teen leading American and European states. As representing the French system they consulted the codes of Louisiana, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. As representing the German system they consulted the codes and laws of Austria, Montenegro, Prussia, Saxony, Switzerland, and the draft Civil Code of the German Empire. As representing the English system they consulted the leading American and English reports and treatises, the draft Civil Code of New York, and the codes of California and British India.1

After four years of the most constant application the Commission submitted in 1896 a revisal of a part of the original draft. Had the Commission had the entire code revised they could not have shown greater wisdom. For the parts incomplete were those dealing with the Family Law and Successions, and the Commission remembered that these were the parts that occasioned the most vital objections to the old code. The Parliament referred the revised draft code to a Committee of their own, of which Mr. Hatoyama, the present Speaker, was made the chairman. After making a careful examination and some important modifications, Mr. Hatoyama reported favorably to its adoption. The Parliament acted according to his advice, and the draft became the law.

In its general arrangement the new code follows what the German jurists call the Pandekten system. It is divided into five general parts. Part I is called "Sōsoku," or General Laws, and deals with persons, natural and artificial, as the subjects of rights; with things as the objects of rights; and with juristic acts as setting rights in motion. One cannot help being astonished at and gratified with the remarkable extent to which Prof. Holland's views as expressed in his book on jurisprudence seem to be adopted in this part of the code. Part II is called

same degree from the same Faculty as Prof. Tomil, has attended several German uni. versities, and is more of the German school than of the French. The Commission itself consisted of several other distinguished personages, with the Prime Minister at the head. But these three professors composed what was called the "Compilation Committee," so that practically they were the Commission.

1 Prof. Ume, a member of the Commission, is responsible for these statements so far as they relate to the codes and laws consulted. The classifications, however, are my own. 2 This may be a mere conjecture on my own part. It is possible that the Commissioners never consulted his book, though to assert such a thing of them would be an insult to their scholarship. Be it as it may, it is a fact beyond question that their arrangement of these topics presents a remarkable coincidence to that of Prof. Holland's, and this is a matter upon which every thoughtful Japanese may well pride himself.

"Bukken," or Jus in Rem, corresponding to the Sachenrecht of the German code, and dealing with Possession, Ownership, etc., etc. Part III is called "Jinken," or Jus in Personam, corresponding to the Forderungsrecht of the German code, and dealing with General Law of Obligations, with Obligations arising ex contractu, quasi ex contractu, and ex delicto. The General Law of Obligations is taken largely from the Forderungsrecht of the Swiss code. The law of Contracts and Torts is taken entirely from the English law. Parts IV and V, dealing with the Family Law and the Law of Successions respectively, have not as yet been published, for reasons already indicated.

adopted by the ImpeTruly, the year 1896 The war with China

Such is the new Civil Code of Japan, rial Parliament in its session of 1896. has been an eventful year for Japan. had brought glory to her arms. Formosa and numerous other islands had been added to her possessions. The insurgents of Formosa had been pacified. The treaties with the leading nations of the world had been revised, providing for the abolishment of the disgraceful extra-territoriality régime in Japan, to take effect, however, upon the taking effect of the new Civil Code. The last and greatest event of all, the new Code was adopted. With equal propriety, then, the Emperor Mutsuhito might have joined Justinian, in proclaiming :-"Imperatoriam Majestatem non solum armis decoratam, sed etiam legibus opportet esse armatam, ut utrumque tempus et bellorum et pacis recte possit gubernari!"

THE

JOHN RUSKIN:

A TYPE OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY MANHOOD.

BY B. O. FLOWER.

'HE name John Ruskin is justly entitled to a foremost place among those of the builders of twentieth-century civilization. In him we find a rare combination of genius, culture, and refinement, blended with a tender concern for all earth's unfortunates. He is at once artist, philosopher, and philanthropist; but he is more than these; there is much of the austere religious reformer, giving a serious gravity to all the utterances of the glad-souled artist, a mingling of the spirit of a Savonarola with the imagination of a Turner.

John Ruskin, more than any other man of our time in like station of life, stands for the civilization which we believe is destined to glorify the coming century, for in his life all thought of ease, fame, and preferment, all consideration of self, is overmastered by his love for others. Endowed by nature with the imagination of a poet, the eyes of an artist, the brain of a philosopher, the soul of a prophet, and the heart of a man, he has conscientiously employed all his gifts as a sacred trust given to him that he might bless and enlighten his day, and ennoble his civilization for all time.

He was born amid affluence, and received the best educational advantages the age afforded. After graduating from Oxford in 1842, he studied painting under Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding. Subsequently he spent some time in Italy, finishing his art education in the land of earth's greatest painters.

While in college he composed many poems, but on leaving the university he turned his attention to art and prose composition. His "Modern Painters was justly hailed as one of the noblest works of the century, and instantly placed its author in the ranks of the foremost art critics of the world.

Few if any of his admirers will agree with all his critical views. He not infrequently falls into those errors which we naturally expect to find in a man of intense feeling, of strong

conviction, and of vivid imagination. If a positive idea takes possession of his mind, it is liable to give a strong bias to his thought, and in a degree interferes with that nice sense of proportion so essential to a great critic. On more than one occasion Mr. Ruskin has frankly admitted that his views and opinions were erroneous owing to being based on a partial appearance or influenced by pernicious ideas. A notable illustration of his thought being biassed by preconceived ideas is found in the religious opinions put forward in the early edition of parts I and II of "Modern Painters." And in a preface written in 1871 for a revised edition of his works, the philosopher calls attention to his early views, declaring that he was "wholly mistaken" and continuing: "I had been educated in the narrow doctrine of a narrow sect, and had read history obliquely, as a sectarian necessarily must."

Such are the blemishes which occasionally creep into the works of this master mind. They are, however, merely spots on the sun, which do not appear frequently enough to seriously dim the splendor of a critical work which in my judgment surpasses in real value that of any English scholar of the century. "Modern Painters," "The Stones of Venice," "The Seven Lamps," and his other works dealing with art are far more than criticisms; they touch the sleeping soul, they fire the spirit and awaken the conscience. They make the reader feel a new love for nature and art alike, and with this pure and inspiring love comes the desire for more knowledge. They appeal to the spiritual aspirations even more than to the artistic impulses or the intellectual apprehension. The moral exaltation which pervades his writings springs from his profoundly philosophical and religious nature. In all his work, as in his noble life, he has ever been moved by an intense desire to uplift and dignify humanity and to impress upon the public mind the subtle but positive effect for good exerted by true art. "I have had," he tells us in "The Two Paths," "but one steady aim in all I have ever tried to teach, namely, to declare that whatever was great in human art was the expression of man's delight in God's work."

With Ruskin, life is august; its possibilities for good and evil are never forgotten.

"Remember," he urges, "that every day of your life is ordaining

irrevocably for good or evil the custom and practice of your soul; ordaining either sacred customs of dear and lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper and deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow. Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature. You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will in the quickest and delicatest ways improve yourself."

...

The pleasure which springs from loyalty to duty is strenuously insisted upon by Ruskin, and he, more than any other illustrious man in our time, has reached such heights of unselfishness as to enable him to fully appreciate the unalloyed pleasure which flows from a life of sacrifice. If he is austere, he is also very humane. The fountains of pleasure that he would have us drink deeply from would leave no bitter aftertaste. He delights in no pseudo-pleasure; faithfulness to the highest ideal, untiring effort at complete self-mastery, a settled determination to work for the good of all and to be ever on guard lest by some inadvertence we injure some other living creature,such are some of the lessons upon which our philosopher insists as essential to man's happiness.

"If," he urges, in writing for the young, "there is any one point which, in six thousand years of thinking about right and wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or successively by experience discovered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any others; that His first order is, 'Work while you have light;' and his second, 'Be merciful while you have mercy.' 'Work while you have light,' especially while you have the light of morning. There are few things more wonderful to me than that old people never tell young ones how precious their youth is. . . . Remember, then, that I, at least, have warned you, that the happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days now. They are not to be sad days; far from that, the first duty of young people is to be delighted and delightful; but they are to be in the deepest sense solemn days. There is no solemnity so deep, to a rightly thinking creature, as that of dawn. . . . You must be to the best of your strength usefully employed during the greater part of the day, so that you may be able at the end of it to say, as proudly as any peasant, that you have not eaten the bread of idleness. Then, secondly, I said, you are not to be cruel. Perhaps you think there is no chance of your being so; and indeed I hope it is not likely that you should be deliberately unkind to any creature; but unless you are deliberately kind to every creature, you will often be cruel to many."

Ruskin is often disquieting to conventionalists; he is too candid to be popular with those who make long prayers and descant on charity while they ignore justice. He puts questions to them which they do not want to consider themselves,