that, having made a present of an arquebus to the Prince of Tanegashima, that potentate caused it to be imitated, and very soon afterwards the navigator was shown six weapons exactly like his own. A few months later there were 30,000 distributed in the province of Bungo, and 300,000 throughout the country. These figures may be taken with a grain of salt; nevertheless, there must have been a very firm foundation for the story. In 1582, forty years after the arrival of the Portuguese, artillery played a great part in the Battle of Shigutake, one of Hideyoshi’s greatest victories. Whether material or spiritual motives were at the bottom of the rapid progress made by Christianity at this period it would be difficult to say. Princes, literary men, priests, even Buddhists, rich and poor alike, presented themselves in hundreds to receive baptism, and even Nobunaga, if he did not actually profess the new religion, at any rate favoured its propaganda. At the time of his death in 1582 there were fully 600,000 converts in the centre and the south of Japan; half the daimios in the island of Kiu-Siu had embraced Christianity, together with the greater part of their subjects; the Prince of Tosa, in the island of Sikokou, and many daimios in the centre and west of the great island had also been baptized. There were not less than 200 churches, some of which were even situated in the capital of the Empire. In Nagasaki, which in 1567 had become the centre of foreign commerce, there was scarcely a pagan left. In 1582 an embassy, sent to Rome by the Princes of Bungo, Arima and Omura, was solemnly received by Pope Sixtus V. It afterwards proceeded on a tour through Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Although Hideyoshi apparently did not display the same enthusiasm for Christianity as did his neighbours, nevertheless, their number continued to increase; and during the last ten years of the sixteenth century it is believed there were over a million converts to the Roman Church out of a population of between eight or ten millions, a marvellous record for fifty years’ missionary labour. Unfortunately, it was not to last long, although, to be sure, the brief epoch of its success was marked by a material progress quite as astonishing as the spiritual, for, with the religion of the Europeans, the Japanese had adopted a great many of their arts and industries. Tobacco, for instance, began to be cultivated, and boats built on European models transported Japanese trade as far afield as the Gulf of Mexico. Strangers could travel from one end of the country to the other without fear of being molested by the natives, and St. Francis Xavier had every reason to say that the ‘Japanese nation was the delight of his heart.’ Presently Hideyoshi became alarmed lest the system of government which he had formulated might eventually be overthrown through the missionaries and by possible religious wars occasioned by so abrupt a change in the opinions and ethics of an entire nation.