upon us, for it was after two o'clock when we landed. A palanquin was procured for your mother, and I walked by its side. You remember the palanquins; long boxes with sliding doors at the sides, and a pole in front and behind, which six natives take over their shoulders, and trot off with the machine, and the person inside, stopping every five minutes to change with six other bearers who run by the side.

The native or Black Town of Madras is built in streets like English towns, and densely populated. It is close to the sea, and encircled by a wall on the landward side, being defended by Fort St. George on the southern extremity. To the west of Black Town lie the great suburbs of Egmore and Vepery; but the English mostly inhabit what are called garden houses, that is, villas standing each in its own ground, which they call a compound; these are scattered over the country for two or three miles to the south and west of the Fort. The roads, streets, and beach throughout this immense area are in general literally swarming with natives. Where they live was to me a continual enigma, but numbers in that country spend the night under the open sky, with a little mat beneath, and a cotton cloth to cover them. It would be almost impossible to count the Pagodas and Mosques erected for the worship of the Hindoos and Mahometans in the Black Town : there are often two or three in a street. Our christian churches are unfortunately much easier reckoned, but I must tell you of them, and the general state of Christianity in INDIA, at another time.

HUMAN SACRIFICES IN THE KHOOND COUNTRY.

The inhabitants of countries long christianized are apt to suppose that the world improves as it grows older; that men get so much wiser and less barbarous, by the lapse of ages, as to be incapable of repeating the atrocities of antient days. We read, for instance, of bloody idolatries which in the time of the antient Britons and Saxons polluted our own England, when in the green fields, which surround our quiet villages and the groves which cluster about their parish churches, hideous images were worshipped with sacrifices of human beings, and our forefathers came before their false Gods "to give their first born for their transgression, the fruit of their body for the sin of

their soul." (Micah vi. 7.) We pity the miserable ignorance of the wretched barbarians who knew no better: but do we enough consider that the same ignorance would have continued to our own day if Christian Missionaries had not visited this land and planted the Cross of Christ in the place of those idolatrous altars? It is not our own natural growth in wisdom, but the blessed Gospel of our dear Lord which has enlightened our country, and given us our present knowledge of mercy and truth. In those countries where the Gospel has not penetrated, men are just as ignorant and hard-hearted as any Druid or Saxon of old.

Of this truth another proof has been given in the discovery of a very horrible kind of human sacrifice which continues to be perpetrated among some of the inhabitants of British India. The discovery was made during the progress of the Goomsoor wara war occasioned by the encroachments and depredations committed on British subjects by the inhabitants of the hill country in the north of the Madras Presidency. Some of these hill people, who are called Khoonds, were found to be in the habit of celebrating, at certain intervals, a feast which they call Meriah. Upon this occasion a young person is selected, whom they adorn with flowers and gay apparel, and treat with every mark of respect and indulgence throughout the days appointed for the Festival. Meat and drink and every other indulgence to natural appetites are plentifully supplied but at the close of the revels the victim is taken into a field and bound fast to a tree. Then, at a given signal, the whole multitude rush upon their prey and literally hew him in pieces! each endeavours to cut away a piece of flesh before life is extinct, and this is straightway carried home and buried in their fields, in order to promote a rich and plentiful harvest!

The victims of this inhuman practice are generally stolen or purchased from the inhabitants of the low country when young. Their own offspring they spare. The children who thus fall into their hands are carefully secured and bred up in villages allotted for this detestable purpose, and out of them the Meriah is selected at the proper age. These miserable captives, though well fed and treated with kindness, `are always aware of the dreadful end to which they are doomed, and the greatest precautions are taken against their escape.

Upon one occasion our troops surprized a place in which more than 200 of these poor children were detained: and this gave occasion for manifesting one of the many blessings which surround a Christian Mission. For when the Government were at a loss what to do with these ransomed creatures whose parents could not be discovered, they were all taken charge of by some neighbouring Missionaries and brought up as the family of CHRIST.

Our Government, though shamefully tolerant, or to speak more properly, direct encouragers of the spiritual darkness of their idolatrous subjects, are at last determined to protect life and limb from the demands of the false gods. They have accordingly strictly forbidden the continuance of these religious murders; but so infatuated are the Khoonds that repeated insurrections are plotted on this account. Their attachment to the Meriah cannot be subdued but by the strong arm of force, and for this purpose our officers and troops are continually on the watch. We rejoice to hear again that the result of the first season of exertions by the present agency has been the rescue of 206 victims more. Nearly 600 have now been rescued in all.

THE EMIGRANT.

They are for America, sir," said the porter, as I stopped on the platform to look at a family party who were hastening out of the booking office: "they pass down this line in crowds for Liverpool: poor things! they have a deal to go through before they find themselves at home again. I stood gazing at the Emigrants, and felt that the man was right. The father of the family was perhaps but little above thirty years of age, but want and anxiety gave him the air of forty. With one hand he was carefully securing the tickets just purchased in the office, and in the other he led a daughter about ten or twelve years old. He walked at the head of the party with a hurried step and a world of thought in his eye. His wife had an infant in her arms and another little girl held by her hand; there were two or three boys scrambling along with packages nearly as big as themselves. I saw the handles of saucepans and gridirons sticking out from some of these, and all the party had bundles of clothing or bedding on their shoulders. The youngsters were gay enough, but the poor mother looked frightened and sad as she patiently followed her husband. In a few minutes we

were all in the same train, rushing swiftly across the narrow space that was left to them of their native land. I saw them again for a brief space as they turned out at the junction, and clustered round their baggage, to pass the hour on the platform that must intervene before the government train would carry them forward. Here I left them, but I had seen and heard enough of what lay in their road to be able to follow them in my mind's eye as I pursued my journey to London.

I saw them counting up their bundles again in the lodging-house at Liverpool, and the poor mother half crazed with feeding and getting to bed the children, now thoroughly tired with the long day's journey. I followed the man next day to the agent's office, and went down with him to the quay, and marked how his lips quivered as his eye roamed in amaze and bewilderment over the forest of masts that filled the docks and river. Then I went back with him to the two-pair lodging, which, miserable as it was, still sheltered his little ones under an English roof. I saw the poor Yorkshireman burst into tears as it came to the last, and exclaim, "I cannot do it, wife, I cannot bear to take you all over the sea where God knows what will befal us." Then the poor woman, who doubtless had been the last to be convinced by the reasons assigned for their emigration, quietly and resolutely reminded him of the necessity that lay upon them, now increased by parting with their former home and coming so far on the way. Putting her hand in his with a look which none but a wife can give, she prayed him to place his trust in God, and she was ready to go with him to the world's end!

Next, I beheld my Yorkshire emigrants on board ship, with all sail crowded, old England rapidly disappearing from their view, and the white foam of the broad Atlantic dashing up over the bows and falling in spray upon them at the steerage hatchway. A whole month passes in which they had many opportunities of attesting with quaking hearts the truth of the Psalmist's description: "At His word the stormy wind ariseth which lifteth up the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven and down again to the deep, their soul melteth away because of the trouble, they reel to and fro and stagger like drunken men and are at their wits' end." But all this while, in tempest or in calm, their cry unto the Lord" must be confined to their own private and sadly hindered devotions; for publick worship or minister of God's Holy Word there is none in that crowded ship.

Then I ran over in my mind the hurry and bustle of landing: - the hopes and fears, the cares, disappointments, crosses and losses of various kinds to be experienced before the emigrant can reach the scene of his future industry, whether as a hired labourer or little farmer.

Through all these I fancied my stout-hearted Yorkshireman, now again thoroughly nerved to his purpose, boldly and cheerfully struggling. He had gained possession of a little clearing (as they call the land which has been so far reclaimed from the forest as to be fit for tillage), and was occupying himself and his boys, with a labourer whom he had picked up by the way, in incessant toil, “ rising up early, and late taking rest, and truly eating the bread of carefulness." Well! if God gives him health and fruitful seasons, it will not be long before the hand of the diligent will make him rich. No active and upright father of a young family ever grudges hard work: and there is work as hard, with far less prospect of remuneration, in many an English home.

But one thing now occurs to our Emigrant, which in the bustle of setting out did not receive the consideration it demands. There is no church or clergyman within thirty miles of him; no means of publick worship or Christian education. Occasionally he may hope to welcome, for a night, one of the travelling missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; and that is all the religious guidance which he and his increasing family can look to! Now our Emigrant is not a man who despises religion, though I cannot say he is altogether an advanced Christian. He was always accustomed to go to church on Sundays, and thankful for the good vicar's call in the course of the week. He liked to hear his daughter read a chapter from the bible of an evening. Being an intelligent man, he often listened with pleasure to the sermons, and would occasionally repeat a good thought from them to his family. He could not but love the church where he had wedded his affectionate wife, and had all his little ones baptized. Sadly and wistfully, therefore, did he and his wife eye each other the first Sunday morning which dawned on them in their new abode. Sally, the eldest girl, came down stairs in her best frock to go, as she said, to church; and the poor girl burst into tears on being told there was no church to go to. Well, we must try and have church at home," said the father: so getting out their bibles and prayer books, the whole family knelt in their solitary hut, and lifted up their voices in the same words of prayer and praise, which were even then echoing through the cathedrals and parish churches of dear old England.

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What a blessing without price is the prayer book! But for this the Emigrant (who had no gift of extemporaneous prayer) must have been shut out with all his family from the communion they now enjoyed with the devotions of their friends and kinsmen afar off.

"What a blessing, too," I exclaimed to my companion, "is the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which, while so many are occupied in sending off these poor creatures by thousands to America and Aus