RELIGIOUS CEREMONY. 
227 
tavvdriness that perverted taste could suggest, and containing a host of 
gilded idols, were distributed over an extensive piece of ground. The 
different apartments occupied by the Embassy, had been the temples 
of minor deities and the dwellings of their priests ; and communi- 
cated with each other by long and narrow passages. These were 
intricate and mysterious, and often terminated in small enclosed yards, 
intended for no purpose that courted the face of day ; or suddenly 
opened into squares decorated with a profusion of gay and fragrant 
flowers. The imagination suggested that fear and pleasure were 
equally used by the ministers of superstition to operate on the 
minds of its deluded votaries. On leaving this labyrinth we passed 
a number of edifices, some open in front, others closed, and all 
containing idols of various degrees of dignity and influence. To 
describe their different forms, or to give their several appellations, 
would not only exceed the limits and objects of this work, but be 
a waste of time and labour, of which the Missionaries seem to have 
been little sensible in their elaborate accounts of the minute sub- 
divisions of the religion of Fo. I may leave my readers to imagine 
the endless sects that must have divided a religion, of which the 
founder took the following doctrine as its basis : “ There is no other 
principle of all things but a vacuum and nothing; from nothing have 
all things sprung, to nothing they must again return, and there all 
our hopes end.”* 
Four hideous monsters “ in form and gesture proudly eminent,” 
occupied, two on the right hand and two on the left, the entrance 
to an avenue leading from the precincts of the principal temple. 
Colossal height and proportions, corpulency, the Chinese physi- 
ognomy caricatured, profuse gilding, green and red paint, were their 
leading characters. Incense was burning at all hours of the day on 
an altar before them. A miserable devotee, generally a female, 
was often seen deprecating their wrath or soliciting their favour. 
* Grosier, vol. ii. p. 219. 
G G 2 
