Petersburg, and in other principal cities of Europe, academies especially designed and adapted for imparting tuition to young men in Oriental languages, such as Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Hindustani, there does not exist to-day any similar institution in Great Britain." This is really a very startling fact. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge each have two professors of Arabic, and one professor of Sanskrit, but this is nearly all that is done on the banks of the Isis and the Cam for the advancement of Oriental Learning. The University of London has only a pro. fessor of Hebrew. We should be surprised at this if we did not know how strangely apathetic Englishmen are on certain subjects, and did we not remember that the un travelled Briton regards with singular languor the great field of Eastern achievement where so many immortal laurels have been won alike by the civilian and the soldier. The East is considered a peculiar world, andthe men who go there a peculiar people—they are to be rewarded if they gain their ends, but their tasks are not to be tightened by any extensive or material aid from the mother country. For, as Mr. Watson truly remarked, the same apathy which makes us languid cultivators of Eastern languages, renders our interest all Oriental affairs comparatively slight. We have the largest opportunities for gathering in an ample harvest of knowledge, but we do almost nothing.
Now this being the case, it seems right to establish, all over the East, Societies corresponding with that which has flourished so long in 22 Albemarle Street, that there may be a supply of feeders to the main institution. The body which has been so unobtrusively at work for the past seven years in Shanghai, has, we hope and believe, done service to the cause of science; and the newly founded association in Yokohama, will, we are assured, be as useful in its special department of activity.
In the treaty ports in China and Japan, there are of course several persons whose rank as men of learning is undisputed and indisputable, but these are not the only valuable contributors to the journals of an Asiatic Society. Intelligent observers are useful, though they may not have had the benefit of a scientific training. A supply of facts is what is required, and each resident, however absorbed in business, can add his mite of knowledge to the general store. The present moment is peculiarly fitted for beginning a Society like that which it is proposed to found at Yokohama, in the Land of the Rising Sun. Of that remarkable country it may be said emphatically that old are ing new. We shall soon things are passing away and all things
almost lose sight of that "Old Japan" whose wild and weird histories Mr.
Mitford has lately made us acquainted The sudden transition from feudalism to comparatively free monarchical institutions which we have lately witnessed in Japan, has changed the face of Society, and has swept away many objects of historical interest. Yet the memorials of past centuries, when the Barons were wealthy and powerful and the people living in a state of serfdom, must be many. Further, the religious change. which has been quite as striking as the political one, has not been made without leaving curious relics. The social changes, too, that have taken place are very many. The manufactures, the agriculture, the various processes of out-door labour have all undergone alterations, and the Society will do well to: preserve accounts of the old implements and processes now disused or passing into disuse. Many more fields of enterprize might be named, but these hints prove that, in founding an Asiatic Society at Yokohama, the Foreign residents have supplied a want.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.