In the absence of any really noble architecture or substantial constructive sense, the Japanese artists are not safe guides as designers. They may be able to throw a spray of leaves or a bird or fish across a blank panel or sheet of paper, drawing them with such consummate skill and certainty that it may delude us into the belief that it is decorative design; but if an artist of less skill essays to do the like the mistake becomes obvious. Granted they have a decorative sense--the _finesse_ which goes to the placing of a flower in a pot, of hanging a garland on a wall, or of placing a mat or a fan--taste, in short, that is a different thing from real constructive power of design, and satisfactory filling of spaces. [Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN. FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE." (MACMILLAN, 1876.)] When we come to their books, therefore, marvellous as they are, and full of beauty and suggestion--apart from their naturalism, _grotesquerie_, and humour--they do not furnish fine examples of page decoration as a rule. The fact that their text is written vertically, however, must be allowed for. This, indeed, converts their page into a panel, and their printed books become rather what we should consider sets of designs for decorating light panels, and extremely charming as such. [Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN. FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE." (MACMILLAN, 1877.)] These drawings of Hokusai's (_see_ Nos. 10 and 11, Appendix), the most vigorous and prolific of the more modern and popular school, are striking enough and fine enough, in their own way, and the decorative sense is never absent; controlled, too, by the dark border-line, they do fill the page, which is not the case always with the flowers and birds. However, I believe these holes, blanks, and spaces to let are only tolerable in a book because the drawing where it does occur is so skilful (except where the effect is intentionally open and light); and from tolerating we grow to like them, I suppose, and take them for signs of mastery and decorative skill. In their smaller applied ornamental designs, however, the Japanese often show themselves fully aware of a systematic plan or geometric base: and there is usually some hidden geometric relation of line in some of their apparently accidental compositions. Their books of crests and pattern plans show indeed a careful study of geometric shapes, and their controlling influence in designing. [Sidenote: JAPANESE PRINTING.]