--'Well, I need not speak of his occasional mistranslations of Japanese words or some small technical errors, but I can say that, in my opinion, he sometimes goes a little too far in giving reasons to matters concerning feeling and sentiment. For instance, he raises the question, if a soul be something concrete and suppose it is gone somewhere--heaven or Paradise, as one may term it--how would it be possible to be present simultaneously at the place where it is enshrined, or where offerings are made, and he tries to solve the difficulty philosophically and logically. He seems to place too much stress on our notions of ancestral worship. We practise it, we like it, and we think it fine and noble, and yet we do so from a spirit of feeling and sentiment. Many things in connection therewith are done by us, not always with conclusive, logical reasoning. In this respect many Europeans often misjudge us, forgetting that they themselves do the same at home. They canonise meritorious persons, sometimes only legendary; they have their wayside shrines of Madonna; they celebrate All Souls' Day, when the whole town or village flocks to the cemetery; they set up statues of great men,--a statesman, a warrior, a writer, a philanthropist, a musical composer, a sculptor, a scientist, and what not. They construct a grand pantheon or cathedral and consecrate the remains of their distinguished dead therein. They even erect colossal figures of an ideal personification, such as "Liberty" standing on high at the Place de la République, and other figures representing great cities, as at the Place de la Concorde. They sometimes decorate such figures on certain days with flowers, as is the case with the statue of Beaconsfield, which is covered with primroses on Primrose League Day, nay, sometimes a figure is decorated with wreaths all the year round, like Strasbourg at the Place de la Concorde. Mind, with regard to this last, I am not speaking of any political aspect of the matter. All this to my mind is very fine in idea. All this, I think, is not done for mere play, nor are those objects set up for mere ornament. The notion contained therein is, I think, intended to perpetuate and sanctify the memory of the person, or of an idea in the minds of the people. If any stranger, for instance, approach any of these objects and insult it in any gross manner, he would be sure to be much hissed, or even punished. From this, it is certain that these matters belong to the sphere of feeling and sentiment and are not exactly within the limits of strict philosophical and logical reasoning. Our ancestral worship and things connected with it are of the same kind. And yet those Occidentals who have themselves very similar things look upon such institutions in Japan with amazement or curiosity, or even with contempt, or else like Lafcadio Hearn, try to reason out some points which are not altogether soluable by ordinary reasoning. A