some setting of its surroundings. To adequately describe this feature, either from its artistic or religious aspects, is an impossibility, and no reproduction can give any idea of its gorgeous effect, owing to the brilliancy of the material in which it is executed. In the bright sunlight of the country, the burnished figures take on an added power, and by their great projection, reaching out from the composition, seem to sear themselves into the imagination. The crawling lizard of gilded bronze on the moulding palpitates like a living thing in the heat, and the many arms of the great god in the trefoil tympanum are full of a movement and action which seem real. But apart from this view of its magnificence, the religious meaning in the whole conception is stupendous. Complete volumes of Hindu and Buddhist thought are embodied in its design, and the meanest member of either of these faiths is able to read in almost any part of it some simple story that he can understand, or extract therefrom some attractive allegory which may stimulate his mind. The artist, whether of the east or west, who has
