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Japan and the Japanese, 
These temples are usually built in the midst of park-like 
grounds, laid out in beautiful walks, and diversified with 
groves, and woods. Trees of great age are to be found in 
these groves, adding to the beauty and solemnity of the 
neighbourhood. 
A quotation from Miss Bird, on " Natural Shrines," will 
fitly come into this chapter. ^'Everywhere there are conical 
hills densely wooded with cryptomeria, and scarcely one is 
without a steep flight of handsome stone steps, with a stone, 
or wooden torrii at its base. From below, the top is in- 
volved in mystery, but on ascending into what is truly a 
' solemn shade,' one usually finds a small wooden shrine 
and some tokens of worship, such as a few flowers, a little 
rice, or a few evergreens. These 'groves, and high places' 
are the shrines of the old nature, and hero worship, which 
has its symbols on every high hill, and under every green 
tree. In some places there is merely a red torrii^ with 
some wisps of straw dangling from it, at the entrance of a 
grove : in others a single venerable tree, or group of trees, 
is surrounded with a straw rope, having tassels dangling 
from it, — the sign of sacredness ; in others, again, a paved 
path, under a row of decaying grey torrii^ leads to nothing. 
The grand flights of stone stairs up to the shrines in the 
groves, are the great religious feature in this part of the 
country, and seem to point to a much more pious age than 
the present. The Buddhist temples have lately been few, 
and though they are much more pretentious than the Shinto 
shrines, and usually have stone lanterns, and monuments of 
various kinds in their grounds, they are shabby and decay- 
ing, the paint is wearing off the wood, and they have an 
unmistakable look of * disestablishment,' not supplemented 
by a vigorous Voluntaryism.' One of the most marked 
features of this part of the country is the decayed look of 
