s--of distorted limbs--of
preternatural beasts, birds, and fishes--of dragons, centaurs, and
intertwined snakes--of uncouth vehicles, and warlike instruments, and
mystic-looking symbols--of chains of interlaced knots and complex
zigzags, all so crowding on each other that the tired eye feels as if it
had run through a procession of Temptations of St Anthony or Faust
Sabbaths. When this field of investigation and speculation is surveyed
in all its affluence, one is not surprised to find that it has been
taken in hand by a race of bold guessers, who, by the skilful appliance
of a jingling jargon of Asiatic, Celtic, and classical phraseology, make
nonsense sound like learning too deep to be fathomed. So, while
Rusticus will point out to you "the auld-fashioned standin' stane"--on
which he tells you that there are plain to be seen a cocked hat, a pair
of spectacles, a comb, a looking-glass, a sow with a long snout, and a
man driving a gig,--Mr Urban will describe to you "a hieroglyphed
monolith" in the terms following:--

"The Buddhist triad is conspicuously symbolised by what the peasantry
call a pair of spectacles. It consists of two circles, of which the one,
having its radius 1-3/4 inch wider than the other, is evidently Buddha,
the spiritual or divine intellectual essence of the world, or the
efficient underived source of all; the other is Dharma, the material
essence of the world--the plastic derivative cause. The ligamen
connecting them together, completes the sacred triad with the Sangha
derived from and composed of the two others. Here, therefore, is
symbolised the collective energy of spirit and matter in the state of
action, or the embryotic creation, the type and sum of all specific
forms, spontaneously evolved from the union of Buddha and Dharma. The
crescent, likened by the vulgar-minded peasantry to a cocked hat, is the
embodiment of the all-pervading celestial influence; and the decorated
sceptres or sacred wands of office, laid across it at the mystic angle
of forty-five degrees, represent the comprehensive discipline and
cosmopolite authority of the conquering Sarsaswete. The figure of the
elephant--undoubted evidence of the oriental origin of this
monoglyph--represents the embryo of organised matter; while in the
chariot of the sun the never-dying Inis na Bhfiodhlhadth threads the
sacred labyrinth, waving a branch of the Mimosa serisha, which has been
dipped in a sacred river, and dried beneath the influe