reached Macao at the entrance of the Canton river. Detained there for nine months, for want of shipping, they eventually proceeded to Malacca, but being attacked by enemies they were pillaged and evil entreated before reaching that place. Passing on to Hindostan they travelled to Goa, and were received in great state by the Portuguese viceroy. Embarking thence in a Portugal ship, they sailed for Europe, and at last disembarked in the Tagus, after a three years voyage, from Japan! Brave shows and pageants here awaited them, and Mr. Buchanan and the White House at Washington must exert themselves if they desire the comparison to be given in favour of the United States of to-day against the courts of the kings of Portugal and Spain in those times. We are told how they journeyed through Talavera and Toledo to where Philip of Castille entertained them with splendour and kindness in his palace of the Escurial; and how he displayed his treasury overflowing, because the Plate fleet had just arrived safe from the Americas!
We wonder whether Mr. Gladstone will be able to show our Japanese friends an equally pleasing sight in Downing Street, or whether the first Lord can report as favourably of the present employment of Her Majesty’s ships.
We are afraid to say how long the Japanese envoys spent in Alicante, Majorca, and Minorca, and may merely tell that they landed in Pisa, and that the Duke of Florence received them right royally. Rome welcomed them with the greatest pomp; first marched his Holiness’ life-guards in rich and costly habits; then the Switzers; then the attendants of the cardinals glittering in gold and carnation silks. How one envies the fair sex—the sensation which visions of such bravery must occasion. The princes and nobility with kettle-drums beating a rare symphony preceded the Japanese envoys curiously attired, after their manner, in garments embroidered with birds and flowers, they each had two swords—it was remarked—and that the hilts and scabbards were rich with pearls and diamonds. Thus they marched in proud array until they entered the presence where sat his Holiness, surrounded with cardinals and bishops in Pontificalibus, a wilderness of croziers, crosses, and surplices, exceeding all the gorgeous shows ever before seen in Rome or Miaco. Here the envoys kissed his Holiness’ feet, and publicly announced their mission, and it was, that “To the most zealous and chief vicar supplying Christ’s place on earth, the prince and holy father!” one Trimus, king of Bungo, threw himself in all humility at his most blessed feet!
It was difficult in those days to get to Rome from Japan, but it appears to have been a still more hazardous undertaking to get back again for, in spite of apostolic blessings, the unfortunate envoys took nearly five years to return home—a home which they reached only in time to find it a sad scene of misery and bloodshed. Indeed, we never hear anything more of them than that they did return; and then in a few years afterwards, when martyrdom awaited all professors in the faith of Rome, we read of one of these poor envoys proudly accepting death and torture, “for he who had kissed the feet of the Vicar of God would not recant”—a generous resolution which speaks volumes for the nation that can produce such men.
Doctor and Patient. (Fac-simile.)
In the year 1578, the storm which had so long threatened was about to burst upon Japan, but not before some of the calmer and wiser of the Christian clergy had foreseen it must soon arrive. The three great princes of Bungo who had first received the Christian sacrament were dead; wars and rebellion followed in their states. The Jesuits were not wanting in that crisis, they toiled most fearlessly; there were fifty-five of them, or twenty-three priests and thirty-two laymen, whose life was one constant pilgrimage, wandering from place to place, cheering the faithful, threatening the backsliders. Religious dissension, it is allowed, was the main cause of this distracted condition of the interior of Bungo; and added to that, the reckless indifference to life which the natives exhibited when once their passions were aroused. Just about this time, too, a terrible calamity aroused the fears and suspicions of the governing classes against all the religious bodies, whether native or foreign. The Emperor Nobananga, after suppressing with great bloodshed one rebellion of the native priesthood, was traitorously slain by an assassin in his own palace; and the Christians with him lost their best friend and ally.
The court of this potentate vied in magnificence, we are told, with the most brilliant ones of Europe in that day; and on perusing all the minute details given by Charles the Second’s Master of the Revels, we cannot but come to the conclusion, that, Christianity apart, the Japanese nation in 1577, and up to 1650, were quite as civilised, and quite as advanced in most of the arts and sciences, as we were in England. The reception of the Japanese envoys at Rome was not a jot more magnificent than the grand tournay held by the Emperor Nobananga at Miaco to receive some present sent him by a Pope. We there read how he caused a vast space to be levelled, three times as large as the great square of Lisbon; how it was set round with the tents and pavilions of all his princes and barons; how it was filled with men in rich liveries; how the good priests could not find words to extol sufficiently the gorgeous richness of the velvets and brocades, the tapestries; the long lines of gentlemen bravely