The Buddhistic, symbol, or mystic form of concentrated prayer, _Om mani padme hom_, is not only heard from every mouth, or silently repeated on the rosary, but is to be seen written everywhere--in streets, public places, walls of apartments, on the fringes of the ceremonial scarf, on the flags that wave from the house-tops, and from cairns on the mountains; engraven on the rocks, carved on monuments by the way, or formed with stones, in gigantic spelling, on the hill-side, so as to be legible at considerable distances. Rich Buddhists maintain travelling Lamas, to go about, like Old Mortality, with hammer and chisel, multiplying the sacred sentences on the faces of the cliffs, and on stones by the highway. The words are Sanscrit, and came from India with the Buddhist faith in the seventh century. The Lamas say that these sacred words include an infinity of doctrine, which the life of man suffices not to survey, but their infinitesimal amount of meaning to the uninitiated is said to be--"_Oh, the precious lotus.--Amen!_" The great difference between the Tibetan lama-serais and the convents of Romanised Europe appears to be, that the members of the former, though subjected to the same rule, and under one superior, cannot be said to live in common, the various gradations of wealth and poverty being as distinctly marked among them as among the laity. Lamas in rags may sometimes be seen begging of their wealthy brethren in the same convent. The revenue of the convent foundation, if it has one, is distributed at intervals in the form of a scanty supply of meal, in rations proportioned to rank in the hierarchy. Occasionally donations from pilgrims also fall to be divided. Sometimes a pilgrim "stands" tea to the whole convent--no small expense, when it numbers several thousand members. Many Lamas augment their means by practising as physicians, fortune-tellers, or exorcists; by various handicrafts, or by keeping retail-shops for the benefit of their brethren. Others are occupied in printing or transcribing religious books. The character is alphabetic, being a modification of the Nagari or Sanscrit letters introduced by Tongmi Sambodha, one of the first missionaries of Buddhism; but printing is, of course, conducted on the Chinese block system. The leaves are loose, printed on both sides, placed between two wooden boards, and tied with a yellow band. The character used in correspondence differs greatly from that of the printed books and literary MSS., being much more rounded and fluent. It is, however, perhaps, like our own writing, only a modification of the other adapted to a current hand.