ound at Ellora and Carlee, in India proper. These three Buddhist
temples are known to have been in existence for about twenty
centuries, and are very similar in design. The elaborate sculptures in
bas-relief which decorate them are almost identical in character, but
they have little or no artistic merit, being in fact as crude as
Chinese or Japanese idols, mere caricatures as seen from a modern
point of view, and yet they are clearly the result of a distinctive
purpose. As to depicting the human figure with any regard to its
anatomy, that was not understood by these artists, any more than are
the laws of perspective by the Chinese or Japanese of to-day. So in
ancient Egyptian sculpture, an approximation to the true outline of
the human figure is all that is attempted. The stone pillars and
figures at Elephanta, so venerable from age and association, were
nearly destroyed by French cannon-balls, the guns being brought on
shore at considerable trouble, and maliciously directed, for this
purpose. It seemed to be a fixed principle with the soldiers of the
first Napoleon to purloin everything of value which was portable in
the countries they invaded, and what they could not steal and carry
away, with true barbaric instinct they destroyed. Churches, charitable
institutions, hospitals, were all alike looted by these French
vandals. Even tombs were invaded by them in their rapacity, as at
Granada, where the leaden coffins in the royal vaults were pried open
with bayonets in search of treasures supposed to have been buried with
the bodies. At Seville, they broke open the coffin of Murillo, wherein
finding nothing of commercial value, they scattered the ashes of the
great master in art to the wind. It will also be remembered that
Marshal Soult--to his lasting disgrace be it recorded--treated the
ashes of Cervantes in a similar manner; a most petty and disgraceful
meanness for a marshal of France to be guilty of.

The Mahawanso, "Genealogy of the Great," a native chronicle, contains
a history of the several dynasties which have controlled the island
from B. C. 543 down to A. D. 1758. This unique and remarkable
Singhalese book is a metrical chronicle written in Pali verse, and
forms what is universally received as an authentic and most invaluable
record of the national history of Ceylon. A scholarly translation of
the same is now extant in English. Pali, as the reader doubtless
knows, is a dead language founded upon the Sanscrit, t