table. These likenesses took the place of our present snapshots and Daily Graphics.' They were often of great use; sovereigns and princes having to marry sent for the pictures of the most suitable princesses in Europe in order to choose the most beautiful.

Jean Clouet was succeeded by his son François, who, though not nearly so great a painter, enjoyed an even greater popularity. François' work was only to follow in the steps of his father, who created the style, and, as we have already said, resisted Italian influence.

François became Court painter in 1545. Laborde tells us that his first duty was to go down to Rambouillet to take a cast of the dead king for an effigy, and his bill is quoted which goes into minute details, 'Despense de bouche' figuring principally among the items.

It was to François that Ronsard wrote the long and exquisite poem which begins: 'Pein moy, Janet, pein moy je te suplie,' and the rest of the Pleiade also offered up verses in the praise of this charming master.

As an example of the passion, or rather frenzy, for portraits of those days, Brantôme tells a story of how Cathérine de Médicis, being at Lyons, went to see the studio of a painter called Lyonsome of his work is to be seen in this collection-and to her astonishment found upon his easel the most beautiful portrait imaginable of herself as a young woman. She gazed in rapture and amazement, and could not remove her eyes for pleasure. Her bewilderment was lessened when the painter confessed that, though he had never seen her Majesty before, he had beheld a reproduction of her portrait, and had been so struck by it that he determined to paint another for himself. It is also known that Francis I. sent Titian a drawing of himself, and requested the artist to paint his portrait from this.

The secret of the Clouets' art seems to have died with François, whose work, though inferior, is no less alive than his father's. An interesting book of reproductions, edited by Lord Ronald Gower, from the Earl of Carlisle's collection at Castle Howard, contains hundreds of the portraits of the people we read of at that time, beginning with the royal house of Valois itself. Is it chance or is it the singular vividness of the Clouets' impressions which gives, even in the children's portraits of the later generation, a strange tiger-like expression? The pale arching eyes, low frowning brows, seem to foretell the future.

Francis I., with his well-known features, and his troubles, and his magnificence, has always been something of a favourite with the world. His stately buildings, his own odd yet distinguished looks, have made his personality so familiar to us that he has almost become a friend, and we refuse to believe all the things we read to his discredit. It is to the painters that he owes much of his popularity. Clouet has painted him with his pale southern face, his dark hair, the great nose, the narrow, self-conscious eyes, the beautiful hands which play with the hilt of that sword which he could wield with such chivalry, but with which he knew not how to lead or to direct. We hear how he modelled himself upon heroes of romance, how, when he was in prison, he sent for the Epistles of St. Paul and the history of Amadis of Gaul to read.

The story of his boys left by him as hostages to linger in captivity after the battle of Pavia is almost the saddest of all those which are told concerning him. Poor little hostages for a treaty which Francis never fulfilled! One of them died, the other never quite recovered his spirits. So says Colonel Haggard in 'Sidelights upon the History of France,' but the historian Clouet brings a very noble personage before our eyes in Henri II., with Francis's own dignity of carriage; he is mounted upon a splendid charger, and is riding in State. Henri II. is also nobly represented by his magnificent additions to Fontainebleau and to the Louvre.

Clouet paints many of his sitters at different ages, as children, and then young people. Men did not live to be very old in those days; there are few heads of aged men. There is one magnificent drawing of the great Connétable Anne de Montmorency, who lived from one reign to another-also one of another sitter, poor little Jeanne de Navarre, of whom the melancholy story is told how, when she was about nine years old, she was repeatedly struck and beaten to force her into a marriage, notwithstanding her passionate protests. When the day of the ceremony came she was so loaded with brocade and precious stones and heavy chains that she could not walk, and, according to the custom of the time, the poor little bride was carried into the church. The Connétable de Montmorency, that grand seigneur, was selected for this office, which so angered and disgusted him that he left the Court in high dudgeon, and gave up for a time all his dignities and appointments.

There is one exquisite little head of Queen Mary Stuart at a very early age, delicate and sprightly-la Reine Dauphine, as she was called-and there is a charming portrait of the beautiful

Duchesse d'Etampes, looking innocent and girlish, whose quarrel with Diane de Poictiers divided the Court.

These Primitifs have been tolerant of human limitations. There are few dull blots, almost everything is beautiful enough to belong to the present and the future, too, as well as to the past, and as one looks, one realises that all this has been in the world for five hundred years to give joy to the living mirage sweeping past that one depicted on the canvas.

But the clock strikes twelve, the shadows grow short, P. M. and A. M. sadly leave this charming world, and turn their faces towards their own home, where, under different skies, and, perhaps, in a more sober mood, there are also beautiful things to admire and noble collections of pictures to study.1

I Just now, when our own art-administration is under discussion, it may be pertinent to bring forward a translation of a little paper which is scattered for distribution in the tapestry hall of the Pavillon de Marsan. It concerns a society which seems admirable in intention and execution. It is called the Société des Amis du Louvre, and the prospectus runs as follows:

'Our great Museum of the Louvre has a municipal revenue of its own (perunalité civile).

'But its income even when augmented by part of the subsidy which the Budget grants annually to the national museums, and by the income which it receives from the sale of casts and chalcographie, cannot keep up with the obligations which the Museum's own reputation and importance impose.

The Louvre, therefore, is in want of aid, so that it may be in a position to acquire works of art which would complete and enrich the collections.

The Society of the Friends of the Louvre has been formed with the idea of creating, by means of subscriptions and grants from its members, funds destined to offer to the Museum works of art worthy to be placed in the galleries.

The Society of the Friends of the Louvre is on the eve of numbering two thousand members.'

Certain lovers of art in England have taken the hint, and a society was started about a year ago under the presidency of Lord Balcarres with the same excellent object in view. The subscription is only a guinea-and let us hope that two thousand members may be found to join the National Art-Collections Fund, notwithstanding its cumbrous name.

THE FIRST ENGLISHMAN IN JAPAN.

THE story of the adventures of William Adams, the first Englishman in Japan, is truly as romantic an episode in the history of our connection with the Far East as the most vivid imagination could well invent. That a poor English mariner, drifting into port on a foreign ship, with naught to recommend him save his own good sense and straightforwardness, should have gained the favour, and kept the favour, of one of the most able rulers that Japan has ever seen, is one of those events which so seldom happen in real life, that, when they do come to pass, they touch our imagination as romance from fairyland rather than as sober facts of life.

At the moment when William Adams set foot in the country, Japan had recently passed through a tempestuous period of her history, and had but newly been reduced to order by the genius and energy of three of her most famous rulers. We have to go back to a remote time to trace the causes which had led up to this crisis, and to explain the dual form of government which was maintained for so many centuries, and which proved so bewildering to the Europeans who first became acquainted with it, and no less to historians even of our own generation.

The rightful sovereign of Japan, from the first establishment of the throne, was the Mikado; and, although in the middle and later periods of the history of the country he almost disappears from sight and becomes a mere cipher, yet his existence never ceased to be present in the minds of the people; the Son of Heaven' was always the occupier de jure of the throne; and it was the Mikado who finally emerged at the revolution of 1868 as the de facto ruler of the country. The growth of the great feudal families of Japan first led to encroachment on the power of the sovereign, and gradually brought him under their exclusive control. In the twelfth century the military power was divided between two houses: the Taira and the Minamoto. The inevitable struggle between them resulted in the temporary victory of the Taira. But, under the leadership of their famous chieftain, Yoritomo, the Minamoto were finally triumphant, and established a dominant military government completely overshadowing and controlling the Mikado.

In the year 1192 the Minamoto hero received from the sovereign the title of Sei-i Tai Shōgun, or Barbarian-subjugating Generalissimo; and it was this title of the Shōgun which was assumed thereafter by the de facto rulers of Japan who could claim to be of the blood of the Minamoto family. To the domination of the Minamoto succeeded the domination of the Hojo, which lasted for nearly a century and a half; and to the Hojo government succeeded that of the Ashikagas, in the middle of the fourteenth century. From that time for two hundred years Japan passed through the misery of continual civil war under the line of the Ashikaga Shōguns, which terminated in 1573. It was out of the chaos into which the country had sunk that the three great historical figures arose who were fated to have such lasting influence on the destinies of Japan.

Oda Nobunaga, a soldier and the son of a soldier, by his conquests gradually pushed his way to the front, and, after espousing the cause of the last Ashikaga Shōgun, deposed him and seized the government. Nobunaga is notorious in Japanese history as the enemy of the Buddhists. From the date of its first official recognition in Japan in the middle of the sixth century, the Buddhist creed had flourished side by side with the native Shinto religion. Under the Ashikagas it had grown in strength and influence, and Buddhist priests and Buddhist monks became a power in the land. They were no longer merely the members of a religious sect; by their numbers and organisation, and by their maintenance of large bodies of retainers, they were a military power and a danger to the public peace which Nobunaga was endeavouring to consolidate. Determined to break down their influence, he suddenly inflicted upon them two successive blows. In 1571 took place the destruction of the great monastery of Hiyeizan, and the wholesale massacre of its inhabitants; and a few years later thousands perished in the siege and capture of the Buddhist fortified monastery or castle at Ozaka. Nobunaga's hostility to the sect is to be specially noted, for to it no doubt is to be attributed his policy of allowing to Christianity freedom to spread through the country as a rival to counterbalance the influence of the hated creed. The Portuguese first of Europeans had found their way into Japan in 1542. With their trade came their religion, and the rapidity with which it was adopted, chiefly in the west and south where the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries found their first proselytes, is one of those remarkable instances of the native readiness to adopt new things. In the days of Nobunaga the Christian converts are said to have numbered