One of the rooms of the _pasangrahan_, reserved, under the old dispensation, for the storing of detached pieces of sculpture, was called the sample-room because, according to current report, orders were taken there for the delivery of such still undetached ornament and statuary as might have struck the visitors’ fancy. Other images lined the path from the _pasangrahan_ to the temple, among them two Dhyani Buddhas, a fine Akshobhya and a still finer Amitabha, and lions, the poor remainder of those which once adorned the steps leading to the raised level of the building, whence the name: Avenue of Lions. Seemingly commanded to descend from the places where they kept guard as solitary sentinels, and to unite for defence at the point of greatest danger, terrible havoc was wrought in their ranks by the onslaught of souvenir-hunters, and one of their large-limbed, beautifully chiselled chiefs, who himself watched the entrance with a vauntful air as if proclaiming to foe and friend alike: _Et s’il n’en reste qu’un, moi je serai celui-là_, had to suffer the ignominy of being captured and carried off to Siam--which proves his Majesty Chulalongkorn’s good taste: it was the best specimen of animal carving on that scale in Java. These are no cheerful reflections when approaching the eminence skillfully converted into a _stupa_ whose equal, both in originality of design and cleverness of execution, can nowhere be found. Though India furnished its prototype, the style here evolved baffles, on close examination, all comparison. The only building it can be likened to is the Taj Mahal at Agra, and only in this single respect while differing in all others, that, conceived by a titanic intellect, the delicate decoration suggests the minute precision of the jeweller’s craft. Opening and closing a distinct chapter in architecture, this admirable production rises in terraces which form galleries round the hill-top, enclosed by walls, spaced on the outside by 432 niches for statues of the Buddha with _prabha_ (aureole) and _padmasana_ (lotus cushion), on the inside with representations illustrating sacred and profane writings in bas-relief; the galleries of the superstructure raised on the square ground-plan, become circular and are bounded by 72 bell-shaped _chaityas_ containing statues of the Buddha without either _prabha_ or _padmasana_, or any ornament whatever. The profuse decoration of their surroundings never detracts from the powerfully expressed central idea of praise to the Enlightened One, the one who has fulfilled his end; the repetition of the motives manifesting the religious purpose, directs rather than confuses the attention of the worshipper in their multiformity of application. The spiritual father of the Boro Budoor must have been a man of strong mental grasp, of honest masculine endeavour stimulated by a highly sensitive temperament; his work, “a goodly heap for to behold,” growing in dignity and beauty the closer