The task of permanently installing for the first time a legation in a city of upwards of two millions of people having been safely accomplished, Mr Alcock entered upon his first diplomatic struggle, the point of which was merely to fix a day for the purpose of exchanging the ratifications of Lord Elgin’s Treaty. The discussion preliminary to this formality occupied no less than seven days. At last the details are arranged, and it is decided that the Treaty is to be carried in procession through the city, under a canopy ornamented with flags and evergreens, surrounded by a guard of marines, and followed by fifty blue-jackets; Captain Hand, with a large number of his officers in uniform and on horseback, following immediately after the four petty officers carrying the Treaty. We can well imagine the effect which so novel a procession was likely to produce upon the inhabitants of Yedo. When the formalities were accomplished, “signals, arranged by the Japanese in advance (by fans from street to street) conveyed the news to the Sampson with telegraphic speed in a minute and a half, a distance of six miles.” So our Minister hoists his flag, and settles himself down in solitary grandeur, to pass his life of exile in solving the difficult problem of reconciling the civilisation he represents with that which surrounds him, but which the jealousy of the Government will not permit him to investigate. This does not, however, prevent our author from entering upon lengthy and interesting philosophical disquisitions upon the many moral, social, and political questions which must, under such circumstances, present themselves to a thoughtful mind. He has not been six weeks so employed when he is suddenly roused from his speculations by a tragical event which occurs at Yokuhama. As this is the first of a series of exciting incidents, we will give our readers an epitome of those which occurred during three years, and the particulars of which are detailed at length in various parts of the book:— “A Russian officer, with a sailor and a steward, were suddenly set upon in the principal street by some armed Japanese, and hewn down with the most ghastly wounds that could be inflicted. The sailor was cleft through his skull to the nostrils—half the scalp sliced down, and one arm nearly severed from the shoulder through the joint. The officer was equally mangled, his lungs protruding from a sabre-gash across the body; the thighs and legs deeply gashed.” In the succeeding tragedies the wounds are invariably of the above savage nature, but we will not always inflict upon our readers a full description of the horrible details.