BEAUTY OF ARCHITECTURE. 107 



mentioned, and all bore the impress of the same 

 style of art, and that one of no mean order. There 

 were none of the excessively outre and indecent 

 representations which are, I believe, frequent in the 

 temples of India, and both the buildings and the 

 sculpture bore the impress of great refinement of 

 taste in the design, and much skill and carefulness 

 in the execution. I must plead guilty to the most 

 profound ignorance in architecture and sculpture 

 generally, and to that of the Hindoos especially, 

 but to my eye these ruined temples and statues were 

 singularly beautiful and interesting, and they are 

 worthy, I think, of far more study and attention 

 than has hitherto been bestowed upon them. In the 

 woods around I found, as at Kedal, piles of old bricks 

 of a much larger size, and better material than the 

 Javanese can now produce. These were the ruins 

 either of the houses of the people, or of the palaces 

 of their kings. 



As I stood on the summit of one of these ruined 

 structures, and cast my eye over the scene around, 

 I could not but feel deeply interested in the mysteri- 

 ous history of the past and forgotten people who had 

 erected them. The site was a most noble one. It 

 was in the north-west corner of the undulating plain 

 or broad valley of Malang, slightly raised above, and 

 overlooking the whole of it. On the right hand, to- 

 wards the south-west was the picturesque group of the 

 Kawi, from which a grassy but broken and serrated 

 ridge stretched northwards to the grand mountain 



