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 island, 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.

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

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 superior indeed to Rousseau's Epitaph on Shenstone at the same time that he is much respected by the English officers in his neighbourhood as a real good judge of a horse, and a cool, bold, and deadly shot at a tiger. 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 Hastings in full costume, that it can do no harm to anybody. To finish the portrait of Maha Rajah Sarboju, I should tell you that he is a strong-built and very handsome middle-aged man, with eyes and nose like a fine hawk, and very bushy gray mustachios-generally very splendidly dressed, but with no effeminacy of ornament, and looking and talking more like a favourable specimen of a French general officer than any other object of comparison which occurs to me. His son, Rajah Sewaju (so named after their great ancestor) is a pale, sickly lad of seventeen, who also speaks English, but imperfectly, and on whose account his father lamented, with much apparent concern, the impossibility which he had found of obtaining any tolerable instruction in Tanjore. I was moved at this, and offered to take him with me in my present tour, and afterwards to Calcutta, where he might have apartments in my house, and be introduced into good English society; at the same time, that I would superintend his studies, and procure for him the best masters which India affords. The father and son, in different ways, the one catching at the idea with great eagerness, the other as if he were afraid to say all he wished, seemed both very well pleased with the proposal. Both, however, on consulting together, expressed a doubt of the mother's concurrence; and, accordingly, next day, I had a very message, through the Resident, that the Rannee had already lost two sons; that this survivor was a sickly boy; that she was sure he would not come back

civil

alive,

alive, and it would kill her to part with him; but that all the family joined in gratitude, &c. &c.

'So poor Sewaju must chew betel, and sit in the Zenanah, and pursue the other amusements of the common race of Hindoo Princes, until he is gathered to those heroic forms, who, girded with long swords, with hawks on their wrists, and garments like those of the king of spades (whose portrait-painter, as I guess, has been retained for this family), adorn the principal room in the palace. Sarboju (the father) has not trusted his own immortality to records like these; he has put up a colossal marble statue of himself by Flaxman, in one of his halls of audience, and his figure is introduced on the monument (also by Flaxman) which he has raised in the mission church to the memory of his tutor, Schwartz, as grasping the hand of the dying saint, and receiving his blessing.

'Of Schwartz and his fifty years' labour among the Heathen, the extraordinary influence and popularity which he acquired, both with Mussulmans, Hindoos, and contending European governments, I need give you no account, except that my idea of him has been raised since I came into the south of India. I used to suspect that, with many admirable qualities, there was too great a mixture of intrigue in his character, that he was too much of a political prophet, and that the veneration which the heathen paid, and still pay him, (and which, indeed, almost regards him as a superior being, putting crowns and burning lights before his statue,) was purchased by some unwarrantable compromise with their prejudices. I find I was quite mistaken. He was really one of the most active and fearless (as he was one of the most successful) missionaries who have appeared since the Apostles. To say that he was disinterested in regard to money is nothing; he was perfectly careless of power, and renown never seemed to affect him even so far as to induce an outward show of humility. His temper was perfectly simple, open, and cheerful; and in his political negotiations (employments which he never sought, but which fell in his way) he never pretended to impartiality, but acted as the avowed, though certainly the successful and judicious agent of the orphan prince intrusted to his care, and from attempting whose conversion to Christianity he seems to have abstained, from a feeling of honour. His other converts were between six and seven thousand, besides those which his predecessors and companions in the cause had brought over. The number is gradually increasing, and there are now in the south of India about two hundred Protestant congregations, the numbers of which have been sometimes vaguely stated at forty thousand. I doubt whether they reach fifteen thousand; but even this, all things considered, is a great number. The Roman Catholics are considerably more numerous, but belong to a lower caste of Indians, (for even these Christians retain many prejudices of caste,) and in point of knowledge and morality, are said to be extremely inferior.

The Brahmins, being limited to voluntary votaries, have now often very hard work to speed the ponderous wheels of Suon and Bali through

the

the deep lanes of this fertile country. This is, however, still the most favoured land of Brahminism, and the temples are larger and more beautiful than any which I have seen in Northern India. They are also decidedly older; but as to their very remote age, I am still incredulous.'

The date of this letter gives it a melancholy interest. It was probably the last that this admirable man wrote. Next day being Sunday, he again preached and confirmed, a rite which he administered once more on Monday morning in the Fort Church. He returned home to breakfast; but before sitting down, took a cold-bath, as he had done the two preceding days. His attendant, thinking that he stayed more than the usual time, entered the apartment, and found the body at the bottom of the water, with the face downwards. The usual restoratives of bleeding, friction, and inflating the lungs, were instantly tried, but life was gone, and, on opening the head, it was discovered that a vessel had burst on the brain, in consequence, as the medical men agreed, of the sudden plunge into the water whilst he was warm and exhausted. His remains were deposited, with every mark of respect and unfeigned sorrow, on the north side of the altar of St. John's church at Trichinopoly.

The disastrous intelligence of his decease was communicated with every caution to his unfortunate widow (who had been left at Calcutta with her two children) by her relation, Lord Combermere. She is left to mourn an irreparable loss, but not without that resignation and acquiescence in the will of Providence, which the precepts and example of her husband were so calculated to inspire and confirm in her mind.

True it is that an apparent accident was the immediate cause of the abrupt termination of the Bishop's life, but it may well be thought that his constitution was becoming more frail and susceptible of injury through his unremitted exertions-exertions which he was led to make by habits formed in a more temperate climate -by a fear which beset him of sinking into that supineness which a residence in India is so apt to engender-and by a spirit thoroughly interested in the pursuit of the great object before him. So long as this immense portion of the globe, extending from St. Helena to New Holland, is consigned to the ecclesiastical superintendence of one man, and that one man is not deterred from doing his best by the impossibility of doing much, it is to be feared there must be a certain waste of valuable life; for what European, arriving in India at the age which a bishop has usually reached before he obtains his appointment, is likely to preserve his health long, in the midst of the disquietudes attending a new establishment-remote from the mother-country-incomplete in its subordinate

bordinate parts-in its fruits perpetually disappointing the hopes and efforts of the labourer-whilst to all this must be added, the extreme difficulty (to say the least of it) of timing all the journies right, where so many, and of such length, must be made, and of always selecting for them those seasons of the year, and those hours of the day, which are least deadly.*

Thus died this faithful servant of God, in the 43d year of his age, and the third of his episcopacy, labouring to the last in the cause that was nearest his heart, and, like Fletcher of Madely, almost expiring in the very act of duty. The world may honour his memory as it will, though such as were best acquainted with him can scarcely hope that it should do him justice; for he had attached himself to no party, either in church or state, and therefore had secured no party-advocates; and of forms, by which mankind at large (for the want of less fallacious means of estimating character) are almost compelled to abide, he was not, perhaps, a very diligent observer: but in India a strong sense of his worth has manifested itself, as it were, by acclamation. At Madras, a meeting was held, a few days after his death, in the Government Gardens, the excellent Sir Thomas Munro in the chair, where to say that lamentation was made over him would be a weak word— there was a burst of affectionate feeling, which proves, were proof wanting, how grievous a loss the cause of Christianity has sustained in the removal of an advocate whose heart and head were equally fitted to recommend it. A subscription was forthwith commenced on a scale of Indian munificence, for a monument, to be erected to him in St. George's church; and this was taken up with the warmest zeal everywhere, and among all ranks and conditions of men throughout the presidency.+ At Bombay it was determined to found a scholarship for that presidency, at the college at Calcutta, to be called Bishop Heber's Scholarship-a testimony of respect the most appropriate that could have been devised; and examples so generous have not been lost upon the capital of Bengal.

It is very pleasing to hear all this. Still, none could know him truly as he was, without visiting (as we have often done) the parish where he had chiefly resided from his childhood upwards-where he had been seen as the son, the husband, the father, the brother, the master, above all, as the shepherd of the flock. There, we are told, the tidings of his death were received by all as if each had lost a personal friend; and though a considerable interval

*We are happy to learn, as this is going through the press, that India is about to be divided into several separate dioceses.

+ The native subscriptions in the lists are numerous, beyond what we could have believed,

had