16 EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMORANDUM &C. 



priests, that I would wish to join in their devotions, 

 I was allowed to attend in the number of their dis- 

 ciples, and always experienced much pleasure during 

 the performance of their devotions, which I compre- 

 hended easily enough, for their language was readily 

 mastered, being in most cases as simple as the Turk- 

 ish though I must own it has points as knotty as 

 the lingo of Japan. The exterior of the temple is 

 simple, solemn and classical ; I heard that it was 

 built from the plans of a foreigner who it is evident 

 was no stranger to Vitruvius ; the principal apart- 

 ment is a large hall, where the priests and their 

 disciples meet, this hall is ornamented with imita- 

 tions of celebrated remains of Greek sculpture, so 

 closely resembling the originals in England, &c., that 

 one would suppose they had been wrought by China- 

 men : on a pedestal in a conspicuous part of the hall 

 is a bust of the Goddess to whom the temple is con- 

 secrated and an inscription states that the building 

 is for the use of her worshippers and their posterity ; 

 beneath the bust of Minerva is the throne of the 

 chief-priest, a work of great merit being the product 

 of four priests' invention, after great deliberation and 

 discussion ; as one of them a student of Welch, wished 

 it to be a monopod like the seat of Caractacus ; 

 another hoped it might be a dipod shaped as Atlas, 

 with a nook in his back for a cushion ; a third, a 

 Greek scholar, wished it to be a tripod similar to the 

 Sibylline stool ; and the fourth a comfortable per- 

 sonage, with some stones of adipose at his command, 

 did not see any reason why it should not be a two 

 armed tetrapod like one of Anastatius Hope's chairs. 

 The time appointed for worship is night at which 

 time the hall is illuminated with white flames pro- 

 duced by the combustion of a kind of inflammable 

 air, which the natives prepare for the purpose by an 

 artificial process, and it burns much more brilliantly 

 than the gas which arises from the earth in the 

 neighbourhood of the Persian Naptha springs. 



