he bas-reliefs
are wrought out with such delicacy as to suggest the influence of Greek
art upon the multitude of artists who toiled for years to produce them.
The effect, at least, is Grecian; and the number of the plaques is so
great that, if they were placed in a continuous row, the line would be
three miles long.

Besides these sculptures, the terrace-walls are interrupted at regular
intervals by four hundred and thirty-six niches or alcove-chapels, each
with its image of Buddha facing the outside world, so that the visitor
approaching the temple cannot fail to see one hundred and nine Buddhas,
or one-fourth of the total number, looking down upon him. Above these
alcove-chapels there are seventy-two small latticed domes, or dagobas,
each with its statue of Buddha imprisoned within, as if he were
preparing himself, by seclusion and meditation, for the final state in
which the great chamber which crowns the structure represents him, I
mean the state of passivity and bliss, which has escaped the evils of
transmigration and has attained to absorption of personal existence of
the impersonal world-force which the Hindu called Brahma.

It is difficult to express the emotions which are roused by such an
exhibition of man's religious instinct, enlightened simply by God's
revelation of himself in the natural world and in the nature of man.
Here is a seeking, but not a finding, a groping in the dark, with only
the faint rays of conscience to show man the way. Yet he who is the
Light of the World was lighting every man, before his advent in the
flesh, and even Buddha was a reformer and an advance upon the Brahmanism
of his time. He preached the doctrine of unselfish devotion, but he
turned it into error by ignoring man's duty to himself. He made
extinction of desire, rather than purification of desire, to be the way
to happiness. How different this from that thirst after God, even the
living God, which animated the Psalmist, or that hungering and thirsting
after righteousness which Christ says shall be filled! Buddha found in
self, rather than in God, the power to overcome evil. Buddhism has no
personal God to whom appeal may be made for strength, and Buddha himself
has no power to answer prayer, since he long ago passed into a realm of
inactivity which is practically indistinguishable from non-existence.
There is no atonement for past sin nor escape from its consequences, but
by the giving up of being. Buddhism is a pessimisti