I think, the peculiar circumstances under which it was performed must have rendered it highly interesting to the greater part of the congregation; at least, if I may judge of their feelings by my own. The Bishop preached, and in the afternoon confirmed thirteen persons, all of whom, save three, were Cingalese; making, together with five who had been previously confirmed at Galle, fifteen recently converted natives in this mission, four of whom received the Sacrament.

In the evening the Bishop examined some of the scholars, and heard them read and construe a chapter of the New Testament from English into Cingalese. This station has been established six years, and if the lives of the missionaries are spared, there is every reasonable hope, with God's blessing, of its being productive of extensive good.

September 26.-We left Baddagame in palanquins, along the banks of the river, which was too much swollen by heavy rains, lately fallen, to admit of our going in boats; indeed the track was in some parts covered with water, so deep that it nearly entered my palanquin, and was very fatiguing to the poor bearers. In the afternoon we arrived at Galle, and resumed our former apartments at Mr. Sansoni's.

In the expectation of being able to sail to-morrow, the Bishop set off immediately to visit Mrs. Gisborne's school. My poor little girl was still suffering under the effects of her recent attack at Baddagame, which prevented my accompanying him; this I very much regretted, when, on his return, he gave me an account of the establishment, which had pleased him very much, and which reflected great credit on Mrs. Gisborne's good sense and good management.

We were detained two days at Galle by unfavourable winds, for it is impossible to leave the harbour unless it blows from a particular quarter.

Early in the morning of the 29th we re-embarked, our party being augmented by a son of Mr. Layard's, and one of Captain Driburgh's (the commandant at Galle), the latter of whom

was on his way to Bishop's College, as one of the new students.

Our visit to Ceylon has afforded us very great pleasure and interest, from its agreeable society, the beauty of its scenery, its curiosities, and, far above all, from the religious state of the native inhabitants. I have heard it said, that the number of Christians on the coast, and amongst our settlements, do not fall far short of half a million; very many of these, undoubtedly, are merely nominally such, who have no objection to attend our church, and even would, if they were allowed, partake without scruple in her rites; and then, perhaps, the same evening, offer a propitiatory sacrifice to the devil! Still, the number of real Christians is very considerable; the congregations in the native churches are good; and the numbers who came for confirmation (none were, of course, admitted of whose fitness their ministers were not well convinced) was extremely gratifying. I think the Bishop confirmed above three hundred.

The Church Missionary Society has four stations, Nellore, Baddagame, Cotta, and Candy, supplied at present with but six missionaries: were its funds sufficient, there would, perhaps, be no limits to which its beneficial effects might not extend; but the island is too poor to do much for itself, and must mainly depend on its friends at home for assistance. Caste exists in considerable force, but it is, perhaps, more political than religious caste. That of the Chaliers I have already mentioned; there is another, yet lower, called "Rhoders," whose tribe was originally degraded for eating beef; their women are fortune-tellers; a large proportion of the Cingalese are, however, on an equality in this respect, and have no objection to following any liberal profession. At Candy the population is scrupulously divided into castes, which include all the different ranks and professions; but there is one caste quite excluded from all intercourse with their countrymen. The name I have forgotten, but I was told that they lived in the deepest misery, from which no good behaviour on their

part could raise them. On meeting a | Candian of any rank they are forced to pay him the same reverence that this last would do to his king.

The worship of Buddh is the prevailing religion in Candy, as well as in other parts of the island, and there are also among the Candians some nominal Christians, who use his doctrines as a charm against evil spirits; this province has, however, been for too short a time under Christian government, to expect any very considerable effects from our intercourse with its natives.

The Candians are a much handsomer and finer race than the Cingalese, the latter of whom are short and slightly made, with countenances a good deal resembling the images of Buddh. In our journey to Candy I was much pleased with the readiness and zeal with which the men used to push the carriages up the steep hills, or hold them back in their descent. On the coast there is a great mixture of inhabitants, descendants of the Dutch and Portuguese as well as Malays, and many others from the continent. There are Mussulmans and Hindoos in all parts, but no great proportion of the latter.

The climate on the south and southwest coast is particularly fine for a tropical country: the thermometer at

Colombo ranges from 75° to 86° or 87°, seldom exceeding the latter, though so near the line. This is partly to be attributed to the constant sea-breezes, and partly to its sharing in the winds and rains of the two monsoons which blow at different periods on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts. It is not generally injurious to European constitutions either there or to the north; and I have seen several individuals, apparently in the enjoyment of health, though without colour, who have never been out of the island. Last year Ceylon suffered from sickness, in.common with all India,, very severely, which only ceased when the rains set in, they having been preceded by an unusual drought.

Sir Edward Barnes interests himself much in the improvement of the natives; the roads which he is making must contribute essentially to their prosperity and comfort, and he is attempting to introduce among them the system of entail; at present property is subdivided into the minutest portions, even to the coco-tree, the 154th part of one of which I have seen advertised for sale. While this custom, with that of forced labour, lasts, the island must be poor; in fact, glorious as it is by nature, it has as yet had very few of the advantages of civilization.

JANUARY 30, 1826.-I again left, with a heavy heart, my dear wife and children, for the visitation of Madras and the south of India. I was accompanied by my chaplain, Mr. Robinson, and went down by boat to Fultah, a village about twenty-five miles from Calcutta, where is a good tavern kept by a Dutch native of Chinsurah. The village is large and populous; the greater part of the people are engaged either in rearing stock for the ships at Diamond Harbour, or in making straw hats, and other trifling articles, for strangers passing up and down the river. The surrounding country is like all the rest of lower Bengal, green, perfectly level, overflowed annually by the river, and distributed in rice-fields, scattered in patches amid almost interminable groves of fruit-trees and palms. We found it much cooler than Calcutta, and less infested with mosquitoes; but during the greater part of the year both this place and all the country round Diamond Harbour, and thence towards the sea, is intensely unwholesome. Were it otherwise, this would be a good place for a missionary, and has been thought of for that purpose. The population of the whole neighbourhood appears to swarm like an ant-hill, but they are all cottagers; no traces of even moderate wealth appear among them, though their dwellings are clean, and their poverty, to a person acquainted with the few and simple wants of this climate, does not seem abject. Perhaps they do not fare the worse for having the majority of their zemindars non-resident.

February 2.-Having received our summons the preceding evening, and the wind now blowing pleasantly from the north, we proceeded down the noble Ganges, which is here, I should apprehend, eight miles at least in breadth, following the ship to a creek called Barakatallah, a little below Calpee, and diverging from the Ganges into the Sunderbunds.

While anchored at Saugor Point, on the 4th, the steam-vessel Enterprise passed us, with dispatches from Frome, and bringing the unwelcome intelligence, though somewhat relieved by the news of a victory, that hostilities had recommenced with the Burmese.

Sunday, February 5.-We proceeded to the Sandheads, and dismissed the pilot. I was glad to learn from him that a poor man, who had once taken us up the river, and got miserably drunk on that occasion, had been greatly impressed by some good advice I had given him, and had since remained a water-drinker. I wish my good counsels were always equally successful!

Our voyage to Madras was tedious, and not over-pleasant; we had a steady and, for this season, a most unusual south-west wind, from the time the pilot left us down to February 25, when we with difficulty reached the roads. The Bussorah Merchant had a very fine and orderly crew of British seamen, without a single Lascar. There were also thirty miserable invalid soldiers, with some women and children, going back, with broken health and depraved habits, either to England, or, which seemed most probable with many of

them, to die at sea. These poor people | were, apparently, attentive to what Mr. Robinson and I read and prayed, and we took it by turns to visit them once a day. We were not, however, able to flatter ourselves that the impression made was at all deep, and the women, in particular, seemed incorrigible in their drunkenness, though one of them, who was actually and hopelessly dying from this cause, was a fluent talker on religious matters, and had been, she told us, religiously educated, and, while in England, a constant member of Mr. Rowland Hill's congregation.

Nothing can be more foolish, or in its effects more pernicious, than the manner in which spirits are distributed to European troops in India. Early every morning a pint of fiery, coarse, undiluted rum is given to every man, and half that quantity to every woman; this the greater part of the new comers abhor in the first instance, or would, at all events, if left to themselves, mix with water. The ridicule of their seasoned companions, however, deters them from doing so, and a habit of the worst kind of intemperance is acquired in a few weeks, more fatal to the army than the swords of the Jâts, or the climate of the Burmese. If half the quantity of spirit, well watered, were given at a more seasonable hour, and, to compensate for the loss of the rest, a cup of strong coffee allowed to each man every morning, the men would be quite as well pleased, and both their bodies and souls preserved from many dreadful evils. Colonel Williams, of the "Queen's Own," whom we met at Bombay, has tried this experiment with much success, and it might, with a little resolution, be universal throughout the army. The young sailors were, many of them, very attentive and devout when we visited the soldiers. On Sundays, indeed, all the crew were decent and orderly in their attendance on Divine Service, and the passengers, though a set little less motley than the crew, evinced much readiness to join in family prayer every evening. There was much grievous distress on board. Two officers from Rangoon and Arracan, both gentlemanly young men, the one wasted

by fever to a living skeleton, without use of his legs or arms, carried up and down the ladder to and from table, his eyes almost glazed, and his voice feeble and hollow; the other, who was particularly intelligent and good-tempered, and had the traces of much strength and manly beauty, was covered from head to foot with ulcers, some of which reached quite to his bones. Both these, as well as a third, who was killing himself with dram-drinking, were going home for their health, though the surgeon of the ship expressed great fears that all three would share the fate of a poor baby who died on board, and find their graves before they reached Europe.

Two of the female passengers were also objects of considerable pity; the first being a young widow, whose husband, a small indigo planter, had failed in business, and destroyed himself, and who was now going home, with her child, to live on the charity of some poor relations. The other, a wretched crazy girl, also in an humble rank of life, who had fallen in love with a man in a more elevated station, and who had since hardly spoken at all, but continued crying all day long..

On the whole, what I saw and heard on board the Bussorah Merchant was not calculated to make my voyage one of pleasure, even if I had felt less keenly my separation at Calcutta. It was a comfort to me, however, with regard to this, that the officers on board, who were all well acquainted with Madras and the south of India, coincided in opinion with what we had been previously told, that it would be highly improper for either women or children to travel there at this season of the year.

Our first view of the coast of Coromandel was of some low craggy hills near Pulicat, at some little distance inland. Madras itself is on a level beach, having these hills eight or ten miles to the north, and the insulated rock of St. Thomas about the same distance southward. The buildings and fort, towards the sea, are handsome, though not large, and grievously deficient in shade; the view, however, from the roads, and on landing, is very pretty.