Naturally enough, amongst men who had lived in the mystery of ancestral seclusion, unbroken by any sign or sound from without, there must be a majority among whom it would be idle to expect an immediate flow of liberal ideas; they thought as their fathers thought, as their forbears had thought in the eleventh century, when the veil was drawn over the holy city and all light shut out till now. Some there were who amazed us by the way in which they met the new situation. Physically, inbreeding had done its work. Many of the nobles were puny, pale and anæmic ghosts, in whom Dr. Willis, a sound observer, found many signs of hereditary degeneration. Others again, equally bearing the stamp of aristocratic descent, were strong and well nurtured. Side by side with Daté, the burly Inkiyō of Uwajima, Higashi Kuzé, the Court noble was not imposing in stature, but his mind was clear and nimble, and indeed, it was wonderful to watch the success with which many of these recluses, whose lives had been spent in the iteration of dull and mentally exhausting ceremonies, threw themselves into the whirlpool of affairs. Iwakura, for instance, who afterwards went as Ambassador to Europe, was one of the most pliant of the new statesmen with whom we came into contact. The three brothers Saionji, and some others, were born men of the world. But these men of more advanced views were few and far between, and amongst the others there can be no doubt that our friends in preaching toleration had an even more difficult task than that which lay before Disraeli when he started upon educating his party. Had the Emperor been a little older his generous spirit would have lightened their burden. But he was a mere boy, not yet able to make his personal influence felt. It was not long in coming; for among the heroes of the days of the restoration none deserve more admiration and respect than the Emperor Mutsu Hito. Hardly was he freed from the luxurious care and tender coddling of the women’s quarters than he was forced to take up his august inheritance at a moment of storm and stress for which the history of his country—perhaps we might say, of the world—furnishes no parallel. He faced the ordeal manfully from the very first, and he seems at once to have recognized the importance of the fact that the days of Japan’s isolation had come to an end, and that, if the Land of the Gods was to preserve its dignity, it must be by casting off the old slough of tradition and prejudice.