those in and about Peking; what is marble there is wood here. Still
they are very handsome, and in the days of its magnificence the Temple
of Uyeno was one of the finest. Alas! the main temple, the hall in
honour of the sect to which it belongs, the hall of services, the
bell-tower, the entrance-hall, and the residence of the prince of the
blood, were all burnt down in the battle of Uyeno, in the summer of
1868, when the Shogun's men made their last stand in Yedo against the
troops of the Mikado. The fate of the day was decided by two
field-pieces, which the latter contrived to mount on the roof of a
neighbouring tea-house; and the Shogun's men, driven out of the place,
carried off the Miya in the vain hope of raising his standard in the
north as that of a rival Mikado. A few of the lesser temples and
tombs, and the beautiful park-like grounds, are but the remnants of
the former glory of Uyeno. Among these is a temple in the form of a
roofless stage, in honour of the thousand-handed Kwannon. In the
middle ages, during the civil wars between the houses of Gen and Hei,
one Morihisa, a captain of the house of Hei, after the destruction of
his clan, went and prayed for a thousand days at the temple of the
thousand-handed Kwannon at Kiyomidzu, in Kiyoto. His retreat having
been discovered, he was seized and brought bound to Kamakura, the
chief town of the house of Gen. Here he was condemned to die at a
place called Yui, by the sea-shore; but every time that the
executioner lifted his sword to strike, the blade was broken by the
god Kwannon, and at the same time the wife of Yoritomo, the chief of
the house of Gen, was warned in a dream to spare Morihisa's life. So
Morihisa was reprieved, and rose to power in the state; and all this
was by the miraculous intervention of the god Kwannon, who takes such
good care of his faithful votaries. To him this temple is dedicated. A
colossal bronze Buddha, twenty-two feet high, set up some two hundred
years ago, and a stone lantern, twenty feet high, and twelve feet
round at the top, are greatly admired by the Japanese. There are only
three such lanterns in the empire; the other two being at Nanzenji--a
temple in Kiyoto, and Atsura, a shrine in the province of Owari. All
three were erected by the piety of one man, Sakuma Daizen no Suke, in
the year A.D. 1631.

Iyemitsu, the founder of the temple, was buried with his grandfather,
Iyeyasu, at Nikko; but both of these princes are honoured wi