e priests of Buddh are," says a writer in the
Foreign Quarterly Review, "there is a kind of sacred personage still
greater than the highest of them, and next in rank to the sovereign;
this is no other than that diseased animal, the White Elephant, far more
highly venerated here than in Siam. The creature is supposed by the
Burmans to lodge within its carcass a blessed soul of some human being,
which has arrived at the last stage of the many millions of
transmigrations it was doomed to undergo, and which, when it escapes,
will be absorbed into the essence of the Deity." This most sacred
personage has a regular cabinet composed of a prime minister, secretary
of state, transmitter of intelligence, &c., possesses estates in various
parts of the country, and receives handsome presents from foreign
ambassadors. His residence is contiguous to the royal palace, and
connected with it by a long open gallery, at the further end of which a
curtain of black velvet embossed with gold, conceals his august person
from vulgar eyes. His dwelling is a lofty hall splendidly gilded, and
supported by sixty-four pillars, to four of which he is chained with
massive silver chains. His bed is a thick mattress, covered with blue
cloth, over which is a softer one of crimson silk. His trappings are
magnificent, being gold, studded with diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and
other precious stones; his betel-box, _spittoon_, and the vessel out of
which he feeds, are of gold inlaid with precious stones. His attendants,
according to Hamilton, from whom we take a part of this description,
amount to over a thousand persons.

"Buddhism in its moral precepts is perhaps the best religion ever
invented by man. The difficulty is, its entire basis is false. It is a
religion of Atheism. Instead of a Heavenly Father forgiving sin, and
filial service from a pure heart, as the effect of love--it presents
nothing to love, for its Deity is dead; nothing as the ultimate object
of action but self; and nothing for man's highest and holiest ambition
but annihilation."

"Their doctrine of merit, leaves no place for holiness, and destroys
gratitude either to God or man." It also ministers to the grossest
pride, for the very fact of his being _now a man_, assures the Buddhist
that in numberless former unremembered transmigrations, he must have
acquired incalculable merit, or he would not now occupy so distinguished
a rank in the scale of being.

Their system of balancing evil