weigh four hundred and fifty tons, and dark brown, and next to beauty of design, the alloy is composed of: "The body, of the image and all the most ancient part of the lotus flowers on which it is seated are apparently formed of plates of bronze ten inches by twelve, soldered together, except the modern parts, which are much larger castings. A peculiar method of construction is said to have been adopted, namely, of gradually building up the walls of the mould as the lower part of the casting cooled, instead of constructing the whole mould first, and then making the casting in a single piece." The other large image of Dai Butsu at Kamakura, near Yokohama, is somewhat smaller than this, and dates from a period three centuries more recent. The various temple bells, some of which are of great size, are remarkable for the sweetness and mellowness of their tones, which contrast greatly with the harsh, clanging sounds to which we are accustomed in Europe. They are struck on the outside by huge pine beams which are suspended by strong ropes. The vessels ordinarily used in worship, such as vases, lamps, and incense-burners, are also of bronze, many of them being fine specimens of art, executed in high relief, and finished with much care. The de mand for art metal-work of a high order has thus existed for centuries in Japan; and so far as can be judged from the specimens of more modern work of this description, the hand of the Japanese workman has not lost its cunning. In the Japanese art-gallery in Grafton Street, among many rare and beautiful productions of the Land of the Rising Sun, the metal-work well deserves attention. A pair of dark, green-tinted bronze vases, fourteen inches high, inlaid with gold, are conspicuous for beauty of design and workmanship. They are said to have occupied the maker seven years, and their curious tint is said to be a trade secret. It must be understood that it is no mere surface coloring, but is produced by the mixture of the metals in certain proportions. The work on the rims and necks represent in gold inlay a cloud dragon, while the bodies are decorated with four medallions formed of gold and silver inlays, the shading obtained by an inlay of gold upon silver being very remarkable. The tints of bronzes vary in color and depth from yellow, green, and ruddy to the tint is a sine quâ non. A favorite design on bronzes is the dragon, a subject which is treated with much force and character. A plaque of shakudo an alloy of gold and copper, and black in color set in a bronze mounting, representing the bamboo, is remarkable as showing the care and labor expended by the Japanese artist in working out details. The design represents a meeting between the twelve chief disciples of Buddha; the inlaying of the figures, trees, flowers, etc., is of gold and silver, with various tinted compositions, and stands out from the dark background of the alloy with much brilliancy. One of the compositions employed for shading is called shibu-ichi, and consists of three parts of copper to one of silver. Both these alloys are favorite compositions of the Japanese artist. The minute interlaying of gold and silver in another plaque, about eighteen inches in diameter, with a curvilinear border, exhibits marvellous skill. The body of the plaque is of iron, and the border is adorned with grape-leaf and fruit patterns, the former being of gold, the latter of silver. This is the work of Komai, of Kioto, whose family held the office of sword-mounters to the court. Swords in the olden time were much prized by their owners, for the quality and temper of the steel, and much cost was lavished on the ornaments of the handles and sheaths. The making of a good sword was regarded as a very serious task, and the maker had to conform to certain rules of conduct from the commencement to the end of the operation. The external ornaments offered endless scope to the skill and care of the worker in metals. Great importance is attached to the maker's name, which is engraved above the guard. It was a common saying of the Japanese, that the swords of celebrated makers, such as Naminohira, Yukiyasu, Masamune, and others, could not return to their scabbards, unless they had been dipped in blood; the sword-maker's occupation is now gone, not so their fellowartists, the sword-mounters. Their skill in working metals can always be turned to good account. Many other works in metal in the gallery deserve mention, but we cannot refer to them here. They all exhibit the patience, skill, imagination, and love of his craft which distinguished the Japanese artist of old. It is to be feared that he is now abandoning these qualities, and seeking a more rapid road to fortune by shoddy foreign imitations, and that beautiful works requiring the patience and loving care of years—such, for instance, as the small cabinet shown in Grafton Street, which was made for the third shôgun of the last dynasty, and which is probably the finest work of its kind in existence-will soon be things of the past. Pall Mall Gazette. NINETEENTH Century Friendships. — In | talk once or twice a week are often unable to France, England, and Germany, among many do so once or twice a month, or even at longer minor groups, three stand out with marked intervals. In this respect London is a monster lustre by reason of the eminence of the men unequalled in the civilized world. But Paris who formed their centres - Diderot, Johnson, is fast becoming a rival of no mean pretensions and Goethe. They all contained men who may in this repulsive characteristic. In the old be ranked among the most active and success- days men lived, so to speak, within a stone's ful workers whom the world has known, men throw of each other. Goldsmith in the Temwho have left enduring monuments of their ple, Johnson in Bolt Court, Burke in Gerard labors. Yet these men never seemed to want Street, for instance, were neighbors, as comleisure for frequent meetings and genial fellow-pared to men equally eager for social union, ship. They met constantly and almost regu- who now perhaps live one at Wimbledon, anlarly, without loss, we may be sure, to their other at Claphamin, a third at Hampstead or work, and with much increase of happiness to Highgate. themselves. The French have a saying that the hours spent at the dinner-table do not count in life. But the best thing at a good French dinner, especially of the old school, was not the cookery but the conversation. A few dishes with ample pauses between, by A RECENT number of the Celestial Empire, which equal justice was done to the viands and referring to a discovery of some ancient graves the talk - this was the ideal, not unfrequently near Shanghai, gives an interesting account of realized in practice, which the proverb had in Chinese burial in former times. A man of view, and in which health equally with recrea- means purchased his coffin when he reached tion found its account. In Edinburgh, again, the age of forty. He would then have it from the days of Hume to those of Sir Walter painted three times every year with a species Scott, men had time both for work and play; of varnish, mixed with pulverized porcelain and even in remote Königsberg, under Kant, -a composition which resembled a silicate the ardent pursuit of metaphysics was not paint or enamel. The process by which this found incompatible with the restorative relaxa- varnish was made has now been lost to the tion of genial and frequent social intercourse. Chinese. Each coating of this paint was of For it is to be noted that the meeting of some thickness, and when dried had a metalfriends, to be at once a source of refreshment lic firmness resembling enamel. Frequent and repose, must be neither too frequent nor coats of this, if the owner lived long, caused too rare. If we only meet our friend at long the coffin to assume the appearance of a sar intervals, we have either too much to say to cophagus, with a foot or more in thickness of him and cannot say it for over-fulness, or we this hard, stone-like shell. After death the have lost touch and those finer contacts of veins and the cavities of the stomach were sympathy which are the spirit and essence of filled with quicksilver for the purpose of prethe best talk. We have insensibly diverged, serving the body. A piece of jade would then each in his separate groove, and easy flow and be placed in each nostril and ear, and in one spontaneity are replaced by reserve and half-hand, while a piece of bar silver would be shyness. It is here that we place our finger on the painful spot in our modern life. In this huge wilderness of bricks and mortar called London friends live apart, separated by invisible barriers, which only exceptional moments of health and energy enable us to traverse. The facilities of locomotion, by which men are enabled to escape from an atmosphere poisoned and thickened with coal-smoke and noxious gases in which their daily business mostly lies, have caused such a dispersion of the inhabitants presumed to live in the same city that the chances are that friends who would like nothing better than to meet and placed in the other hand. The body thus prepared was placed on a layer of mercury within the coffin; the latter was sealed, and the whole then committed to its last resting-place. When some of these sarcophagi were opened after the lapse of centuries, the bodies were found in a wonderful state of preservation; but they crumbled to dust on exposure to the air. The writer well observes that the employment of mercury by the Chinese of past dynasties for the purpose of preserving bodies ought to form an interesting subject for consideration and discussion in connection with the history of embalming and “mummy-making." For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. A LITTLE LINK. SHE sleeps - the welcome wintry sun And soft she sleeps, my little one, The flowers I plucked for her delight Beside the pictured book: Strange thoughts arise, oh! blossom bright, Thy mother's face, thy mother's smile, And when this evening's shadows fall, Ah dear my wife! ah sweet my wife! Should we weep, thou and I? If we two stood upon the brink "I erred the first-and most,' 'Tis hard to say, for pride is strong, The looks of one away, My heart cries out against the wrong I was to blame, for I was hard; 1 From The Fortnightly Review. THE LIFE OF JAMES MILL.* WHEN Mr. Mill's " Autobiography was given to the public nine years ago, it created a common impression that the father was even a more remarkable and singular figure than the son; and there was a general desire to know more about a personage of so many striking and original traits. Grote had already said enough in one of his minor pieces to stir a lively curiosity about the elder Mill. Apart from his publicly authenticated merits, which have for that matter fallen somewhat out of date both in history and philosophy, he had other merits, says Grote, which were not any less real: His unpremeditated oral exposition was hardly less effective than his prepared work with the pen; his colloquial fertility on philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and of stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive inspirations through all the shifts and windings of a sort of Platonic dialogue all these accomplishments were, to those who knew him, even more impressive than what he composed for the press. Conversation with him was not merely instructive, but provocative to the dormant intelligence. Of all persons whom we have known Mr. James Mill was the one who stood least remote from the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic · τοῦ διδόναι καὶ δέχεσθαι λόγον (the giving and receiving of reasons)-competent alike to examine others, or to be examined by them on philosophy. When to this we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and single minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain of mere paradox, it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful intellectual ascendancy over younger minds. cerity of his criticism, and the consistency of his life. "He was always," says Brougham, "of such self-denial that he sunk every selfish consideration in his anxiety for the success of any cause which he espoused, and ever ready to the utmost extent of his faculties, and often beyond the force of his constitution, to lend his help for its furtherance." The real impressiveness, however, of James Mill's character was not suspected by our generation until his son described it to the world in pages that must become classic, if mankind continue to cherish the memory of their benefactors. Mr. Mill pronounced it to be "far from honorable to the generation which has bene. fited by his work, that he is so seldom mentioned, and, compared with men far his inferiors, so little remembered." There are two causes for this. One of them is that the thought of him merged in the deservedly superior fame of Bentham, though he was anything but Benother reason is that notwithstanding the tham's mere follower and disciple. The great number of his opinions which have come to be generally adopted, "there was on the whole a marked opposition between his spirit and that of the present time." In other words, he belonged to the eighteenth century: he was the last of its strong and brave men, "and he was a fit companion for its strongest and bravest." (Mill's Autobiography, p. 205). But surely the best reason why James Mill's fame is less than it deserved to be is that his influence was far less literary than personal. His most striking gift was "the power of influencing the convictions and purposes of others by mere force of mind and character." He was sought for the vigor and instructiveness of his conversation, and used it largely as an instrument for the diffusion of his opinions. I have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in col Lord Brougham, in a passage quoted in the volume before us, says something to the same effect. He admits that James Mill was not free from the dogmatism of his school (as if Brougham were quite free from the dogmatism of his school), but he praises his great candor in controversy, and then he goes on to remark what must have multiplied his in-loquial discussion. His perfect command over tellectual force a thousandfold, namely, his moral earnestness, the profound sin* James Mill. A Biography. By Alexander Bain, LL.D. London: Longmans, 1882. John Stuart Mill. A Criticism with Personal Recollections. By the same. his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language, and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amus |