I
been made in the art of glass mosaic, and where, a
decade ago^ a few pillars wrought into simple designs
alone represented it, there are now scores of elegant
columns, worked in the most daring colours into
patterns of great beauty and intricacy. Unhappily
the advance is not always in the right direction,
and much that has been done of late years marks
a falling away, both in simplicity and in taste. I f
the Burmese mind be, as I believe it to be, essentially
alive, it is also prone to extravagance and
excess, and this failing is nowhere so marked as it is
in Burmese art. There is a fascination in the mere
multiplication of things which it is unable to resist, and
objects beautiful in themselves become an occasion of
fatigue to the eye by their incessant repetition. One
notable example of this is furnished in the base of the
pagoda. Originally of a design remarkable for its
antique simplicity and dignity, it has of late been
almost entirely concealed by the accumulation of an
enormous number of petty shrines. Some of these,
indeed, are wrought with great delicacy and skill. Yet
they serve no true purpose of art, since they are wholly
unnecessary; and they are worse than unnecessary,
since they obscure what was already beautiful and
adapted to its purpose. To protests made by lovers
of the great shrine, the invariable answer is that the
new chapels will look very fine when they are finished.
The trustees to whose care the building is committed
urge, on the other hand, that it is not in accordance
with Buddhist feeling that the right of any man to