A discovery of much interest has been made in Japan.
The tomb of the first Englishman who ever set foot on the shores of the land of the Rising Suu, has been found. The intrepid adv turer is interred beside his natly wife, "on the top of a high hill commanding a magnificent view of the coast and surrounding country," not far from the Temple of Tookoza Jédé- shi. Here, it seems, traditions have for centuries preserved the memory of the wandering Englishmav, whose for-tano led him to live and to dic ina realm then almost a terra incognita to Britons. There are men to whom this curious "invention" will possess no manner of interest. Yet it is worth while to pause for a moment, in the midst of the rash and harry of business, to examine a fact which so curiously links the past and the present. This Adams, or Anjin as he was named in his adopted country, was a rough specimen of those extraordinary men who raised England to naval supremacy in the 16th century. He was the contemporary of Drake and Hawkins, and was pilot in one of the Great Queen's ships. He lived in the spacious times of Elizabeth, and may have served' under Raleigh, and seen. Shakspeare in the Tempest at the Globe Theatre. His adventures were wild enough to Lave suggested a theme to the creator of Prospero and Ariel. But the discovery of the tomb of Adams naturally forces on us the thought, "what amazing progress' has been made since his day." What improvements in ship building, what enhancement of: commercial facilities, what enormous changes in England and Japan—the island Empires of the East and West. If Adams were to appear again upon the scone of his exploits and sufferings, he would find the barbarian Japanese sailing in ships compared. with which the proudest vessel gri the Armada would show like a cock Koat. He would hear not a word of the dreaded Spaniard; but the descendants of the colonists of those mysterious Americas, whereof Raleigh's mariners had told such strange tales, would jostle him in the streets, and table and look just like his countrymen, Though both of course would compare ill with the splendid Englishmen in doublets and mantles and ruffs, that he left behind him when he set sail in the good ship Charity, 160 tons burden, with 109 good men. and true all told for her crew.
The changes in Europe, however, effected in two centuries and a half, would not strike the awakened voyager with more astonishment than the changes that have taken place in Japan in Jess than twenty years. The land of the Rising Sun shows favourably beside the England of the age of Eliza beth. Japan, now, is probably more civilized indeed in many. respects than cur own country was'then, Railways, industrial exhibitions, and a hundred other developments of science and intelligence, amaze us in the land of the Mikado. That very Emperor so lately a mysterious abstraction, has come down into the daylight of common sense, and really concerns himself with his people's interests, On the sea, float the flags of nations of which Adams knew nothing; indeed the " whirligig of time" has wrought changes that defy imagination. These thoughts may lead to little, but they are (oreed apon ut by the discovery of the long. hidden grave of one who, if not entitled to rank with Mr. Froude's "forgotten worthies," was a man of mark alike from his vic situdes and his experiences—a sort of homely, unheroic Ulysses.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.