a nation to be envied for the perfection with which her sons have been trained to fight her battles, and Marquis Ito has striven successfully to secure for the country the blessings of constitutional Government, Count Okuma has made it all his life the one aim of his existence to promote the adoption of an educational system throughout the Empire which shall be effective and thorough, and if he has in this way led successive Governments to regard the work of education as a pressing duty laid upon them, and to expend large sums in its fulfilment, he has not hesitated to devote large sums from his own purse to the attainment of his ideal. As a rich man he has been able to do a great deal to further the cause which he has always had at heart, and he certainly has displayed a most commendable readiness to add practice to precept when advocating the allocation of Government funds to the endowment of schools and colleges. The University of Waseda, which he founded in 1882, has prospered exceedingly, and is numbered among the most valuable of those institutions,—and they are many,—which afford facilities to the Japanese youth for the acquisition of a liberal education. The Japanese name of the College is Semmon Gakko, and Waseda is the suburb of Tokio in which stands the Count’s mansion, adjacent to the institution in which he takes a natural pride. It aims at the higher education of girls as well as boys, and among other things it possesses an extensive publishing bureau, designed to provide for the efficient translation into Japanese of foreign works of an educational character. Here his own articles for foreign magazines have at times been rendered into English, for though the Count is fairly conversant with our tongue he does not attempt to speak or write it save on very rare occasions.