We leaned against the stone rails and talked of Iyéyasŭ—of his good nature, of his habit of chatting after battle, of his fraudulent pretensions to great descent; and of the deadening influence of the Tokugawa rule, of its belittling the classes whose energies were the true life of the country. We recognized, indeed, that the rulers of Iyéyasŭ's time might have perceived the dangers of change for so impressionable a race, but none of us asked whether the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives of courageous Christians had been made up in the strength of the remaining blood.
Far away the sounds of pilgrims' clogs echoed from the steps of distant temples; we heard the running of many waters. Above us a few crows, frequenters of temples, spotted the light for a moment, and their cries faded with them through the branches. A great, heavy, ugly caterpillar crept along the mossy edge of the balustrade, like the fresh incarnation of a soul which had to begin it all anew.
ENTRANCE TO THE TOMB OF IYÉMITSŬ.
[IYÉMITSŬ]
We were told by our good friends that the temple of Iyémitsŭ, the grandson of Iyéyasŭ, far less pretentious than the shrine of the grandfather and founder, would show us less of the defects which accompanied our enjoyment of yesterday. The successors of Iyémitsŭ were patrons of art, sybarites, of those born to enjoy what their ancestors have sown. The end of the seventeenth century has a peculiar turn with us, a something of show and decadence, of luxury and want of morals; and the same marks belong to it even in Japan. Indeed, I feel in all the Tokugawa splendor something not very old, something which reminds me that this was but the day of my own great-grandfather; a time of rest after turmoil, of established sovereigns on various scales, of full-bottomed wigs, of great courtliness, of great expenses in big and little Versailles. I miss the sense of antiquity, except as all true art connects with the past, as the Greek has explained when he said that the Parthenon looked old the moment it was done.
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