a mode of living which infallibly dooms him to a few millions of years in hell, whence again he has to work up through the upper three states of punishment before he can enter anew upon existence on earth, there to strive to accumulate hard-earned merit, that he may not incontinently topple back again to nga-yè. In any case the poor man's hope can only be directed to the future. From the seeds sown in past worlds, tares have sprung up in the soil of his present existence, and tares they will remain. The germ of a higher life may be sown, but it will only grow up in a new existence. There is happily one refuge for the man born to poverty and misery. It is always open to him to put on the yellow robe of the Assembly of the Perfect, but to do that he must feel himself strong enough to beat down the fire of passions and remain steadfast to the end, for a loo-twet, a man who has put his hand to the plough and turns back again, exposes himself to infinitely greater danger towards his next existence than he who has remained throughout in the world. The monastery is a house of refuge not to be lightly sought, and, sad to say, even it is not open to the outcast.

This doctrine of kan also accounts for the equanimity and callousness with which Buddhists view human misery and the taking of human life, notwithstanding the law which forbids the killing of even the smallest insect. They recognize apathetically the working out of inexorable destiny, and watch a man drowning in the river with undisturbed tranquillity, for they are not called upon or even justified in stirring a hand to prevent it. You cannot combat manifest fate.

any case enter the monEven that last chance is connecting link with the

But the outcast may not in astery, not even as a scholar. withheld from him. He is the state of animals, the highest state of punishment. He is

no better than an animal in thought; he meets with less consideration indeed. Were he bedizened to the eyes with costly silks and priceless jewelry no girl would look at him. His wealth is of no use. He is not allowed to build a pagoda, or even to supply fresh water-pots on a way-side stand. The monk would refuse his alms; the starving free-man beggar would scorn his bounty. I cannot understand why they do not drown themselves.

CHAPTER XVII.

FORMING THE NATIONAL CHARACTER.

IF the nation which has no history is happy, it is difficult to know what is to be said of the nation which has a very voluminous history, almost all of which is, however, pure romance. The effect on the Burmese of the fond imaginings of the Mahah Yaza-win, the great Chronicle of Kings, is most undesirable. No defeats are recorded in those courtly pages; reverses are charmed into acts of clemency; armies vast as those that people dreamland march through its chapters; its heroes are of the old ballad type; its treasures such as might have been the produce of Aladdin's lamp. The result has been a permanent influence on the national character. Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Chronicle of British Kings" has only left its mark on the national literature, but had the English lived forty degrees nearer the line, they might still be believing in Brut, great-grandson of Eneas, and the unbroken line of kings of whom King Arthur was chief. As it is the British Mahah Yaza-win only supplied a spring for the poets of all the after time. The Burman Chronicle, on the other hand, has laid the foundation of the national character. Like all hardy, strong-limbed races, the Burmans are naturally proud; but this innate

pride has been tenfold increased by the wonderful tales of the national annals. What is a Burman to think when he reads in the history of his country-there is but the one means of learning the past-that the English have only foothold in Burma through the clemency of a gracious king? They might have been crushed as effectually as the first settlers on Negraïs Island; they might have been driven forth as easily as their seventeenth-century ancestors from the factory at Bhamaw, far up the Irrawaddy on the confines of China; but Bah-gyee-daw, the king, said, like the Lord Buddha, "All can take life, but who can give it back?" The Burmese annalist relates: "The kulla byoo, the white strangers from; the west, fastened a quarrel upon the Lord of the Golden Palace. They landed at Rangoon, took that place, and Prome, and were permitted to advance as far as Yandabo; for the king, from motives of piety and regard to life, made no effort whatever to oppose them. The strangers had spent vast sums of money on the enterprise; and by the time they reached Yandabo their resources were exhausted; and they were in great distress. They petitioned the king, who, in his clemency and generosity, sent them large sums of money to pay their expenses back, and ordered them out of the country."

By the Treaty of Yandabo, extorted by the fear that the capital would fall into the hands of Sir Archibald Campbell, then thundering at the gates of Ava, the English acquired the provinces of Tenasserim and Arrakan, and deprived the sovereign of two-thirds of his sea-board. The Province of Pegu, which was annexed after the second Burmese war in 1852-3, has never been formally ceded by any treaty. King Mindohn said, "Let them stay there; I cannot turn them out, but I will not be written down as the king that gave up Rangoon." Lord

Dalhousie said: "A treaty with a man like that is useless"; and he straightway fixed upon a parallel of latitude as the northern boundary of British Burma, and put up a line of frontier pillars along it without reference to the Burmese Government at all. The Mahah Yaza-win said, in effect: "The foreigner was starving in his own land, and the king bounteously granted him a resting-place in the dismal swamps by the sea." To this day the only approach to a recognition of the British possession of Pegu is an announcement from Mindohn Min, the late king, that "orders had been issued to the governors of districts not to allow the Burmese troops to attack the territories of Meaday and Toung-00, in which the British Government had placed its garrisons." Well may it be said that Burmese kings submit to accomplished facts, but do not sanction them. Shortly before the storming of Melloon, the King Mintaya Gyee sent a note to Sir Archibald Campbell representing that "it was contrary to his religious principles, and the constitution of the Empire, to make any cession of territory, and he was bound to preserve its integrity."

Naturally, therefore, the up-country Burman thinks that his race is the bravest in all the realms of Zampoodeepa, the island in the south, with all its five hundred surrounding islets. The idea has been little checked by English communications and relations with the Lord of the Golden Palace. Such documents as the following are duly inserted in the Mahah Yaza-win, and lose nothing in the translating. This was sent, in 1695, by Nathaniel Higginson, Governor of Madras, to the King of Ava. "To his Imperial Majesty who blesseth the noble city of Ava with his presence, Emperour of Emperours, and excelling the Kings of the East and the West in glory and honour, the clear firmament of Virtue, the fountain