120 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



ject all the delicate subtlety of the Orient. Their 

 work is little known in Europe and America. Only 

 now and then some rash collector hoards a few 

 priceless pictures, at which his friends stare super- 

 ciliously, valuing them, as Macaulay valued Celtic 

 manuscripts, — sixpence for the lot. Fifty years 

 ago, however, the drawings of Fo-Kou-Say, or, 

 as the Parisians christened him, Hok'sai, aroused 

 great enthusiasm throughoiit France ; and M. 

 Champfleury, in a somewhat fantastic spirit, likens 

 the Japanese to the Spanish painter, Goya, finding 

 in both the same capricious fancy, the same wanton 

 grace of outline, the same exquisite conception of 

 the waywardness of women and of cats. Several 

 of Hok'sai's beautiful sketches have been repro- 

 duced — though with little skill — in M. Champ- 

 fleury's volume ; and their finely imaginative char- 

 acter suggests to the sympathetic mind those 

 charming Oriental stories, so different from the 

 sombre legends of mediaeval Christendom. The 

 sinuous and light-limbed pussies that Hok'sai cop- 

 ied so daringly must surely have attended the mid- 

 night dances, held in flowery gardens heavy with 

 perfumes and soft with scattered petals, where — 

 so says an ancient Japanese tradition — assemble 

 under the round white moon such cats as are able 

 to pay the entrance fee, — a stolen silken handker- 

 chief. Or perhaps, in calmer mood, they may plod 



