436 Voyage of tiiG Novara. 



tesy, and escorted us round the various apartments with 

 considerable enipressement. They were mostly widows, who 

 pass their lives here in calm retrospective contemplation, 

 and occupy themselves with preparing little articles for the 

 Buddhist ritual, such as censers, tapers, printed sacrificial 

 papers, &c., with which apparently they contrive to support 

 themselves. These associations (Ni-koo) were usually found- 

 ed by legacies and donations by pious Chinese, and are 

 exceedingly useful as providing an asylum for poor, helpless 

 women, weary of life. Many widows withdraw into these 

 abodes of peace, there to pass the rest of their lives, free from 

 the tumult of the world, in the exercise of devotion and of 

 works of neighbourly love and charity. Nevertheless, if we 

 are to believe common report, works of piety are not the only 

 objects occasionally pursued in these Buddhist convents, and 

 the web of intrigue and amorous adventure, of which they 

 have frequently been the scene, has not a little tended to 

 lower the estimate in which these religious societies are held, 

 and even threatens to cut short their existence. A people of 

 such a materialistic mode of life, and such ant-like industry, 

 as the Chinese, who rarely know what it is to have one 

 holiday in the entire year, must involuntarily look with 

 argus-like eye on all religious communities, which pass their 

 time in luxurious ease and exemption from care, without in 

 any way advancing the well-being of their fellow-creatures 

 by cither mental or physical labour. 



