As the Japanese have the curious custom of changing their own names several times during their life-time, true to their customs they changed the name of their chief school four times in little more than as many years. Something deeper than instinct actuated them in this phase of their educational policy. Each change involved appointments, promotions, and a vast amount of clerical, carpenters' and contractors' work. In a native official's eye, no man can be a "yakunin " unless he makes many rules. Of these rules, there has not been, nor is there the faintest likelihood of there being, any end. To pass away time, the schoolofficials-we need specify no one place of their achievements-showered rule after rule, regulation after regulation, so fast that one poetically inclined was reminded of autumn-leaves. Many of them were so unnecessary, so unreasonable, and often so trivial, that the foreign teachers could not obey them. The native officials, however, varied their leisure by changing the course of studies and adopting new ones. It was simply a matter of mensuration and Chinese characters. So many hours per week, so many square inches of paper, fill up the squares with Chinese characters, (which often mistranslate what the native official knows almost nothing about,) and the new curriculum is laid down, not to be taken up again for several weeks. Having found out, however, that he had not attained to perfection in curricula-making; the official, believing that he had struck the right course this time, tried another. Having thus in a few months acquired skill in making short roads to learning, gained some routine-knowledge and a faint conception of foreign education, he was promoted to a higher office in the same or another department, and a new, inexperienced, and incompetent man stepped into his place.

The students had just grown used to the vagaries of one director and the foreign teacher had smothered his contempt for and perhaps gained the confidence of his superior, when a new one arises who knows not his own business or the characters of his inferiors.

There are two bright lines in the spectrum of this subject under examination. The teachers and professors who know their business do it, paying little attention to such annoyances, and the scholars, most of them ever eager and insatiable after knowledge, remit no diligence and yield to no despair.

But enough of this; we have pointed out the grievous errors and abuses in one part of the Japanese system of education. It has given us no pleasure to expose them. We do not make merry over their short-comings, nor would we raise a laugh at the expense of a people so nobly struggling from ignorance into knowledge; but we wish to show the evils and point the cure. It would be cruel and unfair to sneer at their lack of western science. We are not doing that. We simply deny their ability and fitness to be directors and head-masters over foreign instructors. We have not only felt the galling yoke of the despotism of ignorance, but have seen its blight upon noble young minds and know of the fearful waste of time, of money, and of earnest effort which it has entailed upon the Japanese people and their sons. The remedy is simple. The chief college and the school of languages at Tokei should be put under the care of a competent and faithful foreign master. In every one of the Japanese schools for foreign education, the teacher, if a professional instructor, as he ought to be, should be given power to choose the studies and to govern his classes.

There is plenty of work for the native official to do. He should be warden over the pupils. He might have charge of the pecuniary affairs and he should have the control of all that is outside of educational matters, strictly so called. In short, he should attend to what he knows about better than the foreign master, professor, or teacher, and with what he knows next to nothing about let him not meddle.

It cannot be objected to this that the proper men who can be trusted are not to be found. The Japanese know and have in their employ men of blameless life and faithful labor. They can easily get from abroad, or can find on their soil, men whose record is known. They need not complain that no foreigner understands their needs. They can easily limit the authority of their teachers and principals. If necessary, these men would give bonds for the faithful performance of work and the abstinence from what their employers think will conflict with the peace of the empire. The foreign educator does not wish to usurp the treasurer's office, to make proselytes, to change the social life, dress, food, or etiquette of the Japanese young men. In these things he is but an adviser, to give his counsel when asked

or needed. He should have no power in these things, except so far as is necessary for dis cipline or the inculcation of western language and science. But whether native or foreigner, let each man be master of what he professes to teach or pretends to perform.

III.-JAPANESE STUDENTS.

While almost nothing is known abroad as to the truth concerning "native officials," and but little about “foreign teachers" in Japan, something is known and much has been said about Japanese students. Most persons have formed extremely favorable opinions about them. In order to treat our subject fully, we must examine these opinions.

Japan had been so long sealed from the world that foreign nations regarded it as a land whose people might possess the average nature and capabilities of Asiatic nations. Indeed, it might be said that, of the mental and social status of the Japanese nation, the ordinary westerner knew nothing. When, then, a few years ago, there came upon America and Europe a sudden influx of polished and eager travelers and of bright, earnest, and very polite students, the tremendous reaction of opinion oscillated into extravagant laudation and unbounded generosity. The entrée into homes and families closed to ordinary comers was theirs. Every social encouragement and educational aid was given them. The rules of most of the schools abroad were broken or made exceptions to in their favor. Nothing seemed to be left undone to make these oriental strangers feel at home and to give them as complete an education as good schools, trained ability, and faithful labor could secure. When civil war broke out in Japan there were several Japanese students in America and Europe. While those in Europe returned home, those in the United States were supported by the private contributions of American gentlemen and retained in school and home until affairs in Japan were settled and remittances arrived.

The Japanese students abroad were so earnest, diligent, polite, quick and eager to learn that they won plaudits even from those unused to praise. The president of a Massachusetts college said he wished to have a Japanese in every college in America to teach the undergraduates good manners. The principal of a Connecticut high school said publicly that a body of young men of such powers of observation as the Japanese students exhibited could not be found in America. The journals of England and Germany, as well as of America, stinted no praise of the graceful Orientals in their schools. Several of the Japanese students won distinctions at English, German, and French universities and at American colleges, and others would have assuredly done so had not the grave come between them and the goal. All these things tended to produce the opinion held by some that the average Japanese is even superior to the average American or European student. In order to judge the matter fairly, let us take a full view of the facts.

In the first place it must be borne in mind that the Japanese students abroad are the very best representatives of Japan's intellect, of high social position and hereditary culture. They are not the average of her sons. They are her best by nature, inheritance, character, and selection. They do not go abroad indiscriminately from the mass of the people, as, for instance, American students flock to Germany. About 90 per cent. of the Japanese students abroad are of the samurai class, and were carefully chosen on account of their character and ability. By no canon of justice would it be fair to compare them with the average western student. Further, in very many cases, extraordinary facilities were given them to procure tutorial aids which the student abroad could not obtain. Again, those students who won distinctions or prizes were in every case students of special courses or subjects; they did not compass the entire curriculum prescribed for the regular university- or college-students. Not one Japanese student has yet been graduated from the full course of a European university or an American college; though that they are fully able to do so, if they take the time, we entirely believe. We have stated these facts simply to get at the truth and to allow the subject to be seen from all sides. We have not spoken of the great obstacles to be surmounted by the Japanese student abroad; we suppose them to be known and felt. It is because they are known that extraordinary merit attaches to the success of the Japanese students abroad.

We shall now endeavor to give our impressions of the actual status of the Japanese stu

dent, his capabilities, and his mental complexion. These impressions, it is but fair to state, have been formed after five years' constant instruction of Japanese youth, both abroad and in this country.

We can treat our subject best by making a contrast between the Japanese and the western student. The first great point of difference which the foreign instructor notices in Japan is the almost utter absence of any necessity of enforcing obedience. In his own country he knows that among his most important needs are physical vigor and a stern will. To govern a class of boys of the Anglo-Saxon race is like holding the safety-valves of as many steamengines. To control a class of boys at home requires the expenditure of an amount of nervous force that many teachers do not possess, which injures the health of many and makes a day's toil in the school-room severe even to exhaustion. It has become almost a maxim in the United States that no one should be a teacher more than fifteen years of his life. No wonder that the nervous and dyspeptic pedagogue or the worn professor at home looks upon Japan as the teacher's paradise and hails the Japanese student as the embodiment of his ideals. To leave the boys of his own land, who feed their bodies with beef and their brains with the ideas that have made England and the United States what they are, whose constant struggle is to repress their rebellious physical energies, and to come among the quiet, sedentary, and docile race of these islands, is a grateful relief to the nerves of the worn teacher. When, however, the instructor has youth and exuberant health and spirits, he would gladly exchange a little of the easy submissiveness and docility for a little fire and energy, which he misses so much.

The professional teacher comes to Japan with great expectations. In all the typical virtues of the scholar he expects the young native to be superior. In his work the teacher hopes to find the happiness that is to compensate him for his exile from home and congenial associations.

Nor are his expectations too great or doomed to disappointment. He meets as uoble young men as ever thirsted for knowledge. He finds that he has but to point the way and his pupils follow. Their perfect trust and confidence in him are as beautiful as their diligence is commendable. It was once said that Japanese youths were fickle, that they changed teachers as often as the moon her form. If this were true in the past it is not so now, at least in the government-schools. The Mombusho have acted energetically in this matter throughout the country and deserve all praise for having enforced their rules requiring a student who enters a school to remain for a term of years. More than this, the very native officials, whose ability to plan and execute a scheme of foreign language we deny and whose utter unfitness to make rules for foreign teachers and to have charge of educational matters, properly so called, we think we have demonstrated by facts, have shown themselves fully able to be the strict wardens and the kind and careful governors of their students in all that is outside of educational matters. In the government of the students, after they leave their foreign instructors, we see little to condemn and much to commend. The native official has demonstrated his fitness to administer discipline and to provide for the daily need of the boarding-pupils and to administer the economics of education. He has done his work, the cost being considered, far better than a foreigner could do it. From the chaos of three years ago, to the order, regularity, and discipline of to-day, is a change that must be as gratifying to the Mombusho as it is to their foreign servants.

The Japanese student of the present no longer scrapes along, untidy in summer and shivering in winter, but comes to school clad as comfortably and appears with as much dignity, all the facts considered, as a critic could desire. The schools of Tokei are rapidly approaching that point when the precision, punctuality, and discipline observed will challenge comparison with the best of Europe or America.

The average Japanese student is bright, quick, eager, earnest, and faithful. He delights his teacher's heart by his docility, his industry, his obedience, his reverence, his politeness. In the course of five years the writer can remember no instance of rudeness, no case of slander, no uncanny trick, no impudent reply, from any of his many pupils. Some teachers complain of deception and lying practiced by their pupils; with them we cannot from experience join. Indeed, in almost all the gentler virtues, in abstinence from what is rude,

coarse, and obscene, the average Japanese school-boy is rather the superior of his confrère in the west. In the hereditary virtues of respect to superiors, obedience, politeness, and selfcontrol, he is unquestionably the superior. On the teacher's first entrance among Japanese students who are unused to foreigners, he may notice some peculiarities, allowable in the Japanese code of etiquette, but repulsive to him; but these soon disappear or cease to annoy. In fire, energy, manly independence, and all those positive virtues which are exhibited in action and not in abstinence, the Japanese student is quite inferior to the western student.

In intellectual power and general ability, we are very much inclined to believe that the average Japanese student is the equal of the average western student. Even in the perception and conception of abstract ideas, we are inclined to think him not inferior, provided his knowledge of the vehicle employed-i. e., the language-be equal to that of his rival. We have had two years of experience and observation of Japanese, American, and English students in the same class, and have not been able to detect any difference in their capabilities. Whether the Japanese student can hold his equal way through the highest studies of a foreign university, whether he can go beyond a certain point and win independent conquests by his own intellect with ability equal to that of the foreigner, is a question not yet ripe for solution. To express any positive opinion on this point would be presumptuous, and would be almost tantamount to a decision of the question whether the Japanese intellect is peer to that of the Anglo-Saxon. Some Buckle or Lecky may decide the question a century or two hence, but its discussion can have no practical value at present. The necessary data upon which to found a conclusion must be furnished by the future; they certainly cannot be found in the past.

It has been hard to hold the critic's pen while writing this article. We have striven to express unbiased truth, though many happy, many sad, memories have sorely tempted us to write only as admirer and friend. There seems no grander, no more sublime sight than we have seen in the youth of Japan leaving home and country to go to other lands, and there deny themselves comfort and ease to master the languages that would open to them a new world. We have seen them nobly toil, feeding the flame of their intense devotion with their own life's oil. One, two, three, a half-score, have we seen consume with the passion for knowledge, and, dying, regret not their loss, but that of their people, to whom they had hoped to bring back the sacred fire of knowledge and to kindle and pass on the torch in their own dearly-loved, but darkened, land. Some of their sepulchers are with their people and some are on alien but kindly soil. As critic, as friend, we praise the living; but of the dead, what shall we say? There can be spoken no word so eloquent as their tombs. There can come to their native land no honor greater than their ashes and their fragrant memories. Abroad, there can nothing speak more eloquently the praises of their country, there can be no art or monument embodying the new life of Japan more grandly, more solemnly, than that burial-lot in the quiet college-city of New Brunswick, with its six marble shafts, on which are chiseled names strange to the sculptor, but familiar to the fellow-countrymen of those who sleep beneath.

To the dead, all honor; to the living, all deserved praise. The foreign teacher in Japan, however discouraged and weary, finds his joy, his daily cheer, and his exceeding great reward in his students. To have led the humblest sons of Japan over the arduous road to knowledge, and thus to have helped on the civilization of this very interesting people, is an honor, even though his masters begrudge him appreciation or thanks. Whether in social exile in the interior, away from the stimulating energies and social pleasures of civilized life, or whether annoyed by men whose necessity alone tolerates him, the honor of being a teacher of such eager and grateful pupils must be and is sufficient.

IV.-NATIVE TEACHERS.

The study of foreign languages and science, though extremely important, constitutes but a part of education in Japan. A scheme of national instruction for this country must necessarily include more that refers to the education of the people in their own than in a foreign tongue. Only a small portion of the rising generation will obtain a knowledge of foreign

languages and science, and a still smaller number will be brought under the direct instruction of foreign teachers. The rest, who constitute a vast majority, will, it is hoped, receive the best sort of education which an improved system of schools and instructors can furnish them.

To the creation of an improved system of public instruction in the vernacular and the training of a corps of qualified teachers, the best energies of the education-department are pledged and will doubtless be given.

At present the demand for intelligent young men, able to speak a foreign language, trained to western methods, and instructed in western learning, is far greater than the supply. In a few years this will cease to be the case; whereas, of natives well educated in their own language, there is not the slightest danger of there ever being too many. Hence the great importance of that department of the work of the Mombusho which relates to the supply of native teachers.

The new education in Japan will be radically different from the old; hence the necessity for a new type of native teachers. The Japanese schools of the future will be organized on western principles and after western models, and foreign science and methods of instruction are to be introduced. In these schools the old typical Japanese teacher will be an anachronism.

The need of properly-qualified native instructors is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the many needs of Japan. The sudden, almost violent, revolution in educational as well as political ideas, through which this country has passed, has discovered that sore need. It is quite safe to say that hitherto the western idea of a trained teacher and of a science of teaching has been unknown to the natives of this country.

That this is true seems to be abundantly proved by their persistence in employing men in their schools who were unfit to be teachers and also by their treatment of the professional teachers whom they brought from other countries. Further, their ideas of what an education ought to be were as different from the ideas now expressed in the school-systems of foreign nations as those of the mediaval school-men differed from those of Herbert Spencer.

So long as the old education of Japan consisted merely in obtaining what we consider the mere work-tools and so long as they made an end of what we count the means, it could not be expected that instructors, such as are now needed, should appear. Every foreigner who has attempted the study of the Japanese language knows by experience that teachers, such as are numbered by thousands at home, cannot, or rather could not, be found in Japan. However learned the native might be, however diligent and earnest his pupil, it was not possible to make a teacher and to master a language at the same time. The native, knowing nothing of his own language by critical or analytical study, and the idea that a language could be mastered in any other way than by slavish repetition being entirely new to him, was unable to impart to a foreigner what was perfectly familiar to himself. The helpless learner, by dint of much direct- and cross-questioning and at much expense of perspiration and patience, might succeed in making himself a pump-handle and in persuading his teacher to be a pump. Usually, however, the patience of the pupil became exhausted, and the native remained as before, a deep well of Japanese undefiled.

The old typical Japanese teacher is rapidly passing away. Like the ripe scholar of other lands he has fallen out of his place, because his work was done. Learning was the chief qualification of the old native teacher; skill, ability to impart his acquisitions, were his last requirements. His chief duty was to stuff and cram the minds of his pupils. To expand or develop the mental powers of a boy, to enlarge his mental vision, to teach him to think for himself, would have been doing precisely what it was the teacher's business to prevent. So long as education consisted in a tread-mill-round of committing to memory the Chinese classics, learning to read Japanese history and government-edicts, to write, and to reckon on the abacus, such a thing as mental development was unknown. There was but one standard, the Chinese classics. Every departure from these was a false step, everything new must be wrong. Under the Sho-gun's government, for centuries, the suppression of mental development was reduced to a system, if not to a science. That same usurpation which robbed the true ruler of this empire of his authority sought to crush all mental enterprise