I wish I could say as much for the religious prospects of Java as I can say for its economical and political prospects. There is even greater need of change in this regard, for the island has been a very stronghold of Buddhism, as it is now of Mohammedanism. When driven out from India, the Buddhist missionaries came to Java and here found a welcome. Javanese kings erected temples so enormous and so rich in sculpture that, defaced and decayed as they now are, they have no superiors on earth. It was, indeed, the fame of Boro Budor, that most attracted us to Java, and we made a journey of thirteen hours to inspect this renowned ruin. Imagine a structure upon an eminence from which it is visible for miles, yet walled in on one side by a lofty range of mountains, and on the other side commanding a magnificent view of cultivated plains. Imagine a temple of brick, like the great pyramid of Egypt, more than five hundred feet square, with five broad terraces, the uppermost of which encloses an immense sitting statue of Buddha. The topmost crown of this solid structure rises more than two hundred feet above the ground. The wonder of Boro Budor is, however, not the vastness of the structure, containing though it does an amount of material five times as great as that of any English cathedral, so much as it is the enormous amount of artistic work that has been expended upon it. Each of these five terraces has sculptured upon its side walls some representation in bas-relief of the legendary incidents of Buddha's existence, not only in the present state, but in his previous states of being. You walk, as it were, through a picture-gallery of the life of Buddha. The bas-reliefs are wrought out with such delicacy as to suggest the influence of Greek art upon the multitude of artists who toiled for years to produce them. The effect, at least, is Grecian; and the number of the plaques is so great that, if they were placed in a continuous row, the line would be three miles long. Besides these sculptures, the terrace-walls are interrupted at regular intervals by four hundred and thirty-six niches or alcove-chapels, each with its image of Buddha facing the outside world, so that the visitor approaching the temple cannot fail to see one hundred and nine Buddhas, or one-fourth of the total number, looking down upon him. Above these alcove-chapels there are seventy-two small latticed domes, or dagobas, each with its statue of Buddha imprisoned within, as if he were preparing himself, by seclusion and meditation, for the final state in which the great chamber which crowns the structure represents him, I mean the state of passivity and bliss, which has escaped the evils of transmigration and has attained to absorption of personal existence of the impersonal world-force which the Hindu called Brahma.