to the palace, and this, too, in the very midst of a large retinue of his retainers!” The account, which our author gives at length, of this occurrence, and of the causes which led to it, is most characteristic: we have only space for the result:— “Eight of the assailants were unaccounted for when all was over, and many of the retinue were stretched on the ground, wounded and dying, by the side of those who had made the murderous onslaught. The remnant of the Regent’s people, released from their deadly struggle, turned to the norimon to see how it had fared with their master in the brief interval, to find only a headless trunk: the bleeding trophy carried away was supposed to have been the head of the Gotairo himself, hacked off on the spot. But, strangest of all these startling incidents, it is further related that _two_ heads were found missing, and that which was in the fugitive’s hand was only a lure to the pursuing party, while the true trophy had been secreted on the person of another, and was thus successfully carried off, though the decoy paid the penalty of his life.” The head of the Regent is said to have been got safely out of Yedo, and presented to the Prince, who was his enemy, and who spat upon it with maledictions. It was reported afterwards to have been exposed in the public execution-ground of the spiritual capital, with a placard over it, on which was the following inscription: “This is the head of a traitor, who has violated the most sacred laws of Japan—those which forbid the admission of foreigners into the country.” After this, with the exception of a “murderous onslaught made by a drunken Yaconin on an English merchant at Hakodadi,” there is another lull, varied only by putting the Legations in a state of defence. They “were filled with Japanese troops, field-pieces were placed in the courtyards of the several Legations, and the ministers were urgently requested to abstain from going outside!” A month passes, and life is absolutely becoming monotonous, from the absence of the usual stimulant in the shape either of a fire, a murder, or a good earthquake, when there suddenly appeared, “as we were sitting down to dinner one evening, the Abbé Gérard, pale and agitated, bringing with him, in a norimon, M. de Bellecourt’s Italian servant, who had been attacked, while quietly standing at the gate of the French Legation, by two Samourai (daimios’ retainers) passing at the moment, and by one of whom he had been severely wounded.”