that quarter arose from the frequency of wars and insurrections between the great feudal princes, owing to the decay of the imperial power during the reign of the Emperor Nabunanga. This Ziogoon, or Tai-koon, had great difficulty in crushing a general disposition of his princes to throw off the control of their sovereign; but whilst his great General, Taiko-sama, was employed in quelling these insurrections, the Emperor is said by the Jesuits—writing from Miaco in 1770—to have treated them with such kindness and attention that the Christian clergy were esteemed before the Bonzes in Miaco. The poor native priests, however, had, it appears to us, ample cause for complaint. Apart from the mere fact of the inroads upon their flocks and the loss of good repute, the determined hostility of the Romish priesthood to the ancient faith of the Japanese people was most marked. Nothing could have been more intemperate than that hot zeal, though at the same time we cannot deny such zeal the merit of courage, when we think of those solitary Jesuit priests thrown into a foreign land, cut off from their countrymen—indeed, never hoping for support except from their God—yet sitting calmly down in a great city like Miaco, then probably more populous than any town in Europe, and writing to their superior that they never lost an opportunity of vilifying the false gods around them, or of defying the thousands of Bonzes and Faquirs of Miaco.
There is a curious instance of this reckless zeal which was so soon to bring sorrow upon all Japan, in a letter from a Father Orgatin, dated Miaco, September 20th, 1577, which we think deeply interesting, as it serves to warn us from a repetition of such intolerance in our coming relations with these same people: “Not more than three leagues from Miaco,” says the Father, “there is on the top of a lofty mountain a famous native temple, dedicated to the devil, which is much frequented by natives from all parts of the empire. The Bonzes in charge live by attending to the religious services there practised. I never fail to constantly express my hope of one day levelling that temple, and to raise upon its site a better one to the honour of Monsieur the Archangel St. Michael, and to plant upon the summit of that mount a crucifix, which shall always be seen by the people of Miaco, and to the exaltation of the glory of God.” Father Orgatin then says, that alarmed at his threats, and at certain proceedings of his in other quarters, where, after a wholesale christening of 400 persons, he whetted their new faith by inducing them to enter a temple and decapitate a number of idols, the Bonzes very naturally complained of him to the authorities. In spite, however, of an official notice, prohibiting the enterprising priest from carrying out his intentions with respect to the temple on the hill, he tells us, that he consoled himself with the hope that his Heavenly Father would show him a way to cast down with his own hands these vain idols, and thus, as he says, “subject the arch-enemy of mankind to great pain and mortification.”
In another letter we find a graphic account of a regular razzia carried on in the district of Arima against the Budhist idols. The poor Bonzes, hunted and persecuted, carried their graven images down the face of a fearful precipice and hid them away in a vast cave, seldom accessible; a traitor carried information of this abode of gods retired from business, to the Christian priest, who, heading some native zealots, succeeds in reaching “this cave full of devils,” and there, amidst the cries of the horror-stricken Bonzes, the rage and grief of pagans, smites off the heads and limbs of their gods and hurls them into the sea! How complacently the priest tells his tale, and dilates upon the pain and chagrin he has that day occasioned to a certain party, whose immediate presence in Japan, is, he is sure, attested by the numerous earthquakes and volcanoes.
Whilst the intolerance of the Romish clergy was thus exciting the fear and hostility of a numerous native priesthood, as well as the religious mendicants, the thousand and one hermits of Fusi-hama; whilst the progress of Christianity threatened to deprive of their subsistence those who lived by the pilgrimages to her ancient shrines and temples; the merchants and seamen of Spain and Portugal were not less successful in alienating the respect of the native authorities and officials. The Portuguese had grown rich and insolent by their trade with China and Japan. Fixing their head-quarters at Nangasaki, their traders had intermarried with the daughters of the richest natives, and obtained such a footing in the country as to already threaten its liberties.
The commerce with Portugal rapidly assumed a character which was naturally distasteful to the ruler of the Japanese people—it was a simple export of her metallic currency against the products of India and Europe; and, added to this, there is reason to fear that Japanese subjects were kidnapped or enslaved by the Portuguese, and carried out of the country for sale elsewhere.
ART IN IVORY.
It is not often that the true lover of art can wander into the well-known shop of Messrs. Colnaghi and Scott in Pall Mall, without finding there something worthy of his admiration. There are happily still left among us a few who follow painting and sculpture as lofty and ennobling pursuits, whether the influence they exercise be upon themselves or upon others—conscientious sensitive men, who dread the rude ordeal of the walls of the Royal Academy, and who shrink from that vulgar speculation which would by the meanest of artifices mislead public taste. Such men rather seek some quiet place where their works can be studied by those who are worthy to enter into their spirit, and can appreciate at their real value the labour and thought bestowed upon them. In the locality to which we have alluded might have been seen not long ago, and may we believe still be seen, the noble dreamy head of the Poet-Laureate, by Watts—a work which proves that we have yet a living portrait-painter worthy to preserve for posterity the features of the eminent men of our day, and whose name, when his generation has passed away, will rank with those of Reynolds and of the first of the English school. Messrs.
