The second quarter of the Brahmin’s life is thus employed. He marries and lives with his family, but he must consider his chief employment to be the teaching of the Vedas and a zealous discharge of the religious observances and of all that relates to public worship. He must sedulously abstain from too sensual and worldly enjoyments, even from music, dancing, and other amusements calculated to lead to dissipation. The Buddhist monkish institution being not hereditary, and its continuance and development having not to depend upon generation, its members are bound to a strict celibacy, and to an absolute and entire abstinence from all sensual and worldly enjoyments inconsistent with gravity, self-recollection, and self-denial. Their chief occupation is teaching to children the rudiments of reading and writing, that they might read religious books, which are the only ones used in schools. He must pay a strict regard to devotional practices, and take care that the religious observances and ceremonies be regularly attended to in his monastery. The third quarter of his life is spent by the Brahmin in solitude as an anchorite. He dwells in the forests, where he must procure what is necessary for food and raiment. The latter article is looked after when he thinks it to be a requisite to cover his nakedness. With many of them fanaticism has so far prevailed over reason and the sense of decency that they live in a state of disgusting nakedness. The roots of plants, the fruits and leaves of wild trees, will supply the needful for the support of nature. That time too must be devoted to the infliction of the severest penances and to the practice of the hardest deeds of mortification. To the Buddhist monk solitude and retirement must ever be dear. Ascetic life is much recommended, and praised as most excellent. It was formerly much in use among religious Buddhists. In Burmah several places are pointed out with respect as having been sanctified by the residence of holy anchorites. Now in our days a few zealots, to bear, as it were, witness to this ancient observance, retire into solitude during a portion of the three months of Lent. The spirit of mortification and self-renouncing is eminently Buddhist; but from the very days of Gaudama we remark a positive tendency on the part of his religious to give up and renounce those unnatural and ultra-rigorous penances regularly observed by their brethren of the opposite creed. The principle is cherished by them, but the mode of carrying it into practice is more mild, and more consonant with reason and modesty.