Father Navarette, in one of his letters to Don John of Austria, relates the following speech of the dalai-lama to his privy council: “My venerable brothers, you and I know very well that I am not immortal; but it is proper that the people should think so. The Tartars of great and little Thibet are people with stiff necks and little information, who require a heavy yoke and gross inventions. Convince them of my immortality, and the glory will reflect on you, and you will procure honors and riches.

“When the time shall come in which the Tartars will be more enlightened, we may then confess that the grand lamas are not now immortal, but that their predecessors were so; and that what is necessary for the erection of a grand edifice, is no longer so when it is established on an immovable foundation.

“I hesitated at first to distribute the agremens of my water-closet, properly inclosed in crystals ornamented with gilded copper, to the vassals of my empire; but these relics have been received with so much respect, that the usage must be continued, which after all exhibits nothing repugnant to sound morals, and brings much money into our sacred treasury.

“If any impious reasoner should ever endeavor to persuade the people that one end of our sacred person is not so divine as the other — should they protest against our relics, you will maintain their value and importance to the utmost of your power.

“And if you are finally obliged to give up the sanctity of our nether end, you must take care to preserve in the minds of the reasoners the most profound respect for our understanding, just as in a treaty with the Moguls, we have ceded a poor province, in order to secure our peaceable possession of the remainder.

“So long as our Tartars of great and little Thibet are unable to read and write, they will remain ignorant and devout; you may therefore boldly take their money, intrigue with their wives and their daughters, and t............