LIFE OF REGINALD HEBER, BISHOP OF CALCUTTA. CHAPTER I. Birth, Parentage and Education of Reginald Heber-his distinction at Oxford-Palestine. THE character of REGINALD HEBER, late Bishop of Calcutta, is one on which readers of every sect and party, religious and political, may agree to dwell with delight. To the scholar his enthusiastic industry in the pursuit of knowledge, the extent of his accomplishments, the refinement of his taste, and the elegant works of his genius, will ever afford gratifying and improving subjects of contemplation. Throughout his life and his writings, it is impossible not to trace the career of a sincere, sober, enlightened patriot. His services to the Church of Christ B have not, perhaps, been surpassed in any lifetime of equal duration. Nor are these conspicuous merits dimmed or tarnished to public view, by any admixture of such faults of personal temper as are often recorded in the annals of the best and greatest. In every relation of life he appears to have devoutly done his duty, and at the same time done it so humbly and affectionately, as to endear himself to all with whom he was connected. Few men had more friends; and he never made an enemy. The early death of one by whom so much had been done, and from whom so much more might have been expected, and the circumstances under which he was thus untimely removed, falling a sacrifice in the prime of his days to the over-abundance of zeal with which he pursued the service of humanity and religion, on a remote shore, among half-civilized, ignorant and benighted strangers, and in a climate to which his constitution was ill-adapted, have invested his name and memory with a deep and universal interest. It is understood that a detailed Memoir of Bishop Heber's life is in the course of preparation by the person who knew and loved him the best. In the meantime we venture to collect such scattered particulars as have been published by writers having access to authentic sources of intelligence, and present them in one connected view. The family of Heber have long been settled at Martoun-Hall, in Craven, and classed with the most respectable gentry of the county of York. Reginald, father to the Bishop, and second son of Thomas Heber, Esq, of Martoun, was born in 1728, and educated at Brazen-nose College, Oxford, where he afterwards acted as Tutor during many years, with much reputation. His elder brother dying shortly after Mr. Heber had taken holy orders, he came early into possession of the family estate of Martoun, and, later in life, of that also of Hodnet, in Shropshire, which had descended to his mother from her kinsman, Sir Thomas Vernon, Bart., the last male of an old and honourable lineage. Together with these estates Mr. Heber held the living of Malpas, in Cheshire, and subsequently, on his own presentation as lord of that manor, the rectory of Hodnet. He was twice married: first, in 1773, to Mary, the daughter of the Rev. Martin Baylie, Rector of Kelsall, in Suffolk, by whom he had one son, Richard Heber, Esq., well known in the literary world, and Member of Parliament, till lately, for the University of Oxford: secondly, in 1782, to Mary, daughter of Dr. Cuthbert Allanson, Rector of Wrath, in Yorkshire, by whom he had one daughter and two sons; the elder of whom was the subject of this memoir. Reginald Heber, late Bishop of Calcutta, was born at Malpas on the 21st of April, 1783. "In his childhood," says an evidently wellinformed writer, "he was remarkable for the eagerness with which he read the Bible, and the accuracy with which he remembered it; a taste and talent which subsequent acquirements and maturer years only served to strengthen, so that a great portion of his reading was intended, or at least was employed, to illustrate the Scriptures. He received his early education at the grammar-school of Whitechurch, whence he was afterwards sent to Dr. Bristowe, a gentleman who took pupils near London. His subsequent career at Oxford, where he was entered of Brazen-nose College, in 1800, proved how well his youthful studies had been directed, and how diligently pursued. The University |