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provided him no remedy, yet, as a matter of conscience, this right might be fitly determined on by his religious guides; and I conceived myself warranted to declare him divorced and at liberty to marry again. My determination, I found, gave great satisfaction to Mr. Frazer and Mr. Morris, both of whom said, that without some such permission the state of new converts would be often very hard, and that the usual remedies supplied by the canon law would be, to men in such circumstances, utterly unattainable. I had some conversation with the man, who spoke a little English, and saw no reason to repent my decision, since I found him tolerably well informed in the principles of Christianity, and, to all appearance, earnest in its profession.

We dined between services. In the evening the Church was extremely full, and there were, I think, fifty communicants, almost all who had been confirmed attending. To the natives I gave the Communion, with the accompanying words, in their own language.

September 6.-I went this morning with Mr. Frazer to the Mission School in the city, which is kept in a large house well adapted for the purpose, and made over to the Church Missionary Society, together with other tenements adjoining, by a rich Bengalee Baboo, not long since dead in Benares, whom Mr. Corrie had almost persuaded to become a Christian, but who at length appears to have settled in a sort of general admiration of the beauty of the Gospel, and a wish to improve the state of B b

VOL. I.

knowledge and morality among his countrymen. In these opinions he seems to have been followed by his son, Calisunker Gossant, now living, and also a liberal benefactor to this and other establishments for national education in India. The house is a native dwelling, containing on the ground-floor several small low rooms, in which are the junior classes, and, above, one large and lofty hall supported by pillars, where the Persian and English classes meet, besides a small room for a library. The boys on the establishment are about 140, under the care of an English school-master, assisted by a Persian Moonshee, and two Hindoostanee writing-masters, the whole under the inspection of a catechist, Mr. Adlington, a clever young man, and a candidate for orders. The boys read Oordoo, Persian, and English, before me extremely well, and answered questions both in English and Hindoostanee with great readiness. The English books they read were the New Testament, and a compendium of English history. They also displayed great proficiency in writing, (Nagree, Persian, and English) arithmetic, in which their multiplication table extended to 100×100, geography, and the use of the globes. To judge from their dress, they were mostly belonging to the middling class of life. Many, I think the majority, had the Brahminical string. I asked the catechist and school-master if any of these boys or their parents objected to their reading the New Testament. They answered that they had never heard any objection made, nor had the least reason to believe

that any was felt. The boys, they said, were very fond of the New Testament, and I can answer for their understanding it. I wish a majority of English school boys might appear equally well-informed. The scene was a very interesting one; there were present the patron of the school, Calisunker Gossant, a shrewd and rather ostentatious, but a wellmannered Baboo, his second son, a fine and welleducated young man, Mr. Macleod and Mr. Prinsep, the magistrates of the place, both very acute critics in Hindoostanee and Persian, some ladies, and a crowd of swords, spears, and silver-sticks on the stair-case, (whose bearers, by the way, seemed to take as much interest as any of us in what was going on.) One, however, of the most pleasing sights of all, was the calm but intense pleasure visible on Archdeacon Corrie's face, whose efforts and influence had first brought this establishment into activity, and who now, after an interval of several years, was witnessing its usefulness and prosperity.

In our way to and from the school I had an opportunity of seeing something of Benares, which is a very remarkable city, more entirely and characteristically Eastern than any which I have yet seen, and at the same time altogether different from any thing in Bengal. No Europeans live in the town, nor are the streets wide enough for a wheelcarriage. Mr. Frazer's gig was stopped short almost in its entrance, and the rest of the way was passed in tonjons, through alleys so crowded, so narrow, and so winding, that even a tonjon sometimes passed

with difficulty. The houses are mostly lofty, none I think less than two stories, most of three, and several of five or six, a sight which I now for the first time saw in India. The streets, like those of Chester, are considerably lower than the groundfloors of the houses, which have mostly arched rows in front, with little shops behind them. Above these, the houses are richly embellished with verandahs, galleries, projecting oriel windows, and very broad and overhanging eaves, supported by carved brackets. The number of temples is very great, mostly small and stuck like shrines in the angles of the streets, and under the shadow of the lofty houses. Their forms, however, are not ungraceful, and they are many of them entirely covered over with beautiful and elaborate carvings of flowers, animals, and palm-branches, equalling in minuteness and richness the best specimens that I have seen of Gothic or Grecian architecture. The material of the buildings is a very good stone from Chunar, but the Hindoos here seem fond of painting them a deep red colour, and, indeed, of covering the more conspicuous parts of their houses with paintings in gaudy colours of flower-pots, men, women, bulls, elephants, gods and goddesses, in all their many-formed, many-headed, manyhanded, and many-weaponed varieties. The sacred bulls devoted to Siva, of every age, tame and familiar as mastiffs, walk lazily up and down these narrow streets, or are seen lying across them, and hardly to be kicked up (any blows, indeed, given them must be of the gentlest kind, or woe be to

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the profane wretch who braves the prejudices of this fanatic population) in order to make way for the tonjon. Monkeys sacred to Hunimaun, the divine ape who conquered Ceylon for Rama, are in some parts of the town equally numerous, clinging to all the roofs and little projections of the temples, putting their impertinent heads and hands into every fruiterer's or confectioner's shop, and snatching the food from the children at their meals. Fakirs' houses, as they are called, occur at every turn, adorned with idols, and sending out an unceasing tinkling and strumming of vinas, biyals, and other discordant instruments, while religious mendicants of every Hindoo sect, offering every conceivable deformity, which chalk, cow-dung, disease, matted locks, distorted limbs and disgusting and hideous attitudes of penance can shew, literally line the principal streets on both sides. The number of blind persons is very great (I was going to say of lepers also, but I am not sure whether the appearance on the skin may not have been filth and chalk) and here I saw repeated instances of that penance of which I had heard much in Europe, of men with their legs or arms voluntarily distorted by keeping them in one position, and their hands clenched till the nails grew out at the backs. Their pitiful exclamations as we passed, "Agha Sahib," "Topee Sahib," (the usual names in Hindostan for an European) "khana ke waste kooch cheez do," "give me something to eat," soon drew from me what few pice I had, but it was a drop of water in the ocean, and the importunities of the