But the Demosthenic caution must be applied to this conclusion, the rather that we are forcibly directed to its application by the fact of the Institution's early success. If the Sailors' Home were working well, and yet the evil remained undiminished, the case would be hopeless; but if there be enough in the working of the "Home" to account for its want of success, the evil of the past becomes a ground of hope for the future. Now it was asserted strongly at a meeting in the Town Hall by Mr. Archibald Grant, and it is reiterated with equal strength in the pamphlet before us, that the Home's want of success is easily to be accounted for; that it had great success at first because it was well managed, and that it has little or no success now because it is ill managed, and that it would in all probability have equal success as at first, were a return effected to the original system of management. The author of the pamphlet before us calls loudly for a full and formal investigation of the working of the Home, in order to elucidate the causes of its present failure as contrasted with its former success, and we take this opportunity of humbly supporting his call.

In connection with the means employed for the moral improvement of sailors, and bearing indirectly on the question before us, we take the liberty to notice the operations of the Seamen's Friend Society, and especially of directing towards it the attention of our local readers. This is a purely evangelical society, which seeks the good of the Sailors by the preaching to them of the blessed truths of the gospel of grace. It seems to us to be worthy of all encouragement and to have strong claims for assistance upon our Christian merchants and all connected with the shiping interests.

The legal remedy sought to be applied to the clamant evil is set forth in the memorial lately presented to the Governor-General in Council. It consists briefly in the enacting by the Indian Government of a Law similar to the Act 7 and 8 Vict. cap. 112. This act provides such penalties for desertion, harbouring deserters, and what is called crimping, as could scarcely fail to put a stop to the evil, provided they could be enforced. But for our own part we do not think they could be enforced here, however they may be in England. The act however may be well worthy of trial here, with such modifications as would adapt it to the circumstances of the port.

Upon the whole we think a vigorous effort should be made for encreasing the efficacy of the Sailors' Home, and strengthening it's hand for carrying on with greater vigor its warfare against the crimps. Even if they could be put down by legal enactment, which we doubt, it would be, at all events, much more pleasing to put them down by depriving them of their occupation, elevating the Sailors above their influence, and providing them in reality and at a reasonable rate with those comforts, for the semblance of which they are fleeced at the punch-houses. If the commanders of vessels would agree, as they would soon find it their interest to agree, to give the preference in the shipping of men, to the inmates of the home, it

would serve all the purposes of a registry without any appearance of infringing the liberty of the sailor. We do not profess to know what the particulars are in which the management of the Home is regarded as having fallen from its original excellence; but we think the mere fact that its success is so much less now than it was formerly calls for investigation.

In conclusion, we must express our conviction that the gentlemen who have moved in this matter have deserved very well of the community. We may mention especially the Rev. Mr. Boaz, who may be regarded as the virtual founder of the Sailors' Home; and who was, up to the period of his quitting Calcutta, Secretary to the Seamans' Friend Society; Sir John Peter Grant, who was, until his recent departure from India, President of the Sailors' Home; Mr. Archibald Grant, whom we have already named as having spoken at the Town Hall, and who is now Secretary of the Seamans' Friend Society; and Mr. H. N. Grant, who seems to have bestowed a vast deal of pains on the discharge of his duties as Honorary Secretary to the Anti-Crimp Association. It may strike some of our readers as remarkable that so many members of the same clan, though all of different families, should be at the head of the various operations, that have been conducted for so good an end. We heartily wish them all success.

Hand-book of Bengal Missions in connexion with the Church of England; together with an account of general educational efforts in North India; by the Rev. James Long, Church Missionary in Calcutta: London, 1848.

It is not often that the title-page of a work so honestly sets forth the real nature of its contents, as does that which we have just transcribed. We have very little faith in title-pages. We have so often found them to be pleasant fictions, reflecting not merely what the author has written, but what he, or somebody else, might have written; we have so often found in the work itself a mere instalment of what we have been promised by the title-page, a part standing disappointingly for the whole, that Mr. Long's descriptive limitations fill us with no little confidence at starting. He promises us merely some account of Bengal Missions, and of but one class of those missions. He limits his literary efforts to his own Presidency and to his own Church. The interest of the work is, therefore, necessarily circumscribed; but what Mr. Long has undertaken to do, he has done effectively and well.

When attempting, in the early part of this number, some account of the personal careers of a few of the most eminent Church of England ministers, who labored antecedently to the Episcopal period in Bengal, we purposely abstained from writing in detail of their connexion with the different societies and institutions whose interests

they so largely promoted. In expectation of the appearance of the volume under review we merely glanced at this important branch of the subject. And we have reason to congratulate ourselves on our forbearance. Mr. Long's work, which is now before us, will enable us to lay before our readers much interesting information relating to the Church of England Missions and educational projects, collected, with no inconsiderable labour, by that able and indefatigable missionary. And in doing so, we shall, in most cases, use Mr. Long's own words. They will be new to our readers; and we desire sometimes. really to review a book instead of merely pretending to do so.

Let us then pass its contents in review order before that great general, the public. It is a book as we have said simply of Church of England Missions in Bengal. The first Protestant Mission came from Denmark and its field of labour was Southern India. The first English Society that turned its thoughts to the great work of con verting the people of India to Christianity was the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge-a Society which has been precisely a century and a half in existence-and which now circulates annually more than four millions of Bibles, Prayer-books and Tracts.

After briefly alluding to the career of Schwartz in Southern India and to the labours of Ziegenbalg and his associates, Mr. Long goes on to say :

"To the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge belongs the distinguished honour of having sent the first Protestant Missionary to Bengal, the Rev. J. Kiernander, in 1758; and of having, previously to that period, fanned the flame of missionary enterprise. We find that, previous to 1709, the Society found a correspondent in the Rev. S. Briercliffe, chaplain of Calcutta-the only chaplain in Bengal at that period he offered to superintend a school in Calcutta, and mentions the openings presented by a number of natives that had been kidnapped by the Portuguese, who carried on the slave trade extensively at that period in Bengal, gaining numerous proselytes by first enslaving the natives in order to baptize them." The Society sent him a packet of books. In 1709 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge sent out a circulating library to Calcutta, the first in India; and in 1731 a Charity School was opened in Calcutta, under its auspices. The pupils in it were clothed in the same manner as the boys of the Blue Coat School in London, and were taught by Padre Aquiere, formerly a Franciscan friar at Goa. In 1732, the Rev. G. Bellamy, chaplain, received another supply of books; he was a corresponding member of the Society, and was suffocated in the Black Hole of Calcutta in 1756, when the city was taken by the Musalmans. In 1732, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge offered to contribute to the support of a missionary to Bengal as a number of Dutchmen and Germans interested themselves in the question, but no suitable person could then be found at Halle, though it subsequently became a second Iona, and was the source for supplying missionaries, when there was little zeal in the Anglican clergy to embark on the errand of mercy."-Pp. 5-6.

Perhaps, the statement, in this passage, that the Society for Promoting Christian knowledge sent Mr. Kiernander to Bengal is hardly correct. The Society sent him to Madras whence he betook himself to Calcutta-the war with the French, in 1758, having interrupted his labours in Southern Arcot. Mr. Long himself, indeed, says that Kiernander was invited to Bengal by Colonel Clive, who gave him the use of a dwelling house, and along with Mr. Watts,

..

a Member of Council, stood sponsor for his son." Of the state of Calcutta at that time Mr. Long gives the following account :

"We shall take a short review of the state of Calcutta when Mr. Kiernander arrived in it; it was pre-eminently then "the living solitude of a city of idolaters." -The Sati fires were to be seen frequently blazing, while many widows mounted the pyre with the most perfect resignation, assured by the Brahmans that they should be happy in heaven for as many years as their husbands had hairs on their bodies, which were liberally calculated at the number of thirty-five millions.-Fakirs ranged ad libitum through the town in a state of complete nudity, with their clotted hair dangling down to the length of two or three feet, and their bodies besmeared with cow-dung, "the most sacred of Indian cosmetics."-A Hindu, after visiting a European, would have his garments washed to free them from the impurity contracted from a mlechha.-The English language was little known, and Europeans resorted chiefly to signs and gesticulations to communicate with the natives.-A proposal to teach a woman to read would have been regarded in the same light as if it had been suggested in London to instruct monkeys in Hullah's system of Sing ́ing."-Pp. 9-10.

Alluding to a still earlier period Mr. Long writes, "In Calcutta at 'the commencement of last century, there was no Chaplain in the city, and the service was read by a merchant who was allowed £50 per annum for his services. The first Governor of Calcutta, Job • Charnock, cared so little for religion, that it was said the only sign of any regard for Christianity he ever exhibited was that when his Hindu wife died, instead of burning, he buried her." The first notice of the performance of Church service by the English in India with which we are acquainted, is to be found in Mandelslo's travels. This writer, whose book was published in 1640, says that the merchants (in Western India) met regularly for divine service twice every week day and thrice every Sabbath!

On bringing his sketch of Kiernander's career* to a close, Mr. Long very opportunely pays a just tribute to that excellent man, Mr. Grant, the father of the present Lord Glenelg, and of the late Sir Robert Grant, Governor of Bombay :

"Among the individuals who took a prominent part at that time, the name of C. Grant, father to Lord Glenelg, stands conspicuous. His memory will ever be hallowed as one of the benefactors of India. He proceeded to Bengal in 1767, in a very humble capacity; but raised himself by his industry and integrity to a high post under the government; he became Commercial Resident at Malda, and "in his house the voice of prayer and praise was heard, when all was spiritual death around." He retired from India in 1790; but did not, like many other Europeans, forget the land which gave him wealth and influence. In 1792 he published a valuable pamphlet, "Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain.' In 1794 he was elected a Director of the East India Company, where he always advocated the policy, that our empire should be founded rather on character than on force, and particularly on our moral and intellectual superiority. He regarded the consideration of the affairs of India as his peculiar province, and as affording sufficient occupation to his mind. In the House of Commons he stood forth with Wilberforce, Thornton, and Babington, in the rank of Christian statesmen. In the Court of Directors he was very anxious to send out good men as chaplains to

* Mr. Long, alluding to the article on Kiernander in the 13th number of this journal, says that he "examined all the documents in the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, as well as those in Bengal, and fully concurs in the observations of the Reviewer.

Bengal; and he was ever forward to rebut the calumnies uttered against missions; hence, in 1807, when a motion was made in the Court of Directors, to recall Dr. Buchanan from Bengal, he defended his conduct in a speech of two hours' length; he exerted himself also on a similar occasion in 1814, when the Court of Directors were about to pass a resolution, censuring their civil and military servants who encouraged missions."-Pp. 19-20 (Note.)

As regards the movements of the Christian Knowledge Society in Bengal, the first quarter of the present century was not a period of any great activity. The Calcutta Diocesan Committee was established by Bishop Middleton in 1815; and in 1818 it began seriously to turn its attention to the establishment of native schools. In 1822 the parent society voted the munificent sum of £5,000 for the promotion of native education in India; but, four years later, it abandoned all direct controul over even its own schools, transferring their management to the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, but continuing to supply funds for the purpose. The leading object of the Society was and is the diffusion of the Bible, the Prayer-book, and religious tracts, in all the languages of the earth. Depôts for the supply of these works have long been established at the Presidency and many of our principal Mofussil stations. "The society for Promoting Christian Knowledge," writes Mr. Long, "established a circulating library in Calcutta as early as 1709, the first of the kind in Bengal. Works of a religious and useful nature were in former days very scarce, and the Society has therefore rendered eminent service by the various depôts of books it formed in different parts of the country, under the superintendence of the chaplains." And again, alluding to as recent a period as 1824, Mr. Long observes," The importance of a depôt may be estimated by the fact that such a work as Scott's commentary on the Bible, which now is sold for £5 could not then be procured under £25. Booksellers made rapid fortunes by the enormous profits they gained, whilst in consequence of their dearness books of a religious character were almost excluded from sale; the consequence was Calcutta was inundated with the trashy novels of the day." We do not quite see the sequitur. The case, certainly, is not very logically stated. There appears indeed to be something of the υστερον-προτερον in it. Calcutta was not deluged with the trashy novels because religious works were highly priced, but religious works were highly priced because Calcutta was deluged with trashy novels -that is, because the demand for trashy novels was great whilst that for such works as Scott's Commentary was small. We presume that religious works were priced so much more highly, in proportion to the trade price at home, than works of a more trashy character, simply because the risk of importation was so much greater.

Of the work done by the Christian Knowledge Society the following extract from Mr. Long's volume will convey an idea to the mind of the reader:

"Sellon's Abridgement of Scripture was translated into Urdu, by Archdeacon Corrie; and in 1824, 1000 copies of it were printed at the expense of the Society