198 JAPANESE CUSTOMS AND HABITS. 



I know no people who so truly deserve to be called 

 artistic as the Japanese. Most men and boys with a 

 piece of stick, burnt at the end, will very quickly pro- 

 duce on a whitewashed wall or a board, a sketch of a 

 plant or a figure, showing accuracy, spirit, and taste. In 

 the grotesque line they are inimitable. This kind of 

 line-sketching is taught at an early age. Their freedom, 

 taste, and quickness of execution, is exactly opposite to 

 their neighbours the Chinese. The nitchkies, or figures 

 in ivory or wood, show wonderful humour. The Chinese 

 have done all in their power to imitate these things, and 

 with creditable success, but they are as much wanting 

 in freedom and true artistic skill, as those they copy are 

 full of it. Education, of course, has in the first instance 

 a great deal to do with all such traits and differences. 



Their system of education is excellent. In vil- 

 lages too small or poor to be able to support a regular 

 schoolmaster, the priest takes his place, and one of 

 the numerous rooms of the village temple is used as 

 a schoolroom. When we put up in these temples 

 the school sometimes had to be stopped, on account 

 of insufficiency of room for all my party. The little 

 scholars had no objection to these extra holidays. 

 Neither, I think, had the priest, who invariably donned 

 his best robe and visited his far-off parishioners. 



