an artist in botany. In like manner, the Tokugawa Sh[=o]guns (1604-1868)
determined to so limit the supply of mental food, that the mind of Japan
should be of those correctly dwarfed proportions of puniness, so admired
by lovers of artificiality and unconscious caricature. Philosophy was
selected as a chief tool among the engines of oppression, and as the
main influence in stunting the intellect. All thought must be orthodox
according to the standards of Confucianism, as expounded by Chu Hi.
Anything like originality in poetry, learning or philosophy must be
hooted down. Art must follow Chinese, Buddhist and Japanese traditions.
Any violation of this order would mean ostracism. All learning must be
in the Chinese and Japanese languages--the former mis-pronounced and in
sound bearing as much resemblance to Pekingise speech as "Pennsylvania
Dutch" does to the language of Berlin. Everything like thinking and
study must be with a view of sustaining and maintaining the established
order of things. The tree of education, instead of being a lofty or
wide-spreading cryptomeria, must be the measured nursling of the teacup.
If that trio of emblems, so admired by the natives, the bamboo, pine and
plum, could produce glossy leaves, ever-green needles and fragrant
blooms within a space of four cubic inches, so the law, the literature
and the art of Japan must display their normal limit of fresh fragrance,
of youthful vigor and of venerable age, enduring for aye, within the
vessel of Japanese inclusion so carefully limited by the Yedo
authorities.

Such a policy, reminds one of the Amherst agricultural experiment in
which bands of iron were strapped around a much-afflicted squash, in
order to test vital potency. It recalls the pretty little story of
Picciola, in which a tender plant must grow between the interstices of
the bricks in a prison yard. Besides the potent bonds of the only
orthodox Confucian philosophy which was allowed and the legally