To where the lost of Niria dwell

In Zabudiba's rocky hell!

Thence from such legends vaguely vast,
To their time-hoared philosophy;
Nurse, haply, of all creeds that be
Save one, the dark recounter past.

He told, how from its fearful frame
The death-won world received its name:*
How from the evils of man's birth,
And that corrupting curse of earth
For ever, as a circle, fated—

-They thought no God the world created.†
For that a God had skreened from aught
Of harm, or chance, the world he wrought.
Of souls (he said) belief was cherished,
That with their fleshly homes they perished;

inferior to man; secondly, that of the Preitta; and thirdly, that of the Assurighe. The tenants of these two latter states endure nearly the same punishments; and, till we are made aware of the horrors of the fourth, we should conceive that imagination had exhausted itself in the tortures they contain. The fourth, or Niria, is in reality the Boudhist's hell: it is situated in the caves of the southern island Zabudiba.

* The Universe receives the name of Logha, or Loka, which signifies destruction and reproduction.

+ The evils in the world, and its repeated destructions, (taught by the creed of Boudha,) are sufficient, in the opinion of these religionists, to prove that it was not the work of a Supreme Being.

But from the whole, again arose
A being, doomed to joys or woes;
To bestial mould, or shape of spirit,
As the past life's career might merit. *
And so for aye, that whole resolves,
Till through all changes it revolves,
And climbs into that loftiest state,
Free from the breath of Time or Fate;
Stirr'd by no memory that hath been;
One calm, delicious, pure, serene—
The Nieban to the perfect given ;-
The shadow of the Christian's Heaven!

*The followers of Boudha, who make one of the three hundred and thirty-nine heretic sects among the Hindoos, believe the soul perishes with the body; and yet, by a metaphysical contradiction, that from the materials of both arises a new being, rewarded or punished according to the deeds in the former life; and they suppose, that these said and same materials, having passed through various orders of Nat, or superior beings, ultimately gain the Nieban, or state of perfect happiness. Thus, curiously enough, they at once deny the immortality of the soul, yet make it progressive; terminate it with life, yet load it with the most tremendous responsibilities. The fact is, that they themselves are irretrievably puzzled and confused in a maze of allegories; and that we, in decyphering their riddles, are ten thousand times as much in the dark. One thing is quite clear, the Boudhists are not, as they have been accused of being, Atheists. They allow gods enough, in all conscience; and give to them, or to their agents, the direction of the world; they only deny, that a divinity created the world. To be sure this denial has in all times been confounded with Atheism; but it is a very different thing-as different, for instance, as tithes from religion.

And these the Indian loved to paint,
But with no fond believing folly;
In his strong mind had now wax'd faint
Each trace his childhood prized as holy.
Not that the erring dreams were lost

In one true faith, but, vague and mixed,
He took from many creeds what most

His fancy pleased, or judgment fixed : And formed them into one, which schooled, The calm opinions hush'd within him ; But-like the holiest-rarely ruled

His deeds, when Passion sought to win him. Ah! would that those divine desires, That Thought exalts, or Heaven inspires, Could grow at once instinct and rife, Breath'd into acts-and made our life!

END OF CHAPTER II. BOOK III.

BOOK THE THIRD.

CHAPTER III.

ARGUMENT.

Blue devils-not seraphs-Their cruelty to Chang-Chang's manners described-His love; jealousy-Mary's alarm-A scene which increases it-Her secret scheme-Chang's wish to go into the country-They depart from London.