His feelings burst forth unrestrained, writes his wife, and he uttered the words which proved prophetic, that he should return to it no more. To Oxford many a contemporary and friend came up to bid him God speed, and from the delights of All Souls he went forth grateful and humbled by the love of his fellows. On the 18th May he closed his lectureship at Lincoln's Inn with a discourse of rapt eloquence and reasonableness on the Atonement, the leading peculiarity of our religion, "its corner-stone and master-key, the vicarious and expiatory nature of the Christian sacrifice Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.1 With exquisite art and reverence he closed with an illustration meant to convey his farewell to his friends :

"Even in this world we may often die; and whosoever finds occasion to tear himself from the friends of his earliest love and the scenes of his happiest recollections, will have experienced some of the worst and bitterest pangs by which our final dissolution can be accompanied. But it is in the power of us all so to fill up the measure of our pilgrimage in this world as that the separation which we so much dread, whenever it comes, can never be eternal; but our parting with our friends may be the prelude to a happier and more enduring friendship in those regions where love is unalloyed and truth unsuspected, and where we shall reap their blessed harvest!"

As the great congregation passed out into the square, Mr. Butterworth, a leading Wesleyan Methodist, exclaimed to Sir Thomas Dyke Acland :

:

"Oh sir, thank God for that man! Thank God for that man!' Considering Mr. Butterworth's station and influence among the Wesleyan methodists, and almost the whole body of India missionaries not directly connected with the establishment, I felt at once all the value of such an impression upon his mind, both as to the disposition with which the Bishop would be met by these bodies on his arrival in India, and the effect which it was clear his intercourse with them would produce."

So Acland wrote to Mrs. Heber.

The last six weeks in London were spent in engrossing

1 See his Sermons Preached in England (John Murray), 1829.

duties "between the India House, Lambeth, the Board of Controul, and the different Societies for Propagating the Gospel." On Sunday, 1st June, the second Bishop of Calcutta was consecrated in the chapel of Lambeth Palace, as his predecessor had been-not in Westminster Abbey, or St. Paul's, or Canterbury Cathedral, but as if the Church of England were doing a deed of which the Empire was ashamed or afraid. In Middleton's case, nine years before, the Archbishop of Canterbury would not allow 1 the publication of the consecration sermon by Dr. Rennell, Dean of Winchester. We fortunately have Heber's own account of the consecration in a letter to Miss Dod::

"LINCOLN'S INN, Thursday, 8th June 1823

"MY DEAR CHARLOTTE has indeed greatly mistaken the cause of my silence when she attributes it to anything like an unkind feeling towards her. The truth is that I have been more busy than I can say with learning Hindostani, with the daily and homely engagements of packing up, receiving deputations, attending committees, making calls on friends and at public offices, and, above all, in preparing a sermon for the benefit of the London Charity School, to be preached in St. Paul's to-day, and afterwards to be printed with the Annual Report of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. That is now over, and I seize the first moment to write what still must be a short and hasty letter to one whose friendship I most sincerely value, and whose kind recollections I always hope, however far removed from her, to retain.

"The ceremony of my consecration was, as you may well believe, a very awful and impressive one. Few persons were admitted to see it, but the Archbishop kindly invited my brother, and Mrs. Manners Sutton asked Emily, with leave to bring two friends, who were Mrs. Williams Wynn and Mrs. Thornton. The Archbishop read the service beautifully, and I was much affected. God grant that the feelings so excited may be permanent! When you read what I then undertook, by His help, to observe and do, you will not wonder that I was agitated. The Saturday following I had a private audience of the King (he not being well enough to hold a levee), and kissed hands as usual. On this occasion I was neither bustled nor shy; but, as I had not seen him even in public

1 Life of Bishop Middleton, by Professor C. Webb le Bas, M.A., vol. i. p. 52 (Rivingtons, 1831).

for many years, I looked at him as attentively as I could do without incivility or disrespect to see whether he answered the idea which I had formed. I do not think he did. I expected an older and more infirm man. He was lame indeed, with his feet in flannels, but his countenance healthy, his way of sitting up extremely upright, his voice loud and firm, and altogether looking like a hale man of eight-and-forty. Yet, at this very moment, the newspapers of London were spreading a story of his being at the point of death.

"Since that time I have had nothing grand or gaudy till yesterday, when I dined with the East India Directors at a monstrous table covered with turtle and French wines, and was obliged, against my will, to make a speech to thank them for their kindness in giving me a house and shortening my term of residence. To-day I preached at St. Paul's. This last has been, beyond a doubt, the finest sight and sound I ever saw or heard. The dome and broad aisle of the church was crowded with welldressed folks (no fewer than 7000 in number, as one of the stewards informed me); an immense orchestra in front of the organ filled with the choir singers (the best Protestant singers in London) in surplices, and above 5000 boys and girls ranged in an amphitheatre all round, in uniform dresses, and packed so close, and ranged on so steep a declivity, that the whole looked like a tapestry of faces and clothes. Whenever they sat down or stood up the rustle was actually like very distant thunder. And their singing! I never felt anything of the kind so strangely and awfully impressive. It was not like singing, but like the sound of winds, waters, birds, and instrumental music all blended; and yet one distinguished the words, with the exception of the coronation anthem, in which their Hallelujah was very magnificent. The Psalms selected were the most simple that could be fixed on-the 100th, the 113th, and the 104th; and in this last every line told. I had nearly got into a sad scrape, the person who was to send my lawn sleeves, etc., having made a mistake, and sent a common clergyman's gown. I did not find it out till I went to robe, but hurried immediately to the tailor, and luckily succeeded in getting my things just in time. The pulpit was ill contrived, and the sounding-board too low. I gave up all hope of being heard by more than those immediately round me, but exerted my voice as much as I could, and succeeded better than I expected.

"I am now at home again, but have not yet got through the fatigues of the day, being still sitting in my gown and cassock expecting the carriage to take me back into the city to a monstrous

tavern dinner with the Lord Mayor and the wise Duke of Glo'ster. To-morrow I am to receive a farewell address from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. . . . I have been by no means well, but the completion of my work to-day has taken a load from my mind, and I am five times the man I was yesterday. I shall send the song 1 to Newcome. I have a book to send you, but will not keep this letter back any longer. God Almighty bless, preserve, and prosper you! Give my kindest love to your mother, sister, and father. Wherever I go I shall never cease to think of you all with sincere gratitude and affection. Adieu! dearest Charlotte, and do not quite forget your affectionate friend,

"REGINALD CALCUTTA.”

To the valedictory address of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which was delivered by the Bishop of Bristol, Bishop Heber replied in the fulness of his heart in a way thus described by Sir Robert Harry Inglis, who accompanied him :—

"I was therefore equally delighted and surprised to hear him speak, though with feelings justly and naturally excited, with a command of language, and with a fulness and freedom of thought, and at the same time a caution which became one addressing such a Society at such a time, when every word would be watched in India as well as in England. We shall long remember the sensation which he produced when he declared that his last hope would be to be the chief missionary of the Society in the East, and the emotion with which we all knelt down at the close, sorrowing most of all that we should see his face no more."

To his mother and sister he sent this letter :

“... I think and hope I am going on God's service. I am not conscious of any unworthy or secular ends, and I hope for His blessing and protection both for myself and for those dear persons who accompany me and whom I leave behind. God Almighty bless and prosper you, my beloved mother. May He comfort and support your age, and teach you to seek always for comfort, where it may be found, in His health and salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord!

"Bless you, dear, dear Mary-you and your worthy husband.2

1 The second "Song of the Bow."

2 The Rev. Charles Cowper Cholmondeley, his successor at Hodnet.

May He make you happy in your children and in each other, in time and in eternity!

"I know we have all your prayers, as you have ours. Believe me that we shall be, I hope, useful, and if useful, happy where we are going; and we trust in God's good providence for bringing us again together in peace, when a few short years are ended, in this world, if He sees it good for us; if not, yet in that world where there shall be no parting nor sorrow any more, but God shall wipe away all tears from all eyes, and we shall rejoin our dear father and the precious babe whom God has called to Himself before us!"

So, on 16th June 1823, there went forth the chief missionary of the Church of England to the East.