nights are as cold as September. All Bengal is a flat country, with not a hill in it, and scarcely a stone. Wild beasts are plentiful. Jackals are everywhere. Mrs. Thomas had a favorite little dog, for which she had been offered 200 rupees, carried off from the door by one, while we were at prayer one evening, and the door open. Yet they never attack man. Serpents abound. To-day I found the skin of one, about six feet long, which was just cast off in my garden. We have no tigers nearer than eight or ten miles, and indeed have no more fear of them than you have in England. Upon the whole, it is a charming country.

'I have no doubt but I shall soon learn the language. Ram Boshoo, my mounshi or interpreter, is a very sensible man, and, I hope, a very pious man. I have not yet seen Parbotee, but expect soon to have him down here. I have great hope of success; but their superstitions are very numerous, and their attachment to their caste so strong, that they would rather die than lose it upon any account. This is one of the strongest bonds that ever the devil used to bind the souls of men; and dreadfully effectual it is indeed. May God put on his great power, and attend his word with great success!

'I hope your souls are prospering, and pray you not to be too much attached to this present world. It will soon perish, and then they who sow to the flesh will find that to be carnally minded is death. Embrace Christ, with all the consequences of Christianity, and commit all your ways to the Lord. Choose affliction always rather than sin; and let it be your daily business to walk near to God, and to endure as seeing him who is invisible.

'For my own part, I must confess my wretched carnality, indolence, and worldliness; yet, if I find satisfaction in any thing, it is in the things of God, and in the exercises of religion.

'I am at present incapable of preaching to the Hindus. I am unacquainted with their language; and my whole congregation is our two families; so that the work of the ministry is to me yet a very dull work; yet I find some sweet pleasures in it, notwith

standing; and I promise myself much, when I am able to go and publish among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

'I am your most affectionate brother,

10*

WM. CAREY.'

CHAPTER III.

SECTION I.

The unusually trying circumstances of Mr. Carey while in the neighborhood of Calcutta-Letter to Mr. Sutcliff-His removal into the Sunderbunds-The timely hospitalities he receives-Subsequent dejection and perplexities-He is relieved and comforted by an invitation to Malda.

THE Compiler cannot open to the reader the ensuing chapter without bespeaking his candor, by intimating the serious difficulty he experienced in the selection of its contents. There were some delicate points, which, upon first consideration, it seemed desirable to escape from noticing. Facts are called into review, which a feeling heart would rather wish to conceal, and even to obliterate; a mere advertence to which may convey such reflection upon individuals, that Christian charity may not very easily tolerate. Yet, silently to pass over every incident and every characteristic remark, how important soever it might be to the design of such a volume, because of their seemingly unfriendly aspect upon particular persons, would have thrown this part of the narrative into so very general a style, and have required the substitution of so much vague and editorial, for vivid autobiographical composition, as to have marred its interest, if it did not interfere with its integrity. The embarrassments and afflictions to which Mr. Carey was subject the first year and a half from his arrival in India, were such as few have encountered in modern times, and which, yet, were borne with a holy heroism and a pious constancy, entitling him to the admiration of the Christian world. So much so, that the ardor and patience he evinced, in pursuing the paramount objects of his mission, and in sustaining the adversities surrounding him, would justify an apostolic declaration in his case: 'None of these things move me; neither count I my life dear unto myself; so that I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry I have

received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.'

The reader will remember, that Mrs. Carey, in the first instance, refused, and was afterwards, with much difficulty, prevailed upon to accompany her husband. Though at length she yielded to the entreaties of Mr. Thomas, her acquiescence was reluctant, and her devotion to the work but partial. When severe trials arose, therefore, as they soon did upon their landing in India, she was quite unequal to their endurance. Their resources, slender from the first, were fast exhausting; their little comforts, becoming more circumscribed and scanty, were every hour diminishing, without the least prospect of replenishment from any known source. But will not the Christian female be slow to censure, and be rather tender to commiserate? A mother, with a young and infant family, in a foreign land, without the presence of a single friend to soothe her, or the power of uttering or understanding a sentence beyond the limits of her household, the very abode they lodged in, incommodious as it was, secured to them only by the daily sufferance of a native. Week after week passed away, until they were brought almost to the brink of starvation. Let it be remembered, too, that every thing in her former life and her physical constitution, was unfavorable to the stern and sublime exercise of the Christian virtues to which her circumstances now called her. Brought up in an obscure village, without any advantages of mental, and few of religious culture, with a spirit unusually tímid, and a bodily frame always feeble, it was no wonder she should be dismayed when such trials befell her, as might make even firm and disciplined minds falter and quail. Besides all this, it is now past doubt that the incipient inroads of monomania, which so distracted the last years of her life, and the malignant influence of which continued to her death, was unhinging her intelligence, and corroding her passions. And this is the main plea of the compiler for introducing a subject of such painful delicacy. Had this been clearly apprehended by Mr. Carey, at the time the events of which we are now describing, melancholy as was the fact, it would, in some degree, have

eased the anguish of his heart, it being certain that the bitter anxiety she occasioned him then, and to the close of her life, was justly imputable to her awful malady, and not to be reckoned as her sin.

Another affliction, and almost equally severe with that just brought into view, which exercised the patience of Mr. Carey, arose from the character of his companion. He was unthinking, unthrifty, versatile, and capricious; characteristics the very opposite of those which constituted the mind and determined the conduct of Mr. Carey. He was deliberate, frugal, and self-denying; clearly defining to himself some great master object, and pursuing it, through fire and through water; whilst, in all minor interests, he was compliant to the will of others, and was always ready to resign the secularities of life to any one disposed to assume their management. The little money they had in hand was in Mr. Thomas's keeping, who took his measures, and disbursed funds, almost independently of the advice, and frequently with too little apparent regard to the comfort, of his friend. Having been twice a resident in India before, it was not surprising that in temporal arrangements, and during the early part of their residence, Mr. Carey should defer to his opinion, and yield himself to his guidance. This was so far the case, that in a few months they were all reduced to destitution. He also appeared for a time as though disposed to relinquish the mission, and actually commenced business in his own profession. Not that his companion conceived him to entertain any purpose of ultimately renouncing their united work; but a temporary and seeming recession from it, was to him a source of most poignant sorrow. Nevertheless, he always referred to Mr. Thomas with marked tenderness, and attributed those parts of his conduct most difficult to interpret, and most destructive to his own comfort, to some infelicity in his constitutional temperament, rather than to any deliberate purpose of doing wrong, or of acting unkindly. When we recur to Mr. Thomas in a subsequent part of this work, the reader will meet with the true solution of what at this period may seem eccentric in his character, and strangely erratic in his demeanor. Those notices in the mean time, which