Soon after Thunberg’s departure, he had a worthy successor in the person of Mr. Isaac Titsingh, the first director at Deshima since the time of Caron to whom we are indebted for any information about Japan. Born about 1740, Titsingh had entered early into the service of the Dutch East India Company. After seven years’ residence at Batavia, he was sent to Deshima, as director, where he arrived August 15, 1779, and remained till November 29, 1780, when he returned to Batavia. He came back again to Japan August 12, 1781, and remained till November 6, 1783, the war between Holland and England, growing out of the American revolution, having prevented the arrival of any ships from Batavia during the year 1782,—an event of which Titsingh took advantage to stipulate for a considerable advance in the price of Dutch imports, for a term of fifteen years. He reached Nagasaki a third time, August 18, 1784, but left again November 26 of the same year. During his first and second visits he made the journey to Yedo as Dutch ambassador, where he succeeded in making several friends, particularly Kuchiki Samon, prince of Tamba, who had learned Dutch, which he wrote tolerably well, with whom, and other Japanese friends, Titsingh kept up a correspondence for some time after leaving the country. During his residence in Japan he made a valuable collection of Japanese curiosities, including many Japanese books, and he also brought home with him translations of some of these books, made by aid of Japanese interpreters attached to the factory at Deshima, whose interpretations, given _viva voce_, he wrote out in Dutch; for though Titsingh knew enough of Japanese for the purposes of conversation, he does not seem to have acquired the written language, nor to have been able to read Chinese, of which the characters are largely, and, indeed, chiefly, employed in most Japanese works of much pretensions. “I found,” he says, “among the interpreters belonging to our factory four individuals sufficiently well-informed for my purpose; a fifth had devoted himself chiefly to medicine, in which he had made rapid progress, in consequence of the instruction given to him by Dr. Thunberg. Far from finding them suspicious and reluctant, as Europeans are usually pleased to represent these persons, in order to palliate their own indolence, they manifested, on the contrary, an eagerness to procure for me every practicable information, to consult, in various matters beyond their capacity, the best-informed individuals among the magistrates and clergy, and to furnish me with books which might serve as a guide to my labors.” After leaving Japan, Titsingh was governor at the Dutch factory at Chinsurah, in Bengal, where he became acquainted with Sir William Jones. In 1794 he was sent, with Van Braam, on a Dutch embassy to Pekin, with the design to counterwork the English embassy of Lord Macartney; but this residence in China was limited to a few months.