526 EEVIEWS — AHEHICAN EXPEDITION TO JAPAN. 



in similar Books prepared for the amusement of children with us. In one of the 

 illustrations there is a quaint old shopman peering through a pair of spectacles 

 6tuck upon his nose, and made precisely like the double-eyed glasses just now so 

 fashionable. A glass globe of gold fish, which have awakened the hungry in- 

 stincts of a cat that wistfully watches their movements in the water, is among 

 the pictures. A couple of chairmen, who have put down their sedan to take their 

 rest, are engaged lighting their pipes ; and a professor, seemingly of Phrenology, 

 is standing amid the paraphernalia of his art, whatever it be, and is taking the 

 measure with a pair of compasses of a bald-headed disciple. All these scenes oc- 

 cur among the illustrations of this little book. All show a humorous conception, 

 and a style of treatment far in advance of the mechanical trash which sometimes 

 composes the nursery books found in our shops. A people have made some pro- 

 gress worth studying who have a sense of the humorous, can picture the ludicrous, 



and good naturedly laugh at a clever caricature 



There were no printing establishments to be seen either at Simoda or Hakodadi, 

 but books were found in the shops. These were generally cheap works of 

 elementary character, or popular story books or novels, and were evidently in 

 great demand, as the people are universally taught to read, and are eager for in- 

 formation. Education is diffused throughout the Empire, and the women of Ja- 

 pan, unlike those of China, share in the intellectual advancement of the men, and 

 are not only skilled in the accomplishments peculiar to their sex, but are fre- 

 quently well versed in their native literature. The higher classes of the Japan- 

 ese, with whom the Americans were brought into communication, were not only 

 thoroughly acquainted with their own country, but knew something of the geo- 

 graphy, the material progress, and contemporary history of the rest of the world. 

 Questions were frequently asked by the Japanese which proved an information 

 that, considering their isolated situation, was quite remarkable, until explained by 

 themselves in the statement that periodicals of literature, science, arts, and politics, 

 were annually received from Europe through the Dutch at Xagaski ; and that some 

 of them were translated, republished, and distributed through the Empire." 



Here it is obvious that effectual steps have at length been taken, 

 for opening up free intercourse with an inquiring, sagacious, and 

 highly intelligent, though suspicious, people. The Americans are 

 justly entitled to all honor for their successful carrying out of an ex- 

 pedition which can scarcely fail to prove advantageous to the whole 

 civilized world, — and not the less so that it is the result of peaceful 

 and friendly negotiation, and not of a barbarous warfare against a 

 sensitive but weak nation. When we consider, with the natural sur- 

 prise of the members of the American Expedition, that the Japanese 

 were found quite ready to converse intelligently with them about rail- 

 roads, telegraphs, daguerreotypes, Paixhan guns, steamships, the 

 Mexican war, &c, as subjects already familiar to them, we cannot fail 

 to appreciate the intellectual powers and cultivation of this remarka- 

 ble people. They have no such self-sufficient faith in their own in- 

 tellectual supremacy as with the Chinese bars all further progress ; 

 and when we consider that in the fourteenth century they were not 



