this Kisâgotami does not understand the law of death, I must comfort her,' said to her, 'My good girl, I cannot myself give medicine for it, but I know of a doctor who can attend to it.' The young girl said, 'If so, tell me who it is.' The wise man continued, Buddha can give medicine, you must go to him.' Kisâgotami went to Buddha, and doing homage to him said, 'Lord and master, do you know any medicine that will be good for my boy?' Buddha replied, 'I know of some.' She asked, 'What medicine do you require ?' He said, 'I want a handful of mustard seed.' The girl promised to procure it for him, but Buddha continued, ‘I require some mustard seed taken from a house where no son, husband, parent, or slave has died.' The girl said, 'Very good,' and went to ask for some at the different houses, carrying the dead body of her son. The people said, 'Here is some mustardseed, take it.' Then she asked, 'In my friend's house has there died a son, a husband, a parent, a slave ?' They replied, From place to place, however, undaunted by their bitterest hostility, the Buddha journeyed, preaching in groves, from mountain tops; making many converts, and calling all men alike to hear his doctrine of deliverance. In Uruvilva, in Râjagriha, in Kâsala, Buddha preached, taught, and founded monasteries for the numerous disciples and preachers of the new faith. At last, after twelve years of absence, he revisited Kapilavastu, and saw once more his father, who had repeatedly in vain implored the return of his wandering son. His teaching was speedily embraced by all the Sakyas, including his young son, Rahula ; while his wife Gopa, with five hundred noble ladies, as sumed the monastic robe. The last moments of his father were soothed by the exhortations of Gautama, who held him in his arms while he breathed his last, in his ninety-seventh year. Throughout all northern India, the Buddha seems to have extended his pilgrimage. There is a legend of him on the banks of the Indus, feeding a hungry tigress with the flesh of his own arm-a somewhat extra-Lady, what is this that you say! The living vagant expression of the tenderness for the brute creation which was one of the most striking characteristics of Buddha and Bud dhism. Singhalese legends say that he repeatedly visited Ceylon, and left in two spots the imprint of his sacred feet. Kindly offices of compassion, sympathy, and consolation clustered around his blameless public life, which was interrupted by occasional periods of silence and seclusion, possibly necessi-ing thus, she was seized by fear, and, putting tated by the bitter enmity of his enemies, times which he probably used for preparing in silence the teachings which he left with his disciples, and which form part, at least, of the Buddhist scriptures. are few, but the dead are many.' Then she went to other houses, but one said, 'I have lost a son;' another, 'I have lost my parents ;' another, 'I have lost my slave.' At last, not being able to find a single house where no one had died, from which to procure the mustard seed, she began to think, 'This is a heavy task that I am engaged in, I am not the only one whose son is dead!' Think away her affection for her child, she summoned up resolution and left the dead body in a forest; then she went to Buddha and paid him homage. He said to her, Have you procured the handful of mustard seed?” I have not,' she replied; 'the people of the village told me, "The living are few, but the dead are many.' Buddha said to her, 'You thought that you alone had lost a son; the law of death is, that among all living creatures there is no permanence.' When Buddha had finished preaching the law, Kisâgotami was established in the reward of the noviciate; and all the assembly who heard the law were established in the same reward. One of the most beautiful of the stories that cluster around his life is the legend of Kisâgotami, which is given here as rendered by Max Müller from a collection of the parables of Buddhaghosha, a follower of Buddha, translated from the Burmese by Captain Rogers. It is as follows :-"Some time after this, Kisâgotami gave birth to a son. When the boy was able to walk by himself he died. The young girl, in her love for it, carried it from house to house, asking if any one would give her some medicine for it. When the neighbours saw this, they said 'Is the young girl mad that she carries about on her breast the dead body of her son?' But a wise man, thinking to himself, Alas! | lamps !' 6 “ "Some time afterwards, when Kisâgotami was one day engaged in the performance of her religious duties, she observed the lights in the houses, now shining, now extinguished, and began to reflect, My state is like these Buddha, who was then in the Gandhakuti building, sent his sacred ap-"In reading the particulars of the life of the pearance to her, which said to her, just as if last Buddha Gaudama, it is impossible not he himself was preaching, 'All living beings to feel reminded of many circumstances reresemble the flame of these lamps, one mo- lating to our Saviour's life, such as it has ment lighted, the next extinguished; those been sketched out by the Evangelists." And only who have arrived at Nirvâna are at rest.' M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, one of the most Kisâgotami, on hearing this, reached the graphic and faithful biographers of Buddha, stage of a saint possessed of intuitive feeling." declares his belief that," except Christ alone, Max Müller gives these legends of Buddha there is not among the founders of religions as a specimen of the true Buddhism, "intel- a figure purer or more touching than that of ligible to the poor and suffering, which has Buddha. His constant heroism equals his endeared Buddhism to the hearts of mil- conviction; he is the finished model of all lions"-" the beautiful, the tender, the the virtues that he preaches; his self-denial, humanly true, which, like pure gold, lies his charity. his unalterable sweetness, seem buried in all religions, even in the sand of not to fail for a moment. the Buddhist Canon." silently prepares for his teaching by six years of seclusion and thought; propagates it by the sole force of persuasion during more than half a century; and when he dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who has practised the right all his life, and who is assured of having found the true." At last, after forty-five years of public teaching and laborious wanderings, the time drew near for his full entrance into the Nirvana, which had borne so large a part in his teaching. Attended by a large number of disciples, he paid his last visits to the cities where he had taught. Near the city of Kusinagâra, he felt that the end had come. He asked to have his couch laid between two tall Sâla trees in a neighbouring forest. Having been carried thither with difficulty, he spent his last hours in giving his parting counsels. The most remarkable words as cribed to him at this time are said to have been addressed to his cousin and favourite follower, Ananda : " Be not much concerned about what shall remain of me after my Nirvana-rather be earnest to practise the works that lead to perfection. Put on those inward dispositions that will enable you to reach the undisturbed rest of Nirvâna." "Believe not that then I shall have disappeared from existence and be no longer among you. The law contained in those sacred instructions which I have given shall be your teacher. By means of the doctrines which I have delivered to you, I will continue to remain among you. As the day broke, he passed away into the undiscovered lands his human eyes had vainly sought to explore. No one who has studied the character and life of Buddha, in so far as we are able to disentangle it from encompassing fable, can fail to be struck by its blamelessness and beauty, which have drawn forth, alike from French academicians and German philosophers, from Roman Catholic bishops and Protestant missionaries, candid and enthusiastic admiration. Bishop Bigaudet sys: . He If such words can be written by Christian men who clearly see wherein he failed to find the true, it is no wonder that his followers venerated him with a fervour which ended in idolatry. Notwithstanding his caution to them to be little concerned as to his remains, these were honoured with the most magnificent obsequies, and his ashes, carefully col lected from the funeral pyre, were divided among his friends, and afterwards distributed through the whole of India.* To this day any supposed newly-found relic of the great Buddha is honoured with a costly temple, and becomes an object of adoration to thousands of prostrate worshippers. Concerning some of the "circumstances" which "remind us of the life of Our Saviour," however, the parallelism is far too complete and striking in all its details to be mere coincidence. According to the statements of the Buddhist Canon, there was a miraculous conception, lights beaming from Heaven to announce his birth, an acknowledgment of the child as a deliverer, by an old Brahman, a presentation in a temple, a baptism of water and fire, a temptation in the wilder Over each of the eight portions of his relics was erected a tope-a bell-shaped building raised over Buddha-a supposed tooth of the Saint, and an anrelics. In Ceylon exist the most celebrated relics of cient tree, said to have been a branch of the tree un-der which he became Buddha.. ness, a transfiguration; a repetition, in fact, of almost every characteristic incident in that still more wonderful life which began five centuries and a half later, except only the tragedy which closed it.* This is easily accounted for, however, by the circumstance that no part of the Buddhist Canon was committed to writing till some time in the first century, A.D., while many portions of it were much more recent, and that Eastern compilers of the Buddha's life, writing after a considerable knowledge of the life of Christ had pervaded the East, by means of Nes * As an instance of the parallelism which exists between some of the Buddhist legends and the Christian narratives, take the following anecdote of Ananda, Buddha's favourite disciple. "After a long walk in the country, he meets with Matangi, a woman of the low caste of the Kandalas, near a well she is, and that she must not come near him. But, She tells him what he replies, My sister, I ask not for thy caste or thy family, I ask only for a draught of water.' She afterwards becomes herself a disciple of Buddha." As the incident of asking water must have been a common one in the East, this may have been simply a coincidence. and asks her for soine water. torian missionaries and in other ways, would deem it no imposture, but simply due honour to Buddha, to supply all that other sources suggested to add to his dignity, and to the veneration with which he was regarded. "It can be proved," says Ernest J. Eitel, in his lectures on Buddhism, "that almost every single tint of this Christian colouring, which Buddhist tradition gives to the life of Buddha, is of comparatively modern origin. There is not a single Buddhist manuscript in existence which can vie, in antiquity and undoubted authenticity, with the oldest codices of the gospels. Besides, the most ancient Buddhistic classics contain scarcely any details of Buddha's life, and none whatever of those above-mentioned peculiarly Christian characteristics. Nearly all the above-given legends, which claim to refer to events that happened many centuries before Christ, canearlier than the fifth or sixth century after not be proved to have been in circulation Christ." FIDELIS. (To be concluded in the next number.) A REFLECTIONS. PLACID water 'tween the willow trees Has made a mirror wherein we behold A perfect image of the beauteous earth, Now flushing 'neath the sunset's parting glow. There are the water-lilies yellow, white; The fleecy clouds which move in silence by ; The long lithe grasses sleeping on the wave, Or lisping a low greeting to the wind; While solitary, and with kingly grace, An aged elm o'erlooks the quiet scene. There is a medium other than the stream; A light compared to which yon orb is pale; A beauty fairer than the lily's bloom. Awaking it to seek the life divine A spiritual ray illumes the soul, Whose image is upon the ages cast, And brightens with the steady flow of years. O Time! stupendous mirror of the race! Revealer of the beautiful and true! In Thee how clear th' eternal glory shines! GOWAN LEA. REGINALD HARLAND: INCIDENTS IN A GOLD HUNTER'S LIFE. Ο III. UR mules were stolen. This fact meant that we should either have to remain where we were, or else abandon our heavy luggage-a serious consideration. "There's no use in crying over it," said the Doctor, "gone our animals are, and we must make the best of it. By Jove, our locker is not particularly well supplied though. How are we going to live? "We can't live here," I answered lugubriously; "that's plain enough to be seen. Our best plan, I think, would be to strike off to the north-west, where some of the miners said they were going. Very likely we shall come across the fellows with our mules, for in all probability they have gone in that direction likewise." "If you're set upon that plan," said the Doctor, "why all right, but I don't like the idea of it. Let us shoulder our portables and go another way, instead of attempting to follow the thieves to the North Fork. They're a parcel of scamps-let them go. I vote we do a little prospecting on our own account to the southward, where nobody has thought of going. If we strike upon a rich placer, we can return, buy animals and provisions at the first town, and go back and work by our selves." To this I assented, and we accordingly set off due north about ten o'clock, journeying over a high table land, almost destitute of trees and covered with chaparral, through which, however, we made our way pretty rapidly. To tell the truth, we were heartily glad of the change, for the toil of the preceding months had been long and severe-too severe for me, as I was wholly unused to physical toil, and I welcomed the respite with pleasure. The Doctor was hardier, and seemed little affected by the difficult work. Towards evening we left the table land behind us, and entered a broken country covered with a noble forest of pine and red-wood. As it grew dark, we descended into a slight hollow, through the middle of which bubbled a little spring, and thinking the place suitable for a night's encampment, set to work and kindled a fire, and soon had a cup of tea ready to wash down our supper of dried meat and biscuit. Then we piled more wood on the fire and sat down to the frugal repast as cheerfully as if we had been in the heart of civilization. Yet, as the fire leaped up in a bright flame, reflecting the weird and solemn ranks of pondrous tree-trunks until they were lost in the dark heart of the forest, a feeling indescribably lonely came over us. What unknown dangers might lurk in the gloomy fastnesses we knew not, but none the less our fears were real enough for a time. However, nothing disturbed us during the night, and early in the morning we started off, over a difficult road, farther to the south. The country was heavily timbered generally, though in places it was very broken and mountainous. During the day we passed many small streams, but none gave any indications of being rich in gold, and we kept on. Late in the afternoon we came to one which appeared to be an insuperable obstacle to our progress, as the cañon through which it ran was very deep and precipitous. We stood on the edge of a sheer descent of one thousand feet or more, cut through the solid rock. The perpendicular wall offered no means of descent; only a few lichens grew here and there from crevices. Half way down was a narrow ledge of rocks, but it could not help us, for it would be impossible to get down to it, even if the remainder of the distance were easier. Far below the ledge, in the dusk, flowed the little stream, rippling over its pebbly bed on its way to the distant San Joaquin. "It seems we are done for in this direction," remarked the Doctor lugubriously, as he crept to the edge of the gulf and peered over into its depths; "it would need a parachute to take us down to the bottom of that hole. It might almost be the doorway to the infernal regions, if that little river down there, with its pleasant chattering, didn't take away the notion." "We can do nothing now until morning," I answered, "for it is nearly dark already; then we can examine the precipice at our leisure, and perhaps we may find a path down somewhere." We passed the night anxiously like the preceding, minus the tea, for we had no water, and as soon as it was daylight began the search for a path down the steep sides of the cañon. We travelled some distance up-stream without finding much change in the precipitous cliff. A dark and sombre forest lined the edge of the chasm as far as the eye could reach, some trees obtaining a foothold even a few feet over the edge, where they must have obtained their substance of life from the elements of the atmosphere, for their roots had no soil from whence to derive nourishment unless solid granite be capable of imparting it. The opposite side was fringed with forest likewise, only the trees crowded farther down the steep. After skirting the edge for perhaps a mile, we came to a spot where we judged it might be practicable to get down. Here the cliff shelved slightly, and there appeared a trace for some distance down, of what might have been a zigzag path in some bygone time. We resolved to make the attempt, though it seemed a hazardous undertaking, rather than run the risk of being obliged to go thirty or forty miles down the cañon before finding a likelier place. Most of the rivers thereabouts have their sources high in the Sierra, from the melting of the snows, and running down the slope to the west, at length pour their clear, ice-cold waters into the fertile San Joaquin valley. Many of these have in the course of ages cut deep beds for themselves through the hard granite, forming long cañons which wind for miles down the slope, and are almost wholly impassable owing to the depth and precipitousness of the walls. The spot we had chosen, although not quite so sheer as the rest of the cañon wall, was still very dangerous. So smooth were the rocks over which the path led, that a single slip, a false step, or a tumble would have been fatal; for once in motion down that inclined plane there was not a single impediment to stop the fearful slide straight to the bottom. The Doctor started first, jesting about the use of such fearful cracks in good old mother earth's bosom, and I followed soon after, picking my way very care fully along the remnants of the old pathway. We made slow but steady progress, stopping at intervals to rest, until we had got probably half way, when we found slighter traces of the path and less of foothold. Sometimes I could almost feel my feet slipping down the side of the polished surface faster than was at all pleasant, yet still we kept on. The Doctor seemed, however almost as sure of himself as when we had first started. We were gradually leaving the daylight of the upper world behind us, and a strange weird feeling crept over me as cold gusts of wind came down the cañon, and fluttered my garments and hair. The babbling stream below, whose music began to be plainly audible, was the most comforting sound we could hear in the gloom, for it told us we should not have much further to go. We went on toiling painfully over the slippery surface, in imminent danger of our lives, until the Doctor came to a dead halt, with a sharp exclamation, and looked around most pathetically. "What's wrong?" I inquired, striving hard to retain a perpendicular position. "We can't go down any farther," he said; "the path comes to an abrupt end, and the remainder of the distance—about thirty or thirty five feet I should say—is almost sheer. There's no help for it, we must go back." Here was a cruel dilemma. We were then nearly a thousand feet from the upper surface, and about thirty only from the bottom, and yet unable to proceed farther. However, it was useless to waste time in deliberation; if it was impossible to descend we should have to return, if indeed it were practicable. It did not take long to show us that if the descent thus far had been arduous, the ascent would be a thousand times more difficult. I turned and endeavoured to take an upward step, and in the act almost lost my footing. Cold drops of perspiration stood upon my forehead when the danger was over, and I then realized how hopeless a task it would be to retrace our steps to the top of the frowning cliff which towered far above us. Rendered almost desperate by our critical condition, I was about to make another attempt upward, when I was petrified by hearing a heavy fall, an exclamation, and a clatter as if a kitchen range had tumbled upon the rocks-the Doctor was gone. In attempting to turn as I had done, but less fortunately, his foot had slipped, he had tumbled |