to-day, with scores of trusty henchmen, their lords’ crests prominently displayed on their helmets and their banners and insignia borne aloft, marching on either side the palanquin to guard their chief. The Regent’s cortege was at the Sakurada Gate when the attack was delivered, and the falling snow had led the retainers to keep their sword-hilts covered, so that there was a fatal delay in encountering the ro-nins, who, moreover, were disguised as peasants, and wore rain-coats to conceal their weapons. Eight of the Regent’s men were killed, and three of the ro-nins were slain on the spot, eight more being brought to execution at a later date. The whole thing was the work of but a few minutes, and the band no doubt had a confederate who was skilled in heraldry watching at the gate, ready to announce the baron’s approach, and able to distinguish his procession by the device on the banners which some of his retinue bore. The Regent was forty-five years old at the time of his death, having been born in 1815, the fourteenth son of the baron Naonaka. The Ii family is a very old one, an ancestor having aided in the subjugation of the rebels, so termed,—presumably the Ainus,—in the island of Yeso, between A.D. 987 and 1011, when the Emperor Ichijo was on the throne. The name Ii is taken from the spot not far from Hamana inlet, in Totomi province, called Ii-dani, or the valley of Ii, whereat the first baron built a castle in the eighth century. But having been appointed protector of the city of Kioto, one of the baron’s ancestors had removed to Hikoné, on Lake Biwa, to be nearer his charge, and thus it came about that Ii Kamon-no-kami was Lord of Hikoné at the period when he became Regent, and dwelt at the Hikoné Yashiki in Yedo. The baron Ii bequeathed to the nation a couplet illustrative of his real patriotism, a quality which even those who were opposed to his policy never failed to recognise as part of his noble nature. It runs:— “Omi no mi kishi utsu nami no iku tabi mo, Miyo ni kokoro wo kudaki nuru kana!” (Rent as the wave-beat rocks on Omi’s strand My broken heart, for our belovéd Land!) Lake Biwa, on which stands Hikoné, is often in poetry termed the Sea of Omi. It washes the shore of what in feudal times were the lord of Hikoné’s estates.