“About this time also appeared a magazine entitled ‘Meisho Zuye’ (‘Sonnets on Yedo Scenes’), a monthly, illustrated by Hiroshige, and displaying his wonderful skill with the brush, to the admiration of the world. He passed away, to the world beyond, on the sixth day of the ninth month of this year, 1858, at the ripe age of sixty-two (sixty-one by our count). He left behind a last testament, or farewell sonnet, ‘_Azuma ji ni fude wo no-koshite tabi no sora; Nishi no mi kuni no Meisho wo Mimu._’ (Dropping the brush at Azuma, Eastern Capital, I go the long journey to the Western Country, Buddhist Heaven is in the West, to view the wonderful sceneries there; perchance to limn them too.) “This by Temmei Rojin, picture by Toyokuni. “Dated, Ansei 5, ninth month (October, 1858).” The best known prints by Hiroshige are the “Fifty-three Stations between Yedo and Kyoto.” This Tokaido series was at first beautifully printed, but the later impressions show a sad decay in the colouring. The “Yedo Haik’kei” or “Hundred Views of Yedo,” give a panoramic vista of the Shoguns’ capital. The pictorial description of Yedo, in black and pale blue, is a lovely series. In many of these landscapes the Dutch influence is very marked, for the master of Hiroshige, Toyohiro, from whom he derived the first syllable of his _nom-de-pinceau_, had experimented in landscape painting after the Dutch wood-cuts which were scattered throughout the country. Although Hiroshige is best known through his landscapes, he, like most Japanese painters, was too universal an artist to confine himself solely to one branch. He loved every phase of nature, and in one of his well-known prints, “The Eagle,” his skill in the delineation of birds is best shown. In the later impressions a pale yellowish tone takes the place of the beautiful steel-blue background of the earlier prints, miracles of colour printing. Athwart this background of ineffable blue, which loses itself in the mists that veil the sacred mountain, is seen, sweeping and sailing cruelly alert, the evil eagle of Hiroshige. His wicked gaze is set on nests of murmuring wood-doves, he eyes the callow sea-birds in their bed of rushes. The temple bell rings solemnly; the long vibrations cleave the azure dusk. It is the hour of rest and dreams. Begone, base harbinger of evil! In the early prints by Hiroshige the colours are most beautiful, one soft tone fading imperceptibly into another, the blues and greens so marvellously blended as to be almost interchangeable. We are told that Michelangelo loved the companionship of the old workman who ground his colours; and of the Japanese, it is said, “this making one family of the greater artist and all who had to do with him has given that peculiar completeness, that sense of peace and absence of struggle which we feel in Japanese art.”