pious bees who sip every flower that blooms in Tibet. In a land so sterile and so cold, architecture is saved from rioting into an over-florid style and is even stunted in its outreachings toward grace, but it attains unto dignity. As in every similar case of a single inspiration operating within almost unvarying environment, there results great uniformity, such, indeed, that the monasteries of Ladak and those around Sining in the Far East might change places over night without discovery. It is highly suggestive as to the future possible development of the Tibetan people that, given a powerful impulse in a given direction, they have shown engineering capacity of so high an order as that involved in the erection of these great structures. That they have often chosen the most inaccessible among many difficult sites may be due chiefly to the same military consideration which determined the uncomfortable and picturesque locations of so many European piles built in the brave days of old. It is pleasing to think, also, that the artistic fitness of the thing —isolation of dwelling, and withdrawal from the world's illusions—may have partly ruled the builders' minds.
Shall we also charitably assume that the theoretical unworldliness of the ruling class may account for the neglect of ways of communication? One who has been tried by these roads is quick to wrath, yet I have seen as bad in Abyssinia as in Ladak. And every traveller in China bewails the strange lack of public spirit which bequeaths to each generation the ruts and bumps of its predecessor. Even America, inspired with mechanical cult, sins greatly in this
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