the new religion? The first of these measures, as we have seen, was the decree of Hideyoshi, passed in 1587. The porcelain first referred to by Mr. Marryat comes second in point of time, and is the porcelain assumed to have been made in Japan, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, for the Christian converts. The second is, chronologically, the last, and is the porcelain made in China, about 1755, for the same people, secretly adhering to their religion one hundred and twenty years after the supposed extirpation of Christianity in Japan. Père d’Entrecolles was attached to the King-teh-chin mission, about 1770. While the religious troubles above detailed were keeping Japan in a continual ferment, China was disturbed by the incursion of the Tartars and the usurpation of the Tai-thsing Dynasty. In Japan we have, therefore, an undisturbed period of not more than fifty years (1540-1587) favorable to the development of that originality which, according to Jacquemart, preceded the imitations of Chinese work. Some singular evidence, which may be read, in one sense, to the same general effect, has been brought together by Mr. B. Phillips, in the _Art Journal_, in an article devoted to the Medicean porcelain in the Castellani collection. He says that two Japanese experts examined the specimen engraved (Fig. 223), and pronounced the decoration Japanese. The style they attributed to Shonsui, and said that it was in use toward the middle and close of the sixteenth century. A piece made by Shonsui bore out the statement, it having similar decorations, even to the flutings, which had been shaded after the same method. If the Medicean bowl be examined, simplicity will be found to be the most marked characteristic of the decoration; and it is clear that it must have been copied from some Japanese porcelain made not later than 1580.