ORIENTALS AT VIENNA. 495 



for a hard day's work, and suggest readiness to answer the calls of 

 any emergency. They are turned out comparatively cheaply to cut- 

 and-dry patterns. The former are the signs of a languid yet not un- 

 fruitful existence. But they express the intuitive gracefulness of ideas 

 evolved in a calm fulness of thought that will not be hurried ; they 

 show an originality and versatility of fancy whose inspirations may 

 have been sought in the dreamy fumes of opium. Go to the remotest 

 East of Asia, seek the Oriental on his own proper ground, and you 

 seldom take him at a disadvantage. In his own unpretending way, 

 the peasant who weaves mats of bamboo or moulds vessels of common 

 clay in his retired village is as much of an artist as the skilled work- 

 man of Yeddo who lacquers cabinets in the most delicate plaques of 

 veneer, or chases the bronze incense-burners that are to swing in the 

 temples. When the Oriental breaks down is when he takes to imi- 

 tating the European, as he has begun to do in these latter days. The 

 Japanese sometimes turn from their own beautiful specimens of Kago 

 and Satsuma porcelain to reproduce the fashions and colors of Parisian 

 and English crockery, while the Turks back their clumsy machinery 

 against the looms of Mancester in calicoes and cottons. Happily these 

 follies of imitation are as yet rare ; and probably the profits of this 

 novel trade will not encourage the enterprising imitators to persevere. 

 The East has much to learn from the West, and the lessons that will 

 2^rove of most service to it go to the very groundwork of its society. 

 It has yet to be enlightened as to the advantages of civil and religious 

 liberty and education, the value of time, and the necessity of system 

 and method. All this it is now learning, and in some matters of de- 

 tail its education is going on only too rapidly. Doubtless sooner or 

 later it will come to our markets for machinery which will enable it to 

 make at home what it imports at present from abroad. But some of 

 its tentative advances in this direction are premature and injudicious, 

 to say the least, and, judging by certain samples of its imitative skill, 

 it seems inclined to precipitate a competition whose unfortunate re- 

 sults in price and quality may cause it permanent discouragement. 



However, it is not our purpose now to discuss the points on which 

 we may teach the Orientals, but rather to glance at some of those 

 where we are the scholars. There is a great deal in the Eastern de- 

 partments of the Vienna Exhibition which is chiefly interesting as 

 showing their relative backwardness. Some of them, for instance, 

 send complete samples of their cereals and vegetable productions, and 

 and these are curious as illustrating the advantages of soil and climate 

 which yield them, in spite of the most backward husbandry and the 

 most primitive implements, returns of twenty, fifty, or a hundred fold. 

 But only turn to their show in the arts, and some of them may almost 

 set criticism at defiance. By general consent, and beyond all com- 

 parison, the first place must be assigned to Japan. The Japanese 

 does most things unlike the rest of the world. His method of han- 



