all, worship the devil. Yet, with all this, the island holds out a prospect of better things. The noble experiment of Sir Alexander Johnstone, as to the introduction of a species of jury trial, appears to have been crowned with most encouraging success. The prejudice of caste is far less powerful than on the continent; and the Dutch had long ago established in it a system of parochial schools and parochial preaching, which, though for some time fallen into decay, the Bishop hoped, with the concurrence of government, which he solicited, to restore to more than former usefulness, and connect with the national church. Meanwhile, as a secondary measure, he moved the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to establish one or more central schools in the islands, for the board and education of a certain number of native Christian youths, who might thus be qualified to act as schoolmasters; and, in case of promising talents, become recruits for the college at Calcutta, thence to return in due time, and shed blessings on their native island. Before quitting Ceylon, the Bishop paid a visit to Kandy-a spot where the honour of England suffered a stain, and

which our troops must have taken possession of once more, with feelings not unlike those of the army of Germanicus, when they reached the secluded scene where the legions of Varus had left their bones to whiten. Little, indeed, could it have been thought, twelve years before, that a capital which was then the den of the most bloodthirsty and treacherous savage that ever disgraced a throne, and in whom, if his subjects must needs have a devil to adore, they might have found him to their hands, was destined so soon to be the peaceful abode of a Christian minister, and the resting place of a most Christian bishop."

CHAPTER VIII.

The Bishop at

Return to Calcutta-Second Visitation
Madras-at Tanjore—at Trichinopoly― Death of Heber.

AFTER an absence of about fifteen months, in October, 1825, he again arrived at Calcutta, where he remained long enough to make his reports to England-to preside at meetings where his presence was required-to hold an ordination, and, what was of no small importance, to promote the building of a church in the native town at Calcutta, where service might be performed by the missionaries on the spot, or in the neighbourhood, in the Bengalee and Hindostanee languages, according to the Liturgy of the Church of England. Such a measure had been adopted elsewhere with the happiest effects, amongst the Hindoos, a people remarkably alive to what is graceful and decorous in external worship; and here, it was hoped, might prevent the few right ideas, which the youths had gathered at the schools,

or in the perusal of Christian books, from being entirely effaced by the idolatrous practices they were daily condemned to witness.

This done, the Bishop hastened to Madras, a presidency which he had reserved for a separate visitation, and wherein it was ordained that he should end his course. On Good Friday he preached at Combaconum on the Crucifixion; and on Easter Sunday, at Tanjore, on the Resurrection. The day following he held a confirmation at the same place; and in the evening delivered an address to the assembled missionaries, as he stood near the grave of Schwartz, a name which he had ever venerated. He arrived at Trichinopoly on the first of April, 1826, and the same evening wrote a letter, of which the following is a part:

I have been passing the last four days in the society of a Hindoo Prince, the Rajah of Tanjore, who quotes Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Linnæus, and Buffon, as fluently as Lady Morgan -has formed a more accurate judgment of the poetical merits of Shakspeare than that so felicitously expressed by Lord Byron-and has actually emitted English poetry very supe

rior indeed to Rosseau's Epitaph on Shenstone -at the same time that he is much respected by the English officers in his neighourhood as a real good judge of a horse, and a cool, bold, and deadly shot at a tyger. The truth is, that he is an extraordinary man, who, having in early youth received such an education as old Schwartz, the celebrated missionary, could give him, has ever since continued, in the midst of many disadvantages, to preserve his taste for, and extend his knowledge of, European literature-while he has never neglected the active exercises and frank soldierly bearing which become the descendant of the old Mahratta conquerors, and by which only, in the present state of things, he has it in his power to gratify the prejudices of his people, and prolong his popularity among them. Had he lived in the days of Hyder, he would have been a formidable ally or enemy, for he is, by the testimony of all in his neighbourhood, bold, popular, and insinuating. At present, with less power than an English nobleman, he holds his head high, and appears contented; and the print of Buonaparte which hangs in his library is so neutralized by that of Lord