--'I am afraid it is such cases as these that give good pretext to the socialistic movement,' said the duchess. 'It is a great problem. But to return to our subject, you have no embassy in Europe, as all other great powers have. You have only legations, with ordinary ministers, like secondary powers. It might have been one cause why ordinary people think Japan is such a small country.' --'It may be so,' I answered, 'in one way; but you see we have not had any particular reason to make ourselves ostentatious, and besides, the matter does not rest with one side only.' --'It is rather singular,' said the duchess, 'that the world has not discovered the real character of the Japanese for so long a time. But yet there was at least one man who realised it ninety years ago. I have read an account about him in a recent issue of the English press. It was in the year 1813, and, therefore, at the time when Java was under English occupation. Lord Minto (ancestor of the new viceroy) was then Viceroy of India, and it seems Sir Stamford Raffles was the chief representative of the British East India Company out in the East. The latter sent in that year an Englishman, Dr. Daniel Ainslie, to whom was attached a Dutchman, Wardenaar by name, to Nagasaki on a mission to look after English interests, and to make a confidential report on the situation in Japan. The mission was a failure; the time was not ripe enough. But the impression Sir Stamford obtained through Dr. Ainslie is interesting. It reads as fresh as though it had been brought back from Japan only yesterday, and speaks for itself: