“Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian,” says the Rev. Mr. Maurice, “be offended at the preceding assertion, that the _cross_ was one of the most usual symbols among the hieroglyphics of Egypt and India. Equally honoured in the Gentile and the Christian world, this emblem of universal nature, of that world to whose quarters its diverging radii pointed, decorated the hands of most of the sculptured images in the former country, and in the latter stamped its form upon the most majestic of the shrines of their deities.”[336] The _fact_ alone is here attested to: not a syllable is said as to the _reason why_: and though I cannot but recognise the _scruples_ of the _writer_, nor withhold my admiration from the _rotundity_ in which the diction has been cast, yet the reader must have seen that, as to _actual illustration_, it is--like the Rev. Mr. Deane’s _flourish_ about the worship of the serpent--“_Vox et præterea nihil_!”[337] “You do err, not knowing the Scriptures,”[338] said a Master, _without pride_, and _who could not err_. If the remark applied in _His_ day, it is not the less urgent in ours. So astounding did the correspondence between the Christian and the Budhist doctrines appear to the early missionaries to Thibet and the adjacent countries--a correspondence not limited to mere points of _faith_ and preceptorial maxims, but exhibiting its operation in all the outward details of _form_, the inhabitants going even so far as to wear _crosses_ around their necks--that Thevenot, Renaudot, Lacroze, and Andrada, have supposed in their ignorance of the cause of such affinity, that Budhism must have been a vitiation of _Christianity_ before planted; whereas _Budhism_ flourished thousands of years before it, or Brahminism either; and _this cross was the symbol of Budha crucified_. “Our second illustration,” says the _Dublin Penny Journal_, referring to what I have here introduced, “belongs to a later period, and will give a good idea of the usual mode of representing the _Saviour_, whether on stone crosses, or on bronze, which prevailed from the sixth to the twelfth century. Such remains however, are valuable, not only as memorials of the arts, but as preserving the Celtic costume of a portion of the inhabitants of our island in those remote ages. It will be seen that in _this_, as in one of the shrine-figures before given, the kilt, or philibeg, is distinctly marked, and _controverts the erroneous assertion_ of Pinkerton, formerly noticed, that “it was always quite unknown amongst the Welsh and Irish.”[339] [Illustration]