cept the Scottish plantation in the north, is a scene of misery and desolation hardly to be matched on this side of Lapland." In other words, England was undoing the work of her own hands. Having by iniquitous confiscations established a strong English colony in Ireland for the securing of English power there, she was now to gratify the greed of her merchants and office - seekers by deliberately destroying it.

In the interests of that colony, and as he insists again and again, in the interests of England herself, Swift fiercely protested against this madness and meanness. His first protest was the proposal to boycott English clothing and furniture. This was published in 1720. The Government prosecuted the printer and publisher. At that time the Irish Bench was filled by the riff raff of the English Bar, and the judges held their offices at pleasure, so the Government could always rely on their support. The jury who heard the charge against the printer and publisher acquitted them. Chief Justice Whitshed refused to accept the verdict. Nine times he sent them back to reconsider it every time they returned with the same verdict. At last, somewhere near midnight, they were induced to return a special verdiot-that is, to find the facts, and leave it to the court to decide whether the defendants were or were not guilty. But it was felt that the Chief Justice had overstepped the wide limit of subservice to the

Government accorded to all Irish judges. The consideration of the special judgment was postponed from session to session, and at last the Crown entered a nolle prosequi-but according to Swift, only when one of the defendants was dead and both were ruined. Every one knew Swift was the writer of the pamphlet, but the Government feared to tackle so formidable a fighter.

This pamphlet was followed in 1724 by the famous 'Drapier Letters.' Nothing Swift ever wrote showed better his genius for popular controversy. The only objection to the patent granted to Wood to coin copper money for Ireland was that it was a gross job. Swift paid no attention to this: the Irish people were used to jobs: in fact the Government of Ireland was government by jobbery; so they were not likely to be moved by that consideration. But the "true English people of Ireland" had a vivid recollection of the brass money issued by King James in the hope of filling his empty exchequer during the civil war in Ireland in 1689. Every Twelfth of July the Society of Aldermen of Skinner's Alley drank perdition to King James and his brass money and wooden shoes, by the last of which they meant his French allies. Swift seized on that point. Wood's ha'pence would not be intrinsically worth their face value; they were therefore base coin, and everybody who was forced to accept them would be swindled. The

On a false issue Swift won true victory for Ireland. The English exploitation of the country received from him its first set-back. And when he had won his victory he practically abandoned his false issue. In the seventh letter, which was not published until the heat of the contest was past, he explains his real objects; and these included not merely the rejection of Wood's penoe and the establishment of a national mint, but the civilisation of the native Irish, the encouragement of manufactures, the stoppage of the pernicious practice of turning agricultural into grazing land, and the planting of forest trees, of which the country was then being denuded, to produce oharcoal for iron-smelting. If his proposals had been carried out, Ireland to-day would be a very different country in population, character, and even climate.

"The true English people of Ireland" were almost all Whigs of the Whigs. When Swift, the Tory champion, came to reside among them, the Dublin mob hooted and howled at him. Now he had become their hero, and such he remained till his dying day.

With the exception of that amazing work, The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver,' which was begun in 1720 and published in 1726-27, Swift, after the 'Drapier Letters,' wrote practically nothing about anything save Ireland. At first he had written as much in the interests of England1 as of "the true English people of Ireland," but as his nature was, he gradually grew to hate the object he opposed, and that object was the English people. This is the reason, I suggest, why the tablet now appears on the wall standing near the site of his birthplace in Dublin.

While he was winning in public all these triumphs as a patriot and a man of the highest literary genius, in private his life was sinking into abject misery. I have spoken of his third love affair. The heroine of it was Hester van Homrigh, surnamed by him (as his wont was) Vanessa. He had met her before he became Dean of St Patrick's, when she was his neighbour in Bury Street, St James's. When he returned to London after being enthroned dean, he renewed the acquaintance, which developed into a flirtation on his side and into an

infatuation on hers. It was then he wrote that story of their love entitled, 'Cadenus and Vanessa,' No doubt he thought that when he returned to Dublin the affair would come to an end; but it did not, for Vanessa followed him there. His elderly vanity seems to have been flattered so much by the admiration of his youthful worshipper that he had not the strength to explain to her the prior claim that poor Stella had upon his heart. Vanessa at last made inquiries by letter on that point from Stella herself. Stella passed on the letter to Swift, Swift returned it to Vanessa, accompanied by a terrifie look of rage, under which poor Vanessa withered up and died, Stella, after three months' rebellion over this revelation, returned to her allegiance.

But her heart was broken, and soon her health was broken too. Swift, when he was in England enjoying the company of Pope and Bolingbroke, and the homage of the whole literary world, was summoned back to her deathbed in Dublin. According to all accounts, he offered to make her every reparation for her long martyrdom that was in his power. She answered that it was too late. She died on

28th January 1728, and was buried in St Patrick's Cathedral.

From her death Swift's savageness and melancholy grew worse and worse. In the June of the year of her death, we find him writing to Pope of his "perfect rage and resentment and the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness." In the next year he writes to Bolingbroke of his fear that he may die in a rage "like a poisoned rat in a hole." In 1736 he writes his last composition, a ferocious poem, attacking the Irish Parliament for hostility to the Church. After that comes raving insanity, then dumb fatuity, and then merciful death.

After a long, tempestuous, and tremendous life, the bitterest wit and the most savage humourist the English race has ever produced lies peacefully enough now under the floor of his own cathedral, by the side of the woman whose love he cherished and whose heart he broke, and in the midst of the people whom he delighted, defended, and despised, and whose follies and miseries rent his heartfor ever beyond the sound of human laughter, and for ever beyond the sight of human tears.

SOME years ago I was in Tokyo and lived in a quaint little native house all made of straw, paper, and wood. I had as a cook a gentleman whose name being interpreted means "Taste of Salt." One day a nephew of his first wife, then a student at one of the universities in Tokyo, named Yamato, came to his house and begged to be allowed to spend the night there. Next morning my cook's old mother slid aside the panel dividing the guestroom from the verandah, and found the boy lying on the floor in the kneeling position, with his head, body, and arms fallen forward over his knees, as if in the conventional bowing or kow-tow position. On closer inspection, it was found that he had committed harakiri in the approved fashion, even to the reversing of the two centre mats of the room in which his body was found.

The cook, of course, who lived in my house, was considerably perturbed, as was evident from the alarming falling off in the quality of his productions. Later, when the suicide was connected with the murder of a lesser light in the political world, which had happened two days before, the cook's state of mental anxiety was truly pitiable. In a fortnight things were normal again. The papers gave forth the theory

I.

that the murder was due to the fanaticism of two young students, whose minds were influenced by reading political literature of an intemperate nature, which they only half understood. This led them to take the mistaken line that, by murdering an offending member of the government with whose views they did not agree, they were emulating the samurai of old, and, at great personal inconvenience, performing a duty to their country. The other student was collared by the police, and at the time the whole thing caused a goodly sensation. In a month all was forgotten, and things, even in my kitchen, went on as before.

A long time later I happened to be concerned in work of a delicate nature which brought me in contact with a sinister figure. This was the head of a great organisation, the central figure that never appeared directly in connection with any of its activities, but remained unknown and obscure as the directing force behind the scenes. The existence of this gentleman was known to many, but few had ever seen or spoken to him. He was a popular myth under the nickname of "Shishi" or Lion. He was reputed to have such influence, that it was said the government and police dared not do anything to him.

In

the course of my work I was to discover how great was his influence. He had many wild impossible schemes, the wildest of which was the formation of an Asiatic Alliance to rule and civilise the world. This scheme and its evolution brought him and his supporters, as may be imagined, into direct relationship with the enemies of my country. These latter were quite willing to help a movement directed towards alienating a vast Asiatic Empire from its allegiance. They only considered this first step, a step convenient for their plans, and never worried about what might happen should this alliance ever be come a fact. However, these things happened before the war, and form another story. They only come in here because, in unearthing them, I also dug up a relic, a fragment, of the story of Yamato, revealing his connection with the "Lion." Another fragment I came upon still later. My cook held

a celebration one evening in one of the back rooms of my house, and I tactlessly butted in by mistake, but was able to play my part well and gained his sympathy far enough to ease his tongue. He was celebrating the anniversary of the death of Yamato, the family hero. I was rather surprised to discover what a hero the boy had become, but the cook was determined that I should be converted to his worship. He told me much of what had passed at the house of his mother on the night of the lad's death.

This news, combined with what I already knew, set me thinking as I lay on my quilt bed on the straw-matted floor of my little house that night. I ransacked my brain for halfforgotten incidents bearing on the case, and, lying well back gazing at the dim tracery of the ceiling, with my tea-stuffed pillow under the back of my neck, I evolved a connected story. The story of Yamato.

On a hot brilliant moonlight night in the early part of August in the year 2 B.W. (before the war), an insignificant figure in a black kimono sat on a dull gold-embroidered silk oushion, in the centre of the floor of a pretty Japanese room. He seemed at first to be gazing out over his verandah and across the lake before his house at the beauty of the night, at the delicate curves and twists of the old firs against the moonlight, or the gentle

shimmer of the still water among the reeds and lotus leaves of the lake. Beside him, though it was damnably hot, was a heavy brass bowl full of ashes, in the centre of which glowed a few sticks of charcoal. On the edge of this bowl he rested one hand, and continued without ever a move to gaze out into the night.

He saw nothing of the moonlight nor the beauties of the lake, nor did he heed the distraeting chorus of the frogs