chains, and "adorned it further with a | if put into a maatsubo bottle. They are
writing that it was a fragment of that mat- found by divers sticking to the rocks of
ter whereof the heavens consist. One the submerged island of Mauri, near For
was said to offer him five hundred pieces
of gold soon after for it, which till Father
Matthew had presented his to the king he
would not sell; after that he set a higher
price, and sold it." We may suppose from
this that colorless brilliant glass was un-
known to the Chinese. The Russian am-
bassador, E. Ides, who went to China,
1693, says he was taken by command of
the emperor to see various sights, among
them some "jugglers, who, after many
other diverting tricks, played with round
balls of glass as large as a man's head at
the point of a sharp stick, tossing them
several ways without breaking them or
letting fall, so it was really surprising."
He was also taken through the markets
and to various shops, especially a toy-
shop; the owner had a fine garden, and
among other things showed him "a large
globe full of fish about a finger long,
whose scales appeared as if made of gold,
but when the scales fell off they were a
beautiful crimson." Japan has so long
been a sealed book to us that it is nearly
impossible to find any information as to
glass made there. Captain John Saris, who
sailed 1605 ("Purchas's Pilgrimmes "),
advises that merchants should take to
Japan "drinking glasses of all sorts, cans
and cups, beer glasses, gilt beakers, and
looking glasses of the largest sorts." This
would lead us to infer that those articles
were not made in the country. Kaemp-
fer, who published his history of Japan in
1727, does not mention glass beyond that
required for glazing the porcelain, which
he describes as most prized when nearly
transparent. The labor required to
achieve this transparence was so great as
to give birth to the old saying "that hu-
man bones are kneaded into China ware."
He gives a singular account of some very
curious ancient tea-bottles called maat
subo (best of vessels); they are shaped
like small barrels with a short neck, are
transparent, very thin, and of a white color
tinged with green. The Japanese believe
they give a high flavor to tea kept in them,
and assert that old tea recovers its virtue

mosa. The bottles must be taken off
with great care for fear of breaking them;
they are much disfigured by shells, coral,
and submarine substances growing on
them, which are never quite scraped off,
as proof of the genuineness of the article.
Merchants give high prices for broken
ones, which they mend beautifully. No
one dares to purchase the whole bottles
found; they are reserved for the emper-
or's treasury, who has inherited from an-
cestors so many as would amount to a
large sum of money if sold. The island
of Mauri is supposed to have been sub-
merged by the anger of the gods; some
scoffers having painted the faces of the
idols red, no one escaped save the Prince
Peiruun and his family, who reached
China, where the day of their arrival is
still kept as a festival- the people row
about in boats, and call on "Peiruun.”
Much interest was excited a few years
ago by an account of the exhibition of
many antique articles at Nara, the ancient
capital of the mikados of Japan, near
Kioto, the present capital. Mr. Campbell
describes this exhibition. It is supposed
that each mikado had put aside some im-
portant treasure and dated it, before the
removal of the government at the end of
the eighth century to Kioto, where it has
remained ever since. Among these treas-
sures is a glass ewer about a foot high,
which is entered in the original list of the
articles deposited in the sort of barn
where they have been preserved. As no
certain knowledge of glass-making in
Japan exists, it has been suggested that
this ewer was imported either from China
or by Arabs before the eighth century, and
being considered a curiosity was depos-
ited among the treasures. It is possible
that before long some Japanese writer
may be enabled to throw some light on
the whole subject of glass in his native
country. A recent traveller describes a
very curious vitreous sponge with threads
which seem as if composed of spun glass,
found on the eastern coast of Japan.

M. A. WALLACE-DUNLOP.

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From The Edinburgh Review. PRINCE BISMARCK SKETCHED BY HIS

SECRETARY.*

man, we feel interest in knowing what were his convictions in the highest spirithere and hereafter, and of the relations ual matters; what was his theory of life between man and God; and this is especially so in the case of Bismarck, who has not only been an instrument in the hands of Providence in re-forming the map of Europe and moulding anew the destinies of nations, but has been in conflict for many years with the greatest ecclesiastical however, that after reading the chapter power in the world. It must be owned, called by Dr. Busch "His Religious Views," we get no very definite notion of what really is the chancellor's religion. A belief in God, in a divine order of the world, and in a personal existence in a future state and, to a certain extent, in

By the translation of Dr. Busch's last volumes on the great German chancellor, the English reader is enabled to get a more complete view than has hitherto been possible of the political and domestic life and opinions of Prince Bismarck, and such an one, we presume, as he would wish Europe to entertain. The relations of Dr. Busch with the chancellor have been long and intimate, and his connection with him as under-secretary of state and in private life has given him exceptional advantages for composing these volumes. Where the chancellor does not speak himself in these pages and great part of them is taken up with passages from his speeches, despatches, letters, and conversation the work must be mainly an echo of his opinions and statements, except, indeed. when Dr. Busch adopts the language of eulogy to an extent which the chancellor's modesty would prevent he confesses that he has arrived at suchim from using. Dr. Busch is a thorough partisan of the principle that might is right; and he finds nothing but what is laudable in any part of the life and policy

of the prince.

The publication of this book, however, is calculated to alleviate the severity of former judgments concerning the chancellor and his public career, and in domestic and social life it presents him in an amiable light. There is much in the volumes which is of high interest, although there is great repetition to which, indeed, the scheme of the author lends itself - for, as he assures us, the work is no complete biography or history, but a collection of studies and sketches to supply materials for a characteristic portrait, to be executed hereafter by some more skil

ful hand.

In studying the life of any illustrious

revelation, seems to form for him a sort

of rude basis of religious belief, with which he has remained satisfied without raising on it the superstructure of any definite creed. In religion, as in politics,

cessive stages of development. In the days when he was known as the tolle Funker, he was first a rationalist and, apparently for some time, an unbeliever. Then for several years he went through severe physical, moral, and even pecuniary trials, and felt a desire to seclude himself from society, and even at one time had a design of emigrating and retiring to the

Polish forests with his last few thousand thalers in his pocket and commencing life anew as a farmer and a sportsman. As he approached his thirtieth year a psychi cal change came upon him, which was probably due in part to the influence of the young lady who became his wife in 1847. This lady, Johanna von Puttkamer, landowner, and both her father and moth was the daughter of a Nether Pomeranian er, being people of a fervent Moravian spirit of piety, opposed themselves to the betrothal of their daughter with one so noted for his wild habits as the "mad squireen." Goethe has shown in the

1. Our Chancellor. Sketches for an Historical Picture. By MORITZ BUSCH. Translated from the German by WILLIAM BEATTY KINGSTON. 2 vols. 2. Souvenirs Diplomatiques: L'Affaire du Lu-"Story of a Fair Soul" how he could be xembourg le Prélude de la Guerre de 1870. Par G. ROTHAN. Paris: 1883.

London: 1884.

3. Souvenirs Diplomatiques: L'Allemagne et l'Italie, 1870-1871. Par G. ROTHAN. Vol. I. Paris:

1834.

affected by the simple piety of a Qua keress; and Bismarck was, it is probable, more deeply influenced. After the accession, too, of Frederic William IV., there

was a great increase of piety, or at least | Nobody loved him for what he had done. He of pietism, in the higher circles of Prus- had never made anybody happy thereby, he sian nobility. The spiritualism of Schlei- said; not himself, nor his family, nor any one ermacher had displaced the rationalistic else. Some of those present would not admit influence of Voltaire and Rousseau. Rathis, and suggested "that he had made a great tionalism came in polite circles to be nation happy." "But," he continued, "how considered somewhat vulgar, and was three great wars would not have been fought; many have I made unhappy! But for me, associated with revolution; and even phil- eighty thousand men would not have perished; osophy in the crabbed phraseology of parents, brothers, sisters, and widows would Hegelianism not only was made an instru- not be bereaved and plunged into mourning. ment for undermining all existing institu-. . . That matter, however, I have settled with tions, but appeared to be pre-eminently God. But I have had little or no joy from all unæsthetic. A religious and unctuous my achievements—nothing but vexation, care, phraseology was the fashionable protest and trouble." He continued for some time in against New Hegelianism and revolution. the same strain. His guests kept silence; and Bunsen, Stahl, and Gerlach were in those amongst them who had never before vogue, and the doctrine of original sin and of the heard him say anything of the kind were somecorruption of human nature was employed what astonished. It reminded one of Achilles to exorcise the spectre of anarchy. speaking to King Priam in his tent before Ilion.

In a letter written to his wife in 1851, four years after his marriage, Bismarck shows the change which had come upon him, and the sense of the inanity of this world's existence finds expression frequently in his correspondence in phrases recalling the musings of Hamlet in the churchyard.

The will of God be done! Everything here is only a question of time- -races and individuals, folly and wisdom, war and peace, come and go like waves, but the sea remains still. There is nothing upon this earth but hypocrisy and juggling; and whether this mask of flesh be torn from us by fever or grapeshot, fall it must, sooner or later. When it does, a resemblance will make itself manifest between a Prussian and an Austrian (if they happen to be of the same height) which will render it difficult to distinguish the one from the other; the skeletons of fools and wise men present pretty much the same appearance. (Vol. i., pp. 112, 113.)

Nor have the prodigious successes of his later life altogether removed these gloomy impressions, as appears from the following anecdote: :

It was twilight at Varzin, and he was sitting -as was his wont after dinner - by the stove in the large back drawing-room, where Rauch's statue of "Victory casting Wreaths" is set up. After having sat silent for a while, gazing straight before him and feeding the fire now and anon with fir cones, he suddenly began to complain that his political activity had brought him but little satisfaction and few friends.

Wir schaffen ja nichts mit unserer starrenden Schwer

muth:

Götter,

Also bestimmten der Sterblichen Loos, der Armen, die
Trübe in Gram zu leben, allein sie selber sind sorglos.
(Vol. i., p. 114.)

After acquaintance with his peculiar religious views, we are not much surprised to learn that the chancellor is superstitious. He apparently believes in ghosts, because he thought he heard a door open and footsteps in a room adjoining that in which he slept, but arose and found nobody. He is firmly convinced that Friday is an unlucky day, and that he has had various misfortunes and mishaps for beginning business on Friday. He refuses to do business on the 14th of October, because this day is the anniversary both of Hochkirch and Jena; he objects to dining thirteen at table, and believes that people should have their hair cut, and that woodmen should only fell trees, in the last quarter of the moon.

Dr. Busch has a chapter called "The Junker Leg," in which he shows through what changes the Junkerdom of though the term Junker has been apBismarck's early youth has passed. Alplied by the chancellor's enemies to him as a term of reproach, he has never rejected it, and, indeed, rather glories in it. The word Junker in early German, and indeed in late German, as Uhland's ballads testify, had no worse signification than that of a young lord or squire, and