d brought back
from India. His travels were soon written and published, but the
translation of the Sanskrit MSS. occupied he whole rest of his life.
It is said that the number of works translated by him, with the
assistance of a large staff of monks, amounted to 740, in 1,335
volumes. Frequently he might be seen meditating on a difficult
passage, when suddenly it seemed as if a higher spirit had enlightened
his mind. His soul was cheered, as when a man walking in darkness sees
all at once the sun piercing the clouds and shining in its full
brightness; and, unwilling to trust to his own understanding, he used
to attribute his knowledge to a secret inspiration of Buddha and the
Bodhisattvas. When he found that the hour of death approached, he had
all his property divided among the poor. He invited his friends to
come and see him, and to take a cheerful leave of that impure body of
Hiouen-thsang. 'I desire,' he said, 'that whatever merits I may have
gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again
with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of
Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future, who is full of kindness and
affection. When I descend again upon earth to pass through other forms
of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards
Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect
intelligence. He died in the year 664--about the same time that
Mohammedanism was pursuing its bloody conquests in the East, and
Christianity began to shed its pure light over the dark forests of
Germany.

It is impossible to do justice to the character of so extraordinary a
man as Hiouen-thsang in so short a sketch as we have been able to
give. If we knew only his own account of his life and travels--the
volume which has just been published at Paris--we should be ignorant
of the motives which guided him and of the sufferings which he
underwent. Happily, two of his friends and pupils had left an account
of their teacher, and M. Stanislas Julien has acted wisely in
beginning his collection of the Buddhist Pilgrims with the translation
of that biography. There we learn something of the man himself and of
that silent enthusiasm which supported him in his arduous work. There
we see him braving the dangers of the desert, scrambling along
glaciers, crossing over torrents, and quietly submitting to the
brutal violence of Indian Thugs. There we see him rejecting the
tempting inv