The leading light in art in the beginning of the fifteenth century was Cho Densu, the Fra Angelico of Japan, who, a simple monk, serving in a Kyoto temple, must in a trance of religious and artistic ecstasy have beheld a spectrum of fadeless dyes, so wondrous were the colours he lavished upon the draperies of his saints and sages. The splendour of this beatific vision has never faded, for the masters who followed in the footsteps of the inspired monk reverently preserved the secret of these precious shades, till at last, in the form of the Ukiyo-ye print, they were sown broadcast, and revolutionized the colour sense of the art world. It has been remarked that Japanese Art of the nineteenth century is often nothing but a reproduction of the works of the ancient great masters, and the methods and mannerisms of the fifteenth century artists have ever served as examples for later students. The glory of the fifteenth century was increased by Mitsunobu of Tosa, and above all by the two great Kano artists, Masanobu and his son, Motonobu, who received the title of “Hogen,” and is referred to as “Ko Hogen,” or the ancient Hogen, of whom it has been remarked, “He filled the air with luminous beams.” By the close of the fifteenth century the principles of art in Japan became definitely fixed, as, almost contemporaneously, Giotto established a canon of art in Florence, which he, in turn, had received from the Attic Greeks, through Cimabue, and which was condensed by Ruskin into a grammar of art, under the term “Laws of Fésole.” The two great schools, Tosa and Kano, flourished independently until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the genius of the popular artists, forming the school of Ukiyo-ye, gradually fused the traditions of Tosa and Kano, absorbing the methods of these rival schools,—which, differing in technique and motive, were united in their proud disdain of the new art which dared to represent the manners and customs of the common people. Harunobu and Hokusai, Kiyonaga and Hiroshige were the crowning glory of all the schools,—the artists whose genius told the story of their country, day by day, weaving a century of history into one living encyclopedia, sumptuous in form, kaleidoscopic in colour. Ukiyo-ye prepared Japan for intercourse with other nations by developing in the common people an interest in other countries, in science and foreign culture, and by promoting the desire to travel, through the means of illustrated books of varied scenes. To Ukiyo-ye, the Japanese owed the gradual expansion of international consciousness, which culminated in the revolution of 1868,—a revolution, the most astonishing in history, accomplished as if by miracle; but the esoteric germ of this seemingly spontaneous growth of Meiji lay in the atelier of the artists of Ukiyo-ye.