before retiring to rest, after my labours were over, to my great surprise I observed that the forts were illuminated!  Imagine our daring exploit of breaking through every consigne, and coming up to Yeddo, having ended in an illumination of the forts in our honour!  At 4 A.M. this morning we weighed anchor, and are now some 140 miles on our way to Shanghae.

[Sidenote:  Articles of the Treaty.]

The principal advantages secured to England by this Treaty, so amicably and rapidly settled, were the following:—­

Power to appoint a Diplomatic Agent to reside at Yeddo, and Consuls at the open ports;

Ample recognition of Consular jurisdiction and of the immunities of exterritoriality;

The opening to British subjects, at specified periods, of several of the most important ports and cities of Japan;

Power to land and store supplies for the use of the British navy at Kanagawa, Hakodadi, and Nagasaki, without payment of duty;

Power to British subjects to buy from and sell to Japanese subjects directly, without the intervention of the Japanese authorities;

Foreign coin to pass for corresponding weights of Japanese coin of the same description;

Abolition of tonnage and transit dues;

Reduction of duties on exports from 35 per cent. to a general rate of 5 per cent. ad valorem.

The concessions obtained from the Japanese by the Treaty of Yeddo were not, in some important particulars, so considerable as those which had been made by China in the Treaty of Tientsin.  It was, however, a material advance on all previous treaties with Japan, and it opened the door to the gradual establishment of relations of commerce and amity between the people of the West and that of Japan, which might become, as Lord Elgin hoped and believed, of the most cordial and intimate character, ’if the former did not, by injudicious and aggressive acts, rouse against themselves the fears and hostility of the natives.’

[Sidenote:  Retrospect.]

August 30th.—­Eleven A.M.—­We are again plunging into the China Sea, and quitting the only place which I have left with any feeling of regret since I reached this abominable East,—­abominable, not so much in itself, as because it is strewed all over with the records of our violence and fraud, and disregard of right.  The exceeding beauty external of Japan, and its singular moral and social picturesqueness, cannot but leave a pleasing impression on the mind.  One feels as if the position of a Daimio in Japan might not be a bad one, with two or three millions of vassals; submissive, but not servile, because there is no contradiction between their sense of fitness and their position.

[1] Not so, however, in the actual work of negotiating.  In a despatch of
    later date he writes:  ’I was much struck by the business-like manner
    in which they did their work;