deplorable ignorance. However, they evinced much gratitude for the visit of the Missionaries; and so eagerly accepted a few books and tracts in their native language, that Mr. Rhenins regretted he had not brought more with him. One poor boy, in particular, after having several times, in vain, solicited a book, as the Missionaries were obliged to be somewhat sparing, brought them, as his only means of purchase, a little paper full of sugar; and it was probably the sum of his earthly possessions, as the natives in those parts are wretchedly poor, and subsist entirely on the scanty produce of the palmyra tree." (P. 53.)

Our traveller's report of the state of the schools in the south of India, is not very flattering. They labour of course, under many difficulties; and the frequency of Hindoo feasts in their neighbourhood, is a great interruption to them, especially in respect to the regularity of attendance. Yet at Nagracoil, he gives this account of the principal Tamul School, supported by the London Missionary Society.

"I asked the senior boys a great number of questions on Scripture doctrines and history; and the answers evinced decidedly a more thorough knowledge of Scripture, than I had found in any of the Schools I had previously visited. On one or two occasions, I was quite astonished at their answers. Such a state of improvement, is highly creditable to their instructors, and has been produced, they think, by the habit of passing much time in daily questioning them as to the meaning of all they read. I asked one little boy, of eleven years old, whether he ever prayed to God, independently of the form of prayer which had been taught him? He replied, that he did sometimes; and when further questioned, as to what he prayed for? his answer was literally thus: My sins are as numberless as the sands, and so I pray to God to take them from me by the power of his Holy Spirit."" (P. 57—58.)

The improvements which have already taken place among the Syrian Christians, are thus detailed and elucidated.

"The following are the four main improvements, which have been effected with general approbation, or at least without any dislike having been openly manifested.

"1st. The marriage of the Clergy.

“2d. The removal of all images from the Churches.

"3d. The reading a portion of the Scriptures every Sunday in Malayalim.

4th. The opening of Schools, attached to most of the Churches. "These reforms may be safely considered as general in spirit, although in fact, from the remoteness of some of the Churches, and the short space of time which has elapsed since the reform commenced, they cannot be yet said to be in universal operation: in a very few more months, with God's blessing, I have no doubt they will be entirely so. Among partial amendments may be reckoned, a decreasing estimation, in the eyes of the principal clergy, of pomp and ceremony: a desire, openly manifested, to study the scriptures: an humble acknowledgement of the dreadful state of ignorance in which they are plunged: gratitude towards those who are assisting in rescuing them from it: and a greater regard to cleanliness and decency of apparel. Since all this has been effected, through the Divine permission, in the short space of four years, (when Mr. Baily, the first Missionary, settled among them,) can we doubt, I

* Nagracoil is not far from the sea shore.

would say it with humble reverence, but that it seems to be our God's good pleasure, that this once flourishing Church should be restored? (P. 99)

"When the Syrian Divine Service of the day was over, in which, for the first time, the prayers, as well as the portions of scripture, were read in the Malayalim tongue, Mr. Bailey went through a part of the English Liturgy in the same language; and then preached a short sermon to them, on the 9th verse of the 4th chapter of the First Epistle of St. John. Du ring the sermon, contrary to their usual custom, they were all attention, and crowded one upon another, in order to get nearer the Preacher. The Catanars appeared particularly struck, as much with the novelty, as with the interest of the scene: for this was the first sermon they had ever heard, it not being the custom among them to preach. But Mr. Baily has exhorted them to commence; and Ï trust, in time, they will: as yet, most of them are too ignorant themselves of the scriptures to do so. (P. 82, 83.)

"It was very remarkable, how different the attention of the people was during the few prayers which were yet recited in the ancient Syriac. "Several of the Syrians called on Mr. Bailey in the afternoon; and one or two of them entering on the subject of his sermon, recapitulated to him the whole scope of it and observed, how much happier their brethren at Cotyam were, who would have such frequent opportunities of hearing him preach.” (P. 84, 85.)

The courteous and simple visit of the Metropolitan to the Missionaries, and the contrast between his robes of state and his ordinary accommodations, may possibly excite a smile, but certainly not a contemptuous

one.

"The Metropolitan came to us in state; which he had kindly consented to do, in order to afford me the gratification of seeing him in his pontifical robes. He wears a mitre on these occasions, and the pastoral crook, or crozier, is carried before him. The latter is of a very ancient form, having the top ornamented with gold, and the staff made of polished black wood, with a stripe of silver descending spirally from the top to the bottom. After a short time, he took off most of his robes, and kept on only the usual one, of crimson silk. (P. 88.)

"We then visited the Metropolitan; and it was not without some emo. tion of sorrow, that I finally quitted this venerable man. He received me as before, in his little bed-room, the furniture of which consisted simply of a bed, three chairs, and a very small table, a wooden chest, and a brass lamp; from the canopy of his bed, some dresses of ceremony were hanging on a cord, and a very few books lay on the chest opposite one small window. Besides this little room, he has one other, not much larger, which is nearly empty. Such I pictured to myself the abode of an Archbishop in the primitive ages of the Church. before the progress of society and civilization had effected a corresponding change." (P. 90, 91.)

Our traveller met also with the Abbe Dubois, and Dr. Prendergast, the Romish Missionaries. But though his account of them is in many respects pleasing, although the former denounces the worship of images, and is friendly to the circulation of the scriptures; they do not appear either of them to be sufficiently men of the other world, to make the small number of their converts a matter of surprise. We may probably have occasion to say more concerning the Abbe hereafter.

To those, who doubt the advantage of Christianity, or the prefer

ence which is justly due to it, above all human systems, which have been compared to it, we recommend a comparison between the following description of a French revolutionary Atheist, and one, which we shall afterwards bring forward, of an infant Christian, in the agonies of a mortal disease. The first case is thus described.

"He is an unhappy native of Paris, a rank Buonapartist, and at the age of seventy-two, compelled to fly his country from the violence of his political opinions. Unacquainted with the language of Egypt, deprived of every friend, and not knowing a single individual with whom he can associate, except his * Drogman, a Corfiote Greek, who speaks Venetian Italian, and understands a few words of French; accustomed to all the elegancies and comforts with which the French capital abounds, and now little capable of sustaining hardship or exertion; this miserable old man seems condemned to spend his few remaining years far from every thing that can render life supportable, yet suffering under a terror of death amounting to agony. A professed believer in the soul's annihilation at the death of the body, a contemner of Christianity, and a practical Atheist, he repeated to me that he 'gloried in calling himself a perfect Frenchman' He confessed that his life was such a burden to him, that he should long ago himself have brought it to a close, but for his dread of death and still he spoke with pride and delight on the superiority of man's natural reason over the absurd and fabulous delusions' of revealed religion." (P. 229.)

With this melancholy account of an unhappy exile, who rejects, as poison, the only true comfort which belongs to his condition, we will now contrast the closing scene of a child six years old, the only son of his parents, who underwent the distressing and hopeless miseries of hydrophobia.

"During sufferings, which I have rarely seen equalled in a man, and never before in a child, John only once permitted a word of complaint, and it was but a slight one, to escape his lips. He said, "it is very sore to die." In the moments of intermission from acute pain, he sometimes begged his mother to read to him out of a little book containing stories from the Bible; at other times he wished her to sing some of his favourite hymns; his poor mother being, as may be supposed in such circumstances, quite incapaple of singing, now and then repeated to him the words of a hymn, to which he listened with evident pleasure.

When sorrow overcame her, and tears flowed down her cheeks, he would say, "Don't cry, dear mamma, I am quite happy;" but when the sacred spirit of a Christian silenced in her for a moment the anguish of a mother, and she once asked him, "whether he did not know that he had often been a great sinner in the pure eyes of Almighty God? “Oh yes mamma," said the little sufferer; "but Jesus Christ died on the Cross for me." "But Johnny," she added, "do you feel sure you shall go to Heaven?" "Yes mamma; and when I am a little angel, I will fly behind you, and take care of you."

"The mother could bear no more, and few who were present were able to restrain their tears At the time when his paroxysms were most violent, he would never suffer his mother to come near him, lest, as in his momentary madness he snapped at every thing within his reach, he might chance to bite even her. He never would confess to her that he was in

* Interpreter.

pain, but always maintained he was "quite willing to go to Heaven." By degrees nature, exhausted with suffering and agony, began to grow feebler and feebler, and the spasms were proportionably less violent; but his ideas wandered, and after two hours unquiet yet lethargic slumber, his sweet soul, without any apparent pain or struggle, left its earthly prison, and flew to join the ransomed thousands of those innocents whom Jesus loved, and to chant with them the "New Song" of the Redeemed of the Lamb.

"It was about ten o'clock at night that he ceased to breathe; and to my astonishment, no mark of the agonies he had endured was visible on his lovely and placid countenance-it was beautiful even in death. The corpse, having been washed, and dressed in a long white robe, was laid out in the bed in which he usually slept; and the attachment of the poor Hindoos covered it, on the following morning, with sweet fresh flowers. Scarcely a word was spoken, which had not some reference to the virtues of this pious and amiable child. His little sister told us a thing, of which his father even was as ignorant as we were, of no common nature. For a long time past, every Sunday on returning from church, he was accustomed to seek out a retired corner of the house, where no eye could see him but that of his heavenly Father, and there pour out his little soul in earnest prayer. We learned from his father, that whenever he had any pocket money, he made two equal divisions of it; one part was placed in his father's bands for the support of the Bible and Church Missionary Societies, and with the other he used to visit the huts of the poorer natives, and relieve their wants as far as his means would extend.

"Such was John S. at the age of six years and a half, for he was no more when he died! His funeral was attended by the General, and most of the officers of the garrison, who knew and loved him young as he was; but that which stamped on the melancholy procession a more peculiar interest, was the number of poor natives, who accompanied it in tears, and who, at the moment of committing the corpse to its last earthly home, pressed forward to throw each his little handful of earth on the coffin, which held all that now remained of him who once enjoyed among them the blessed title of The poor man's friend.'

"A small monument has since been erected to his memory, where, on a tablet of white marble, are simply recorded his name, age, and death; together with the words of Him, who, in the days of his sorrow, loved to take little children in his arms and bless them, saying, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.'" (P. 13-16.)

In connexion with the preceding narrative, though (we trust) the bereft parents have long ceased to mourn the departure of an infant, who was unquestionably an heir of glory, we feel impelled by a sense of humanity to recal public attention to an extraordinary cure of hydrophobia, which occurred in the native hospital at Calcutta in 1812. From a patient under the aggravated symptoms of that disease forty ounces of blood were taken, which produced immediate relief. The rabid symptoms re-appearing in about two hours, blood was again let, till he fainted, which happened after eight ounces were taken. After the second bleeding the disorder did not return. But considerable quantities of calomel and opium were administered; and he was discharged in a fortnight. We believe that two other instances have occurred of similar treatment with equal success, though in one of them no mercury was administered. It is also stated, that a physician at Padua in 1816

cured a patient by making him swallow a pound of vinegar in the morning, another at noon, and a third at night.

Our author met in the course of his travels with one of those proofs of the debasing influence of the slave trade on all, who are any way concerned in it, which ought to stimulate our efforts, and animate our perseverance, till the legal abolition of that nefarious traffic shall become universally effectual. At Cairo he says,

"We also went to see the market for black slaves, than which I never beheld a scene of more consummate filth, misery, and degradation. Men, women, and children, covered with every species of dirt, many of them totally naked, are huddled together, and crowded almost to suffocation, in dark and dismal cells under ground, which are never cleaned, and have no outlet except the strong gates opening on the slave bazar. From these dungeons they are brought forth for sale, like articles of merchandise, to every passing customer: and, to complete the scene, most of the purchasers who came there while I was on the spot were well dressed females, with their faces veiled as usual. Is it not a remarkable contradiction, that they who consider it a deep offence to the modesty of their sex, should a man at any time chance to see their face, can yet become so reconciled by habit to the sight of slaves, in the state I have described, as to consider that sight not only tolerable, but as being also not at all unbecoming their own sex and condition" (P. 244.)

Our readers will naturally wish to accompany the author in his tour through Palestine, and to trace his feelings in walking upon that ground, the very touch of which must awaken recollections, eminently sacred.

Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus,
Singula dum, capti, circumvectamur, amore.

We therefore restrain ourselves, and will do little more than quote the rule, which he has prescribed for himself, in attempting to draw the line between childish credulity and unfeeling scepticism, in a place where Superstition has been above all others fertile in invention.

"I will not allow myself to disbelieve those accounts of places, which on closely consulting the Bible as my only guide, I have reason to think may be true; and I will decidedly reject every history of them as fabulous, to which the Bible makes no allusion." (P. 290.)

The particulars which are detailed to a traveller in this which may be called the classic region of piety are indeed minute usque ad fastidium. Very different from these juggling trifles is the combination of interesting names and circumstances, in the following account of Cana and its neighbourhood.

Before entering the village from Nazareth, and a little to the right of the road, is a fig tree, which marks a spot where our Saviour is reported frequently to have sat in retirement with his disciples, expounding to them his doctrines, and teaching his gospel. From it there is a pleasing view of Cana, and the valley below. Close to the village is another tree planted, where Jesus at the marriage feast changed the water into wine. It is singular, that though there are now no Christians in the village, all the marriages are celebrated under this tree, in commemoration of the miracle just mentioned. Not far from the tree is a beautiful well of ancient structure; and as it is the only one in the vicinity, it is not improbable