To this historic document were appended the great seal of “Dai Nihon” and the signature in the monarch’s own caligraphy—_Mutsuhito_—it being, perhaps, the first time in all Japanese history that the personal name of the ruler had been used officially during his lifetime. The retiring Shogun left the capital and for a brief period took up his abode in the castle of Osaka. But it was to the chief town of Suruga province, midway between Tokio and Kioto, that he finally withdrew, and thereafter lived the unobtrusive life of a country gentleman on a small estate which the Emperor bestowed upon him. In this way, in the perfect seclusion of Shidzu-oka (_lit._: the Hill of Peace) he was able to wholly divest himself of political connections, and was now and then to be seen setting out on a fishing excursion with perhaps but one attendant, preferring the quietude of his existence apart from the cares of State, and revelling in his emancipation from the pomp and circumstance of that Court of which for a brief interval he had been the acknowledged and puissant head. Never, perhaps, did a potentate more completely renounce his rights, nor so absolutely efface himself on doing so, in the history of mankind, but he has had his reward in the confidence and favour of the real sovereign whose deputy he had been, and from whom he has received in recent years the highest honours. He has the rank of Prince under the new regime, while Prince Tokugawa Iyesato, the head of the Tokugawa family, has also been raised to the same rank, and holds office as President of the House of Peers. Thus the family of Tokugawa, which from the close of the Sixteenth Century until 1868 virtually ruled Japan, retains, by the magnanimity of the Emperor, a status among the nobility of the land that is unsurpassed by any princely or ducal house, and actually boasts the possession among its ranks of two princes, since his Majesty thought fit in 1900 to request his former Shogun to visit Tokio, and then and there conferred upon him the title which he now holds, declaring at the same time that he was perfectly absolved of all participation in the events of 1867-8, which would no longer blot the record. There has been nothing in the personal relations of his Majesty with his dutiful and supremely loyal people which has more endeared him to them than his extreme generosity, and inasmuch as there were necessarily among all classes of his subjects many thousands—even hundreds of thousands—who had in their early days been proud to own allegiance to the Shogun and the Tokugawa house, the sovereign’s attitude has been more widely appreciated than it is possible, perhaps, for strangers to the country to comprehend.