Pleasant reading, in spite of being a translation from the French, accompanied by pleasant illustrations. All about Japan and the Japanese—and very pleasant. people the author makes them out to be—the descriptions are wonderful and expressed wonderfully. Take for example, And as one climbs, so one sees, in the middle distance on the farther side of the shut-in valley where Nagasaki has grouped her thousands of grey roofs, the opposing mountains towering, covered by funereal woods, pagodas, and tombs, where the soil is mingled with human ashes, and where the eternal perfume of the incense sticks, burned for the dead, exhales. Farther away, the great blue opening of the bay spreads between the battlements and the charming complications of the shores. And then, far down, scarcely sketched in, almost lost in the more and more conquering blue, the far-flung islets show the outposts of Japan, islets which you would think too venturesome, in the immense waters arowmd them, and too pretty, with their cedars on their shores, steeving to the sea." This in English; what must it be in French? I can recommend the volume to all lovers of Japan.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.