When Iyeyasu the Law-giver died in 1616 his first resting-place was at the temple of Kunozan, in the province of Suruga, which adjoins his own native province of Mikawa. The mount of Kuno is close to the port of Shimidzu, in Suruga Gulf, and the temple is approached by many flights of stone steps, and looks out immediately on the broad Pacific, the impressive solitude of the spot being broken only by the occasional visits of bands of pilgrims coming from far-distant parts of Japan to pay their respects at the shrine. The wooden structures betray the ravages of time, notwithstanding that the contributions of the faithful are devoted to the preservation of this and like edifices which possess for the Ten-shi’s subjects deep historic interest, and the peculiar sanctity of the fane in Japanese estimation is doubtless heightened by the claim made for it by the attendant priests that it still holds the heart of the great Shogun though the rest of his remains were transferred to Nikko in 1617. Nikko, the incomparable Nikko, _lit._: Sun’s Effulgence,—is so well known to Occidental travellers that a lengthy description of its glories would here be superfluous, and it need only be mentioned, perhaps, that the splendid cryptomeria-bordered highways met with on the journey thither were equally with his code of laws a part of “Iyeyasu’s Legacy” to the nation, inasmuch as it was with a wish to afford the millions who in after years might traverse the roads of Niphon that protection from its fierce summer suns which might be derived from spreading shade trees that the founder of the Tokugawa house caused those magnificent avenues to be planted and maintained. The tomb at Nikko to which his body was removed from Kunozan in March 1617 was regularly visited by the occupants, each in his turn, of Yedo Castle, but only the founder’s grandson Iyemitsu, who completed the work of building Nikko, and also of the original Uyeno temples at Yedo, rests beside Iyeyasu in this sacred spot. The other Shoguns of the Tokugawa line were interred in the capital, six at Uyeno, and six at Zozoji in Shiba, and on the “Rock of the Dead,” as the hill at Nikko is named on which these heroes of Old Japan repose, only the mausolea of the First and Third of the Tokugawa Shoguns are to be found. But there is that in the surroundings of the lonely graves on the crest of Hotoké-Iwa that is absent even in the gorgeous edifices which stand within those famous groves of pine and cedar that envelop the base of the mountain, and in the simplicity of the unadorned tombs, with their moss-covered approaches, and the time-worn balustrades which surround the peaceful courtyard, with its few bronze urns and incense-burners, there is grandeur unmistakable, and a dignity which no wealth of embellishment ever could confer. Iyeyasu in his lifetime wielded practically regal sway, and he and his successors of the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns were _de facto_ rulers in Japan, and obtained