others, on the same principle that a void more easily admits a foreign body than does space that is already occupied; or as a blank piece of paper takes a dye more brilliantly for not being already tinted itself. The third result, the remarkable homogeneity of the people, is not, perhaps, so universally appreciated, but it is equally evident on inspection, and no less weighty in proof. Indeed, the Far Eastern state of things is a kind of charade on the word; for humanity there is singularly uniform. The distance between the extremes of mind-development in Japan is much less than with us. This lack of divergence exists not simply in certain lines of thought, but in all those characteristics by which man is parted from the brutes. In reasoning power, in artistic sensibility, in delicacy of perception, it is the same story. If this were simply the impression at first sight, no deductions could be drawn from it, for an impression of racial similarity invariably marks the first stage of acquaintance of one people by another. Even in outward appearance it is so. We find it at first impossible to tell the Japanese apart; they find it equally impossible to differentiate us. But the present resemblance is not a matter of first impressions. The fact is patent historically. The men whom Japan reveres are much less removed from the common herd than is the case in any Western land. And this has been so from the earliest times. Shakspeares and Newtons have never existed there. Japanese humanity is not the soil to grow them. The comparative absence of genius is fully paralleled by the want of its opposite. Not only are the paths of preeminence untrodden; the purlieus of brutish ignorance are likewise unfrequented. On neither side of the great medial line is the departure of individuals far or frequent. All men there are more alike;--so much alike, indeed, that the place would seem to offer a sort of forlorn hope for disappointed socialists. Although religious missionaries have not met with any marked success among the natives, this less deserving class of enthusiastic disseminators of an all-possessing belief might do well to attempt it. They would find there a very virgin field of a most promisingly dead level. It is true, human opposition would undoubtedly prevent their tilling it, but Nature, at least, would not present quite such constitutional obstacles as she wisely does with us.