embroidered silks, albums, books of wood-cuts, and knick-knacks were scarcely unpacked in the shop before they found their way into the studios of artists and the libraries of scholars. In a short time great collections of the artistic productions of Japan passed into the hands of the painters Manet, James Tissot, Whistler, Fantin-Latour, Degas, Carolus Duran, and Monet; of the engravers Bracquemond and Jules Jacquemart; of the authors Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Champfleury, Philippe Burty, and Zola; and of the manufacturers Barbedienne and Christofle. [Illustration: HARUNOBU. A PAIR OF LOVERS.] The International Exhibition of 1867 brought Japan still more into fashion, and from this year must be dated the peculiar influence of the West upon the East and the East upon the West. The Japanese came over to study at the European polytechnic institutes, universities, and military academies. On the other hand, we became the pupils of the Japanese in art. Even during the course of the Exhibition a group of artists and critics founded a Japanese society of the "Jinglar," which met every week in Sèvres at the house of Solon, the director of the manufactory. They used a Japanese dinner-service, designed by Bracquemond, and everything except the napkins, cigars, and ash-trays was Japanese. One of the members, Dr. Zacharias Astruc, published in _L'Étendard_ a series of articles upon "The Empire of the Rising Sun," which made a great sensation. Soon afterwards the Parisian theatres brought out Japanese ballets and fairy plays. Ernest d'Hervilly wrote his Japanese piece _La Belle Saïnara_, which Lemère printed for him in Japanese fashion and paged from right to left, giving it a yellow cover designed by Bracquemond. A Japanese ballet was performed at the opera, and a Japanese turn was given to the toilettes of women. For painters Japanese art was a revelation. Here was uttered the word that hovered on so many lips, and that no one had dared to pronounce. With what a fleeting touch, and yet with what precision, with what incomparable sureness, lightness, and grace, was everything carried out. How intuitive and spontaneous, how imaginative and how full of suggestion, how effortless and how rich in surprises, was this strange art. How happily was industry united with caprice, and nonchalance with endeavour at the highest finish. How suggestive was this disregard for symmetry, this piquant method of introducing a flower, an insect, a frog, or a bird here and there, merely as a pictorial spot in the picture. How the Japanese understood the art of expressing much with few means, where the Europeans toiled with a great expenditure of means to express little.