ehanics, and one class treading on the heels of another, as in our sad old country. There kings are kings, and lords are lords, and dirt is dirt. What a new lesson for the Japanese daimios to learn, that with God there is no respect of persons, and that every man has rights of which no society can lawfully deprive him! used only at funerals, ringing out its brazen notes, confuse the evil spirit so that he cannot hear what the soul is about; while he is still further perplexed by the whole company scampering round and about before the inner porch of the temple-scampering about in such loud and noisy tumult that he cannot see the tube when they all rush frantically with it into the When official visits are paid, or, indeed, any inner temple. By this clever device he does visits at all, the order of the whole proceedings not know where the soul has gone to, so must is mapped out with curious exactness. The grope about with his cruel paws empty until a manner and matter of the introductory and less carefully guarded victim is brought within complimentary speeches is as well known, and his power. Still the voices are howling, the as much of course, as the introductory handtomtoms beating, and the big bell ringing, while shake and "how do you do" in England; the they rush so frantically into the temple, where exact position of each visitor-always placed at they find a little white shrine, something like a your left hand-and where the seat must be an pagoda, all decked with white flowers and inch pulled forward, and where an inch thrust lighted tapers; under which they lay the square back, is also precisely known and arranged; tube, while the bonzes read a few prayers, before and how the gates are to be opened, and which delivering up the body to the burners. The gates; and how the bows are to be made, and body is then taken away to the proper place and what bows; when the one-sworded servant, must burnt, and the ashes are gathered up into an approach the two-sworded official, change his urn which is placed in the most sacred part of shoes for clean new sandals, unbutton his oiledthe "tera," to be lighted up, watched over, and paper waterproof cloak, and relieve him of it, the soul belonging still kept from the power of his hat, and his umbrella; at what precise mothe demons, if prayer-wheels are good for any-ment in the conversation the longest sword thing in the spiritual world. By the way, the is to be taken from its silken sash, and placed burner is completely isolated from society. He carefully against some solid piece of furnimay not enter a house or shop, and must even pick up his pay from the ground where the relatives have flung it, so strictly is the ban kept up. But he is not despised like our executioner. Perhaps his taboo is sacred, like some of the Otaheitan forms; but it is complete. If not actively religious in their own way, the Japanese are yet singularly intolerant at any attempt at proselytising or converting. The massacre of the Portuguese at Papenberg was mainly on account of religious interference, and the Dutch have kept their favoured place only because they consented to creep and crawl under religious indignities which destroyed their power of converting. This is a hint to our own missionary societies and their emissaries, whose presence at this time in Japan would be like a match to a gunpowder barrel, and would blow the whole concern of commerce and treaty to the winds. Intolerant and tenacious, the Japanese is also the most aristocratic and punctilious, as he is the best bred man of his time. No vulgar republican levelling for him! No wild French revolution ideas of natural equality and the rights of man, of the reign of reason and the fraternisation of classes! Every one in the empire would revolt at such social impiety, and the very poor themselves would refuse so sinful a boon. For every one in the empire knows his exact place: the very spot where he ought to sit in the presence of his superior, and who, to the shadow of a hair, is his superior; the very words he ought to say; the compliments to return; the arms he may bear; the dresses he may prefer; where he may ride, and when, and how; with various other still smaller matters, reeled out and plumbed, and measured by instruments that never fail. There is no mingling together of noblemen and me ture; when the talk may begin, and in what order of speech and speaker; all is as clearly marked out as the lines on his sheet of paper-lines which may not be departed from under any condition whatsoever. Of the three gentlemen who always make official visits in company, one is the spokesman and mouthpiece, the other the referee, the third the acknowledged government spy, whose duty it is to note down every word as it is uttered:when, woe to his two colleagues if they go a hair's breadth beyond the instructions received from Yedo, or assume as much freedom of action and irresponsibility as we would allow a common secretary! Every syllable is written down in the tablets which each man carries in the bosom of his robes, and in an incredibly short time— for the transmission of news and the exactness of report rank among the marvels of Japanthe whole conversation is sent to Yedo for the consideration of the executive. Then there is nothing for it but a grand feast, gay dresses, and the neat, elegant manner of performing the harikari, if either the mouthpiece or the referee has given too free a translation to his instructions and dared to speak out of his own heart and understanding. "Individuality" in an official is what the executive never forgives. The harikari is sure to be self-administered well and properly, if the man has been properly brought up; for it is one of the earliest and most important of all the lessons given to youth, and how to cut himself open in the form of a cross, gracefully and neatly, and without wounding his bowels, an even more necessary part of a gentleman's education than how to hand a cup of tea with fitting form and gesture-which, perhaps, ranks as the lesson next in value and consideration. One of the two swords always worn is specially great towns, and would soon raise up an army devoted to harikari. of Rebeccaites if tried across the streets. A Japanese carries his pocket in his bosom. Japan, like China, has its interminable past-a Secure among the crossing folds of his gay- past of special excellence which the present cancoloured robe is his paper pocket-handker- not reach. It has its old lacquer, of which the chief, his tablets, chopsticks, medicines, the secret seems to be now lost, for the best modern sweetmeats which he gives to women and productions do not equal the ancient in beauty children, his pencils, compass, calendar, and a or value; and it has its old porcelain, against which host of minor things. For this folded bosom the modern can set but very slender pretensions is a more capacious omnium gatherum than even of merit. But then there is the future, when a schoolboy's favourite pocket, and does its its vast coal-fields will be worked, and its leadowner better service. Who defined man as "" an mine explored, and all the mineral wealth lying animal with pockets?" The definition holds round the fiery Fusiyama brought into use; and good in Japan, where this one bosom bag does perhaps the future resources will outweigh even the work of half a dozen pockets, and vindi- old lacquer and antique porcelain, and bring somecates the wisdom of the definer. Clean and thing better to the country than harikari and the careful, the Japanese never dishonour the in- Mikado. The Japanese are very proud of their terior of their houses by wearing in them the lacquer, and immensely tenacious of it; a gentlesame shoes as they have used out of doors, but man holding pieces of it as dishonourable to part always put on clean sandals for the fine white with it as an English nobleman does to part with mats and dainty neatness of the house. Indeed his family plate or inherited pictures. the whole expression of Japanese life is its scru- The Japanese ladies-who pluck out their pulous neatness, and the attention paid to out- eyebrows and blacken their teeth-hold a very ward things. Its bathings and scrubbings and fair position in society; but, something like the changes of dress and polite handing of teacups German "house-mother," are chiefly domestic and picturesque arrangement of gardens, its and drudging. Still they are free, and not fetforms and ceremonies and bows and genu-tered, as in China, by any absurd custom of flexions, its police with stiff wings and silk trousers, its gentlemen with fluttering fans and its ladies with got-up faces-everything is cared for, and nothing left to nature or neglect. But if small observances are carried too far, and too great a fuss is made about trifles, the Japanese scrupulosity has a reasonable outgrowth some times. There is the institution of the Ottona, for instance, the governor of his hundred, the appointed guardian or watchman of his quarter, what a capital idea that is, and how admirable for cities like the Japanese! The Ottona is the officer in whose sole responsible charge is placed a certain small district or division of the city, and who, together with all his family, is accountable for any theft, robbery, violence, murder, or any other crime that may take place therein. At every hundred yards or so, you come to a gate, which is closed at a certain hour in the evening, with a huge paper lantern hung over it. The business of the Ottona is to learn the business of every passer by that gate, why he has invaded his district, what he means to do in it, and where he means to go; by such universal checks and spying, scarcely a mouse can creep in the Japanese cities without being challenged, watched, reported, and followed. Therefore, whenever a theft or any other crime is committed there is no hope of escape for the criminal; for the Ottona knows every one in his district, and can trace the footsteps of a stranger as accurately as if they had been made in snow. This Japanese office of the hundred is something like the old Saxon institution of the same name; but those provoking barriers at every few yards would ill suit with the restless, upall-night population of London, or any of our national mutilation. Though the family tie is held so strict, and married fidelity so proudly insisted on, yet the most public lapses before marriage is not the smallest barrier to a happy marriage and a respectable position, with the esteem, good will, and countenance of the most blameless matrons of the quarter. There is a very curious mixture of the tainted and the pure going on in all the tea establishments and other places of public resort; but the tainted are not despised, nor the pure considered to be contaminated, and any two-sworded grandee might wipe away the last remembrance of shame from the name of her whom he may choose to be his wife. Our information as yet is very scanty and imperfect; and we must not accept too implicitly all that we are told, even by English consuls. We must wait yet awhile before we can speak as of knowledge; meanwhile let us hope that Eves are fair and serpents few in the groves and plains of our bright and distant Eastern Eden. NEW WORK BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. A STRANGE STORY, BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. &c. Now Ready, price Fourpence, FORMING THE EXTRA DOUBLE NUMBER The right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors. Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Suand. Printed by C. WHITING, Beaufort House, SU 2 ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1861. No. 139.] A STRANGE STORY. [PRICE 2d. when Faber rested on phrenological observations, assurances in honour of Lilian, I forgot Sir W. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. | Hamilton, and believed in phrenology. As iron CHAPTER XLVI. girders and pillars expand and contract with the mere variations of temperature, so will the strongest conviction on which the human intellect rests its judgment, vary with the changes of the human heart; and the building is only safe where these variations are foreseen and allowed for by a wisdom intent on self-knowledge.* JULIUS FABER and Amy Lloyd stayed in my house three days, and in their presence I felt a healthful sense of security and peace. Amy wished to visit her father's house, and I asked Faber, in taking her there, to seize the occasion to see Lilian, that he might communicate to me his impression of a case so peculiar. I prepared Mrs. Ashleigh for this visit by a previous note. When the old man and the child came back, both brought me comfort. Amy was charmed with Lilian, who had received her with the sweetness natural to her real character, and I loved to hear Lilian's praise from those inno-woman. But his love was without fear, without cent lips. Faber's report was still more calculated to console me : "I have seen, I have conversed with her long and familiarly. You were quite right, there is no tendency to consumption in that exquisite, if delicate, organisation; nor do I see cause for the fear to which your statement had preinclined me. That head is too nobly formed for any constitutional cerebral infirmity. In its organisation, ideality, wonder, veneration are large, it is true, but they are balanced by other organs, now perhaps almost dormant, but which will come into play as life passes from romance into duty. Something at this moment evidently oppresses her mind. In conversing with her, I observe abstraction-listlessness; but I am so convinced of her truthfulness, that if she has once told you she returned your affection, and pledged to you her faith, I should, in your place, rest perfectly satisfied that whatever be the cloud that now rests on her imagination, and for the time obscures the idea of yourself, it will pass away." Faber was a believer in the main divisions of phrenology, though he did not accept all the dogmas of Gall and Spurzheim; while, to my mind, the refutation of phrenology in its fundamental propositions had been triumphantly established by the lucid arguments of Sir W. Hamilton.* But The summary of this distinguished lecturer's objections to phrenology is to be found in the Appendix to vol. i. of Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 404 et seq. Edition 1859. There was much in the affection that had sprung up between Julius Faber and Amy Lloyd which touched my heart and softened all its emotions. This man, unblessed, like myself, by conjugal and parental ties, had, in his solitary age, turned for solace to the love of a child, as I, in the prime of manhood, had turned to the love of jealousy, without trouble. My sunshine came to me, in a fitful ray, through clouds that had gathered over my noon; his sunshine covered all his landscape, hallowed and hallowing by the calm of declining day. And Amy was no common child. She had no exuberant imagination; she was haunted by no whispers from Afar; she was a creature fitted for the earth, to accept its duties and to gladden its cares. Her tender observation, fine and tranquil, was alive to all the important household trifles, by which, at the earliest age, man's allotted soother asserts her privilege to tend and to comfort. It was pleasant to see her moving so noiselessly through the rooms I had devoted to her venerable protector, knowing all his simple wants, and providing for them as if by the mechanism of a heart exquisitely moulded to the loving uses of life. Sometimes when I saw her setting his chair by the window (knowing, as I did, how much he habitually loved to be near the light) and smoothing his papers (in which he was apt to be unmethodical), placing the mark in his book when he ceased to read, divining, almost without his glance, some wish passing through his mind, and then seating herself at his The change of length in iron girders caused by variation of temperature, has not unfrequently brought down the whole edifice into which they were admitted. Good engineers and architects allow for such changes produced by temperature. In the tubular bridge across the Menai Straits, a selfacting record of the daily amount of its contraction and expanse is ingeniously contrived. VOL. VI. 139 feet, often with her work-which was always cination, or self-deception, is more apparent than destined for him or for one of her absent in all the strange tales you confided to me. For brothers-now and then, with the one small here is the hallucination of the man seated on book that she had carried with her, a selection the shores of Nature, and who would say to its of Bible stories compiled for children;-some-measureless sea, So far shalt thou go and no times when I saw her thus, how I wished that farther!'-here is the hallucination of the creaLilian, too, could have seen her, and have com- ture, who, not content with exploring the laws pared her own ideal phantasies with those young of the Creator, ends with submitting to his indevelopments of the natural heavenly Woman! terpretation of some three or four laws, in the But was there nothing in that sight from midst of a code of which all the rest are in lanwhich I, proud of my arid reason even in its guage unknown to him-the powers and free-will perplexities, might have taken lessons for my- of the Lawgiver himself; here is the hallucinaself? tion by which Nature is left Godless-because What would matter all our Man is left soulless. speculations on a Deity who would cease to exist for us when we are in the grave? Why mete out, like Archytas, the earth and the sea, and number the sands on the shore that divides them, if the end of this wisdom be a handful of dust sprinkled over a skull! On the second evening of Faber's visit I brought to him the draft of deeds for the sale of his property. He had never been a man of business out of his profession; he was impatient to sell his property, and disposed to accept an offer at half its value. I insisted on taking on myself the task of negotiator; perhaps, too, in this office I was egotistically anxious to prove to the great physician that that which he believed to be my "hallucination" had in no way obscured my common sense in the daily affairs of life. So I concluded, and in a few hours, terms for his property that were only just, but were infinitely more advantageous than had appeared to himself to be possible. But, as I approached him with the papers, he put his finger to his lips. Amy was standing by him with her little book in her hand, and his own Bible lay open on the table. He was reading to her from the Sacred Volume itself, and impressing on her the force and beauty of one of the Parables, the adaptation of which had perplexed her; when he had done, she kissed him, bade him good night, and went away to rest. Then said Faber thoughtfully, and as if to himself more than me, "What a lovely bridge between old age and childhood is religion! How intuitively the child begins with prayer and worship on entering life, and how intuitively on quitting life the old man turns back to prayer and worship, putting himself again side by side with the infant!" I made no answer, but, after a pause, spoke of fines and freeholds, title-deeds and money; and when the business on hand was concluded, asked my learned guest if, before he departed, he would deign to look over the pages of my ambitious Physiological Work. There were parts of it on which I much desired his opinion, touching on subjects in which his special studies made him an authority as high as our land possessed. He made me bring him the manuscript, and devoted much of that night and the next day to its perusal. When he gave it me back, which was not till the morning of his departure, he commenced with eulogies on the scope of its design and the manner of its execution, which flattered my vanity so much that I could not help exclaiming, "Then, at least, there is no trace of hallucination' here!" "Alas, my poor Allen! here, perhaps, hallu 'Nec quidquam tibi prodest Aerias tentasse domos, animoque rotundum Percurrisse polum morituro.' Your book is a proof of the soul that you fail to discover. Without a soul, no man would work for a Future that begins for his fame when the breath is gone from his body. Do you remember how you saw that little child praying at the grave of her father? Shall I tell you that in her simple orisons she prayed for the benefactor—who had cared for the orphan; who had reared over dust that tomb which, in a Christian burialground, is a mute but perceptible memorial of Christian hopes; that the child prayed, haughty man, for you? And you sat by, knowing nought of this; sat by, amongst the graves, troubled and tortured with ghastly doubts-vain of a reason that was sceptical of eternity, and yet shaken like a reed by a moment's marvel. Shall I tell the child to pray for you no more?— that you disbelieve in a soul? If you do so, what is the efficacy of prayer? Speak, shall I tell her this? Shall the infant pray for you never more?" I was silent; I was thrilled.. "Has it never occurred to you, who, in denying all innate perceptions as well as ideas, have passed on to deductions from which poor Locke, humble Christian that he was, would have shrunk in dismay; has it never occurred to you as a wonderful fact, that the easiest thing in the world to teach a child is that which seems to metaphysical schoolmen the abstrusest of all problems? Read all those philosophers wrangling about a First Cause, deciding on what are miracles, and then again deciding that such miracles cannot be; and when one has answered another, and left in the crucible of wisdom a caput mortuum of ignorance, then turn your eyes, and look at the infant praying to the invisible God at his mother's knees. This idea, so miraculously abstract, of a Power that the infant has never seen, that cannot be symbolled forth and explained to him by the most erudite sage,-a Power, nevertheless, Charles Dickens.] that watches over him, that hears him, that sees ture tells me your doubt-a doubt which your him, that will carry him across the grave, that heart, so femininely tender, will not speak aloud will enable him to live on for ever;-this double lest you should rob the old man of a hope with mystery of a Divinity and of a Soul the infant which your strength of manhood dispenses-you learns with the most facile readiness, at the doubt the efficacy of prayer! Pause and reflect, first glimpse of his reasoning faculty. Before bold but candid inquirer into the laws of that you can teach him a rule in addition, before you guide you call Nature. If there were no efficacy can venture to drill him into his hornbook, he in prayer-if prayer were as mere an illusion of leaps, with one intuitive spring of all his ideas, superstitious phantasy as aught against which to the comprehension of the truths which are your reason now struggles-do you think that only incomprehensible to blundering sages! And Nature herself would have made it amongst you, as you stand before me, dare not say, 'Let the most common and facile of all her dicthe child pray for me no more!' But will the tates? Do you believe that if there really Creator accept the child's prayer for the man did not exist that tie between Man and his who refuses prayer for himself? Take my advice Maker-that link between life here and a life -Pray! And in this counsel I do not overstep hereafter which is found in what we call Soul, my province. I speak not as a preacher, but as alone-that wherever you look through the unia physician. For health is a word that compre-verse, you would behold a child at prayer? hends our whole organisation, and a just equi- Nature inculcates nothing that is superfluous. librium of all faculties and functions is the con- Nature does not impel the leviathan, or the lion, dition of health. As in your Lilian the equilibrium the eagle or the moth, to pray; she impels only is deranged by the over-indulgence of a spiritual man. Why? Because man only has soul, and mysticism which withdraws from the nutriment Soul seeks to commune with the Everlasting, as a of duty the essential pabulum of sober sense, fountain struggles up to its source. Burn your so in you, the resolute negation of disciplined book. It would found you a reputation for learnspiritual communion between Thought and Di-ing and intellect and courage, I allow; but learnvinity robs imagination of its noblest and safest vent. Thus, from opposite extremes, you and your Lilian meet in the same region of mist and cloud, losing sight of each other and of the true ends of life, as her eyes only gaze on the stars and yours only bend to the earth. Were I advising her, I should say: Your Creator has placed the scene of your trial below, and not in the stars.' Advising you, I say: 'But in the trial below, man should recognise education for heaven.' In a word, I would draw somewhat more downward her fancy, raise somewhat more upward your reason. Take my advice thenPray. Your mental system needs the support of prayer in order to preserve its balance. In the embarrassment and confusion of your senses, clearness of perception will come with habitual and tranquil confidence in Him who alike rules the universe and reads the heart. I only say here what has been said much better before by a reasoner in whom all students of Nature recognise a guide. I see on your table the very volume of Bacon which contains the passage I commend to your reflection. Here it is. Listen: "Take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man who, to him, is instead of a God, or melior natura, which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith which human nature could not obtain. You are silent, but your ges Bacon's Essay on Atheism. This quotation is made with admirable felicity and force by Dr. Whewell, page 378 of Bridgewater Treatise, on Astronomy and General Physics considered with Reference to Natural Theology. ing and intellect and courage wasted against a Truth-like spray against a rock! A Truth valuable to the world, the world will never part with. You will not injure the truth, but you will mislead and may destroy many, whose best security is in the Truth which you so eruditely insinuate to be a fable. Soul and Hereafter are the heritage of all men; the humblest journeyman in those streets, the pettiest trader behind those counters, have in those beliefs their prerogatives of royalty. You would dethrone and embrute the lords of the earth by your theories. For my part, having given the greater part of my life to the study and analysis of facts, I would rather be the author of the tritest homily, of the baldest poem, that inculcated that imperishable essence of the soul to which I have neither scalpel nor probe-than be the founder of the subtlest school, or the framer of the loftiest verse, that robbed my fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that eludes the dissecting-knife, in a being that escapes the gravedigger. Burn your book-Accept This Book instead; Read and Pray.”, He placed his Bible in my hand, embraced me, and, an hour afterwards, the old man and the child left my hearth solitary once more. CHAPTER XLVII. THAT night as I sat in my study, very thoughtful and very mournful, I revolved all that Julius Faber had said, and the impression his words had produced became gradually weaker and weaker, as my reason, naturally combative, rose up with all the replies which my philosophy suggested. No! if my imagination had really seduced and betrayed me into monstrous credulities, it was clear that the best remedy to such morbid tendencies towards the Superstitious was in the severe exercise of the faculties most opposed to |