Their refinement, if failing to reach our standard in certain respects, surpasses ours considering the bare barbaric basis upon which it rests.

For it is as true of the Japanese as of the proverbial Russian, though in a more scientific sense, that if you scratch him you will find the ancestral Tartar.

But it is no less true that the descendants of this rude forefather have now taken on a polish of which their own exquisite lacquer gives but a faint reflection.

The surface was perfected after the substance was formed.

Our word finish, with its double meaning, expresses both the process and the result.
There entered, to heighten the bizarre effect, a spirit common in minds that lack originality--the spirit of imitation.