oured glass or an inverted English decanter." These were outdone in picturesqueness by the native vessels, the craft of the Irawadi. Picturesque they look in illustration, and doubly so they must have been as they sailed onwards "before the wind, with their vast spreading wings and almost invisible hulls, and with the sunlight falling on their bellying sails, like a flight of colossal butterflies skimming the water." The construction of this craft was most peculiar. "The keel-piece, a single tree hollowed out" the bow low, with beautiful hollow lines; "the stern rising high above the water; a paddle shipped for a rudder; a mast of two spars bolted and lashed so that it could be let down or unshipped together, with ratlines running from one to the other, and forming a ladder." The rig was stranger still. "The yard is a bamboo, or a line of spliced bamboos, of enormous length, and, being perfectly flexible, is suspended from the mast-head by numerous guys or halyards, so as to curve upwards in an inverted bow. A rope runs along this, from which the huge mainsail is suspended, running on rings like a curtain outwards both ways from the mast." We have seen the boats of the Tagus, and wondered; but this must have been a greater marvel. On went the mission by day, staying by night at some town or village, where they were invariably recreated by a puppet show and a regular dramatic performance, aided ever by a full Burmese orchestra. Without these no entertainment would be complete. They are the popular amusements of the people-the national ideas of recreation and representation. Dull and monotonous enough they appear to have been; but who shall say what is dull, what gay, what brilliant, what tasteful, what enjoyable, to other eyes? The mind, the age, the people, has each its own gauge of enjoyment: who shall dictate or prescribe for it? What has been received and recognised as the amusement of a nation must claim respect-must have in it inherent points of attraction, though we perceive them not. We should vote the operas and cotillons and the witticisms of our forbears rather slow; and yet

how they revelled in them, and considered themselves rather fast fellows. So their "pues" were to the Burmans the very essence and spirit of fun and interest, however monotonous they might seem to strangers. "What fools those English are," said the Sultan Mahmoud when witnessing a ball at the Embassy, "to be twisting and turning about and perspiring in that manner. If we wish to enjoy dancing, we make our slaves do it"-and look on. So much for the national estimate of pleasure. A pues" might to a Burman be a richer treat than an opera which concentrated all the power of the Marios, and the Grisis, and the Piccolominis, and all the genius of the great Maestri; and to us, as the recreation of a people, it is an illustration of the feelings and phases of human nature, which we cannot but regard with interest, which we could not overlook in our estimate of the character of a race. The thing which stirs his heart to pleasure or enjoyment is ever a key to the solution of the great problem, man. Arts and sciences, institutions and governments, give him his rank in the classes of civilisation, but in the sources and objects of his joy and recreation we shall perhaps find a truer index to his inner nature.

Thus our author describes the popular entertainment, which during their journey was repeated night after night for the amusement of the members of the mission:

"The stage of the Burmese theatre is the ground, and generally spread with mats. On one, two, or three sides are raised bamboo platforms for the more distinguished spectators, the plebs crowd in, and squat upon the ground in all vacant places. In the middle of the stage arena, stuck in the ground, or lashed to one of the poles supporting the roof, is

always a small tree, or rather a large branch of a tree, which, like the altar on a Greek stage, forms a sort of centre to the action. I never could learn the real meaning of this tree. The answer usually was, that it was there in case a scene in a garden or forest should occur. But there is no other attempt at the representation of scenic locality; and I have a very strong impression that this tree has had some other meaning and origin now probably forgotten. The foot-lights

generally consisted of several earthen pots full of petroleum, or of cotton seeds soaked in petroleum, which stood on the ground, blazing and flaring round the symbolic tree, and were occasionally replenished with a ladleful of oil by one of the performers. On one side or both was the orchestra, and near it generally stood a sort of bamboo horse or stand, on which were suspended a variety of grotesque masks. The property-chest of the company occupied another side of the stage, and constantly did duty as a throne for the royal personages who figure so abundantly in their plays.

Indeed, kings, princes, princesses, and their ministers and courtiers, are the usual dramatic characters. As to the plot, we usually found it very difficult to obtain the slightest idea of it. A young prince was almost always there as hero, and he as constantly had a clownish servant, a sort of Shakesperian Lance, half fool, half wit, who did the comic business with immense success among the native audience, as their rattling and unanimous peals of laughter proved. It was in this character only that anything to be called acting was to be seen, and that was often highly humorous and appreciable even without understanding the dialogue. Then there was always a princess whom the prince was in love with. The interminable prolixity of dialogue was beyond all conception and endurance. What came of it all we could not tell. I doubt if any one could, for with the usual rate at which the action advances, it must have taken several weeks to arrive at a de

nouement.

"Much of the dialogue was always in singing; and in those parts the attitudes, actions, and sustained wailings, had a savour of the Italian opera, which was intensely comical at first. Dancing by

both male and female characters was

often interspersed or combined with the action. The female characters in the towns more remote from the capital were often personated by boys, but so naturally that we were indisposed at first to credit it.

The puppet-play seemed to be even more popular among the Burmese than the live drama. For these little performers an elevated stage of bamboos and mats is provided, generally some thirty feet long. This affords room for a transfer of the scene of action; and very commonly one end of the stage is furnished with a throne to represent the court, whilst the other had two or three little branches to represent the forest. The style of the play acted by these

marionettes seemed to us very similar to that of the large actors, and was equally prolix in its dialogue and operatic episodes. But I fancied that more often in the former there was a tendency to the supernatural, to the introduction of enchanted princesses, dragons, bats, and flying chariots, probably from the greater facility of producing the necessary effects on a small scale. Some of the puppetplays, too, were 'mysteries' founded on the history of Guatama, which possibly it would not have been admissible for living actors to perform.

"The puppets were from ten to fifteen inches high, and were rather skilfully manipulated. Not seldom, however, they got entangled, and then a large brown arm of the Deus ex machina was seen descending from the dramatic welkin to dissolve the nodus; or a pair of huge legs,striding across the stage with a view to the adjustment of the foot-lights, perfectly realised Gulliver and Lilliput."

Each performance was attended by a full Burmese orchestra. The principal instruments were peculiar. One, circular tub-like frame, formed of called the pattshaing, consisted of a separate wooden staves, fitting by tenons into a hoop, and having some eighteen or twenty drums or tomtoms suspended vertically round the interior. The performer sits squatted in the middle, and plays with the natural plectra of his fingers and palms. This is aided by various other instruments-clarionets with broad brass mouths, cymbals, clappers of split-bamboo, and sometimes a large tom-tom. There were also concert instruments, stringed harps and harnonicons, curious and strange enough in shape, though not very original in design, and all displaying a very fair skill and advance in the knowledge of instrumental harmony.

The drama here could not be accepted as a representation or reflex of the social life of the people; and as all the action and the characters were sought in higher or imaginary spheres, it seems evident that their own lives and histories do not furnish incidents or tableaus suffi

ciently striking or interesting. This, however, indicates a very advanced stage, when men and women will sit to listen, to see, to weep, or to laugh, over the events of common life. It shows that a people

have attained a life of their own, and one which has more vivid action and interest for them than the fictions of state or fancy-one which they can accept as a drama furnishing scenes and incidents which they can delight to see exhibited in pathos or caricature. The Burman, rising from his reed hut and monotonous existence, sought his excitement, his romance, in the stories of kings and princes, and in the ideal world of gods and Náts. In thus placing his scenes in unknown spheres, and in selecting his heroes from a class of beings supernaturally or socially above or beyond him, he is not dissimilar to nations more elevated in the scale of civilisation. Neither is the prolixity of dialogue, which our author complains so much of, peculiar to him. What audience nowadays would not yawn over the recitation of a Greek chorus, or sleep or groan over the classic speeches in Cato? The national drama is ever held especially to be an index to the moral status of a people. One authority pronounces the Burmese to be full of abominable conceptions; and again another, and a very high one too, Major Phayre, the envoy, strongly protests against such a view, and declares that he never, in the Burmese plays, saw anything approaching to indecency, except when there was a sprinkling of Europeans, and believes that the indecent actions were then introduced in supposed conformity to the tastes of their visitors. What a rebuke to civilisation! Does not this national recreation, however this picture of crowds sitting hour after hour, day after day, to listen to prolix dialogue, and wait for feeble denouements, prepare us to hear afterwards of a people inert and apathetic, indifferent to the present, hopeless of the future, careless and despairing of their own lot, and delighting rather in the pleasures of the imagination and the sense, than in the actual and active enjoyments of life? When the recreations of a race lack the robustness and vigour of personal action, we can scarcely ever hope to find in their history or their career the energy, the independence, or the character which leads to the development of a great or national destiny.

On speeds the mission along the river, stopping at the different towns and villages to see plays, receive deputations, and make excursions to oil-wells, until it reaches a chief and interesting point in the journey, the ancient city of Pagan, whose ruins are the vestiges of the past of Burmah. The past of a people who bear no promise of a future is a sacred record, and they who preserve or publish it, do a faithful and honest part toward the elucidation of the great problem, the history of man. This the mission did for us. The past of Burmah, as it exists, and is written in the works and remains of art, has been vividly presented and illustrated; so that, though temple and pagoda may crumble and decay, the lessons they convey, the state of civilisation they represent, and the knowledge which can be culled from the impress man leaves on his works, will be ever open to the inquiry of philosophy or the comparisons of art.

Here, at Pagan, twenty-one kings reigned in succession; here Buddhism was established as the religion of the country; and here was enacted the greatest and most prosperous period of Burmese history. Magnificent ruins, extending over a space of eight miles, exhibiting all kinds and forms of temple architecture, and enclosed by a ditch and mound, and large masses of ruined brickwork-all attest a high stage of civilisation, art, wealth, and grandeur, though they have no record, no tradition of the glory or the greatness of the kings who reigned here for so many centuries. They are records of man rather than of dynasties. It was a vast quarry of architectural research and analogy; it was a chapter in the history of man, and such chapters, however short or obscure, are ever important pages in the great book.

Here were found all the varied expressions of the religion of Buddhism, embodied in the beautiful and elaborate forms of Eastern art. "The bell-shaped pyramid of dead brickwork, in all its varieties; the same raised over a square or octagonal cell, containing an image of the Buddha; the bluff knob-like dome of the Ceylon Dagobas; the fantastic Bo-phya, or pumpkin pagoda, which seemed

rather like a fragment of what we might conceive the architecture of the moon than anything terrestrial." "But the predominant and characteristic form is that of the cruciform vaulted temple." This is the substantial type of the temples at Pagan. "The body of the buildings was cubical in form, enclosing a Gothic vaulted chamber. The entrance was by a projecting porch to the east, and this porch had also a subsidiary door on its north and south sides. There were also slightlyprojecting door-places on the three other sides of the main building, sometimes blank, and sometimes real entrances. The plan of the building, it will be seen, was cruciform. Several terraces rose successively above the body of the temple, and from the highest terrace rose a spire, bearing a strong general resemblance to that of the common temples of Eastern India, being, like the latter, a tall pyramid, with bulging sides. The angles of this spire were marked as quoins, with deep joints and a little apex at the projecting angle of each, which gave a peculiar serrated appear ance to the outline when seen against the sky. The buildings were entirely of brick; the ornamental mouldings still partially remained in plaster. The interior of each temple contained an image of Guatama, or its remains. The walls and vaults were plastered, and had been highly decorated with minute fresco paintings."

The finest and most perfect of the type is the Ananda, and which is still the most frequented as a place of worship. It illustrates an architecture so beautiful and so singular, “so sublime even in its effects," that we cannot forbear transferring the author's description of it, though full justice could not be done to it without the exquisite drawing and plans which place it before the eye in all its completeness and all its

details.

"This temple is said to have been built in the reign of Kyan-yeet-tha, about the time of the Norman conquest of England. Tradition has it that five Rahaudas, or saints of the order second only to Buddah, arrived at Pagan from the Hema-woonda, or Himalayan region. They stated that they lived in caves on the Nanda-moola hill, and the king requested them to give him a model of their abode, from which he might construct a temple. The Rahandas did

as they were requested. The temple, being built, was called Nanda-tsee-goon,

or caves of Nanda.

"The Ananda is in plan a square of nearly 200 feet to the side, and broken on each side by the projection of large gabled vestibules, which convert the plan into a perfect Greek cross. These vestibules are somewhat lower than the square mass of the building, which elevates itself to a height of thirty-five feet in two tiers of windows. Above this rise six successively diminishing ter races, connected by carved converging roofs, the last terrace just affording breadth for the spire, which crowns and completes the edifice. The lower half of this spire is the bulging, mitre-like pyramid, adapted from the temples of India; the upper half is the same moulded taper pinnacle that terminates the common bell-shaped pagoda of Pegu. The gilded htee caps the whole, at a height of 168 feet above the ground. The building, internally, consists of two concentric and lofty corridors, communicating by passages for light opposite the windows, and by large openings to the four porches. Opposite each of these latter, and receding from the inner corridor towards the centre of the building, is a cell or chamber for an idol. In each this idol is a colossal standing figure, upwards of thirty feet in height. They vary slightly in size and gesture, but all are in attitudes of prayer, preaching, or benediction. Each stands facing the porch and entrance, on a great carved lotus pedestal, within rails, like There are gates to each of these chamthe chancel rails of an English church. bers-noble frames of timber-rising to a height of four-and-twenty feet. The frame-bars are nearly a foot in thickness, and richly carved on the surface in undercut foliage; the panels are of lattice work, each intersection of the lattice marked with a gilt rosette.

"The lighting of these image chambers is, perhaps, the most singular feature of the whole. The lofty vault, nearly fifty feet high, in which stands the idol, canopied by a balance of gilt metal curiously wrought, reaches up into the second terrace of the upper structure, and a window pierced in this sends a light from far above the spectator's head, and from an unseen source, upon the head and shoulders of the great gilded image. This unexpected and partial illumination in the dim recesses of these vaulted corridors, produces a very powerful and strange effect, especially on the north side, where the front light through the great doorway is entirely

subdued by the roofs of the covered approach from the monastic establishments. The four great statues represent the Buddhas who have appeared in the present world-period."

Another great feature in the art and religion also of Burmah, is the number of monasteries or kyoungs which are seen every where in connection with the temples. These exhibit even a greater richness of ornamentation and detail, and the most perfect of them, afterwards seen at Amarapoora, seemed actually to overwhelm and dazzle the sight with the multiplicity and elaboration of the ornaments. One is spoken of as "carved like an ivory toy, and being a blaze of gold and other ornament."

"In the precincts of the Ananda was a large group of these kyoungs or monastic buildings, forming a street of some length. These, in beauty of detail and combination, were admirable; the wood-carving was rich and effective beyond description; great fancy was displayed in the fantastic figures of warriors, dancers,náts, and bilus (ogres), in high relief, that filled the angles and niches of the sculptured surfaces. The fretted pinnacles of the ridge-ornaments were topped with birds cut in profile, in every attitude of sleep; ing, picking, stalking, or taking wing." The Burmese architecture is itself a study: the material is the "kucha pukka" work, "that is, brick cemented with mud only;" and the style is one peculiar and striking, combining as it does solidity of structure with the beauty and grotesqueness of detail, and being withal religious and solemn, as well as gorgeous. The principle of the construction is "a representation of the cave, a favourite style of building among the Burmese for depositing images, and not a wonderful one among votaries of a religion which regards an ascetic life in the wilderness as the highest state for mortals in this world." But this is so covered with the forms and ornaments belonging to other religions or other styles, that the original idea, if not lost, is at any rate confused by the beauty and brilliancy of the exterior, and the variety of designs superadded on the gloom and coldness of the cave idea. It would seem at first to have most affinity with the Indian;

but this, on a careful comparison, applies only to the details, and not the construction; "for the arches and vaults which are such marked features in the Pagan temples, are quite unknown to ancient Hindoo architecture." In the religious expres sion, too, they differ. "The Burian, rejecting indeed, in the pride of his philosophy, the idea of an Eternal Divinity, but recognising the eternal sanctities of nature and conscience, has reared nobler fancies, and far more worthy to become the temples of the true God, than the Hindoo, with those his deities so numerous and impure." And then again: "The arches and semi-arches resting on regular pilasters, with base, capital, and cornice, the singular resemblance of which, both in general character and in many of the details of mouldings, to the pilasters of Roman architecture, is startling, perplexing, and unaccountable, "-induced with some the theory that these temples must have owed their origin to the skill of a Western Christian or missionary, who may have adopted largely the ornamentation of the Burmese, and engrafted much of their detail and arrangement on his own ideas of a temple, and that the cross-like plan was thus symbolical. Our author, too, again and again remarks how singularly these buildings, especially "the Ananda, suggest strange memories of the temples of southern Catholic Europe." Assuredly in the descriptions we recognise touches of the Gothic character; and ever and anon, as we looked on the pictures, so gorgeous in ornamentation, and so quaint in many of the details, there would float across our vision shadows and recollections of those strange and long-hidden temples in Central America.

It is, however, unjust, and apparently irrational, to be always attempting to reduce the art or style of a people to some known and recognised standard; most of the symbols and designs which are adopted by man in the expression of his worship, are such as are generally recognisable in some shape amid the generality of tribes and nations, and their presence would argue nothing more than the common heart and