king a bargain, as they are
pleased to accept in the end. In the interior of the country the
state of things in this respect is much better.

Among the temples which I visited in order to procure Pali books was
the so-called "devil's" temple at Ratnapoora, the stateliest
idol-house I saw in Ceylon. Most of the temples were built of wood;
all were exceedingly unpretentious, and without the least trace of
style. The numerous priests and temple attendants lived in rather
squalid and disorderly dwellings in the neighbourhood of the temple.
They received me in a friendly way and showed me their books, of
which they occasionally sold some. The negotiation several times
ended by the priest presenting me with the book I wished to purchase
and positively refusing to receive compensation in any form. On one
occasion the priest stated that he himself was prevented by the
precepts of his religion from receiving the purchase-money agreed
upon, but said that I might hand it over to some of the persons
standing round. At two of the priests' houses there was a swarm of
school-children, who ran busily about with their palm-leaf writing
books and writing implements.

[Illustration: STATUES IN A TEMPLE IN CEYLON. ]

The temples were very different in their arrangements, probably on
account of the dissimilar usages of the various Buddhist sects to
which they belonged. A temple near Colombo contained a large number
of wooden images and paintings of gods, or men of more than human
size. Most of them stood upright like a guard round a sitting
Buddha. I could not observe any dislike on the part of the priests
to take the foreigner round their temples. The key, however, was
sometimes wanting to some repository, whose contents they were
perhaps unwilling to desecrate by showing them to the unbeliever.
This was, for instance, the case with the press which contained the
devil's bow and arrows, in the temple at Ratnapoora. The temple
vessels besides were exceedingly ugly, tasteless, and ill-kept. I
seldom saw anything that showed any sign of taste, art, and
orderliness. How different from Japan, where all the swords, lacquer
work, braziers, teacups, &c., kept in the better temples would
deserve a place in some of the art museums of Europe.

In the sketch of the first voyage from Novaya Zemlya to Ceylon, a
countryman of Lidner can scarcely avoid giving a picture of
"Ceylon's burned up vales." In this respect the following extract
from a letter