Chinese origin) were considerably developed before the Tokugawa era; but it was then that they [357] began to assume those inexpensive forms which placed aesthetic gratification within reach of the common people. Sumptuary legislation or rule might yet apply to the use and possession of costly production, but not to the enjoyment of form; and the beautiful, whether shaped in paper or in ivory, in clay or gold, is always a power for culture. It has been said that in a Greek city of the fourth century before Christ, every household utensil, even the most trifling object, was in respect of design an object of art; and the same fact is true, though in another and a stranger way, of all things in a Japanese home: even such articles of common use as a bronze candlestick, a brass lamp, an iron kettle, a paper lantern, a bamboo curtain, a wooden pillow, a wooden tray, will reveal to educated eyes a sense of beauty and fitness entirely unknown to Western cheap production. And it was especially during the Tokugawa period that this sense of beauty began to inform everything in common life. Then also was developed the art of illustration; then came into existence those wonderful colour-prints (the most beautiful made in any age or country) which are now so eagerly collected by wealthy dilettanti. Literature also ceased, like art, to be the enjoyment of the upper classes only: it developed a multitude of popular forms. This was the age of popular fiction, of cheap books, of popular drama, of storytelling for young and old.... We may certainly [358] call the Tokugawa period the happiest in the long life of the nation. The mere increase of population and of wealth would prove the fact, irrespective of the general interest awakened in matters literary and aesthetic. It was an age of popular enjoyment, also of general culture and social refinement.