so much attention to schools and public institutions for education. In none are the taxes lighter, and in the administration of justice to the natives in their own languages, in the establishment of punchayets, in the degree in which he employs the natives in official situations, and the countenance and familiarity which he extends to all the natives of rank who approach him, he seems to have reduced to practice almost all the reforms which had struck me as most required in the system of government pursued in those provinces of our Eastern Empire which I had previously visited. His popularity (though to such a feeling there may be individual exceptions) appears little less remarkable than his talents and acquirements, and I was struck by the remark I once heard, that 'all other public men had their enemies and their friends, their admirers and their aspersers, but that of Mr. Elphinstone everybody spoke highly.' Of his munificence, for his liberality amounts to this, I had heard much, and knew some instances myself.

"With regard to the free press, I was curious to know the motives or apprehensions which induced Mr. Elphinstone to be so decidedly opposed to it in this country. In discussing the topic he was always open and candid, acknowledged that the dangers ascribed to a free press in India had been exaggerated, but spoke of the exceeding inconvenience, and even danger, which arose from the disunion and dissension which political discussion produced among the European officers at the different stations, the embarrassment occasioned to Government by the exposure and canvass of all their measures by the Lentuli and Gracchi of a newspaper, and his preference of decided and vigorous to half measures, where any restrictive measures at all were necessary. I confess that his opinion and experience are the strongest presumptions which I have yet met with in favour of the censorship.

"A charge has been brought against Mr. Elphinstone by the indiscreet zeal of an amiable but not well-judging man, the 'field officer of cavalry' who published his Indian travels, that 'he is devoid of religion, and blinded to all spiritual truth.' I can only say that I saw no reason to think so. On the contrary, after this character which I had read of him, I was most agreeably surprised to find that his conduct and conversation, so far as I could learn, had been always moral and decorous, that he was regular in his attendance on public worship, and not only well informed on religious topics, but well pleased and forward to discuss them; that his views appeared to me, on all essential subjects, doctrinally correct, and his feelings serious and reverential; and that he was not only inclined to do, but actually did more for

the encouragement of Christianity, and the suppression or diminution of suttees, than any other Indian Governor has ventured on. That he may have differed in some respects from the peculiar views of the author in question, I can easily believe, though he could hardly know himself in what this difference consisted, since I am assured that he had taken his opinion at second hand, and not from anything which Mr. Elphinstone had either said or done. But I have been unable to refrain from giving this slight and imperfect account of the character of Mr. Elphinstone as it appeared to me, since I should be sorry to have it thought that one of the ablest and most amiable men I ever met with were either a profligate or an unbeliever."

The publication of Bishop Heber's Journal with this passage led Mountstuart Elphinstone to express to a friend some misgiving lest it should appear that he had, in his conversation with his guest, expressed more than he felt. "It is certain," writes his biographer, "that his religious opinions were not of the orthodox character the Bishop supposed, but such were his natural piety and his leanings to Christianity that a casual acquaintance might be easily misled as to his views. . . . One who had the best means of judging of his opinions in later life considered that they were those of a devout Unitarian."

From 28th April, when the Bishop held his visitation of the clergy in the old church - since the Cathedral of St. Thomas-to his sermon before the Governor on Whit Sunday from Acts ii. 38, 39, when he urged the highest authorities to aid, in their private capacity, in the conversion of India, down to the day before his departure for Ceylon, he was incessantly occupied in inspecting and encouraging every form of church and charitable effort in the Presidency. Five churches were consecrated, and the new school of the Bombay Education Society was dedicated by prayer. In this latter work Heber anticipated the services of philanthropists like Sir Henry and Lady Lawrence in the military asylums which bear their name, of Alexander Duff in care for the Eurasians, and of his own successor, Bishop Cotton, in the hill schools. At a public breakfast, after the foundation stone had been well laid, Heber thus addressed the Governor :

1 Life of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, by Sir T. E. Colebrooke, Bart., M. P., London (John Murray), 1884, vol. ii. p. 172.

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"It is a grateful sight to see the high, the talented, and the valorous unite to grace with their presence a work, the object of which is to promote the education of the poor. It is impossible for us to look on the group of children now before us, to hear their seraphic voices, and to consider who they are and what may be the consequences of their education, without the deepest interest. They are the children of those who have fought our battles, and have shed their blood, side by side, with our fellowcountrymen; and it is to them and their children that, humanly speaking, we must look for the improvement of the people over whom we rule, and their conversion from the errors of their superstition to the pure tenets of our faith. So that even if the sway of England, like other dynasties, should pass away (which God grant may be far distant!), we shall be chiefly remembered by the blessings which we have left behind."

When in Salsette, moved by the ignorance and degradation of the casteless tribe there, Heber at once proposed "the establishment of a school and a missionary among them," as John Wilson not long after did for the other jungle peoples of Western India.

The Company's cruiser Discovery gave its passengers a pleasant time, despite the monsoon swell of the Indian Ocean, as for ten days it coasted along the beautiful shores and backwaters of Malabar, dotted with Christian churches from the times of Pantænus and Cosmas Indicopleustes. Mrs. Heber, whose pen was almost as ready as her husband's, writes the Journal of their tour in Ceylon, which the Bishop himself sketches in letters to his venerable mother and to Mr. Mayor, vicar of Shawbury, in Shropshire, who had given a son to the Baddegama Mission of the Church Missionary Society in Ceylon. From Bombay to the close of his episcopate Heber enjoyed the services of the Rev. Thomas Robinson, A.M., chaplain of Poona, and afterwards Archdeacon of Madras, as his domestic chaplain. Mr. Robinson was a scholar who had prepared a Persian translation of the Pentateuch, and it was desirable that he should be in Calcutta to pass his work through the press of Bishop's College. To this we owe the tender record of "this beloved apostle of the East," which was published first in Madras in 1829, and then in London-The Last Days of Bishop Heber.

Sir Edward Barnes was the Governor of Ceylon, which had become a Crown Colony in 1798, when it was separated from the adjoining Presidency of Madras, of which, in almost every other respect, it forms a part. The cruel king of Kandy, whom we had set up after driving out the Dutch in the Napoleonic wars, was still a State prisoner in Vellore, and his much-injured chiefs had gladly vested the sovereignty in the British Crown. It was not till 1818 that the Church Missionary Society began its beneficent work among the Singhalese Buddhists1 at the lovely hill capital of Kandy, and a little later at Baddêgama and Cotta, in the south, while a separate set of workers evangelised the Tamil-speaking Hindoos who had crossed the pilgrim bridge of Rameswaram to Jaffna. Colombo, the British capital, which a railway of seventy-five miles now connects with the Kandy sanitarium, and Kurunegala were occupied long after. But, led by the intrepid Coke,2 who, ten years before Heber's visit, had died when off Ceylon, the Wesleyan missionaries had settled there. Not five years passed since the first and greatest of American medical missionaries, John Scudder, M.D., had landed from Boston to begin at Jaffna the Tamil Mission which he and his children to the fourth generation have since spread over Arcot and other districts of South India. As yet, then, it was the day of small things in the island of which Heber had sung in his immortal hymn, and where he failed to find even "the spicy breezes" which the poet's fancy has ever since led visitors to expect.

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Mrs. Heber thus describes the Bishop's reception at Galle, which continued the principal port of the island till recently, when the harbour that gives Colombo its name was improved :

"25th August 1825.

"Mr. Glennie, the senior colonial chaplain; Mr. Layard, the judge of Galle; Mr. Mayor, one of the Church missionaries, and the Master Attendant of Galle, came on board to meet us, and about three o'clock the vessel was got safe into harbour. The

1 William Carey, of course, had been the first to work for the Buddhists of Ceylon, having made progress in the study of their language in 1798, and sent Chater to begin a mission among them at Colombo in 1812. The London Missionary Society had sent three Germans to Ceylon in 1804. 2 Dr. Coke applied to be made first Bishop of Calcutta. respondence of William Wilberforce, vol. ii. p. 256 (1840).

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Fort fired a salute, which the Discovery returned, and we were met on the pier by the principal inhabitants of the place, the regiments stationed there, and a band of spearmen and lascarines. The pier was covered with white cloth, and we passed between two files of soldiers to the place where palanquins, etc., were waiting; in which, preceded by native music, a constant attendant on all processions, we went two miles to the cutcherry, where we were invited, and most kindly and hospitably entertained, by Mr. Sansoni, the collector of the district.

"The Singhalese on the coast differ very much from any Indians I have yet seen, and their language also is different ; they wear no turban or other kind of covering, on the head, but turn up their long black hair with large tortoiseshell combs; the coolies and labouring classes have merely the waist-cloth, as in Bengal; but the 'moodeliers,' or native magistrates, headmen, as they are generally called, wear a strange mixture of the Portuguese and native dress, but handsome, from the gold with which it is covered. The moodelier of Galle, and all his family, are Christians; he is a most respectable man, in face and figure resembling Louis XVIII., to whom his sons also bear a strong likeness; the old man wears a handsome gold medal, given him for meritorious conduct."

"26th August.

"The heat is said to be never very oppressive at Galle, being constantly tempered by sea-breezes and by frequent rain; the total absence of punkahs indeed proves the climate to be moderate. The fort was built by the Dutch, and is a good deal out of repair. We dined to-day at Mr. Layard's, who has an excellent house within its walls; we went in our palanquins, and instead of the lanterns to which we had been accustomed in Calcutta and Bombay, were preceded by men carrying long palm-branches on fire; the appearance of these natural torches was picturesque, and their smell not unpleasant; but the sparks and flakes of fire which they scattered about were very disagreeable, and frequently were blown into my palanquin, to the great danger of my muslin dress; they are never used within the fort."

"28th August.

"The Bishop confirmed about thirty persons, of whom the greater portion were natives; some of the moodelier's family were among the number, but the rest were principally scholars from Mrs. Gisborne's school. He afterwards preached. The church was