Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/149

 and affected the peculiarities of Nebuchadnezzar during the seven years in which that hapless monarch was afflicted with lycanthropy. They slept in beds of nettles, in marshes reeking with miasmata and swarming with foul reptiles. They lacerated their skins, already covered with sores and smarting with the bites of insects. Cleanliness and comfort were loathed by them as crimes, dirt and misery being regarded as the highest indications of internal holiness. These men were reverenced in bygone days as saints of the purest ray; and the honour in which they were held was perfectly compatible with times when physical phenomena, such as earthquakes and disease, were attributed to the action of demons. We in the nineteenth century, of course, can see where the mischief lay in the case of these unfortunates. They were really raving lunatics, and at the present day would have been consigned to the restraints of an asylum. In China the hermit-race has never reached quite such an abyss of degradation as in Europe. Indeed the old Taoist and Buddhist mystics of whom we read, and specimens of whom we may even see around us now, were rather interesting characters. They generally chose for their retreat some rocky glen shut in by mountains, sheltered from the burning sun by the thick foliage of trees, and surrounded by every natural feature which makes a landscape lovely. There they passed their lives in that state of mental vacuity and freedom from interest in mundane matters which is the nearest approach to the summit of virtue and bliss. That summit in the articles of the Buddhist Church is called Nirvana. The Taoists look forward to very much the same condition. Their idea of happiness is, after all, a very wise and very pure