LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA

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282 TO EUROPE AND AMERICA AGAIN. sible for her to fall back to her former position. She has shaken off her old robe. She is ready to adopt something better. The daily press so copiously scat­tered throughout the empire is constantly creating among readers some fresh desire and appetite for the new change. Her leading minds will no longer bear with the old form of despotic feudalism, neither be contented with the worn-out doctrines of Asiatic mor­als and religions. They cried out for a constitution a few years ago, and have already obtained a promise from the emperor to have it given them in the year 1890. The pagan religions seem to their inquiring minds mere relics of the old superstition. The compulsory education lately carried out in the common schools, amounting in number to almost thirty thousand, is proved to be a mighty factor to quicken and elevate the intelligence of the masses. The Im­perial University at Tokyo is sending out men of high culture by the hundred every year to take some re­sponsible positions either in the governmental service or private capacities. Another university will soon be founded by the government at Osaka, the second important commercial city of the empire, to accommo­date the youths so anxiously craving the higher educa­tion. It will be out of the way for me to dwell here upon the material progress Japan has so recently made. But let it suffice to state that the waters of her coasts are bnsily plowed by her own steamers. Public roads arc constantly improved. Tunnels are being cut here and there, and railways are being laid to connect im­portant commercial points. Telegraph wires are Rtretched throughout the whole length and breadth of the empire. Surveying what she has accomplished within so short a period, we cannot help thinking th2.t

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