416 FURTHER INDIA. BOOK VIII. write. The few essays he attempted are meagre in the extreme, and nine-tenths of his knowledge perished with him. Had these two men been able to work together to the end, they would have left little for future investigation. There was, however, still a fourth labourer in the field Dr. John Leyden who, had his life been spared, could have easily assimilated the work of his colleagues, and with his own marvellous genius for acquiring languages and knowledge of all sorts, would certainly have lifted the veil that shrouded so much of Javan history in darkness, and left very little to be desired in this respect. He died, however, almost before his work was begun, and the time was too short, and the task too new, for the others to do all that with more leisure and better preparation they might have accomplished. During the last ninety years the Dutch have done a good deal to redeem the neglect of the previous centuries, but, as has happened in the sister island of Ceylon, it was for long without system, and no master mind appeared to give unity to the whole, or to extract from what is done the essence, which is all the public care to possess. The Dutch Government, however, published in 1 874, in four great folio volumes, 400 plates, from Mr. Wilsen's drawings, of the architecture and sculptures of Boro- Budur ; and the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences published sixty - five photographic plates of the same monument ; and as Dr Leemans of Leiden added a volume of text, historical and descriptive, there is no monument in the East so fully and so well illustrated as this one, and probably none that better deserves the pains that have been bestowed upon it. The same Society published also 333 photographs of other Javan antiquities and temples, but, unfortunately, for the most part without any accompanying text. A thoroughly well qualified antiquary, Heer Brumund, was employed to visit the localities, and write descriptions, but unfortunately he died before his task was half complete. A fragment of his work is published in the 33rd volume of the 'Transactions' of the Society, but it is only a fragment, and just sufficient to make us long for more. At the same time an Oriental scholar, Dr. R. H. Th. Friederich, was employed by Government to translate the numerous inscriptions that abound in the island, which would probably explain away all the difficulties in the history of the island and its monuments, but none have appeared since some of these were published in the 26th volume of the
- Verhandelingeri ' in 1856.
Within the last twenty years, however, many works have been published, which add considerably to our knowledge, one
