strongest repugnance to Siva’s prime attribute. Under the circumstances we need not wonder that the Islām did so little to stimulate art in Java. Christianity did still less, rather clogged it in its application to native industries, which suffered from the country being flooded with stuff as cheap as possible in every respect, but sold at the highest possible prices to benefit manufacturers in Europe. This is not the place to expatiate on this subject nor to discuss present efforts (in which alas! personal ambitions play first fiddle and jeopardise results) to revive what lies at the point of death after centuries of culpable discouragement, the professional secrets and peculiar devices of native arts and crafts, requiring hereditary skill and the delicate touch of experienced fingers to attain former perfection, being now already half forgotten or altogether lost. Concerning the ancient monuments of Java, it is to the British Interregnum, to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles that we owe the first measures for their preservation and the first systematic survey of specimens of Hindu workmanship as beautiful as any in the world, more in particular of the Prambanan temples, and also of the Boro Budoor, by common consent the masterpiece of Buddhist architecture. Marshalling his assistants in the archaeological field, especially Cornelius and Wardenaar (whose fruitful explorations and excavations deserved fuller acknowledgment than they received from him), a diligent student besides of the history and literature of the island, doing for Java in that respect what Marsden had done for Sumatra, he inspired Dr. Leyden, Colonel Mackenzie and his rival John Crawfurd among his contemporaries, and of younger generations now equally gone, Wilsen, Leemans, Brumund, Friederich, Junghuhn, Cohen Stuart, Holle,--_j’en passe et des meilleurs_! The value of their labours must be recognised and it is the fault of the Dutch Government’s apathetic attitude that with such forces at its disposal, so little has been achieved. Each of them, with few exceptions, worked independently of the other and blazed his own personal path in the wilderness of Dutch East Indian antiquities. There was, as Fergusson complained, no system, no leading spirit to give unity to the whole. Disconnected, sometimes misdirected investigation did not result in more than an accumulation of fragmentary material for possible future use, _rudis indigestaque moles_. And meanwhile the glorious remains of a lost civilisation went more and more to ruin. They were drawn upon for purposes of public and private building; statues and ornament disappeared, not only in consequence of the unchecked, persistent nibbling of the tooth of time, and it seemed almost so much gained if Doorga or Ganesa reappeared occasionally in the function of domestic goddess or god to some Resident or Assistant Resident who demonstrated his devotion to ancient art and care for the preservation