On his way to London the Marquis had passed through Russia, where he was received in special audience by the Tsar, and Count Lamsdorff gave a Ministerial Banquet in his honour. From St Petersburg he travelled to Germany, Italy, and Belgium, receiving at Potsdam a decoration from the Kaiser, at a banquet specially arranged, the tour through Europe being one of unalloyed satisfaction to the veteran statesman, and of exceptional value to his country, in that he obtained information at first hand regarding the status of political parties, and added to his store of knowledge on subjects connected with the science of constitutional government, which is one of the many matters on which he is privileged to be the trusted adviser of his sovereign, in virtue of his position as President of the Council. In this necessarily imperfect sketch of the strenuous life of Marquis Ito I have touched mainly on his public career, leaving to the last any reference to the simplicity and usefulness of his private life in town and country, the one permeated with the anxieties and perplexities of a statesman’s daily round of duty, the other a restful freedom from political worry always to be secured in his seaside villa at Oiso. In a measure the Marquis may be said to have made Oiso, for it was not until he had a house built there, within sound of the waves of the Pacific, that the wayside village and posting station of ancient times became known as a health resort and acquired a certain notoriety as a convenient seaside bathing-place. Oiso will never be a Brighton or an Eastbourne, perhaps, but it has a pretty collection of villa residences close to the shore, and it has for a background the peerless Fujiyama, while the Pacific billows rattle the shingle on its extensive beach. Here it is that the veteran statesman is visited by his life-long friends, those “elder statesmen” of the new regime who recognise in him their experienced chief and are by the nation regarded, in the main, as its safest guides and counsellors in all that appertains to the welfare of the country.