fair foreigner made herself queen-mother and her son king, above the lawful heir, whom she was instrumental (perhaps purposely) in getting out of the way by furthering his wishes. Moral obliquities are little considered in these fair favorites of translunary powers. Visakha, in one Buddhist tale, gets herself chosen by the Brahman as bride of a great man by her care to veil her charms at the bath; in another tale she attracts a prime minister in disguise, and becomes his wife, partly by laying aside all of her clothing at a bathing tank where she knows he will see her. Bathsheba's fame is similarly various. Her nudity and ready adultery with the king did not prevent her from passing into Talmudic tradition as "blessed among women," and to her was even ascribed the beautiful chapter of Proverbs (xxxi.) in praise of the virtuous wife! In the "Wisdom of Solomon" she is described as the "handmaiden" of the Lord in anticipation of the Christian ideal of immaculate womanhood. A similar development might no doubt be traced in the beautiful story of Vi[']s[=]akh[=]a of Shravasti, the most famous of the female lay-disciples of Buddha. The queries put to her by Buddha and her explanations of her petitions, which had appeared enigmatic, are related in Carus's Gospel of Buddha, and in form correspond with the very different questions and solutions that passed between the Brahman and the Tibetan Visakha, already mentioned. The name Visakha, from a Sanskrit root, meaning to divide, came to mean selection and intelligence, of all kinds, but in the matron of Shravastî wit becomes the genius of charity, and cleverness expands to enlightenment. The Queen of Sheba,--"Queen of the Seven,"--is a sister spirit of this lay-disciple. Whatever truth may underlie the legends of this lady, there is little doubt of her legendary relation to the Wise Women of Buddhist parables,--to Visakha of the sevenfold wisdom; and of her who decided between the rival claimants to the same child; to Ambapali, the courtesan, who journeyed to hear Buddha's wisdom and presented to him and his disciples her park and mansion; and to the Queen of Glory, whose story belongs "to a very early period in the history of Buddhism." Such is the opinion of Mr. Rhys Davids, whose translation of the Mahásudassana-Sutta, containing an account of the queen's visit to the King of Glory, in his Palace of Justice, attended by her fourfold army, may be read in Vol. XI., p. 276, of Sacred Books of the East. This exaltation of human knowledge and wisdom, travelling to find it, testing it with riddles and questions, belongs to the cult of the Magus and the Pundit.