The violence of the ministerial Tarquin only served to direct attention
to the illegality of his master's rule; and people began to turn their
allegiance from Yeddo and the Shogun to the long-forgotten Mikado in his
seclusion at Kioto. At this juncture, whether in consequence or not, the
relations between these two rulers became strained; and the Shogun's
minister set forth for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful
sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to precipitate events. It
was a piece of religion to defend the Mikado; it was a plain piece of
political righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. To
Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have arrived. He was himself
still confined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelligence; but
with that he sharpened a sword for the Shogun's minister. A party of his
followers were to waylay the tyrant at a village on the Yeddo and Kioto
road, present him with a petition, and put him to the sword. But Yoshida
and his friends were closely observed; and the too great expedition of
two of the conspirators, a boy of eighteen and his brother, wakened the
suspicion of the authorities, and led to a full discovery of the plot
and the arrest of all who were concerned. In Yeddo, to which he was taken, Yoshida was thrown again into a strict
confinement. But he was not left destitute of sympathy in this last hour
of trial. In the next cell lay one Kusákabé, a reformer from the
southern highlands of Satsuma. They were in prison for different plots,
indeed, but for the same intention; they shared the same beliefs and the
same aspirations for Japan; many and long were the conversations they
held through the prison wall, and dear was the sympathy that soon united
them. It fell first to the lot of Kusákabé to pass before the judges;
and when sentence had been pronounced he was led towards the place of
death below Yoshida's window. To turn the head would have been to
implicate his fellow-prisoner; but he threw him a look from his eye, and
bade him farewell in a loud voice, with these two Chinese verses:--

  "It is better to be a crystal and be broken,
   Than to remain perfect like a tile upon the housetop." So Kusákabé, from the highlands of Satsuma, passed out of the theatre of
this world. His death was like an antique worthy's. A little after, and Yoshida too must appear before the Court. His last
scene was of a piece with his career, and fitly crowned it. He seized on
the opportunity of a public audience, confessed and gloried in his
design, and, reading his auditors a lesson in the history of their
country, told at length the illegality of the Shogun's power and the
crimes by which its exercise was sullied. So, having said his say for
once, he was led forth and executed, thirty-one years old. A military engineer, a bold traveller (at least in wish), a poet, a
patriot, a schoolmaster, a friend to learning, a martyr to
reform,--there are not many men, dying at seventy, who have served their
country in such various characters. He was not only wise and provident
in thought, but surely one of the fieriest of heroes in execution. It is
hard to say which is the most remarkable--his capacity for command,
which subdued his very jailers; his hot, unflagging zeal; or his
stubborn superiority to defeat. He failed in each particular enterprise
that he attempted; and yet we have only to look at his country to see
how complete has been his general success. His friends and pupils made
the majority of leaders in that final Revolution, now some twelve years
old; and many of them are, or were until the other day, high placed
among the rulers of Japan. And when we see all round us these brisk
intelligent students, with their strange foreign air, we should never
forget how Yoshida marched afoot from Choshu to Yeddo, and from Yeddo to
Nangasaki, and from Nangasaki back again to Yeddo; how he boarded the
American ship, his dress stuffed with writing material; nor how he
languished in prison, and finally gave his death, as he had formerly
given all his life and strength and leisure, to gain for his native
land that very benefit which she now enjoys so largely. It is better to
be Yoshida and perish, than to be only Sákuma and yet save the hide. Kusákabé, of Satsuma, has said the word: it is better to be a crystal
and be broken. I must add a word; for I hope the reader will not fail to perceive that
this is as much the story of a heroic people as that of a heroic man. It
is not enough to remember Yoshida; we must not forget the common
soldier, nor Kusákabé, nor the boy of eighteen, Nomura, of Choshu, whose
eagerness betrayed the plot. It is exhilarating to have lived in the
same days with these great-hearted gentlemen. Only a few miles from us,
to speak by the proportion of the universe, while I was droning over my
lessons, Yoshida was goading himself to be wakeful with the stings of
the mosquito; and while you were grudging a penny income-tax, Kusákabé
was stepping to death with a noble sentence on his lips. FOOTNOTES:

  [4] Yoshida, when on his way to Nangasaki, met the soldier and
    talked with him by the roadside; they then parted, but the soldier
    was so much struck by the words he heard, that on Yoshida's return
    he sought him out and declared his intention of devoting his life to
    the good cause. I venture, in the absence of the writer, to insert
    this correction, having been present when the story was told by Mr. Masaki.--F. J. [Fleeming Jenkin.] And I, there being none to settle
    the difference, must reproduce both versions.--R. L. S.

  [5] I understood that the merchant was endeavouring surreptitiously to
    obtain for his son instruction to which he was not entitled.--F. J.




VI

FRANÇOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER


Perhaps one of the most curious revolutions in literary history is the
sudden bull's-eye light cast by M. Longnon on the obscure existence of
François Villon[6]. His book is not remarkable merely as a chapter of
biography exhumed after four centuries. To readers of the poet it will
recall, with a flavour of satire, that characteristic passage in which
he bequeaths his spectacles--with a humorous reservation of the case--to
the hospital for blind paupers known as the Fifteen-Score. Thus
equipped, let the blind paupers go and separate the good from the bad in
the cemetery of the Innocents! For his own part, the poet can see no
distinction. Much have the dead people made of their advantages. What
does it matter now that they have lain in state beds and nourished
portly bodies upon cakes and cream! Here they all lie, to be trodden in
the mud; the large estate and the small, sounding virtue and adroit or
powerful vice, in very much the same condition; and a bishop not to be
distinguished from a lamplighter with even the strongest spectacles. Such was Villon's cynical philosophy.