In the foregoing pages we have endeavoured to give a faithful account of the great religious order existing in countries where genuine Buddhism is the prevailing creed. We have been obliged, for the sake of truth, to mention many abuses that have slowly crept into it; but we never entertained the slightest intention of casting a malignant contempt or a sneering ridicule upon its members. Most sincerely we pity those unfortunate victims of error and superstition who are wasting their time and energies in the fruitless pursuit of an imaginary felicity. No language can adequately express the ardour and intensity of our desires, sighs, and prayers to hasten the coming of the day when the thick mist and dark cloud that encompass their souls shall be dissipated, and the Sun of Righteousness shall shed into them his vivifying beams. However deplorable their intellectual blindness may be, we always felt that they have a right to be fairly and impartially dealt with. The religious order they belong to is, after all, the greatest in its extent and diffusion, the most extraordinary and perfect in its fabric and constituent parts, and the wisest in its rules and prescriptions, that has ever existed either in ancient or modern times without the pale of Christianity. ADDENDA. Many persons have often put to the writer the following question:—Is it credible that the founder of Buddhism established from the beginning a body of religious, with so perfect an hierarchy and so complete an organisation as to elicit the wonder and astonishment of all those who contemplate it with a serious attention? No doubt, Buddhists attribute to Gaudama all the regulations contained in the Patimauk, or the book of the _enfranchisement_; they maintain that the contents of Cambawa, or book for the ordination of Patzins, have been arranged by the same hand. But the absurdity of such an assertion cannot fail to strike the eyes of even a superficial observer. These two books, with their elaborate divisions and subdivisions, must have been gradually prepared and arranged at an epoch when Buddhism had taken deep root and spread its branches far and wide, and had become the dominant religion in the countries where it is flourishing. To confer splendour on the admittance of individuals into the body of monks, the rules of the Cambawa were enacted. To render the life of religious an object of greater veneration in the eyes of the community, the regulations of the Patimauk were devised, and were very likely brought, by a slow process, to the state of completeness we see them at present.