argument, they had been unable to rein themselves in, before the interests of the Shogunate were thereby jeopardised, and as a logical consequence they brought unconsciously to a terrible catastrophe the whole edifice of the military regime, in which alone they could find a reason for their existence. The spirit of the nation had thus been under the increasing notion that the coexistence of the sovereign Emperor with the omnipotent Shogunate would be ultimately impossible, and such a trend of thought had been highly welcomed in those parts of Japan where militarism had the least hold. So far, however, it had been the more logical pursuance of a political ideal, and if no opportunity had presented itself to these idealists to put their theory into execution, it would have remained for long the idle vapouring of romantic and irresponsible politicians. That Japan was saved from this inaction, and that the virile movement in favour of the revival of the imperial prestige was at last undertaken, must be attributed to the shock and stimulus which came from without, that is to say, to the coercion on the part of the Western nations to open to them our country, which had been so long secluded from the rest of the world. Since the so-called "closing of the country" the Japanese had enjoyed a peaceful national life, undisturbed for more than one century and a half, and during this period of long tranquillity Japan had been able to prepare herself for the hardships which she was about to encounter, by replenishing her national culture and transforming it so as to be able to take in as much of the Western civilisation as she was in need of, without fear of thereby endangering her own national existence. But at the end of the eighteenth century the insistent knocking of foreigners at the door began to be heard, first at the back-door of the Island Empire. It was only the Russians who, having already annexed the vast tract of Siberia, were now ready to make a jump forward, and loitered on the northern coast of our Hokkaido, called the island of Yezo at that time. This was the beginning of new national troubles. It was not, however, the same kind of foreign troubles as those which we had tried and succeeded in getting rid of in the early days of the Shogunate. There was no fear now of suffering from the religious intrigues of foreign missionaries. The danger, if there were any, was purely of a political nature.