appearance from the unexplored East had led the natives to believe that their gods had forsaken them. The expedition returned laden with vast wealth, not the spoil of battle, but the peaceful tribute of a bloodless victory; and from that time forward Japan, through Corea, and later by direct contact with China itself, began to receive and assimilate the civilization, arts, and religions of China. Thus through a woman Japan received the start along the line of progress which made her what she is to-day, for the sequel of Jingo Kōgō's Corean expedition was the introduction of almost everything which we regard as peculiar to civilized countries. With characteristic belittling of the woman and exalting of the man, the whole martial career of the Empress is ascribed to the influence of her son as yet unborn,--a son who by his valor and prowess has secured for his deified spirit the position of God of War in the Japanese pantheon. We should say that pre-natal influences and heredity produced the heroic son; the Japanese reason from the other end, and show that all the noble qualities of the mother were produced by the influence of the unborn babe. With the introduction of literature, art, and Buddhism, a change took place in the relations of the court to the people. About the Emperor's throne there gathered not only soldiers and governors, but the learned, the accomplished, the witty, the artistic, who found in the Emperor and the court nobles munificent patrons by whom they were supported, and before whom they laid whatever pearls they were able to produce. The new culture sought not the clash of arms and the shout of soldiers, but the quiet and refinement of palaces and gardens far removed from the noise and clamor of the world. And while emperors sought to encourage the new learning and civilization, and to soften the warlike qualities of the people about them, there was a frontier along which the savages still made raids into the territory which the Japanese had wrested from them, and which it required a strong arm and a quick hand to guard for the defense of the people. But the Emperor gradually gave up the personal leadership in war, and passed the duty of defending the nation into the hands of one or another of the great noble families. The nobles were not by any means slow to see the advantage to be gained for themselves by the possession of the military power in an age when might made right, even more than it does to-day, and when force, used judiciously and with proper deference to the prejudices of the people, could be made to give to its possessor power even over the Emperor himself. And so gradually, in the pursuit of the new culture and the new religion, the emperors withdrew themselves more and more into seclusion, and the court became a little world in itself,--a centre of culture and refinement into which few excitements of war or politics ever came. While the great nobles