All through the four seasons, which are almost too varied even for a Thomson's pen, eventful with the constant calls of one after another of our flowery visitors--beginning with the noble plum that peeps with its tiny yellowish-white eyes from under the spotless repose of fleecy snow, and ending in the gay variety of the chrysanthemum--we have too many allurements from outside not to leap into the widespread arms of Mother Nature and dream away our simple, our contented life in her lap. True, there also are in Japan many instances of broken hearts seeking their final rest under the green turf of an untimely grave, or else in the grey mantle of the Buddhist monkhood. But in them, again, we see the characteristic determination and action of a Japanese at work. To indulge in Hamlet-like musing, deep in the grand doubt and sublime melancholy of the never-slumbering question 'To be, or not to be?' is something, so to say, too damp to occur in the sunny thought of our open-air life. If asked to name the most conspicuous of those physical phenomena which have exercised so great an influence on our mind, no Japanese will hesitate to mention our most beloved Fuji-no-yama. This is the highest and the most beautiful of all the great mountains in the main group of the Japanese islands. Gracefully conical in shape, lifting its snowclad head against a serene background 12,365 feet above the sea, it has from the earliest time been the object of unceasing admiration for the surrounding thirteen provinces, and where it stands out of the reach of the naked eye, winged words from the poet's lyre, and flying leaves from the artist's brush, have carried its never-tiring praise to all the nooks and corners of the Land of the Gods. Here is one of the earliest odes to Fujiyama, contained in a collection of lyrical poems called Man-yô-shû, or 'Myriad Leaves,' by Prince Moroe (died A.D. 757), somewhere in the first half of the eighth century:-- There on the border, where the land of Kahi Doth touch the frontier of Suruga's land, A beauteous province stretched on either hand, See Fujiyama rear his head on high! The clouds of heav'n in rev'rent wonder pause, Nor may the birds those giddy heights essay, Where melt thy snows amid thy fires away, Or thy fierce fires lie quench'd beneath thy snows. What name might fitly tell, what accents sing, Thy awful, godlike grandeur? 'Tis thy breast That holdeth Narusaha's flood at rest, Thy side whence Fujikaha's waters spring. Great Fujiyama, tow'ring to the sky! A treasure art thou giv'n to mortal man, A god-protector, watching o'er Japan: On thee for ever let me feast mine eye!