RELIGION, EDUCATION, FINE ARTS. 



645 



the arch fiend of Creation, will be slain, and 

 life will be everlasting and holy. The Par- 

 sees do not eat anything cooked by a person of 

 another religion. Marriages can only be con- 

 tracted with persons of their own caste and 

 creed. Their dead are not buried, but exposed 

 on an iron grating in the Dokhma, or Tower 

 of Silence, to the fowls of the air, to the dew 

 and to the sun, until the flesh has disappeared, 

 and the bleaching bones fall through into a 

 pit beneath, from which they are afterward 

 removed to a subterranean cavern. The tem- 

 ples and altars must forever be fed with the 

 holy fire, brought down, according to tradi- 

 tion, from heaven, and the sullying of whose 

 flame is punishable with death. The priests 

 themselves approach it only with a half-mask 

 over their faces, lest their breath should defile 

 it, and never touch it with their hands, but 

 with holy instruments. The fires are of five 

 kinds ; but, however great the awe felt by 

 Parsees with respect to fire and light, they 

 never consider these as anything but emblems 

 of Divinity. There are also five kinds of ' ' sac- 

 rifice," which term, however, is rather to be 

 understood in the sense of a sacred action. 



Koran, the sacred book of the Mohamme- 

 dan religion. According to that belief a copy 

 of it, in a book bound in white silk, jewels, and 

 gold, was brought down to the lowest heaven 

 by the angel Gabriel, in the blissful and mys- 

 terious night of Al-Khadr, in the month of 

 Ramadan. Portions of it were, during a space 

 of twenty-three years, communicated to Mo- 

 hammed, both at Mecca and Medina, either by 

 Gabriel in human shape, " with the sound of 

 bells," or through inspirations from the Holy 

 Ghost "in the Prophet's breast," or by God 

 himself, "veiled and unveiled, in waking or 

 in the dreams of night." Mohammed dic- 

 tated his inspirations to a scribe, not, indeed, 

 in broken verses, but in finished chapters, and 

 from this copy the followers of the Prophet 

 procured other copies. The chief doctrine 

 laid down in the Koran is the unity of God 

 and the existence of one true religion with 

 changeable ceremonies. When mankind turned 

 from it at different times, God sent prophets 

 to lead them back to truth ; Moses, Christ, and 

 Mohammed being the most distinguished. 

 Both punishments for the sinner and rewards 

 for the pious are depicted with great diffuse- 

 ness, and exemplified chiefly by stories taken 

 from the Bible, the Apocryphal writings, and 

 the Midrash. Special laws and directions, ad- 

 monitions to moral and divine virtues, more 

 particularly to a complete and unconditional 

 resignation to God's will, legends principally 

 relating to the patriarchs, and almost without 

 exception borrowed from the Jewish writings, 



form the bulk of the book, which throughout 

 bears the most palpable traces of Jewish in- 

 fluence. The outward reverence in which the 

 Koran is held throughout Mohammedanism is 

 exceedingly great. It is never held below the 

 girdle, never touched without previous purifi- 

 cation ; and an injunction to that effect is gen- 

 erally found on the cover. It is consulted on 

 weighty matters ; sentences from it are in- 

 scribed on banners, doors, etc. Great lavish- 

 ness is also displayed upon the material and 

 the binding of the sacred volume. The copies 

 for the wealthy are sometimes written in gold, 

 and the covers blaze with gold and precious 

 stones. Nothing, also, is more hateful in the 

 eyes of a Moslem than to see the book in the 

 hands of. an unbeliever. 



Palace of the Caesars. The palace of 

 Augustus, built upon the site of the houses of 

 Cicero and Catiline, was the beginning of the 

 magnificent pile of buildings known as the 

 Palace of the Caesars, and each succeeding 

 Emperor altered and improved it. Tiberius 

 enlarged it, and Caligula brought it down to 

 the verge of the Forum, connecting it with 

 the Temple of Castor and Pollux, which he 

 converted into a vestibule for the imperial 

 abode. Nero added to it his " Golden House," 

 which extended from the Palatine to the Cselian 

 Hill, and even reached as far as the Esquiline. 

 This latter portion was afterward used by 

 Titus for his famous baths. The ruins of the 

 palace extend over the three hills of Rome, 

 and cover an area of 1,500 feet in length and 

 1,300 feet in width. The Golden House, as 

 can be imagined from its name, was a build- 

 ing of extraordinary magnificence. It was 

 surrounded by a triple portico a mile in length, 

 and supported by a thousand columns ; and 

 within this lay an immense lake, whose banks 

 were bordered by great buildings, each repre- 

 senting a little city, about which lay green 

 pastures and groves, where sported " all ani- 

 mals, both tame and wild." The ceilings of 

 the banqueting rooms were fretted into ivory 

 coffers made to turn, that flowers might be 

 showered down upon the guests, and also 

 furnished with pipes for discharging perfumes. 

 The principal banqueting room was round, 

 and by a perpetual motion, day and night, was 

 made to revolve after the manner of the uni 

 verse. The interior walls of the palace were 

 covered with gold and precious stones, and 

 adorned with the finest paintings that the 

 world afforded. In the vestibule stood a 

 statue of Nero, 120 feet in height. 



Chinese Burial Customs. Immedi- 

 ately upon the decease of a person in China a 

 priest is called, whose prayers are supposed to 

 free the departed spirit from the necessity of 



