partiality, his criticisms are not to be surpassed, here and there
expanding into an inspired burst of enthusiasm. On cloudy nights, when
passing through southern seas, the waste of water sometimes spreads like
a dark metallic surface round you. A shoal of fish or band of porpoises
suddenly comes along; the surface begins to ripple and move; flakes of
phosphorescence shoot here and there; illumined streaks flash alongside
the ship, and in a few seconds the undulations of the waves are
shimmering, a mass of liquid light. So in Hearn's letters, treating the
dullest subjects--writing to Chamberlain, for instance, on the subject
of his health, and diet, and the storage of physical and brain force, he
suddenly breaks off, and takes up the subject of Buddhism and Shintoism.
"There is, however, a power, a mighty power, in tradition and race
feeling. I can't remember now where I read a wonderful story about a
Polish brigade under fire during the Franco-Prussian war." Then he tells
the story in his own inimitable way: "The Polish brigade stood still
under the infernal hail, cursed by its German officers for the least
murmur,--'Silence! you Polish hogs!' while hundreds, thousands fell, but
the iron order always was to wait. Men sobbed with rage. At last, old
Steinmetz gave a signal--_the_ signal. The bugles rang out with the
force of Roland's last blast at Roncesvalles, the air forbidden ever to
be sung or heard at other times--the national air (you know it)--'_No!
Poland is not dead_!' And with that crash of brass all that lives of the
brigade was hurled at the French batteries. Mechanical power, if
absolutely irresistible, might fling back such a charge, but no human
power. For old Steinmetz had made the mightiest appeal to those 'Polish
brutes' that man, God, or devil could m