Two months after this the servant of the French Consul is cut to pieces in the street—cause unknown. By way of varying the excitement, the Tycoon’s palace is burnt down about the same time, and the Japanese Ministers propose to stop all business in consequence. This is of course not considered a legitimate way of evading disagreeable questions. Diplomatic difficulties continue to be discussed, and the greater part of the settlement of Yokuhama is burnt down:— “While yet occupied by these events, we were startled by another of more immediate and personal import. It was near midnight; Mr Eusden, the Japanese secretary, was standing by my side, when the longest and most violent shock of an earthquake yet experienced since our arrival brought every one to his feet with a sudden impulse to fly from under the shaking roof. It began at first very gently, but rapidly increased in the violence of the vibrations until the earth seemed to rock under our feet, and to be heaved up by some mighty explosive powder in the caldrons beneath.” The nerves of our author scarcely recover from the shock of the earthquake when they receive another of a different description. A hasty step is heard outside his room, and “Captain Marten, of H.M.S. Roebuck, threw back the sliding-panel. ‘Come quickly; your linguist is being carried in badly wounded.’ My heart misgave me that his death-knell had struck.” Of course it had; they seldom miss their stroke in Japan. “The point” (of the sword) “had entered at his back and came out above the right breast; and, thus buried in his body, the assassin left it, and disappeared as stealthily as he came.” While discussing this matter, in dashes the whole French Legation—the French Consul-General at the head: “‘Nous voici! nous venons vous demander de l’hospitalité—l’incendie nous a atteint.’ Then follows Monsieur l’Abbé in a dressing-gown—a glass thermometer in one hand, and a breviary in the other; then the Chancellor in slippers, with a revolver and a _bonnet de nuit_.” What with an assassination in one Legation and a fire in another on the same night, our diplomatists have their hands full. Our author, however, seems to have passed a few nights in comparative tranquillity after this, before he is again roused at four o’clock in the morning by the arrival of an express from Kanagawa with the news that about eight o’clock in the evening two Dutch captains had been slain in the main street of Yokuhama—“a repetition, in all its leading circumstances and unprovoked barbarity, of the assassination perpetrated on the Russians.” After this, beyond a few bad earthquakes, nothing happens for a month or so, “when, on my return from a visit to Kanagawa, the first news that greeted me as I entered the Legation was of so startling and incredible a character that I hesitated to believe what was told me. The Gotairo or Regent was said to have been assassinated in broad daylight on his way