The Appeal to the Serpent ; or, Life in an
Ancient Buddhist City. By the Rev. Samuel Langdon. (Religious Tract Society).—To take the reader back to " Ceylon in the Fourth Century A.D." (surely this is not a correct use of the abbreviation A.D.), is not an easy thing ; nor is it made easier by the writer's evident desire to give his story a modern application. It is not diffi- cult to see the reference in Alypius, the latitudinarian Greek Christian, who is bent, so to speak, on being Christian and Buddhist at once. Mr. Langdon has, we should judge, the requisite learning ; but in the application which he makes of it, he is not always successful. To use it without displaying it, or letting the reader see that he is using it, is more than he can always manage. Still, he introduces picturesque figures and striking scenes,—as, for instance, in that in which the story culminates, and from which it takes its name. It is curious to find the well-known story of the satiric consolation administered by Demonax to Herodes Atticus reproduced in Buddhist literature. A widow carried her dead child to Gautama Buddha, and begged him to restore him to life. He promised to do it if she would bring him mustard-seed from a family which had never lost son or husband, parent or slave.
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