The Boro Budoor was never hidden from view to the point of blotting out its existence from memory. I shall have occasion to refer to native chronicles mentioning it in the eighteenth century. To speak of its rediscovery by Cornelius is therefore inaccurate though we owe to that clever Lieutenant of Engineers, purposely sent to the Kadu by Raffles, in 1814, the first scientific survey and description with elucidating drawings. Except for the publication, in 1873, of Dr. C. Leemans’ book with an atlas containing illustrations after drawings by F. C. Wilsen, and the mission of I. van Kinsbergen to obtain photographic reproductions of the reliefs, the Dutch Government left the matchless temple entirely to its fate until very recently. An official correspondence, kept trailing indefinitely to invest ministerial promises regarding the antiquities of Java with a semblance of sincerity, had the usual negative effect. Whenever a colonial Excellency declared with unctuous pomposity that the most conscientious care would be taken of the Boro Budoor, a monument of incalculable value considered from the standpoint of science and art, most brilliant memento of the island’s historic past, etc., etc., those versed in the phraseology of Plein and Binnenhof at the Hague trembled in expectation of bad news of criminal negligence, theft and mutilation to follow. The later history of the “brilliant memento” agrees but too well with the ominous prognostics derived from such dismal parliamentary fustian. A great poet sang of things of beauty scarce visible from extreme loveliness: the readily movable things of beauty constituting the loveliness of the Boro Budoor, became invisible _sans phrase_. We are told in legendary lore of statues which flew through the air to take domicile at enormous distances from their proper homes, or vanished altogether, dissolving into space: the statues of the Boro Budoor developed that faculty in an astonishing degree; if handicapped by great weight or solid attachment to the main structure, bent on travelling _à tout travers_, they sent their heads alone to seek recreation and instruction in the varying ways of the world, and their heads did never return, either because they were amusing themselves too jollily away from the austerities of the eight-fold path or because they found themselves unavoidably detained in durance vile.