Yesterday, I went out in another afternoon of blazing sunlight, up to the corner of the temple inclosure and along its outside edge, where the rocks of the mountain, covered with trees, make a great vague wall. Under the damp trees runs a path paved with small blocks of stone, slippery with moss, or, when bare, smoothed by ages of treading. This road leads to the little cascade which supplies the sacred water-tank of the temple of IyÉyasu, that square block of water under the gilded and painted canopy in the great courtyard.

The waterfall drops over rocks into a hollow between the hills; high trees stand along its edge near a black octagonal shrine, with great roof, green and yellow with moss. On this side of the water, a diminutive shrine, red-painted, with columns and architrave of many colors and a roof of thatch all green, out of which are growing the small stems of young trees. In front, a Torii, just tall enough to pass under, of gray stone, all capped and edged with green, velvety moss. A curved stone, cushioned with moss, in front of it, spans the water-course that gives escape to the waters of the pool. The doors of the shrine are closed, as if to make more solitary yet the quiet of the little hollow.

Higher up, past the black building and above high steps, on a platform edged by walls, stand black buildings, shrines of Buddhist divinities, whose golden bodies I can see through the grating of the unfastened doors. I feel their amiable presence, while I sit painting in the damp sunlight, and the murmur of the waters seems their whispered encouragement.

On my return I looked again toward the abrupt rocky hill to find a little monument we had passed at its foot, just off the road. Through the inevitable Torii a little path of rough flagging, all broken up and imbedded in moss, leads across the small bridge of two large stones, one of whose parapets is gone, and up high steps, half natural, to a little altar of big stones with a heavy balustrade around three sides. A little stone shrine with a roof stands upon it, and behind it a tall gray rock upon which is incised and gilded a device of five disks forming a circle. All around about the path and shrine are trees covered with moss; the rocks, the shrine, the path, are spotted with green and yellow velvet; all looks as if abandoned to nature,—all but the gilded armorial bearings in the mossy stone, which I take to be those of the divinized mortal in whose honor this little record has been built, Ten-jin Sama, known and worshiped by every schoolboy in Japan. He is the patron of learning and of penmanship, and was during his life a great scholar and minister of state under the name of Michizane. This was just before the year nine hundred. A faithful minister, a learned and just man, he naturally gave great umbrage, especially to a younger associate whose sister was Empress, and who succeeded through malicious slander in bringing about Michizane's banishment.

In his place of exile, separated from wife and children, he died two years later. There, I suppose, he rode about on the saddled bull, upon which Yosai has placed him in his drawings, as also he was seen by Motonobu in a dream, of which I have a drawing. There the great artist has represented him, faithful, I suppose, to what he really saw, as a younger man than he really could have been, galloping swiftly and bending down to avoid the branches of the trees above.

Bulls of bronze and marble adorn his temple in Kioto, recalling how the bull that drew him to the cemetery refused to go further than a certain spot, where he was buried in a grave dug hastily. Misfortune and remorse followed his enemies, with the death of the Imperial heir; so that the Emperor, revoking his banishment, reinstalled the dead man in the honors of his office, and bestowed a high rank upon his ghost. Since then his worship has grown, as I said above.

As you see, the Mikado has been the fountain of honor for this world and the next; and I cannot help being reminded of the constant relations of Chinese and Japanese thought in this unity—this constant joining of that which we separate. The forms of China may be more "bureaucratic"; no such national prejudices and feelings can belong to the idea of the sovereign there as must exist in Japan, with a dynasty of rulers as Japanese as Japan itself. But there has been here, as there, a sort of natural duty in the Government to look after all the relations of those intrusted to its care. In China, all religion or religions must depend upon the sanction of the ruling powers; nothing is too great or too small to be satisfied with; official approval may attend the worship of some local heroine, official disapproval may be shown to some exaggerations of Taoist superstitions. The source of this right and this duty is always the idea that in the ruler all is centered; he is responsible to Heaven, and is the tie between the powers above and the deities below. Hence there is nothing absurd in his following the governed after death.

In Japan, the forms of this power may be different, but its workings will be similar, and hero-worship, combined with the respect and worship of ancestors, has had a most important part in the development of life here, in encouraging patriotism and lofty ideas, and in stimulating the chivalrous feeling, the ideas of honor, that seem to me the peculiar note of the Japanese. However misapplied, however mistaken, however barbarous some forms of these ideas may appear to us, I cannot make for myself a definition of the national character, nor see a clue to many of their actions unless I bear in mind the ruling power of this feeling. While we are in this place, where IyÉyasu's name is so important, let me cite a trifling anecdote.

It is said that on some occasion he accompanied Hideyoshi, the great Taiko Sama, each with few attendants, upon some visit, and all were afoot. Now, among the retinue of IyÉyasu was one Honda, a man of preternatural strength, who hinted to his master that this might be an opportunity for an attack upon his great rival. But Taiko guessed the danger, and, turning round, said to IyÉyasu: "My sword is heavy, for me unaccustomed to walking, so may I not ask your servant to carry it for me?" For Taiko knew that it would have been considered a disgrace to attack a man unarmed when he had intrusted his sword, not to his own servant, but to the servant of his enemy. And IyÉyasu understood this appeal to the idea of honor.

Two more days and we shall be gone. As I sketch in the temples or about them, everything seems more beautiful as it grows to be more a part of my daily existence. Though I am perpetually harassed through feeling that I cannot copy everything, and through trying to force my memory to grasp so as to retain the multitudinous details of the architectural decoration, I have drawn the curve of this, and the patterns of that, and noted the colors, but I wonder, if the thread gets loosened that holds them together, whether I shall ever be able to separate one from another in their entanglement. And then I still do not wish to work. There are so many places that I should like to look at again without the oppression of an obligatory record.

This evening I must take another look at the neglected graves of the followers of IyÉmitsu who committed suicide, as my Japanese account has it, "that they might accompany him in his dark pilgrimage to the future world." At least it says this of Hotta Masemori and of three others; while the graves, as I remember them, are twenty-one in number, and about this I have never thought to ask, but I must do so. And then there may have been retainers of retainers. It is a pleasure to me anyhow to set down at least one name and to help to keep this memory clear when I think of the neglected spot in which they lie. It is not far from that part of the land where stood the residence of their master's family, now destroyed, through the days of turbulence which closed the last moments of their reign. Broken fragments of fencing still lean against the little inclosures of stone posts, balustrade, and gate that surround each memorial pillar. They stand in two rows in a little clearing, the valley sunk behind them, hidden in part by much wild growth.

O—— was telling us some little while ago of the feudal habit which gave to a chieftain the vow of certain retainers who undertook to follow him faithfully even beyond the grave. It was expected of them in war that they should be about him sharing in his struggle, and if he died in peace, near or far, they should be ready to go too.

And as death is the most important thing in life, I cannot help thinking over the condition of mind of any one who looked forward to such a limitation of its lease.

When age had changed the view of life, had created more ties, more duties, had made the term nearer and more capricious, while everything else became more fixed, did this bond, with its promise of payment to be met at any moment's demand, become a heavy burden of debt? I can occasionally conjure up a picture—perhaps erroneous, because my imagination of the circumstances may displace them,—of some older man settled in pleasant places, rested in secure possessions, with dependants, with friends, with affections around his life, learning at any moment of the probability that the call might come. He might be summoned from any festivity or joy as if by a knocking at the door. How curiously he must have watched the runners of the mail who might be bringing into his town the news from the court, or wheresoever this other life—which to all purposes was his own—was perhaps ebbing away. How then he would have known what to do, even to its most minute detail, and be but part of a ceremonial that he himself would direct. Vague memories come up to me of places set apart in the garden, and the screens and the hangings and the lights that belonged to the voluntary ordeal. But as I keep on thinking, I feel more certain that my fancy displaces the circumstances of former times and of a different civilization. For instance, the concentration of the feudal territory, habits of clanship, the constant attendance, must have narrowed the circle and made the individual more like a part of one great machinery, one great family, than he can ever be again. The weakness, the insufficiency of the individual, has been stiffened by the importance of the family, of the clan, as a basis of society; and I could almost say that I discern in this one main-spring of the peculiar courtesy of this nation, which seems to go along with a great feeling of a certain freedom, so that the obedience of the inferior does not seem servile. The servant who has done his duty of respectful service seems afterward ready to take any natural relation that may turn up. The youth trained in respect to his betters and elders, and silent in their presence, will give his opinion frankly when asked, with a want of diffidence quite unexpected. The coming years are certain to bring changes that cannot be arrested.

••••••

While I was being baked to-day, at my work that I could not leave, my companions have been away on a visit higher up the mountains, to the hot baths on the lake, and, at least for part of the time, have had the weather almost cold. They have much to say about the baths, and the fullness of visitors, and the difficulty of getting place, and one of them has gone to her bath in the native dress, and another cannot yet quite get over the impression made upon him by the pretty young lady near whom he stood under the eaves of the bath-house, where he had taken refuge from the rain, and whose modest manners were as charming as her youthfulness, and had no more covering.

Here everything is still hot and damp, though our nights are cooler and I am able to make out more conveniently my notes and my sketches and my memoranda of purchased acquisitions. On the lower floor boxes are being filled, and to-morrow evening horses and men will stand in our garden to be laden; we shall follow the light of their lanterns down the road, and they will seem to be carrying parts of us away from Nikko.