r's face, and launched
into such an outbreak of indignation as made the matter public in the
school. He was still, when Masaki knew him, much weakened by his
hardships in prison; and the presentation-sword, three feet long, was
too heavy for him to wear without distress; yet he would always gird it
on when he went to dig in his garden. That is a touch which qualifies
the man. A weaker nature would have shrunk from the sight of what only
commemorated a failure. But he was of Thoreau's mind, that if you can
"make your failure tragical by courage, it will not differ from
success." He could look back without confusion to his enthusiastic
promise. If events had been contrary, and he found himself unable to
carry out that purpose--well, there was but the more reason to be brave
and constant in another; if he could not carry the sword into barbarian
lands, it should at least be witness to a life spent entirely for Japan.

This is the sight we have of him as he appeared to schoolboys, but not
related in the schoolboy spirit. A man so careless of the graces must be
out of court with boys and women. And, indeed, as we have all been more
or less to school, it will astonish no one that Yoshida was regarded by
his scholars as a laughing-stock. The schoolboy has a keen sense of
humour. Heroes he learns to understand and to admire in books; but he is
not forward to recognise the heroic under the traits of any contemporary
man, and least of all in a brawling, dirty, and eccentric teacher. But
as the years went by, and the scholars of Yoshida continued in vain to
look around them for the abstractly perfect, and began more and more to
understand the drift of his instructions, they learned to look back upon
their comic schoolmaster as upon the noblest of mankind.

The last act of this brief and full existence was already near at hand.
Some of his work was done; for already there had been Dutch teachers
admitted into Nangasaki, and the country at large was keen for the new
learning. But though the renaissance had begun, it was impeded and
dangerously threatened by the power of the Shogun. His minister--the
same who was afterwards assassinated in the snow in the very midst of
his bodyguard--not only held back pupils from going to the Dutchmen, but
by spies and detectives, by imprisonment and death, kept thinning out of
Japan the most intelligent and active spirits. It is the old story of a
power upon its last legs--learning to the bastille,