patiently, in hope of a better and more enduring inheritance. The influence of Christian households, thus formed and conducted, must eventually be great among a people, to whom domestic happiness is rarely known.

The free boarding school for boys, at Tillipally, is called the preparatory school, from its relation to the seminary. It contains 50 scholars, of whom four are members of the church, and four or five are candidates for admission. The pupils have made good progress in their studies, and given satisfaction as to their general behavior. The number is not so large as in preceding years, as the class, which left it in 1830 to enter the seminary, was not replaced by new admissions-a part of the funds which had been usually appropriated to the preparatory school, being more needed by the seminary. Near the beginning of the year 1831, almost the whole school was awakened to a serious concern for the soul.

In the seminary, at Batticotta, are 83 students, 38 of whom are members of the mission church; 28 were added to the church during the year 1831. There are besides a number of candidates for admission. In all the four classes, and especially in the first, the weight of character and influence is decidedly Christian. Idolatry may possibly have its secret advocates, but it is avowed by none. That none of the pupils will hereafter countenance the superstitions of their countrymen, it would be too much to expect; yet the folly of idol-worship, if not the sin of it, must have been made so apparent to all, as to render their cordial support of it scarcely possible.

Both the students and their parents are evidently forming a more definite and correct estimate of the value of an education; and the seminary is exerting an important and growing influence in favor of Christianity. Many of the parents of the students have

been induced to attend church at the several stations.

No class was admitted or dismissed the past year. Eight of the students, for various reasons, left the seminary. The studies of the several classes are as follows:

First Class.-17 students; Lennie's Grammar and Exercises-Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric-Porteus's Evidences of Christianity-Euclid through 4th book-Blair's Grammar of Natural Philosophy through Optics-Translating, Declamation, and Composition-Tamul Classics.

Second Class.-18 students; Woodbridge's Geography-Lennie's Grammar-Euler's and Bonnycastle's Algebra-Mental Arithmetic, (reviewing)-Tamul and English

Phrases-Euclid 1st book-Pronouncing Testament-Tamul Grammar of the High language, and Tamul Classics.

Third Class, 18, and Fourth class, 30 students; Lennie's Grammar-Colburn and Joyce's Arithmetics through Logarithms-Phrases-Native Arithmetic-First Lesson in Astronomy-Writing in English and Tamul-Construing the English New Testament and English Tracts.-All the classes have attended to the study of the Bible, in both Tamul and English, in connection with chronology.

Mr. Poor greatly needs an associate in the instruction of the seminary, and the Committee purpose to send one, as soon as a suitable man can be obtained. He should be qualified to teach in the Scriptures, and in the various branches of natural history.

The following table gives a summary of the schools and scholars at each of the stations.

The expenses incurred in this department, in the year 1831, reckoning the pound sterling at five dollars, which is its value in Ceylon, were as follows:

These were the expenses as charged in the pecuniary accounts

of the mission for that year.

But reckoning all the expenses which

are properly chargeable to the schooling system, the average cost in each of the cases above specified would be somewhat greater. The expense of catechists, readers, and other native assistants was 486 dollars, or about 15 dollars each.

PREACHING.-At Tillipally the congregations have been larger than in former years. The attendance of women has been particularly encouraging. Meetings for prayer have been held in dif ferent neighborhoods at an early hour in the morning, where members of the church resided and were able to attend.—The congregations at Batticotta have been more numerous and attentive than heretofore. Not only has the chapel been filled, but also an adjoining room. From fifteen to thirty native women attend at this station, several of them the wives, mothers, or sisters of schoolmasters. "This," remarks Mr. Meigs, "forms a new era at Batticotta. Six months ago it was considered a thing quite impracticable. Many were disposed to say, should the Lord make windows in heaven, could this thing be?" There has been regular preaching on Fridays, often by missionaries from other stations, or by the native preachers; and evening meetings have been held, sometimes in two villages at the same hour, which were well attended. The congregation on Sabbath mornings at Oodooville, is from four to five hundred, and fills the church. From seventy to eighty are adults, and from twenty to twenty-five are women. The afternoon congregation consists of the female and English schools, and from twenty to thirty adults. The native preachers hold meetings alternately in Copay and Pootoor, places in the neighborhood of this station, at which the free schools of the vicinity attend, and from four to twenty adults; a few women have begun to come in. Evening meetings in different villages have usually been well attended, though there is not supposed to be in any village a general desire to hear the gospel. The leading motive in most, is a wish to please the missionary, or the teacher of the school, or to pass an idle hour. Nevertheless it has pleased God to make the attendance of some a means of bringing them to a saving acquaintance, as is hoped, with the truth. At Panditeripo the attendance, both at the station and in the village meetings, is much the same as in former years, with the exception of a small increase of women. There are two meetings in the course of the week, one of which is at Santillepay, for females exclusively, at which the attendance has been encouraging.-The preaching, at

Manepy was interrupted during half the year, by the fire, and the Committee have received no report concerning it.

Three natives now furnish valuable aid as licensed preachers of the gospel, besides others who assist as readers and catechists. Gabriel Tissera, the oldest of the preachers, has been for some time a licentiate; the others, Nathaniel Niles and Charles Augustus Goodrich, were licensed and received a public designation as preachers of the gospel and candidates for ordination, at the quarterly communion in January 1831. At the same time, they were charged in the presence of the church and congregation to be faithful to their solemn trust. In the afternoon of the same day, they went for the first time into the pulpit, and after Goodrich had read and expounded a portion of Scripture and prayed, Niles preached with great propriety, energy and feeling; enforcing the duty of the native church to raise up and send forth native preachers of the gospel of Christ. Nearly all the congregation were in tears. These two young men are the first from the seminary, who have received license, and are very promising both as to piety and talents. Tissera received the greater part of his education from the missionaries of the Board, but has been connected with the seminary only in the capacity of an instructer. A particular account was given of him in the Missionary Herald for June 1830, and in the appendix to the fourteenth Annual Report of the Prudential Committee. Timothy Dwight was examined and approved in respect to his qualifications, at the same time with Niles and Goodrich, but some family reasons and the state of his health prevented his receiving license.

THE PRESS. The mission not having a press of its own, procures its printing done at the Church Missionary Society's press at Nellore, under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Knight. Most of the labors of the mission in this department have been in connection with the small tract society of the district. Many of this society's publications were prepared by the missionaries of the Board, though much indebted for revision and correction to Mr. Knight, who possesses a critical acquaintance with the Tamul language. A few of the tracts are translations, but the idiom and genius of the language and the modes of thinking among the people are so entirely different from those of the western world, that little can be done by mere translations; and it has generally been found ex

pedient to compose the tracts and school books intended for the natives, expressly for them. About 75,000 tracts were distributed by the mission during the year 1831; designed for native Christians, Heathens, Papists, and Mohamedans. Four tracts, coming within the rules of the American Tract Society, were published at the expense of that institution, on account of the appropriation of $200 mentioned in the last Report. The Committee take great pleasure in acknowledging another grant of $500 from the same society, for the use of this mission.

A revised edition of the Old Testament in the Tamul language, was printed at Madras in the years 1830 and 1831, with beautiful type and paper, and put up in strong binding. A thousand copies of this edition were taken by the Bible Society in Jaffnapatam, of which one half were placed at the disposal of our mission. The greater part of these were distributed as reading books in the schools, and among the native Christians, Papists, and Heathens. At the close of 1831, the stock of Scriptures, and particularly of single Gospels for the use of the schools, became much reduced, and the grant of the American Bible Society of $600, mentioned in the last Report, was eminently seasonable; not only as it enabled the missionaries to supply the wants of the schools, but also to enlarge their stock of entire copies of the word of God, of which there were scarcely fifty in the mission. This they could do from an edition, said to be in progress a year and a half ago, with a very small type, in which the Old Testament would be brought into one octavo volume.

Nothing can be more obvious, than that the demand for the Scriptures and for tracts must regularly, if not rapidly, increase among the inhabitants of this populous district.

MISSION CHURCHES.-For the greater convenience of church government and discipline, the missionaries have found it expedient to form separate churches at each of the mission stations; uniting them, however, in a consociation. Of the 198 natives, who had been received into the mission church since its formation, several had died, a few had removed to other parts of the island, and eight had been excommunicated. The remaining members were divided to the different stations where they reside, or to which they naturally belong. According to this arrangement, the native members in the several new churches were as follows.