Then the splendour culminates. Beyond the Chinese gateway is the actual shrine itself, its cream-white gateway studded too with brass, while superb in the utter beauty of their carving, two writhing dragons stretch on either hand between the door-post and the pillar. Inside is the temple of the memorial tablets, where with daily rites the Buddhist priests prayed for the soul of Iyeyasu. To-day the Buddhist emblems are all gone, the shrine is bare. A _shintō_ rope of rice-straw stretches from post to post, the mirror of the Sun-Goddess shines above the altar for her son, the “Son of Heaven” _Tenshi_, the Mikado, has come back to his own. All the magnificence of the temple now is in its walls, walls of panel carvings where the springing phœnix and the crouching lion rise like pale shadows from the pale unstained wood, so little are they raised above the surface. And yet the artist’s hand that carved them was without a rival in the world. They are real and living, delicate and true, and so entirely beautiful that the heart cries out with joy as at a long-lost good. Here is no colour, the sweep of pale yellow matting, the panelled walls of pale dust-coloured wood, are more light than colour. Here the rich joy of sense is laid aside: the temple stands a beauty immaterial. Through three hundred years they prayed for Iyeyasu daily with long rites, but his tomb is not here. It lies beyond the temple and above it. One climbs to it by a long, steep stair of grey-green granite, set in the sombre hill. A stairway built of granite in long slabs, so broad and thick that the balustrade with its coping, base, and sculptured columns is all cut from one solid block, with each block fourteen feet long. And the stairway took thirteen years to quarry and set up. The hillside is steep, the stairs are many, and the tall dark pines, the flame-red maples gather, gather till the temple’s roof, the sound of praying bell or chanted hymn is lost. The little space which Art stole from Nature is completely hidden, even the forest has forgotten. And the grey stair climbs, climbs among the dark-green trees, then stops. On the top of the hill is a rounded curve of stately pines. Alone, solitary between sky and trees, stands the tomb of Iyeyasu, a domed pillar-box of bronze glinting golden through the trees. A low stone wall surrounds the tomb, a bronze door solid but uncarved is its gateway, and that is all. Here among the quiet trees, in the stillness of the forest, above the splendour of the temple, lie the ashes of the great Iyeyasu. All the days of his rule he dwelt among men, but his soul climbed the steep stair of Life, casting off its splendours and its glories, climbed above them, climbed back into the eternal simplicity of Nature, and there he laid him down to rest. IV KANNON, LADY OF MERCY