"What bird is this?" he said to the servante, but she was suddenly called

away.

When the landlord brought up his account that night-"By-the-bye," said the guest, "what is become of that nice little owl I was so fond of?"

66

A colly

mates and companions of man.
dog, on whom the most important part of
his shepherd master's work depends, the
retriever, who can do anything but
speak," these are friends, hardly to be de-
graded into pets.

The faculty of taming wild animals, "Monsieur," said the host, going on which some men possess in so remarkable with the bill, "has been content of the a degree, would be worth studying more service?" accurately - with some it seems to deQuite satisfied," replied the English-pend on the strength of the instinctive "but I am very sorry about the owl; what is become of her?" "Monsieur has had his potage, his roti, his deux, and his gibier each day he has been here?"

man;

Yes, yes," said the other impatiently; "but about the owl?" A horrible suspicion crossed his mind.

"Monsieur, on this the last day, behold, with all my possible efforts, I could get no game, alas, for Monsieur's dinner!" "What!" cried the horrified guest, "you did not kill the little owl for me!"

་་

Oh, non, Monsieur! il est mort tout seul!"

part which we share with the animal creation. A deaf and dumb man has been known to possess it to a great degree. With others it seems to depend upon patience, quiet tenderness, and a determined will.

An old man who led a secluded life in an ancient house, in the midst of trees and fields, might be seen with the robins, tomtits, &c., perched on his shoulders and taking crumbs out of his mouth.

A more extraordinary proof of confidence in birds was to be witnessed one year in the crowded Tuileries gardens. An old man in very shabby dress might The stealing of pet dogs has become a be seen any day summoning birds from regular trade, or rather an art, according the trees and houses round: pigeons, as it is now pursued, the stalking of the sparrows, thrushes, &c., came flying up, master or mistress, so as to know all their fluttered over his head, alighted on his hat, haunts, and time the exact instant most his shoulders and arms, and sat there capropitions for the capture of the well-ressing him. He did not feed them, at watched beast. While the calculations, least ostensibly, and when, after a time, upon the most refined psychological prin- he had had apparently enough of their ciples of the precise moment when the company, with a wave of his hand he disagony of the bereaved will bring about missed his court, which all flew quietly the highest amount of reward, how not away at the signal. They wanted apparto offer hopes too soon, and not to de- ently nothing but friendliness from him, lay too long, all this has reached the dig- and on his part it was not done for money, nity of an exact science. "How do you but simply for his own pastime, and when settle the amount to be asked, is it accord- the reception was over he walked away ing to the breed of the dog?" said the among the crowd, which seemed too well fleeced but happy recoverer of a beloved used to the sight to heed it much./ pug to the trader. "Oh no, sir we doos it by the feelinx of the party."

Perhaps the only really happy and satisfactory pets are wild animals, which lead their own natural lives, obtaining food by their own exertions, but adding a friendship for man and an occasional luxury at his hands to their usual course of woodland existence. A squirrel in this way has been known to enter the open window every morning where a family were breakfasting, run up the back of the master, and nestle in his coat-collar, when it received a nut.

In general, however, we are too stupid in our intercourse with animals to attempt to understand the language they use, or to try to perfect the signs by which they are to interpret our wishes; although the occasional instances, often accidental, show how much might be done in this way.

A cat in a Swiss cottage had taken poison, and came in a pitiful state of pain to seek its mistress's help. The fever and heat were so great, that it dipped its own paws into a pan of water, an almost unheard-of proceeding in a water-hating cat. She wrapped it in wet linen, fed it with Besides these are such creatures as are gruel, nursed it and doctored it all the kept for use, not for play, who, even day and night after. It recovered, and though their food be found for them, are could not find ways enough to show its quite unspoiled by luxury, and lead a life gratitude. One evening she had gone upof independent usefulness as the help-stairs to bed, when a mew at the window

roused her, she got up and opened it, and found the cat which had climbed a peartree nailed against the house, with a mouse in its mouth. This it laid as an offering at its mistress's feet and went away. For above a year it continued to bring these tributes to her. Even when it had kittens they were not allowed to touch this reserved share, and if they attempted to eat it, the mother gave them a little tap, "that is not for thee." After awhile, however, the mistress accepted the gift, thanked the giver with a pleased look and restored the mouse, when the cat permitted her children to take the prey which had served its purpose in her eyes. Here was a refined feeling of gratitude, remembered for months after, quite disinterested, and placed above the natural instincts (always strong in a cat) towards her own offspring. If the question of the capabilities of animals, their affections and powers of memory, both evidently great-their degree of ideality, often in a dog very strong the amount of their reasoning power, i.e. of foreseeing the consequences of an action and guarding against them, or accomplishing new and untried object, were as studied as it might be in the very intimate intercourse existing between pets and their masters, much would be done towards reconciling outsiders to that very exclusive relation, and making pets an interest instead of a nuisance to the public in general, as is now too often their fate.

From Good Words.
BUDDHIST PREACHING.

date their text, or to interest their audience, so, among the Buddhists, monks are occasionally found who leave the customary track and preach intelligibly to attentive hearers.

The most common of the popular preachings are extracts from the Life of Buddha, and from stories of his acts in previous stages of his transmigrations, such as tales of his devotion when, millions of years ago, he cast himself into a ditch, and made a bridge of his body, that the great Teacher, the Buddha of those days, might pass in comfort; or of his vast works of charity, when he lived as the Prince Wessantara, when he gave away his kingdom, his wealth, his elephants, his horses, his carriage, and his children, and was willing to give away his wife.

The public sermons or readings are given in large halls attached to the monasteries, not in the temples themselves. There are also frequent private sermons, in the palaces of the nobles and the houses of the people, whither the monks are invited (with the understanding that they will be remunerated) to give to their inviter, his family, and dependants an opportunity of making merit by hearing the Law.

I had been a long while resident in Siam before I was invited to make a little merit for myself by attending at one of these private gatherings, and possibly the invitation would never have come but for the arrival of a learned German who had devoted several years to the study of Asiatic Religious Beliefs, and, after much travel, had presented himself among us. The object of the learned doctor's studies naturally interested the most intelligent of THE Buddhist monks of Siam do not as the Siamese, and especially did it interest a rule endeavour to make their sermons Chao Phya Tipakhon, the Minister for interesting. They are satisfied monoto- Foreign Affairs, an enlightened Buddhist, nously to chant or intone a number of whose wont it was, ever and anon, to lay verses in the dead language Pali; and to aside the cares of statemanship and readd an almost incomprehensible commen- fresh himself with the pleasures of abtary in Siamese. Nor do their hearers stract philosophy. Seldom indeed did I care. Crouching on the ground, in a rev-meet him without his engaging in a long erential posture, they make merit by ap- conversation on religion or science, in pearing to listen, and they do not believe which, while he fairly and willingly listened that that merit would be one whit greater to foreign ideas, he seldom failed to point if they understood the language of the preacher. They have been taught that "Blessed is he who heareth the law," and so they hear it, and believe themselves blest. A very happy state of things, but from an English point of view, a very strange one.

There are, however, exceptions to most rules; and while among ourselves there are preachers who sometimes fail to eluci

out how deficient was my education, in that I had not studied the highest and most admirable of all philosophical works, the Baramat, the metaphysical mysteries of the third section of the Buddhist Canon. He was curiously interested in the learned German, who, without any desire to get wealth, and without any apparent love for religion, endured all the toils of travel and the labours of severe study, who had

even, it was said, studied the aforesaid which the rules of the priesthood require, Baramat in the original Pali. So when an abbot, eminent for knowledge and told him of the doctor's wish to be present piety, was, when we entered, giving the at a preaching, he invited him to come audience an opportunity of making merit. and listen at his palace to two of the most Despite his age, he had the unwrinkled, renowned of Siamese abbots, and I, as or scarcely wrinkled, face which Buddhists bearer of the invitation, had the good admire as a proof of the spiritual tranfortune to be included in it. I had never quillity of a life of worldly abnegation. In liked to make the application on my own one hand he held a kind of fan or screen, account, fearing to be considered intrusive. designed to assist the monk in keeping At about seven o'clock one Saturday his eyes from wandering, and his thoughts evening, we reached the Palace of Foreign from straying to things carnal; in the Affairs, and, passing through two granite other he held a book, made of slips of paved courts, entered the reception-hall, a palm leaf, on which, with an iron style, large and lofty room, with a floor of sev- had been scratched, or written, the Pali eral steps or stages. The lowest stage was text which formed the subject of his disoccupied by a crowd of slaves and ser- course. Sentence by sentence he read vants; on the stage above lay a dozen or from his book, following each passage by more petty officers: the stage above this an explanation in Siamese; but his exwas clear, as if to keep the vulgar from treme age caused him to mumble so, that too close contact with the great man, our my ears caught little of what he said, and host, who sat on the highest stage. We that little I found almost past understandwere conducted to him, and silently took ing. His subject was the most vital, and our places beside him on the carpet. probably the most ancient of all Buddhist This upper end of the room was about dogmas, that called the Four Pre-eminent seventy feet broad by twenty-five long. Truths, the assertion that (1) misery ever Its walls were decorated with numerous attends existence; (2) that its cause lies large mirrors, and rich cloth and silk hang- in desire; (3) that it may be destroyed by ings. Some of these hangings were cov-extinguishing desire; and (4) that this may ered with Chinese proverbs and poems, be effected by holiness. A finer subject embroidered in golden characters, and on he could hardly have chosen; a duller serothers were elaborately worked figures of mon he could not have given. most gorgeous Chinamen, surrounded by deer and snakes and fishes, of anatomical proportions which might perhaps be explained by the aforesaid Baramat, but which certainly seemed to lack that balance or perfection of proportion which Chinese philosophers declare to be the essence of all things.

When he had finished the four sections of his discourse, he left the chair and took a seat on a mat. The minister then crawled to him, adored him by bowing his head to the ground and lifting his joined hands, and presented him with a variety of offerings, a parcel of robes, a japan box. scents, fruits, and a wax candle, stuck all Along the two sides and end of the over with the little silvery bullets which, room were lines of tables, each decked until quite recently, were the only coinage with a choice collection of Chinese brass- of Siam. Taking hold of the cord, which ware, bronze, and porcelain, and bearing I mentioned above as passing from the wax candles, set on curious stands, which, idol, the abbot uttered his blessing, and with the assistance of numerous oil-lamps, then departed, followed by a train of serhanging from the ceiling, and reflected in the mirrors, shed a pleasant light through- | minister. out the building.

There was no pulpit, the preacher occupying a gilt chair, placed in the centre of the upper stage. The minister and ourselves sat on the floor on his right, and on his left was a table or altar supporting a gold image of Buddha from which image a silken cord passed to his side. A number of yellow-robed monks sat between him and the altar.

Sitting crosslegged on the chair, his shaven head and eyebrows giving him an exceedingly clean appearance, and his robes arranged with that decent neatness

vants carrying the offerings of the pious

The calm, contented, passionless appearance, the thorough indifference to all that passed around, the long words, and the general unintelligibility of this old gentleman seemed most agreeable to the Siamese audience, who remained grave and silent during the address, and were, doubtless, satisfied at having made a full hour's merit of a very high kind; for, according to their notions, the greater the piety of the preacher, the greater the merit of the hearer. Their feelings were quite different when the chair was occupied by another orator. Their grave de

portment vanished, and, amid protesta-1 them and attaining their opposites, absence tions that they were not altogether pleased, of greed, absence of anger, and absence of they were unable to repress their smiles folly could happiness be attained. He when addressed by the Spurgeon of Siam. gave no praise to wisdom, he spoke not of Achan To, abbot of the Monastery of the one active Buddhist virtue, charity, the Bells, would, perhaps, have objected but, like a true monk, he urged the allto such a comparison, for it was not on importance of negative goodness. Dehis oratory that he prided himself, but on sire nothing! Never lose your temper! his scholarship. He was one of the most Commit no folly! Do nothing! Say nothlearned, if not the most learned, of Pali ing! Think nothing! Such were the scholars in Siam. Thin and wiry without ideas his sermon left in the mind of his being gaunt, the old monk, who, we were hearers, though perhaps he did not push told, had reached his seventy-third year, his theory quite so far. He was no rewas still bright and full of activity. He former, no dallier with foreign science, was the very opposite of the previous oc- but orthodox of the orthodox, and-for cupant of the chair. Restless and observ- all he said about anger- a hater of inant, he made no pretence to the quiet-novations and innovators. Every word ness and indifferentism his co-religionists that he spoke could be justified by the so much admired. "Who are those for-palm-leaf book which he held in his hands, eigners?" he at once inquired, in a tone which implied little love for the strangers; and when he heard that one of them had come to his country to study his religion for a whole year, there were no bounds to the contempt he expressed for my presumptuous friend, the man who dared to pretend to master, in so short a time, the study which had occupied him for threescore years. Waving his arms, with flashing glances, he took up his parable:

"If there be thirty ships, thirty-ships and every one full of merchandise, and a man should pretend to put all their cargoes into the space of one, what would you say of that man? Again: a single seed is a good thing in its way, but its produce is very limited. This foreigner will take but a single seed, and though I cannot say what he will make out of it, I know that a Siamese could make but little, and I do not think that a foreigner will be able to make much more! "

justified without sophistry or reservation.
Like his predecessor in the chair, he re
peated to us verse after verse of the sa-
cred Pali, but without ever even glancing
at the original. I would not suggest that
Buddhist abbots are more given to vanity
than their better-paid brethren, the. bish-
ops of our own Church, but it seemed to
me that the learned preacher was anxious
that the despised foreigners should ob-
serve his great memory. He certainly
kept us in mind throughout his sermon,
and his improvised explanations in verse
teemed with allusions to my friend.
"He
has learnt to read! He has got a book or
two! And he will go home and boast, 'I
know Pali, I know Pali, I've got a real-
Pali book!""

The doctor who, as may be supposed, understood little of what was said, was extremely amused at the remarks I translated to him, and bore his castigation smilingly; but the minister was evidently With these uncomplimentary and dis- shocked at the excesses of the preacher, couraging observations he prefaced an ad- and, when the sermon was over, and the dress on the three great roots of sin, abbot had left with his presents, he did Greediness, Anger, and Folly. Over and his best, by various civilities, to efface over again, rolled forth the Pali words what he regarded as a grave discourtesy. thus translated, followed by improvised Two or three reputed scholars were inexplanations in verse. To these three vited to join our party, and, while a va were ascribed all evil thoughts, all evil riety of refreshments were served, we had words, all evil actions. But for them a long theological discussion, in which the none would destroy life, none would steal, minister, desirous to please, declared that none would commit adultery, none would he was really not a bigoted Buddhist, but tell lies, none would get intoxicated. a believer in only such parts of his reliThese are the three great enemies of the gion as had a foundation in reason. heart, the creators of evil destiny, some- phrase, it is true, savoured of the diplotimes one, sometimes another, sometimes matist as much as of the theologian. all. If anger was absent, and the heart was As the foregoing sermons are described impelled by no greediness, no desire for from very scant notes, and a not very peranything sinful, folly would nevertheless fect recollection, I will conclude this sketch come in and lead the heart astray. Only by an abstract of a written sermon in Pali by subduing all three, by eradicating and Siamese, which has found its way into

The

2011

ater

the India Office Library, and lies there, little vexed by readers.

It commences with a Pali text that is the initial words of the passage in the Sacred Books, of which it is supposed to be an amplification, which is thus translated: "Hearken, oh monks! The body of every one that is born, male or female, consisting of the elements Form and Name, may be likened unto a great city, which is called the Golden City."

Then without any more Pali quotations, but with a vast admixture of Pali words, it continues the parable:

"To this great city there are nine gates, the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, &c., and around it is a wall, the skin. Within it are pools and watercourses, with fish and crochodiles; and paths also, and roads, and many a dwelling-place from the tips of the toes even to the brain, and around its walls edis herbage, the hair springing, from the skin.

reser

hair

en gi

"And this city is ruled over by the great king Mind, whose daughter is Carnal Desire, and whose mother is Corruption. His queen is Sensation, who excites to love, and his five concubines are Sight, Scent, Hearing, Taste, and Feeling.

would escape from the three worlds; for the world of men, the world of angels, and the world of archangels are all places of sorrow. Endless is the succession of births and deaths!' And the Great Brahmin will call the twenty-two Brahmins, of whom Piety is the first, to aid the desire of the king. They will lead him to the great teacher (Guru) who is named Wisdom, and to Wisdom he will say, ' We would escape from the two oceans of sorrow, from merit and demerit which know no end, and we would be freed from our enemy, King Death.'

"Then will the Great Teacher promise to help him, and will undertake by the teachings of the Holy Sword of Victory to bring him the war chariot which shall subdue King Death, and will promise to crown him Emperor of all the worlds and Ruler of the Eternal City, Nirvana.

"And the king will cry, Sathu! sathu ! It is good! it is good!'

"'Then shall the Great Brahmin prepare the ceremonies; he shall cause the king to observe the religious abnegations, and then to meditate in quietude; then to observe the extended abnegations, and then again to reflect in quietude.

"Seven great officers has he, which are "First shall he reflect on the nature of good inclinations of the heart, and six in his body, the foulness, the impermanence whom good is mixed with evil, and there of its materials; then shall he proceed to are fourteen evil counsellors who continu- meditate on the affections, until he shall ally lead him from the way of righteous-have attained to indifference; then will he ness. These fourteen are Folly, Fearless- enter into the first stage of Trance (Dhyness of Sin, Shamelessness of Sin, Base- âna), whereby all the fifteen thousand imness, Avarice, Error, Pride, Wrath, Envy, purities of his nature will be utterly reScandal, Sloth, Laziness, and Doubt. moved. [Thirteen only are mentioned.]

"And there are twenty-two Royal Brahmins: Piety, Fear of Sin, Shame of Sin, &c., who move the king to righteousness, leading him into the paths of the saints, that he may attain the glorious city of Nirvana.

"And there are four guardian angels, which are the four great elements - Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.

"With the king dwell two reminding angels, which are Mercy and Inclination to the Paths of Righteousness. Five watchers also are there, who urge him to take pleasure in the five states of Trance. And there is a Great Brahmin who inclines him to rejoice in the Holy Law which shall lead him to the further shore, to Eternal City,

Nirvana.

One

"Then the Great Teacher will give to the king the Sword of Victory, and the king will judge all the officers of his court, and all that are evil shall be slain. by one the fourteen evil counsellors will be brought before him, and he will slay them with the Sword of Victory. then shall be brought before him his rela tives, his father, his mother, and his queen, and, despite his love, he will slay them. In its downstroke the sword shall touch the lowest hell, in its upstroke the highest heaven, and all the worlds shall quake.

And

"Then shall the Great Teacher enthrone the king as the Emperor of the world and Lord of the happy City of Nirvana.

"This Great Teacher is Wisdom, and the

Sword of Victory is Knowledge of the

Paths of the Saints.

"And the king, with all his courtiers, ex- "The Lord Buddha, compassionating all periencing joy and sorrow without ever an beings in the whorl of transmigrating exend, will cry to the Great Brahmin, 'We istence, angels and men, denizens of hell,