There was a great stir in Japan in the summer of 1869, when it was known that the Duke of Edinburgh was coming in the _Galatea_. The Japanese Government were wildly excited, for it was the first time that a Royal Prince had paid a visit to the Mikado, and they were determined to give his Royal Highness a reception at Yedo worthy of his rank and of the Monarch who was to entertain him. Hama-go-ten, a beautiful garden by the sea, was determined upon as his residence; and the preparations were made in the most generous fashion. Furniture and all the equipments necessary to European ideas of comfort were procured from Hong Kong; but the decorations were carried out entirely in the native fashion, and most beautiful and artistic they were. In order that nothing might be wanting the Japanese asked Sir Harry to allow me to help them, for in those times they were not so well acquainted with Western habits as they are now; so a couple of rooms were made ready for me in Hama-go-ten so that I might be on the spot, and there I remained for about a month. I was also to serve as interpreter to the Duke, and as I should have to act on the occasion of his interview with the Son of Heaven, I had to be coached in the language of “the people above the clouds” (royalties and courtiers), for there are matters of etiquette and proper phraseology at this as at all courts in which it would be very easy to make some awkward mistake. It was a pity that the Japanese did not have the inspiration to lodge the Duke in one of their own charming pavilions; but they were bent upon preparing a European house for him, and so a rather ugly, ramshackle wooden house with green shutters was run up in a hurry. The ugliness of the outside, however, was made up for by the decorations within. The walls were a perfect riot of colour and gold, which in less deft hands would have been glaring and violent, but the artists had the secret of so mastering and intermarrying the most hostile colours that the whole effect was delightful and a succession of surprises. The discordant note was struck by the furniture dealers of Hong Kong; their wares, with a strong flavour of Tottenham Court Road in them, jarred piteously with the imaginative poetry of the Japanese artists.