The prefectural assemblies, which were designed to pave the way for organised self-government through representative bodies on the western model, continued to meet in the provinces and to constitute a very useful training for the people in the principles of local administration and the formation of public opinion. The functions of these provincial parliaments were definitely laid down in a special ordinance in the year 1888, a few months before the assembly of the first Diet, so that there should be no conflict in regard to the respective powers of these institutions. A notable step had been taken four years previously in the reorganisation of the aristocracy on a system akin to the Chinese but accommodated to the methods of the Occident. There had been from ancient times in the Chinese Empire certain well-defined grades of the aristocracy, and in a modified form the titles so conferred had had their equivalents in Japan, so that it became necessary merely to revive the system under modern conditions. The degrees of nobility thus reintroduced were Ko = prince, Ko = (with a different symbol) marquis, Haku = count, Shi = viscount, and Dan = baron, corresponding to the Kung, Hou, Po, Tzu, and Nan of the Chinese, the European equivalents for these titles being adopted by imperial ordinance from the year 1884. It has often been supposed that Japan copied the Western forms in reorganising her nobility, but the truth is that she officially recognised the European ranks under their Chinese equivalents, just as her scientific terminology is based upon the ideographs which have been employed in China for tens of centuries to represent substances of which the inhabitants of that land were cognisant though they lacked the enterprise to turn their knowledge to practical account. Chinese, as a language, has been to Japanese what Latin and Greek have been to English, the never-failing fount from which it was feasible to draw as occasion might require a term to suit the needs of scientific advancement. There had been princes, court nobles, and a hereditary aristocracy in Japan from times out of mind, the new feature introduced was the adjustment of mediæval titles of nobility to the requirements of a later age. Under this arrangement it became possible to group the former feudal magnates according to the relative positions that they had occupied while in possession of their estates, and simultaneously to raise to commensurate rank those who had become distinguished by their services to their country. Honours were to be conferred solely by the sovereign, and while he confirmed in this respect in their inherited privileges the members of the older aristocracy the Emperor raised to a status of equal title to respect those who had served him in the reconstitution of his empire on a basis of unexampled prosperity. On Ito Hirobumi his Majesty conferred the rank of Count. A similar honour was bestowed on his colleague and