slavish imitation of the old Japanese painters and their Chinese exemplars, till the heirs to the splendid traditions of the great masters preserved little more than their conventions and shortcomings. It was time for a new departure, but there seemed to be no sufficient strength left within the charmed circle of the orthodox schools, and the new movement was fated to come from the masses, whose voice had hitherto been silent in the art world. Fourth Period: Popular School. A new era in art began in the latter half of the 17th century with the establishment of a popular school under an embroiderer's draughtsman named Hishigawa Moronobu (c. 1646-1713). Perhaps no great change is ever entirely a novelty. The old painters of the Yamato-Tosa line had frequently shown something of the daily life around them, and one of the later scions of the school, named Iwasa Matahei, had even made a specialty of this class of motive; but so little is known of Matahei and his work that even his period is a matter of dispute, and the few pictures attributed to his pencil are open to question on grounds of authenticity. He probably worked some two generations before the time of Moronobu, but there is no reason to believe that his labours had any material share in determining the creation and trend of the new school. Moronobu was a consummate artist, with all the delicacy and calligraphic force of the best of the Tosa masters, whom he undoubtedly strove to emulate in style; and his pictures are not only the most beautiful but also the most trustworthy records of the life of his time. It was not to his paintings, however, that he owed his greatest influence, but to the powerful impulse he gave to the illustration of books and broadsides by wood-engravings. It is true that illustrated books were known as early as 1608, if not before, but they were few and unattractive, and did little to inaugurate the great stream of _ehon_, or picture books, that were to take so large a share in the education of his own class. It is to Moronobu that Japan owes the popularization of artistic wood-engravings, for nothing before his series of xylographic albums approached his best work in strength and beauty, and nothing since has surpassed it. Later there came abundant aid to the cause of popular art, partly from pupils of the Kano and Tosa schools, but mainly from the artisan class. Most of these artists were designers for books and broadsides by calling, painters only on occasion, but a few of them did nothing for the engravers. Throughout the whole of this period, embracing about a hundred years, there still continued to work, altogether apart from the men who were making the success of popular art, a large number of able painters of the Kano, Tosa and Chinese schools, who multiplied pictures that had every merit except that of originality. These men, living in the past, paid little