careful enquiry and examination of their proceedings on the part of intelligent visiters, whether local residents or passing travellers. In India at least one fact is undeniable, that those laymen who know missions best, are their best supporters. But in the case of our author, no such enquiry was once made. He visited, he saw; and was everywhere determined not to believe. He makes no charges; he presents no rational arguments against the missions he saw; he makes no objections; he offers no explanations, derived from the magnitude of the work, the greatness of the obstacles with which it meets, or the character of the object at which it aims. He mentions none of the reasons, so plain to every eye, which render missions an arduous task. He simply sneers at them, as in his description of Hurdwar; or hammers away with the same assertions of unbelief in their utility, reiterated and repeated again and again. These things with sensible men will do no harm. They simply prove the intensity of his prejudices; they show that his mind had arrived at a foregone conclusion; that he was determined to believe that missions are useless and expensive; and that nothing should convince him to the contrary. Nothing else will account for the extraordinary statements in the paragraph above quoted, that the native Christians of Sigra are subdued and depressed outcasts, and that still they make a profit in becoming Christians!

No one who makes an honest and complete enquiry, can fail to discover the exact position which missions occupy in India. The managers of missionary societies have published, and continue to publish, much illustrative of this very point. From their annual reports may be compiled, not only a faithful account of the course which missions have taken; not only a record of their increase or decay, the casualties they have suffered, the hindrances they have met with, or the success they have attained; but all the circumstances under which these things have occurred, and the causes by which they are influenced, are described in detail. Missionaries know well some things by which mere observers and chance visiters are continually puzzled and misled. For instance, the opponents of missions do not discriminate between people and places as they should do. They set down all native Christians as mercenaries or as hypocrites; they assert of all places that missions are unsuccessful and have few converts. But the real truth in these matters is well known to those who make enquiry. The different districts of India are not all alike; and missionary literature not only recognises the fact, that in some stations the progress of conversion has been exceedingly slow, but indicates most clearly the causes from which the delay springs. In these works nothing is more fully recognised than

the fact that immense differences exist in the knowledge, the social customs, the religious traditions of the various tribes which people India. They acknowledge plainly that caste, and a bigotted attachment to the shastras, have been great barriers. to Christianity in the North-west Provinces; while simple manners, an open disposition, and unusual social freedom, have much facilitated its progress among the Shanars and the Karens. Again, none know the discouragements of missions so well as those who are best acquainted with the mission system. The assertion often made that only the bright side of things is communicated home, and that in England, fictitious success, and the hiding of difficulties, make every thing appear couleur de rose, is a great mistake. An attentive reader of missionary literature will find stories of lamentable apostacies, of disappointed hopes, of mercenary enquiries, of difficulties among native Christians, of failure among native catechists, all causes of grief to the missionary,—as well as stories of the incidents which give him joy. Mr. Taylor, like many other objectors to missions, praises missionaries as faithful, laborious and earnest men; let the view which such men give of their work be carefully studied and fully appreciated; the objectors will then find their cause fall utterly to the ground.

With the concluding sentence of the verdict passed by Mr. Taylor on the Benares and other missions, we, of course, disagree entirely. We might shelter missions under the consideration that Mr. Taylor has seen so very little of missionary operations, as to make it perfectly true, that what he saw did not correspond to the vast expenditure of money and talent, laid out on three hundred places which he did not see; and thus that the statement he makes, is literally true. But we refer rather to the obvious meaning of the sentence, that in his opinion immense sums of money have been expended on missions in India, and that taking all the results together, they do not correspond to the outlay. Of course, Mr. Taylor has no right to make such an assertion, having neither seen nor read enough concerning the wide-spread operations of missions, to be able to form such an opinion on just grounds. In all he says, it is his prejudices and prepossessions that appear, and foregone conclusions take the place of the results of enquiry.

The truth of the statement we question in toto. Far from being fruitless, the labours carried on in connection with Christian missions, have produced an immense amount of good to the country generally, in the direct purpose which they have in view. We shall not attempt to prove this now. The pages of this Review have, in years gone by, given frequent evidence of the beneficial results of missionary efforts: and those who wish for

fuller information can easily find it on every hand. At the same time, we ask, why should missions be specially singled out as unsuccessful. Who in India have been completely successful in their schemes, subduing all obstacles, and securing the desired triumph? Has the Government been successful in drawing to itself the affections of its subjects, and securing the willing obedience of even the oldest provinces under its rule? Has it cured the mighty public evils which have prevailed for centuries? Has it been able to establish courts of real justice, to banish perjury, and appoint uncorrupt officials among its lower officers? Has it formed a faithful and vigilant police: a faithful army, a contented, prosperous peasantry? All the Governors and high officials of the land lament the contrary. Has education been successful? Has it reached the masses; has it really enlightened the few that have sought its blessings? Have its results been commensurate with the money, time and talent expended upon it? Have planters been successful in making their cultivation popular with the peasantry, while profitable to themselves? Have our merchants taught honesty in all their dealings with native traders, and been able to secure it? In all these cases, the deficiencies of the people have presented great obstacles to progress: how much more may difficulties be pleaded in the case of missions, which go to the very root of the soul's motives and principles of action. Time and effort have failed perfectly to cure numbers of the surface-evils exhibited by native society in India. Much less have they removed far deeper social maladies. Is it wonderful then that Christian missions, which deal with the deepest maladies and disorders of all, should require more time and more effort still before their full fruits can naturally be looked for? Government, in aiming at its objects, employs thousands of European agents: the Christian church sends but four hundred into the whole of India.

We would draw special attention to one statement of Mr. Taylor's, which merits the most serious consideration at the present time:

"There is one feature of English society in India, however, which I cannot notice without feeling disgusted and indignant. I allude to the contemptuous manner in which the natives, even those of the best and most intelligent classes, are almost invariably spoken of and treated. Social equality, except in some rare instances, is utterly out of the question. The tone adopted towards the lower classes is one of lordly arrogance; towards the rich and enlightened, one of condescension and patronage. I have heard the term "niggers >> applied to the whole race by those high in office; with the lower orders of the English it is the designation in general use. And this,

SEPT., 1857.

K

too, towards those of our own Caucasian blood, where there is no instinct of race to excuse their unjust prejudice. Why is it that the virtue of Exeter Hall and Stafford House can tolerate this fact without a blush, yet condemn, with pharisaic zeal, the social inequality of the negro and the white races in America ?

We fear there is too much ground for this indignant remonstrance. But neither Exeter Hall nor Stafford House approve of the treatment which the American stranger so justly censures. The friends of Exeter Hall are those with whom native servants find kind friends and sweet words. They do blush at the haughty and proud demeanour of their countrymen, and have frequently protested against it; not like Mr. Taylor on ethnological grounds, but because it is as unchristian as it is unkind.

On quitting India, Mr. Taylor turned his face towards China, and spent a considerable time at the various ports open for English and American trade. In his journal appear many items of information concerning the manners of the Chinese, which we have not seen noticed elsewhere. He is everywhere, when such prejudices as those to which we have just alluded do not interpose, the same careful observer, photographing the various scenes of interest which passed before his view: but to this work he confines himself. We shall only quote an extract or two descriptive of Shanghai and its neighbourhood. In the following passage, he gives us a picture of the banks of the Woosung, the river on which Shanghai is situated :

"The country on both sides of the river is a dead level of rich alluvial soil, devoted principally to the culture of rice and wheat. The cultivation was as thorough and patient as any I had seen, every square foot being turned to some useful account. Even the sides of the dykes erected to check inundations were covered with vegetables. These boundless levels are thickly studded with villages and detached houses, all of which are surrounded with fruit-trees. I noticed also occasionally groves of willow and bamboo. The country, far and wide, is dotted with little mounds of earth-the graves of former generations. They are scattered over the fields and gardens in a most remarkable manner, to the great detriment of the cultivators. In some places the coffins of the poor, who cannot afford to purchase a resting-place, are simply deposited upon the ground, and covered with canvass. The dwellings, but for their peaked roofs, bore some resemblance to the cottages of the Irish peasantry. They were mostly of wood, plastered and whitewashed, and had an appearance of tolerable comfort. The people, who came out to stare in wonder at the great steamer as she passed, were dressed uniformly in black or dark blue. Numerous creeks and canals extended from the river into the plains, but I did not notice a single highway.

The landscape was rich, picturesque and animated, and fully corresponded with what I had heard of the dense population and careful agriculture of China. I was struck with the general resemblance between the Woosung and the lower Mississippi, and the same thing was noticed by others on board.”

After residing for a month at Shanghai, during the numerous panics which prevailed there, after the victorious insurgents had taken Nankin, our author gives the following account of the appearance and arrangement of the city :

"We now enter an outer street, leading to the northern gate of the city. It is narrow, paved with rough stones, and carpeted with a deposit of soft mud. The houses on either hand are of wood, two stories high, and have a dark, decaying air. The lower stories are shops, open to the street, within which the pig-tailed merchants sit behind their counter, and look at us out of the corners of their crooked eyes, as we go by. The streets are filled with a crowd of porters, water-carriers, and other classes of the labouring population, and also during the past week or two, with the families and property of thousands of the inhabitants, who are flying into the country, in anticipation of war. At the corners of the streets are stands for the sale of fruit and vegetables, the cheaper varieties of which can be had in portions valued at a single cash-the fifteenth part of a cent. A bridge of granite slabs crosses the little stream of which I have already spoken, and after one or two turnings we find ourselves at the city gate. It is simply a low stone arch, through a wall ten feet thick, leading into a sort of bastion for defence, with an inner gate. Within the space is a guard-house, where we see some antiquated instruments, resembling pikes and halberds, leaning against the wall, but no soldiers. A manifesto issued by the Taou-tai-probably some lying report of a victory over the rebels-is pasted against the inner gate, and there is a crowd before it, spelling out its black and vermilion hieroglyphics.

Turning to the left, we advance for a short distance along the inside of the wall, which is of brick, about twenty feet thick, with a notched parapet. Carefully avoiding the heaps of filth, and the still more repulsive beggars that line the path, we reach a large, blank building, about two hundred feet square. This is a pawnbroker's shop-for the Chinese are civilized enough for that-and well worth a visit. The front entrance admits us into the office, where the manager and his attendants are busily employed behind a high counter, and a crowd of applicants fills the space in front. We apply for permission to inspect the establishment, which is cheerfully granted; a side-door is opened, and we enter a long range of store-houses, filled to the ceiling with every article of a Chinese household or costume, each piece being folded up separately, numbered and labelled. One room is appropriated wholly to the records, or books registering the articles deposited. There are chambers containing thousands of pewter candlesticks; court-yards piled with braziers; spacious lofts, stuffed to