purpose of catching the susceptible. The shops were modestly

attractive from their nature, but the booths deliberately make eyes
at you, and with telling effect. The very atmosphere is bewitching.

The lurid smurkiness of the torches lends an appropriate weirdness
to the figure of the uncouthly clad pedlar who, with the politeness

of the arch-fiend himself, displays to an eager group the fatal
fascinations of some new conceit. Here the latest thing in

inventions, a gutta-percha rat, which, for reasons best known to the
vender, scampers about squeaking with a mimicry to shame the

original, holds an admiring crowd spellbound with mingled
trepidation and delight. There a native zoetrope, indefatigable

round of pleasure, whose top fashioned after the type of a turbine
wheel enables a candle at the centre ingeniously to supply both

illumination and motive power at the same time, affords to as many
as can find room on its circumference a peep at the composite antics

of a consecutively pictured monkey in the act of jumping a box.
Beyond this "wheel of life" lies spread out on a mat a most happy

family of curios, the whole of which you are quite prepared to
purchase en bloc. While a little farther on stands a flower show

which seems to be coyly beckoning to you as the blossoms nod their
heads to an imperceptible breeze. So one attraction fairly jostles

its neighbor for recognition from the gay thousands that like
yourself stroll past in holiday delight. Chattering children in

brilliant colors, voluble women and talkative men in quieter but no
less picturesque costumes, stream on in kaleidoscopic continuity.

And you, carried along by the current, wander thus for miles with
the tide of pleasure-seekers, till, late at night, when at last you

turn reluctantlyhomeward, you feel as one does when wakened from
some too delightful dream.

Or instead of night, suppose it day and the place a temple. With
those who are entering you enter too through the outer gateway into

the courtyard. At the farther end rises a building the like of
which for richness of effect you have probably never beheld or even

imagined. In front of you a flight of white stone steps leads up to
a terrace whose parapet, also of stone, is diapered for half its

height and open latticework the rest. This piazza gives entrance to
a building or set of buildings whose every detail challenges the eye.

Twelve pillars of snow-white wood sheathed in part with bronze,
arranged in four rows, make, as it were, the bones of the structure.

The space between the centre columns lies open. The other triplets
are webbed in the middle and connected, on the sides and front, by

grilles of wood and bronze forming on the outside a couple of
embrasures on either hand the entrance in which stand the guardian

Nio, two colossal demons, Gog and Magog. Instead of capitals ,a
frieze bristling with Chinese lions protects the top of the pillars.

Above this in place of entablature rises tier upon tier of decoration,
each tier projecting beyond the one beneath, and the topmost of all

terminating in a balcony which encircles the whole second story.
The parapet of this balcony is one mass of ornament, and its cornice

another row of lions, brown instead of white. The second story is
no less crowded with carving. Twelve pillars make its ribs, the

spaces between being filled with elaboratewoodwork, while on top
rest more friezes, more cornices, clustered with excrescences of all

colors and kinds, and guarded by lions innumerable. To begin to tell
the details of so multi-faceted a gem were artistically impossible.

It is a jewel of a thousand rays, yet whose beauties blend into one
as the prismatic tints combine to white. And then, after the first

dazzle of admiration, when the spirit of curiosity urges you to
penetrate the centre aisle, lo and behold it is but a gate! The dupe

of unexpectedsplendor, you have been paying court to the means of
approach. It is only a portal after all. For as you pass through,

you catch a glimpse of a building beyond more gorgeous still.
Like in general to the first, unlike it in detail, resembling it

only as the mistress may the maid. But who shall convince of charm
by enumerating the features of a face! From the tiles of its terrace

to the encrusted gables that drape it as with some rich bejewelled
mantle falling about it in the most graceful of folds, it is the

very eastern princess" target="_blank" title="n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人">princess of a building standing in the majesty of her
court to give you audience.

A pebbly path, a low flight of stone steps, a pause to leave your
shoes without the sill, and you tread in the twilight of reverence

upon the moss-like mats within. The richness of its outer ornament,
so impressive at first, is, you discover, but prelude to the lavish

luxury of its interior. Lacquer, bronze, pigments, deck its ceiling
and its sides in such profusion that it seems to you as if art had

expanded, in the congenialatmosphere, into a tropical luxuriance of
decoration, and grew here as naturally on temples as in the jungle

creepers do on trees. Yet all is but setting to what the place
contains; objects of bigotry and virtue that appeal to the artistic

as much as to the religious instincts of the devout. More sacred
still are the things treasured in the sanctum of the priests. There

you will find gems of art for whose sake only the most abnormal
impersonality can prevent you from breaking the tenth commandment.

Of the value set upon them you can form a distant approximation from
the exceedingrichness and the amazing number of the silk cloths and

lacquered boxes in which they are so religiously kept. As you gaze
thus, amid the soul-satisfying repose of the spot, at some

masterpiece from the brush of Motonobu, you find yourself wondering,
in a fanciful sort of way, whether Buddhist contemplation is not

after all only another name for the contemplation of the beautiful,
since devotees to the one are ex officio such votaries of the other.

Dissimilar as are these two glimpses of Japanese existence, in one
point the bustling street and the hushed temple are alike,--in the

nameless grace that beautifies both.
This spirit is even more remarkable for its all-pervasiveness than

for its inherentexcellence. Both objectively and subjectively its
catholicity is remarkable. It imbues everything, and affects

everybody. So universally" target="_blank" title="ad.普遍地">universally is it applied to the daily affairs of
life that there may be said to be no mechanical arts in Japan simply

because all such have been raised to the position of fine arts. The
lowest artisan is essentially" target="_blank" title="ad.本质上，基本上">essentially an artist. Modern French nomenclature