his own furnace. We have glass enough with- toasted him, and he came out a little fat pitchout him."

"Very good, your Majesty," answered the Giant, pulling up his waistband. But in the doorway he met a workman as monstrous as himself.

"What are you doing here?" asked the workman, and fastened the end of his rod on the Giant's nose.

Oh! then the Giant roared; but roaring was of no use. Up he went in the air, for all his twenty feet of length. The workman blew with all his might, and the Giant drew up and rounded into a great glass bubble. The workman dropped him into a bottle-mould and blew again, and the Giant came out a bottle. And it is decreed that he shall always be full of the nastiest medicine, and that he shall always be horribly afraid of being broken.

Just as this was completed the King, hearing the uproar, came running in.

er; and he, also, will always be afraid of being broken, and so sorry that people will wipe him out dry and never leave him a drop for himself. As for the Wise Man, he blows glass for all the kingdom, and grows richer every day.

THE

THE SACRED CITY OF THE HINDUS.

HE peculiar interest which antiquity im- | cause also it presents diversities as remarkable parts to cities and monuments is not due as those which separate our flowers and forests to age alone, to the lapse of time merely, by and animals from the vegetable and animal which these objects become remote, so as to be monstrosities of pre-Adamite existence. In seen through the long vista of many intervening some respects it is to our modern life like the generations, but to the unfamiliarity with which representations of art, "similia in alia materia," age invests all things, separating them from us like a sculptured bass-relief, or like a drama. by abysses which sometimes neither the mem- The mask and buskin and other paraphernalia ory nor the records of men can span or illumin- of the Grecian stage did not more effectually ate. They become thus hieroglyphic symbols remove the actor into a sphere separate from of a life which in some sense belongs to us, be- that of the spectator (so isolated, indeed, that cause it is human; but we can only imperfectly within this charmed circle the descent of the read the signs, and though our sympathy is gods from above, or the ascent of furies from courted, our intelligence is defied. The chal- the under world, never taxed the imagination of lenge to our powers of analysis, thus sent, as the Athenian audience to give to these apparifrom a distant star whose light is thrown like a tions the semblance of reality) than do the difgauntlet at our feet ages after its own dissolu- ferences of outward circumstance, of temperation, sharpens curiosity and augments our in- ment, of mental constitution-in fine, of all the terest. The very darkness which gathers about conditions which regulate thought and action, the path of the antiquarian lends the romance separate from us the men and women of the of wonder and adventure to his most tedious ancient world. Not more unfamiliar to Homer investigations. He is the leader and repre- or to his audience appeared the heroes that sentative of the telescopic intelligence of his warred about Troy, or even those ancient ladies era striving to resolve into constellations the of whom Ulysses caught a passing glimpse in nebulous milky-way of pre-historic times; and the dark recesses of Hades, than do Homer and even his partial success crowns him with brighter his contemporaries appear to us. The removal honors than are awarded to triumphant geolo- by death of a single generation of men shuts gists and astronomers. against the following one the gates of a world Antiquity discloses to us a life which is our more alien than it is credited to be, or than the own and yet not our own, just as old earth- record of it which survives ever perfectly indifossils establish a similarity of types at the same cates. The Puritan is already a stranger, how time that they indicate forms and proportions much more the ancient Scythian, or Egyptian, or with which we are unacquainted. It is the Hindu, who are not only removed from us by a same life, but revolves in a separate orbit and succession of generations, but also by alienaabout a different centre. It is not only differ- tion of race and climate-who inhabited regions ent because we view it in perspective, but be- which even to the cultivated Greeks and Romans

us when we behold the pyramids and the face of Memnon. It afforded the basis of the most sacred oath known to the ancients. It was the ground of that fear which the Greeks personified in Nemesis.

lects of Europe, after patient and long-continued examination, have been well-nigh baffled in the attempt to discover which is fiction and which is fact. A few threads of truth have rewarded their pains, and perhaps a few others may occasionally be drawn forth; but that the gaudy-colored fabric of Hindu history, manufactured by themselves, will ever be satisfactorily separated into its two component parts is as hopeless as to expect that the waters of the Jumna will ever cease to mingle with the waters of the Ganges....... The result is, that this city of Benares, whose antiquity is very great, is robbed of much of the glory which is justly her due."*

The study of Indian antiquities is very recent. "Only within the last few years," says Mr. Sherring, "so far as I am aware, have any inquiries been made in a regular manner after old build

But the zeal of the historian and the archæologist-a zeal born of this Race-Passion—is often baffled, and is never perfectly satisfied with the results of its search. The startling events of remote history have left behind them sometimes no trace at all, and often only faint signs which are scarcely intelligible. The invasion of the Shepherd Kings—in itself, doubtless, an occurrence of great and lasting moment-left but a dent upon the soil of Egypt. Nomadic invasions in Asia that, age after age, overturned empires have left no more palpable record than the flight of comets through space upon the regions they have traversed. most ancient monuments known to the anti-ings in Benares. James Prinsep, the great Inquarian―signs, perhaps, of conquests that shook the world, or of religious emotions which swayed millions of the human race-stare us stolidly in the face; they can not tell their story. More recent memorials, having still hovering about them the fragrance of the meanings which they embody, are confused, the symbols of one age being blended with, or, as in a palimpsest, written over those of another.

The

dian archæologist, was a resident in the city for about ten years; but it does not appear that he made any important discoveries in it......Major Kittoe, the late Government archæologist, and the architect of the Government College—a beautiful Gothic structure in the suburbs of the city—although interesting himself in the excavations of Sárnáth, some three miles north of Benares, did not, so far as is known, examine the city itself. Indeed, so inattentive was he to its claims to antiquity that he removed many cart-loads of heavy stones, some of which were curiously carved, from Bakarígá Kund, on the confines of the city, and not more than a mile from the college which he was erecting, without reflecting that they might possibly be relics of ancient buildings formerly situated on that site. As a fact, they were originally connected with a series of Buddhist edifices covering perhaps as much space as those structures the foundations and remains of which are found at Sárnáth. A third archeologist, Mr. Thomas, late Judge of Benares, and a distinguished numismatist, trod in the same footsteps, only taking interest in the coins discovered in the city and in the Sárnáth explorations. As instances of ruthless spoliation, I may here remark that, in the erection of one of the bridges over the river Barna, forty-eight statues and other sculptured stones were removed from Sárnáth and thrown into the river, to serve as a breakwater to the piers; and that, in the erection of the second bridge, the iron one, from fifty to sixty cartloads of stones from the Sárnáth buildings were employed. But this Vandalism hardly equals that of Babu Jagat Sinh, who, in the last century, carted away an entire tope, or sacred tower, from the same vast store-house, with which he built Jagat Ganj, a ward or district in the suburbs of the city." Much of the existing city has been built in comparatively modern times, and, with the exception of an occasional bit of

Thus it is with Benares-the Sacred City of the Hindus-a city so ancient that its origin is only mythically recorded. As the religious centre of Hinduism, of Buddhism, and then of Hinduism again, and for a long period as a secondary centre of Islamism, it has influenced the faith of more than half of the world's population. But numerous conflicts have almost entirely obliterated its earliest monuments; and what has not been thus obliterated has become inextricably confused on account of the appropriation by one conquering faith of the religious temples of that which preceded. Hindu writers have done little to relieve the difficulties of the archæologist; "they have shown a singular neglect of chronology, and an utter distaste for noting and recording historical facts in a simple and consecutive manner. This is the more remarkable when it is remembered that many of them have been accustomed to close thought, and have prided themselves on their intellectual acumen, that they have originated numerous systems of philosophy, and made great pretensions to logical accuracy; and that the habit of the nation generally, for thousands of years, has been to reverence the past, and to reflect upon and observe, with punctilious nicety, its religious ceremonies and social usages.. They possess no single record, among the ten thousand separate manuscript works of which their ancient literature is said to be composed, on the historical correctness of which one can place much reliance. Legendary stories are so intermingled with real events, and the web of the one is so intimately inwoven with the woof * The quotations given in this paper, unless referred to other authority, are from Mr. Sherring's work, of the other, and the two form so homogene-"The Sacred City of the Hindus," recently published ous a whole, that the finest microscopic intel- in London.

old frieze or cornice, or a broken bass-relief or architecture, but also sculptured stones of many statue, inserted into recent walls, deposited over kinds distributed among the walls and foundadrains, or lying neglected by the side of the tions of modern houses, and in such profusion road, there is nothing of an ancient character that there can be no doubt as to the existence visible in a large section of it; but in the north- of an older city upon this site. Some of the ern quarter of the city there exist a large num- capitals, pillars, bases, architraves, and mouldber of isolated specimens of architectural re-ings are most severely simple in their type, indimains of various stages of antiquity. Not only cating great antiquity, while others are crowded are there in this quarter separate buildings, or with ornamentation. parts of buildings, of an early style of Hindu VOL. XXXVIII.-No. 228.-48

"It is worthy of notice," says Mr. Sherring,

66

Benares, now the capital of a division of the Bengal Presidency, is situated on the left bank of the Ganges, 390 miles northwest from Calcutta, but probably more than twice that distance if measured by the tortuous course of the river. It stretches for several miles along the edge of the Ganges, from which ascend numer

as illustrating the nature of Mohammedan | and Southern India; the latter being frequentrule in India, that nearly all the buildings in ly of gigantic dimensions. Yet, in respect of Benares, of acknowledged antiquity, have been symmetry and beauty, the difference is immenseappropriated by the Mussulmans; being usedly in favor of the Northern fanes." as mosques, mausoleums, dargáhs, and so forth; The purpose of Mr. Sherring's work is to give and also that a large portion of the separate pil- a representation of Benares as she was and as lars, architraves, and various other ancient re- she is; of "her early condition-her connecmains, which, as before remarked, are so plenti- tion with ancient Buddhism, her architectural fully found in one part of the city, now contrib- remains, her famous temples, holy wells and ute to the support and adornment of their edi- tanks, and numerous gháts or stairs leading fices. Not content with destroying temples and down to the Ganges-the legends concerning mutilating idols with all the zeal of fanatics, them-the peculiar customs at the templesthey fixed their greedy eyes on whatever object the ceremonies of the idolator-the modes of was suited to their own purposes, and, without worship-the religious festivals, and other topscruple or any of the tenderness shown by the ics, illustrative of the character which Benapresent rulers, seized upon it for themselves. res maintains as the sacred city of India." This And thus it has come to pass that every solid subject is the more interesting in that Benares, and durable structure, and every ancient stone which has held for 2500 years a foremost place of value, being esteemed by them as their pe- in the history of India, is likely to retain this culiar property, has, with very few exceptions, position in the new era of enlightenment which, passed into their hands. We believe it was the under the auspices of Christianity, has already boast of Alauddin that he had destroyed one dawned upon that land. thousand temples in Benares alone. How many more were razed to the ground, or transformed into mosques through the iconoclastic fervor of Aurungzeb, there is no means of knowing; but it is not too much to say that he was unsurpassed in this feature of religious fanaticism by any of his predecessors. If there is one circumstance respecting the Mohammed-ous gháts or flights of stone steps. The streets an period which Hindus remember better than another it is the insulting pride of the Mussulmans, the outrages which they perpetrated upon their religious convictions, and the extensive spoliation of their temples and shrines....... When we endeavor to ascertain what the Mohammedans have left to the Hindus of their ancient buildings in Benares, we are startled at the result of our investigations. Although the city is bestrewn with temples in every direction, in some places very thickly, yet it would be difficult, I believe, to find twenty temples in all Benares of the age of Aurungzeb, or from 1658 to 1707. The same unequal proportion of old temples as compared with new is visible throughout the whole of Northern India. Moreover, the diminutive size of nearly all the temples that exist is another powerful testimony to the stringency of the Mohammedan rule. It "In the comparative cool of the early morning I sallied out on a stroll through the outskirts of Benares. seems clear that, for the most part, the emper- Thousands of women were stepping gracefully along ors forbade the Hindus to build spacious tem- the crowded roads, bearing on their heads the waterples, and suffered them to erect only small struc- jars, while at every few paces there was a well, at tures, of the size of cages, for their idols, and which hundreds were waiting along with the bheesties their turn for lowering their bright gleaming copper these of no pretensions to beauty. The conse-cups to the well water to fill their skins or vases. All quence is, that the Hindus of the present day, blindly following the example of their predecessors of two centuries ago, commonly build their religious edifices of the same dwarfish size as formerly; but, instead of plain, ugly buildings, they are often of elegant construction. Some of them, indeed, are so delicately carved externally, are so crowded with bass-reliefs and minute sculpturing, are so lavishly ornamented that the eye of the beholder becomes satiated and wearied. In regard to size there is a marked difference between the temples of Northern

are narrow; and the buildings, principally of stone, are very lofty, and are built to inclose a circular space; they often contain 200 inhabitants each. The entire population is estimated at from 200,000 to 500,000; the exact number it is scarcely possible to determine owing to the immense fluctuating population, but it is probably about 400,000, of whom one-tenth are Mohammedans. Benares is properly the only Hindu city in India. The wealthy residents live in detached houses, surrounded by walls with open courts; the poorer live in mud huts, of which there are about 16,000.

Mr. C. W. Dilke, in his recently published work, "Greater Britain," gives the following graphic description of the city as it now appears:

were keeping up a continual chatter, women with women, men with men; all the tongues were running ceaselessly. It is astonishing to see the indignation that a trifling mishap creates-sach gesticulation, such shouting and loud talk, you would think that murder at least was in question. The world can not show the Hindu's equal as a babbler; the women talk while they grind corn, the men while they smoke their water pipes; your true Hindu is never quiet; when not walking he is playing on his tom-tom.

"The Doorgha Khond, the famed temple of the Sacred Monkeys, I found thronged with worshipers and of the best holy tanks in India, but has not much garlanded in every part with roses; it overhangs one beauty or grandeur, and is chiefly remarkable for the