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BISHOP OF CALCUTTA, AND METROPOLITAN. WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS JOURNALS AND CORRESPONDENCE. EDITED BY MRS. COTTON. LONDON : LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 1871. MORSE S Ef*HBtlS PREFACE. A FEW WORDS are necessary to explain the change of editorship which will be apparent in this volume. When, in 1866, the sincere regard or warm friendship entertained towards the late Bishop of Calcutta passed into mournful and affectionate reverence for his memory, a desire was expressed within the circle of his intimate friends, that a published memoir should make the story of his life more widely known. In behalf of the Indian Church this desire was echoed in India. Through the kindness of the present Dean of Westminster it was partially met ; and to him are due the first three chapters, which contain a sketch of the Bishop's early years and English career, with reminiscences of him gathered from various sources. It was a work of greater difficulty to provide for the editing of the second and more important section of the biography, that, namely, which was to give an account of the episcopate. There were very few persons in England sufficiently acquainted with Indian ecclesiastical matters to undertake the task, and, of these few, none could command the necessary leisure. When at length, after long delay, all hope of securing a more able editor faded away, the question of the memoir became a personal one for myself. The moment arrived when, had I stood aloof, the project must have fallen to the ground. Under 5*1658 VI PREFACE. these circumstances it appeared to be my duty to face the responsibility of carrying it out, rather than to yield wholly to self-distrust. It seemed right to make an effort that might in some measure express my sense of that loyalty towards the Bishop which, unchilled by years of separation, seemed to acquire a yet brighter glow when no renewal of earthly intercourse could be looked for. Thus the work of compiling the greater part of the following pages passed unavoidably and almost insensibly into my hands. In discharging this trust, my aim has been to make the Bishop's words the record, as far as possible, of his mind and work, and to introduce supple- mentary matter only as the framework of his journals and letters, or as links of connexion or explanation. Some subjects and incidents seemed to demand a closer and more concentrated treatment than isolated letters could supply. In all such cases I have desired faithfully to exhibit, in a more expanded narrative, my husband's sentiments and motives of action so far as these could be drawn from a large amount of public and private corre- spondence and from my own knowledge of his character. I have to acknowledge obligations to various sources whence materials have been derived. I am much in- debted to Lord Lawrence who, as Viceroy, permitted me to have the use of the ecclesiastical correspondence with the Government of India ; to private friends in Calcutta, who undertook to superintend the tedious labour of copying the large official correspondence left in Bishop's Palace ; and to many others, both in India and England, who have contributed a large collection of the Bishop's more private letters. I lie under an obligation of a different kind to Professor Cowell and the Eev. J. N. Simpkinson, who furnished respectively a brief sketch of PREFACE. Vll the Calcutta University, and a review of the Bishop's second charge. Except for aid in these two instances, most kindly rendered, and by myself gratefully appre- ciated, the work has derived scarcely any advantage from the direct assistance of others. If I abstain from a more specific acknowledgment of some valued criticism on one or more isolated sections, it is because I desire to bear the undivided responsibility of blemishes and deficiencies of which I am fully conscious. s. A. a 1870. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Birth Death of his Father Education at Westminster School Un- dergraduate Life at Trinity College, Cambridge Habits and Prin- ciples Early Friends Vaughan Conybeare Letter from Miss Mitford ... 1 CHAPTER II. Degree at Cambridge Mastership at Rugby Dr. Arnold Course of Life at Rugby Influence on Boys in his own House Select Preacher at Cambridge Election to the Mastership of Marlborough College Reminiscences by John Campbell Shairp and by John Conington Correspondence . . . . . .11 CHAPTER III, Appointment to the Bishopric of Calcutta Consecration in West- minster Abbey Return to Marlborough Appointment of his Successor Farewell Visits Embarkation Letters 59 CHAPTER IV. Journal Farewell to Friends in England Cairo Presentation of the Mahmel or Sacred Canopy to the Pasha Visit to the Armenian Patriarch The Coptic Church Mahometan Festivals Life on board Ship Aden Ceylon Madras Arrival at Calcutta Instal- lation in the Cathedral State of affairs in India Position of the Bishop Nature of the work to be done Journal extracts Letters 68 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. PAGE Primary Charge Departure from Calcutta for the Primary Visitations Benares Cawnpore Lucknow Agra Delhi Ambala La- hore Peshawur The Kyber Pass Sealkote American Mission- aries and the Maharajah of Cashmere Amritsir Kangra View of the Snowy Range Sunday Marching and Travelling Lawrence Asylum at Sauwar Arrival at Simla . . . .95 CHAPTER VI. Question of opening Episcopal Churches for Presbyterian Worship State of religious feeling in the Punjab Applications for the use of Churches consecrated to the worship of the Church of England Correspondence on the subject Christian movement in a Sikh Regiment Misunderstanding between the Government and Mission- aries Explanations Government order on Christian worship in Native Regiments Letters at Simla Journal extract Visitations resumed Bareilly Shahj ehanpore Seetapore Lucknow Fyza- bad Juanpore Benares . . . . . 146 CHAPTER VII. Return to Calcutta Departure of Domestic Chaplain for England The ' Nil Durpan ' Indigo-planters The Bishop's views on the Relations of Englishmen to the Natives of India Letters . 186 CHAPTER VHI. Anglo-Indian Education Schools in Calcutta Eurasians Deficiency of means of Education in North India The Bishop's efforts to in- crease it Connexion of the movement with the Day of Thanksgiving General plan of Education submitted to the Government Minute of the Governor-General Memorial School at Simla Selection and position of the Head Master School Payments Creation of a Diocesan Board of Education ..... 201 CHAPTER IX. Primary Visitation resumed in'Burmah Life on board Ship Goldwin Smith's Lectures Buddhism Misgivings on the enormous extent of the See of Calcutta Journal extracts Rangoon Prome Christ- mas-day at Moulmein Examination at the Mission School Burmese system of National Education The Andamans Penang Malacca Chinese Cemeteries Mission School for Chinese Girls Confirmation at Singapore Return to Calcutta Departure of Lord Canning . . . . . . 220 CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER X. PAGB Journey to Darjeeling Suggestions for the extension of Missionary enterprise The Additional Clergy Society Advice to the Com- mittee Difficulties connected with the use of the Burial Service Letter to Archdeacon Pratt Keen enjoyment of Himalayan Scenery Journal extracts . . 241 CHAPTER XI. Visitations of the Central Provinces Imperfect Ecclesiastical arrange- ments Difficulties in travelling The Bishop's Journal Letters Benares Nagpore Mhow Saugor Jhansi Cawnpore Conse- cration of the Memorial Well Agra Begum of Bhopal Caste ISmeute in St. John's College The Bishop's Speech Letter to Government on Ecclesiastical affairs in the Central Provinces Letters 272 CHAPTER XII. Ordinary Life in Calcutta Personal characteristics in the Bishop His political opinions The Cathedral services The Bishop as a Preacher Churches and Church Architecture in India Memorials of the Mutiny Church at Cawnpore Cemeteries and Mural Tablets Inscriptions at Lucknow Chaplain's work The Bishop's interest in Soldiers Relations with Chaplains Efforts for the improvement of the Ecclesiastical Service Letters to Chaplains . . . 299 CHAPTER XIII. Review of the Charge of 1863 Metropolitan Visitations Madras Bombay ........ 329 CHAPTER XIV. Voyage to Ceylon Colombo Tinnevelly The Syrian Church Letters 351 CHAPTER XV. Return to Calcutta Meeting with Sir John Lawrence Acts before the Legislative Council Seaman's Home Missionary Pastor for Calcutta Consecration of St. James's Church Title Deeds of the Simla School Intercourse with Natives Calcutta University-r- Bethune Society Lectures Visit to Lutheran Mission at Ranchi Cathedral lectures to Hindus The Bishop's intercourse with an Inquirer . , . . . . . .382 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVI. PAGE The Bishop's relations with Missionary Societies Extensive field of Missionary work Its characteristics Questions of prominent in- terest in management of Missions The Bishop's personal relation to Missionaries Sympathy with their difficulties His position towards inquirers about Christianity His views on Native Education as administered by Missionaries Growth of feeling on the subject among Missionaries Liberality of views on the part of the State Limited amount of Missionary success The Bishop's maxims of ' Quietness and Confidence ' Affairs of Bishop's College Letters to the Secretary of the Propagation Society .... 409 CHAPTER XVII. Residence in Calcutta of 1864 Affairs at Simla Memorial School at Jutog Presbyterian Movement The Bishop visits Simla Resumes visitations as far as Lahore Returns to Calcutta Letters . . 429 CHAPTER XVIII. Effects of the Cyclone in Calcutta Ordination Cathedral Choral Gathering Visit to Krishnaghur Cathedral Mission College Convocation of University Vice- Chancellor's speech The War in Bhotan Duke of Brabant Departure for the North- West Halts at Delhi and Lahore Arrival at Murree Letters Tour in Cash- mere The March Srinagar Medical Missions of the Church Missionary Society Sights and Antiquities in the Valley Expedi- tion to Islamabad Journal extracts Return march by Abbotta- bad Arrival at Murree . ..... 445 CHAPTER XIX. Further progress of Educational Plans Cainville House School Transfer of St. Paul's School Purchase of Mr. Maddock's School- Letter to the Secretary of the Board of Education Fresh appeal for Subscriptions Final Educational Pastoral Life at Murree Journal record of work Cold weather visitation of 1865-6 Dis- turbed state of Hazara District Descent of the Indus Hissar Delhi Agra Correspondence ..... 470 CHAPTER XX. The Bishop's Official Correspondence in 1866 State aid and Volun- taryism Revision of Pension rules Suggestions for improving Ecclesiastical Service Increase of Archdeaconries Views on extension of Episcopate Coadjutor Bishops Alarms for the position of the Indian Church Letter to the Bishop of London The Capetown Controversy Letter to the Bishop of Capetown Remarriage of Converts' Act Two Letters on the Subject . . 495 CONTENTS. Xlll CHAPTER XXI. Social intercourse with Natives in Calcutta Visit to Patshalis Business in the University Letters Departure for Assam Journals and Letters Return to Kooshtea The Bishop's Consecra- tion of a Cemetery Return to the River Unprotected Causeway His fatal fall . 622 CONCLUSION . . 554 ILLUSTEATIONS. PORTRAIT ..... To face Titk-page MAP OP THE BRAHMAPUTRA AND ITS AFFLUENTS . page 194 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. CHAPTEE I. BIRTH DEATH OF HIS FATHER EDUCATION AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOL UNDERGRADUATE LIFE AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE HABITS AND PRINCIPLES EARLY FRIENDS VAUGHAN CONYBEARE LETTER FROM MISS MITFORD. GEORGE EDWARD LYNCH COTTON was born October 29, 1813, at Chester, at the house of his grandmother, the widow of Dr. Cotton, Dean of Chester. On November 13, a fortnight after the child's birth, his father, Captain Cotton, of the 7th Fusileers, and major of brigade to Major-General Byng, serving in the second division of the British army, was killed at the head of his brigade, while in the act of storming a redoubt on the left of the enemy's intrenchments, before the village of Ainhoue, in the battle of the Nivelle. His son was baptised in the cathedral, and spent his childhood in the town of Chester. To his mother, in the belief of those who knew him best, he owed his chief early stimulus to those literary and intellectual tastes which he never lost. His marked capacity for humour, on the other hand, though doubtless fostered by her acuteness and vivacity, was rather an B OR BISHOP COTTON. [OH. I. ti ib.is .lather's family. But thrown as lie necessarily was from the peculiarities of his early child- hood most upon himself, the sweetness of temper and even balance of mind, which distinguished him through life, and the power of absorbing the good and eschewing the evil of surrounding circumstances, were gifts pecu- liarly his own. He had a keen interest in his father's family. He much enjoyed the only visit he ever paid at Combermere while the veteran head of his house, the first Viscount Combermere, was still alive ; and it was with the truest pleasure that he revived in India a long dor- mant claim of cousinship with Sir Arthur and Sir Sidney Cotton. But it was with his father's brothers and sisters that he was chiefly thrown, for they were fondly attached to him from his earliest infancy, and regarded him as a child of much promise. He was full of delight in family recollections. ' Certainly,' he says in a letter to a much- loved pupil, 4 the friendships which we form for ourselves are great sources of happiness, yet there is a charm about relationship which other intimacies rarely have. It is so extremely delightful to call people by their Christian names, and talk over all the old stories of one's childhood, and do exactly what one likes.' In 1845, he married his cousin Sophia Anne, eldest daughter of the late Eev. Henry Tomkinson, of Eeaseheath in Cheshire, and family ties were thus in after days strengthened by a yet deeper bond, which can only be appreciated by those who knew the blessedness of that undivided union of twenty-one years. When he was between eleven and twelve years old, that is to say in January 1825, he entered Westminster, in the Lower School, and was admitted upon the Founda- tion at Whitsuntide, 1828. Some of his Westminster contemporaries, one of whom was amongst his earliest and most intimate friends, have thus described their recol- lections. Ce. I.] SCHOOL-DAYS AT WESTMINSTER. 3 * College was at this time an abominable place in point of the hardships and tyranny to be endured, and on the score of morality also very bad indeed. The fags, fewer in number than their masters, were simply menial ser- vants wholly in the power of the seniors, and partially of the " third election," which rank Cotton had attained when I entered college. Cotton himself had suffered much under this system in the earlier stages of his course, and had contracted a retiring and guarded manner. Being of a weakly constitution and unadventurous spirit he had never thrown himself with zest into the games of the school ; and the college rules, which forced the juniors to take their part in cricket, football, hockey, and boating, with plentiful application of punishment to bunglers, had unfortunately created a distaste for these exercises, fostered further by his own studious and some- what diffident disposition, and his repugnance to all that was brutal and degrading was perceptible even then. And the dry quaint humour of his peculiar genius was used to soften the harsh and repulsive character of the life that was so distasteful to him, to soften it for others as well as for himself. Surrounded as he was by asso- ciates with whom he had little sympathy, he fell spon- taneously into a method resembling the " Socratic irony." Talking with those who were too strong for him to check, when bent on some cruel or discreditable act, he would lead them unawares into some admission which showed their conduct in its true colours, and he would drive home this conclusion by some remark which I hesitate to call sarcastic, because it was never unkind. And he would talk to the juniors in a tone of pleasant banter which cheered them under their task-work, and which but expressed that considerate sympathy which the at- mosphere of the place forbade to be shown more openly. It was always a relief to me when my turn came round to be assigned to the service of the " third election," B2 4 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. I. chiefly, though not wholly, because of the pleasure of being thus brought into contact with Cotton.' A similar account is given by another friend who entered college nearly at the same time with Cotton, and was also at Cambridge with him : ' He was not con- sidered a boy of first-rate abilities, though standing well and studious and persevering. He was an insatiable reader, not only, as generally is the case with boys, of works of imagination, but he had read far more widely than most of his age the best histories and standard works. He was very fond of theatrical amusements, and he and I generally used to contrive a visit to any cele- brated performance, and especially to any good opera. Cotton's discursive reading and vivid imagination made him in great demand as a teller of stories ; he would go on for hours, either from recollection or inventing as he proceeded. Even when a senior he never bullied the younger boys, but if his fags offended him he used to invent odd, harmless punishments. He acted in the Westminster plays, I think twice. I remember him par- ticularly as an old nurse in the " Eunuchus," and he acted capitally. He was full of odd fun. I remember once, when he was out of school in the boarding-house (i.e. either really or fancifully unwell), our concocting at his suggestion a supposed translation from the Danish, and sending it to the " Gentleman's Magazine." When it appeared in the venerable publication his glee was ex- treme, and especially when, a few weeks after, there was an editorial note wishing to hear from the translator again.' After some remarks about the ' very low ebb as to religious tone ' at which the school was, he continues : 4 But according to the standard of the day, Cotton always stood high. I remember he always said his prayers at night.' Another friend writes : ' My recollections of Cotton at Westminster, scanty as they are, are still very definite, CH. I.] KINDNESS TO HIS SCHOOLFELLOWS. 5 though I was but twelve to fourteen at the time. When I got into college myself in 1830 he was " third election." ' He was certainly a very odd boy at that time, as peculiar in character as in manner and appearance. * He had very little sympathy with the ways of boys in general, did not care for games, and had been knocked about a good deal, I fancy, in his earlier college days. His quaint and grotesque humour was more demon- strative at that time than in after years ; and it formed on him, I think, as a sort of shell, by which he protected himself from intrusion, and vindicated some independency for himself, amongst companions who were stronger and more resolute than himself, but whom he did not care to follow, and wished to keep at a certain distance. There was no privacy procurable at that time in college, even the seniors and third election having no better approach to studies than the " houses," i.e. the great green baize enclosures round the three fires in the dormitory, in each of which they formed a kind of com- mon room. ' Cotton was most kind to us wretched juniors. Beside him I only remember two or three who took any pains to be so, especially , blessings on his head ! I wonder where he is now, and , a son of the Bishop, a loose and disreputable fellow, but a thoroughly warm-hearted one. It was a great alleviation to the miseries of our Helot condition to have Cotton's kindly humour playing continually about us. He was our good angel in the " middle house." And while his way of treating us showed a sympathy at all times with our out- cast state, it had also a softening effect upon the other potentates of the pale. I remember, too, how he would get some tyrant of ours into conversation about his threats or his summary proceedings, and by a Socratic process draw from him some very damaging admissions against himself; breaking, when he had achieved this triumph, 6 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. I. into that half-suppressed chuckle which was so charac- teristic of him at all times.' His name still remains carved in large letters on the stonework of the school doorway. He never lost his interest in Westminster. At one time it cost him many a pang to surrender the thought of being the head master of the school ; and even in India it was curious to trace the traditions of Westminster permeating the ecclesiastical intelligence, which under his supervision appeared in Indian periodicals. Thus, when Archbishop Longley was raised to the See of Canterbury, it was told there pro- bably alone, amongst all the numerous announcements of that appointment, how Longley, the only popular monitor in the midst of an unpopular generation, had fifty years before been greeted in Westminster school with the cry of ' Eose amongst Thorns,' ' Eose amongst Thorns ; ' and when he wrote from the same distant shores to the dear friend who had become Dean of Westminster, it was with the fervour inspired by his own early recollections. ' I think of you as ruling the noblest and grandest of English churches, the one to which in historical and religious interests even Canterbury must yield ; the one in which I worshipped as a boy, in which I was confirmed, and in which I was consecrated to the great work of my life.' He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a West- minster scholar, in 1832, taking with him, if his own account of himself is to be trusted, no great attainments in scholarship, no eager thirst after knowledge for its own sake, rather narrow views of work, but a well-defined resolve to get a good place in the classical tripos if it could be got by steady diligence. He used to laugh at himself for the scorn with which he and others had treated the suggestions of the tutor that they should of course read the histoiy of a particular period in Nicbuhr 1 as if Niebuhr had anything to do with the tripos.' As CH. I.] LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE. 7 an example of his steady adherence to rules once laid down for his work, he said, ' When 12 o'clock struck, I used to shut up my books, though I was in the middle of a Greek play.' This regularity, however, could not always be maintained by a man who had so large a number of acquaintances and of such various kinds. He has some- times described in his own humorous way a breakfast, ' which I gave to a party of my rowing friends. Hoping to get rid of them in tolerable time in the morning, and yet wishing to be hospitable, I bought a box of cigars for the occasion, though I never smoke myself. Unfor- tunately they liked my cigars so much that they stayed smoking in my room from breakfast till hall, utterly discomfiting my plans for reading.' The records of his college life, in his journals, were most enlivening. In later years he sometimes read passages from them to his younger relations, and the reading never failed to excite shouts of laughter. He was always in the first class in his college examinations, and he also got the prize for reading in chapel, and a declamation prize. By that time his character, such as we all think of it now, had received its final bent, and was already formed in its main outlines. Principles and aspirations dis- tinctively Christian were manifest and prominent in all his words and ways. He was a teacher in the ' Jesus Lane Sunday school/ a member of various religious associations among the undergraduates, and an adherent avowedly of the Evangelical school, which indeed was the only one at that time recognised at Cambridge as inculcating devoutness and devotedness of life. But there was much in the Evangelical system which he distrusted and objected to, and the teaching which had already won his full sympathy and adherence was that of Arnold. It was a delightful and a surprising thing to Arnold's pupils to find one who was as enthusiastic an admirer as themselves of their great master, and this 8 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTTO T . [Cu. I common feeling became of course a special bond of union. Cotton got to know several of the Eugby men well ; Charles Vaughan above all, who soon became well- nigh his chief friend. But no one was ever allowed to supersede or even rival the most cherished of all, W. J. Conybeare. His conversation on all serious ques- tions was always thoroughly reverent its fault being, perhaps, that he exacted rather more confidence than he gave. On personal and other secular matters it was tinged with that indescribable sort of humour, which was all his own, delighting in quaint analogies, in bluntness purposely carried a little too far, yet always stopping short of rudeness, and in rather incongruous fancies con- stantly mixed up with the realities of the moment, yet withdrawn at once whenever any moral consideration made them out of place. One of his strange fancies was to make out every year a ' tripos ' of his friends and acquaintances, the three classes being carefully arranged in the exact order of the estimate he formed of them. Apparently this was done purely for his own satisfaction, and for the pleasure of alluding to it, as he was careful to conceal the list from everybody, though fond of telling them that it was 'just coming out,' or 'just come out.' One day Conybeare (or C. J. Yaughan) found the new list, left by mistake upon his writing-table, and mis- chievously proceeded to affix it like a college notice to the outside of his sporting door, to the great horror of Cotton on his return, who knew not what eye might have seen it, and tearing it down, rushed into his room with stifled shrieks of laughter. He used to decorate it with (A) and (B), (1), (2), &c., as in the Cambridge calendar, to represent medals, Smith's prizes, &c., which he adjudged to this one and that on special grounds of preference. ' Do you remember,' he says, ' that walk we took to Madingley last Thursday fortnight. I was setting you a paper for the medal. You lost it. It was adjudged CH. I.] INFLUENCE OVER YOUNGER MEN. 9 to Alex. Merivale, Vaughan having gained the first. Whytehead and Howson had the Smith's prizes this year.' c I keep up the acquaintance of - in order that he may be my wedge.' Another of his favourite amusements was to challenge those who, like Vaughan, prided them selves, as he too did, on their knowledge of the calendar, to a contest of mutual examinations, ' more Westmonas- teriensi.' ' Who was tenth wrangler in 1829?' 'Who was the first Browne's medallist ? ' or, passing from ' book- work ' to ' problems,' to propound with high glee such knotty questions as, ' When would it next be Sidney's turn in the " cycle of proctors " ? ' ' When would " second tripos day " fall in Leap year, if Easter day were on March 21 ?' After taking his B.A. degree he continued to reside in college, reading for his fellow- ship and taking pupils. ' Among these,' says the same friend who has furnished recollections of his school life at Westminster, ' I remember especially Lord Edward Howard, in whom he was very much interested, and who, I think, was in turn much attached to him. He had a great power of influencing younger men, less by force of character, or attractiveness of manner, or genial sympathy, than by the interest he showed in them, accompanied, I may add, by a curiosity which did not offend them, being evidently so innocent and so unassuming. This often drew them out, and gave him an opportunity, which he used with great kindness and faithfulness, of remarking on what he observed, and giving them useful counsel. Vaughan was the first to divine what special capabilities were in him for the work of a schoolmaster which I should hardly have thought, and was the cause of his going to Eugby.' This brief notice of George Cotton in his school and college days will close with the following singular inci- dent, which has come to light through the letters of Mary Eussell Mitford.* * ' Letters of Mary Russell Mitford,' edited by the Rev. L'Estrange. 10 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. I. M-iaa Mitford to the Rev. W. Harness. September 1829. I have got the ' Bann of the Empire,' the real words in Grerman and English, and after the great chain of literary con- nexion which has been set in motion on this question, the libraries that have been ransacked, the Grerman historians and law professors that have been written to, the document has been discovered and sent to me by a Westminster school-boy ! Perhaps you know his mother, a Mrs. Hutchinson Simpson, living at Frognal, Hampstead, and the youth, my friend, is her only child by a former marriage, a boy of the name of Cotton. The letters both of mother and son are very interesting ; hers especially remind me much of Mrs. Hemans. The lad heard that I wanted the document from a friend, and sent me first the ' Ecclesiastical Bann,' which he found in a French book. When I told him with many thanks that it was not the thing wanted, he set about learning German, and by the help of a Saxon friend has actually sent me the undiscoverable prize, as I have told you. We shall hear of that youth himself in literature some day or other. In the meantime, I am more touched and pleased by the interest which he has evinced in the matter than I have ever been by any compliment in my life. CH. IF.] TAKES HIS DEGREE. 11 CHAPTER II. DEGREE AT CAMBRIDGE MASTERSHIP AT RUGBY DR. ARNOLD COURSE OF LIFE AT RUGBY INFLUENCE ON BOYS IN HIS OWN HOUSE SELECT PREACHER AT CAMBRIDGE ELECTION TO THE MASTERSHIP OF MARL- BOROUGH COLLEGE REMINISCENCES BY JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP AND BY JOHN CONINGTON CORRESPONDENCE. IN 1836 he took his degree, and was a senior op time and eighth in the first class of the classical tripos. In the same year he was appointed by Dr. Arnold to an assist- ant mastership and a boarding-house at Eugby. The influences of this appointment on his after life were incalculable. First amongst these must be counted the impression produced upon him by the character and teaching of his great chief. It is not too much to say that there was none of all the direct pupils of Dr. Arnold on whom so deep and exclusive a mark of their master's mind was produced as on Cotton. They received this mark on minds more or less incapable of fully appre- ciating the force of his character ; and in later years, in many instances, its particular effects were more or less rudely effaced, either by the impulses of their own grow- ing thoughts, or by the disturbing attractions of other men and other schools of thought. But Cotton came into contact with him after his mind had been already formed, and yet before he had been swayed by any other commanding influence. He had received from his intercourse with his Eugby friends at Cambridge a strong predisposition to admire and to love the man whose fame they were proud to spread amongst their new acquaintances. Indeed there 12 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. grew up at Cambridge a circle of disciples, to which no exact parallel could be found at Oxford not that the Oxford-Eugbeians were less enthusiastic than those on the banks of the Cam but that the receptive elements at Oxford were fewer or less analytical. All who re- member those days will recall the delight with which they found in such men as Conybeare, Howson, Freeman, and others, willing listeners to all they could pour forth of their beloved master, and men who seemed to gather like a new undergrowth beneath the parent tree which had sheltered them. But amongst all those Cotton was chief. From the moment that he first made Arnold's acquaint- ance, he never wavered in his loyalty. He may, after his manner, have criticised and deprecated parts of his character or career. But no other hero ever took the place of the image which had thus been enshrined in his heart ; there was never either in his own mind, or in the circle of his later acquaintances, any force sufficiently powerful to disturb its pre-eminence. His long continu- ance within the direct sphere of its influence, first at Eugby, then at Marlborough, tended to keep it intact : and when he entered on the wider field of India, the inspiring force of Arnold's genius and goodness only found a new channel in which to work, and all that was most elevating and peculiar in those bright recollections of his early youth stamped itself on every part of the task which he there undertook. There is no proof of Arnold's practical influence so undivided, so unquestion- able, so little alloyed with any baser matter, as the blame- less and fruitful career which will be described in the following pages. In the book * which beyond any other will keep fresh in the minds of future generations the pic- ture of the school-life at Eugby, it will be remembered that the crisis of the story is brought about by the wise sugges- ' Tom Brown's School Days/ part i. chap. ix. CH. II.] FRIENDSHIP ^ITH DR. ARNOLD. 13 tion of a young master, ' the model young master,' lately come, on which Arnold acts, and which produces the desired results. That ' young master ' was Cotton, and it will be seen how fitting a tribute to him has been the notice, however slight, of his intimate relation to the school and its illustrious head.* There are those who can still recall the picture of the two men, as they have seen them side by side in the school-close, or met them in the hedge-grown lanes of Warwickshire, the one in the very prime of vigorous middle age, tall, stalwart, dark-visaged, with keen eye that flashes still through the mist of years, and swinging stride and prompt utterance, and under lip and lower jaw that spoke of suppressed energy and will, the king of men as he seemed to his loving or trembling pupils ; the other tall also, and younger, and with a face inte- resting even to boys, but of hesitating and awkward gait, slow in speech, dry in manner, somewhat slouching in figure, short-sighted, and playing perpetually with an eyeglass, as unlike his companion in physical gifts as in force of character and fire of genius. Yet, for all this, there was a strong and instructive sympathy and likeness that drew them to each other ; and, on a calmer view of men and things, it may be questioned whether there was one of Arnold's friends or pupils who so tho- roughly absorbed and reproduced in his own life and work the most distinctive features of Arnold's character and principles, or whether, after Arnold's death, there * 'Young is the most remarkable boy I have ever yet had dealings with, and the lessons I learnt from him last Sunday were as numerous as they were profitable. I never saw, in man or boy, such a real conviction of sin, and, though he showed great ignorance, he was most deeply impressed with the notion of eternity, and spoke with an earnestness altogether diffe- rent from anything that I ever heard before. His voice quite trembled as he spoke. All this taught me the great error and sin of neglecting boys who seem thoughtless and troublesome, which I have always done in his 14 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. II was any one man who might claim to have carried out so earnestly, and in time so successfully, the ideas and the system of which his friend was the founder and the apostle. Yet his success as a schoolmaster was by no means rapid or unchequered. His Eugby life extended over fifteen years : a time of slow and gradual growth, in which the foundations for some present and much future success were laid with daily toil and patience. His keen and boyish sense of life's mirthful side never left him. He was often the most amusing and laughter-moving of companions. There was a natural and quiet flow of genial humour that overran and freshened, like a mountain spring, the dry places and arid relations, the numbing cares and anxieties, of scholastic life. The visitors at that hospitable house will remember the quaint reminiscences of books and travel that reproduced Vitellius in the denizen of his pigsty, the Semiramis of Prague in the Libussa who drew his carriage, the Norman invaders' dog in the whelp Hardigras, and which transformed two faithful household servants from a Eamsay and a Packwood to a Criologus and Xylosagus. But with all this he was never frivolous or self-indulgent : the vein of ceaseless humour which played beneath an exterior somewhat grim and saturnine was combined with an intensity and earnestness of reli- gious life which formed the chief feature in his character. The pastoral relation in which a clergyman should stand to his pupils was never out of his sight. To deepen and quicken the Christian side of public school life was the deliberate purpose of his life. It was now that he drew up and published manuals of devotion for school-boys, which have stood the tests of many schools and many generations of boys. It was now that he laid the founda- tion for his future excellence as a preacher by his carefully prepared addresses to his house on Sunday evenings. CH. II.] DIFFICULTIES OF HIS LIFE AT RUGBY. 15 It was now that, in occasional sermons at Rugby and elsewhere, and as a select preacher before the University of Cambridge in the year 1843, he gave evidence alike of his powers, and of his promise as a preacher. It was now that, in his preparation of his pupils for Confirmation, he learnt to find his way to the often closed casket of an English boy's thoughts and feelings. It was now that by his minute and careful study of all the details of education, he laid the foundation of the powers of organisation which afterwards developed themselves elsewhere. It was now, finally, that by systematic reading and laborious self-cultivation, he trained himself to become what he was in India, the teacher not of boys, but of men. Yet he had many difficulties to contend with, and his self-development was slow and lingering. It was not at once that he acquired the art of enforcing discipline, or controlling unruly and turbulent boyhood. He was in some respects before his age, and his very efforts to become acquainted with his juniors were for a time re- sented by the stolid conservatism of boys, if not of men, as a revolutionary encroachment. His dry humour was branded as sarcasm : his interest in his pupils was de- nounced as favouritism. He had little of the charm of manner which in some men is itself a passport to the hearts of others, none of the ready address and super- ficial tact which come unsought to less earnest spirits. But he won his way, and the circle of his friends widened yearly, and the devotion of his pupils yearly gathered strength. There was about the man a sim- plicity and earnestness which went straight to the hearts of those who had once come under his spell. After the death of Arnold he became the attached friend and trusted counseller of his successor. His pupils, among whom might be mentioned Professor Conington at the one university, Lord Stanley at the other, carried with them to other scenes their warm and affectionate homage. IQ LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Ca. II. And the man himself was growing, not merely his repu- tation and influence. ' He seemed,' it has been said of him often, both before and since his death he seemed, as time went on, to develop new faculties, to become master of fresh gifts : decision, promptness, knowledge of man- kind, came to him as gold comes to the patient miner ;' and when twelve years had passed, and he had vainly offered himself as the successor of Bishop Tait to the chair of Arnold, it was felt that he had accumulated powers and gifts which might well be exerted in a larger sphere. That sphere was found at last, and his Rugby life ended in 1852 with his election to the mastership of Marlborough College, or, in less exalted language, to the head mastership of the school which bears that name. A man of less quiet confidence and courage might have shrunk from the task. The case may be stated very briefly. A desire to extend the area of public school education had led, in the year 1843, to the formation of a school constituted by royal charter. The main object of its founders was to benefit the clergy, a class in which men of gentle birth and classical education were too often precluded by narrow incomes from giving their children the training which they would most desire. The school was established, and was soon overflowing ; but owing to many causes, none of which need here be indi- cated, the experiment had met thus far with unlooked-for difficulties. An empty exchequer, an increasing debt, a community of boys still agitated by the recollection of an exciting conflict with authority, an absence of healthy public school feeling, and falling numbers, seemed to present all the elements of disastrous failure. There were those who felt that there was one man in England who might avert consequences which involved far more than the fate of a single school, and at the earnest re- commendation of those who knew the man, Mr. Cotton was appointed to the post. His success was complete. CH. II.] MASTERSHIP OF MARLBOROUGII COLLEGE. 17 He won, from the very first, the hearty confidence of the singularly varied body of bishops, noblemen, M.P.s, clergy, lawyers, and country gentlemen, who formed what is now called the ' governing body ' of the school. With their co-operation, a wise economy, combined with entire self-abnegation on the part of himself and the devoted band of old pupils and their friends whom he drew around him, restored the financial equilibrium. Within the school order was re-established : mutual respect and kindly intercourse took the place of mere repression and resistance. Work throve under so zealous a teacher, and a civilised out-of-door life in the form of cricket, foot- ball, and wholesome sports, took the place of poaching, rat-hunting, and poultry stealing. In spite of what seemed insuperable obstacles, his work grew and pro- spered. The Marlborough of 1866 looks back on him as its founder. The Marlborough of 1858 looked up to him as a father. The devotion to him of the school of his adoption knew no bounds. And this devotion was not merely the loyalty felt to the successful teacher and organiser it was paid to the man himself. The attractive and fascinating side of his character, the mixture of mirth- ful humour with earnest and paternal kindness, the activity of his intellect, and his power of sympathising with varied modes of thought and character, came out under the diffi- culties and successes of his new sphere as they had never done before. He had now, too, for the first time, a pulpit of his own ; and they were made to feel, in every word he said, that he was not beating the air or merely discharg- ing a duty, but speaking out of the fullness of his own thoughts and feelings, and from the result of continued and earnest study, to those whose trials and dangers, whose tastes and modes of thought, he had made familiar to him by kindly observation and hearty sympathy, and whose interest was dear to him as his own life. A s masterships fell vacant, they were filled partly by c 18 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. his old and attached pupils, partly by their friends, who knew him through them. But the first appointment of all was an old Marlburian, a former head of the school, highly distinguished at Oxford, who yielded to none in devotion to the master and the school. Through a circle of masters, whom he drew close to him, and through his sixth form, many of whom were in time united to him by bonds not less close, he mainly did the work which he did. His intimate friendship was open to all who chose to seek it. They went to him, some of them at all events, as they could not go to any other man in the world. The difference of years between him and them had the effect of making intimacy more close than it could have been if their ages had been more equal. They only could describe the relation in which he stood towards them, his ready help, constant sympathy, and consideration, generous forgiveness of offences, the large- ness of his confidence, his constant habit of consulting their judgment, his hearty appreciation of excellence in characters most opposite his own and to one another. Reminiscences of the Eev. G. E. L. Cotton at Rugby, from 1847 till 1852. By JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP, of St. Andrews. c There are few things that I look back to with such pure satisfaction as the privilege of having known intimately the late G. E. L. Cotton. In trying, however, to recall those years of familiar intercourse with him I find it hard to do so. The throng and pressure of that busy time have so jostled the incidents and blurred their outlines. It is only the total impression, for the most part, that remains. 'Towards the close of 1846, by the kindness of the present Bishop of London, I went after leaving Oxford to Eugby, to undertake one of the masterships there. Durino- the few first days, while I stayed as guest at the school CH. II.] MR. SIIAIRP'S REMINISCENCES. 19 house, Dr. Tait told me a good deal of the new life and work that lay before me, and spoke of the colleagues I should meet with. 4 I can still distinctly recall the way in which he spoke of Cotton, as one whom it might do anyone good to know, whose whole life and work were a great example. Dr. Tait had at that time been a little more than four years head master, and I could see that he had formed for Cotton a peculiar admiration and affection. 4 1 cannot quite recall the first impression Cotton made on me. Only I think it was of one who stood calm and self-possessed in the midst of a great whirl of work and many more excitable persons. 4 In general he received strangers quietly, and it was not at first sight they were most taken by him. In due time, by our mutual friend Bradley, we drew to each other, and began to have walks together on half-holidays and Saturdays. Having lately left Oxford, I was full of views and thoughts which were then seething there below the surface. In these Cotton was much interested, with firm intelligent desire to know what way the currents were setting in the university, and from kindly sympathy with young men, and whatever engaged their thoughts. In these conversations, two things in him soon struck me : first, the large tolerance and perfect fair-mindedness with which he tried to understand and judge ways of thinking that were different from his own ; and, secondly, his sta- bility while opening his mind to new views he was not carried away by them. He held fast without effort by his old fixed moorings those truths, few and simple, which were the roots of his being. 4 During those early years of our intercourse I remember a characteristic trait of his mingled humour and practical downrightness. Mr. Mill's " Political Economy " had just been published, and several of the masters agreed to read it, and discuss it together afterwards chapter by chapter. c 2 20 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [di. II. Cotton was one of these. In one walk, the early chapters on Productive and Unproductive Consumption formed topics for discussion. The truth was brought out very clearly, that all that was spent in recreation, banquets, &c., beyond what goes to invigorate body and mind for fresh productive labour, is so far wasted and a loss to the community. With most persons it would have stopped there. Cotton, partly from love of a joke, partly from his earnest practical turn, began to press this truth home. Banquets among the masters had at that time in some quarters grown to rather large dimensions ; he urged that all banquets should straightway be curtailed within the limits prescribed by political economy. This proposal to square practice by speculation caused much discussion and amusement and gave rise to one humorous incident. ' The present Oxford Professor of Political Economy may perhaps remember these things. ' Our intimacy once begun was ripened into friendship by some time spent together abroad, in the summer of ]849. We met at Dresden, where Cotton and Mrs. Cotton were staying, two of his sixth form pupils accompanying them. ' Together we all travelled to Prague, spent some days there, and returned to Dresden. 6 It would be impossible to find a more delightful tra- velling companion than Cotton was. His entire unselfish- ness, his perfect temper, placid and even, always inter- rested, the continued play of his quiet peculiar humour on all the little incidents and traits of character we met with, his unwearied love of things and places historic, the thoroughness, the kindliness that pervaded all he said and did made his society at once calming, strengthening, and exhilarating. ' Prague, I remember, greatly charmed him. He was struck by the Eastern look it had, which was something new to all of us. There was the palace and church of the Hradschin, with its tombs of the Bohemian kings nine CH. II.] MR. SIIAIRP'S REMINISCENCES. 21 centuries old ; the bridge with its crucifix and ever- burning lamps supported by a fine laid on the Jews ; the mouldy synagogue, one of the earliest in Europe ; while in the shattered windows and battered walls of the houses were freshly seen the marks which Winditzgratz and his Austrians had left on the town during last year's revolution. It was the enlargement it gave to his historic sympathies that formed to him the greatest charm of travel. One occurrence at Prague greatly amused Cotton. On- the first evening after our arrival we were invited to a party which turned out to be made up of German-hating Czechs, the name of the Sclavonic inhabitants of Bohemia. We had never till that day exactly known of the exis- tence of this small race of Sclaves. But that evening we found ourselves sitting with a number of fierce patriotic Czechs, toasting in German wine " Auf die Bruderschaft der Czech und der Englander." While Cotton was at Kugby, each summer vacation, sometimes the Christmas ones too, were laid out methodically, not merely for ease and pleasure, but to combine needed relaxation with some increased enlargement of his knowledge of men and of places famed in history. 'In the summer of 1850, while Cotton and Mrs. Cotton were in Germany, he had a severe attack of rheumatic fever, which prevented him from returning at the usual time to his school duties. As I had then no boarding- house of my own, Cotton wrote asking me to undertake the charge of his for a time. After some weeks he was so far recovered as to return to Eugby, still quite unlit for work. He and Mrs. Cotton returned for a week or two, and lived in their own home as guests, the name and character he insisted on assuming. After a short stay he left again for the rest of the half year ; but I still vividly remember with what consideration and good feeling he carried the whole thing through, so that he converted what might have been an embarrassing situa- 22 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. tion into a most pleasant and friendly visit. .During the weeks I took this charge I had an opportunity of ^ seeing what I had always heard, the excellence of Cotton's work as head of a boarding-house. It was a house in all things well ordered, filled with a prevailing spirit of quiet industry and cheerful duty-doing. c Good as was Cotton's work in his form, it was only in his own house that his full influence was manifest. What Arnold had been to the whole school, that Cotton was to his own house, the boarders in it, and his private pupils out of it. No two men perhaps were ever more different in temperament than the calm, unimpassioned Cotton and the resolute Dr. Arnold ; yet notwithstanding this, of all Dr. Arnold's pupils or followers none imbibed more largely his spirit and acted out his system more entirely than Cotton did. The praepostors system, as Arnold conceived and recreated it, he thoroughly adopted and carried out. To get hold of his sixth form pupils, win their confidence, mould their views of life and conduct, and through them to reach and influence the younger boys on this idea by which Arnold governed Eugby, Cotton threw himself with his whole heart, and by it made his house what it was, one of the best, not only in Eugby, but in any public school. It was his habit to live in great confidence and intimacy with the prsepostors in his house, and they with few exceptions returned his confidence and, as far as boys could, entered into his views. ' And so they were the channels by which his mind and character reached, more or less, every boy under his roof. ' In the routine of his daily work there was " unresting, unhastening industry." Method, orderly but not pedantic, each duty done punctually and faithfully. Yet he never seemed to be in a hurry, almost always to have leisure. ' If a boy's prose or verse copy was looked over in his CH. II.] MR. SHAIRP'S REMINISCENCES. 23 study, this was done as carefully as a sermon to be preached in the chapel. Some parts of a master's duty for instance, the scratching of innumerable copies daily I knew to be painfully irksome to him. Yet I often wondered with what cheerfulness he did these things ; the pupil never knew how irksome he felt it. For when the work was done he would take the opportunity of speaking a few friendly words to the boy, and so getting to know him better. Many men who may try to go through these details with something like the same exactness, find themselves when the long routine is over so wearied out that they have no heart for further intercourse with boys, but must seek leisure or silence. ' It was not so with Cotton. Whether in his study cor- recting exercises, or afterwards in his drawing-room, he sought every opportunity of conversing with his pupils and showing them that he took interest in them. A laborious life of this kind leaves most men no leisure for reading. But Cotton, even in the busiest times, had generally, besides lighter reading, some solid book on hand. And from his vacations he generally came back having along with his relaxation mastered one or more important works with which he had enlarged his know- ledge. ' The custom of reading or speaking some practical words to the boys assembled for Sunday evening prayers was in most boarding-houses occasional. With Cotton the " sermonette," as he used to call it, was almost in- variably given every Sunday night. This way of teach- ing suited his turn, and he was a great master of it. These were not formal like church sermons, but brief, plain, pithy words. Some part of school life and daily duty was reviewed before the boys in the light of Chris- tian principle, and that with such plainness and directness that there was no getting past it. These I believe had uch effect on his pupils partly with the force with 111 24 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii. IT. which they were put still more because the boys felt that they were entirely in keeping with his own life, and summoned up the spirit in which he himself lived and worked and wished them to share with him. He used to say jokingly himself, " I think that I am a shepherd, not a goatherd." By this he meant to say that it was not by throwing himself into their games, playing cricket and football with them, as some masters do, that he could influence boys. Unless there were something else in a boy than animal spirits and love of games he felt that he could not reach him. He required some degree of thoughtfulness or some sense of duty at least some common sense to be stirring in a boy before he could find a point of contact with him. If he could only be got at by his animal sympathies Cotton felt that he was not the man for him. And so it was to their higher nature, mainly their conscience or intelligence or affection, that his character commended itself. When, however, any of these had once been touched, then they found other things in him which they had not expected. His humorous sayings, quaint remarks, and jokes, were to those who knew him well, colleagues and pupils, a con- tinual amusement ' To his house there came many pupils from the most serious homes in England. He used to say that he thought it was his calling to take boys who had been brought up in the strictest Evangelical system and fit them for contact with the world. He endeavoured to expand their minds and remove their prejudices, while he tried to confirm and deepen whatever good religious principles they had learnt. If in some cases he did not succeed, if there are instances in which pupils of his have since wandered wide of their first faith, the fault was not in him or his teaching. It is but one result of that spiritual tempest, which of late years has so cruelly strained young minds in the English universities, and CH. IT.] MR. SHAIKH'S REMINISCENCES. 25 stranded, as has been truly said, many of the finest spirits on every shore of thought. Of one thing I am sure, that those who have since been led to differ from him most widely still look back on Cotton, as they remember him at Eugby, with undiminished affection. 'His house work and the impressions he made on his own pupils formed the centre of Cotton's influence in Eugby. But it did not end there : elder boys in other houses, seeing the effect he had on his own pupils and their attachment to him, were drawn towards him and welcomed any opportunity of knowing him. He thus became a rallying point for whatever was best in the school and also in a great measure the upholder of the Arnoldian spirit in it. If in some things, as in the stress of responsibility which it threw on the praepostors, this spirit was overstrained, if it pressed too strongly the spring of " moral thoughtfulness " (the peculiarly Eugbeian virtue, or vice, as some would call it), so as in some cases to provoke an after rebound, Cotton, though not unaware of this possible result, would, I think, have said that he notwithstanding accepted the system and threw himself into it as the best that had yet been discovered for working public schools. ' I have noticed the methodic way in which he went through each day's routine of work. Neither rapid at it nor slow, he always seemed to have each thing done at the proper time, and most days to have some leisure over, and this leisure he employed, partly in social duties, partly in reading. 4 He always had on hand some solid work, historical, theological, or other. This he read in the most systematic, exhaustive way, so that when he was done he could re- produce all that was most valuable in it for the informa- tion of others. ' I never knew anyone who could give a clearer, more well-ordered digest of anything he had read, heard, or 26 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON". [On. II. seen ; hence his knowledge, even in that busy life, every year made a steady increase. ' His imagination too, not originally I should think one of his strongest faculties, grew richer every year lie lived. This is one of the mental gains that seemed to grow out of a moral nature true to itself. You see many a time a naturally fervid imagination divorced from moral purpose burn brightly in early youth, but grow fainter as time goes on, while the imagination in other men originally stiff and bald, as the meaning of life deepens to them, expands and deepens with their years. This growth of imaginative power is observable in Arnold's later, as compared with his earlier writings. And I think the same was the case with Cotton, and the cause was the same in both. But in most other respects no two men, holding the same views and governed by the same aims, could be more unlike each other. * If Cotton lacked much which Arnold had, one thing he possessed which Arnold wanted the humour that oozed from him and gave unfailing zest to all he said. This was closely connected with his temper, which was the most placid you would meet with in a lifetime. I do not suppose anyone ever saw Cotton in a rage. I never saw him even approach to being angry, though I have seen him deeply pained on hearing of some baseness of action or falseness of word. ' His perfect temper arose in a large measure from his great unselfishness. The "heart at leisure from itself" was in him untroubled by those feelings which spring out of self-regard and make up most men's annoyances. ' The attachment of his elder pupils, especially the sixth form boys, to him was wonderful ; not less deep were his feelings towards them. ' The earnest side of his character drew out their reve- rence, the humorous arid jocular side interested and amused them. CH. II.] MR. SHAIRP'S REMINISCENCES. 27 ' His jokes arid quaint sayings were a kind of possession of all his house, and through them of the whole school, 4 During his vacations he visited at the homes of his elder pupils or took them with him on his foreign travels. I well remember his return from seeing off in the train a favourite pupil, leaving school for the uni- versity, in whose future he felt a special interest. Cotton had seen much of him during his later school days, and now on the last had gone with him to the train. 4 When Cotton returned he told me a good deal of what they had spoken about, their last words, the part- ing, and then he added, with a wave of his arm and the tears in his eyes (strange to see in one usually so calm), "And so passed the greatest interest I ever had in Rugby." 4 To this power of attaching his pupils, and through them winning the regards of others like minded, it was that he owed his greatest success at Marlborough. It enabled him to draw round him a band of young masters fresh from the universities, who went to Marlborough not for salaries, for these then were insignificant, nor for the attractions of the place, for hard work was its main attraction, but drawn solely by love to Cotton himself, and through him to the work he had taken in hand. That work was to raise the then comparatively obscure College of Marlborough out of the depths into which it had fallen. Single-handed, with merely average masters going through a routine duty, he could have done little. But he was enabled to regenerate the school mainly by the personal magnetism which attracted, and the devo- tion with which he inspired his following of young masters, men of as good ability and as high character as the large salaried masters of Harrow or Eugby, and with the first ardour of youth on their side. 4 It was early in 1852 that he accepted the headship of Marlborough. His going to Eugby was the greatest loss 28 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [di. II. it could sustain. But he felt that his work there was done, and that he could put forth fresh energy in a place which he could mould to his own mind. That summer, just before he went to Marlborough, he came down to Scotland and visited at my father's home. All there, though most of them did not know him till then, greatly relished his society, his naturalness, his quiet drollery, his unpre- tendingness. On Sunday, I remember, he accompanied us to the small Presbyterian parish church. He felt much interest in being present at this form of worship, which was new to him, but he joined in it as naturally, and with as little constraint, as the humblest peasant there. English clergymen when in Scotland, if they go to the Presby- terian church at all, are apt to do so as if they were condescending. No doubt they are not aware of it them- selves, but the natives are, and feel it offensive. Cotton had nothing of this about him ; indeed, nothing was more remarkable in him than his entire freedom from the common clerical weaknesses. About many of the most excellent clergymen there is a sort of professional enamel which they cannot get rid of. Those of the broad school, seeing this, sometimes fly to the other extreme and play the laymen. They are continually, as it were, taking off their white tie and flinging it in your face. From both of these extremes Cotton was equally removed. You could speak to him about anything, express difference or doubt, just as if he were a layman ; indeed, with far less hesitation than you can do with most laymen. And the consequence was that with all laymen his influence was much stronger than that of most clergymen, because they felt, in what he said, that there was nothing professional, but that it simply was the honest conviction of a single-hearted, truth-loving man. ' When we left my father's house, he made me lead him through the vales of Tweed and Yarrow. Dryburgh CH. IT.] MR. SHAIRP'S REMINISCENCES. 29 Abbey we visited in the beauty of a summer morning, then Melrose and Abbotsford. In the afternoon I took him up Tweed through the beautiful woods of Yare to the ridge of the hill behind it. There pausing, and look- ing westward, we saw beneath us the whole course of the Yarrow, as it winds from the lochs down through the green interlapping hills. The westering sun was streaming down the " bonny braes." Two nights we stayed by still St. Mary's lake, and all day we wandered among the hopes and side-glens that come into Yarrow, the Douglas Burn, Kirklife, by Drylife Tower and the rest, while I told him the traditions and ballads that still haunt the spots, and make more than half their charm. We then walked down Moffat dale, and parted at Moffat. Sometimes during this short tour, as we wandered among the green hills, Cotton would begin to discuss some difficult question of education or scholastic management. The enterprise of remodelling Marlborough, now close before him, was evidently much on his mind. After one or two conversations, I bargained that these topics should be left till we had reached our inn at night. Savouring as they did of the work-day world, they seemed alien to the dreamy stillness of those green pastoral uplands. To this he readily agreed. In a letter which I received from him soon after we parted, he told me that his enjoyment in this short tour had been only second to that he had felt in seeing the two or three great world sights of his life. ' Somehow I regret to say I never made out a visit to him at Marlborough, though often invited. But I saw him from time to time at Eugby when, during the holidays, he came to visit others and myself there. 4 After his consecration as a bishop, while he was on his last visit to Eugby, just before sailing for India, a quite unexpected occurrence brought me from Scotland to Eugby, and we there met. It was on a Sunday we were 30 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. II. there, and I remember the impression it made on me when at the close of the evening service Cotton rose and as bishop pronounced the benediction in that chapel where for years his voice had been so familiar. On the Sunday we saw as much of each other as we could, but of course he had many friends to see. We agreed to meet early on Monday morning, as I had to leave at 8 o'clock A. M. ; we met at 7 o'clock in the close, walked several times up and down there walks we had so often paced together in former years then at half-past seven said farewell. As we parted he gave me a copy of his Maryborough Sermons, just then published, and below my name and his own wrote, "Kugby, Sept. 6, 1858. School close, 7.30 A.M." ' After he went to India, I had a letter from him every now and then, one every six months or so, till the last year or two of his life, when they intermitted. I do not know what was the reason of this, or whether I was to blame for neglecting to answer him. Most pleasant, friendly, instructive letters they were, full of the facts and thoughts you wished to know, told in the clearest, most orderly, and often quaint way. He had more the gift of the real old letter-writer than anyone else one knows now-a-days. 4 In his letters he expressed himself almost as fully as one can conceive it done, his life, the things he was doing, the books he was reading, the thoughts he was most engaged in at the time he wrote. ' In thinking of Cotton as he was, the thing that most comes back on me is his entire truthfulness and goodness: the love of all that was good, the open conscience toward all that was right amounted in him to a kind of genial goodness. ' Whatever other talents and faculties he possessed, this the central moral power in him at least doubled his other powers. He was, I think, the most candid man I CH. II.] MR. STTAIRP'S REMINISCENCES. 31 ever knew ; he was almost the only man I have met who if anything he said or did was objected to would not try in the least to defend himself, but would hold up himself and his action in the light of unbiassed reason, and judge it with strict impartiality, as if it were the case of a third person. If after consideration he was convinced that the objection was true, he would at once get himself to cor- rect his view, and conform his thought and word and deed to his new correction. ' Another side of the same quality was his love of truth in all its aspects, his desire to know the best attained truth in all matters, and ever to be increasing his know- ledge of it. Whether the matter were fact of history, or political opinion, or interpretation of scripture, or philo- sophical question, or truth of theology, in all alike he used conscientiously the best helps within his reach, strove to attain the best light extant, and then to turn it to practical account. But the first thing he sought was to know what was true. ' With him, however, the end of this search was not speculative knowledge. He desired to know that he might be and do. The open eye for truth and knowledge ministered to the love of goodness Christian goodness and all the truth he saw he used in the service of the goodness he loved. ' He had no jealousy, lest the one should hurt the other, convinced that at the bottom they were in perfect har- mony. So well balanced were these two habits in him that no access of fresh critical knowledge ever weakened his heart's hold on its fundamental moorings, nor did his firm hold of these narrow his mind against perceiving any new truth that might be presented to him. Indeed, while he continued to the last to be interested in all the critical and theological questions of the time, his faith in those great evangelic truths with which he began life was growing every year till its close. For speculation as an 32 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. end in itself he had no caring. His strong love of practical goodness kept his thoughts solid and healthful. ' He was eminently a friendly man, and one whom friends only could know. Mere acquaintances were very likely not to know or to misunderstand him. His plain, undemonstrative manner often disappointed persons on first seeing him, when they had heard much of him be- forehand. You required to get beyond mere acquain- tance and within the range of intimacy, before you got a glimpse of the real man ; but then every step you took within that range revealed his true worth more fully. Under that calm (what strangers sometimes thought cold) exterior you found one of the truest, most devoted hearts that ever beat. Steadfast and devoted he was to his friends, whether those of his own or of a younger generation, and of such friends no one had more ; de- voted to his duty whatever it was, and to the good of the place wherever it might be in which his work lay, yet without the narrowness or unsociableness that often accompany strict duty-doing ; devoted to the not romanti- cally, but to the morally heroic, in whatever form he perceived it ; devoted to the memory of Dr. Arnold as the best earthly embodiment of this whom he had known. But all these forms of human affection were deepened and hallowed by a more central all-pervading devotion still devotion to that Divine Master whom with his whole heart he loved. ' Of this central affection he seldom spoke it expressed itself in his life far better than in his words. But no one could know him without knowing that this was the strongest power within him, that which moved his whole being. What made it more remarkable was that it excited, in a nature which was so entirely unexcitable, a heart which had fervour to give not to small or transient things, but only to the most important. All the more concentrated was the devotion it gave to these. Those CH. II ] MR. CONINGTON'S REMINISCENCES. 33 who knew these qualities in Cotton at Eugby were quite prepared to see the good and arduous work he achieved at Marlborough. They had seen in him a singleness of eye and a concentration of aim which doubled all his natural powers, and drew forth ever new reserves of power to meet each new emergency as it arose. 4 Therefore they were not surprised when they heard how steadily and surely his influence in India grew, and how by sheer dint of Christian character he had come to be the acknowledged head, not of the Anglican Church only, but of all the Christian Churches in that empire. ' They were prepared to hear that all laymen as well as all ministers of every communion looked up to him as one of the best of all bishops, because they had known him long since to be one of the best men/ Reminiscence by JOHN CONINGTON, late Professor of Latin at Oxford* 4 1 have been asked to contribute my recollections of the intercourse which I maintained with him during the last fourteen or fifteen years of the Bishop's English career. I do so with pleasure, but with some misgiving. That intercourse was, I need not say, a more important part of my life than of his ; and in writing of it I cannot hope to avoid the danger of giving myself a prominence to which I have no claim. ' Mr. Cotton had been my house-master during the greater part of the time I spent at Eugby, from the beginning of 1840 (when he succeeded to Mr. Powlett's * The above reminiscence of past years, and some letters in the follow- ing pages, will now, after Mr. Conington's early death, be read with heightened interest by many who knew the closeness of the intimacy which existed between him and the Bishop. Each possessed a warm and faithful heart, and a close friendship built upon a constant interchange of thought, about many things both grave and gay, was neither cooled by time nor weakened by distance. Mr. Conington died in October 1869. D 34 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II boarding-house) to the autumn of 1843, when I left the 1 school. During that time, however, no very intimate relations subsisted between us, and though when we parted I was well assured of his kind interest in me, and had readily responded to his desire that we should cor- respond with each other, I had no reason to expect that our past connexion would lay the foundation of a very close or enduring friendship. Some letters, however, which I wrote to him early in 1844 called forth warm sympathy on his part ; and on paying him a visit shortly after, in the Oxford Easter vacation, I found myself at once established on a new footing. I may be allowed without impertinence to add that the friendly feeling with which I was then welcomed was extended to me in a greater or less degree by many of the other Rugby masters, with whom I had previously had little or no acquaintance. I can scarcely trust myself to speak of the strange delight and fascination which I felt in these new and unexpected friendships. My tastes at that time had much more affinity for the pursuits of my elders than for those of my contemporaries ; those tastes had been gratified but little during my school life, and it did not seem likely that they would receive much greater satis- faction at Oxford. But in corresponding with Mr. Cotton and in visiting Rugby, I was able to pass from the trivial- ities and annoyances (as I conceived them) of every day life into a more exalted atmosphere ; high questions and state secrets were discussed openly and freely before me by persons whose opinion I knew to be of great account, and I was encouraged to express my own sentiments. I was made free as it were of a more illustrious and dignified society than that in which I ordinarily moved. I plunged eagerly into correspondence, I paid repeated visits to Mr Cotton, and yet I was never allowed to feel that my letters were too numerous nor my visits too frequent or too protracted. I am speaking of course of early boyish Cu. ir.] MR. CONINGTON'S REMINISCENCES. 35 times, and I write with something of a boy's eagerness. Yet though the loss of novelty and the increase of expe- rience made the pleasure of this kind of intercourse some- what soberer, I cannot say that as years went on it was abated in any perceptible degree. The pleasure was of too solid I had almost said too homely a character to wear out readily ; when it was no longer a novelty it be- came an institution. I remember when Mr. Cotton left Eugby wondering within myself how much of the enjoy- ableness of my past visits had depended on the person, how much on the place, and, consequently, how much I might expect to find in future visits to Marlborough. The question had not to wait long for a solution. I visited him after he had been for three months settled at Marl- borough, and from that time till his departure to India I do not believe that six months passed without my paying him a visit. T remember also the feelings with which I read the letter containing the news of his appointment to Calcutta, and the sudden conviction which flashed upon me that no event of the kind within the circle of iny friend- ships could possibly affect me so much. I wish for my own sake I could add that the conviction had proved mistaken. ' It is difficult to sum up briefly the causes which made my intercourse with Mr. Cotton such a real and abiding pleasure. Perhaps the qualities in himself to which it was most to be attributed were his perfect sincerity, simplicity, good nature, and considerateness. These soon made themselves felt in spite of a certain shyness and embarrass- ment of manner which existed very markedly during his earlier years at Eugby. and were not entirely got rid of, I think, during any part of the time for which I knew him. He was always ready to converse with a younger friend on any subject in which that friend was interested ; he listened patiently and tolerantly, and discussed calmly and good-humouredly. The opinions to which he listened might or miht not accord with his own ; but even when 36 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. IF. obliged to express serious dissent from them he never treated them with contempt or refused to reason quietly about them. And in turn he was always ready to speak of matters that were occupying his own mind matters of controversy, political or theological, points connected with study, questions of school government : he took a pleasure in talking of them, and he took a pleasure in eliciting his hearer's judgment about them. It was not a dialogue in which one held forth and the other listened ; it was a discussion on equal terms. Others might be more stimulating, more suggestive, but I have never met with anyone who, without any tendency to disputatiousness, was so ready to talk out a question. The range which his conversation embraced was sufficiently wide. There might be some points, such as poetry and literary critic- ism, in which my interest was greater, his less ; but even these he was ready and glad to discuss. It was not that there was in general great novelty in his views, but there was a spirit of unvarying good sense, calmness, and dis- cretion, so remarkable as to be itself a novelty. There was an unfailing vein of dry and grotesque humour which made conversation lively. There was a seriousness in discussing serious subjects, an unwavering disposition to refer everything to the highest applicable standard, which prevented it from being unprofitable. Individuals were not uncommonly criticised, sometimes in a more or less satirical tone ; but there was no real bitterness or ill- nature. What he was at one time he was at another ; there were no ' mollia tempora fandi,' no moods in which he was exceptionally communicative. He could always be counted on for conversation, with the very rare ex- ceptions of actual ill-health or great physical weariness. Whenever he was not busy, he was disposed for a walk and a talk, or, at any rate, the latter ; nay, he was quite willing that his guest should sit with him in his study, while he read or wrote, every now and then exchanging a pleasant remark arising out of their respective occu- CH. II. J MR. CONINGTON T S REMINISCENCES. 37 pations, and only excluding him for an occasional five minutes when some one happened to call on business. It was this perfect domesticity which made a visit to him so enjoyable. One felt encouraged to talk to him, as I have said, on anything which happened to be occupying your own mind, OTTI TOI sv [AsyoLpouri XOLXOV T dyaQov TS and you felt assured no less that he would treat you with the same freedom, mentioning to you in confidence any school difficulty, any puzzling question of any sort, on which he was then engaged, and desiring to hear your thoughts. " Next Sunday I think of discoursing on such and such a text ; state at length your views on the subject," would be the natural commencement of a Mon- day's walk. Altogether I do not think I have ever known any person, old or young, ^with whom entire reciprocity in communicating thoughts was so possible, and therefore so pleasant. 6 About the manner of Mr. Cotton's conversation I have probably said enough ; about its matter perhaps a few more words may be allowed me. The greater part of my con- versations with him I suppose must have been taken up with matters relating to school life : questions of education, questions of government, discussions about character, some- times general, sometimes with reference to individuals, local matters affecting Etigby or Marlborough. Connected with these would be matters relating to university life, in which of course I was likely to be more immediately in- terested, though as he kept up a more or less regular intercourse with Oxford and Cambridge the latter being his own university, the former that to which the majority of his pupils went he was always ready to take up the subject for its own sake, and entered warmly not only into principles but into details. Public matters, too, had always a large share in our conversations. The particular class of questions that might be uppermost in our thoughts 38 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II, would of course vary according to circumstances : from 1844 to 1846, the period of my undergraduateship, it would generally be the Tractarian movement at Oxford ; in 1848 and the years immediately following politics would be most prominent ; questions lying at the foundation of Government and of society were sure to be freely discussed. I remember well the general character of the conversations we used to have together during the latter of those two periods. The year 1848 was, I fancy, to not a few persons of my own age what it was to Europe at large, a year of revolution. Thought moved unusually fast, everything social or political that could be questioned was questioned, conversation was turned into a process of attack and de- fence, and if any places lay out of the vortex of such agitations, assuredly Eugby and Oxford were not among them. It was much in those days to have the opportunity of discussing matters of this kind with one of Mr. Cotton's temperament, one who while he entered readily into them and never put them aside as unseasonable or wearisome, was yet never carried away by mere novelty, who brought calm judgment, patient argument, and quiet humour to bear on questions only too apt to excite warmth whether in conversation or in destructive reasoners, who, in his own words, steadily refused to admit that we could talk as if we were living in the year One, yet never on that account treated anything as placed by prescription beyond the pale of serious rational debate. To politics and social problems succeeded university reform, which, I need not say, in 1851 and the succeeding years became for the first time a really practical question. Probably I should be right in saying that in our latest communications theology came once more into prominence, though I certainly do not mean to imply that in his mind, and consequently in his conversation, it had ever receded far into the back- ground. But I think we both of us felt that owing to parti- cular circumstances we were able to approach that subject CH. IL] MR. CONINGTON'S REMINISCENCES. 39 in a more satisfactory manner than heretofore, to assume a broader basis of agreement, and to discuss details, whether of opinion or of conduct, as persons who ex- pected to arrive at a real conclusion. ' I do not know that I can say anything tending to illus- trate any particular occurrences in Mr. Cotton's life either at Eugby or Marlborough, though I have not only my own recollections to guide me, but a considerable number of letters, beginning about 1847, three years after the actual commencement of my correspondence with him, and con- tinuing till his departure. His English life, as your readers will see, was not an eventful one ; and in writing for the public it is more natural to dwell on its general character than to single out particular stages of It. There were certainly times at which his communications with his friends were closer and more frequent than at other times, but though a reperusal of the letters which he wrote on such occasions revives old recollections with a touching vividness, it is difficult to make any selection even from that part of his correspondence without obtruding on the world matters in which the world has no concern. I may, however, make a partial exception in the case of his can- didature for the head mastership of Eugby at the end of 1849. Being a very warm supporter of his claims on that occasion, I was constantly exchanging letters with him while the event was pending, besides paying him one or two short visits ; and I have now before me a number of letters, explaining his own feelings and discussing the opinions of others and the chances of election. From these I make a few extracts, longer and shorter, exempli- fying at once the feelings with which he entered into the contest and the spirit in which he discussed the matter with a younger friend. < Rugby, October 27. 'I shall be very glad to receive your promised second letter on the subject of the vacancy here : meantime I send you a 40 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. collection of facts and speculations from this place. In about a fortnight the Trustees are to hold a meeting, receive Tait's resignation, declare the office vacant, and announce the day of election, which will probably be before Christmas. My standing appears to be a subject of active speculation, both among the masters, the boys, and the town. 4 Then follows a number of amusing details of a private character. 4 So much for fact. Now for speculation. Am I fit ? For surely few miseries could be greater than being put into a public and elevated situation to which one was unequal. I trust that I have profited enough by ryv&Qt, o-savrov to discern many points in which I should be deficient, some in which I might succeed. And I think I see some reasons which made me fitter for the Burmese than the Rugbeian empire. [He alludes playfully to his candidature for the head mastership of Birmingham, the year before.] But that is a profitless regret. What are the chances of success ? This question of course re- solves itself into that of standing or keeping quiet. And there is first the old tradition against the election of under masters, a very unjust one, and making one's office here in a worldly point of view a somewhat hopeless one .... The same thing which would go far to remove these difficulties would also induce me to stand. They would be removed, I think, if three classes of persons were to think me an eligible candidate : 1. Old Rugbeians ; 2. A considerable proportion of the masters ; 3. Parents. As to the first, I should think that it would be important to hear the view taken not only by you and others whom personal regard may have made over partial, but by per- sons less closely connected with me, , , and others again younger than they. On the whole therefore I think that events had better develop themselves a little. Like Louis Napoleon, I may perhaps be one whom it is desirable to enthrone to save the State from an utter revolution by the intrusion of the iambopoeic or any other foreign element. Or I may be thought desirable on higher grounds. But, at all events, I shall certainly not be elected unless a general feeling in my favour of the kind which I mention is communicated to the Trustees, nor do I think that without it there would be CH. ii.] ME. CONINGTON'S REMINISCENCES. 41 any use in standing. I should like to hear from you a really honest opinion on the whole matter. If I do not wish more for the efficient management of the school than for personal aggrandisement, I ought to be ashamed of myself, and therefore I also ought to be ashamed if I were offended at anything which you tell me about the whole question. And I do not think one of my faults, either as aspirant, or elected, or re- jected, will be to despise the advice or opinion of the people. 1 November 4. ' I am very much obliged to you for your former epistle. I quite feel the justice of some of the objections : to some I rather demur. Possibly many were made by men who only knew me in the first years of my authority here. Of late, I have reason to think that the lessons in the Fifth are very tolerably useful to the hearers : and I certainly seem to myself to get on well with the boys. But I always think that I have been far more successful of late years. However, everything depends on the candidates, who I suppose will begin to be known after Friday next, when the Trustees make their proclamation. 1 November 10. 'The die is cast, and after many misgivings, doubts, fears, and qualms, I am really a candidate. The Trustees met yesterday: fixed December 17 for the election and December 8 for the day of sending in testimonials. The vexing process of the Burmese election must, I suppose, be gone through again. ' After asking questions about testimonials he continues : 4 1 feel altogether too nervous about the whole affair, from contemplating the results which would follow from election far more than the disappointment, such as it would be, of rejection, to write to you a long letter now. I will only state that the office in its whole nature, its varied interests, its connexion with the scene of my first active professional duties, with the most sacred memories of my life, and the persons to whom I feel more attached than to any out of my own immediate family, is to me a perfectly ideal occupation. I do believe that every energy which I possess would be called out by it, and I should approach it with a perfectly awful sense of its responsibility. 'The four following extracts, from letters written 42 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. between 1847 and 1850, I give simply as specimens of the way in which he would deal with different subjects, serious or playful. ' The first was suggested by a conversation about current speculative opinions. maintained that the whole set of which he spoke were biding their time, sharpening their weapons, and are to come out in great force hereafter with views matured and truth ob- tained. He afterwards explained more exactly what he meant by the views of which he had been speaking. Certain men regard such a point as the Incarnation in this way. They do not deny it (which would be very wrong), but they are dissatisfied with the way in which it is commonly taught, and they are now waiting till some new side of it is put forward on which they can lay hold ; and till then they keep themselves in suspense about it. Now, if nothing had resulted from this subject but the controversies of the Monothelites, or the question of our Lord's impeccability, or the disputes of Eutyches and Nes- torius, I could understand a recoil which would leave men in indifference if not in unbelief. But as I own that I do not ex- pect anything appealing more truly to our wants and sympathies than the view of the Incarnation in Hebrews ii. 18, and which pervades all Arnold's writings, or of the Atonement than Romans viii. 32, and its consequences, I cannot imagine what this aiiaphorism means, nor do I believe that Oxford or Rugby either will produce a fouDder of a better religion than that of St. Paul. Similarly in practical matters, say and , some nonsense is taught in Sunday Schools : Bible and Missionary Societies are injured by the folly of their advocates ; therefore these men can take no part in such things. Though this view also abandons all practical usefulness, and leaves the poor to die uncared for while we are waiting for a prophet who shall give life to the vast unwieldy mechanism of English educational schemes, &c., and though I hold that in an im- perfect world we must do our best with the materials which are placed before us (cf. " He that is not against us is on our part"), still this is much less dangerous than the other part of the question, and must work out its own cure if men were placed in a situation of practical work. But the other destroys not CH. ii.] MR. CONINGTON'S REMINISCENCES. 43 merely practical activity, but, as it seems to me, all true men- tal activity and influence also, and brings us back to the notion that everything is in a perpetual flux. 'The next, written in January 1848, illustrates the manner in which he would speak of books which he had read. His Indian letters will, I think, show that he lived to modify in some degree the opinions expressed in the last few sentences ; but they are not the less characteristic of his general feeling. 6 1 have read Macaulay, and fully agree with you about its wonderful literary merit, and the manner in which it fixes or rather almost engulfs one's attention, with as much force as the most exciting novel. Its chief defect, or at least the chief hindrance to its ranking as a really great work, seems to me its want of earnestness. Though far from being " addictus jurare in verba Carlylii," I feel his immense superiority in this respect to Macaulay. Take two parallel scenes, the death-bed of Charles II. as the first scene in the English Revolution, and the death- bed of Louis XV. as the first scene in the French. In vividness and graphic power they are told with about equal effect by the respective authors ; but in addition to these merits, it may be fairly said of Carlyle's picture that no one ought to rise from contemplating it without being morally and spiritually the better for it. Your other criticisms on Macaulay seem to me very just : it is a regular historical exposition of the old Whig doctrine, which, like most other things, requires a little en- livening and elevating now-a-days. My other reading during the holidays has been mainly historical. I am one of the medal examiners, the subject being the histories of England and France from 1685 to 1713, the peace of Utrecht. Macaulay of course came in capitally, and I felt so ignorant of the period after '88, that I thought it well on all grounds, both general and special, to continue the history. So I went on with the " Pictorial History of England " ; dull work after Macaulay, but still full of information, and stored with long extracts from the original documents. Now I am reading Lord Mahon's " War of the Succession in Spain," which is very entertaining, though guiltless of any great historical power, and for a clever book 44: LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. II. singularly deficient in anything like political philosophy. It contains a capital account of that strange character Lord Peterborough, of whom my notions had been exceedingly vague. I have also skimmed the French history in the "Siecle de Louis XIV." French historians have improved a little since Voltaire's day, I imagine. My only other reading has been Liicke on St. John, which I do very slowly, making an abstract of it in my Lachmann, which is interleaved in quarto. So you see that I know nothing of Baptist Noel, of whom, however, I hope to catch hold some day, though I expect to disagree utterly. A separation of Church and State would surely es- tablish a double tyranny. How insupportable would either be ! And although our present Erastian state may in some degree check any such enthusiastic development of religious earnestness as might reclaim large provinces from heathen- dom suddenly and with one blow, yet this is every day be- coming less and less the case, as public men are getting more earnest and Christian, which I think is proved by the conduct of Lord Ashley, Horsman, &c., by the tone of the Jewish debate, and by the exertions making all around us for good objects, in spite of the opposing influences which other causes, and amongst them this religious development itself, have called forth. ' The next explains itself. 'Do you remember meeting a pupil of mine here named ? I was much shocked to hear of his death in Madeira, whither he had gone from a threatening of consumption, though his family seemed unprepared for so rapid an end. He died wholly among strangers ; but I have seen a letter describing the close. Is it not a real evidence to the truth of the Christian promises, that at the last the mind finds in them its only comfort, and that the language of one who was of old a mere specimen of cheerful good-nature, is through their sup- port changed into something of true spiritual eloquence ? * These extracts, it will be seen, have all been made with a special object, that of illustrating Mr. Cotton's intercourse with a friend like myself during his Eugby and Marl- borough days. All of them, as it happens, belong to the On. II.] INTEREST IN FORMER PUPILS. 45 Bugby period, but the letters which lie used to write from Marlborough were of the same general character. With our intercourse as carried on by letter during his Indian life the present sketch has nothing to do. It was all that it could have been under the circumstances, but as com- pared with that which had subsisted between us in England it was indeed " as moonlight unto sunlight." ' LETTERS. To a former Pupil. Rugby, October 31, 1842. I was very glad to receive your letter, and to gather from it that you are comfortable in your new home. I hope that I shall hear from you with tolerable frequency, for I can assure you that I regard intercourse with my old pupils as one of the freshest springs of my life. For myself, I derived such great benefits from Trinity College, and feel to it so devoted an attachment, that I am most sanguine as to your also being in all ways the better for your residence there, particularly if you bear steadily in mind the truth that college life (at least to an undergraduate) is only a part of education, and therefore concerned with the future, rather than the present. The practical view of which is what I told you before you left Rugby that you must not allow yourself to be carried away by the desire of present usefulness the amount of which can be but small to the neglect of the preparation for that future in which you must fight against evil, not only in your own heart, but in that of many others also. And as certainly there never was a time when the Church of Christ stood more deeply in need of the spirit of wisdom, as well as of the spirit of zeal with so many foes attacking her without, and strange opinions disturbing her quiet within so is it the time when the accurate and vigorous cultivation of the mind can least be dispensed with by any of us. But when I say this, of course I am far from meaning to advise you not to adopt all means which you find necessary to 46 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. keep alive religious feelings in yourself. In a place so much devoted as Cambridge is to the idolatry of intellectual power, you will surely find it most useful to live always as in God's presence, and to humble yourself before Him, by whatever means are most likely to remind you of your weakness and sinfulness, and of your duty to your Christian brethren. So I think that visiting the poor, and Sunday-school teaching, in moderation, may be very profitable to you ; and I also hope that you will steadily keep up the Rugby habit of making the study of the Greek Testament an important object ; and above all things beware of the great sin of Cambridge I mean of the more out- wardly respectable part of it that abominable pride of the understanding which leads men who are fond of literary society to ridicule and despise those whom God has not made capable of shining in it.' You will not be angry at my still speaking to you a loco superiori, after all my right to do so has been resigned. But I do not think that you are so anxious to get rid of the Rugby connexion as to be offended at being still considered as one of our own body. What happiness your stay at Rugby, as my pupil, caused me, I need not say, nor express to you my earnest hope, that it has been the foundation of an enduring intimacy between us, which will have the only sure pledge of permanence in being con- secrated to the glory of God. I shall long to see you again, and in the meantime to hear from you whenever you can spare time. I quite approve of your reading arrangements. We are all going on very quietly and happily here, and Norris, I think, is gaining ground with the house. Your brother is well and prosperous. To the Same. Liverpool, February 6. I was very much interested by your letter, and delighted to receive it, as I always am to hear from you ; this one, however, I think gave me greater pleasure than usual. Only is it too great a favour to ask you to put in your corrections in ink, to write on larger pieces of paper, and more legibly ? One or two sentences, I grieve to say, I have not even yet deciphered. CH. IF.] ENGLAND AND IRELAND. 47 As to Ireland, it seems a locus desperatus. Shiel's speech did not please me so much as it did you, and I cannot at all agree with you about O'Connell's goodness and patriotism. His agitation is preventing altogether the investment of English capital in Ireland, which would, I suppose, diminish the misery of his unhappy country. He surely does not always speak the truth, constantly panders to the passions of the mob, and derives so comfortable an income from his patriotism, that we cannot believe him disinterested. I think it would be well if the Queen spent about six weeks there every year ; and if the Lord-Lieutenant's office was either abolished or placed on a different footing. But we ought to grant (1.) the exclusion of Irish prelates from the House of Lords, and the institution of four new English bishops, who are much wanted. (2.) The suspension of all appointments to livings in Ireland, where the number of Protestants is not some fraction of the population, to be fixed by Parliament. (3.) The devo- tion of these funds to general education. (4.) I think, but am not quite sure, the endowment of the Popish priesthood. (5.) A revision of the Landlord and Tenant law. But the error of establishing the Protestant Church in Ireland was so fatal, that it is hard to say what can now be done about it. But though Ireland is, England is not yet, thank Heaven, a locus desperatus. There I believe that the Church system, properly carried out, would relieve us from almost all our evils ; and therefore I never cease to regret the abandonment of the Education Bill of last session, as an immense step towards doing so. Another great step in the right direction, is the raising of a fund in London for district visiting, under the control of the clergy, but extending help and relief to persons of all religious persuasions, which exactly fulfils my notions of the meaning of an established Church as distinguished from a sect. To Rev. A. P. Stanley. Rugby, September 14, 1846. I should not have been satisfied to attend the service yesterday anywhere except in the place which is so associated with - . I do not think that till this week I have half felt or appreciated his excellence, and how unworthy I was to be his 48 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON: [CH. ii. teacher. At the same time, I never lost a friend in whose death I more entirely and thankfully acquiesce. I candidly agree with what you say about the happiness of thinking that he is now safe from any evil influence at Oxford or elsewhere ; and, as far as I am concerned, the picture and the lesson is now quite perfect. Had he lived, I do not doubt that there would have been little to distinguish him from other good and holy men. Probably many now at Rugby would have been as active and useful clergymen as I had hoped to see him. But I certainly never knew a boy like him, and so for this reason also I could not wish him back again. This example teaches boys how to live, and also how to die ; and having from his childhood loved God, and worked for Him so heartily as he began to grow older, there seems a fitness in the circumstance that he has been called to his eternal portion, at the very time of his removal from the school where he exercised so extreme and blessed an influence. So again I delight in thinking of him as having been strictly a Rugby boy. For his religious opinions were greatly influenced and modified by what he heard here, and he was fast losing the peculiarities of Evangelicalism, and learning to think for himself. To the Same. Gibraltar, February 7, 1851. We are now at Gib. waiting for the ' Iberia,' due on the 4th, but still delaying, unless indeed a ball which I have just espied from the signal-staff should release us from our capti- vity. I wrote to you from Cordova, whose mosque, even after seeing the Alhambra, I pronounce the grandest Moorish relic in Spain, i.e. assuming that no towns but Grenada, Cordova, and Seville can possibly compete for the prize. We journeyed by diligence from Cordova to Bailen, passing the scene of the one Spanish victory of modern days ; at 2 A.M. were deposited in the market-place, and our luggage left in the mud. Agi- tated enquiries from some people having elicited the painful fact that, in consequence of the lateness of our diligence, that from Madrid to Grenada had passed, we had to grope our way to a posada. Received by a hideous old woman, with one of the quaintest CH. II.] TRAVELS IX SPAIN. 49 oil-lamps in her hand, we were shown into a wretched room with two beds, in one of which the sheets were stained with blood, in the other as damp as if they had just left the wash- tub. A broken window patched up with paper, two basins without jugs, tooth-glasses, or other humanities, and a fragment of looking-glass, were the other chief objects in the apartment. So, after ascertaining that there were no trap-doors from which brigands might emerge, we locked ourselves in, and retired to repose, my companion on the denied couch, I in a Scotch garment purchased for me by Shairp, on condition that I would always call it plaid, never pladd or scarf. We got to Grenada by the malleposte, after spending twenty-four hours at Bailen, and on our way passed through Jaen. The situation of this place see of the grotesque bishop who figures in W. Irving's 6 Conquest of Grenada ' is extremely picturesque. It is quite embosomed in mountains ; up one hill run Moorish walls, con- necting the town with a fine castle, and from the midst rise the towers of a large Italian-looking cathedral. Between it and Grenada the scenery is on a really grand scale. Very soon we entered a narrow defile destitute of trees, but guarded by superb rocks of various colours, fit natural bulwarks to the land of the Moors. The whole country thoroughly realises one's notion of a debatable land, like the border of England and Scotland, or Bohemia and Saxony. At last the Sierra Nevada rose before us, and ilexes surrounded us ; but it was dark as we entered the Vega. Of Grenada I forbear to write at length. I was a little disappointed in the actual Moorish remains in the Alhambra. I think that the situation, the general effect of the red towers grouping at the top of the hill, the views of the Vega from different points, and the way in which one of the most romantic of all histories is brought before one at every turn, justify any amount of enthusiasm. Here I had a truly hairbreadth escape, so marvellous that I can hardly realise it. In the diligence office, when I was taking places for Malaga, I met a certain native of Gibraltar, whom I had previously seen at Seville, and who was travelling as a guide to some English officers. He was displaying a musket which he had just bought to protect his party from robbers, and which he told Blake was loaded with two balls, but said was not cocked. In this belief he pulled the trigger in a swagger- E 50 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. II. ing way ; the gun instantly went off, so close to my head that it actually singed my hair ; then it smashed in all the window- panes, one ball passing through the frame. Providentially it killed no one in the street, but of course brought half Grenada into and round the office. Had I been standing a single inch to the left of my actual position, the balls must have lodged in my head. The culprit was seized on by the police, but released on paying for the damage actually done. From Grenada we went to Malaga by way of Loja. As soon as you leave the Vega the journey is through mountains the whole way. You are surrounded by fine rocky peaks, destitute of trees, and generally of verdure, except where occasionally a pretty little valley peeps out from among them. For the last two leagues from Fuente de la Heigna the road is an uninter- rupted descent by zigzag to Malaga, the zigs giving glorious views of the Mediterranean, on which I again gazed after ten and a half years. Ilexes, almond-trees in full blossom, and prickly pears clothe the hill-sides, while Malaga is below, with its records of many generations its sea carrying one's thoughts back to times before history began, its name to the Phoeni- cians, its castle to the Moors, its cathedral to the Spanish conquerors, its smoking Manchester-like chimneys to the present and the future. There we were rejoined by the party who had travelled via Cadiz and Gibraltar, and spent a fort- night between Malaga and a most charming place eight miles off, called Torre de Molinos, where the physical enjoyment of a sea- breeze, delightful walks on the beach and mountains, comfort- able rooms and food, were all that could be wished. Finally, last Tuesday night we came here by the Marseilles and Cadiz boat : and Gibraltar has now been seen one of the grandest sights of the tour, which has been of all tours that I ever took one of the most successful and enjoyable, of all medical prescriptions ever administered to me infinitely the most delightful. The following letter to a former pupil was written in the last year of his life at Kugby. Eugby, October 19. On this Sunday, the first of your Oxford life, I feel more vividly than I did when we parted in June, that you have really left Rugby, that you have fairly ceased to be my pupil, and CH. II.] PREPARATION FOR A LIFE'S WORK. 51 that the responsibility of these years is, for better, for worse, actually over. So it seems the right day, even though I saw you so lately, to send you the assurance that, though the respon- sibility is over, my interest in all that concerns you is not over, but greater than ever ; that you have been much in my thoughts to-day, and, let me add, in my prayers also. Most earnestly do I hope that Oxford may complete any good which Eugby has begun, and supply any which it has left undone ; that you may grow in all goodness, and in all knowledge, that Christ's kingdom may be set up in your own heart, that thus you may be fitted to extend it among others. You have sometimes, long ago now, but I distinctly remem- ber it, during an autumnal walk on the Dunchurch Eoad, talked to me about wishing to be a clergyman, and even a missionary. Latterly you have not spoken much upon such subjects ; but I do not know that this makes much difference, for every Christian is in fact called to be a missionary. Wherever he is there are people for him to benefit ; not only, as Arnold says in his sermons, in Africa or India, but close around you, are there souls to be saved, which are in infinite danger. And so, whether it please Grod to call you to the actual work of a clergyman or missionary, or not, you can never escape the re- sponsibility which lies on you already by the fact that you have been called to the knowledge, and therefore to the duty of spreading the knowledge, of His Son. And a new period in the preparation for this work is now begun ; so let us join in the hope and prayer that Grod may bless this coming period, and make it really one of preparation, in the truest sense. For, that you may be ever of any use to others, it is necessary first that good should be done to yourself; that your mind should be strengthened as well as your heart fitted for the work. And in this time in which we live, above all others, is an intellectual as well as a moral preparation necessary ; the wants of our age can only be met by the spirit of wisdom, added to the spirit of zeal. I entreat you therefore to make a thoroughly good use of these three years at Oxford, and to remember that they furnish, probably, the last opportunity which you will ever have of carrying on systematically your general education. E 2 52 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. A laborious profession is probably before you ; if you take to the Bar or any (so to speak) secular calling, you will be pre- vented by necessity, if the clerical or educational profession, by your own sense of duty, from giving up very much time to study. So that really these three years should not be frittered away. Believe me, it is no mere question of emulation and competition and first classes, but a plain and simple case of duty, that you should now store your mind with knowledge and thought, extracted from the great works of great men. The large extension lately given to the Oxford course gives you ample room for choice as to your line or lines of reading : only determine them soon, and stick to them. I always fear in you a little too much tendency to pick up knowledge as easily as possible ; such knowledge is rather superficial than systematic, and a mere knowledge of facts, though indispensable, is not of much use if it remains unpro- ductive. What you should steadily carry out is the thorough, accurate reading of the good tough books which Oxford places before you, where, in Tennysonian phrase, ' Thought has wedded Fact.' So again, a man of warm affections and a great love of society is apt perhaps to give his friends too much of his time. Far be it from me to depreciate friendships, one of the chief blessings of life, or society, one of the great means of education. Still, if we are to get much profit from talking to our contem- poraries, the wisdom of past ages, laid up in books, must furnish subjects for our conversation; and whilst I allow that both means of improvement should be carried on together, we must remember that, if we find friends far pleasanter companions than books, we have to watch ourselves lest they take up an undue share of our time. People say you say yourself that your last year at Rugby was crowned with rather more success than your exertions merited : make up the purchase-money of that success in your first term at Oxford. Show your gratitude for laurels gained with less work than usual, then, by even more work than usual now. No doubt, it is hard to set oneself down to work often dis- tasteful, when there are & thousand opposing attractions and influences about us ; it requires a great effort of the will, the conquest of the lower by the higher nature within us. CH. II.] CHRISTIAN FAITH. 53 But here is more of Tennyson for you He knows a baseness in his blood At such strange war with something good; He may not do the thing he would. And again He seems to hear a heavenly Friend, And through thick veils to apprehend A labour working to an end. Or rather, this is not Tennyson, but pure Christianity received and put into poetry by him. Let me therefore turn to the fountain-head at once, and finish this lengthy epistle by remind- ing you that, whether we are fighting against open sin, or merely against laziness and the love of pleasing ourselves in minor things, these words are true : ' The good that I would I do not : but the evil which I would not, that I do. ... wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' So may you be led to carry on in Him all your work and all your relaxation, and then will neither interfere with the other, but both will combine to make your three years at Oxford the beginning of an active, a useful, a Christian manhood. To a Friend. Glengariffe, July 1856. The whole visit impressed me very much, not in the least in the way of inclining me to turn Puseyite, but in strengthen- ing my feeling that amongst us, who regard ourselves as taking a more liberal view, there is far too little of real devotion and earnest Christian faith. This impression has been increased by my finding Arnold's life on the table at F ; I took it up casually, and read on and on with deepening interest, and conviction that too many of Arnold's disciples are unlike their teacher in that which was the central point and main principle in his whole life a practical belief in Christ, and conduct founded distinctly upon it. I am far from wishing that we should follow him into all his peculiar theories and their con- sequences, exclusion of Jews from Parliament, for instance, which though they may be all connected in strict logic take too little account of the friction of actual facts, and at all events 54 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. II. should not be adopted without other consequences of his views, which are allowed to be impracticable. But I think that we stray far from him in our own personal principles of conduct. He talks of feeling c a rush of love to Grod,' of being conscious of no greater desire than to conform his life to Christ's pattern, and so on. Now if we are unlike him in these things, I do not think that this arises merely from our own imperfections and sinfulness, which would be a different question, but I doubt whether we really act upon his principle at all ; we are con- scious, no doubt, of a desire to be good and true, but do we shape our desire in a Christian way, and connect it with the faith in Father and Redeemer, without which experience proves that it only produces half its effects ? . . . For myself I often feel the danger very acutely, and not least with reference to our Marlborough boys, lest in trying to make them intel- lectually vigorous, I am too careless in making them Christians. And undoubtedly this fear, coupled with other reasons which we have often discussed, makes me hesitate very much about tampering with chapel until we can see our way to put the service or the boys' daily prayers on a footing entirely satis- factory as regards the main object for which we assemble them for common worship. It has also made me sympathise more with 's views about behaviour at such times, and without wishing to dragoon them into a forced and false appear- ance of devotion I certainly desire to teach them quietly their duty in this matter. Well, I have wandered far from Grlen- gariffe, and touched, I fear, on the very borders of ' shop.' But you, I am sure, will excuse this outpouring sympathise at least with parts of it and think that I may express to an intimate friend what has been very much in my heart, without supposing that I am turning Tory or High Churchman. No doubt to reconcile modern thought with Christian faith may be a hard matter of practice, but it is only a repetition of the problem which other ages have successfully solved, and by way of beginning the solution let us hold fast to Christian love and all Christian virtue. To Us Wife. July 1857. There is plenty now to do at Bologna in the way of churches, and the town itself is picturesque, but my after-dinner lion- CH. II.] BAPTISM AT BOLOGNA. 55 ising was interrupted by a singular and pleasing incident. A waiter came to me and said that he supposed from my passport that I was a pretre protestant, that in Bologna lived a Swiss family to whom had recently been born a child, that they were very anxious to have their child baptised, that there were no means of getting this done (except by resigning the child to the Roman Catholics) nearer than Florence, would I come to baptize it? So I donned my tail-coat and white tie (not having expected to want them for such a purpose), and accom- panied the waiter to a remote part of the city. Here I found a Swiss family from the country of the Orisons, who could speak neither French nor Grerman, nothing but bad Italian and the Eomansch language, a strange Latin dialect between Italian and French, in which alone they possessed a New Testament. This materially increased the difficulty of the ceremony, which I had intended to perform in French, but which it was now necessary to try to do in Italian. I got the waiter to certify that the Italian sentences which I meant to use (and which I first wrote down) were intelligible, and then told the people that we should begin by saying prayers for the child from my speaking such a little Italian we must do that privately and separately, and so I knelt down and did so myself. Then I baptized the child Ursula Albert Italianising the words in the English prayer-book, finally gave the blessing, and expressed my hopes as well as I could that they would teach it to be a good Christian. He drew up a certificate of the ceremony signed by me and two witnesses to satisfy their pastor in the Grrisons, where they hope to return in three years, and I greatly surprised them by refusing a fee, and telling them that in the Church of England we did not take money for adminis- tering the sacraments. So they regaled me with excellent ice, some cake, and a rather sickly drink of cherries and water. I shook hands and left the good couple after many expressions of gratitude. The incident gave, as you may suppose, a very human and at the same time religious interest to my solitary journey. To a former Pupil. I am very sorry that you should be troubled with any doubts of the kind which you mention, because I know that they are 56 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. II. often very distressing, and beg that you will never apologise for writing to me on that or any other subject which disturbs you, since to help you is, in my opinion, a simple duty. Assuming that your taste for a clergyman's life and work has not altered, I cannot see anything in what you say which should make you change your wish to be one. There have been ' doubts thrown on different parts of the Bible ' from the days of Celsus and Porphyry to the present hour, but it does not follow that these doubts are well founded, and there is no more reason, because another person tells you that he disbelieves this or that, why you should renounce your belief in it too, than why he should accept the whole Bible because you profess your belief in it all. Doubts are thrown on a great many good things besides the Bible. Some people extenuate falsehood, drunkenness, and other gross vices ; but it does not follow that they really are excusable because those persons say so. The question is one of evidence and reasoning, and each particular assertion must be tested separately. However, if you want my opinion on the general question I will give it you ; of course I cannot give it in particulars without knowing what the special assertions are. The Bible, though an inspired revelation of God's will, is written by human authors, preserved by human keepers, handed down from one generation to another by human means. Hence questions may arise and be carefully entertained, as to the authenticity of this or that portion of it ; and the human element in it is subject to the laws of human criticism. Research, scholarship, increase of knowledge, have un- doubtedly modified men's views of it in some points. To take an obvious instance, it is now almost universally allowed that the passage 1 John v. 7 was not in the original text of the epistle, and has been interpolated accidentally. Again, the Bible was supposed to contain an infallible system of natural science. The Pope once declared that it was inconsistent with Scripture to believe that the world went round the sun. Latterly, men have begun to see that the Bible was not intended to teach us natural philosophy, but was a record of God's will sent to guide us to heaven and make us His faithful servants. On scientific points they have felt that the sacred writers had not received a divine revelation, but used the CH. II.] BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 57 natural language of their age. Other instances might be given in which criticism has been exercised on the Bible ; and when exercised in an humble and loving spirit this criticism has only served to bring out more fully its true character, and to enable men to understand it more correctly, and apply it more practically to the guidance of their lives. There has also been a great deal of wild, unhallowed, careless speculation, one theory set up one year to be knocked down the next, and sceptics have been battling more against each other than against the Bible. But take my word for it no true criticism has touched the great facts that the Bible is a con- tinuous authoritative revelation of Grod's dealings with man, that the Old Testament records the preparation for that re- demption which is described in the New, and that the New contains a true account of the life and death of (rod's own Son vfor us, of the doctrines which He taught, and the moral pre- cepts which He would have us obey, and of the foundation of His Church, by the divinely chosen and divinely inspired Apostles. Out of this record you are required to find spiritual life for yourself, and to instruct the people committed to you if you take orders, and I am quite sure that by Grod's help you need have no. difficulty in doing either. At present, all that you have to do is to live as a faithful Christian, to lay a good foundation of general knowledge and thought, and to look forward humbly and hopefully to serving God as a minister of His Church, which surely is a very great privilege and blessing. If when the time for ordination ap- proaches you find that there is anything in the subscriptions required which you cannot accept, then, much as I should regret it, groundless as I believe the objections to be, strong as I think the reasons for ordination, I certainly would not advise you to disobey your conscience, though I should think your conscience misguided. But these enquiries need not trouble you yet : you are at this moment called not to be a clergyman, but a Christian a Christian student laying that basis of secular learning and practical sense on which a sound theology must be built. Hence I quite agree with your father's advice not to argue on such points ; your belief in Christianity I trust is founded on reasons which no argument can touch, and for separate questions about this or that part of scripture you have 58 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. II. neither time nor knowledge. Meantime listen to this. You know that - - has been very ill here, almost dying. I went to him daily all last week, reading to him a few verses and a prayer. He was not, I suppose, a very religious boy when at school, but the simple words of the Bible and the Prayer-book seemed to soothe him in his pain and touch his heart with a divine power, and is not this more to the purpose in reference to a clergyman's work, than questions of manuscripts, various readings and intellectual evidences, which, though not unim- portant in themselves, cannot lie at the root of a revelation addressed to the spirit of men by the Spirit of Grod ? To Rev. 0. 0. Bradley. February 13, 1858. I can only write you a line compressed between a sermon just finished and a sixth dinner party just impending. The blow is terrible indeed. I wrote to the poor husband last night and rejoice to hear of his brave and Christian calmness. I never hear of such a calamity without thinking how much we all need them, and what a mercy it is they are withheld. And when I turn to the comforts and blessings still spared to my own home, I trust that I feel some desire and make some effort (alas ! how weak and transient) so to live that the with- holding them may not cease to be a mercy and become a sign of judgment. We both feel deeply for you and your wife, scarcely less than for your brother. Our best love to you all. Grood night and Grod bless you ! CH. III.] APPOINTED BISHOP OF CALCUTTA. 59 CHAPTER HI. APPOINTMENT TO THE BISHOPKIC OF CALCUTTA CONSECRATION IN WEST- MINSTER ABBEY RETURN TO MARLBOROUGH APPOINTMENT OF HIS SUCCESSOR FARE WELL VISITS EMBARKATION LETTERS. IT was in 1858 that he received the offer of the see of Calcutta. A few words may be given to explain the circumstances. In 1856 his most valued friend and former chief, Dr. Tait, had been raised to the see of Lon- don. Cotton was appointed to preach his consecration sermon in Whitehall Chapel, and in the following year he became his examining chaplain in connexion with the University of Cambridge, and another of his most intimate friends in connexion with the University of Oxford. Deeply did those weeks at Fulham strengthen the value which each of those two had for their dear associate from Marlborough. The laborious fairness, the alternations of admiration and indignation which the merits and demerits of the candidates called forth, the keen interest which he took in each of them, the sound judgment which he exercised in those trying questions which beset that opening period of a young clergyman's life, whilst they bound him with a yet closer tie to his younger colleagues, awakened in the bishop's mind a yet deeper sense of his fitness for a higher post. Accordingly, when the news arrived in England of the death of Bishop Wilson, the Bishop of London determined to use every effort to secure Cotton's appointment to the see of Calcutta. It was a moment in which more interest attached to the Indian episcopate than at any period since its first establishment. (50 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. III. The Indian mutiny was just over. The horrors of the war itself, and the horrors, must we not add, which followed it, are still fresh in the minds of all. Amongst the few who had not been carried away in the excitement of the disastrous tidings from Cawripore and Lucknow were the Bishop of London and Cotton himself. A sermon is still extant preached on the fast-day of 1857, in which, whilst the prospect of any personal connexion with India was entirely unthought of, Cotton expressed those senti- ments of mercy and fairness which made the indiscriminate cries of vengeance in the English press so distasteful to him and which w r ere in thorough accord with the policy which Lord Canning was, almost singlehanded, bent on maintaining in India. The Bishop of London, with all the energy of his character, pressed Cotton's merits on the Government of that day but, partly from an appre- hension lest his modesty should throw some obstacle in the way, without consulting Cotton himself. Meanwhile, from causes unnecessary here to mention, the hope of accomplishing this object had faded away, and the subject was dropped, until the Bishop was suddenly informed that if Cotton would take the post it was still at his disposal. There was not a moment of time to be lost. A change of Government had just taken place, and Mr. Yernon Smith, now Lord Lyveden, who was then the Secretary of State for India, was holding the post only till a new ministry could be formed. The Bishop telegraphed the offer to Marlborough. It was like a thunder-clap to Cotton in the midst of his peaceful labours. The telegram dropped from his hands, and he rushed from the school to his house, and thence hurried up to London. The first person whom he consulted was that friend of many years who has put together these fragments of memoirs. * What are your reasons for thinking that I ought to take this bishopric ? ' There are two qualifications,' was the answer, ' indispensable to a Bishop of Calcutta, which CH. III.] CONSECRATION. 61 are possessed by very few, but are possessed by you : one is the power of understanding the old religions of India, the other is the power of dealing fairly and kindly by the different Christian communities. Therefore you must take it.' It was one of those decisive cases in which the mere decision is enough to shake the minds of most. Perhaps in Cotton's case an outside spectator would have been startled and even disappointed to observe how slightly he seemed to be agitated. The calm, disinterested view which on all occasions he would take of his own character and position as of a third person, enabled him in all simplicity to accept the estimate of others concerning himself and to acquiesce in a change in many ways so alien to his habits and feelings. On the following day he saw the Indian Minister, whose brief words dwelt in his memory, as containing in a short compass the extent of his opportunities and responsibilities. ' I believe that in appointing you I have done the best for the interests of India, of the Church of England, and of Christianity.' He was consecrated in Westminster Abbey on Ascension Day. The sermon was preached by the early college companion by whom, more than any other single person, the whole course of his life had been determined Dr. Vaughan, the head master of Harrow, by whom he had first been introduced to Arnold. That noble sermon still remains, a record of what was expected, a prediction of what was fulfilled. Those who were present can re- member the thrill of sympathy, deepened in after years into a yet more abiding conviction, with which they heard the preacher dwell on the inestimable boon of such a pastor to the young Englishmen living at Calcutta, to the families suffering from bereavement or disease, to the clergy who would be gathered round him, on the thought, mournful yet inspiring, of the graves of Martyn at Tocat. of Schwartz at Tanjore, of Heber at Trichinopoly, on the consolation, slight yet how full of meaning, ' Friends 62 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. III. even in the same land, how little do they see each of the other ! when they meet, how little of all that is in their hearts do they tell ! how deep a depth lies below,, which friend exhausts not to friend, nor brother to brother ! ' * With a sedate tranquillity, unlike the excitement which often follows on such appointments, the new Bishop, after his consecration, finding that he would not sail until autumn, returned quietly to his work at Marlborough, already beginning to prepare himself for his future career by study of the Indian languages, but still continuing his intercourse with his pupils to the last moment, as though he were to continue their master and friend. Meantime a rare tribute of respect and confidence was paid him by those with whom he had acted for the last six years. Instead of the usual process of selection from a number of candidates, his successor was appointed avowedly on his recommendation, and he w r as cheered by seeing his work in England pass into the hands of one of the most cherished of his Eugby friends. Karely has a successor so entirely entered into his predecessor's labours. Earely has a predecessor watched with such loving and grateful affection the continuation and im- provement of his task in the hands to which he himself had committed it. The remaining time was spent mostly in farewell visits and necessary business. One short excursion of a few days he made with one of his friends to see the cathe- drals of Norwich, Peterborough, and Lincoln. They met for their journey at Ketteringham, near Norwich, at the house of Sir John Boileau, the friend of M. Guizot, who was staying there at the time. M. Guizot was much interested in the sight of the new Bishop, and * 'The Word, the Work, and the Promise/ a consecration sermon proached in Westminster Abbey on Ascension Day, by Charles J. Vaugliau, D.D. CH. III.] DEPAETUEE FEOM MAELBOEOUGH. 63 bade him farewell in words, not the less significant for the foreign idiom in which they were partly couched God bless you and your great work ! Make peace and good Christians/ The two friends parted at the London terminus. The agreement was made between them that twice a year, at least, they should on stated days communicate to each other what seemed to each most interesting in the eccle- siastical state of England and of India. It was, in fact, the portion of an elaborate idea, by which the Bishop arranged a systematic correspondence on different sub- jects with all his English friends. In some instances it may have dropped through, but in the case just mentioned it was continued with an exact- ness of date and purpose on either side, and a fullness of information and sympathy from the Indian side which seemed to annihilate the distance of time and space, and only caused the English friend to count the years as they rolled by, which brought nearer and nearer the happy day of the return. In many a desponding hour as to the fate of the Church at home have those letters brought before him the refreshing thought that in one vast diocese, at least, on the other side of the world, in one great epis- copal see, the work of Arnold was carried on in the true faith of Christ ; in the true genius of the English State and Church, in the spirit of that text which he had always regarded as his motto, ' In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.' The Bishop took his last farewell of Marlborough early in September. One of his friends, bound to him by no common ties of gratitude, sat with him late on the last night. They read together the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, knelt once more in prayer together, and parted. The next morning, the whole school turned out at eight o'clock to cheer him, as he started for Hungerford on the outside of the familiar 64 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IIT. omnibus. At Southampton, where he embarked on September 25, he was met by the same faithful friend who had preached his consecration sermon. A small gift which he received from him on that day never left him. It was with him at the close. No wonder that when the fatal tidings eight years afterwards reached the shores of England, the scene which recurred to his friends and pupils at Marlborough, as the last expression of thoughts and feelings too deep for words, was that in which the disciples of the departing apostle 'mourned most of all for the words which he spake,* that they should see his face no more.' From a Friend. March 1858. So you are going to India as Bishop of Calcutta ! The news took me utterly by surprise, and made me feel at once both very glad and very sorry : at first perhaps more sorry than glad, for I felt at a glance the risk of the change, and how much we must lose by ' we ' meaning myself and all your English friends, Marlborough, England's Church, England's education, and indeed England altogether. However, I am determined to rejoice heartily with you and for you. You have made a great choice, and a great work is before you. You have also, I think, a favourable season for beginning. Men's minds cannot but be seriously disposed after the terrible events of the last twelve months. The first step towards Christianity in India must be evangelising the English there, purifying English lives, ennobling English conduct you, I know, will feel this. Yes, it will be a grand work, and I wish you all strength and grace to do it well. In many respects your character seems to me excellently fitted for the work. Let us be full of hope for you. As I write this, I think another name will now be added to my list of Indian correspondents. Yes, certainly we must write to one another, and keep up our * 'The Parting at Miletus,' a sermon preached in the chapel of Marl- borough College, October 21, I860, by George Granville Bradley, M.A., Master of Marlborough College. CH. III.] PKOSPECT OF WOEK IN INDIA. 65 friendship while our lives last. It is now of some standing eight years I reckon : looking back over that time I can trace it distinctly as a peculiar blessing to me. You, I think, were the first person who led me to think seriously at all, and certainly ever since you have been a helper to all my best thoughts and purposes. And I know many others besides me can say the same thing. For all which, and your unceasing kindness and sympathy, may Grod bless you ! To Rev. W. J. Butler, Vicar of Wantage. March 6, 1858. My dear Butler, Many many thanks for your kind letter and cheering words. I value them very much for old friend- ship's sake, and because we do not agree in all our opinions ; c truth and bitterness ' at once you will say : I trust not, but rather love and charity. I am quite aware that I am not altogether the kind of bishop that you desire to see, but I assure you I go to my diocese with the humble hope that I may be thoroughly in earnest in my work, and impartial and ready to appreciate and encourage Christian goodness wherever I find it. When one has to try to purify English society in India on the one hand, and to make war on Vishnu, Buddha, and Mahomet on the other, the less that we think of party feuds within Christ's Church the better. Yes, you have triumphed ; I am already half a doctor : the grace past on Thursday, and a scarlet hood has arrived. I suppose that we shall not go till autumn. An earlier departure seems useless for we cannot go at once, and to start an Indian life in summer is said to be mere folly. I should like to come to Wantage, but will make no promise yet. I have got some books on India, an aide de camp from Oxford to take most of my teaching off my hands, and wish to stay here quietly, keep the general government of the school, read and prepare for the unknown but most formidable future. Perhaps I may try to make out a lecture on India, but I will promise nothing at present. Meantime, I am sure you will sometimes pray that Grod's blessing may be with your old schoolfellow in work which he neither asked for nor desired. 66 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. III. From a former Pupil. Wednesday, May 12, 1858. As I cannot come up to see your consecration I shall like to write to you once more, for the last time, before the name by which I have known you for more than sixteen years has ceased to be the beginning of my letters to you. I wish that I could have been at the service to-morrow, but I did not see how I could get away from my work, and perhaps it is as well as it is. I shall be at my ordinary work while you are being consecrated to another and more important part of (rod's work, and I shall gladly hail the thoughts which this remembrance will bring with it, while I am trying to extract Greek and Latin prose from reluctant boys, as helping me to realise, what it is so easy to hold as an opinion, that my daily work must be made the real hearty service of (rod if I am ever to serve Him in another way in His own immediate presence. I do not doubt that He will be with you by His spirit to-morrow, and in your new work ; and I pray that He will give you richly that love and strength and wise judgment which are His own most precious blessings to those whom He chooses to be His servants. Our Lord and Saviour, yours and mine, I trust will surely show Himself more clearly to you year by year, and help you to enlarge His kingdom, and by doing His will to know Him perfectly. I do not like to speak of any sorrow that it will be to me to lose you at such a time as this, and so I must turn to the other view and be thankful, as for a most treasured gift, that for all these years your friendship and counsel and help and influence have been near me, and shaped my views of life, and led me to bridge over the chasm between the common and the Christian life. You know that I have sometimes tried to hint at this ; and though I am not much in the habit of speaking out strong feelings, for it is better not, yet once for all, before we cease to bear the relation we have borne so long, I should like to say that if Christianity is, or is to be, to me a living principle and not a weary burden, it is to you that I owe it. CH. III.] CLERICAL AND LAY WORK. 67 To an old Pupil, a Layman, written on the morning of his Consecration. May 13, 1858. 8.45 A.M. I will send you the last familiar signature, the last, that is, unless I live to lay down this burthen and spend an old age in England, which I am not sure that I desire and which, at all events, I can most truly say that I leave cheerfully and con- fidently in God's hands. A thousand thanks for your letter, which is a great comfort. Let my last presbyteral avowal be a declaration of my conviction that your work, if done in the faith of Christ, is as much His work as mine. LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. TV. CHAPTER IV. JOURNAL FAREWELL TO FRIENDS IN ENGLAND CAIRO PRESENTATION OF THE MAHMEL OR SACRED CANOPY TO THE PASHA VISIT TO THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCH THE COPTIC CHURCH MAHOMETAN FESTIVALS LIFE ON BOARD SHIP ADEN CEYLON MADRAS ARRIVAL AT CALCUTTA INSTALLATION IN THE CATHEDRAL STATE OF AFFAIRS IN INDIA POSITION OF THE BISHOP NATURE OF THE WORK TO BE DONE JOUR- NAL EXTRACTS LETTERS. THE story of Bishop Cotton's voyage from England, and of the beginning of his life in India, will be best told in his own words. September 27, 1858. I will try now to begin a regular journal of my Indian episcopate. I have kept many diaries and memoranda before of a private character this possibly may contain some things of more general importance. May all that is in it, whether personal or domestic or public, be written in the love of Jesus Christ, with the great objects to which I have devoted myself constantly before me, in thankfulness to Grod for past mercies, with the hope and effort after present and future usefulness steadily in view, in dependence on His pro- tection, and with the one desire to consecrate my private and public life to His glory. Several ' last things ' in England were solemn and appropriate. My last sermon was to the Augustinians, the students of a college from which I trust may flow many blessings to India. My last regular Sunday service was in Canterbury Cathedral, the birthplace of English Christianity, and endeared to me privately by the thought of Stanley. My last service of any kind was in Westminster Abbey, where I worshipped in boy- hood and where I was consecrated to the office of Bishop. My last visit was to Weybridge, to the grave of dear Conybeare, my closest and in one sense my oldest friend. We were accompanied CH. IV.] CAIRO. 69 to the steamer at Southampton by friends and relations of many ages, and representing different classes of valued intimacies and close ties ; and though these partings were full of sorrow, yet we separated, not, I trust, as those who have no hope, but in the belief that we are in the hands of a loving Father, whose tender- ness has not failed us in time past, and will not fail us in time to come. Cairo, Saturday, October 9. Up at five this morning, break- fast at six, and at half-past six started to see one of the most picturesque and amusing sights which I ever beheld, and one which brought the East and Islam most strikingly before us. This was the annual presentation to the Pasha of the Mahmel or sacred canopy which during the previous year has been placed over the Kaaba at Mecca. By favour of Colonel Malcolm we got first-rate places, actually on the platform occupied by the Pasha and his court. The ceremony took place in a large square just under the citadel, and extraordinary interest at- tached to it this year because the Pasha had resolved to take the opportunity of making a great military display to overawe the fanatical Mahometans who are only too anxious for a general assault on the Franks. To display his force, to-day he invited Colonel Malcolm and some other officers to attend in uniform, and with them we were permitted to go. The square was lined with troops in all kinds of uniforms, for it appears to form a great part of Said's delight to imitate the costumes of all nations, almost of all ages, for some were in coats of mail. The Bedouins alone were allowed to retain their wild national dresses, and on their stout little horses formed a curious contrast to the red coats, yellow mantles, hussar jackets, and gay colours of the rest. The platform for the Pasha was carpeted and matted, there was a divan all along it, with a huge arm-chair and other chairs in front, and a great canopy over all. Besides sundry beys and military officials and guards and courtiers, there was present the ' Scherif ' of Mecca, i. e. the governor of the city, a sacred functionary because he is of the Prophet's tribe of Koreish,, rather a fine looking man, with soft refined features, dressed in a splendid robe of green and gold. He has been to Constanti- nople to help in bringing to justice the perpetrators of the Jeddah massacre, and is now on his way home. He was treated 70 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IV. with prodigious reverence, and accompanied by his two younger brothers, in robes the one of green, the other of pink. These occupied chairs close to Said, who appeared last of all, plainly- dressed in white, with blue military trowsers and a red cap. He came with much accompaniment of salutes, music, present- ing arms, and shouts from the troops, and as soon as he was seated, shoeless attendants presented coffee in small jewelled cups. Pipes were then offered to the dignitaries (happily not to us) of great length and splendour, and after a few whiffs, salutes announced the entrance into the square of the sacred procession. After some guards, banners, and soldiers, came a camel richly caparisoned with the canopy on his back, then another camel bearing a wild, half-naked dervish with long black hair, flinging his head into all kinds of strange positions, which appear to be the external signs of his prayers, and have been continued during the whole of the journey to Mecca and back, forty-seven days each way. More camels conveyed strange-looking figures with pipes, kettle-drums, and divers instruments, whose shrill, harsh, discordant clang contrasted oddly with the tunes which the regular bands were playing. This cavalcade was accom- panied by a number of excited pilgrims, rushing about with sundry gesticulations and grimaces ; and after wheeling round in a gradually lessening circle, the whole procession stopped in front of the Pasha who touched the canopy, whereupon the camel who had borne it was dismissed to idleness and main- tenance for life at the expense of a grateful country. Then some money was thrown to the pilgrims, who proceeded to fight and struggle for it till they approached close to the plat- form, whereupon the guards flew at them with long bamboo canes, and belaboured them with such fury that the proportion of kicks to halfpence was certainly very large. More coffee and pipes followed and then the grandees dispersed, and we soon followed, driving through immense crowds of ' malignant and turbaned Turks ' who lined the streets. Wednesday, October 13. This morning Lieder, Burn, and I went to pay our respects to the Armenian Patriarch, who received us at the head of his staircase, attired in a brown satin cassock, a purple robe, and a black cap. On his neck hung a gold chain with a cross attached studded with diamonds, and he had a long white beard. There were also present a Coptic CH. IV.] THE ARMENIAN CHURCH. 71 layman, fat, with white turban and rich Turkish shawl, an Armenian priest in blue with a rosary and most beautiful white beard (much superior to the patriarchal) and two servants. We were presented with (1) long pipes, from which (with a horrible recollection of being made ill when once before in my life I smoked as a boy at Westminster) I was obliged to take two or three whiffs, while Burn, the Copt, and the priest, seemed to enjoy theirs very much ; (2) a quantity of lemonade ; (3) cafe noir in egg-cups. The room was very neat, matted, with a divan all round, a table in the middle, two clocks, and a picture of a gruff-looking ecclesiastic. Lieder acted as inter- preter. The patriarch said that he embraced in brotherly communion all episcopal Churches, Greek, Coptic, Syrian, English, &c., except the Roman, on account of its claims to universal authority and exclusive salvation. A recent tour in Italy and Sicily had convinced him that wherever there are many Eoman priests and monks, there also is gross immorality, and for this and other reasons he considers the pope a minister of the devil. Scotch and other nonepiscopal Churches he regards as defective, but not in fatal error like Rome : he bewails their deficiency in deacons as well as in bishops. He regretted that I did not bring ' my lady,' considering matrimony an honour- able estate, lawful in itself for bishops as well as for others, except that in his and other Churches of the East the rule that bishops must be elected from the monks makes it impossible. Parish priests must be married, c as no one can be a real pastor of a flock without a wife.' He has 750 Armenians in the town of Cairo to whom he preaches every Sunday, and who are con- spicuous for industry, good morals, and general prosperity. He took us into his church, a large and neat building, with pictures, and a cross on the altar, but no crucifix or images. I told him that I felt very happy at standing in such a building in a Mahometan town. ' We may thank you English for that,' he replied : c the Pasha would never have dared to allow liberty of worship but for the pressure from England.' After showing us his pastoral staff and other treasures he dismissed us with the assurance that he regarded it as a happy day since he had made our acquaintance, and that his heart was enlarged in consequence. October 18. We returned to old Cairo this afternoon on 72 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IV- donkeys, to explore the remains of Egyptian Babylon, wherein an improbable tradition says that St. Peter wrote his first epistle. The old Roman walls enclose a small town, mainly inhabited by Copts and Greeks. We saw two Coptic churches ; one built over a cave in which the holy family are said to have lived. It is an old building with narrow Saracenic arches in the nave, and the chancel fenced off by one screen and the altar by another : the screens are of carved wood and ivory. The altar is under a canopy a little in advance of the end of the church, which terminates in an apse with a seat round it. The cave below is turned into a baptistery chapel, and divided into three small aisles by low arches. The churches, and also one belonging to a Greek convent which we afterwards visited, are adorned with pictures. From what Lieder tells me, the Copts are in a very low con- dition, and their priesthood particularly degraded. The priests have no regular incomes : they live on what they can pick up by exaction and mendicancy, and whenever a church is vacant some Coptic tailor or shoemaker (wholly uneducated) is ordained to it, often by compulsion. The present patriarch, who is described as an enlightened person, is anxious to divert the property of the convents, which is large, to form stipends for the parochial clergy. This measure of course is not an easy one ; meanwhile he is trying to raise up an educated clergy, and has turned part of his episcopal palace into a school. Tuesday ', October 19. Burn, Epp, and I went to see the ex- traordinary and revolting ceremony of the Doseh, with which is concluded a kind of fair which has been held in the Uzbekieh ever since the return of the pilgrims from Mecca, in honour of the Prophet's birthday, and which also commemorated Burn's. We were admitted to the house of the Sheykh el Bekir, said to be descended from the Khalif Abu Bekr, and the head of Mahometanism in Egypt. This house is large and comfortable, with a court in the middle overlooked by the latticed windows of the harem, through which we could just see the white dresses of the inmates. In a large room open to the court, with a marble floor, sat the Sheykh on a divan smoking with the cadi and other great dignitaries, and into a room at the side, decorated with texts of the Koran, framed like pictures, we were shown. There were also present sundry Europeans, CH. IV.] THE DOSEH. 73 and some natives. After a long delay we went into the court, which was nearly filled with dervishes, pilgrims, policemen, soldiers, and spectators. A space was cleared in the middle, and in rushed a tumultuous crowd shrieking and struggling, some with drums and cymbals. Some of these threw themselves on the ground and were arranged on their stomachs in a regular line along the open space ; any who were not quite straight were pulled into order, and there was a furious uproar about settling them near the entrance of the court, vehement use of the bamboo, kicking, pummelling, and shouting. At last in walked some attendants over these prostrate devotees, then two men bearing enormously high green poles surmounted by crescents, and finally, amidst a Babel of frantic fanaticism, the sheykh of a certain set of dervishes (the Saadeeh) rode over them on a horse led by two grooms. The confusion at the end was indescribable : I thought that the horse and the green poles were coming full tilt against the spectators : Epp was seized by a servant and whisked away into a side room, but fortunately the rider dismounted, the horse was led away, and the devotees jumped up and shook themselves, some, as I was told afterwards, with terrible bruises. The sheykh was stream- ing with perspiration, and looked horribly tired, as he well might be, for he had on a huge turban three times as big as his head, and a very thick furred robe, in which he had ridden through Cairo with the midday sun streaming down on his head, and for the last part of the way, before as well as after entering the house, over the bodies of men. After this was over, fresh howling began : some of the devotees were rewarded by receiving yellow or pink robes ; one man lay down while the wearied sheykh stood on his stomach, others danced, sang (if such frenzied roaring can be called singing), clashed pieces of wood together, and sat on the ground swinging their bodies backwards and forwards. The great use of seeing this atrocious exhibition is that it entirely dispels the notion that Mahomet- anism is a calm and contemplative religion of common sense : even Hindu orgies cannot be much wilder than the Doseh, though it is now exhibited in a mitigated form, and divested of its old accompaniments of dervishes tearing serpents to pieces with their teeth, and thrusting red-hot daggers into their bodies, or of men who had taken a vow never to wash, dancing 74 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IV. bedaubed with mire, all of which additions were practised within recent times. Saturday, October 23. I have established prayers at 10 A.M. as on the 'Malta;' it is satisfactory to see that the people crowd to them, and even come long before 10 to secure good places. The Church of England is represented by a bishop and four presbyters, besides nearly all the laity on board. Much more numerous, however, are the Eoman clergy : seven monks going to a monastery of sixty brethren on the Isle of Bourbon, two or three French priests for India, and two Irish priests, chaplains to the army in India. Monday, October 25. The poor child who has been so ill died in the night, and was buried to-day at 12. I read the service, most of the passengers attended, and at the impressive words ' looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead,' the sailors lowered the little coffin, drilled with holes, from the gangway into the water. Certainly, if it is right to indulge in imagination or romance about such a subject, the Red Sea is a place of sepulture not wanting in grandeur and solemnity. One of the Roman priests said to me on hearing of the child's death, ' It is a great consolation that she was baptized,' a remark not unworthy of attention, as illustrating Roman Catholic teaching in more ways than one. Wednesday, October 27. We entered the harbour of Aden about 1 A.M. At 5.30 came a letter from the Brigadier Coghlan, requesting us to visit him at once, and we found his boat alongside of the ship, and two carriages on shore. We drove by a capital English road along the sea-shore, with a few white bungalows by its side; then by zig and zag up the mountain, then through a narrow fortified pass into the can- tonments, and then to the commandant's winter residence (four miles from the landing-place), where we were received by the Brigadier and Mrs. Coghlan, the latter having been a passenger with us on the 'Malta.' He is evidently an able man, and has ample opportunities of ruling in a small way, as in his person is concentrated the supreme civil, military, and judicial authority of Aden. He tries criminals and hangs them, he visits as a sovereign prince the Sultan of Lahaj, from whom Aden was taken some twenty years ago as a com- CH. IV.] ADEN. 75 pensation for certain piracies, he makes war on African tribes who maltreat English travellers, he has set up a school, he is building a church his government, in fact, is a paternal des- potism. We stayed with him till 5 P.M. and enjoyed ourselves much, having cool rooms and many comforts, all the more acceptable after the heat and close quarters of the ship. We drove a little about Aden itself. The town occupies the crater of an extinct volcano ; all round are peaks of picturesque form, but of a bluish black colour like lava or pumice. There is no vegetation, but the sea views give life and freshness to the desolation, and in the small bay are several rocks which vary the outline. The whole place shows that the English hand is there ; the Arabs have good substantial houses instead of huts of wattled reeds, which are gradually disappearing ; they ride on their camels with their merchandise down the excellent road : they are getting tamed, and begin to appreciate peace and order. We went to the school, of which a Eurasian from Bombay, an intelligent man apparently, is master. Here, in two nice clean whitewashed rooms, were half-naked Arabs, Hindus, and English soldiers' children receiving instruction. As it is a Government school there is no religious teaching, except in one class composed solely of Europeans, from whom I got some intelligent answers. Friday , October 29. My birthday. How little I thought on its last anniversary where and how this one would be spent ; and now what a number of hopes, fears, doubts, and misgivings disturb me in spite of myself. I find it quite impossible on a day like this to avoid unprofitable or worse than unprofitable questionings as to the worth of the task which has been put upon me : whether it was really needful to make so utter a change in my life, to rend asunder so many ties for a future all darkness and uncertainty. Nay, sometimes doubts force them- selves upon me as to the reality of the message which I am to deliver, still more as to my own fitness to deliver it in circum- stances so wholly new. I trust that all these temptations to distrust and even unbelief will, by God's blessing, be dispelled when work really begins, and that He who called me to the task will help me to perform it. The monotony and want of occupation on board ship doubtless encourage such evil thoughts ; perhaps it is better to put them away at once, not to 76 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. IV. indulge them by dwelling on them even in hopes of conquering them, but to use the simple prayer, Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief, because I am quite certain of my earnest desire to believe in the greatness of my message and the value of my office, and to try to realise to myself the promise of Habakkuk, repeated by St. Paul and appropriated by Luther, The just shall live by his faith. Lord, grant that as this new year of my life must be one of the most important through which I have passed or shall pass, so it may be most largely blest to me and mine by the help of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Thursday, November 4. Epp is attracting a good deal of attention for his obedience, docility, and intelligence. He seems thoroughly to enjoy himself, spite of daily lessons in Latin and French. In the evening I tell him a story from the 6 Bagh-o-Bahar,' and at 8.15 he, Burn, S , and I read the Bible and have prayers in our cabin ; so that I hope he will retain a happy recollection of the last winter which he can spend with his parents for a long time, perhaps for all time. Friday, November 5. We had another delightful holiday on shore. When we came on deck we were running along the coast of Ceylon, fringed with beautiful green foliage almost to the water's edge, though the trees were separated from the sea by a low line of rock, against which the surf broke in white waves. Behind the trees rose a range of high mountains. Almost exactly at 11 A.M. we anchored in the small harbour of G-alle, girt with rocks and hills crowned by forests of cocoa palms, which are far less stiff and more graceful than the date palms of Egypt. The European part of the town is old and picturesque, with heavy fortifications built by the Dutch, covered with fern and lichen, and a large, massive church, which they also built, and which is now used alternately for Episcopalian and (English) Presbyterian worship. Soon after we anchored the Bishop of Colombo came on board with the secretary to the chief justice of Ceylon, bearing an invitation for us to spend the day at the Queen's House, a building used indifferently by any government functionaries who happen to be at Gralle, and now occupied by the judges who are holding the assizes there. Later on, the bishop took me out alone. After driving in a carriage by the sea-shore CH. IV.] CEYLON AND HABEAS. 77 through a forest of palms, we crossed a small river and walked up a hill. The turf was as green and fresh as any in England ; ferns covered the rocks, wild flowers grew around, especially the glorious yellow alamanda, the pride of the English hot- houses ; above us were trees, chiefly cocoa-nut, but varied by plantains with their enormous leaves, bread fruit, tulip-trees, and some which I did not know, very like magnolias in leaf. The air was balmy, the shade kept off the sun, the green all around (after Suez and Aden) most delicious. From the top of the hill are two glorious views : one into the interior, over a plain teeming with luxuriant vegetation, bounded by fine mountains (of which Adam's Peak, reverenced equally by Buddhists and Mahometans, was hidden by clouds) ; the other out to sea, with the harbour of Gralle and its beautiful shore for a foreground. At 4 there was a service in the old Dutch church, where there was a kind of preliminary installation of me as metro- politan. Prayers were read by the bishop, thanks returned for our safe progress, and after service an address was presented to me from the bishop and clergy of the diocese of Colombo, very kind and cordial in expression. I briefly replied, and gave the blessing. There was a very tolerable congregation, and among them several natives. After this we returned to dinner at the Queen's House, and finally steamed out of Gralle harbour about 9.30 P.M., the buoys being all lit up to show us the way, by a boat being moored to each with a man in it holding up a blazing torch. Monday r , November 8. About noon to-day we caught our first sight of India by the appearance of certain low hills at Sadras, and soon after of the Seven Pagodas. Then we steamed along a low sandy wooded coast till, about 4, we dropped anchor off Madras, and saw before us a long line of low buildings, with some shipping in front of them, and a conical hill (St. Thomas's Mount) a little way inland, assigned by tradition as the scene of the apostle's martyrdom. Soon after the Bishop of Madras came on board, attended by his domestic chaplain, the chaplain of the garrison church, and his registrar. We landed in a large deep boat rowed by Tamils, and having escaped the well-known perils of the surf, we were 78 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. IV. conveyed to the house of Mr. Goldingham, with whom the bishop was staying, and who extended his hospitality to us, while the steamer lay twenty-four hours at anchor. We saw^ very little of the town of Madras ; our drive was along a broad esplanade bordered with a species of tulip-tree, and with refreshing green fields on each side of it, past the gardens of Government House, of which the gates were illuminated with crowns and V.E.s in celebration of the transfer of India from the Company to Victoria. There was an immense crowd of natives, chiefly in white dresses, hastening to see some fire- works and a bonfire in commemoration of the same event. November 9. We were up and out soon after 6, and drove with T. Madras to see his cathedral, a large handsome Grecian church, defaced by damp outside, internally lined with chu- nam, a kind of white substance made of shells, and polished to resemble (at an infinite distance) white marble. The church contains some fine monuments by Chantrey to Heber, to Corrie, and especially to a Mr. Lushington. Saw Alcock's church in the fort, the oldest in India, containing a monument of Schwartz, with an interesting basrelief of his death, and an inscription, highly laudatory and well deserved, but far too long. We were dismissed on the beach by the prelate, tossed through the surf to the < Candia,' and off again about 11.15 A.M. Friday, November 12. About 9 this morning we reached the pilot brigs which are always cruising about twenty miles from the mouth of the Hooghly, to furnish pilots to take ships up its windings and shallows. But it was noon before we fairly saw land on each side of us, that on our right being Saugor Island, a low woody, frowzy-looking swamp, abandoned to jungle fevers, tigers, and lighthouse men, the last being protected from the second by barricades and intrenchment, and I suppose accustomed to the first. There seemed much less shipping than at the mouth of the Thames or Mersey, but as the Hooghly is here eleven miles across, what there is being much more dispersed appears less important. Higher up, the banks get very pretty : the varied foliage with the thatched huts of the Hindus nestling under trees of graceful form quite prevents one from grumbling at the flatness of the land, which is in fact lower than the water, and protected from inundation by embankments. We anchored for the night at a place CH. IV.] ARRIVAL AT CALCUTTA. 79 called Fulta, it being unsafe to navigate the river in the dark. Saturday, November 13. We were off at half-past six. The famous approach to Calcutta is rather very pretty than very grand ; you pass one handsome villa after another, each standing in a compound green with luxuriant foliage, and at last anchor just opposite Bishop's College, which is a truly academical building, and quite a startling sight in an Indian landscape. As soon as we stopped, people came flocking on board to greet friends and relatives, among them Archdeacon Pratt ; and with him I was soon after rowed to the shore of my own diocese in a government boat with the Union Jack flying at the stern. In two carriages left by the late bishop to his successor we all drove along an uninteresting road to the cathedral, opposite to which stood .the large and handsome house, which we are to learn to look upon as our Indian home. May Grod help us to make it a happy, and as far as we are concerned, a Christian home : may it be a house where He is served and His glory promoted, and His great Name loved and honoured. May He also vouchsafe to accept our humble and hearty thanks for the many mercies which have marked our voyage here, for our freedom from illness and danger, for having brought us safely to this land to which He has called us. Lord help us to dedicate our new life to Thee, and make me a faithful pastor, a guide and a father to Thy children in this land, both to those who know Thee and to those who are in ignorance of Thy love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Sunday, November 14. I was installed this morning in the cathedral, at 10 o'clock at the beginning of morning service. The building is too much like a great hall inside ; outwardly it is certainly a very pleasant sight from our windows, and will be yet pleasanter when the roof is altered. I like the spire : this and the chimes and the green compound, or close as it really is, bring England back to us continually. Monday, November 15. To-day all the clergy of the town and neighbourhood, thirty in number, came to the palace at nine o'clock, and were severally introduced to us by the arch- deacon. After this we had prayers in the chapel, followed by a general breakfast. 80 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. IV. The change in the episcopate of Calcutta occurred at a remarkable crisis. The venerable Daniel Wilson had lived to see India convulsed by a great military rebellion which was not suppressed at the time of his death. His long ad- ministration of the See had been marked ' by a zeal which age could not chill, and by an open-handed charity and liberality which have rarely been equalled.' But it will be thought no disparagement to his noble life to say that the last six or eight years were characterised rather by ripened piety than by active church work. During the mutiny he had encouraged others to be courageous in God's name, and then he fell asleep, bequeathing a wide field of labours and responsibilities to his successor. Such of these as appertained to the Church in her missionary character possessed at that time peculiar interest. Amongst the many questions to which the mutiny gave rise, that of missions obtained in England, in 1857, a political pro- minence such as they had not received since 1813. The evangelisation of India became a conspicuous topic, and some extreme and opposite sentiments on the subject again found utterance. The theory that the presence of mission- aries endangered our dominions had still some adherents; the Bible, unfettered and compulsory, was once more a watchword with the large party who have always pleaded zealously, but impulsively, in behalf of India. Calm and moderate views were held by many others no less earnest in the cause, who surveyed thoughtfully the crisis and its difficulties, and urged the need of wisdom no less than of zeal in dealing with them. A deeper sense of Christian duty and responsibility on the part of England towards India was, at length, more generally awakened, and practical measures followed upon the discussions that the question excited. Appeals for labourers in that great field of evangelistic work were made with increased urgency ; a special fund was opened for Indian missions ; missionary studentships were projected at the two uni- CH. IV.] ASPECT OF THE DIOCESE. 81 versities ; missionary studentship associations were formed in some dioceses. The Church at home was thus review- ing her responsibilities and infusing fresh vigour into her Indian mission work, when a new bishop was sent forth 'to quicken the energies and regulate the labours of mis- sionaries of Christ in the East, to build up again from its ruins a Church distressed and desolate and baptized in blood.'* At the moment that Bishop Cotton landed in India, the royal proclamation was sounding the first notes of peace and goodwill through a land over which bitter- ness and fanaticism were still brooding ; the tempest of the great rebellion was dying away in the final campaigns of Oucle and Berar ; English supremacy was reasserting itself in all parts. Missionaries had resumed their wonted labours, and were restoring the many native Christian settlements which the mutiny had turned into waste places. Strong in the strength of the message they undertook to deliver, and with faith deepened by the trials and the de- liverances so lately encountered, they seemed prepared to work on in patient hope and to face with steadfast resolu- tion that aggravated hostility to the Christian's creed which all acknowledged to be one inevitable legacy from the recent conflict between alien races. Prominently, how- ever, as the evangelistic duties incident to the See of Cal- cutta were at that time brought forward, the right ordering of the existing Church had an equal claim on the thoughts of its chief pastor. The Europeans and Eurasians forming this Church are found through the length and breadth of the land, in considerable numbers in the large cities, in smaller communities elsewhere, sometimes in almost total isolation in remote districts. They belong to all grades, from the civil and military servants of Government down to the most uncared-for wanderer thrown adrift upon the world. For these several classes, in their temptations, their * ' Consecration Sermon,' by Rev. Dr. Vaughan, Westminster Abbey, 1858. G 82 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. IV. troubles, their loneliness, the ministrations and ordinances of the Church are urgently required. The obligations to supply them had deepened with every extension of British - territory, and had taxed the energies of leaders of the Anglican Church for more than fifty years ; but it pro- mised to press with more than ordinary weight when, in 1858, English troops were unusually numerous, and English settlers and mechanics were preparing, under the change of policy on the restoration of peace, to seek em- ployment and fortune in India in far larger numbers than heretofore. The resources which the English Church had at command represented in unequal proportions the two principles of State endowment and voluntary aid. The relations which the new Imperial Government assumed towards the ecclesiastical department of the State kept these two principles in view. At no previous time since the creation of an established Church in India had the Supreme Government evinced a more sincere desire to acknowledge the work which the Church had to do, or a greater disposition to strengthen her hands. But it became evident at once that help would be afforded by the encouragement of voluntary efforts after expansion and development within her borders rather than by direct increase to the ecclesiastical arm of the Indian service. Early in 1859, the staff of State chaplains was increased by ten ; but the numerous European regiments impera- tively called for this addition, and the arduous duties of two preceding years had sent home so many chaplains invalided, that the gain was scarcely perceptible. The supply of ministers from other sources was inadequate to the demand, and the dearth of clergy continued to create a standing difficulty in all ecclesiastical arrangements. Such was the general aspect of the see when it passed into fresh hands at the close of 1858. There was no greater pressure of daily routine work than anyone with good business habits and fair physical powers could easily CH. IV.] FIRST MONTHS IN INDIA. 83 accomplish, even in a tropical climate; no greater questions of ecclesiastical discipline were likely to arise than average tact and judgment could settle. It was the responsibility rather than the toil of the office that weighed most upon the new bishop. He felt from the first, not only that he stood as the chief representative of Christianity to the native races, but that he had also to lead the Church of England in her efforts to provide for the welfare of organized Christian congregations. The needs of these congregations in all their variety and distinctiveness were at once discerned. Their recognition became the key- note of his administration of the see, and it will be for ensuing pages to indicate the untiring industry with which he negotiated alike with State authorities and with private individuals, the ways and means for promoting the Church's efficiency. Fearlessly and hopefully many English friends had seen him go forth, but it was neces- sarily a work of time to inspire similar confidence on the scene of his labours. He landed in India with singularly few links either of kindred or friendship to connect him with the country, and he had no name in the ranks of either of the two great Church parties ; he was in all senses a stranger among strangers. During many months he was little known ; he was engaged in feeling his way quietly and with characteristic reserve. His early sentiments towards India were prompted by thoughtful earnestness rather than by soul-stirring enthu- siasm ; he realized it as a field for the exercise of a man's highest mental powers ; he was prepared to watch with keen intellectual interest the course of every Western influence brought to bear on Eastern minds ; he was full of calm and just recognition of the difficulties which sur- round the moral and spiritual relations of England with her great dependency. The unusual gravity of his coun- tenance at the moment that he set foot on the shores of his diocese, vast in extent, more vast in the variety and G 2 84 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. IV. complexity of its interests, testified to the solemnity of spirit with which he entered on the work that was await- ing him. His early occupations included the patient study of two vernacular languages, inspection of schools and missions congregated in and about Calcutta, and intercourse with any who could be sources of information. The following selection from journal arid letters will serve to give some early impressions, and to shadow forth the various lines of work with which, as time passed on, he vigorously identi- fied himself. EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. January 18, 1859. To-day we drove to see our heathen friends, who were attracted by my discourse on Advent Sunday, and who have called occasionally since. They showed us their house, half European and half Hindu. The European part is in bad taste, the drawing-room being disfigured by tawdry furniture and gilt gimcrack ornaments ; but they have a large and valuable library, including various shelves of theology of all sorts, from Theodore Parker to Swedenborg among authors really or nomi- nally Christian, besides Hindu and Mahometan works. The so- called Christian shelves were a melancholy sight in that house, as reminding us how real an impediment must be furnished by the heresies and schisms of the Christian Church to the conversion of the heathen. The Hindu apartments are round a court, and are chairless and tableless ; mats spread with pillows, books, desks, and hookahs, where the men smoke, read, and idle, while the women are immured behind a long grating, through which the fresh air breathes on them from the court, and from which they may see any games and entertainments which are occa- sionally held in it. The front apartment of the court opposite the entrance on the ground floor, is decorated prettily enough, and is the place where the puja is held, while in a room hard by is kept ' our Grod ' as one of our hosts said. ' (rods you should say,' replied the other. ' Grods if you like,' answered the first, ' though after all there is only one Grod, for the other image is a goddess.' It is hard to tell in what state of mind or creed they are CH. IV.] CONVERSATION WITH SIR JAMES OUTRAM. 85 heathens professedly, of course ; yet one of them, in exhorting me to impress continually on the English the duty of peace and goodwill towards the natives, said : ' That is the only way by which they will spread Christianity over the country,' as if he wished it to be spread. Moreover, they constantly use ' Christian ' as equivalent to ' good.' ' Such conduct is unchris- tian.' 'Englishmen should not act so, as belonging to a Christian country.' February. . . . At a recent dinner party I had some pleasant talk with Sir James Outram, who quite equalled my expectations in the nobleness of his sentiments. He spoke of his soldiers with the greatest affection, highly commended the chaplains who had been with him on different excursions, and said that their ministrations to the soldiers, especially when sick, were quite invaluable, that the men often seemed to pine for them, and that their influence, if properly used, might be both extreme and permanent. He bitterly lamented the bloodthirstiness of the English during the mutiny, believed that the feeling was now changing, and rejoiced that he had never hung a sepoy. The atrocities perpetrated by the natives during the revolt he accounted for by the temporary madness which took possession of the men under their various delusions, and compared them with the conduct of the French in the Eeign of Terror. He admires the proclamation exceedingly, thinks that it is producing an excellent effect, interprets the prohibition of interference with native religions to mean official interference, considers the revolt at an end, and that the problems immediately pressing are how to put down highway robberies, which will continue for some time, and how to restore the finances. He says that the sepoys who have ac- cepted the amnesty and come into our camp, when they have seen the old familiar sights again, have cried like children. He thinks that the whole effect must be to deal a severe blow to Brahminism, and promote Christianity. Faxit Deus. Thursday, March 4. To-day has been a mournful one ; it has been the day of our separation from darling Epp. Medical advice has determined us to send him round by the Cape, that his constitution, so much benefited by his journey here and his winter in this warm climate, may, if Grod will, derive greater vigour from a voyage through the Atlantic. So we took a 86 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. IV. cabin for him, and our English manservant and I took him down to the coolie bazars ghat, whence a dinghi conveyed us to the ' Alfred ' at 8 A.M. I stayed with him till a quarter-past ten, breakfasting on board with the passengers, and then we were all warned away ; and as the boatman rowed us ashore, we saw the great ship slowly swinging round, while the c Mary Stewart ' steamer, which was to tug her down the Hooghly, began to puff and pant up to meet her. But the actual junction between the English king and Scottish queen we did not see, nor the actual start down the river, for as we approached the shore the ' Alfred ' became hidden by the forest of shipping, and by the time we entered the carriage we could not distinguish its masts from those of other vessels. We thankfully left Epp under the charge of Mr. Spry, the excellent chaplain of Alla- habad, who remained bravely in the midst of his flock all through the mutiny, and will, I have no doubt, take as good care of Epp as he did of them. Amidst all our sorrow, we part from him with true thankfulness for all the happiness he has caused us, for the great success of his journey out and his four months in India, with entire confidence in the wisdom and tenderness of those who are preparing to take such care of him at home, and in the humble hope that, if it be good for us, Grod will bring us together again, and in any case will so guide us that we may meet in His heavenly kingdom. To Professor Conington. November 18, 1858. . . . There plainly will be plenty to do. The Bishop is a kind of Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, and decides on the sta- tions of all Government chaplains, besides receiving complaints against them, of which there have been three since I came. If he keeps on good terms with the Grovernment, his power over them is much greater than that of an English bishop over his incumbents. Then he is trustee of nearly all the religious, educational, and charitable institutions in the town, including some of a most miscellaneous character ; for instance, in one, one of my chief co-trustees is a Mahometan prince. I am also on the senate of the new Calcutta University, which is to examine for B.A. degrees next March. Then there are, of course, the more purely spiritual functions. I have announced Cir. IV.] HINDU CONVERTS. 87 my first ordination for January 25, the day on which I was myself ordained deacon, and my first confirmation for February 2, on which days I and my work will not, I hope, be forgotten by friends in England. Most of the Indian officials with whom I have had short interviews seem to acquiesce in the India Bill, and to hope that it will do good, by making the Indian Minister one of the chief men in the Cabinet; so that they expect always a better ruler than they used to get when, as President of the Board of Control, his office was only reckoned one of secondary importance. The interest and possible magnitude of our work here is, I think, gradually opening upon me : a great impulse was given to this feeling by an interview with a youth who was con- verted and baptized at eighteen. He was disgusted with Hinduism on two grounds : (1) the crimes of the gods ; (2) the degrading prostrations required from his caste (Sudra) by the Brahmins; and the arrogance and rapacity displayed, in conse- quence, by these authorised priests and teachers. Christianity attracted him, in the first instance, by its moral precepts, and by its tendency to civilise, by overthrowing caste and teaching all men self-respect and independence. Yet he prefers Hinduism to the atheism into which many of the educated young men are rapidly falling. Hinduism operates as some sort of moral check, whereas these unbelievers give full licence to their pas- sions and impulses. The evil often begins by their casting off Hindu observances before they are convinced that they are needless ; for instance, many neophytes of the ' Young Bengal ' school go and eat their tiffin at hotels, with a lingering feeling that it is wrong, ' whereby their hearts are hardened, and they get to do things which are really bad.' A striking illustration, I thought, of ' Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.' You will not doubt that I sympathise truly and heartily with your anxieties about the health of your parents, and I am glad that I spent those few hours at Boston, as enabling me to do so more really. Pray do not think that I am uninterested in comparisons between Eton and Kugby, and in educational matters of other kinds, especially such as are connected with the universities. On the contrary I feel as to my past schoolmaster life, 'If I forget thee, may my right hand forget her cunning.' . . . 88 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [On. IV. Some crows were enjoying the fragments of a meal which had been eaten in the open air by some officers. An adjutant, a great carrion bird, approached : all the crows dispersed, except one unlucky wight, who ventured to stop and finish his share ; the adjutant instantly swallowed the crow whole, who, as he descended into his stomach, was heard to utter a farewell caw. This story is chiefly for the benefit of E. B. Smith. To the Rev. Dr. Stanley. , February 28, 1859. If you thought of my former work with you during the Fulham ordination, you may imagine how often recollections of you returned to me during my own first ordination. There were five candidates. The chief interest centred in the three natives from the NW. as pastors for native congregations. Their appearance was singular, as they were arrayed entirely in white, always coming shoeless into my presence, and with white turbans. I certainly felt it an impressive moment when I was conducted to my chair within the rails, and the arch- deacon advanced up the aisle, with the candidates after him, and presented three heathen-born Hindus, brought down from the very centre of war and anarchy to be ordained ministers of the Grospel of Peace. Soon after the ordination a series of confirmations began, coupled with much school in- specting, and a tour to Krishnagur, Burdwan, and other important places. At the confirmation I hammered through the service in Bengali, but gave my harangues in English, which were interpreted, sentence by sentence, by one of the missionaries present. And now what do I think of the missions? They are very like well-ordered English country parishes, each with its church, parsonage, and schools ; cottages neat, people neat and tidy, schools decidedly good. But undoubtedly very little is doing in the way of adding to the converts (at least in the places just visited), though great care is taken to keep the existing converts and their descen- dants in the right path. Certainly able men are wanted. Few of the missionaries appear to me quite up to the mark of battling with acute Hindu or Mahometan disputants. Some of them are Germans in English orders, and, among many dis- advantages, this fact at least has the advantage of introducing Cu. IV.] TOS1TIVISM. 89 more taste and romance into the missions than some of the stricter English puritans would tolerate or appreciate. In two places the singing of the Bengal congregations was quite beautiful, and there was always something picturesque about our reception. I had very interesting interviews with two of the native Christians, whom the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal has just appointed to be deputy-magistrates. I talked a long time with each about the influences which had led to their conversion, their difficulties, and the prospect of Christianity making way among the educated classes. Undoubtedly the English do not treat these people properly. The two whom I saw were as completely gentlemen as you could desire to see, and were now Government officers in responsible and prominent positions. Yet some of the English functionaries thought it impossible to ask them to dinner, and one spoke of natives in a rude and unkind way in the presence of one of them. I am glad to record that a Rugby man, in the school-house in Arnold's time, and though now a High-Churchman, one who devoutly reverences his memory, has given a banquet on pur- pose for the deputy-magistrate at his station, and asked all the aristocracy of the place on the occasion. To Arthur Watson, Esq. Bishop's Palace, Calcutta, May 1, 1859. This is a bad time to write to you, for the hot weather is at its height, and therefore very little is going on, so that the materials for a letter are few, while at the same time the power of getting through necessary work is less, and so one's inclination to extra occupation is diminished. Besides the or- dinary evils of the hot weather, I am troubled by a develop- ment of it called the ' prickly heat,' a sort of rash which does one no real harm, in fact it is a sign of health ; but I certainly find it disagreeable, and very often I desire to spend the whole afternoon on the sofa reading 'Frederic the Great,' which was brought by the penultimate mail, and is now my only light literature. I have read, not - 's sermon of which you speak, but a sketch of it in the ' Saturday Review,' and I understand its general purport from having read Comte's c Catechism,' or at least a good deal of it. Doubtless positivism teaches us some 90 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IV. important moral truths, but it is amazing to me how - - can fail to see that Christianity has also taught them for the last eighteen centuries. If anyone really maintained that the G-ospel does not tell us to live for others, in the face of our Lord's declaration, ' Love one another as I have loved you,' or that it makes us indifferent to the true happiness of the world, and the desire of improving it, and doing every duty which we undertake conscientiously and thoroughly, he must be wilfully blind and ignorant. Doubtless some Christians have spoken foolishly about entire separation from the world under all cir- cumstances, and have divided our spiritual altogether from our secular duties, but this is a irapstcftaais of Christianity, not Christianity itself, and to remedy it we need not throw away our faith in eternity our consolation in sorrow, our chief motive power to true holiness. So there should be no dallying with this new religion. I must end. One word as to the magnificence of the flower- ing trees here. Imagine great trees rising to the top of the windows in our drawing-room (a first floor not a ground floor room) absolutely laden with huge bunches of orange and scarlet flowers. They are quite gorgeous. To C. P. ttbert. Bishop's Palace, Calcutta, May 22, 1859. I have not much to say this time, and you must prepare for a stupid letter. The truth is that I am oppressed by a languor and weakness against which I struggle in vain. I am quite well, sleep only too much, and eat and drink as much as is good for me. But all my energies seem melting away, and in writing a sermon or even so commonplace a composition as an address to the Grovernor-Greneral on the Queen's birthday, I feel as if my power of expressing my thoughts and constructing sentences were gone. The doctor says that it is only the effect of my first hot weather, Uiat 1 must not be surprised and discouraged, and that I shall come all right soon. We have been getting up some lectures addressed to educated natives, who form the class for whom least is done in the cultivation of the intellect. They are all well trained in English in the Grovernment colleges, and are in some respects unpleasing ; but there are points about them which are more hopeful, and at all Cu. IV.] LECTURES TO EDUCATED NATIVES. 91 events they must not be neglected, as they are becoming the most important class in Bengal. The lectures were designed not to be of a directly mis- sionary character, but to treat on subjects of general interest, regarded from a Christian point of view, and intended to rouse these young Bengalis to the fact that Christianity is not a local or national religion of the West, as Brahminism is of the East, nor, again, a system of outward ceremonies and abstract doctrines, but a principle intended to pervade the whole of human life, all moral speculations and actions. The programme is as follows : Lessons suggested by the Early History of India. St. Augustine (of Africa). The Emperor Julian. The Institutes of Menu (the Hindu lawgiver) and Education. Dr. Arnold. Two of them have already taken place, and the success, as far as securing auditors goes, has been complete. The room was crammed by Bengali young men, and just round the lecturer's desk sat a few Europeans. I opened the proceedings on the first night by a brief explanation of the object of the lectures, and then read Arnold's prayer, which I used with you in the sixth, slightly altered and adapted to the occasion, to which I requested the audience to listen, and to join in as far as possible. Then came the first lecture hearty, earnest, and well- written, sometimes eloquent, but too generally deficient in historical detail, hardly corresponding to its title, since the lecturer treated exclusively of the Mahometan period, and in its conclusion more directly like a Christian sermon than was expedient. On the following Tuesday, we had Dr. Kay on Augustine an admirable lecture, extremely interesting, most graceful and touching in its language, and exceedingly well adapted to the Bengalis, who at the end applauded it in a manner which, for their lazy temperaments, may be called vociferous. The scene, as we came out on the first night, of groups of Bengalis in their white garments standing about the steps of the lighted building, discussing the lecture, with the bright clear ivory moonlight of India around them and above them, was one of the most picturesque that I ever saw. One longed 92 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON, [Cn. IV. to be able to contemplate it with something more than an artistic feeling, and to believe that the lectures might, by God's blessing, take some permanent hold on their hearts and heads* The lectures were the occasion for an absurd piece of caution on the part of a Grovernment official. We had to give them in an inconvenient place, instead of a very convenient one. Lectures are commonly given, on all kinds of miscellaneous subjects, in the theatre of the Medical College, and the principal of the College readily assented to our use of the room. The arrangement, however, was stopped by an official, lest the Government should be mixed up with missionary work. I certainly thought this refusal unworthy of a sensible man, and it is the only instance which I have seen of that cowardice about Christianity which religious people at home (often unjustly) attribute to the Indian Government. The natives themselves showed their incapability of appre- ciating this caution by crowding to the lectures to the amount of some four hundred, and asking with annoyance why they were sent to an out-of-the-way place, instead of going to the Medical College, to which they are accustomed on such occa- sions. One of them remarked to me that a man must know little of the Bengalis who supposed that the class for whom these lectures were designed shared the blunders of ryots and sepoys, and believed that they were to be made Christians by force. To Mrs. Arnold. May 31, 1859. I little thought when I wrote to you the other day, telling you of the pleasure which we had experienced in Willy's visit to us, that my next letter to you would be so mournfully different. We were greatly shocked a week ago by the news of his death. You will, I doubt not, feel a mournful pleasure in anything which I can tell you about him. We enjoyed his visit greatly. He was particularly lively and agreeable, except when he was positively ill, and we had various intimate talks, reminding me of old days at Rugby. Sometimes these related to various forms of belief and unbelief now prevalent, and he once or twice expressed a desire for some fresh evidence of Christianity, which should clear away difficulties relating to inspiration. < But, after all,' he said, c there was no difficulty CH. IV.] DEATH OF WILLIAM AENOLD. 93 greater than to believe that the Sermon on the Mount was not divine.' I was very glad that he had a pleasant interview with Lord Canning. You know that he had written against him in the papers and spoken harshly of him. When Lord Canning heard he was here, he sent for him and consulted him con- fidentially on various questions relating to education, and Willy returned certainly very favourably impressed with his courtesy, kindness, and desire to do his duty. We parted on February 8, when he went on board the steamer, and we must have left Calcutta at about the same moment : he homewards, we on our tour to Krishnagur and Burdwan. He is, as we humbly trust and believe, the first of the nine children who has gone to his Father, to a truer and better home than that happy earthly one which he hoped to find with his mother ; and certainly, of all the nine, he bore not the fewest traces of his earthly father's character. Everybody who has spoken to me about him regards his death as a real loss to India ; for, by his activity and ability in discharging his duties in the Punjab, he had won himself great credit, so that there were few men of his age who had a higher reputation. Perhaps the point which most struck me about him (com- pared with his language in 'Oakfield') was his thorough interest in this country, and keen enjoyment of his work here. One day he said, ' Well, I hope that the Tories are safe in office for three years.' I cried out at this as very unlike his old opinions, and he said, c Perhaps it is wrong to view everything with reference to India, but really I cannot help it, and as I be- lieve Lord Stanley to be the best man for us now, I wish him to stay in, and therefore the Cabinet.' Both to Lord Canning and to myself he expressed himself strongly in favour of the grant- in-aid system (the despatch of 1854), and urged me to advocate it in my charge to the clergy at my visitation. He always had a Greek Testament on his dressing-table : taking it up casually one day, I saw that on the first page was the date of his wife's death. It would be interesting to you now, and to his children hereafter, to possess this, as it was probably used by him as long as the power to use it was left. The last day we talked about you, and he took great pleasure in my telling him about my visit to Fox How, and how happy and honoured your life there had appeared to me. 94 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IV. To the Rev. Dr. Vaughan. August 1859. Many thanks for your letter, which I answer now, in order to express my regret and annoyance at the manner in which was treated about St. Paul's School. I am very sorry that my desire for your intervention has turned out such a signal failure, and only gave you trouble without any corre- sponding fruit. I have taken an opportunity of expressing my objection to the selection of a treatise on regeneration as a text- book of Church doctrine, and my desire that persons of 's sentiments should not be excluded from the diocese. ... I have written to Mr. in much the same strain as my minute to the Governors. Enough of this, which has vexed me a good deal, and, I fear, troubled you. We had our Thanksgiving-day on July 28. It went off, I hope, well. The Governor-General and Council came to the Cathedral in state, and took part in the service drawn up by me, and listened with decorous attention to my discourse. The Thanksgiving-day ended by a great banquet at Govern- ment House, where I was struck by the genuine, heart-felt gratitude which Lady Canning expressed. ' I thought it at one time hardly possible,' she said, ' that I should see this day ; that the war must have gone on far beyond the time when we should have quitted India.' With this exception nothing has been stir- ring : the hot weather and rains are always the dead time of the year. We want a Gladstone to restore our finances, and gene- rally a little more vigour and speed of action might be infused into the councils of the State. Cn. V.] HIS FIRST CHARGE. 95 CHAPTEE V. PRIMARY CHARGE DEPARTURE FROM CALCUTTA FOR THE PRIMARY VISI- TATIONS BENARES C AWNPORE LUCKNO W A GRA DELHI AMB ALA LAHORE PESHAWUR THE KYBER PASS SEALTCOTE AMERICAN MISSION- ARIES AND THE MAHARAJAH OF CASHMERE AMRITSIR KANGRA VIEW OF THE SNOWY RANGE SUNDAY MARCHING AND TRAVELLING LAWRENCE ASYLUM AT SAUWAR ARRIVAL AT SIMLA. IN SEPTEMBER 1859, the Bishop gave his primary Charge. The weather was very hot and trying, and the visitation in Calcutta was spread over two days. On the first the service consisted of the Litany and a sermon from Dr. Kay, the principal of Bishop's College, and the Holy Communion ; on the second day, after morning prayers, the Charge was delivered. It fell into three divisions, and treated of the relations of Government with native edu- cation, of the condition of missionary progress, of the state of the European population, and the demands upon its special ministers. The first of these topics was at that time invested with the highest interest. The connexion of Government with any Christian element in Native edu- cation was still a subject for controversy. The mutiny had revived the question with an agitation and excite- ment which had not subsided in India in 1859, and many earnest men, besides professed missionaries, were awaiting with anxiety the legislation which was to follow the Queen's proclamation, guaranteeing religious toleration towards all. The state of the native mind could not be a source of satis- factory contemplation to thoughtful observers. While some of the older educated Hindus were intrenching themselves in ancestral orthodoxy, a younger generation was breaking loose from all faith, and scepticism and atheism seemed 96 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. V. the only fruits reaped from the seed of Western culture cast upon India. On Christians who desired to read aright the signs of the times, the duty pressed more heavily than ever of claiming that a free course should be granted to the Bible ; that, at least, it should be rendered not less accessible to Hindu students than the secular knowledge so freely offered. The Bishop, in surveying this great question, took his stand upon the recent language of the Government. He pointed out that far from being retro- gressive the Secretary of State's Educational despatch of 1859, which was so severely criticised, confirmed that of 1854 ; that both permitted the presence of the Scrip- tures in the libraries of Government schools, and that neither placed any restrictions on giving instruction, if voluntarily sought in other hours than those devoted to regular school studies. He was satisfied that, this point once conceded and again ratified, there remained no barrier raised by the rulers of India between the ' seeker after God ' and the teacher to whom he might care to turn. To his mind it afforded the one fair and practical escape out of that dilemma, one horn of which was an official ban upon the Bible in Government schools, the other being its compulsory introduction, regardless of the consideration that the teachers must be, for the most part, heathens. On this latter point the Bishop never changed his ground. ' When I consider ' (so runs a passage in the Charge, written with all the acute personal feeling which this aspect of the question invariably excited in him) ' how great, whether for good or evil, is the influence of the living voice and the contact of mind with mind, and how disastrous in religious teaching is the effect of the sup- pressed sneer, the vacant air of indifference, the doubting or hostile comment, I must maintain that it were almost better for a Bengali not to know that the Word of God exists than to hear it explained by one who regards it as an CH. V.] GOVERNMENT ORDERS. 97 imposture and a delusion.' Such concession or compro- mise, great as it was, could at best be only partially satis- factory to one who viewed the divorce of religious from secular instruction as unnatural and calamitous at all times and for all races. He acquiesced in it as representing a period of transition, preparatory to that time, only then dimly foreshadowed, when Government, withdrawing from the direct work of education, would limit itself to aiding the efforts of voluntary associations. He accepted it for India as the one onward step then practicable, and he knew that it was capable of indefinite expansion at the hands of secular teachers who were able and really religious men. As a matter of fact, the principles proclaimed by Go- vernment were more liberal than its practice. Orders issued by the late Court of Directors, strangely and needlessly timid, were still unrepealed, and in India official caution evinced such distrust of the voluntary Bible classes in Government buildings, that the Bishop had to make yet again a strenuous and successful appeal in their behalf to the Governor-General. On the whole, however, the edu- cational policy at that time was one to which he could give in his adhesion, and with which he could co-operate hopefully. To make others share this feeling was one aim of the Charge. He brought argument and calm reasoning to bear upon a topic which had often been dis- cussed with prejudice and impatience, and in doing so he occupied that position of a peacemaker which was equally in accordance with his office and his own personal cha- racter. The language in which he pleaded for fairness and moderation was too temperate to satisfy some ardent minds ; but it won for him, in the early months of his Indian life, much confidence from Government and from many others also, who accepted it at the time and were content to be guided by it in after years. The necessity for such arbitration has now almost if not wholly dis- appeared, but ten years ago it was not so. An incident H 98 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ca. V. hereafter to be noticed will show that the embers of dis- trust were still smouldering. While irritation remained, the Bishop found his task in seeking to allay it and in mediating between parties severed far more by mutual misunderstanding than by any antagonism of principles. In the endeavour to raise men's minds to a wider and more impartial contemplation of a much debated subject, he thus summed up a long analysis of it : I cannot but express a wish that the word neutrality could be dropped in describing the relations of the British Government to religion. It may be said that a word is not of much conse- quence ; and no doubt some word is necessary to express the facts that the state stands aloof from missionary enterprises, and that, in the language of the Queen's proclamation, ' none shall be in anywise favoured, none molested or disquieted by reason of their religious faith or observances, but that all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law.' But the word neutrality (which is avoided in the proclamation) is liable to perpetual misconstruction, and has received it from certain Madras petitioners. Nor can I ever hear it without thinking of our Lord's warning, 4 He that is not with me is against me.' It is impossible for any thoughtful man to be really indifferent to the contest between two such principles as Christianity and Heathenism. Nor, in truth, can we claim to have been so when we have taken upon ourselves to decide that certain parts of the Hindu system are immoral, and to prohibit them by law. Passing from the word to the principle intended to be expressed by it, there must arise, from the anomaly of a Christian Government ruling over a non-Christian population, a thousand delicate questions as to the distinction between the private and public capacity of state officers, and as to the acts which are lawful in one character and unlawful in the other. On these multifarious difficulties I cannot enter further than to remind you that we must not be hasty in censuring individual decisions ; for the task which our rulers have before them in this matter is one demanding judgment, firmness, and candour in an unusual degree. We must all acknowledge the principle of official non-intervention ; coercion and favouritism are alike unchristian; our heathen fellow-subjects have an undeniable CH. V.] LETTERS RELATING TO THE CHARGE. 99 right to demand, in simple justice, that no civil or military functionary should use his public position for the purpose of making converts. On the other hand it is quite true that the claims of indi- vidual liberty, and of Christian conscience, must be considered by Grovernment as well as the duty of non-interference with the religious belief of their subjects. The distinction will often be so nice that we are bound to abstain from harsh and hasty judgments if the decision is not always in accordance with our own opinion. A Charge which was characterised as c over moderate in tone, and, if possible, too impartial in its statements,' could not escape hostile criticism. But concurrence and approval came from other quarters where it was peculiarly valuable. To one home correspondent he wrote : I have had a very kind letter from Mr. Venn, of the Church Missionary Society, about my Charge. Of course he does not quite like the part about the Bible in Grovernment Schools, but admits that there is but little difference between his own plan and that which the Grovernment has adopted and which I defend, and about the rest of the Charge he writes with entire satisfaction. Moreover, the letter is very friendly in its tone, and as he is the person who has done most for, and knows most about, missionary work (except actual missionaries), I do not heed some unfavourable, and, I think, very unfair criticisms which this part of the Charge has called forth. And again, as follows, to another English friend : You may either congratulate yourself on penetration, or you may pronounce it, if you please, a proof of extreme vanity and self-satisfaction in me, when I tell you that, of all the various criticisms which I have seen on my Charge, the only censure with which I agree is yours, on my (I think only apparent) declaration that the conversion of India would be profitless unless it is the conversion of the nation's heart to Grod. Doubtless, I have worded it too strongly. I quite agree that if a native rajah adopted Christianity, and could bring- over all his people en masse to the same creed, by fair means, the gain would be enormous. But I only meant to utter a H 2 100 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. V. strong protest against conversions by force or fraud, or undue favour, like those of the Dutch in Ceylon, or the Jesuits in South India. It would not be good if a whole province of natives were scourged into Christianity, or if each baptized person were presented with ten rupees from the rajah's coffers. In denouncing views which lead to this, I have gone too far in the opposite direction. Once more he wrote : I have had a very satisfactory and pleasant letter from Captain Eastwick of the Indian Council about my Charge. He says he quite agrees with my remarks on the Santhal schools and the word neutrality, and that Sir Charles Wood, in spite of strong opposition, has written out to sanction the university examinations in Butler and Paley. Besides other advantages, I fancy that this will retain Dr. Duff on the senate. The Bishop passed on from this question of prominent interest and importance to the discussion of evangelistic labours as carried on by missionaries, and of the pastoral agency at work amongst Europeans. At so early a stage of his life in a new country, and with only a limited per- sonal experience of India, he disclaimed the right authori- tatively to enunciate opinions or propound theories which wider knowledge might greatly modify. But his survey of the Church's work was comprehensive and suggestive ; his views on the broad range that missionary labours ought to take, and on the wide scope afforded by the various classes of English society for the best energies of chaplains, were clearly and impressively expressed. Words, perhaps anxiously looked for, were spoken at last, and were all the more forcible from the long and deliberate thought with which they had been penned. By many in India the Charge was accepted and welcomed as a valuable exponent of the Bishop's mind on various topics. Long afterwards it was said that his wise and temperate language on the subject of the connexion of Government with religious teaching had been the means of laying that vital question to rest. It was no less true that the Cu. V.] FIRST JOUENEY IN INDIA. 101 delivery of this primary Charge constituted, on other grounds also, an epoch in his tenure of the See. From that date he ceased to be a stranger amongst his clergy, who now felt his strength and value as a guide and leader, and discerned how closely he desired to be knit with them in the bonds of common responsibilities and of a common work. The matured thought, conciliatory language, and intrinsic earnestness which characterised the first public utterance of his opinions, cast a light on his character in advance of his personal presence, which the unavoidably ephemeral intercourse with individual clergy during the long visitation about to commence might have failed to afford. Immediately after the delivery of the Charge, the party in the Palace left Calcutta, and entered upon that wander- ing life which was to be henceforth their lot in India. A month was spent in ascending the Ganges to Benares, and in halts at several of the earliest stations of British India planted on the banks of that great highway of nature. The home of the travellers during this period was the official barge, kindly lent by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and towed by a Government steamer. But neither the great comfort and comparative coolness of the boat, nor the care of the doctor in charge of the party, could keep illness at bay ; and both the Bishop and his chaplain were so prostrated by fever, arising from prolonged sojourn in the damp atmosphere of the river, that the light duties of the small stations that were visited were often a matter of difficulty. The marvellous size of a tropical river can never fail to be impressive to English eyes. The Bishop wrote of the mighty Ganges : ' It has given me an abso- lutely new idea, such as I never drew from Elbe or Ehine or Tagus or Nile.' But, except for this vast expanse of waters, the Ganges valley is painfully featureless. A dead flat extending for many hundred miles is only broken by the low range of the Eajmahal hills. . Its soft and shifting soil 102 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. and the absence of stone forbid the erection of fine buildings near the river, and an unbroken tropical tem- perature reduces the dress and dwellings of the natives ' to a dull uniformity. A second and far more interesting section of the visitation journey opened at Benares, the famous Hindu city, worthy of being called the Gateway of Upper India. Though now left comparatively in isolation by its distance from the main line of railway, it stood ten years ago conspicuously on the Grand Trunk Road, the first in that succession of great cities which, either as thoroughfares of traffic or monuments of Eastern rule and magnificence, still form centres of Hindu or Mussulman national life, through the breadth of the continent up to the borders of Afghanistan. At the Bishop's first visit the invigorating cold weather of the North-West Provinces was fast setting in, and health and strength were quickly recruited in the crisp freshness of the morning and evening hours. The fine situation of the city, its peculiarly Oriental character, its gay bazaars and costly manufactures, all combine to make Benares a fitting prelude to sights and scenes of vivid interest which await the traveller as he passes through India, arid awaken a sense of its many elements of past and present grandeur. From Benares also the onward route in 1859 lay for a long distance through tracts of country which had witnessed the greatest and most mournful events of the mutiny. The strong hand of British rule had already done much to repair the breaches in the land ; but at that time many roofless churches, ruined bungalows, and desolated missions still remained to tell the tale of war and havoc. Cawnpore had a death-stricken aspect, the Eesidency at Lucknow was a wilderness of ruins, and Delhi was feeling the weight of stern retribution. Such special associations were peculiar to the years imme- diately succeeding the mutiny, but under any circum- stances the visitations of an Indian Bishop are replete CH. V.] BENARES. 103 with interest and variety, and have the special character- istic of combining a tour of pleasure with the regular discharge of official duty. But although the days and weeks were unsettled and full of change, the fatigues and vicissitudes of travel never overpowered current business or interfered with the tenor of the Bishop's industrious life. His love of travelling and long familiarity with it enabled him to draw refreshment, rather than excitement, from all that crossed his path ; and through great powers of abstrac- tion, and the method and mental arrangement that pervaded his work at all times, there was not a daylight hour, even of locomotion in a dak carriage or palanquin, which, when lie was in health, was not turned to account. The journal extracts which follow this brief preface will serve to show how thoroughly the Bishop threw himself into the new mode of life necessitated by the primary visitation. The ensuing months were still chequered by some attacks of illness, but the way of the travellers was strewn with many blessings. Proverbial Anglo-Indian hospitality awaited them everywhere, the circle of pleasant ac- quaintance was extended, and a store of bright recollec- tions laid up for future days, before rest and a cool retreat in the Himalayas were attained in April 1860. EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. Benares, November 9. We went up to the great mosque, whose minarets I remarked yesterday as commanding the whole city ; it was built by Aurungzebe on the site and out of the materials of a great temple of Vishnu, to mark the triumph of the Prophet over Brahma. The mosque, except the minarets, is not striking at all : it resembles in architecture some of the older Cairo mosques, such as that of Sultan Hassan. The Hindu temples were far more interesting. We saw two, one belong- ing to Nana Sahib, which has been seized by Government, though left as open to the worship of votaries as in the days of its original possessor. It is unlike any temple that I have yet seen. Outwardly, it rather resembles a large house of three 104 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. V. stories. To reach the actual temple, we had to go up a long staircase, which led into a handsome hall, supported by arches of wood richly carved, with a sanctuary at the end, containing^ an image of Mahadeo, resplendent with gold and silver, and with the usual offerings of flowers before him. The hall was filled with worshippers discordantly shrieking. The other temple is the famous one of Vishvesheshwara, having a dome covered with gilding, or, as the people say, with gold as thick as an eight-anna-piece. This temple is small, square, pic- turesque in architecture, elaborately ornamented, and ex- tremely dirty. There is as usual a court, in the middle of which rises the building with the golden dome in the middle, and a pagoda on each side, and the colour of the whole is a very rich dark red. Near the temple is a sacred well, into which the god j umped when Benares was taken by the Mussul- mans. So holy is Benares that all its stones are really gold, only that mankind is now too sinful to see this, the Vishvesh- eshwara temple being alone revealed to them as a specimen of the splendour which really clothes every house and ghat and pave- ment, and every Christian who dies in it may look for admis- sion to heaven if he has given money to the Brahmins. Just before sunset we got a boat, went on the river and saw the city from the water one of the most picturesque scenes that I ever beheld. The ghats with their lofty flights of stone steps flanked by pagodas, the beautiful effect of the bend in the river, the pagodas grouping in the background, and the minarets crowning all, together with the absence of ruin and desolation owing to the use of stone instead of brick and plaster, make the view of Benares from the Granges a sight much to be remembered, and to be compared with many fine views of European cities. November 14. To-day was devoted to the Sigra missionaries. We first drove to Jay Narain's College, founded by a wealthy half Christian unbaptized native, who had religious convictions and anxieties on his deathbed, and left a sum of money to the trusteeship of the Church Missionary Committee at Calcutta. The building, though architecturally unpretending, yet with its entirely separate class-rooms opening into verandahs, is better adapted for its purpose than the Grothic aspirations of the Government College. I examined the first class of the college Cn. V.] FEARS OF THE HINDUS. 105 department, and they did well in Scripture and in English history, but the great mark of inferiority to the Government College was that they brought up no English literature. An easy compendium of English history was very different from the second act of ' Macbeth ' in the Grovernment College, and I certainly should like to see a higher standard in this respect. We paid a hasty visit to the school for native girls whom Mrs. Smith laudably gathers together, by employing women to go daily from house to house and bring them ; the average attendance being eighty. After breakfast, I had a long and in- teresting talk with an able and remarkable native Christian. He thinks that the great reason why Christianity takes no hold of the Hindus is that it is the religion of the conquering race, and of a race whom, in plain language, the majority of them simply detest. Everything we do is viewed with suspicion, and the feeling that we intend to force or cajole them into Christianity some day is as strong as ever. They believe that Lord Canning summoned all their rajahs and native potentates to his durbars at Cawnpore and Lucknow only with this object in view. And being quite ignorant of the history of their own country, they fancy that to restore the Mogul empire would be to restore the reign of peace, wealth, and security. This applies to the older generation ; those educated at the English schools are growing up with very different views. The Bible might have been introduced into Grovernment schools before the mutiny ; an order for its introduction at the present time of suspicion and bad feeling would do more harm than good. - is a convert of a singularly sensitive and speculative turn of mind, the very reverse therefore of certain missionaries who seem to carry hatred of speculation to a length which must diminish their usefulness in dealing with the subtle minds of the Hindus. An inquirer said to one of them that he was puzzled by the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity. You have nothing to do with such subjects, was the reply : if you wish to be a Christian, you have only to feel and confess your need of forgiveness. Surely an unwise answer, and opposed to the examples furnished by the New Testament and by early Church history. For certainly many came to our Lord, and many converts were added to the Church afterwards from other motives than the simple want of forgiveness, although I believe that such a want 106 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. will always be felt when a person comes to have any spiritual knowledge of Christianity. November 26. Soon after 1 P.M. we reached Cawnpore, and drove straight to the lieutenant-governor's camp, where tents were provided for us. At five we drove out, and were taken by Dr. Bird to the fatal well and Wheeler's intrenchments. He is well fitted to be our cicerone, having come into Cawn- pore from Lucknow with Sir Colin in November 1857. All traces have vanished of the house in whicli the massacre took place ; but in a wide expanse of sand, with a few palm trees and two European houses near, is the mouth of the well, com- pletely bricked up, rising about a foot from the ground, and surrounded by a wooden fence. On one side is the well-known cross put up by the men of the 32nd under Moore's auspices ; on the other, a plain horizontal gravestone with a cross carved upon it, and the two texts from Joel ii. 17: Spare thy people, Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them : wherefore should they say, among the people, Where is their God ? 21. Fear not, land ; be glad and rejoice : for the Lord will do great things. This was put up by a non-commissioned officer of the Bengal Artillery to the women and children belonging to his corps. On the upright cross to the memory of those belonging to the 32nd, the motto is, / believe in the resurrection of the body. Surely these are among the most melancholy memorials in the world : there are some in Paris which speak of tales as tragical, but it is most solemn and striking to think that the historical scenes of these NW. Provinces are of events which occurred only two years ago, whereas most of the notable places which I have ever visited before are associated with doings or sufferings not greater or sadder than these, and of which the impression is blunted because they are removed from us by long years or even centuries. Hence, perhaps, I never was more moved by any place than by this Cawnpore well. The remains of Wheeler's intrenchments are about a mile and a half further on. Traces of the ditch which surrounded the garrison are still visible, but the rampart has altogether vanished. Within the ditch are the ruins of a barrack which was occupied till the mutineers set it on fire, and the well still remains in which the dead were buried secretly at night by parties who stole out at the peril of their CH. V.] CAWNPORE. 107 lives to perform the last rites to their comrades. We left Wheeler's intrenchments wondering how any defence at all could have been made in an open plain, with no protection but a ditch and parapet, over which, as some one said, a buggy might have been driven, and which actually was overleapt on horseback by Lieutenant Bolton, who escaped from the massacres of Oude to meet his death by treachery at Cawnpore. / Sunday r , November 27. I have said nothing about the general appearance of Cawnpore. In desolation it surpasses any station which we have yet seen. It is of great length, five miles from the civil lines to cantonments, the camp where we are being pitched about half-way between them. A long straight road leads through the station, bordered by a treeless waste of sand, which in the rains is said to be green and pleasant, but now is absolutely devoid of a trace of grass. On each side are houses, some still in ruins, some restored, with compounds round them. There are also the remains of the theatre and assembly rooms burnt by the Gwalior Contingent ; Christ Church also nearly destroyed by them, but now in the course of rapid restoration, and intended to be the church of the civilians. All this long range of European buildings is between the Granges and the city, the minarets and pagodas of which are seen through the trees. Everything at present looks miserable and depressed, and even the residents seem specially to dislike the place, as if the curse of the Nana still blighted it. On the other hand, there is the memory of Henry Martyn to hallow it ; while the thoroughly solid and substantial masonry of the Granges Canal, which terminates here, and the handsome new railway station, hold out a prospect of future material prosperity. I preached twice in St. John's Chapel, a ' cutcha ' building of a very in- convenient description near Wheeler's intrenchments, soon, I hope, to be superseded by the Memorial Church, which is actu- ally to occupy their site, and to be the place of worship for the military. November 28. At 1 to-day we quitted Cawnpore, crossed the Granges by a somewhat rickety bridge of boats just where the canal joins the river, and then found ourselves in Oude, on the road which, two years ago, was the scene of such hopes and fears, anxieties, disappointments, noble deeds, and unflinching reso- lution. I had heard so much of its ugliness that I was agree- 108 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. ably surprised at the number of fine trees which diversified it. It was quite dark when we reached Lucknow (about half-past 8 P.M.), where we found the Chief Commissioner's house placed at our entire disposal. He is out on his winter's tour, but Colonel Barrow and Charles Currie, the latter once my pupil at Rugby, and now secretary to the Oude Government, act as our hosts, and live in a bungalow hard by. Tuesday, November 29. The house in which we are, com- fortable, two-storied, thatched, commanding a beautiful view, and surrounded by a large garden, was once the abode of an Oude Begum ; then, after the annexation, it was handed over to Major Banks, and under the name of ' Banks House ' it fre- quently occurs in accounts of the siege, having been occupied by the rebels, who placed here a powerful battery, and taken from them after the final capture of the city. This evening, Colonel Barrow, who commanded the cavalry when Havelock relieved the Residency garrison in September '57, and was shut up with the rest till Sir Colin arrived in No- vember, took us a drive through the town to give us a general notion of the whole scene of these great events and the prin- cipal points connected with them. First, he made us mount to the top of the house, and look down on Lucknow. The view is strikingly beautiful: from a great mass of trees there rise in every direction domes and minarets, mosques and palaces, giving the impression of a really splendid Eastern city. This is a little dispelled when you descend into it, from the fact that the large buildings have in them so much brick and plaster and chunam, and that the style is often bad, a mixture of the French chateau with the mosque of Mohammed Ali at Cairo. The whole splendour of Lucknow is modern : before Warren Hastings' time, Fyzabad was the capital of Oude. Still the mosques and palaces are very large and very numerous, and the whole effect is really fine. We see the city now in its transition state. Enormous spaces are wholly without buildings, long narrow native streets and bazaars have been cleared away, and broad roads are run straight through it. By the side of these, English-built bazaars, in good Oriental style, are rising, which will probably make the future Lucknow far superior to the past. Indeed, I am surprised that Heber says so little about the beauty of the place, so that perhaps in his time the squalid CH. V.] LUCKNOW. 109 naked houses choked up the great public buildings. We passed a night through the many courts of the huge Kaiser Bagh, a great palace as big as Versailles. Just opposite the palace is a small monument surmounted by a cross, marking the spot where Sir Mountstuart Jackson and his fellow-prisoners in the Kaiser Bagh were murdered. Next we passed the ruins of the Eesidency itself; the iron bridge over the Groomty, across which the troops retreated from the disasters at Chinhut, the Muchie Bhawn, the Imambara, all destined to be familiar names in future Indian history. There are now three forts : the principal one is of great size and strength, and will certainly prove a tougher morsel than the Residency, which is itself now protected by huge ramparts, rather different from the narrow ditch and puny parapet which defended it during the siege. Wednesday, November 30. In the morning, S and I, ac- companied and lionized by Colonel Barrow, had a deeply interest- ing walk round the Eesidency. He fully explained to us the scenes of the events. At present, the Bailey guard gate, a tower and fragments of the Residency itself, the shell of the banqueting hall (used as a hospital during the siege), part of Dr. Fayrer's house, and the foundations of Mr. Grubbins', are the chief remains, together with the whole of the Begum Koti, which alone, as a Mahometan building, the mutineers spared after we left the place. Of the church very little more than the foundations is left : the burial ground is full of monuments (including one to Neill), and it is rather sad to see how ugly and tasteless most of them are. None is yet erected to Sir Henry Lawrence. The site of every battery was pointed out, and never was any his- torical scene more completely realised to me before. Saturday, December 3. The greater part of to-day was devoted to the missionaries Menge, Ball, and Storrs. I con- firmed three native Christians, breakfasted, and conversed with two inquirers, likely, I hope, to become Christians, the one a fakir, the other a Persian nobleman, late in the army of the King of Oude. The fakir had first been attracted to Christianity by reading St. Matthew's Grospel, which is inter- esting as showing the effect of Christian morals, or ' doctrine ' in Stanley's sense, and also as refuting the assertion sometimes made that people are only brought over to the truth by feeling 110 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. their need of forgiveness. After this, we visited three mission schools. Sunday, December 4. This evening I preached at a really interesting service. There is no church at the Dilkhusha cantonments, so the men of the Eifle Brigade and the 73rd have built two small chapels for their own use. In the Bines' chapel I preached to about 120 auditors, 110 being soldiers, the rest officers, clergy, and wives. I extemporised on Isaiah v. (first lesson for the morning), and never had a more attentive congregation. The singing was very creditable and promising. We had ' I will arise,' ' Sun of my soul,' the Advent Hymn, sung, and the ' Magnificat ' and ' Nunc Dimittis ' chanted. Everything showed that the men took a thorough interest in the chapel and in the service, and Waterhouse told me that a worthy corporal who is the head of the movement in the Rifles, was greatly excited when told that their work was to be crowned by a special sermon addressed to the men by the Bishop. The chapel has mud walls and a thatched roof; it is supported in the middle by wooden posts, on the sides by carved pillars extracted from the ruins of Lucknow. I hope that these facts, connected with the good going on at Banda, show that a real improvement is taking place in the army. We drank tea with the chaplain and his wife, who are building a bungalow near, and meantime, much to their credit, live in a mere hut with canvas top and sides of reeds, in order to be in the midst of their flock. Tuesday, December 6. We left Lucknow at half-past 8, after a very pleasant and interesting visit. Our last sight was an impressive one, Havelock's grave at the Alumbagh, where we stopped on our way. A large slab, destined, I suppose, to receive a monument, under a mango tree, marks the spot where he lies, and a piece of metal fastened to the tree bears his name. I trust that the tomb to be erected to the gravest and sternest and most puritan of Indian heroes will be simpler and in better taste than the hideous erections which deform the burial-ground of the Residency. We reached Cawnpore about 5, and went to stay with Sir John Inglis, now general of the district. Wednesday, December 7. This house is well placed on a high bank immediately over the Granges, with plenty of sand CH. V.] RELICS OF THE SIEGE OF LUCKNOW. Ill in the middle of the river, and Oude opposite. Just here the station of Cawnpore is less ugly than elsewhere, for the ground is broken and wooded. Burn and I walked this morning to the fatal spot called Suttee Chonder Grhat, where the victims of the Nana's shameless falsehood embarked in the boats, and were massacred by the cowards who had been unable by fair fighting to conquer such a force in such a fortress as Wheeler's intrenchments. A bungalow with a pretty garden stands just above the ghat, and on the right of this garden is the road by which our countrymen came down to the boats from the higher ground above, congratulating each other, as I have been told, on deliverance from the intrenchments, and the approaching comforts of Allahabad. At 4 was a confirmation ; a miser- able contrast to that at Lucknow. There were three candi- dates (one being from Allahabad), and about ten people in church. It is hard to feel enthusiasm or speak with earnest- ness when the rite is so obviously undervalued, and when the chaplain has taken such small pains about it, though doubtless it is a great fault to exert oneself less for these three than for the sixty-eight at Lucknow. There was one set-off against the depressing effects of this indifference, that I felt a real personal interest in , with whom I afterwards talked privately, a conversation which revived the recollections of the private in- terviews which preceded Rugby and Marlborough confirmations, than which no part of the work is more worthy of remembrance. Friday, December 9. Sir John Inglis showed me three interesting relics of the siege ; two letters addressed to him by Outram and Havelock, announcing the one immediate, the other speedy relief. Havelock tells him never to surrender, rather to perish sword in hand. Both are written on small scraps of paper ; the important words in Greek characters ; but as Havelock had forgotten how to make a A, he has written Lucknow Liwz/&>, so like its English appearance, that a sharp native would have read it. Both were brought to him in quills secreted about the persons of the bearers. The third relic was the order book, beginning with Sir Henry Lawrence's orders, and ending with the triumphant acknowledgment by Sir Colin of the glorious defence and ' unparalleled feat of arms ' by which Havelock and Outram had accomplished the relief. It contains Sir Henry's last orders, announcing that ' it 112 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. has pleased Grod that Sir Henry Lawrence should be severely wounded,' and appointing Major Banks, Major Anderson, and Colonel Inglis to the supreme authority in their respective, departments. It contains, too, the coup d'etat by which, on Banks' death, Inglis ordered that ' the office of Chief Com- missioner should remain vacant,' and so overthrew the civil power. The book is so valuable that the Government will not allow Sir John to keep it, but after he has had it copied, the original is to be preserved among the records of British India. Thursday, December 15. At noon to-day we reached Agra. The sight of the city from the opposite side of the river is striking, and to a certain degree imperial, and worthy of Akbar. The white dome of the Taj is conspicuous, and the fort, a long massive gloomy building of red sandstone, frowns grandly over the Jumna. A bridge of boats and an execrable road led us into the main street of the city, through which we drove between native shops till we emerged on an open space, where are the very conspicuous buildings of the Eoman Catholic establishment here, which dates from Akbar's time, and now consists of a Bishop (Dr. Persico, a Neapolitan), eight or nine priests, a convent, and a settlement of native Christians. Friday, December 16. S - and I, and a large party, went to the Taj. I was not in the least disappointed with this wonderful building, nor had I formed before any adequate conception of it. Some places, when I saw them for the first time, as Venice, the Pyramids, and the Colosseum, seemed so familiar to me that I almost felt as if I had seen them before ; others have been absolutely and entirely new, as the basilicas at Eavenna and Eome. The Taj occupies an intermediate position. I knew what sort of a place it would look. I had no notion how graceful it is, how beautiful, how white, how admirably set off and framed by its garden and the adjacent buildings, all parts of the general design. A fine gate of red sandstone leads into a delicious garden, most carefully kept in order by an English gardener, with paved walks and a grand avenue of cypresses with larger trees behind, varied by the red-leafed pointcettia, and by roses and other flowers. At the end of this avenue appears an immense terrace of white marble with a flight of steps in front, and on the terrace is the Taj itself, a very large octagon building of purest white, its uni- CH. V.] THE TOMB OF AKBAK. 113 formity beautifully broken by arches, by fretted work, by wreaths of flowers inlaid and composed of different coloured stones (just like Florentine mosaic and the work of Italian artists), and also by verses from the Koran inlaid with black marble. From the middle of the building rises a large dome, with smaller domes clustering round it, and at each corner of the terrace is a most graceful minaret ; while, as a frame to the picture, there stands on each side a building of red sandstone crowned by a white marble dome. That turned to the west, i.e. to Mecca, is a mosque ; that turned to the east is its jawab (answering or corresponding building). Beneath the Taj are the tombs of Shahjehan and his much loved wife Mumtazi Mahal, of whose name Taj Mahal is said to be a corruption. And above them, under the great dome, are their cenotaphs, adorned with inlaid flowers, composed of blood stone, lapis lazuli, and various agates, and surrounded with a railing of the most delicate open fretwork in white marble, like a honey- comb. Three views of the Taj are specially noteworthy : (1) from the gate, looking up the cypress avenue; (2) from a corner of the terrace near the minaret on the right, where a great expanse of the delicate white marble with its beautiful architecture and workmanship is seen at once ; (3) [not to be attained without much climbing in the dark] from the top of the gate, whence you get an admirable notion of the whole design Taj, garden, trees, and adjacent buildings. The effect of the Taj is certainly different from that of Canterbury Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, although the interior is by no means wanting in impressive solemnity, but for grace and fairy-like beauty I know nothing equal to it. There, indeed, and not in the plaster Husseinabad at Lucknow, the Arabian Nights are realised, unless, indeed, they are realised at Lucknow and idealised in the Taj, which satisfies not so much* one's notion of Haroun Alraschid's abode as of Aladdin's palace. Tuesday, December 20. This evening, S - and I, and some of the party, went to Secundra, three miles out of Agra, to see Akbar's tomb. The great emperor's last resting-place is approached by a lofty Saracenic gate of red sandstone, inlaid with white and coloured marbles, sometimes in geometrical patterns, sometimes in curved lines and rude attempts at flowers, all on a large scale, and wholly different from the I 114 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. delicate Italian inlaying of the Taj. The gate leads into a large garden, abounding in orange trees, on which the golden fruit glowed as at Seville in January 1854, and at the end of the garden is a great palace, also of red sandstone, grotesque rather than beautiful, though with much that is graceful in detail. It rises in four terraces, one above another, and each smaller than its predecessor, is ornamented by numerous small cupolas, which are placed at intervals on these terraces, and certainly look rather unmeaning and useless, except as homes for the countless pretty green parrots which screamed inhar- moniously around us. The highest stage or terrace is of white marble, and is surrounded by a screen of most beautiful open- work, and in the middle, on a platform of marbles of different colours, is the cenotaph of Akbar, purely white, covered with carving (texts from the Koran) and surmounted by the Kalam dan, or writing case, the usual sign of a man's tomb. The real tomb, under which the body actually lies, is in a vault under- neath the building, and is also of white marble, and bears the kalarn dan, but is unadorned with texts. At the other end of the garden, near the great gate, is a screen of red sandstone, elaborately carved with openwork, like the marble screens at the top of the building, a difficult process with so soft a stone, and very beautifully executed. Wednesday, December 21. At 7 A.M., escorted by Dr. Playfair, we explored the fort, externally a vast and very imposing structure of red sandstone, with huge round bastions, serrated battlements, a wide ditch, and magnificent gates of great height inlaid in large patterns. It is the work (1) of Akbar and (2) of Shah Jehan. Inside are several things of great interest. First and foremost is the Moti Musjid (pearl mosque) which, though externally red, like its neighbour buildings, is within nothing but pure white marble. A flight of steps leads into a large quadrangle, surrounded on three sides by cloisters, with a vestibule on the fourth, supported by numerous arches, and containing the steps of the pulpit and the Kibla, turned to Mecca, and therefore to the west. The arches, whether of the cloister or of the vestibule, are all of the indented Saracenic pattern, and the whole is crowned by three domes, and a number of cupolas shaped as at Secundra, and not in my opinion very pretty, having something of a Chinese appearance. With Cii. V.] FORT AT AGRA. 115 this exception, the view of the white quadrangle, with its arches, pillars, domes, and tank for ablutions in the middle, all glittering in the morning sun, was one of really exquisite beauty, unlike the Taj, from the absence of inlaid work, yet closely related to it, facies non omnibus una, Nee di versa tamen, qualis decet esse sorortim. The other sights are different portions of the palaces of the Moguls. The Diwan-i-Amm (hall of public audience) is fitted up as an armoury, but contains the emperor's throne, under a small arcade, approached in front by two flights of steps, and behind from the zenana and private apart- ments, which we explored afterwards. It contains also the gates of Somnath, a sight which I longed to see, as pro- fessing to unite the victories of Mahmoud of Grhazni at one end with the policy of Lord Ellenborough on the other, and in which I had a private interest, since I remember somewhere about 1847 signing and canvassing for a petition to Parliament against the said Ellenborough in the matter of these very gates. They are said to be of sandal wood, but scent, sanctity and sculpture alike have vanished from them ; there are hardly any traces of the ornaments which once covered them, and they are a mere ugly and clumsy pair of doors. I am told that really they are of deodar pine, that the tradition about Somnath is false, and that they are only the purely Mussulman gates of Mahmoud's tomb. The Diwan-i-Khass (private residence) is of white marble inlaid like the Taj, and very pretty and elegant it is. Then there are small white mosques, serving as private chapels to the palace ; oubliettes, descending to the Jumna, for the punishment of faithless queens, and large wells, called bowlies, also reaching to the level of the river, with steps and terraces round them for the ladies to bathe; summer apartments with fountains in them, and the walls covered with pieces of glass, intended to reflect innumerable lamps; screens of beautiful fretted work in white marble ; a large quadrangle surrounded by arcades for exhibiting fights of wild beasts, with an elevated seat for the emperor, and divers other relics and traces of the luxury and splendour of the house of Tamerlane. The last sight was one of the most interesting a court of the palace of Hindu architecture : no arches, but pillars supporting a quasi- i 2 116 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [C-H. V. triangular opening in the wall, the stones projecting one beyond another, and with a kind of boss or stalactite hanging from each ; above these arches, a frieze of birds and other animals ? and the rafters of the vestibule within are wreathed with serpents. Of course, all this representation of living beings is very anti-Mussulman, and three theories have been maintained to account for it : (1.) That the court was built by Akbar, and is an evidence of his heterodoxy. (This is the Archdeacon's view.) (2.) That it was built by Jehanghir, to please one or more Hindu princesses whom he married. (This is Dr. Playfair's, and mainly rests on the traditional native name for it, the Jehan- ghir-i-Mahal.) (3.) That it is a genuine Hindu building, included within the fort by Akbar, and appropriated by Jehanghir as a zenana. (This is Mr, Morgan's.) Between these views I am not Oriental enough to decide, but that Akbar was fond of building in the Hindu style is certain. After a most interesting morning, we got home at half-past 9, and at 11 went to church for the ordination, the preparation for which has occupied much of my time at Agra. And now I will retrace the history, and record for future reference our manner of conducting the preparation and ex- amination of the candidates. There were five candidates for mission and other clerical work. We set them seven papers : (1) A sermon on Eom. v. 10, and (for the three missionaries) an Urdu exposition of the parable of the two sons. (2) Questions on the Old and New Testaments. (3) On the Prayer Book. (4) On the Articles. (5) On evidences. (6) On history. (7) On the particular portions of Scripture enjoined in my paper on ordination. I gave them four extempore addresses or lectures (1) the general spirit in which a Christian minister should act ; (2) details of pastoral work and teaching ; (3) preaching and sermon writing ; (4) a church as a separate society, and specially on the Church of England ; which addresses were always followed by prayer. I had two separate private inter- views with each, viz. one for a viva voce examination, the other for talking about their papers and future ministry. I felt very much the absence of the palace at. Calcutta, with its facilities for friendly intercourse and seeing into character, and Gii. V.] ORDINATION AT AGRA. 117 its chapel to give solemnity to the daily address and prayer. Still we did as well as we could, and tried to supply the absence of more constant hospitality by one dinner-party and evening gathering of all the clergy. With - - I was greatly pleased ; he is devoted to his work and life as a missionary, and says that he now enjoys it so much, and feels so much encouragement, that he should think it a real sorrow to be obliged to give it up ; and the good effects of a real education were seen in the readiness with which, though a regular evangelical, he ad- mitted the advantages of Bishop's College and the excellence of its present head, and was generally fair and candid in his judgment and opinions. I preached the ordination sermon on ' Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them ; ' the congregation was large, and the sing- ing very respectable, the choirs of both the Agra churches being joined for the occasion. May Grod bless the work, and may His Spirit add five faithful and devoted ministers to the clergy of this diocese in those thus ordained, and enable them in their diversity of administrations as missionaries, as pastors to Europeans, or as educators, faithfully to serve the same Lord Jesus Christ, and to bear efficient help in building up His kingdom. Thursday, December 22, was devoted to the missionaries. We breakfasted with Mr. Schneider, and then went to St. John's College, where I examined three classes. The work is decidedly higher than the standard of Jay Narain's ; besides answering their Bible questions as well, they had been reading- parts of an abridged and diluted Gibbon, and knew it very fairly, and moreover they had read and understood two or three books of the 'Excursion.' The girls' school was then examined, and finally I confirmed twenty-two natives in St. John's Church, being welcomed by a peal of bells presented by Mr. Thomason, father of my two pupils, of whom the eldest and best known to me was murdered in the rebellion. I rejoice to think that the Agra mission meets with real encouragement. There have been sixteen baptisms of adults during this year (1859), and Shackell told me a striking story of a durzi (tailor) in a neighbouring village baptized by French, who assembles his family and friends in his house for conversation and prayer, and is gradually influencing them for good in a most remarkable way. 118 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. Christmas Day, 1859, was begun by my baptizing the child of the Eecord Keeper of the Sudder Court. Afterwards, I preached and administered the Communion at St. Paul's,' assisted by two of the clergy, and in the evening I preached at St. George's. Between the two I held a brief Christmas service in one of the cantonment hospitals, and by dint of these three services I was a good deal knocked up. Thus with a Christmas Day spent in work not, I trust, wholly useless, ended our very interesting visit to Agra. Tuesday, December 27. This morning we reached Delhi. The Jumna was again crossed by a bridge of boats. We drove under the grand red walls of the palace, passed out of the city through the Cashmere Gate, so famous in the history of the siege, and entered the compound of the Commissioner who had kindly promised to receive us. In the evening we went to see the palace. Like all the present city of Delhi, it was built by Shahjehan ; indeed, Shahjehanabad was the official name for the town in all royal documents. Its exterior wall, with great bastions and the serrated Mahometan parapet, is, if anything, finer, and certainly higher than the wall of the fort at Agra. The entrance is through a lofty gateway, and through similar gateways we passed to the interior of the palace, which has been greatly injured from its recent con- version into a barrack by our troops, red arcades round the courts whitewashed on sanitary grounds, and some beautiful marble railings wholly removed. Moreover, the exterior arches of the famous Diwan-i-Khass, celebrated in ' Lalla Eookh ' and elsewhere, are bricked up, a great deal of the inlaid work (which is the same as in the Taj) picked out, and the crystal throne packed up, and en route to England, so that we have pretty well completed the work which Nadir Shah began when he plucked away the silver roof. The inscription about the Paradise on earth still remains. The arches here are of marble not quite so white as that of Agra, and the style differs in two respects from the buildings there ; the columns are more solid and massive, and there is a great deal of gilding. The Diwan-i-Amm was filled with soldiers' beds, and white- washed. We saw other very pretty parts of the palace, baths with floors beautifully inlaid (now officers' quarters), and a small Moti Musjid of white marble, with the same differences from CH. V.] DELHI. 119 Agra as I noticed in the Diwan-i-Khass, only here the domes were covered with copper gilt, all of which has been pulled off by natives and prize agents. The great building furnishes altogether a remarkable commentary on fallen grandeur ; and it is striking to look back upon it through the real splendours of Shahjehan and Aurungzib, the violated majesty of their successors, the desolation caused by Nadir Shah, and the follies of the later protected Moguls, down to the imbecility or wickedness (whichever it was) of Shah Bahadoor, the present exile of Eangoon, and the murderous crimes which brought to a richly merited end even the nominal rule of Tamerlane's house. Wednesday, December 28. We drove out this morning on the now famous heights, behind which our small besieging force was encamped. They begin from the Jumna, and then stretching away from Delhi, gradually rise into the Arivalli hills in Mewar and Jodpur, and reach the height of 5,000 feet. There they are comparatively insignificant, though they are sufficient to give diversity to the wide plain, and to have been the means of the capture of Delhi. It was really strange, as we stood on them and looked over the boundless expanse of plain on the one side, and the walled and battlemented city on the other, to remember that both were in possession of the enemy, and yet that they could not prevent a handful of Englishmen from occupying these heights, and so taking the town. Surely, the fact is a proof that at present the Hindus are not fit to be an independent nation. The most interesting point is the Flagstaff tower where the fugitives spent the whole of the weary May 11, while they saw the townspeople flinging the bodies of their friends and relations into the ditch below, and whence they fled at night to Kurnaal. Several other places were shown us by Mr. Brandreth as having been the scenes of hard fighting, and at a place called the Sammi house the heights dip down to the plain, and round this point the mutineers used to creep through the rocks and shrubs with which the heights abound, and appear suddenly in our camp. As we looked over Delhi we could see the bridge of boats, across which fresh bodies of auxiliaries were frequently pouring into the city ; the arrival of any new force being always a warning to the English to expect a fresh assault. To call this the siege of Delhi is almost a misnomer; we were as much 120 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. V. besieged as besiegers : it was an obstinate occupation of the heights on one side of Delhi, ending by a successful assault through the breach by the Cashmere Grate. In the evening we saw the last scene of this great drama, for we visited the tomb of Humayun, Akbar's father, the asylum in which the king and princes took refuge when the city was stormed. The tomb itself is a large building of red stone in the style with which we are now familiar, and with a very fine and spacious terrace. Near it live two princes of the royal family, distant cousins of Shah Bahadoor, who came out from their retreat to see Mr. Brandreth. One of them was the very person who took to the king the message from Hodson that, if he would surrender, his life should be spared, and he showed us the exact spot in one of the recesses of the octagon where the old man was lying on a bed, and received the promise. This prince has a weak but not unpleasing face, and was dressed in a long black gown, and glittering turban : in his hand was a rosary of black beads, as he had just been worshipping at the tomb of Nizam-ud-din, a Mussulman saint, which we also visited, and where there is abundance of beautiful work in white marble, and also a mosque of the time of the Toghlak kings, older than any which we have yet seen, and very grand and impressive in its arches and other features. The domes are low and flat. The whole district on this side of Delhi is covered with the ruins of former capitals ; with mosques, tombs, serais, houses, and a large fort bearing considerable traces of former grandeur. The comparison is obvious with the environs of Cairo. To-day, Ramchandra called, the native Christian who, having been baptized through the influence of Mr. Jennings, narrowly escaped death during the mutiny, but is now established as master of the Government school here, and is the spiritual father of Tara Chand and other converts. He is an able mathematician, and his book on Maxima and Minima has been published with a preface by De Morgan. He was as intelligent and pleasant in conversation as - - of Benares, and gave a different reason for the slow progress of conversion. This arises, he says, partly from man's natural indisposition to a purely spiritual religion, and partly because the Hindus are so accustomed in their own religion and in Mahometanism to a variety of forms of faith, that the notion is prevalent among CH. V.] THE KUTB MIXAK. 121 them that every religion contains some portion of truth, each being suited for some particular race or nation. Thursday ', December 29. This morning we started betimes on a pilgrimage to the famous Kutb. This is a magnificent column about ten miles from Delhi, about 250 feet high, of red sandstone, tapering from the base to the summit, and grooved alternately in cylinders and solid angles. It is beauti- fully carved and ornamented, and its height is broken by very graceful galleries projecting from it. When I stood under it, and looked up at it, I thought its effect exceedingly grand, but from a distance, where the details cannot be seen, it looks too much like a gigantic factory chimney. The neighbourhood of the Kutb is also full of interest. Close to it is a large Jaina temple or palace, forming a cloister, with straight pillars elaborately carved in flowers, fantastic devices, and small images, the last carefully mutilated or knocked off. Contiguous to this temple are remains of purely Mahometan architecture, on a very grand scale, with fine Ofothic arches, only terminating in a cusp instead of a point. There is also the commencement of another Kutb. Altogether, it seems as if the Mahometans had appro- priated the Jaina building, turned it into the beginning of a mosque, completed it in their own way, and had intended to add two enormous minars, or pillars of Victory, one of which is this crumbling fragment, the other the existing Kutb. The in- scription on it attributes it to Shems-ed-din or Altameh, second of the Slave Kings, and contemporary of Chenghiz Khan, (A.D. 1220), son-in-law and successor to Kutb-ed-Din (polestar of religion) ; but the mosque I believe is a little older, as it seems from an inscription to date from the time of Shahab-u-din- Grhni (1200), who immediately preceded the Slave dynasty. The Kutb and its accessories form the grandest of Delhi sights. When we got back to Delhi, we found the Gr.-Gr. and his immense cortege of human beings, horses, oxen, camels, and elephants, duly lodged in camp. December 30 and 31 were spent by me chiefly in bed. The weather is very cold, and I got a chill at the Kutb, and was thoroughly to wrongs. On Saturday afternoon I got up, and received a visit from Lord Clyde, a fine courteous old Scotch gentleman, simple and straightforward, deprecating the Chinese War, though admitting 122 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. V. that as things are now it is unavoidable, and earnestly hoping that there would be no attempt at territorial possession. Sir William Mansfield also called. Neither on Sunday, January 1, 1860, was I able to begin the new year by a sermon or by receiving Christ's Holy Communion. May He by His Spirit fulfil to me the Church's promise, that I may c eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to my soul's health, though I do not receive the Sacrament with my mouth,' and grant that the year 1860 may be to me and mine a year of a living and growing Communion with Him. Monday r , Jan. 2, 1860. I got comfortable sleep last night, and awoke much better. In the afternoon I managed to con- firm ten natives, in the curious church which Colonel Skinner built, an Italian edifice surmounted by a dome, topped by a ball and cross, which were riddled with shot during the mutiny, but not cast down, and which still remain an emblem of Christianity and of the futile attack upon it. Mr. Woodington, the late chaplain, has been restoring and decorating the church, perhaps as well as such a building will permit, and desires to adorn it still further, by giving it the interest of painted win- dows, in memory of Mr. Jennings, and other victims of the mutiny.- Many persons object to painted windows in Indian churches when they represent living beings, as giving Maho- metans a notion that Christianity is an idolatrous religion, and would tolerate nothing more than mere kaleidoscope glass, as in Bishop's College chapel and the transepts of the cathedral. I think that there is something in the objection in the case of single figures, and that if a Mussulman saw a large east window filled with separate representations of the Apostles, he might think that the saints were objects of our worship. But I do not see how he could suspect us of worshipping a group, such as that which Bishop Wilson allowed to be placed in the east window of the cathedral ; and, on the other hand, it is important that Christianity should vindicate to itself something more of out- ward beauty and majesty than it has hitherto admitted in India. Indeed, since the mutiny, the desire for memorials in churches is so general, that to refuse windows will only be to multiply those hideous tablets which deface our walls. The mission- aries at Agra assure me that they have heard from no natives any observations on the painted windows in St. Paul's Church Cii. V.] PUX1SI1MEXT OF DELHI. 123 there, where groups are represented. On these grounds I have consented to the project. Tuesday, January 3. We went out this morning through the Chandni Chouk, said to be the finest native street in India : but not so in my opinion, for it has no merit but width, being devoid of picturesque architecture. Thence we went to the Jumma Musjid, a very grand mosque indeed : raised on a terrace approached by four noble flights of steps, which lead into a spacious courtyard. Three sides of this are surrounded by a most graceful open cloister, the fourth is occupied by the mosque, surmounted by three white marble cupolas. The whole building is of red sandstone, relieved by white marbles. From the roof is a fine view of Delhi, the palace being the most con- spicuous and imposing object ; but the whole city and its en- virons are eminently picturesque. No prayers are now offered in the mosque, but I think that in justice it should be restored to the Mahometans. It was theirs, built by an emperor of their faith, and endowed with their property. The only excuse for making it a college or a Christian cathedral (to neither of which purposes it could be appropriated without utterly spoiling it) is that the Delhi Mussulmen deserve a merited punishment for their murderous rebellion. But have they not had enough in the following? (1) The shadow of the house of Timour blotted out ; (2) All their personal property confiscated by prize agents; (3) Exclusion from the city for two years; (4) Necessity of building fresh houses outside the walls ; (5) Diminution of their number by at least one third ; (6) De- struction of many of their houses, and serious injury to all. Justice is surely satisfied, and may now permit or rather require the restoration of the Musjid. I had to-day another conversation with Ramchandra. He told me that his non-Christian friends (especially the Hindus) are very kind and civil to him, ask him to their houses, and even to food apart from themselves. The Mahometans occasion- ally engage with him in argument ; their reasons against Christianity being drawn from discrepancies in Scripture, various readings, uncertainty whether the whole Pentateuch was written by Moses, &c. I told him that I could not think that such questions could touch the foundation of any devout acceptance of the Gospel, and that I should have expected, if they had 124 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. V. spoken of the 0. T., they would have argued from certain moral difficulties, such as the extermination of the Canaanites. But this, he answered, is too much in accordance with their own principles to allow them to object to it, though they always quote it, if accused of propagating Mahometanism by the sword. The cases of course are not inpari materie ; but how strange that they should reply by an appeal to Judaism, when Christ expressly disallowed such appeal, and pointed out the new spirit of the Gospel, when He rebuked the Apostles for wishing to imitate Elijah's punishment on Ahaziah's messengers ! Ramchandra himself was reclaimed from a philosophical Deism by reading the New Testament and seeing the devout worship of educated Englishmen a striking instance of the concurrent evidence of the Grospel and the Church, Christianity and Christendom. Roorkee, January 10. To-day I had my first view of the Himalayas. Three ranges are distinctly visible : (1) the low outwork of the Sewallic range ; (2) the blue hills of Mussoorie ; (3) the magnificent snowy mountains standing up against the sky like a gigantic wall with white battlements. To-day, too, I casually took up an * Evening Mail,' and there, to my amazement and delight, read the news that not only Ilbert, but Ilbert and Papillon, the two clever little boys of my reign at Marlborough, are elected together Balliol Scholars. The triumph has been long in coming, but it has come at last in unexpected splendour. Wednesday, January 18. We arrived early this morning at Umballa, and found that the Governor-General cum suis was also in the station. This I regret, as he throws everything into confusion, and the temporal certainly overpowers the spiritual . when our visits clash. Nevertheless, I went to the camp to write down my name, and came across a number of gorgeous processions of native rajahs with elephants, Sikh soldiers, silver howdahs, and quantities of gold brocade all going to pay their respects. Thursday, January 19. To-day we went to the Grovernor- Greneral's durbar. Both outside and inside the tent the scene was brilliant, and thoroughly Oriental. Outside stood the ele- phants which had borne the Sikh potentates, the splendid howdahs covered with dome-shaped canopies ; and as a contrast a great array of British soldiers were drawn up, including the CH. V.] A DURBAR. 125 kilted 93rd Highlanders. Inside, the Europeans all in full dress were seated on the left of the throne, the natives in every variety of costume on the right. The three principal persons on this side were the rajahs of Patiala, Jhind, and Naba, Sikhs of the Phulkian house, and lords of considerable terri- tory. All had done good service in the rebellion, especially the Jhindwala, who personally headed his troops at Delhi, and who is a fine-looking old man with a grey beard worthy of a Greek philosopher or mediaeval prelate. Besides these were a num- ber of Sirdars, Sikh chiefs formerly possessing some indepen- dent authority, of which all but six or seven have been deprived by our Government, so that they are now merely large landed pro- prietors. Most of these were superbly dressed in rich brocades, and sometimes in cloth of gold, many with jewels round their necks and arms, some with earrings. The dresses were generally very handsome and effective except the leg arrangements. All the natives have wretchedly thin legs, arising, as Lord Clyde told me, from sitting on their hams, so that their muscles never develop ; and this defect they make more prominent by wearing tight trousers of the gaudiest colours, sometimes made out of Cashmere shawls, while their shoeless feet are clothed in blue, red, green, or particoloured stockings. With the magnificence of the Sikh dresses was strongly contrasted the dark, simple attire of certain Affghan princes, sons and grandsons of Shah Soojah, whom we absurdly placed on the throne of Cabul. The Viceroy himself was on a chair of scarlet and gold, beneath which was spread a cloth of gold brocade, and chairs on the same cloth were placed for Lord Clyde and myself, and for the rajahs of Patiala and Jhind. The natives were presented in turn, each bringing a nuzzur of gold mohurs, which were touched by Lord Canning, and then seized by a Bengali official, and put into the treasury. Then the servants brought in a number of trays covered with shawls, plate, and jewels for Patiala, round whose neck the Governor-General tied a necklace, and then addressed him in a complimentary speech, conferring on him an accession of territory, the right of adoption, &c. This was translated by Beadon, and replied to by the rajah, who attributed all his services to the advice of Sir John Lawrence and Mr. Barnes, the commissioner of Umballa. A khilat was then given to his son, a graceful little boy, who was 126 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii. V. exhorted to learn English, and afterwards to Jhind and Naba, who were both highly commended. Khilats were distributed more rapidly among the rest, and then, after pawn had been handed round, ' (rod save the Queen ' was played, and we dis- persed. Friday, Jawuai*y 20. To-day I visited the school of the 27th Eegiment, with which I was much pleased. The master seemed sensible, and the children answered well. Then I went to the hospital of the same regiment, a new, handsome, and convenient building, and held as usual a short service with the convalescents. In the evening we dined in camp, where I had much pleasant talk during dinner with Lady Canning, and after dinner with his Excellency. It seems that the question of precedence between the rajahs of Jhind and Naba had caused the greatest difficulty, and that when at last it was decided in favour of Jhind, Naba was plunged into such profound afflic- tion that for some days he had refused to taste food. Lord Canning is plainly anxious to establish or restore in India something of a territorial aristocracy : in Oude this is certainly possible, in the Punjab he hopes so, but in the north-west pro- vinces he has asked in every district whether there are any natives influential enough to be entrusted with magisterial powers; but the answer has universally been, No there is nothing really between the Grovernment and the village com- munities. The policy has hitherto been to lop off the heads of the tallest poppies, to get rid of those who might possibly recalcitrate against our rule ; but now it is discovered that those who might recalcitrate might also be very useful. Wednesday, Januai^y 30. AVe started in doolies, and crossed the Sutlej, now broken into three streams with long beds of sand (of course, covered with water in the rains) between them, and so entered the Punjab. About eight miles from the river is an old walled city named Kussoor, where one uncovenanted civilian drags on a monotonous and certainly unenviable exist- ence. He asked me to come in and see his house (an old Mahometan tomb), and I was pleased to find in this solitary place a man really anxious for the good of the people around him, to whom he reads portions of the New Testament in their own language. He asked me to put him in the way of getting some tracts and other books which mio-lit instruct the Sikhs of Cu. V.] LAHORE. 127 his district, who, he says, are quite ready to listen to Christian doctrine, and generally intelligent and well conducted. At Loodiana we were met by two carriages, one drawn by two mules, the other by four camels, kindly sent out to meet us by Mr. Eoberts, the financial commissioner of the Punjab, together with tea and ample refreshments. A repast was spread for us under the walls of a large serai, after which we entered the carriages and reached Lahore late at night. Tuesday r , January 31. Lahore, in the popular acceptation of the term, now consists of three parts: (1) Anarkulli, the civil station, said to be called after a slave girl, an inmate of the harem of a Mogul emperor ; (2) the native city of Lahore ; (3) Meean Meer, the military station, five miles from Anar- kulli. We drove out in the evening round the actual Lahore, which is surrounded by a brick wall with bastions at intervals, built by Runjeet Singh, and surmounted by a white coping by the British Government. As there are no houses or buildings near the wall, and a road planted with trees encircles it, the city with its cupolas and minarets rising above the wall is very picturesque. The country, desolate till within a short distance of Lahore, becomes rich and fertile as it approaches the Ravee, and there are fine trees outside the walls, including some very beautiful groups of palm trees. Thursday, February 2. Before breakfast we drove across the Eavee, which with the trees on its banks looked most bright and pleasant in the morning sunlight. On its right bank is the village of Shadrah, and here is a great imperial Serai, the place where the Emperor would assemble his camp when marching from Lahore, and where also travellers might sleep in one of the stalls of a kind of cloister which surrounds it, and picket their horses in the courtyard. Through this Serai we passed into the garden which surrounds Jehanghir's tomb ; for here the fourth of the Moguls, who died on his way to Kashmir, was brought for burial. So now I am getting to know in many cases to have seen the places of interment of the six great emperors of the house of Timour : Baber at Cabul ; Huma- yun at Delhi ; Akbar at Secundra, near Agra ; Jehanghir at Shadrah, near Lahore ; Shah Jehan in the Taj at Agra ; Aurung- zib at Aurungabad. This tomb of Jehanghir is a large square building with marble floors and open screen work like that at 128 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. V. Agra and Delhi, and the actual grave, as usual, in the centre. There are four minarets, one at each corner, of various coloured marbles, chiefly shades of yellow, and galleries at intervals. x There is no cupola in the middle ; and the whole, though very grand and striking in design, has suffered in detail from the mutilations of the Sikhs, who have despoiled it, like the sum- mer houses of Shalimar, to enrich Amritsur. Temple, Sloggett, and both the Eobertses accompanied us. I am much pleased with the pains and enthusiasm which Temple shows about keeping up the ancient monuments of India, not only for their own sake, for art's and history's sake, and for the natives' sake, but even for the good of our countrymen, to prevent them from going through the land from Dan to Beersheba and saying all is barren, declaring India 'a horrid country where there is nothing to see,' and sinking into indolence, discontent, and apathy. In the evening I went to service and preached in Anarkulli's tomb, which now, surmounted by a large cross thirteen feet high, very neatly fitted up, and purified from Mussulman worship by the consecration of the Bishop of Madras in 1857, has become St. James's Church, the authorised place for the meeting of the Christian congregation in the civil station at Lahore. Friday, January 3. In the afternoon S. and I drove to Meean Meer, lunched with Murray, and then visited the hos- pital of the 5 1 st, where I held a short service, and visited sepa- rately a soldier who was dying of aneurism. Then we went to church, where Murray read prayers and I preached with especial reference to the first communion of the newly confirmed, adapt- ing my sermon more especially to soldiers. What a comfort it is that I can extemporise with some fluency ! I should be sorry so to use the power as to get careless or lazy about writing sermons, but the ability to do it seems absolutely necessary to my present office, and is one of the many good things which I learned at Marlborough, where it was necessary sometimes to harangue the school at a moment's notice, especially in the early days when some of them had murdered a dog. Saturday, February 4. I breakfasted with Sloggett to meet the Amritsur missionaries, and also the American Presbyterian missionaries of Lahore, and the Presbyterian chaplain of the CH. V.] TOMB OF RUNJEET SINGH. 129 Highland regiment at Meean Meer. After breakfast we went to the American school in the city of Lahore, which numbers about 320 boys. I examined the classes, each of which is heard in a separate room a great advantage. The school is a good one, but not better than some belonging to our own Church which I have visited, and not so good as the Church Missionary College at Agra. In the evening we were conducted through the city of Lahore in grand style. Three elephants, with buggies and carriages, were retained for the party, while sowars preceded and followed the cortege. We drove to the city gate, and then mounted our elephants. The streets are as usual nar- row, with a few pretty balconies and pieces of carving ; but the important sights are five, and are soon seen. The first is the Wuzeeri mosque, wholly different in style from any I have yet seen, being altogether inlaid with a sort of porcelain tile of various colours, yellow, blue, green, red, in patterns of flowers, so that minarets and mosque alike are a perfect blaze of colour. The next is the Padshahi mosque, I believe of the same date as the other (being either wholly built or completed by Aurungzib), but of a graver and simpler character ; not unlike the Jumma Musjidat Delhi, of red sandstone with white domes. The third is the fort, containing the palace of the Mogful Emperors, afterwards appropriated by Runjeet Singh, with some beautiful white marble summer houses in the garden, and a very fine sunset view from one of the towers, including the city of Lahore, the Ravee and its green banks, and the desolate country beyond. The fourth is the tomb of Runjeet Singh, a white building surmounted by a dome, under which lie literally the ashes of the great Sikh Rajah ; for as Sikhism is a mixture of Islam and Hinduism, so his body was burnt and half the ashes thrown into the Granges, Hindu fashion, while the other half, according to Mahometan practice, were buried under this tomb. But instead of the oblong sarcophagus which marks the resting-place of a Mussulman, the ashes of Runjeet Singh are enclosed in a white marble globe. Around this are the frightful memorials of a horrible superstition. Eleven smaller globes encircle the great one, containing the dust of eleven women four Ranees and seven slave-girls who were burnt as suttees with the body of the Rajah. Surely, surely it is not for nothing that Grod has delivered India into the hands of a civilised and Christian K 130 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. V. nation ! In a small chapel near the tomb is an idol represent- ing Durga. I thought that the Sikhs were monotheists, and had renounced idolatry as well as caste. I expressed to some* of the natives at the tomb my surprise at seeing this image. They said that Nanuk and his eight successors had forbidden images, but that they were permitted by Grovind, their last guru or teacher. These Sikhs are fine-looking men, with their hair, which they are never permitted to cut, tied up behind. They are also forbidden to smoke tobacco, and they have even a greater horror of eating beef than the Hindus. Besides these sights, I was taken to call on a great Sikh potentate, Eajah Tejah Singh, who had been general of Eunjeet's army, and had fought against us in the Sutlej campaign, but is now a loyal and contented subject of Victoria. Here, under a canopy at one end of the court-yard, were assembled a great number of Sikh and Mussulman chiefs in very gorgeous dresses, and among them several boys covered with pearls and emeralds. Each was presented to me in turn by Temple, and the boys, in answer to enquiries about their schooling, recited passages from the Grulistan. One man attired in a particoloured coat of patchwork was said to be a disciple of Kubeer, a reformer who preceded Nanuk. I see from Cunningham's ' History of the Sikhs ' that the assertion of the worshippers at Runjeet Singh's tomb, that Grovind allowed idolatry, is directly contradicted by some passages from his addition to the sacred books of the Sikhs, the Duswen Padshah ka G'runth (Book of the Tenth King, or Sovereign Pontiff), the title which he assumed as the tenth guru in succession from Nanuk : e.g. : Grod is worshipped, that by worship salvation may be attained : Fall at the feet of Grod : in senseless stone Grod is not. Either therefore he was inconsistent, or the opinion of Thorn- ton that the idol was put up as a mere ornament is to be ac- cepted. There is, however, plenty in Grovind's Grrunth about the incarnations of Vishnu, and other tales, barely consistent with monotheism. Friday, February 11. About 2 A.M. we found ourselves in the wild, rugged Bakreala pass, and were awakened by being carried up and down steep inclines, sometimes with our feet CH. V.] ATTOCK. 131 elevated high above, and sometimes depressed far below our heads. Finally a steep hill took us into Eawul Pindi, a large station, with church, barracks, hospitals, and bungalows, over- hung by a finely broken chain of mountains. Saturday r , February 12. This evening I held a service in the hospital of the 81st, and afterwards went to see the married barracks, which are very airy and comfortable, and each married pair have two good rooms allotted to them. February 13. At Hussein Abdal, about twenty-eight miles from Rawul Pindi, the scenery was particularly wild, and a snowy peak before us remarkably grand. We had a frugal repast here, and started again at 5 P.M. The scene as we departed was striking. On the brown plain encircled by mountains were gathered numbers of wild-looking figures, Affghans, and Hindus, and mounted sowars ; while horses were picketed and tents pitched in various places ; a great Cabul sheep, with thick fleece, black and white face, and long fat tail, was browsing on the stunted grass, camels were ruminating, and a monkey was careering up and down a ladder. So we started, were borne across two wide nullahs (brooks), and on Tuesday, February 14, at 1 A.M., heard the roaring of the Indus, beyond which no Hindu ought to pass. Soon after we were deposited at the dak bungalow at Attock, and slept profoundly from two to seven. Attock, on the east bank of the Indus, just at its junction with the Cabul river, here by the natives called the Vallunda, is a most striking and picturesque place. The two rivers meet in a wide pebbly waste, covered, I suppose, with water during the rains, and then the Indus, thus reinforced, flows at a rapid pace, forming white crested waves, under the bridge of boats which now connects the lands of Hindus and AfFghans. On a high rock on the Hindu side is a large fort built by Akbar to defend his Indian empire, with yellow crenellated walls and bastions, and fortifications running far up the hill, now slightly altered and adapted to the use of English soldiers, but retain- ing all its old Mahometan features. Fine mountains overhang the fort, and the Indus, having rushed under the bridge, winds beneath rocks on either side, and at last seems to lose itself in a mountain gorge which closes in the picture. We are now at the entrance to Hindustan trodden by Alexander, and by the Arab and Tartar invaders. We can appreciate the insufficiency of K 2 132 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. V. a river frontier to a great empire, and the necessity of extending the boundary of India to a mountain chain. We had this morning a visit from Tuting, one of the Peshawur Church v missionaries, who has come to Attock to look after some of the 24th Punjab Infantry, who have been baptised, and are now preparing for confirmation against my return. After arranging with him the time for this, we started again, crossed the river, and proceeded on our way to Nowshehra. The country soon ceased to be picturesque : we were on a wide, desolate, dusty plain, bordered by low hills. Nowshehra itself is the most unhappy looking of stations. Two years ago a tremendous inundation of the Cabul river swept away all its bungalows, so that now we passed by the gates of compounds with the barest fragments of houses on the river bank. The flood which desolated the place on this last occasion, which has more than once suffered from this calamity, is said to have been caused by the fact that the tributaries of the Indus, high up in the hills, were swollen by tremendous rains and melted snow ; that the volume of water thus poured into the Indus was so enormous, and flowed down with such fearful rapidity, that the stream actually forced back the Cabul river at Attock, sent boats which were descending it violently upwards, and over- whelmed Nowshehra. February 15. Still doolie travel to a little place called Thyroo. The Thannadar and his numerous attendants came out and prostrated themselves with salaams, conducted us to the Thanna (policeman's house), presented us with tea and fruits from Cabul, and in due time transferred us to the two carriages which Sir Sydney Cotton had sent to bring us into Peshawur. We crossed a little river called the Barra, and after a rapid drive through a country still green and flourishing (though many of the trees, as throughout the Punjab, are deciduous, and now therefore leafless) we beheld before us the frontier town of British India, and of the diocese of Calcutta. The walls are of mud, and so is a very large fort, built by the Sikhs, with enormous round towers. Here an escort of irregular cavalry were sent out to meet us in most picturesque scarlet dresses ; the two chaplains also came out ; so that we entered the General Sahib's compound in great state. Here we found the General, my father's first cousin (whom I suppose that I CH. V.] ORDINATION AT PESHAWUR. 133 never saw certainly never since my childhood), his son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren ; so that we are eight Cottons in all. Thursday r , February 16. I began examining Mr. McCarthy, one of the Church Missionary Society's clergy, for priest's orders. Afterwards there was such a flood of visitors called that we never left the drawing room ; for whenever we thought that there was an intermission, ' the cry was still, They come ! ' as it was in Macbeth's case. The deluge even overflowed tiffin time, and did not finally subside till three o'clock. Saturday, February 18. This morning I consecrated the new church, which is still unfinished ; but the consecration, requested by Sir K. Montgomery and the inhabitants of Peshawur, was justified by the length of time which elapses between two visitations of this extremity of India. In the afternoon we went to a grand military spectacle : 5,500 men, infantry, cavalry, foot and horse artillery, were paraded before the Greneral on the plain, with three capital regimental bands. The sight was very fine. All the native troops are in pictu- resque and appropriate dresses, except indeed some old Sepoys, who did not mutiny, and who still wear the old tight European uniform, in which they look so miserable. The quick march is a most exciting proceeding, especially when the artillery dashes along ; and the magnificent background of mountains, one ridge behind another, and frequent snowy peaks rising above all, made a grand completion to the scene. The General delights in his profession, is thought a great bore by his officers from the frequency of his parades and military displays, and has even got the nickname of Grun Cotton, but is admitted to be a first- rate teacher of the art of war, and to terrify Afridis, Eusofzeis, Affghans, and all other dwellers in the mountains by the manoeuvres and admirable condition of the frontier army thus constantly displayed before them. Sunday, February 19. If our Affghan neighbours are kept in check by Sir Sydney's warlike measures, I trust that this day's ceremony may also have influence on them in a different way. I ordained M'Carthy at the 1 1 o' clock service, assisted by the two chaplains, Burn and Mr. Clark, the senior missionary. It was a solemn thing thus to devote a man to Christ's service and ministry on the very borders of the fiercest Asiatic fanati- 134 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. cism, and I believe that McCarthy is a man who is likely to pursue his work in the spirit of power, and love, and soberness, for I thought that he showed ability in his examination, his conversation proved that he was ready and desirous to improve his knowledge by extending his reading, and every one here speaks of his untiring devotion to the school and other labours of the mission. May Crop's blessing be with him for Christ's sake. Monday, February 20. We made to-day a highly interest- ing expedition. We drove out a few miles beyond cantonments, and then proceeded, S - and I on an elephant, the General, the a-ayjui. and TTVSV/JL. and others on horseback, to the fort of Jumrood, the very extremity of English dominion, the frontier of civilisation, the mouth of the fatal Khyber Pass. We had a very strong escort, all armed ; for though the border tribes are much better than they were, yet it is not safe to tempt them by going undefended, as. the tragedy of Captain Mecham shows. The plain, which reaches to the foot of the mountain, is of very great extent, stony, greenish, treeless, with low bushes growing over it. For some time we were struck by its remarkable stillness and solitude, but as we approached Jumrood we saw sheep grazing, signs of a neighbouring village. The fort is a ruin, built on the top and up the sides of an isolated hill. It was most picturesque to see our variously clad escort scarlet tunics, yellow cloaks, blue turbans winding slowly with their horses up the steep path in single file, our elephant bringing up the rear. From the top is a grand mountain view : the Khyber was just before us, we could trace the winding paths leading up to it, and we could see the tops of the hills bound- ing the narrow gorge where Sale and his men perished. We also saw a native village consisting entirely of caves hollowed in the hill side, and guarded by small towers from the depre- dations of their neighbours. The tribe who live in these caves are called Kookheekheyl. A party of them came down to see us, wearing sheepskin cloaks and sandals, each man with a matchlock, and generally with a pair of enormous pistols in his belt, and even boys armed with long knives. They seem to have been reduced to something like order, not only by the vigorous measures taken and punishments inflicted when any outrage occurs, but by their rinding that the English are good Cii. V.] SCHOOL WORK. 135 customers, and that Pesliawur opens a market to the produce of Afghanistan and Bokhara. The Khyber mountains do not rise above 4,000 feet from the plain of Peshawur (about 5,000 from the sea), but beyond them rise snowy peaks of much greater height. Ash Wednesday, February 22. After breakfast I visited the Artillery Hospital, and held a short service as usual. Thence to church, where about 30 people were assembled, and where one of the chaplains preached. In the afternoon we went to the top of the Residency to see the entry of the Viceroy, and a picturesque sight it was : a long street of soldiers, through which drove the General's two carriages- and-four with Lord Canning, Lord Clyde, and a small allow- ance of aides-de-camp and secretaries, an elephant, a large and brilliant escort, and a great cortege of natives in dresses of various colours, some wearing shields studded with stars sur- rounding a crescent. In the evening there was a party at the Commissioner's to meet his Excellency, who has been drawn from Lahore by relays of camels. On one occasion three of the four animals lay down in a river, and generally they were so restive and unruly that the carriage only just stood the work which it had to endure. Thursday ', February 23, was chiefly devoted to schools and hospital work. Corbyn has with laudable zeal started a station school for the children of clerks and others ; he gets ladies to teach, but they can only come from 7.30 to 9 A.M. three days a week. The institution is most valuable as assert- ing a principle and making a beginning, but of course such machinery cannot give a real education, and I trust that at Simla I may devise some proposal for the benefit of this class of children in our great cities. I also saw the Artillery School, where both children and men were at work, and the hospital of the 7th Fusiliers, in which, forty-six years ago, my father was a captain, and my godfather commanding officer. Saturday^ February 25. We left Peshawur to-day after a most pleasant and interesting visit. We had a most kind and cousinly reception into a pleasant family party ; we saw in the General an embodiment of vigorous action and military discipline ; we much approved the Christian devotion and real piety of the clergy, who all seemed to be hard at work and 136 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii V. doing their very best. Many of the lay folk too deserve all approbation, and I was pleased to see again my old Rugby friend, , whom I tried to deter some twenty years ago from going- out to India, telling him that he was too good to run the risk of being devoured by a tiger, not foreseeing that I should one day share his perils. We reached Attock at 8.30 P.M., and so passed again from Affghanistan into India. Rawul Pindi, Sunday, March 4. A salute this morning at 7.30 announced the departure of the Viceregal party. They are to travel seventy miles to-day, on their way to Sealkote. I am not given to extreme Sabbatical views, that is to say, I think that many people use language about the Sabbath (a word never applied in the New Testament to the Lord's Day) quite inconsistent with Christian liberty, and with the express words of St. Paul. But believing that the institution of a day of rest is among the greatest blessings which God has given us, and is one of the chief outward signs of our national Chris- tianity, I deeply regret this continual disregard of it by the person bearing chief authority of the country, and whom on many grounds I respect and esteem. Sealkote, Saturday, March 10. Went in the morning to the hospital of the 52nd, and of the Artillery, and also to the female hospital, and held a service in the first. In the even- ing I went with Sir Robert Montgomery to call on the Maharajah, and saw a great deal of barbaric splendour in his camp. The floor of the durbar tent was covered with Cashmir shawls ; the purdahs were all Cashmir shawls ; we entered it under a canopy consisting of one large Cashmir shawl. The troops were ranged round and lined the approach to the tent ; some in chain armour, some from the borders of Thibet, with strange pointed helmets, many with wonderful daggers grasped by a two-pronged handle. As we came up the Rajah's band played ' Grod save the Queen ' in most inharmonious style, and with extraordinary rapidity, the amusing thing being that the perpetrators of this detestable discord, the worst that I have heard since the shrieks at Meean Meer Church, say that the English excel the Cashmiris in everything except music. The Maharajah met us near the entrance of his camp in an old family coach drawn by four mules ; he then got out and walked to the tent holding the Lieutenant-Governor's hand, CH. V.] AMERICAN MISSIONS. 137 while his son, the heir apparent, a little fellow about seven years old, took mine and led me up to a smart gilt chair. The Maharajah, son and successor of Grholab Sing, is a young man, very dark, with moustaches twisted into points and turned up in the air, in an exaggeration of Louis Napoleon's style : he is a Eajput, and in religion a strict Hindu ; his tunic was white and gold ; his trousers red, with yellow spots ; his turban white, green, and gold ; and round his neck were many rows of large pearls and emeralds. His manners I thought awkward, and his gait slouching, like all these native princes that I have seen except the Rajah of Jheend. He occupied a chair oppo- site the entrance of the tent with sundry ministers and attend- ants behind him, to whom he kept turning round awkwardly and asking questions of them in an undignified manner. In India I see no difference between the manners of a king and a khidmatgar indeed I consider those of the latter superior. The little boy, my companion, spoke some English, and informed me that he was quite well, and that there were nine parts of speech. He led me back to the carriage, his father, as before, taking the Lieutenant-Grovernor, and so amidst fresh clanging of ' Grod save the Queen,' this time accompanied by a salute, we departed. Monday, March 12. Certain American missionaries came to breakfast. They do not belong to the same body which sent out Morrison and his Lahore brethren, but to the ' United Pres- byterians,' a sect which seem to show their own union by a rigid and almost Papistical exclusion of all other Christians, for they will not receive the communion with any persons who are not formally and directly members of their own body ; a restric- tion said to be necessary on account of the danger (in America, but hardly elsewhere) of receiving it in company with slave- holders. Moreover, they think it wrong to sing hymns, and nothing is allowed but the metrical version of the Psalms, hymns being uninspired ; an argument which should also prevent them from preaching sermons, and oblige them to be content with reading a chapter of the Bible, no doubt in many cases a most happy substitution, but certainly not acted on by our friends, since their energetic discourses drew away numbers of the residents in Sealkote from the ministrations of the late chap- lain, who was considered not to preach the Grospel. From the 138 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. extraordinary narrowness and bigotry implied by these restric- tions, I was prejudiced against the missionaries ; but when they appeared I was agreeably disappointed. They seemed to me' quiet, earnest, practical, and in most things sensible men ; all of them afterwards attended the confirmation, and declared themselves much pleased and impressed with the service. On Saturday they had a very unsuccessful interview with the Ma- harajah, which Mrs. described to me. They requested an audience in order to present him with a Bible, and took with them a native convert whom they have ordained, and who having been originally named by some good-spirited national appellation, now bears the ridiculous title of the Eeverend John Scott, according to the senseless and unpatriotic practice of trying to turn Hindu Christians into Englishmen or Yankees. On his appearance the Maharajah asked who was that native in English clothes, and whether he held any office under Govern- ment. Matters being explained, he said that such a person must not sit down in his presence, whereupon all the mission- aries refused to sit, and presented the Bible. ' What is this ? ' inquired the prince, and then expressed his belief that the Shasters contained all that he wanted, and that he did not wish any Christianity in Cashmir. Finally he handed it to one of his attendants. I much doubt whether it was desirable to give him the Bible at all. They argue that even now perhaps some of his attendants may read it. It is equally or more probable that they will light the fire with it ; and this plan of thrusting the Word of God at unbelievers without any preparation cer- tainly exposes it to contemptuous treatment, and is likely to raise a prejudice against the donor and his religion. Amritsur, Thursday, March 15. The station is green and pleasant ; the city is remarkable for cleanliness, industry, wealth, and an active and thriving population. It is large, containing some 130,000 inhabitants, who are enriched by shawl making, and by the trade which passes through the city from Cashmir, Cabul, Bokhara, and Central Asia. The walls and gates are lofty and massive : in the clean, crowded and bustling streets there is but little picturesque architecture, but the great sight is the Sikh tank and temple in the middle of the town. A large square tank with water clear as crystal is surrounded by handsome buildings, the property of priests and also of Sikh Cu. V.] AMRITSUK. 139 rajahs and sirdars, who, like the Hindu princes at Benares, wish to have a dwelling-place overlooking the sacred water. Above these houses rise some Mahometan minarets and other buildings which unintentionally add to the beauty of the head- quarters of Sikhism. This tank is the ' Pool of Immortality,' which has given its name to Amritsur (Amrita Saras : how exactly Amrita is afiftporos without the auxiliary /3!) ; and in the middle is an island on which stands the temple, a small building, the lower part of inlaid marble, the upper half and the domes of copper gilt. This temple is joined to the mainland by an extremely picturesque marble causeway, and opposite to it, at the end of the causeway, is a chapel also gilt and adorned with marble, where Ram Dan, the fourth Sikh guru, the first in whose family the office became hereditary, the ancestor of Grovind, and the founder of Amritsur, ' spent his life in a sitting posture.' The interior of the temple struck me as too gaudy and glaring ; it is gilt, painted, and decorated in all kinds of ways : on the beautiful marble floor sit priests and worshippers with various offerings before them, cowries, pice, sweetmeats, and flowers. They sang inharmoniously to the accompaniment of a guitar, fiddle, and drum ; opposite the door sat a very fine looking old man under a rich canopy, with the Grrunth before him, wrapped up in costly shawls, covered with flowers, and defended from pollution of flies by a man who waved over it a large chowri. The inlaid marble on the outside walls of the temple and the pavement is very beautiful ; besides flowers and fruits, birds and beasts are represented in delicate mosaic. The general effect of the whole exterior, with its gilding glittering in the sun, and its reflection in the clear Waters of Immortality, is extremely pretty ; but from the small size of the temple, and absence of grandeur and solemnity, I cannot give it a higher epithet. On the terrace round the temple sat groups of Sikhs listening to chaunters of the Grrunth, venders of wooden combs used to fasten up the unshorn locks of the faithful, of flowers for offerings to the temple, and others more or less interested or occupied about it. The whole scene was cleaner, pleasanter, and gave a purer and better impression of worship, than those which we have witnessed at Kali Grhat, Benares, and Hurdwar. Friday, March 16. We breakfasted with the missionaries; 140 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cu. Y. afterwards we saw the orphanage, where the children sleep on charpoys, not as in Bengal on mats on the floor, and then went into the city and examined the mission school. The know- ledge of English was very imperfect, and in the first class only one boy answered at all well. The school wants looking up. There is a tendency now certainly in the committee of the Church Missionary Society at home, and among some missionaries out here, to depreciate schools in comparison with preaching. Yet surely the great influence which a really kind, earnest and able missionary must obtain over intelligent scholars, the un- doubted improvement in the tone of morality, regard for truth, obedience, and discipline effected in a well-ordered mission school (strongly asserted by the Peshawur missionaries), the favour which a good school wins for the mission as the source of a great benefit to the city where it is planted (a fact resting on the evidence of the Agra missionaries), and the general clearing away of ignorance, folly, and superstition effected by education, are as likely to pave the way for Christ's Spirit as the plan of hurrying from village to village, preaching for a day or two, and not reappearing to deepen and confirm the impression of the visit till a year has passed away, and all that was said is forgotten. The apostles brought with them two evidences of power and goodness : of the first by their miracles, of the latter by their lives. We should also bring both, substituting for the miracles, now withdrawn from the Church, the fact that knowledge, civilisation, activity, intellectual and material greatness, law, order, discipline, are all in the hands of Christian nations, and in theirs only. Kangra, opposite Dharamsala, Friday, March23. The view from the German missionary's house on this hill is an exceed- ingly grand one. The spectator stands on a hill about 3,000 feet above the sea. Before him, and about 1,000 feet lower, stretches a wide plain, beautifully diversified with rocks, trees, luxuriant crops, and a mountain- stream. From this plain rises a range of mountains, the highest peak being 1 6,000 feet above the sea, the tops of course wholly covered with snow, the lower part with trees. It may be compared with Mont Blanc from the Flegere, the Yungfrau from the Wengern Alp, and the Orteler Spitz from the Stelvio. But it is in some respects CH. V.] QUESTION OF SUNDAY TRAVELLIXG. 141 superior to any of these. For, however magnificent Mont Blanc looks, the valley of Chamouni between it and the Flegere is ugly ; from the Wengern Alp one cannot (as far as I re- member) see the valley below at all ; and from the Stelvio only one Orteler is to be seen, whereas here there is a whole range 'of Ortelers. Dharamsala, March 24. On the road up to this place we met the Viceregal cortege descending to the plains. Having thus again encountered the Grovernor-Greneral, I may as well record the termination of the Sunday correspondence. He had not, it appears, got my letter when I met him at Sealkote, but on the day after he left I received a long and very courteous reply, defending the Sunday marches by the facts (1) That out of twenty-two Sundays he had marched only on seven. (2) That with a camp of 17,000 men it is sometimes impossible to halt on Sunday (provisions for two days being necessary) without causing great hardship to the people about the halting-place, and even giving occasion to oppression. And the travelling through Sunday when not with his camp was excused on the ground that the whole journey to Peshawur was a race against time, and unless he made the greatest haste, lie would not be able to break up his camp and dismiss his European escort till the weather is so hot that troops ought not to be out of their cantonments, unless imperatively required for active service. I entirely admit that if (2) is probable, the reason for marching is conclusive ; and, indeed, I never thought that a march in the early morning could be compared with such journeys as that from Rawul Pindi, when the whole day was occupied in travelling, thereby causing an utter neglect of service, giving real pain to some consciences, and setting a bad example ; and I still think that the journeys ought to have been so arranged as to avoid these evils. However, the letter was in its whole tone creditable to his Excellency.* The road was carried by steep zigzags up the mountain * The letter here referred to was one which, after long deliberation, the Bishop had deemed it desirable to write to the Governor-General on the subject of the Sunday travelling. Lord Canning, while framing his reply with his usual courtesy, was nettled for the moment ; any vexation, how- ever, soon passed away, and the correspondence was never alluded to again. 142 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. V. side, which was clothed with fine trees, especially wild cherries in flower, and rhododendrons, such as I had never dreamt of. Long was the ascent before we reached the house to which we were bidden ; the rain poured in torrents at last, but the curtains of our jonpons were watertight. We completed our journey at half-past eleven, and in the afternoon, as it got quite clear, we went out again first on a pilgrimage to poor Willy Arnold's deserted house, which I wish to describe to his friends at home. There we looked down over the wide and beautiful valley, and saw Kangra, with its gilt dome, and even Merk's house above it, in which Mrs. Arnold died, carried there in the vain hope that a warmer climate might restore her fading strength. Strange to say, Willy had no garden, and did not care for one, though there is a piece of ground just in front of the house which would have made as pretty a foreground to the landscape as the gay parterres of Fox How do to the view of Eydal and Fairfield. Both the drawing-room and dining- roorn are good rooms ; the former has windows commanding two glorious prospects, just as at Fox How one drawing-room window has the Rydal and the other the Ambleside view. May Grod bless his orphan children, and help and prosper the work of those who are now training them up with affectionate devotion. May they be worthy of their grandfather, and, like him, Christ's true servants. Sunday, March 25. To-day I consecrated the church, preached, and administered the Holy Communion. The only monument in the church is one to Willy and his wife, and below the lines recording his age and parentage is the text 6 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of Grod.' The thought of rest is most appropriate to one of such untiring activity and incessant occupation as he. May he have found it in Christ Jesus ! Monday, March 26. We started at 7 A.M., descended through the rhododendrons, and at 8 I consecrated the burial- ground where Willy's wife was laid. Sunday, April 1. At 2 A.M. we found ourselves at Kalka, at the foot of the hills, en route to Simla. We sought refuge in the dak bungalow, ordered tea and jonpons, and before daylight were ascending the hill. When rosy-fingered dawn allowed us to see around us, we found that we were on the side of a steep Cn. V.] THE LAWRENCE ASYLUM. 143 grassy mountain, looking upon a similar one on the opposite side of a mountain-torrent. Soon we came to pines ; then we looked down on the plains opened before us like a map, green and fertile, with the Sewallic range (through which we must have passed from Umballa) gradually sinking down at this their western extremity into low sandy hills. At last we reached Kussowlie, where a dressing and bathing revived us a little, and enabled us to enjoy the really grand view from the verandah, extending over range upon range of hills, with snowy peaks at a great distance terminating the prospect. Lawrence Asylum, Sanawar, two miles fom Kussowlie, Wednesday, April 4. This morning I held a confirmation in the very pretty, though perhaps somewhat heavy-looking, church. The ornamental work, communion-rails, reredos, &c., though in good taste, and skilfully worked, are just a little too massive. Eighty-one children were confirmed. At the west end of the church is a painted window in memory of Lady Lawrence, and close to it a Grothic monument is rising to Sir Henry, with the double inscription which he wished to be put on his tomb : the text from Daniel, ' To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness,' &c., and ' Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty.' Perhaps the two together may be said to include the essence of Christianity, or rather the two great principles from which it starts men's need of forgiveness from Grod, and the supremacy of duty. We afterwards went over the other buildings, all substantial and well arranged, though the boys' dormitories are a little too crowded. Finally we proceeded to the parade-ground, where the boys, who are kept under military discipline, were duly paraded before us, in their artillery uniforms, which dress has been chosen because Sir Henry was an artillery officer. Thursday, April 5. This morning I examined the first and third classes of the boys' school in Bible, geography, English history, and a little grammar ; they seem to me extremely well taught. Certainly this institution seems a wonderful place, when I think what and where these soldiers' children might be without it. Either untaught, or at best only at regimental schools, of which some are but poor affairs ; living in barracks among many doubtful influences, and losing health and vigour in the sultry 144 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. V. plains. Whereas now they are well cared for in body, soul, and spirit, and (a rare privilege for schools of this character) they are brought under the direct influence of a conscientious clergyman, instead of a trained schoolmaster from Battersea. One of the characteristics of the Himalayas, compared with other mountain regions, is their silence. This arises from the want of water. In the Alps, down every gully, glacier-streams are gushing, and the sound of waters is around the traveller on all sides. Here, at least at this time of year, every water- course is dry, except the main torrent at the bottom of the valley, which is too scanty, and generally too distant, to be heard. Subathoo, Easter Day, April 8. I should like to have spent this ' day of days ' with my wife and child, but I hope that at least it was usefully spent. There are 850 men here of the Eifle Brigade, depending on the visits of the Dugsheri chaplain ; so they were very glad of our visit, and of full services ; for among them are and his friends who ap- peared in such brilliant colours at Lucknow. Burn read prayers, and I preached in the morning, and then we both administered the Communion. In the evening, after prayers, the whole congregation repaired to the burial-ground, which I consecrated, giving an address on the combined lessons of the consecration service and of Easter. The situation of the ground is very beautiful, and the sight of the lines of riflemen in their white uniforms, standing amidst the graves on the hill-side, with the mountains towering above them, to listen on Easter-day to the hope of immortality, was inspiriting and impressive. Siree, Wednesday, April 11. From the dak bungalow here, we began, at 6 A.M., our final pull of nine miles uphill to Simla. Yet it is not all uphill. After a little while we plunged down into a deep valley, crossed a stream, and began then a most tremendously steep ascent, up which the jonpanis puffed and panted, but certainly carried us bravely. The hills were very bare barer than yesterday. How, I thought, can Simla be wooded and pretty! when suddenly a turn round the crest of a mountain brought us into a forest of pines, evergreen oaks, and rhododendrons in full flower, the latter larger than those at Dharamsala, but not so numerous as I expected from CH. V.] ARRIVAL AT SIMLA. 145 previous descriptions. Soon occasional houses began, a small bazaar, an hotel ; then the chaplain came riding out to meet us ; the houses got more numerous, a church appeared above us, a larger bazaar, fresh pines and oaks, a turn in the road, a gate, a flower-garden, a verandah, the front door of Ravenswood, the house which we have taken for the summer, and where, after long wandering, we hope to enjoy a little, I trust, industrious rest. The house is situated on a spur of Jacko, the well-known Simla hill, which rises behind us, and sinks below us clothed with most graceful pines ; and from our front verandah we have a glorious mountain view. The house, though dingy and long unpainted, is large enough to be comfortable, and very fairly furnished. And here I might say Brundisiimi longse finis chartaeque yieeque ; but I will record that, on Thursday, April 12, I mounted my Bokhara pony (whose name it is settled shall be Eunjeet Singh), and rode round Jacko an expedition of about five miles, remarkable for the diversity of views which it offers in a small compass ; entire rocky barrenness on one side, and glorious vegetation on the other. It is about 8,000 feet high, and our house is 1,000 feet below its summit. Oh the luxury of being in our own home again, even though that home is on the ' Thibet road,' and of resuming all our home habits, cozy meals at our old hours, and no necessity to be always either flitting from place to place or playing company ! Yet a good deal is wanting to a home on the Thibet road. Oh for a sight of Edward, and an hour's talk with some of our kith and kin ! Oh for a visit from Vaughan, from Stanley, from Bradley, from Gr. Lushington, from many, many others ! May we learn from what is wanting, that here we have no continuing city, but that we seek one to come. May we learn to look forward from this present rest, so graciously vouchsafed to us, after the many mercies and almost unvaried prosperity of our journey, to that rest which remaineth for the people of God. 146 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VI. CHAPTER VI. QUESTION OF OPENING EPISCOPAL CHTTPvCHES FOR PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP STATE OF RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE PUNJAB APPLICATIONS FOR THE USE OF CHURCHES CONSECRATED TO THE WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CORRESPONDENCE ON THE SUBJECT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT IN A SIKH REGIMENT MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND MISSIONARIES EXPLANATIONS GOVERNMENT ORDER ON CHRISTIAN WORSHIP IN NATIVE REGIMENTS LETTERS AT SIMLA JOURNAL EXTRACT VISITATIONS RESUMED B AREILLY SHAH JEHANPORE SEETAPORE LUCKNOW FYZABAD JUANPORE BENARES. IN 1860 the formidable ecclesiastical question arose of lending Government churches for Presbyterian worship. Owing to the mutiny the number of Highland regiments in the country had been increased, and in many stations there was no place of worship for Presbyterians. The subject came first before the Bishop in 1859 through an application from a Punjab chaplain for authority to per- mit Scotch service to be held in his church. The Bishop took legal advice and gave his sanction. Subsequently a second case occurred at Mhow, and the similar necessity raised the same questions in Madras. The authorities in that Presidency addressed themselves directly to the Home Government ; and the Secretary of State, by the advice of Dr. Lushington and with the concurrence of the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, sent out instructions that under suitable regulations the churches should be available for the worship of the Scotch regiments. It was the receipt of these instructions and the submission of them to the Bishop for his sanction of their application within the Diocese of Calcutta that first brought him and the Govern- ment of India into correspondence. In the face of high Cir. VI.] CONCESSIONS TO PRESBYTERIANS. 147 legal authority, it would have been a difficult and un- gracious act for the Bishop to withhold his consent. When the law was tolerant and elastic, he did not care to make the Church narrow and illiberal ; neither could any common sense view gainsay the emergency of the case. One apparent means for meeting it, viz. that of building more Scotch places of worship, was of course not lost sight of. The Bishop once brought forward the suggestion at an early stage of the official correspondence, but he never renewed it. It was certain that the Government would not consent to multiply churches for a few High- land regiments, whose detention at any given station, or in India at all, might be of short duration. Persistence in the recommendation of impracticable measures would have endangered influence with the authorities an impru- dence which the Bishop was not likely to commit. If therefore the use of existing buildings should be refused, no refuge from the open air parade service during the extreme heats or excessive rains of India would be avail- able for large bodies of troops, while other means of grace and opportunities for religious exercises among the men would be lamentably crippled and impeded. On the other hand, the Church of England had to be protected ; the feelings, even the prejudices of ministers of the Church of England had to be considered. The Bishop was well aware that, however much reason and law might favour the concession, it would be a novelty in the English Church, and as such be deemed by many Church- men an innovation on her special rights. He knew that some of his clergy would share this feeling, and that many others with whom ecclesiastical objections might have less weight, would yet look upon any interference with the exclusive possession of their churches as a grave inconvenience and hindrance in their pastoral work. He discerned from the outset many practical obstructions to the smooth working of the arrangement, L 2 148 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. VI. arising partly from local circumstances, and partly from the limitations imposed by a relentless tropical sun upon all public worship to which troops have to march. While accepting therefore the necessities of the case and yield- ing his consent to the proposed loan of the sacred buildings with the liberality of spirit with which he viewed the question, he from the first directed his efforts towards restricting the concession within the narrow limits of the military exigencies, and securing such stringency in the regulations to be laid down as should dispel any notion that the churches were to become common property between the two communions. At one moment in the long negotiations that went on, there was a marked inclination on the part of Govern- ment to claim for the Scotch parade service, under certain circumstances, a prior right to the use of the church. The Bishop at once took alarm and sent in a strong remonstrance. The following extracts from it are sub- joined because they exhibit the main point that was at issue and show how steadily he declaimed against any settlement of it which should involve a suspension of the Church of England services. To the Viceroy in Council. Simla, June 25, 1860. I certainly should strongly deprecate any arrangement by which the morning or evening service of the Church of England should be given up, in order to leave time for Presbyterian worship. I think that such an arrangement would be unjust, offensive to many members of the English Church ; and (as far as I know) it has never been requested, or supposed possible, by any of the Presbyterians themselves, who have only asked for the use of our churches when not required for the per- formance of English service. I think that it would be unjust for two reasons: (1) The churches have been consecrated, and whatsoever be the legal effect of consecration, undoubtedly in the memorial presented CH, VI.] USE OF CHURCHES. 149 to the bishop (to which the local government signifies its assent), the request made is, that he will ' consecrate the said church for celebration of Divine service therein according to the rites and ceremonies of the United Church of England and Ireland,' and in the decree of consecration the bishop repeats this phrase. Hence I infer that the primary use of the building must be for the Church of England, that this must not give place to any other, and that no other can be celebrated in it without the consent of the bishop. (2) It must be remembered that though these churches have been built in a great measure at the expense of the Government, whose liberality in this matter I thankfully acknowledge, yet they have been largely aided by private subscriptions from members of the Church of England. At least fifty-two churches in the diocese, in which the English service is performed, have been aided by grants from the Calcutta Church Building Fund (besides missionary churches, which of course I do not take into account), and many churches have been mainly built by the personal ex- ertions and unfailing liberality of my predecessor. I am sure that this would not have been done had it been supposed that Scotch service would ever be substituted for our own. In some cases such an order would deprive half a regi- ment of the service of the English Church altogether. Ex. gr. at Ferozepore and Eawal Pindee the churches are so small that one wing has to be marched to church in the morning, and the other in the evening. If one of these times is to be given up to the Church of Scotland (which might happen, if two regiments, one of Highlanders, were stationed at a place where the church is small) half the Episcopalians will not have their own worship at all. I do not quite agree with your Excellency's remark, that unless either sunrise or sunset were always conceded, a favour would be granted on paper which was of no practical bene- fit to the recipients, and which would therefore only serve to provoke disappointment I think that while we steadily maintain the principle, that the service according to the rites of the English Church must be performed twice every Sunday, the amount of concessions to the Scotch Church is still con- siderable. I would remark that it shows a considerable progress in 150 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii. VI. Catholicity of feeling that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Calcutta, and the chief legal functionary of the Church of England should all agree that Presbyterian service' may be performed, without sacrifice of principle, in buildings consecrated by Episcopalian forms. Certainly some years ago, in Bishop Middleton's time for example, this would not have been the case. In some stations where there are two churches at no great distance, such as Peshawar, Sealkote, Lucknow, I have little doubt that the wishes of the Government can be carried out, and that the use of a church may be granted, for the morning or evening, without interruption to the Presbyterian minister. Or again, where there is a very small Episcopalian com- munity, who would naturally go to church in carriages, and a Scotch regiment, which would be marched to church, I should think that the English evening service might be at some hour in the afternoon before the sun goes down ; and the parade service for the Presbyterian troops at sunset. I therefore earnestly hope that your Excellency, maintain- ing the principle that these buildings are designed for the service of the Church of England, and placed under the care of the English chaplain, acting under the authority of the bishop, will simply direct that they shall be used where it is possible for the service of the Church of Scotland, particular cases being referred to the bishop (whose consent in every case is necessary, according to Dr. Lushington's opinion) who may fix the time for the English service ; and therefore decide whether the particular hour of sunrise or sunset is available for the Scotch. The fact that I agreed to permit Presbyterian service in an English church, before Dr. Lushington's opinion or the wishes of Her Majesty's Government were known, will at least show that I should be desirous to exercise this power in a liberal and conciliatory spirit. The above letter practically closed the correspondence, for the Government accepted its arguments and framed the official notice of the arrangement in conformity with them. It will readilv be believed that this boon was welcomed CH. VI.] DIFFICULTIES OF THE QUESTION. 151 by Presbyterians as in the highest degree gracious and conciliatory. Indeed the sudden and keen appreciation of Anglican places of worship expressed by the Scotch Church introduced an element almost of amusement into a matter in itself harassing and beset with difficulty. But the views of some Churchmen were different, and hostile criticism, chiefly from England, was passed upon the Bishop. This act of legislation was one of the earliest ecclesiastical measures of wide and general interest with which his tenure of the see brought him into contact, and it was through the medium afforded by his line of action on this occasion that much of his future adminis- tration was scanned. Threats of withholding help from church building and other diocesan funds, and even from general missionary objects, were expressions of the feeling which interpreted the transaction as an innovation, upon Church of England rights openly countenanced by the Bishop. The case was judged from an English point of view. The anomalies which intrude into all ecclesias- tical arrangements beyond England were overlooked, and no credit was allowed to the Bishop for his scrupulous care that an act of friendly assistance to a sister Church should involve no slight or hurt to the Anglican Liturgy. Local circumstances and necessities were dimly appre- hended by, or appeared insignificant to those afar off, though they had to be duly estimated by him on whom rested the responsibility of a decision which was certain to excite bitterness of feeling on one side or the other. There was no precedent, in India at least, to guide this decision ; there was no obligation that could aid the Bishop's judgment, except the moral one of choosing the liberal path which the law had left open. His powers were purely permissive and discretionary, and the doubt and perplexity frequently involved in the exercise of such powers cannot be denied. Probably some who so reproach- fully deprecated the loan of Anglican places of worship 152 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VI. would have paused before committing themselves to a refusal which in India would simply have brought obloquy on the Church of England. On the other hand, many who marvelled that the Bishop should have felt a moment's hesitation would, in face of the circumstances with which he had to deal, have shared his anxiety to guard an unusual privilege with a cordon of restrictions. For it has now to be told how quickly this first concession begot a desire for more, and how soon the Bishop was called upon to deal with requests for the opening of the church doors to other bodies of Christians. Applications for thus extending the loan of the churches beyond what either the Bishop or the Government intended, were connected with a religious movement of some strength at that time in the Punjab. From the earliest days of its administration as a British province, many of the leading officials had been deeply religious men. Under the friendly shelter of their rule American Presbyterian missionaries advanced from Loodianah and established themselves firmly and influentially in many places. On the other hand, Church of England mission work was only slenderly represented, chaplains were few in number, the presence of a bishop was almost unknown ; hence the earnest Christian life that animated Englishmen in the Punjab was but slightly leavened with loyalty to the Church. Persons of different communions were bound together by religious feelings running deep and strong, arid by the single desire to be preachers of righteousness to the civil and military communities around. Indian houses are not large ; few could supply rooms fit for large religious gatherings, and thus to lay and clerical leaders in spiritual things ready to sink outward differences in united and informal worship, the order to lend the churches for Scotch service sounded as a boon available for them- selves also. To such applications there was but one answer to give. When the Bishop supported the State Cu. VI.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH CHAPLAINS. 153 in meeting the temporary and accidental exigencies of large congregations of another State Church, he desired to magnify the Church over which he presided by an act of catholic and large-hearted sympathy, but he dis- claimed both the wish and the power to lower her distinctive teaching and position by opening the doors of the consecrated buildings to a promiscuous worship in which the services of the Prayer Book would find no place. He refused the use of the churches, but at the same time he felt and expressed sympathy with the movement which had called forth the request. Though he often regretted that the spirit that was abroad was more sectarian than catholic, he could thank God for any agency which boldly and powerfully confronted vice and godlessness everywhere and especially among soldiers. He once said of an officer in India whom he greatly respected, 'I think Colonel most jedifying on the campaign of Afghanistan, but singularly the reverse on Baptismal Eegeneration.' It was thus with his usual weapon of quiet humour that he entered a protest against a narrowness of doctrine from which he utterly dissented. The existence of the movement stimulated his efforts to make the Church more influential through her appointed ministers, but he sought rather to guide than to repress it, and never came forward prominently except where, as in the matter of the churches, he was asked to authorise what was against all Church order. The subject occa- sioned much correspondence with several chaplains, and some letters are annexed as giving an insight into a move- ment which within a limited circle had many of the features of a strong religious revival. To a Chaplain. I860. I should be very sorry if I were to appear to undervalue the good understanding which exists between you and Mr. , or 154 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. VI. to place any discouragement in the way of your cordial co- operation in all good works in your station. But I do not think that the proposal of a united service, in which you shall both take part, is consistent with my circular or with the prin- ciples and practice of the English Church, and it would open embarrassing questions which are much better left quiet. What I have tried to lay down in my circular to the clergy is this, that to lend our buildings, when necessity requires, to the chaplain of the Church of Scotland is a friendly act to a sister Church, but that it is not to be mixed up with any questions as to the ministrations in our own congregations, which are to re- main as at present. The fact therefore that my letter makes it lawful for Mr. to assemble the Presbyterian troops in your church and preach to them does not empower him to take part in the services of the English Church. It is true that in your absence he kindly consented to read our liturgy to the Episcopalian troops, but this again is quite a different case. According to the custom in India, when the English chaplain is unavoidably absent, the service (with certain exceptions) is read by a layman, and rT it may be read by a layman, then a fortiori by a Presbyterian clergyman. But the proposal that you should unite with a Presbyterian clergyman in a common service involves the whole question of the intercommunion of the Scotch and English Churches, which I, as an individual bishop, am not competent to decide by my sole authority. It cannot be justified by any plea of necessity, it would to some extent stultify my prohibition of prayer meetings in churches, as con- tained in the later paragraphs of my circular, it would excite many remonstrances and much disapprobation at home and in- deed in India ; and therefore with every good wish to the Scotch Church, and the fullest appreciation of Mr. - 's kind and liberal feeling in his 'dealings with you, I must beg that, when you are at , our services may be conducted solely by yourself or by some other clergyman of the Church of England. To a Chaplain. I860. . . . Considering the amount of godlessness and careless living which prevails, especially in the army, I could not speak of a revival as you do, as I often think that something extraordinary CH. VI.] LETTERS TO CHAPLAINS. 155 is required to awaken nominal Christians from the sleep of death. That a revival generally involves many questionable features, and would require careful watching, I quite allow; but if it produces permanent moral improvement its origin is known by its fruits. . . . The best counsel I can give you is to do all that you can to unite your flock closely to yourself by un- wearied activity, and by seeking so to build them up in Christian holiness that they shall not need nor desire the more exciting ministrations which you deprecate. To a Chaplain. 1860 I altogether approve of the clerical meetings. Interchange of thought, experience, and knowledge is one of the great wants of the Indian clergy arising from geographical causes, and I am sure that wherever it can be obtained it should be sought. Of course the only point which requires watching is the union with ministers of another Church. And I certainly do not envy you the Calvinism which your next subject suggests, for the older I grow and the more I read the more I dislike that system, not only from the untenable theory, but from its practical evils. Most wisely said Butler, ' though it were admitted that this opinion of necessity were speculatively true, yet with regard to practice it is as it were false.' I have, however, no fear of your yielding the distinctive character of the English Church in your intercourse with your brethren of another, though I own that one or two of the clergy seem to me to think that the way to stop the spread of dissent is to give up every point in which we differ from dissent. But you will not forget that the motto should be comprehension without compromise, and that conciliation and brotherly love are possible without the abandonment of principle. The calm and candid discussion of the meaning and application of Scripture between persons who agree in its divine authority is a clear gain. To a Chaplain. 1861 I very much regret the embarrassing position in which you are placed by the conduct of the soldiers about whom you write to me ; I had heard of them before as well-intentioned and pious men, but unhappily self-righteous and self-confident. 156 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. VI. No doubt that they should include a self-appointed adminis- tration of the Holy Communion in their prayer meetings, and decline to partake of that ordinance according to the order of the Church, is grievously inconsistent with Scriptural principle and precedent, and an unchristian act of schism in the strictest sense. But on full consideration I cannot recommend you to interfere with them by any means except private influence. It would be unwise now to deprive them of the use of the room, as they would be made more self-righteous than they are by fancying themselves martyrs, and would probably find other places for their irregular services. By trying to attach them to yourself through kindness, by showing them the excellence and necessity of the Christian ministry, by your own zealous fulfilment of its obligations, and by taking any opportunity which may occur of quietly pointing out to any of them in private the dangerous, unpractical, and unscriptural character of this system, you may hope gradually to win them over, but certainly you will not do so by any other means. During the same months the Bishop's attention was di- verted from the spiritual concerns of Highlanders to those of a native regiment. The well-known case of the Muz- hibi Sikhs formed an episode in the annals of North Indian Missions. Missionaries were at that time keen in placing a jealous interpretation on that noninterference in the rights of conscience which was the key-note of the Queen's proclamation after the mutiny ; they were keen in de- tecting any evasion towards Christians of that neutrality so distinctly promulgated in behalf of heathens. On the other hand, the Viceroy was during the years immedi- ately succeeding the mutiny very sensitive as to the means used by missionaries in the prosecution of their cause, and ready to take alarm when he conceived that they showed a tendency to disregard prudence and moderation. Hence he had taken cognisance of the distribution of anonymous tracts among the natives near Benares, and had made the presence of officers at some baptisms at Amritsur the subject of official enquiry. Such steps CH. VI.] THE MUZHIBI S1KIIS. 157 were easily construed by the equally sensitive party on the other side into opposition rather than neutrality, and they paved the way for the growth of another case against the Government, which was submitted to the Bishop in his recent visitation of the Punjab in an aspect equally new and startling. The Muzhibi Sikhs formed a sweeper or low-caste clan among that nation. In Eunjeet Singh's time they were conspicuous Thugs in the Punjab, and exercised their calling vigorously until Lord Dalhousie attacked and dis- persed that dreadful confederation. The tribe remained sweepers when they had ceased to be Thugs, and as such they were held in degradation by their coreligionists. Efforts to improve their condition were made by the British Government, and they were employed for some years on canals and roads in the newly-acquired territory. In the mutiny, when service was accepted from any quarter, they were enrolled into a military corps, and proved most efficient both at Delhi and Lucknow. It was among the spoils of Delhi that these men found some books which awakened in them a desire to enquire about Christianity. They sought instructors first from their own officers, afterwards from missionaries at Amritsur, and a few of their number were baptized. A spirit of enquiry was kept up in the corps, and manifested itself in a company stationed at Peshawur after the suppression of the mutiny. In 1859 an impression became prevalent among the Punjab missionaries that the Government had issued an order calculated to thwart their work, and to check a very hopeful Christian movement amongst the Muzhibi Sikhs. Inferences drawn from this supposed order were that no officer might speak on the subject of Christianity to any native Christian in his corps, nor visit him when sick, nor urge Christian motives upon him as reasons for performing well his earthly duties ; that ministers might not hold service in the lines though it be 158 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VI. in a native Christian's house and with closed doors, nor erect a chapel though mosques and temples abounded, and that all these restrictions had emanated from the highest authority. Such edicts, if existing, were equi- valent to a ban upon the Christian religion ; and the Bishop, on the matter being reported to him, at once set enquiries on foot. Correspondence with Government and the military officials in the Punjab at length traced the impressions under which the missionaries laboured to an order couched in cautionary but general terms, which Government, in order to put officers on their guard against compromising themselves in matters of religion, had issued, on being informed that a tendency towards Christianity was revealing itself in the regiment. One officer in promulgating this order to his company added some verbal remarks expressive of the interpretation he placed upon the Government's instructions. These re- marks were received by the hearers of the order as an integral portion of it, freely circulated as such, and became the foundation of the unfortunate inferences above mentioned. Thus a matter productive of long and deep bitterness was explained. A Government order, liable in the first instance to misconstruction among men painfully sensitive on the subject to which it referred, had received through a verbal indiscretion an unauthorised and calamitous expansion. The facts of the case being ascertained, the next steps were to renew Christian instruction in the regiment, and to disabuse the minds of missionaries of intentional hostility on the part of Government. The former was easy of achievement, the latter was more difficult. Missionaries listened to explanations, and ac- cepted the Bishop's warnings against hasty and prejudiced conclusions, but they nevertheless maintained that they had grounds for distrust, arid held that recent language and acts on the part of the Government justified their alarms, and CH. VI.] CONVERTS AMONG NATIVE TROOPS. 150 that religious neutrality was in danger of being violated both in respect of their own ministrations and of the spon- taneous desire of enquirers to receive Christian instruction. To allay past irritation entirely was impossible. The Bishop's chief anxiety was to secure latitude of language in an order, by which the Government proposed for the future to recognise and regulate Christian ministrations in the case of converts among native troops. Thus he wrote to the Viceroy : To Lord Canning. Simla, July 17, I860. I have to thank your lordship for your letter, and for sending me the copy of your despatch to Sir Charles Wood on the recent occurrences in the 24th Punjab regiment. I think the despatch very fair and very conciliatory, and I hope that it will do a great deal of good. It certainly should help to disabuse people of the notion that Government wish to impede the quiet and peaceful progress of Christianity, and shows that they think and speak kindly of the missionaries, even when their intentions and orders have been mistaken by them. I only think it necessary to write a few lines on the last paragraph of the despatch, in which I am quoted as concurring in the broad distinction which the Grovernment order contemplated by your lordship is to lay down between the cases of officers communicating on religious topics with the non-Christian men of their regiment and with those who have been baptized. I should regret if this order were to define too stringently the separate cases. The number of officers in native regiments actively interested in the progress of Christianity is, I fear, small ; the limits of official and private life are very hard to define ; Grovernment orders are very apt to be misunderstood, and, as we have seen in this case, to be interpreted rather too widely than too narrowly. I certainly should be sorry if an officer were forbidden to answer a question spontaneously put to him, or compelled to exclude an unbaptized soldier from voluntary attendance at a Christian service, unless it became clear that harm resulted from it, or that the questions were put and the service attended 160 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cj: VI. for any corrupt motives. Of such cases no one can judge in the abstract or till they have actually occurred. I see, on referring to your lordship's letter of June 23, that you object to the suggestion of a parade service for the converts, almost as much on spiritual as on secular grounds. I quite agree that such a course would be undesirable in itself, and it would be far better if we could trust to voluntary attendance on public worship instead of parades, compulsory college chapels, and all such services. But I merely suggested it as an alternative in case there were any objections to a voluntary service and as at least assimilating the circumstances of Asiatic Christians in the army to those of their European brethren. The following letter to the Calcutta Secretary of the Church Missionary Society was one of the last in the long correspondence to which this affair gave rise. I agree with all of your unofficial letter of July 6, except that I consider that as the Government were obliged to send some answer to Major - 's very needless report on the conversions in the 24th Native Infantry, their interference in this case was not spontaneous. Some days ago I wrote to Mr. - , as the words 'harm clone by believing and circulating,' &c., are quoted from a letter of mine to Lord Canning. I have told him that since I received his full explanation of the reasons for his belief, I think that the misapprehension of the intention of Govern- ment was so general among the officers, that I understand much better than I did why he shared them and helped to circulate them. He can do what he likes with my letter. I did not suggest to him to print it, because there has been already so much agitation on the subject, and because to religious work, and especially missionary work, the warning 4 in quietness and confidence shall be your strength ' especially applies. But if he feels himself aggrieved, the simplest thing that can be done is to print my letter in the ' Christian In- telligencer,' where it will be seen by those whose opinion he most values, and who are most interested in the subject, without prolonging a newspaper controversy. I have also written to Lord Canning to-day, telling him CH. VI.] THE GOVERNMENT AND THE MISSIONARIES. 161 that in my opinion if he issues any Government order it should be couched in as general terms as possible. But though my letter to him is very much in the spirit of yours to me, do not overrate my influence with him. He is very fair and courteous in considering what is said to him, but he will decide accord- ing to his own judgment as to the wording of any order he may issue. The case had much more than a mere local interest. One strange feature in it was the obscurity that enveloped it in some quarters, compared with the notoriety which it obtained in others. The story was sent home to. the Parent Society in London in 1859. Through papers issued by them, and through religious magazines and newspapers, it had received a wide circulation (and in language which did not spare the supposed official inter- ference) before the Supreme Government of India, or the officials of the Punjab, or the Bishop knew anything beyond the fact of a few conversions in a native regiment. It has been shown that daylight at last breaking upon the affair dispersed partially the mists of mutual misconception arid distrust ; but time has not entirely healed the wounds then made by this great missionary grievance. Missionaries have disclaimed the wish to attribute intentional opposition to the proceedings of Government on that occasion ; but they none the less maintain that the movement never wholly recovered its early check, and that an opportunity was lost of converting a whole tribe as amenable to the influence of Christianity from absence of caste, as Kohls or Santhals. Still the unfortunate and protracted misunder- standing was not without some redeeming features. It cannot be doubted that the thorough investigation which in the end the matter obtained, and the wide circulation which the Governor-General's despatch to the Secretary of State received through its publication in a subsequent re- port of the Church Missionary Society, tended to secure for missionary operations a fresh lease of stability and M 162 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VI. recognition. Since those days there has been no collision between the missionaries and the State. Other causes may be assigned for more amicable relations, but among these a prominent one is the explanation to which the case of the Sikh regiment gave rise, and through which, as the Bishop wrote at the time, ' he hoped the two parties would in future understand one another better.' To Rev. G. G. Bradley, Master of Marlborough College. Simla, April 1860. Hurrah ! we are here at last a great boon after our long wanderings. The rest and homelike feeling are most delight- ful, though it is hard to feel altogether at home when we are told that we are living ' on the Thibet road.' However, here we are in a comfortable house, with a glorious mountain view before us, with no need to start to-morrow, either in jonpon, dooly, dak ghari, or camel carriage. The visitation, though undoubtedly attended by a good deal of fatigue and physical discomfort, has been of the highest interest, and not, I hope, without its use. Moreover, we are all in sound health, indeed I am much better than before it, though I have serious doubts whether an old bishop could accomplish it. With the missionaries I have been agreeably surprised. Spite of some heresies in the charge, they received me everywhere with real cordiality, listened attentively to my entreaties that they would not neglect their schools for the more exciting work of preaching in bazaars, and many of them are not only devoted Christians, but sensible and practical in their work to a degree which I had not expected. One whom I ordained priest (a high wrangler at Cambridge) is a really superior man, and passed as good an examination as I have ever seen either as chaplain or as bishop, while Burn, who saw a good deal of him in private, was still more struck with him. His school is the best of the missionary schools and the only one which could compare in secular knowledge with the Grovern- ment colleges. I regretted, however, that some of the missionaries study the Revelations more than the Koran and Shasters, or rather, perhaps I should say (since the Revelation CH. VI. ] RELIGIOUS LIFE IX THE ARMY. 163 itself is a most profitable study) Elliott's ' Horae Apocalypticae,' Cumming's ' Great Tribulation,' and similar works. ' What does your lordship think about the theory that the Affghans are the ten tribes ? What has your lordship heard about the flocking of the Jews to Palestine?' In the former case I could tell them that a rigid Presbyterian missionary at Peshawar had assured me that they were not ; but I longed to exhort them to dismiss all speculations as to the Millennium, and devote themselves to a thorough investigation of the Vedanta philosophy, or of the doctrines either of Mahomet or of Nanuk. But these millennial speculations, and on the part of some only an inordinate belief in the efficacy of galloping from village to village, and ' making the proclama- tion ' to the unprepared and ignorant heathen, were the only exceptions to much really edifying intercourse, and the sight of a great deal of self-denying and practical piety, from which I am sure that I have great need to take a lesson. I was also much interested and pleased in many places with the soldiers. Schools are flourishing in nearly all the military stations, in which you see grizzled heroes of Delhi and Lucknow working out vulgar fractions or copying dictation, ' On Linden, when the sun w 7 as low,' &c. In most regiments there is a nucleus of really religious men. They build, often for themselves, with the help of officers, and a grant of a site from Government neat, little chapels in which they can retire from the crowded barracks for private prayer, and where the chaplain can assemble a Bible class or hold a short week-day service. I went to three of these, and preached or expounded to most attentive bodies of listeners. Though I do not agree with all Hedley Vicars's views of religion, yet it is a remarkable instance of real goodness that his regiment, the 97th, which was at Banda when I was there, is one of the best and steadiest of the service, and that a large number of them attended the Communion when I administered it after consecrating the church, and also meet for daily prayers with a very modest and sensible Scripture reader, with whom I had a long inter- view. It really seems as if it may be said of Vicars that ' he being dead yet speaketh.' Much has been laid against the English rule in India, and undoubtedly there is a great tieal that ought to have been otherwise ; but is it not remarkable M 2 iGi LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VI. that within two years of the height of the mutiny we travelled from Calcutta to Peshawur, through days and nights, along by-roads, and I may sometimes say no roads, without an alarm of any kind, and that everywhere there is perfect order and security ? This at least is something to set against our shortcomings, and is a strong contrast to the Mahometan rule. Everywhere, too, I see symptoms that we are mending our ways, and the prosperity of the country is rapidly increasing. The submontane part of the Punjab is like a continuous garden, 'the valleys standing so thick with corn that they seem to laugh and sing.' It is most true that the present age has need of anxiety in its belief, but perhaps the extremity of the danger is the real security. Tennyson said to you what I have often thought, and what I told poor Willy Arnold in almost our last inter- view, that the question was not so much of Christianity as of man's immortality. There seems to me no resting-place between Christianity and Positivism ; and as to the latter, I can only say, first, that Comte's religious system seems to me rather a subject for laughter than serious discussion, and, next, that he bears unconscious testimony to the truths which he denies when he finds it necessary to provide such an extra- ordinary support for our religious feelings as his catechism. He testifies to the reality of these religious feelings and long- ings, which to my mind point indubitably to a Grod, and, given a Grod and immortality, then I think that a Revelation is almost a necessary consequence. I am sure (pardon a little confession not desirable generally) that whenever doubts and difficulties come into my mind, they always take an immoral, or at least immoral, tone. It is not ' Did Christ really rise from the dead ? ' but ' Why should I think that duty and immortality are realities ? What is the use of troubling myself about all this ? Why should not I take my ease, and live an idle dignified life of indulgence and literary leisure ? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' Hence, to me at least, scepticism and temptation to selfish wickedness are identical. Cir. VI.] WOKK AT SIMLA. 105 To the Rev. Dr. Vaugkan. Simla, June 1860. We were delighted to receive your letter the other day, having, as you may suppose, heard and wondered at numbers of reports which came floating to India about the events which have happened to you since I wrote last. The actual prelate of Eochester does not possess any letter of mine designed for you, for I never wrote to you under the title which he bears. The mail via Southampton brought us the news of the offer and acceptance, that via Marseilles of the resignation. . . . And now what shall I say about it, or is it wise to say any- thing, as it must revive many troubles of spirit ? For yourself, my deal* old friend, I can have but one wish, that you should be wherever you are happiest, safest, most useful to others, and nearest in heart to God. For the Church I certainly do feel regret, because in these days one cannot but wish our best men to be in our foremost ranks. . . . Meantime, I think a year's rest sufficient, and therefore after December 27, 1860, 1 shall expect you to be ready to accept any bishopric, 4 even ': I do not know what is now the even of bishoprics. But I was much amused the other day by a review of the Duke of Wellington's correspondence, in which the moans of a certain Cleaver, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, are described, who after recounting his doings and sufferings for the Government, and his hard usage in not getting the apparently very wealthy see of Raphoe, says that he is now quite ready to accept any English bishopric, ' even Bristol.' . . . My clerical duties consist in preaching in the station church every other Sunday, and in delivering on Wednesday evenings a series of expository lectures on some of the more important Psalms, for which I make diligent preparation, certainly greatly to my own benefit, whatever be the effect on some forty people who attend the Wednesday service. I have also held two Confirmations, one for Europeans and one for Asiatics, which led to an indignant article from the Simla correspondent of the 'Delhi Gazette,' asking whether I thought the natives unfit to renew their baptismal vows at the same time with the English, ' for surely God does not, who is no respecter of persons.' This I thought a most unkind cut, 166 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. VI. first, because I had taken a good deal of pains to be able to read the service and give a Confirmation address in Hindustani, and holding two Confirmations rather than one, in order that every- one might be confirmed in his own language ; and, secondly, because I had been abused some time ago by another paper for expressing a wish that English people in India should feel a closer sympathy with their heathen fellow-subjects, and that we could break down the barriers of prejudice and mis- understanding which separate the races. . . . To H. R. Tomkinson, Esq. July 1860. Have you read Mansel's ' Bamptons ' ? I cannot condemn the book, spite of Maurice's attack upon it. Indeed, I think that there may be much help in it from theological difficulties which now perplex people, though I question some things, especially the remarks on morality. But he shows well the inextricable confusions into which we are plunged when we attempt to reduce the infinite to the laws and conditions of the finite, and to argue that Grod cannot do this, or that something else is contrary to His nature. I have not yet so studied the book as to form a decided opinion, but certainly after reading it I issued an order the other day to the clergy to use the prayer for rain with a much clearer conscience and livelier faith than I should have done had I been fresh from a course of Buckle or Mill. Meantime rain has come. There was serious alarm last week at the delay of the periodical rains : grain rose enor- mously in price, and old Indians looked back with a groan to the horrors of the great famine in 1837, and seriously antici- pated their renewal. It is believed that the weather has changed in time : prices are falling, and there are again hopes of a sufficient harvest. All the North-west Provinces were suffering under a similar drought. The rains, though most needful, are very disagreeable, even here : clouds float through the windows into our very drawing-room, we have fires blazing everywhere, and Burn feels it very much and has a great deal of fever about him. I, who suffered from the protracted hot weather, am much better just now, and am. going to preach again to-morrow, after an unusually long silence. . . . CH. VI.] BENGALI TRANSLATIONS OF THE PSALMS. 167 To the Rev. Krishna Mohun Banerjea, Professor in Bishop's College. August 1860. I have had such hard work lately from Mr. Burn's illness that I have only just been able to read through the proof-sheets which you kindly sent me of your projected dialogues. But I can now tell you that I have read them, and with great pleasure and interest. As a proof of it, I may say that I lay down on the sofa with them and did not stir till I had finished the fifty-sixth page. It is exactly the book which I desire to see emanate from Bishop's College, and above all from a clergyman of Bengali race. I do not quite see for what class they are especially designed, though I think that there are three classes for whom they will be especially useful. First, for your own unconverted countrymen of the higher orders, only that for them they should, I suppose, be published in Bengali. I hope that you are going to do this. Next, for European missionaries, that they may know better the state of feeling and opinion which they have to encounter ; and, thirdly, for the educated English both here and in England, as giving them a good picture of the wants and difficulties of mission work in India. Only for the third and possibly for the second class a little more explanation is required. I should recommend you to prefix to the dialogues a short introduction as free from arguments or disputed points as possible, and merely giving a popular sketch of the history of Hindu religion and philosophy. Doubtless this is intended to be given at length, but gradually, and is even begun in the second dialogue ; but I think that an ISiM-rrjs might be deterred from reading your book by encountering at once such phrases as ' kali ' and ' saliya yuga ma,haprabya ; ' and five or six pages are all that would be needed to enable him to enter into it with pleasure. I do not see why the edition should be tenta- tive : as far as I have read I cannot perceive any objection to immediate publication. What has become of the translations of the Psalms by you and Dr. Kay? I heard some English missionaries object to your part of it as being ill adapted to the language and com- prehension of the Bengal peasantry. Probably you can judge 168 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii. VI. of this better than your critics, and it may be difficult to translate into a vernacular familiar to them without lowering the dignity and practical grandeur of the Psalms. Certainly, much of our English Bible and Prayer Book must be unin- telligible to the English peasantry, and it is perhaps impossible to bring theological language down to them, for, indeed, we ought rather to raise them by moral and mental culture to the capacity of appreciating it. But it may be well to tell you that the objection has been made, if you have not heard it before, valeat quantum. To a Professor of Bishop's College. September 1860. ... I will accept - - as a candidate for deacon's orders on your presentation, before we start for Burmah and the Straits, whither I hope, all being well, to go, I suppose when the rains begin, or whenever the favourable season comes ; and I should wish the whole service to be in Bengali and in the midst of a Bengali congregation, either in Bishop's College Chapel or at the early service in the Cathedral. I think that such measures may help the natives to understand their religion a little better, and to realise the meaning of the Church and the Christian ministry. Meantime, I wish the Articles and Ordination services translated into Bengali, which, I believe, has not been done in either case. Will you write to me about this ? and if my supposition is correct I will commission some persons to prepare a tentative translation Mr. Banerjea I suppose, certainly some clergyman of the Church Missionary Society (Mr. Long, by way among other things of forestalling his criticisms), and others. Will you advise me about this after speaking to the principal ? It is better not to ask him as he has so much to do, more, I fear, than is good for him, but he might look over the translation of the Articles with special reference to the doctrinal words, and to avoid any possible heresies in the direction of either ' nerakar ' or ' sakar.' The following extract is from a letter to the Rev. Henry Venn, containing a review of the Church Mis- Cir. VI.] MISSION AT KOTGUR. ICO sionary Society's missions in the Forth-west Provinces and Punjab : September 1860. . . . From Kotgur we have just returned. Kotgur is the most unsatisfactory mission, perhaps the only unsatisfactory one of our Society, that I have seen. The place no doubt is very small and the people very ignorant, but the school is bad ; still worse is the branch school of Muttiana two marches from Kotgur, where I found fourteen boys reading St. Luke's Gospel with a heathen teacher who seemed very inefficient and com- plained of their constantly running away. Neither was the secular knowledge worth much either at Muttiana or Kotgur. This is the chief part of what I have to say about existing missions ; but there is one other district of the Punjab to the wants and claims of which I desire to call your attention. Ferozepore is the centre of a large Sikh population, is itself an important place, and is wholly unoccupied by missionaries. As Simla would be an additional starting-point to Kangra for operations among the hillmen, so might Ferozepore be an additional starting-point to Umritsur for operations among the Sikhs ; each would strengthen the other in both cases. Then, besides Mooltan, of which I cannot speak from experience, we should have the missionaries at Peshawur, with a branch mis- sion at Attock, devoting themselves to the Affghan Mussulmans, Urdu and Pushtoo languages, the study of the Koran and Mahometan superstitions, the missionaries at Umritsur and Ferozepore devoted to the Sikhs, the Urdu, Hindi, and Punjab dialects, and the Grunth and religion of Nanuk and Govind, and the missionaries at Simla and Kangra to the Hindi with its mountain peculiarities, and the simpler work intellectually, but no less difficult spiritually, of preaching to the hill people, and training their children. In this way the Church of England would be more worthily represented in the Punjab than it is now at present. I feel a little (I trust harmless and Christian) jealousy ef the American Presbyterians who are working at Eawal Pindee, Sealkote, Lahore, Loodiana, Umballa, Kupper- thala, Murree, Subathoo, and are talking of other plans also. In this way, too, I think that our labour and strength would be divided and concentrated on definite objects. 170 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. VI. To Mrs. Arnold. Kotgur, near Simla, September 1860. . . . The place from which I am now writing is about fifty miles from Simla, on the Thibet road, and therefore quite in the interior of the mountain land. We came here partly because it is a mission station which wants a good deal of organising and stirring up, partly to get a little more knowledge of the Himalayas and health from their breezes, before we go down again into the plains. I have often tried to compare this Himalayan scenery with that of other mountain countries ; but the result has been an increased conviction of the proverbial odiousness of comparisons, and a determination to enjoy what is before me without hankering after the unattainable. Doubt- less one may miss here the lakes of Italy, the glacier scenery of the Bernese Oberland, and the peculiar repose, freshness, and mountain streams of Westmoreland. But nowhere have I seen such foliage and vegetation ; the forests are of a grandeur and solemnity which remind me of the effect of a great cathedral, and from any height the enormous scale of the green land- scape, the vast ranges of hill-sides clothed in verdure and rich cultivation, the lines of mountain rising one behind another and terminating with the distant snow, give you the impression of a ' mountain country ' far more than any other scenery, and realise the fact that you are in the loftiest mountain range of the world. On Saturday morning we went up Hawathoo, 11,000 feet high, in this country of course a mere dwarf, but famous for its beautiful view. In the Alps at this height we should have been in the midst of ice and bare rock : here we sat down to a breakfast of coffee and mutton chops ! on a greensward covered with potentillas and other flowers un- known to us, but some like anemones and others like China asters, with oaks and pines all around us and the ruins of an old Ghoorka fort to lean our backs against. The lichens and ferns are of great beauty, and the trunks of trees are clothed with the Virginia creeper which now has turned red, just as we have seen it against an old English manor house or a college in Oxford or Cambridge. We are all, thank Grod, quite well. We were somewhat knocked up with the long winter travel, which was prolonged Cu. VI.] OCCUPATIONS AT SIMLA. 171 ^d _t a little too far into the hot weather, as we did not reach Simla d rest till April 11. So each of us has had a touch of illness, in every case this has passed away, and we are all as well and strong just now as we were in England. As I get older and since my duties have become more and more solemn, I have learned to value increasingly one of the many lessons which I learned from your husband, to be grateful not for health only, but for occasional illness also, as a warning that the night cometh when no man can work. My chaplain had a real fever, and was the only one who kept his bed, but that we are both really well you may gather from the fact that we walked up Hawathoo, 1,800 feet above the level of our halt the previous night, before breakfast without fatigue. EXTRACT FROM JOURNAL. September 1860. Our happy summer at Simla, which place we have enjoyed and admired more and more, has nearly come to an end. My occupations have been of the same cha- racter as heretofore. The lectures on the Psalms continued till Wednesday, August 29, when I brought them to the conclusion. My sermons latterly were preached nearly every Sunday, as Burn was ill and could not take his turn. My studies have been chiefly Urdu, Ewald's ' Psalms,' some Hebrew, and Ernest Eenan on the book of Job. The transla- tion I think most excellent and instructive, and a conclusive proof of the necessity of amending our English version, at least of the Old Testament, a task which ignorance and timidity combine to oppose. But there is matter in the preliminary dissertation which I strongly regret and deprecate, and which shows, like the Positivist theory, that Christianity must now struggle not only against those who deny that it is a divine revelation, but against those who disbelieve or hesitate to affirm man's personal immortality. I have been instructed by Tennent's ' Ceylon,' interested but by no means convinced by Mansel's c Bampton Lectures,' repelled by Maurice's attack upon him, edified by Vaughan on the revision of the Liturgy and on the Eomans ; rather pleased with Temple's c Essay on the Education of the World,' sometimes edified but oftener alienated by Jowett on the interpretation of Scripture, annoyed by 172 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. VI. Patteson's way of viewing Christianity ab extra in the c Tenden- cies of Eeligious Thought in England, 1688-1750,' though the essay itself is interesting and important, and made really indignant by the tone and substance of Williams on Bunsen's ' Biblical Researches.' The other essays in this volume I have not read, but I see no good, but rather great harm in Temple placing himself in such companionship. As everybody can see that Williams's speculations are hostile to Revelation, a Ketzer- gericht is sure to include in its condemnation the harmless speculations put forth in the same volume by Temple. With regard to public matters, I rejoice in the great triumphs of Garibaldi and the brightening prospects of Italy, not, I hope, to be crushed by the Austrian legions or the treachery of French diplomatists. But in India matters are still gloomy : Grod has taken from us two of those on whom our best hopes rested, Wilson and Sir Henry Ward : and it seems as if we must struggle against many difficulties, some the result of our own sins, some the dispensations of Providence, before we are permitted to fulfil our true mission of giving to India a Christian civilisation. God grant that we may not fail in the effort from selfishness or unfaithfulness ! On October 1, the rest and refreshment of Simla came to an end, and the party entered upon one of the most fatiguing months they ever encountered. It was still far too hot in the plains to attempt travelling by day, and nine nights out of the month of October were spent in palanquins ; and twice in the same period the steep and toilsome ascent of many miles of mountain road had to be performed to bestow visitation on Mussourie and JSTainee Tal, and the still more remote hill settlement of Almorah. At length, in the early days of November, Bareilly was reached, a large military cantonment, and a bright and animated native city in the healthy province of Kohilcund, and the journal becomes the best record of the ensuing camp life. Bareilly, Tuesday, November 6. To-day we made our first march and took up our quarters in camp. The comfort and CH. VI.] CONSECRATION AT SHAHJEHAXPORE. 173 neatness of the tents is such that their construction may really be considered a work of ' high art.' A large double-poled tent occupies a central position in the encampment, and forms the general sitting and eating-room. In front of this is the shemianah, a large square canopy with canvas walls running round three sides. This is our hall of audience for the reception of village functionaries or native magnates of a district who may desire to pay their respects. All around are pitched in regular order tents of all grades from the spacious single or double-poled apartment down to the piece of canvas stretched over a horizontal bar under which the servants and sepoys bivouac. As everything is supplied in duplicate we are never to be without shelter, one set of tents being always sent on ahead to the next camping ground. Shahjehanpore, Sunday, November 11. This morning I consecrated St. Mary's Church, scene of the awful tragedy of May 31, 1857, when the mutineers rushed upon the congre- gation in the middle of service, murdered Mr. Eicketts, the magistrate, just as he was escaping through the vestry door, and six others in the immediate neighbourhood, including Mr. M'Callum, then minister of the station under the Additional Clergy Society. The seven bodies were afterwards buried in a tope of trees which surrounds the church, and I hope that soon a proper monument will be placed there. The rest of the fugi- tives were very coldly received by the Eajah of Powayn (who, I am sorry to say, got off with a reprimand from Lord Canning, in consequence of good service done by some of his family), and sent on by him to Mohumdee, where they were joined by my old pupil Thomason, then Deputy Commissioner of Mohumdee, and on June 5 all marched towards Aurungabad. Wednesday, November 14. The second anniversary of my installation in the cathedral. We again journeyed for eleven miles through jungle, topes and fields to Burwar within one march of Aurungabad. Camp is getting quite like home ; sofas, easy chairs, books, and writing materials, make our day tent just like our drawing-room ; and as all mango topes are of much the same appearance it is difficult to believe that the whole establishment is in a daily state of migration, but it rather seems as if we were permanently living in a large, well- wooded compound. 174 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. VI. Here is a tolerably correct list of our cortege : 1 prelate, 1 prelate's wife, 1 prelate's daughter, 1 chaplain, 1 doctor, 1 captain of escort, 1 nurse, 31 servants, 4 masalchies, 10 bheesties, 8 sweepers, 8 sowars, 80 sepoys, 31 dooly bearers, 1 moonshee, 55 kelassies, 10 elephants, 65 camels, 6 horses and ponies (besides those of the sowars), 16 bullocks, 1 cow and her calf, goats, sheep, ducks, chickens ad libitum (all but goats varying in number de die in diem, as they are devoured or successors bought), sundry Pariah dogs, 1 cat, never seen, but said to consume butter, sugar, tea, and other provisions, when they vanish unaccountably. Our mode of life is as follows : up at 4.30, tea and toast, off at 5. I generally walk for an hour ; about 6, S. and I ascend our elephant, and receive a conversational lesson in Hindostani from the Amritsur moonshee who travels in the back seat of the howdah. We generally reach the camp about 8, when Hathi gives us a parting salaam with his trunk, and we retire to bathe, dress, and refresh ourselves before prayers and breakfast. Sundry occupations more or less profitable fill the day ; at sunset we stroll out in the fields, or go to see the elephants eating their evening meal of chupatties (huge cakes of flour and water), and then come in for dinner and an early retirement to bed. The country is beautifully green and fertile ; our tents are usually pitched under a tope or clump of fine mango trees. Often there is no road, and we strike along very narrow paths through crops of arhur or other grain, of which Hathi whips up large portions with his trunk and devours en passant. In these parts rain has been sufficient ; but the accounts from Agra, Meerut, and now, alas ! from some districts of the Punjab, are very alarming. A scarcity there must be and is : may Grod be pleased to avert a famine ! Another source of disquiet is the income tax : people say that it will be much less productive than was expected, and that the accounts of the wealth of native merchants and bankers appear to be greatly exaggerated. If the remedies for our difficulties are only partially successful, and if this year the scarcity forces Government to remit revenue and give employ- ment to the people on public works, the financial trouble is as great as ever, and Wilson's successor has as serious a task before him as Wilson himself. On. VJ.] ASIIIK ALL 1 / 5 Thursday ', November 15. A very short march this morning, and we forded the Groomtee exactly as the sun was rising. For some way on each side of the river trees cease, and we passed over waste grass land. Almost the first tree (a neem) on the left bank of the river in a wide plain of grass and corn fields, one mile from Aurungabad, marks the scene of the massacre of the Shahjehanpore fugitives. We visited it in the evening, accom- panied by the tehsildar of Mohumdee, who is escorting us through his district, and a zemindar of the place named Ashik Ali, descendant of an old princely family, the Nawabs of Aurung- abad. He actually saw the massacre, and, after the mutineers had dispersed, buried the bodies. There were twenty-two men, five women, and four children killed. The number of Sepoys was about two thousand. One party had followed them from Mohumdee, and they were met by the Seetapore mutineers at the Groomtee. There the Sepoys held a consultation, told the Euro- peans that they might go on where they liked, but almost imme- diately followed them, and forced them to halt at the tree under which they had retreated for shelter from the rays of a mid-day sun. The Sepoys surrounded them, except on one side, keeping at a distance of about 100 yards, and then began shooting them down ; the tree still bearing traces of the musket-balls. The last who were killed were two children, who during the whole time showed no signs of terror, or attempted either to run away or to beg for mercy. Ashik Ali knew Thomason well as the Assistant Commissioner, and showed me exactly where he fell. How little I thought when I looked over his copies, and scolded him for his false concords at Rugby, that I should ever stand on a spot so mournfully connected with him ! Happily his character and tendencies were such, that I believe him to have been ready to face without shrinking even so sudden and terrible a death. The bodies were buried in two graves ; the men in an old dry well, the women and children in a pit close by. The tree is to be enclosed and connected by a wall with the two graves, which are also to be walled in and marked by a monument, now on its way from England. Seetapore., Saturday, November 17. The Seetapore mutiny was on June 3. The 41st Native Infantry and two irregular regi- ments mutinied and murdered their officers, and the military police posted round Mr. Christian's house immediately followed 176 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. VI. their example, and fired on the inmates. Mr. Christian and several others were killed on the spot, and some as they were crossing the Sureyam, which flows by the compound, while Sir Mountstuart Jackson, one of his sisters, and some others, found refuge with Rajah Lonee Singh of Mithowlee, who after- wards gave them up to the Lucknow soldiery and now labours as a transported convict in the Andamans. It was a party sent by Mr. Christian from Seetapore to escort the Shahjehanpore fugitives which joined the Sepoys at Mohumdee on June 4, and with them murdered the victims under the neem-tree of Aurung- abad. Sunday, November 18. This morning I consecrated the new and still unfinished church by the name of All Souls, intending thereby to remind those who worship in it of the sufferings and deaths of their Christian brethren, former inhabitants of Seetapore. Friday, November 23. A long march this morning into Lucknow. We were longing to see again the place which we had so much enjoyed last year, and S and I had intended to enter it triumphantly on our elephant ; but at Marioun the two chaplains met us witli the Commissioner's carriage, to which we transferred ourselves, and drove through the ruins of the old can- tonments. Then appeared, separated from us by the Goomtee, various distant minarets, the crumbling tower of the Residency, the great earthworks round the Muchi Bhawm, the Chatr Munzil, the old iron bridge, the tombs of Grhazi-ud-din with their fine domes ; and then we crossed the bridge of boats opposite the Kaiser Bagh, and found a completely new order of things es- tablished, a garden being laid out in front of the palace, round the cross marking the scene of Sir Mountstuart Jackson's mur- der, which cross, now standing in a great open space, is certainly small and insignificant. Then came the new bazaar building last year, finished now with gay purdahs of different colours, such as I have seen in market-places in Italy ; then the new church, and a large public garden called after Wingfield, en- closed by a light pretty balustrade, and entered by a rather flimsy gateway topped with plaster females and urns; after which we entered the Martiniere compound, and found our camp pitched. Saturday, November 24. I consecrated the civil service C.i. VI.] PASTORAL WORK AMOXG SOLDIERS. 177 church by the name of Christ Church. By a remarkable coin- cidence to-day is the anniversary of Havelock's death. Surely a great mercy, and therefore a great responsibility, that in exactly three years from that time our power should be wholly re-esta- blished, Lucknow restored and beautified, and the Christian con- gregation assembled in perfect peace to worship (rod in their new church. It is to be filled with memorials of the victims of the mutiny : the four Grothic tablets in the aisle are reserved for Lawrence, Havelock, Neill, and a general memorial of those who fell in the Eesidency. The interior of the church is really good : it is cruciform, has side aisles, and a roof of successful woodwork. Externally, the building is too much squeezed to- gether, and too high for its length. Roy Bareilly, Sunday, December 2. We had two services in the mess-room, where we dined last night. Doubtless, it is the best arrangement possible till the church is built, but I never felt the force of association and the need of celebrating sacred offices in a sacred building more than when I ministered to-day in a room decorated with smart mirrors looted from the Kaiser Bagh, prints of the Duke of Wellington, a battle, and the Malton Hunt, and bookcases filled with rows of the ' Edinburgh ' and ' Fraser.' However, the want of a material church was sup- plied by a rather numerous church of men and women, including a great many soldiers whose attendance was voluntary, and by services not unedifying, I trust. In the morning I had a con- firmation, followed immediately by the communion, according to Whately's plan. Monday, December 3. After a morning spent in hospitals and schools, I found that eight men of the 38th regiment desired to be confirmed. The chaplain had seen them, and so did I after receiving his report. It seemed that they did know what confirmation was ; that they were impressed with yesterday's service ; that they desired to become communicants ; that they had been reluctant from false shame to come forward and say so. I saw each man separately, and talked to him, which was almost my first experience of pastoral work with soldiers, and I hope that I got to understand better their peculiar difficulties and oddities. Clearly a chaplain ought to take very special pains with such a flock. Much more should be done than merely to read out a notice of confirmation. Public explan- N 178 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. VI. ations and individual influence are wanted, but at the same time it is plain that they would be a difficult set to deal with ; though, after all, every congregation has its peculiarities : London tradesmen, farmers, and labourers, public school boys so, why not soldiers ? However, after giving some time to these interviews, I resolved to confirm them, and did so in the large double tent at half-past four in the presence of our own party, one of their officers, and some other soldiers. After this, I had a drive with Mr. Crommelin, the Assistant Commissioner, and visited the old ruined city of Eoy Bareilly. It is not at all remarkable, but the. fort must have been large and strong. It had thick mud walls faced with bricks; the bricks have been taken to build the European station ; the piles of mud remain, with a road driven straight through them, and the gates in ruins. In the Serai, Major Grail was murdered while trying to pass from Lucknovv to Allahabad during the mutiny ; the only crime which disgraced Eoy Bareilly, though in its neighbourhood lived the scoundrel Earn Bux, who smoked Thomson and Delafosse out of the temple on the banks of the Granges when they were escaping from Cawnpore ; the others in the boat with them were murdered, but these two cut their way through his men who were surrounding the temple. He was after- wards hanged on the scene of his crime, under Mr. Crommelin's superintendence. The famous Ungud, who carried letters be- tween the Eesidency and Havelock's army, and did other good service during that eventful summer, came to our camp to-day. He was once a Sepoy in Captain Price's company, wounded in the Sikh war, had a pension, returned to his village in Oude, threw himself into our cause, and now has the title of Sirdar Baha- door, more pension, and land to the value of 3,000 rupees a year. He is a very fine-looking man, tall, well made, and told us his stories in a most energetic manner. He was well dressed in a tunic, English trousers, and turban of silver tissue, and wore the Order of British India and the Order of Merit. Wednesday, December 5. The morning's march was through a regular wood to the old Mussulman city of Jais a mass of ruinous mosques, towers, and houses, some of brick and some of mud, surrounded by trees and cornfields and orchards, and situated on a rising ground, formed of the ruins of previous houses. In the evening we explored the town, and to my great CH. VI.] SUNIS AND SHIAHS. 179 surprise were the cause of a quarrel between the Sunis and Shiahs. In the afternoon, a letter written in Arabic, adorned with large spangies and other ornaments, had been brought to me from the Moulvie Azim Ali, requesting the honour of an in- terview. As I had already given audience to the Tehsildar, and had a good deal to do, I sent word that I was coming to the city that evening, and should be glad if he would meet me there and show me his mosque. Accordingly, we started on our elephants, and found messengers, who said that they came from Moulvie Sahib, and conducted us to a dirty old mosque and Imambara, where their master, a villainous-looking old fellow, received us. We talked a little and departed. In the evening another messenger arrived during dinner, informing us that we had visited the wrong Moulvie a heretic a Shiah, who had sent out emissaries to decoy us to his mosque, while the true believers, the Sunis, had been waiting in front of their mosque to enjoy the light of my countenance ! They would be humbled for ever in the sight of their wicked antagonists unless I would also visit them, or at least, give their Moulvie a testimonial to his virtue and loyalty, which might do him service in the eyes of the Government. Both courses were impossible the first as it was pitch dark, the second as we of course knew nothing about him ; so we could only send a letter regretting the mis- take, and assuring the Suni of our impartiality between the claims of Ali and Abubekr to the Khalifat. Wednesday, December 12. We got into Fyzabad this morn- ing, passing near the entrance of the city a large tomb of a Begum who died some thirty years ago. Then we rode through a portion of the native city abounding in mosques, crossed a really magnificent avenue of tamarind-trees of great length, then came out upon the maidan, sprinkled with new or half-finished bungalows, barracks, and buildings, and finally reached the camp, pitched in a pretty tope just opposite the church. The chaplain here is Anstey's eldest son, whom I was very glad to see. In the afternoon we all went to see the ancient Hindu city of Ajudhia, separated from Mussulman Fyzabad by a short in- terval, and regarded with extreme reverence as the birthplace and capital of Kama, who with his monkey friend Hunamun is worshipped here in numerous temples, rising in picturesque N 2 180 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VI. groups along the banks of the wide Grogra, which is here navi- gable for steamboats. We came in for a grand ceremony by the river-side : a boy dressed as Eama was enthroned to receive adorations and offerings of flowers. The ghats flanked and crowned by temples are, as usual, very fine. But, on the whole, I was most interested by the Hunamungari a monastery, so to speak, of 800 Byragis, dedicated to the monkey god. Externally it is fortified, the Byragis being warlike. Indeed, a bloody battle between them and the Mussulmans at this place, betokening a spirit which seemed likely to spread to the Sepoys of our army belonging to the two religions, was one cause of the annexation of Oude. The monastery is approached by a lofty flight of steps, and consists of a quadrangle surrounded by a cloister, with a shrine and image of Hunamun in the middle. Quite deserted when we entered, the place was soon thronged with Byragis, who swarmed out of their cells to greet us, with their Mahunt, or abbot, at their head. Their dirt, and their want of anything like a uniform and decorous dress, and of all dignity and order, contrasted very unfavourably with the grave looks and black robes of a Roman Catholic convent. Only 300 are now at home ; the rest are dispersed about the country, begging and per- forming pilgrimages. At the end of the interview, the Mahunt bewailed the severity of the Government in exacting 500 rupees per annum from the convent for income-tax, or, as he called it, ' tikkus,' and entreated me to exert myself to procure a remis- sion. I could only assure him that I had nothing to do with such matters, and was required myself to pay a considerably larger 6 tikkus ' than 500 rupees. I am told that the convent is very wealthy, and would have been leniently assessed at 1,000 rupees. Sunday ', December 23. Groruckpore is a very pretty place green, abounding in palm-trees ; misty also, like a town in Bengal, but colder. The church is the property of the Church Missionary Society, and used both for English and Urdu services. I preached in the morning, and in the evening confirmed thirty candidates, chiefly soldiers of H.M.'s 13th regiment. Monday^ December 24. I confirmed forty natives in Urdu, and in the evening S , I and Mr. Reuther, the German mis- sionary, drove over to Basharalpore ('city of glad tidings'), a Christian village in the middle of a tract of land granted by CH. VI.] THE HALKABANDI SCHOOL. 181 Government to the Church Missionary Society, and cultivated by the native Christians. The village was wholly destroyed, and the church unroofed and gutted by the mutineers, and the inhabitants fled to Chupra. The cottages have been rebuilt, and are models of neatness and order. The number of Christians is about 300, and they bear a good character among the civil authorities. Christmas-day began by a parade of our Sepoy guards in their full uniforms, with medals of Bhurtpore and the Punjab campaign, to make their salaams to S and me. Vegetables were presented by various persons, venison, and a peacock from the jungle ; fish from the Raptee, a youthful pig, Cabul grapes, pistachio-nuts, oranges, ad infinitum. A blazing fire just out- side our tent diffused through an opening in the canvas a comfortable warmth over the interior. Ursula was particularly blithe and frisky, and, altogether, spite of the absence of Edward, of other familiar faces, and of English church-bells, we had many Christmas associations around us, and abundant reasons for thankfulness. I preached on the Epistle for the day, tried first to explain it in Vaughan's way, and then spoke specially on the verse ' When He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.'' Afterwards we administered the communion, though not, alas ! to a numerous body of communicants, nor to all who were con- firmed on Sunday. In the evening I went to the hospital and had service there. We wound up the day by a great banquet to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of the station ; the military always feast together on Christmas-day at their own mess. I forgot to record that at one of our halts near a native vil- lage I saw an inspector of schools named Shivapershad, who spoke English with perfect fluency, and is evidently an intelli- gent and well-educated man. He was well known to Mr. Thomason, and translated some religious books from English into Urdu for Mr. Carre Tucker. He brought the village school for me to look at and briefly examine. It is one of the Halkabandi schools, as they are called, of the North-West Provinces, paid for by a small cess on the villages, and the boys are taught just the elements of knowledge to read the Nagri character, and perhaps the Persian, to write, work rule-of-three, and learn an outline of 182 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. VI. geography and Indian history. They stay, he says, about two years at school, or rather only one ; for during half of each year in their school life they are. at work in the fields. In this time they just pick up enough to enable them to conduct the ordi- nary business of life with decent intelligence, and this is all that we can expect of them at present. Shivapershad hopes that enough is given to the boys of this generation to make them desire more for their children, and says that the Benares College produced very little effect on the education of the city, till those who had learnt something from it had sons whom they desired to see better taught than themselves. He had after- wards some conversation with Burn, and said that he did not visit England because he should never be able to afford the sum which the Brahmins would demand from him for buying back his caste. He was aware that the caste system was all nonsense, but if he lost his caste, he would lose the means of doing good to his countrymen. This is exactly the state of mind de- scribed by Polybius, who desired to retain the popular theology of Eome as a means of benefiting the people. How different from our Lord's prayer ' Sanctify them by Thy truth : Thy word is truth.' Sunday, December 30. The first Sunday which we have not spent in a station, and on which we have not taken part in public service since October 9 of last year, when we were coaling at Commercolly. We had our own quiet service in the tent, and I read Arnold's Christmas Sermon of 1839 on c Christ's Three Comings.' How thoroughly characteristic it is ! In one respect its reading gave me pleasure, in contrasting 1860 with 1839 ; in another pain : pain inasmuch as the tone of the leaders of liberal thought in theology now is so much less Scriptural, and has in it so much less of faith in Christ as a person, and of the hope of immortality, than Arnold's tone ; pleasure, since I do not believe that he would now say, as he did then, that the aspect of England is such as to render a revolution like that of 1789 probable. Saturday, January 5. We marched into Jaunpore. The town is ruinous, surrounded with tombs and mosques, and displays much stone tracery on the front of its old houses. We passed under the fort, across the Groomtee by the famous bridge, through a bazaar and serai on the right bank, and CH. VI.] JAUNPOKE. 183 along a pretty avenue to the maidan where our camp was pitched. The place was the capital of a kingdom from 1394 to 1476, stretching along the Granges from Canouj to the frontier between Behar and Bengal. A certain Khqja Jehan made himself independent of the last Toghluks, and Jaunpore, though conquered before, yet was not really and permanently brought under Delhi till Akbar's time. One of the most interesting of the sights is the bridge, of great length and width, and per- fectly level, crossing two arms of the Groomtee, one of which is now quite dry. On each side of it are shops as on old London Bridge or the Eialto at Venice, not however close together, but with intervals between them, through which are pretty views both up and down the Groomtee. The bridge has narrow arches and stout buttresses, and on it, half way across the river, is a very old group, of Hindu workmanship, representing a tiger devour- ing an elephant, the tiger being much the bigger animal of the two. The Moonshee discovered on it the date 809 of the Hegira, i.e. 1431. It is a work which does much credit to our Moslem predecessors. The fort stands very finely on a mound rising from the left bank of the river, and entirely commanding the bridge. Since the mutiny several efforts have been made to blow it up, and a great part of the parapet and some of the walls have fallen. The entrance is through a very fine gateway : in the interior is the garden which contains, be- sides the ruins of buildings and terraces and a powder- magazine, a lat, or Buddhist pillar, like those in the Kutb and in the fort at Allahabad. It commands a good view of green, well-wooded country, both up and down the Groomtee. We then visited two magnificent but ruined Pathan mosques- the Atala Musjid and the Jumma Musjid; both built on the same general plan, both little more than ruins, but highly interesting and very grand in design. Each consists, or con- sisted, of a large quadrangle with a cloister round it, formed not by arches but square massive pillars, divided certainly into three stories in the Jumma Musjid, and possibly in the Atala also, though there only the two lower stories now remain. In the middle of each side is a grand gateway, and one of most massive solemnity in the side of the west, which in the Jumma Musjid, where it is most perfect, is of almost Egyptian strength and form ; a regular propylon, with one immense Grothic arch ? 184 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VI. and smaller Gothic windows and decorations. There are no minarets Patlian mosques seem never to have had them ; though minarets are no modern inventions, since the Cairo mosques older than these have them always. The domes are not in the bulbous shape of the Mogul mosques, but natter, lower, and more saucer-like. Our cicerone was very strong in the belief that the whole colonnade in each case belonged to a Jaina, or, as he said, a Buddhist temple, and that the Mussul- mans seized these temples, added the great gateways, and turned them into mosques. To one who has seen the Kutb the theory is plausible, for there too is a cloister or colonnade of square pillars, and also a series of magnificent Mohammedan arches. But after carefully looking at both mosques, I cannot but agree with Fergusson that they are original works of the Pathans. There is no marked break or want of continuity between the domed gateways and the colonnade. At the Kutb the Jaina pillars are covered with sculpture, including bas-reliefs of saints, from capital to base ; here the flat surfaces are in the sternest simplicity of Mohammedan puritanism. That there were Jaina or Hindu temples in Jaunpore is undeniable, for every now and then in the walls, roofs, and bases of the mosques we came to stones carved into the likeness of the human figure ; but these were put in carelessly and promiscuously, forming no part of the Mohammedan design ; so that, in my opinion, the Mussulmans pulled down the temples and used the materials in building up the mosques. Of the two, the Atala Musjid is the more beautiful, because the colonnade is entire on all four sides of the quadrangle, whereas in the Jumma Musjid it is a mere fragment. On the other hand, the one feature of the great west propylon is grander and more perfect in the Jumrna Musjid than in the Atala. Monday, January 7. I went to see the mosque over again, and also to visit a third about two miles away, called the Lall Darwaza Mosque. It is a miniature of the others, exactly in the same style, but on a smaller scale. The entrance gateway on the east side of the quadrangle, opposite the great propylon of the mosque proper, is more perfect than at either of the others. There, and at the Jumma Musjid, schools of Mohammedan boys were assembled. Positively the whole instruction consists in teaching them to repeat the Koran by rote in Arabic, without Cu. VI.] BENARES. 185 understanding a word of it ! They repeat this (to them) utter gibberish in a monotonous chant, swinging their bodies back- wards and forwards ; truly a ' vain repetition,' almost more miserable than ' Baal, hear us ! ' for I suppose that Jezebel's priests knew what the words meant. My second inspection of the mosques convinced me yet more that they are entirely Pathan works, simple in design, and that the Jains or Hindus had no more to do with them than that their stones were pilfered to build them. Tuesday, January 8. We performed for the last time during this tour our ordinary morning march ; breakfasted together ; then I had a Moonshee lesson, translated Psalm xviii. for the C. C. I., and after luncheon took leave of our faithful Sepoys, and made them a brief oration in Hindustani. Their pre- sence has shown me how very hard it must have been for the Indian officer in 1857 to believe that his regiment was disloyal. They are so orderly, punctual, respectful, and quiet, that it must have been really inconceivable that they were capable, almost it would sometimes seem at an hour's notice, of rising in mutiny and committing atrocious crimes, and murdering the very officers to whom they had appeared thoroughly devoted. Our regiment, the 31st, was almost the only line regiment in the Bengal army which did real service in the mutiny, by actually fighting on the English side and driving the rebellious 42nd from Sagor. At 4, S and I mounted Hathi, and had a short ride of seven miles to Benares. 186 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. VII. CHAPTEE VII. RETURN TO CALCUTTA DEPARTURE OF DOMESTIC CHAPLAIN FOR ENGLAND THE 'NIL DURPAN ' INDIGO-PLANTERS THE BISHOP'S VIEWS ON THE RELATIONS OF ENGLISHMEN TO THE NATIVES OF INDIA LETTERS. IN February 1861 the Bishop's party were reassembled in the palace, after an absence of eighteen months, which had been rich in novelty and interest, and in personal blessings. Life in Calcutta brought a return to more settled occupations, and to pleasant social intercourse with a large English community. The Government also went through the hot weather with its servants ; and there was in those days no migration of Court and Council to the hills, reducing Calcutta to the dullness of a Mofussil town. Many large and small parties at Government House broke the weight of the trying hot season, and one scene of his- torical interest was the durbar in which Lord Canning received the thanks of the Talookdars of Oude for the privi- leges it had been his special policy to restore to them. The event of chief importance to the Bishop personally was the departure for England, through failing health, of his chap- lain, Thomas Harris Burn. The parting was the rending of another tie with England and the past. Their adoption together of a wholly new work had sealed the confidence and friendship of fifteen earlier years, and the Bishop felt that the separation in 1861 would cause a blank in his life which could never be wholly filled. It was practi- cally a resignation of the office, for Mr. Burn returned to India in 1862 to resume it only during one visitation journey and a few more months. When, in 1864, he CH. VII.] THE 'NIL DUKPAN.' 187 was released from long and painful illness, the Bishop mourned the loss not only to himself of a tried and trusted friend, but to the whole diocese of one who was a bright example to the service he had adopted, by his high sense of ministerial duty towards both Europeans and natives, by the energy with which he quickly mastered the language sufficiently for much practical usefulness, and by many excellent gifts of head and heart which led him to spend and be spent for India. In July, Calcutta was roused from the torpor which creeps over life in the hot weather by an incident more exciting than anything which had occurred since the mutiny. The ' Nil Durpan ' burst like a cyclone over society. It formed a painful episode in a large and difficult subject, and left its traces in party animosity and personal bitterness, long after the event itself had become a matter of history. The ' Nil Durpan,' meaning ' Mirror of In- digo-planting,' was a play in the vernacular intended to describe village life in Bengal, and indigo-planters (chiefly Englishmen of the commercial class) were among the leading characters, and were exhibited in a very unfavour- able light, in respect both of humanity and morality. The play got into the hands of some persons in influential position in Calcutta, warmly interested in the condition of natives of the poorer classes. To them it appeared, though very dull as a composition, curious and note- worthy as an indication of popular feeling on the relations existing between the planters and the peasantry, between the occupiers and the cultivators of the soil. They de- sired a more extended publication of the play, and to this end they brought about its translation into English in Calcutta, and its subsequent circulation in England through channels sufficiently public and official to be marvellously indiscreet. Such an open assault upon a whole class, just at a time when the indigo-planting system was condemned by many, 1S8 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. VII. both in India and England, as injurious to the welfare of the peasantry, naturally aroused the utmost indignation in commercial circles in Calcutta. The points in the published play by which they felt themselves especially aggrieved were a clause in the native author's preface, accusing two Calcutta journalists of selling themselves for a sum of money to support the planters' interests, and a statement in the translator's preface that the picture of a ryot ruined by the indigo system was represented in language ' plain but true.' The Landholders' Associa- tion, dissatisfied with an unsatisfactory explanation from the Bengal Government, brought an action against the printer for libel and defamation. He pleaded guilty, paid a fine of a few rupees, and, instructed by one of the chief promoters of the translation, gave up his name. It was that of a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, an earnest and fearless man, devoted heart and soul to the welfare and improvement of Bengal ryots. A pro- secution followed, and he was found guilty on both counts, and sentenced to a month's imprisonment and a 100/. fine. It was impossible for the Bishop to stand aloof from an occurrence which had. placed one of the clergy in such a position ; but he was happily spared from much personal contact with the case by his absence on visitation. In the remote places in Assam the echoes of the din of excitement raging in Calcutta tardily reached him, while the irregularity of postal communications in that sluggish province gave him ample time to survey the transaction in all its bearings, and to pass a carefully weighed judgment on the missionary who, so far as the Bishop was concerned, was the chief actor in it. This he did in a letter which apportioned impartially censure and sympathy, and the conclusion of which ran thus : .... And now I have fairly told you all my grounds for blaming you in this matter. Everyone who has seen your most zealous and self-denying work at , or who knows your CH. VII.] LETTER TO A MISSIONARY. 189 true and earnest interests in the welfare of the Indian peasan- try, or the real good which you have done by your efforts to promote a moral and Christian vernacular literature, or your high personal character and blameless life, will be very slow indeed to believe that you acted otherwise than conscientiously. I am sure that you published the play with the full belief that you were accelerating the termination of a system which you thought wrong in itself and injurious to India, and warning the English public as to the light in which the Hindus them- selves regard it. I do therefore deeply regret the part of the sentence which inflicts a month's imprisonment, and I rejoice to hear that you have very much to alleviate it. After this expression of opinion, you may be sure that while I earnestly warn you against any fresh indiscretion, and believe that the sympathy which you receive, especially from natives, will make it necessary for you to walk warily, and avoid all temptation to defy or speak contemptuously of the law, yet neither as Bishop nor as President of the Corresponding Committee of the Church Missionary Society have I any intention of moving further in, the matter, or attempting to add any ecclesiastical censures to the civil penalties already inflicted. I am glad to hear that you think of going home. Such a change and rest will be good for yourself, and while the present irritation lasts your useful- ness in India will be impeded, and yourself constantly exposed to unfavourable influences of various kinds. But I hope that in a year or so we shall see you again, and that you will be en- abled, through God's blessing, to carry on your earnest missionary labour and devotion to all good works your plans for the Christian education and for the improvement, both temporal and moral, of the ryots of Bengal. This letter was the beginning and end of the Bishop's official interference in this transaction ; but with his watchful interest in all that went to make up the social condition of British India, he saw far more in the occurrence than a fracas between a missionary and an irritated English party. To him it represented, in jarring combination, the mixed elements of Anglo-Indian life, and supplied a vivid picture of conflicting interests and jealous susceptibilities, 190 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VII. revealing themselves in the mutual relations between officials, the commercial classes and natives. The hostile tone of the Anglo-Indian press, and the expressions of unfeeling severity that were heard in an English court of law during the unfortunate trial, awoke in his mind thoughts and fears, which found a vent in some private letters, and in a statement of the case published in a Calcutta periodical. The latter afforded the most direct channel for the publication of his own view of a notorious incident, with which, through a missionary's share in it, he was brought into indirect connexion. While animadverting in this article upon the indiscreet words and acts, the party rancour, and the uncalled-for asperity of language, as prominent and painful points in the case, he was studiously fair and moderate in what he wrote of the planters as a class. The local press, how- ever, which represented their interests, was too excited to accept any utterances except those of indiscriminate parti- sanship, and its comments on the article and the writer were bitter and personal. Men smarting under a slur cast upon their whole class, and proclaimed on the housetop, through an ill-considered act of their own countrymen, were deaf to words that strove to lift the matter out of the arena of party conflict, and to place it on the higher ground of a common re- sponsibility and duty towards India. In language de- signed to appeal to more Christian instincts in minds which were for the moment inflamed by heated per- sonal feelings, the article referred to thus concluded : ' Turning from the past to the future, we desire to found on the whole transaction one earnest aspiration and hope. It is painful to think that in the midst of a vast heathen population, the few Christians whose example and influence ought to leaven for good the whole mass are divided from each other by the hostility which this incident has, for the time, most lamentably intensified and embittered. CH. VII.] THE 'CALCUTTA CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER.' 191 Cannot this great evil at least be brought to a conclusion? Cannot officials and settlers believe that the common faith and hope, which ought to unite them, are far greater and more important than the temporary differences of policy and self-interest which separate them ? Shall we never see all Englishmen in India realising that profession, which none but the most degraded refuse to acknowledge, but which none except the best and noblest carry out in their practice, that they are placed here not to bite and devour one another, not merely that each may heap up for himself riches and honours, but that all may work together to civilise and Christianise and build up in this land the kingdom of God ? Let us put away rancour and evil speaking. Let not each seek his own, but every man another's wealth. Let us try our utmost to live as brethren and so win over others also to join our Christian brother- hood.' To Professor Shairp. Palace, Calcutta, April 9, 1861. This is not a letter, but a mere bit of friendly chat : not a regular constitutional round by the Dunchurch Road and Bilton, or the Holbrooke Grange fields and Aganippe, but a simple stroll after second lesson to our homes and a little be- yond perhaps, or a turn round the close after chapel on Sun- day. I write partly to introduce to you the ' Calcutta Christian Intelligencer,' a monthly publication, which, having sunk to the lowest depths of dullness and debt, is now endeavouring to struggle into a new life under the auspices of Burn, who has become its editor. Its objects are explained in an article written by me in the February number entitled ' Ourselves.' As long as it exists (which may cease to be the case unless the sale can overtake the debt) I hope to send it you as a present monthly, as it will record most of my public and official pro- ceedings. If you could ever be induced to furnish an article, a scrap of poetry, a brief review, religious reflections, a short memoir anything pertaining more or less directly to theology, whether practical or scientific, you would edify the Indian clems, and place us under deep obligations. 192 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. VII. Your letter, just received, gave me extreme pleasure, as your communications always do. There are few persons with whom I generally agree more thoroughly, owing to the mixture of religious enthusiasm, firm faith, and thoughtful reflection which distinguishes your Christianity, arising perhaps from an Oxonian manhood grafted on a presbyterian boyhood. I can- not answer it now to-day is mail-day; but in answer to your question as to what work in life can best be taken up in the time not absorbed by the Professorship, I answer that books to strengthen the faith and deepen the Christian convictions of young men seem to me the chief want of the age in England. We are all, thank (rod, very well, though the hot weather is upon us with all its fury. I rejoice that you are complete professor. To C. M. Bull, Esq. Dibroghur in Upper Assam, September 3, 1861. As I wrote to you last from Simla, and now date from the banks of the Brahmaputra, you must think that my whole life is spent in wandering about India, a supposition, however, which is not quite correct, for last year I had six very happy months undisturbed at that place, and this year have spent six more in my own home at Calcutta. It seems odd to call Cal- cutta home ; yet besides the fact that no home can be homeless which contains wife and child, I feel more and more that it would be ungrateful to refuse to it that name of endearment, considering the multiplied comforts and advantages which mitigate its heat and its exile. . . . Though travelling now in the full state of a government steamer I find considerable discomforts arising from the occa- sionally frightful heat, and the absence, in these recently established and imperfectly provided stations, of those means and appliances whereby in Calcutta we make our houses cool in the hottest weather. Yesterday the thermometer was at 94, and the blinds by which the sun was nominally excluded were far less serviceable than good calico blinds, such as you have in any well-provided English house. The result is that one can do nothing. Before the heat of the day began I had a confirmation, and at sunset consecrated a burial-ground, but during the interval was absolutely useless, lying on my bed CH. V1L] CHARACTER OF EUROPEAN SETTLERS. 193 fanning myself. So that the ice, and punkahs, and other in- struments of coolness in the more civilised parts of India, are not luxuries, as they would be in England, but means of doing work efficiently. Even as a tour the present one is not of first- rate interest ; the two chief objects for observation being some extremely grand river scenery, and the gradual transformation of a wild jungly valley, 400 miles long, into one huge tea plantation, to which change Assam is submitting, apparently with most successful results to tea planters, tea drinkers, and Assamese labourers. With regard to India, the point which chiefly troubles me as bishop, and should, I think, cause most anxiety to all its well- wishers just now, is the result of the constantly increasing influx of European settlers and their relation to the natives. . . . And there are unquestionably three points on the side of the settlers worthy of much condemnation (1) the calumnies of their newspapers, (2) the claim which they set up to be the public and people of India, wholly forgetting the unquestion- ably prior and wider rights of Hindus, (3) the commercial spirit of magnifying capital and its claims above all other considerations. Nothing would, I think, be more disastrous than a parliament or council in which they would be the pre- ponderating, element, since they would be a mere oligarchy of race without any responsibility, such as presses upon the official class, and we all know from history what is the course which such an oligarchy usually runs. Hence, though not given to admire arbitrary government, and sufficiently detest- ing the present French regime, I am very glad that the new constitution with which Sir C. Wood is favouring India is of a somewhat despotic character, though in truth India cannot be despotically governed, if the English Parliament does its duty. . . . My educational work is not wholly over : besides certain schools and colleges whereof I am visitor, I have been elected on the syndicate, or governing committee, of the Calcutta Uni- versity, which is really now the most efficient agent in educat- ing the Hindus, and there I sit monthly with the Advocate- General, Dr. Duff, the Free Kirk missionary, a physician, and a native (a son of Earn Mohun Eoy) ; a curious ' Hebdomadal Board' is is not? I think that we do some good, and we are 194 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. VII. as harmonious as if we were canons of Durham, dividing our money, and banded to resist a radical commission. Kindest regards to your father and mother. To his Son. Bishop's Palace, October 22, 1861. I have again so completely fallen into the routine of Cal- cutta life that I am beginning to forget my two months in Assam, the recollection of which is also getting absorbed in the prospect of the voyage to Burmah and the Straits of Malacca, now fast impending. Nevertheless, at the risk of boring you to death, I am going to test your asserted scientific tastes, by a dissertation on the river Brahmaputra, chiefly taken from notes made by the Archdeacon during our voyage on its capa- cious bosom. The great problem is, whence does it draw the enormous supply of water, which I have noticed in more than one of my recent letters to you. To make the matter clear I send you a rough map. The main river must rise in the mountains somewhere east of Assam, as it descends into the valley at the sacred spot called Brahmakhund, where it forms a small lake, and then begins its course through Assam. But it is by no means a great river till it receives the Dihong and Dibong, when it is suddenly swollen to five times its former size. Of these two rivers the Dibong is comparatively small, so that the Dihong must somehow or other be the main cause of the Brahmaputra's greatness. Now the Dihong has been very imperfectly explored, and no one has yet ascertained, from actual inspection, whence come its supplies. But to the north of the Himalayas, in Thibet, flows a great river called the Sanpu, rising probably near the Granges, Indus, Jumna, and Sutlej, far in the west, and flowing through a long mountain valley in an easterly direction past Lassa. What becomes of it is unknown, and the most probable conjecture is that it turns south, joins the Dihong, and so meets the Brahmaputra. Here are some of the arguments for this belief : 1. In 1825 it was found that on December 26 the discharge at A (above the junction) was 19,000 cubic feet per second, and at B (below it) 88,000 ; also that the relative size of the Dibong and two branches of the Dihong at that season was : CH. VII.] THE BRAHMAPUTRA AND ITS AFFLUENTS. 195 Dibong (at a) 13,000 cubic feet; Dihong (at 6) 53,000 cubic feet ; Dihong, west branch (at c), 3,000 cubic feet ; i.e. Dihong 56,000 cubic feet, or more than four times the Dibong. More- over, in the same month of December, the Brahmaputra proper (as we have seen) discharged 19,000 cubic feet per second, so that the Dihong is proved to be chief constituent in the united stream. On March 29, 1826, by which time the snow on the lower parts of the mountains had melted, the discharge at A was 34,000 cubic feet, and at B 120,000 cubic feet. Thus, in December, the Brahmaputra proper gave 19,000 cubic feet, in March 34,000 cubic feet, the difference being 15,000 cubic feet. But in December the Dihong and Dibong gave 69,000 cubic feet, in March 86,000 cubic feet (86,000 is 120,000 34,000), the difference being 17,000 cubic feet. Thus, while the Brahmaputra proper increased by 15,000 cubic feet, the Dihong and Dibong, though three and a half times the size of the Brahmaputra proper in December, increased by only 17,000 cubic feet, whereas, had the proportion been preserved, they 69 should have increased by - x 15 = 54 nearly. Hence a large i y part of either the Dihong or Dibong (or both) must come from a region in which the snow by March has not melted so much as in the region whence the Brahmaputra flows. Now the Sanpu comes from a region so elevated, probably more than 10,000 feet above the sea, where the snow does not melt so early, and therefore it is not unlikely that it flows into the Dihong. It must flow into the Dihong rather than the Dibong, since the latter is too small. 2. The width of the Dihong, above its division by the island, is not much greater than that of the Dibong or Brahmaputra, though the discharge in the cold season is so much greater. Hence its speed must be much greater, and therefore it has probably descended (under the name of the Sanpu) from a at height. 3. While the Brahmaputra (proper) and Dibong have the milky appearance seen in rivers or torrents produced by melted snow, the Dihong is clear, which shows that its main supplies are not from snow recently melted, i.e. from the lofty sources of the Sanpu. o 2 i 196 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VII. Against these claims of the Brahmaputra to be the ultimate recipient of the Sanpu, some French geographers have urged those of the Irawaddy, which rises in a region to which the Sanpu may easily get if it continues its course east instead of turning into the Dihong. A person, however, whose scientific reputation is considerable, informs me that the Irawaddy has been traced upwards to a stream only eighty yards across, which could not therefore have received anything so big as the Sanpu. But unluckily the people on the banks told the ex- plorers of another branch of the Irawaddy, which they could not reach ; though there is reason to believe that this other branch is not a large one. I think that the chief reason why I have sent you all this prose is that I, who profess to be quite unscientific, got really interested and excited about this Sanpu and Brahmaputra question, and chattered violently to all the Anglo-Assamese about the Dihong and Dibong. Hence I wish to know whether my son, who professes to be entirely scientific, responds to my enthusiasm. Perhaps, however, you will say that it is easier to care for such a question on the banks of the actual Brahmaputra than on the banks of the Swift. Many thanks for your salad fork and spoon which I like very much. When you are next in town buy for me again one of those little Chinese-looking men, who wag their heads and thrust out their tongues. Ursula and I between us have broken one of them, and I want a successor. Send it out whenever there is an opportunity. . . . We are all quite well, and the cold weather coming on apace. Mists now morning and evening, and fires kindled at night in the Bengali cottages. The rains have been tremen- dous, unheard of in duration and copiousness. The result has been very favourable to the corn crops in the north-west, but rather too much of a good thing for the rice crops down in Bengal, and almost ruinous to the already much perplexed indigo planters. . . . Such horns I have brought from Assam ! People will think me a sporting prelate of the middle ages. God bless you, my own boy ! Cir. VII.] GENERAL VIEW OF HIS WORK. 197 To Professor Conington. Palace, Calcutta, October 1861. Your letters are always very interesting, and I can say with- out flattering that I never receive one without great pleasure. The last reached me as I was voyaging up the Brahmaputra on a two months' visitation of the remote and somewhat uninter- esting province of Assam, and most agreeably recalled my thoughts from its opium-eating inhabitants to Oxford and English interests. I confess that such matters still occupy a very foremost place in my mind, more so perhaps than they ought to do, considering the work assigned to me here. But I cannot help it, and it would be affectation to say that I view India with the absorbing interest felt in it by Martyn or Corrie or my immediate predecessor. Not that I at all dislike my work, or that I am not interested in it. On the contrary, the work itself I like very much : it is not oppressive, it gives me plenty to think about, I throw into it willingly such energies as I have, and as long as Grod mercifully preserves our health, I have no cause for regret except the want of Edward and some English friends. But then, when it comes to India, I feel certain draw- backs. Thus, as to the missionary work, I am only concerned in it occasionally, and as it were indirectly, while the evangel- isation of the country to such an extent as to bring me into more constant connexion with it is very distant, hardly reserved for my episcopate unless there were to be some special inter- position of (rod's providence. Again, the politics of India are not of a kind to interest, but rather to disgust me. At present, the great subject of newspaper controversy is the rivalry between the governmental or official classes, and the mercantile com- munity of settlers, planters, and other persons who come here to make their fortunes. ... I do not deny that there are ex- cellent men among them, some who are true Christians and would gladly make the natives Christians also. But even these come here simply for purposes of trade, and undoubtedly their views for the future of India are largely coloured, not merely by com- mercial but by personal considerations. . . . Among civilians, I see often a real interest in the natives, and a desire to im- prove them for their own sake. But then the civilians, like all the rest of the Anglo-Indian world, are always looking for- 198 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON". [Cu. VII. ward to going home, and regard England as their country, so that the utmost that one ever sees, excepting in a few devoted missionaries, is a readiness, perhaps an earnest desire, to do good to India during the time of sojourn in it. Thirdly, consti- tutional changes, such as those lately announced, are only alterations in the way of nominating counsellors and disposing of patronage or working the details of Government, and these are certainly not matters of high interest. The change which is likely ultimately to lead to the most important results is Lord Canning's last order, which permits the sale of waste land and the redemption of the land tax, so as to introduce into the country a class of real landlords, holding the fee simple of their estates. . . . On one part of my duties of life, I have come, I think, to a pretty clear opinion the nature of my reading. I do not consider that I should be doing my best for the Indian Church in its present aspect, so much more European than native, by spending my time in trying to make myself an Oriental scholar. Two living languages, Hindustani and Bengali, of which I already know something, I wish to keep always on hand, alter- nately, as work calls me to the NW. Provinces or keeps me in Bengal. For I think it desirable to be able to ordain, con- firm, and perform other services in the native congregations in their own tongues, and to be able to talk a little to them. And I always hope to keep up and improve my acquaintance with Indian history and such studies as will enable me to feel an interest in the people. But to learn Sanscrit or Arabic, and to read Vedas and Upanishads or Koran and Mahometan literature in the original languages, would consume immense time without corresponding fruit. My business is to influence and help the clergy, to be a Christian theologian, to do my best to spread in the country true views of Christianity, to interest people by freshness and sound matter in my sermons. Hence I hope to make Divinity my chief study, and therefore I have resumed Hebrew and read divers books of Scriptural criticism : the last being Elliott's ' Horse Apocalypticse,' by which, however, I remain unconvinced, though the learning of the book is great, and it is written by a good man. . . . Cu. VII.] EFFECTS OF FAMINE. 199 To the Bishop of Adelaide, South Australia. Palace, Calcutta, October 28, 1861. I was absent from Calcutta on my first visitation of Assam when your letter arrived with the kind contributions of your diocese to the Famine Eelief Fund, for which I return my best thanks. The famine is, by God's mercy, over, and has been succeeded by a bountiful harvest. But its effects of course remain, and among these there is none more melancholy than the great number of orphan children. Orphanages have been set up by both of our missionary societies, where these children will be trained up as Christians under the care of clergymen. The most important is that of the Christian Missionary Society at Agra, but that has been so largely aided by the committee of the Famine Eelief Fund that I have thought it needless to help it further with the Australian money. I have therefore divided this between two other orphanages of more recent origin, which are more dependent on private contributions : that of the Society for Propagating the Grospel at Cawnpore, and that of the Christian Missionary Society at Umritsur in the Punjab, and I trust that this appropriation of the money will meet the wishes of yourself and of those who have kindly given it. It may add some interest to the appropriation of the money sent from Adelaide, if you know that at my first Ordination I admitted to deacon's orders two Hindustanis who had been saved from the last great famine (1837-8) and trained up in a missionary orphanage. To the Rev. J. D. Glennie, Secretary, Society for Promoting Christian Knoivledge. Palace, Calcutta, November 2, 1861. Many thanks for your letters, announcing the consent of the committee to my proposals about the hymn book (already hastily acknowledged), and about the formation of a ver- nacular committee. This has been done, and will, I hope, be fruitful in results. In its name I have already to ask one favour, than which I think none can more lawfully fall under the Society's rules and operations. A new edition is wanted of the Urdu Prayer Book both in Arabic and Eoman character. Some 200 LIFE OF BISIIOr COTTON. [CH. VII. time ago I appointed a committee, consisting of persons eminent for Urdu scholarship, both clerical and lay, to revise the existing translation, which had been censured as unidiomatic and difficult. It was also necessary to translate the Ordination Services. A new edition is now ready for the press, which will for the first time contain these, together with the Psalms and Epistles and Gospels, to which hitherto mere references have been given, and the rubrics in red letters. The last improve- ment perhaps you will think rather premature in the present state of Hindustani churchmanship, but it is really most expedient, to enable the ignorant to see clearly that these rubrics are directions, and not prayers or otherwise parts of the service. The book, which has my full sanction, is to be printed at Bishop's College press. ... I now turn to another subject. A year ago the committee liberally voted me 5001. for my projected school at Simla for the children of Europeans and Eurasians. In order to secure the Government grant in aid, I am required to certify how much has been actually paid to me, the Government being ready to contribute a like amount. May I therefore ask you to pay me the 5001. as soon as convenient, in order that I may secure the insertion of the grant in the budget of 1862-3 ? CH. VIII.] ANGLO-INDIAN EDUCATION. 201 CHAPTER VIII. ANGLO-INDIAN EDUCATION SCHOOLS IN CALCUTTA EURASIANS DEFICIENCY OF MEANS OF EDUCATION IN NORTH INDIA THE BISHOP'S EFFORTS TO INCREASE IT CONNEXION OF THE MOVEMENT WITH THE DAY OF THANKSGIVING GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION SUBMITTED TO THE GOVERNMENT MINUTE OF THE GOVERNOR- GENERAL MEMORIAL SCHOOL AT SIMLA SELECTION AND POSITION OF THE HEAD MASTER SCHOOL PAYMENTS CREATION OF A DIOCESAN BOARD OF EDUCATION. IT may be well at this point to suspend the chronological order of events in order to narrate with continuity the earlier steps in that development of Anglo-Indian educa- tion which distinguished the sixth Episcopate of Calcutta. The time was not unfavourable for the attempt. The subject had attracted some attention before the mutiny ; its revival on the restoration of peace was likely to com- mand sympathy and support, apart from the special in- terest which it derived from the proposal to connect the first fresh steps in the movement with the day of public thanksgiving. To the Bishop, personally, the work was congenial. It was the first that he made entirely his own, it was a link between his past life and the present, and supplied in a distant land an outward expression to that spirit of loyalty to the memory of his life's chief teacher, which prompted him on one occasion to write, * When- ever a large school is governed on enlightened Christian principles, its masters will reverence the great man who in our day first showed such government to be possible. In whatever part of the world Englishmen are thinking, planning, working, struggling, conquering, there some of Arnold's pupils, and the pupils of schools carried on in 202 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. VIII. Arnold's spirit, will be found foremost in the battle of ...life.' In Calcutta, in 1859, there was no deficiency in the supply of English and Christian education ; schools had become as numerous as the churches. Even in the self-enriching days of early English rule, the foundation and liberal endowment of the Free School, Doveton Col- lege, and Martiniere, testified to a sense of responsibility on the part of the Government or of private individuals towards the forlorn semi-Asiatic children around. The Church, though in a depressed condition in those days, put forth efforts in the same direction, represented by St. James's School due to Bishop Turner, and the High School, since known as St. Paul's School, founded after long delays and with great difficulty by Archdeacon Corrie, who may be called the forerunner of Bishop Cotton in the matter of Eurasian education. Other schools were added from time to time as the Eurasian population in- creased through the exertions of English residents in the Presidency city. The Bishop, either as visitor or as a member of the governing body of many of these institutions, necessarily came into contact with their working system. From his earliest occupation of the see, his advice on all points of school management was sought; his active personal interest was cordially welcomed; and the directors of one flourishing seminary, containing Church of England boys, but under strong Free Kirk influences, were not afraid to ask him to succeed Dr. Duff as its visitor. The standard of in- fstruction in these schools was not lower than that of middle and national schools in England, and the religious in- fluence they imparted was often deep and enduring ; but their general system and training, carried on at a disadvantage in a debilitating climate, was not as a rule robust enough, physically or mentally, to invigorate feeble and inert Eurasians. These half-castes, forming a numerous and distinct class throughout India, have many CH. VIIL] MIXED POPULATION OF INDIA. 203 grades of respectability amongst themselves, but, as a body, they have never secured any solid or profitable social position. Possessing very little ambition or capacity for self-help, they have been outstripped in the race of life by pure Anglo-Saxon energy, while the almost heathen degrada- tion into which the lowest class sometimes sinks has been overlooked by the fervour of missionary zeal directed ex- clusively to the natives. The presence of this race in its full proportions was unknown to the Bishop until he reached India, and in his first charge in reference to a chaplain's work, he thus spoke of it with all the force of a fresh and strong impression : ... I imagined Calcutta to be a large city, occupied by Euro- pean officials and merchants ; with the soldiers in the fort and sailors by the river side, but with no poverty, strictly so-called, except among the natives, who would of course be cut off from us by barriers of language, religion, and caste. ... I need not say that such anticipations have been entirely falsified by the reality ; there can be no city where from the strange mingling of inhabitants, of English and East Indians, descendants of the old Portuguese settlers or of the slaves whom they imported, of traders from all parts of the world, the Church's work is more imperative or more difficult. For, in dealing with these classes, the clergy have to encounter faults and peculiarities to which in England they are unaccustomed. From early marriages and frequent deaths, they find families in strange and unnatural relations ; widows who have hardly ceased to be girls, step-mothers charged with the care of their husband's children before they are well able to take care of themselves.^ Many are the hindrances too which an Indian sun and an enervating climate interpose between us and the energetic discharge of our duties ; but we know that our high calling must carry us through these and even greater difficulties, that we must never forget that the same voice which said to Saul 6 Why persecutest thou me ? ' will say to any one of us, ' Why neglectest thou me ? ' if through indifference those for whom Christ has died are left in misery and ignorance. 204 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii. VIII. Iii the North- West Provinces the demand for education was to some extent met by a good school at Lucknow, on the same foundation as the Martiniere in Calcutta, and by one or two private schools in the hills, dependent on the life and health of the proprietor, and therefore possessing only a precarious tenure of existence. Eastern Bengal, Assam, and the Punjab were unprovided with any middle- class education, except what the convents afforded for girls.* The quota of children contributed by each British station might be small, but the aggregate was con- stituting a whole generation deteriorating physically, and growing up in a state of deplorable ignorance and neglect. A project for establishing two schools in the Punjab to meet the wants of that province had been started early in 1857. Like many other good works which flourish only in peaceful times, it fell prostrate before the great tem- pest of the mutiny. On the Bishop's arrival in India, the scheme and some money collected for it were placed in his hands and became the nucleus of a fresh and more extensive undertaking. His first step was to obtain sta- tistics as to the extent of educational destitution, and his own conjectures on the subject were abundantly con- firmed by the general testimony rendered by the officials of Northern India. Such testimony came from Commissioners, Deputy- Commissioners, Directors of Public Instruction, and others whose work brought them constantly into contact with the heterogeneous elements of Anglo-Indian life. A few extracts from replies to the Bishop's inquiries are subjoined, as touching on distinct evils, for which it was hoped that a more organized education might be one remedial measure. * The Lawrence Asylums at Sunawar and Murree being intended ex- clusively for the children of English soldiers cannot be included among the schools available for Anglo-Indians generally. Cii. VIII.] NEED OF SCHOOLS. 205 ... At present, for want of some institution like that now in contemplation, many children are being educated by Eoman Catholics, not because their parents are hostile to our Church, but from the absolute dearth of schools conducted on Protes- tant principles, and at a moderate cost. ... As the seat of one of the local Governments, Alla- habad has drawn to itself a miscellaneous homeless Christian population, whom the rebellion has rendered dependent on Government and on charity. Amongst these are widows and orphans of mixed blood, often speaking only Hindustani, and though nominally professing Christianity, so ignorant of its first principles as to be utterly unable to teach their children. Many cases have come under my notice in which whole families of children are utterly uninstructed, growing up in the city among Mahometans and idolaters, and learning all that is bad. . . . Knowing that such a school is the crying want of India, as far as the clerks and that class of society are con- cerned, I warmly second the Bishop's project myself, and hope that he may be able to establish a good school in the hills, to the support of which I shall gladly contribute. There are several clerks here with families. Their children are growing up. They can never hope to send them to England, and I do not know to what schools they can send them in India. They would be glad enough to send them if a good cheap school were established ; but men of this class are unable to assist in carrying out such a project. As regards the rates of schooling, ten rupees per mensem should be the lowest, and thirty rupees 1 per mensem the highest. *J ... I am extremely happy to hear of the movement which the Bishop is making to establish good schools for the children of European parents. That the want is a real one is apparent to all who have had much opportunity of being acquainted with boys brought up in this country. I confidently hope and believe that his Lordship's efforts will be largely responded to. Certainly few objects can be more worthy of the support of all Christian residents in India, and well-wishers of the country. Whilst so many direct efforts are made for Christianizing and 206 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VIIL improving the people around us, it is too often forgotten how enormously important, with reference to this work, is the indirect or unconscious influence of the resident Christian population, more powerful, perhaps or rather, certainly one way or other, than all the missionary labours in the country. And thus for the sake of those around us, as well as for our own, whilst we urgently need, for the present generation, a large increase to the spiritual agency at work among the adult Christian residents, both the present and succeeding genera- tions, Christian and heathen, will, under the blessing of (rod, reap the benefit of such schools as his Lordship has proposed. The following extract is from a letter from Sir Charles Trevelyan to the Bishop, which, though written at a later date in the course of the educational movement, indicates his sympathy with the principle which lay at the root of that movement. . . . We owe a great duty to our countrymen and their offspring, who are scattered over the face of this great country in a manner which makes them peculiarly dependent upon the combined action of their more fortunate Christian and English brethren, in all that relates to the upholding and improvement of their moral and intellectual condition. Without such com- bined and well-sustained action, the Christian minority inevi- tably becomes absorbed in character and manners in the Hindu and Mahometan majority, and that portion of the Christian community which is in most habitual intercourse with the natives, becomes a scandal and a stumbling-block in the way of their conversion. Example is better than precept; and although no means of instruction are to be neglected, I am of opinion that more can be done for the religious improvement of the natives by exhibiting Christianity to them in all its blessed practical fruits than by any amount of direct didactic teaching. . The Bishop's investigations were primarily made in behalf of neglected Eurasians ; but with quick discern- ment, while still only imperfectly acquainted with India, he detected the further demand for education created by Europeans of the non-official class whom railroads and CH. VIIL] ENGLISH COMMERCIAL CLASSES. 207 other commercial enterprise drew to the country in in- creasing numbers very shortly after the suppression of the mutiny. The thought of future generations of English settlers growing up with no Christian education to redeem commercial life from its hardness and selfish- ness was appalling to him ; ' he saw that if there could be one thing fatal to the spread of Christianity, it was the sight of a generation of unchristian, uncared-for Englishmen, springing up in the midst of a heathen popu- lation. He felt that, if there could be one thing subver- sive of our Indian empire, it was the spectacle of a generation of natives highly educated, and trained in missionary and Government schools, side by side with an in- creasing population of ignorant and degraded Europeans.' * In the words of his earliest manifesto on this subject, ' he hoped that a sound physical, intellectual, and re- ligious education might, under God's blessing, not only benefit children likely to remain permanently in the land, but might also, indirectly, tend to remove the barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding which separate the races to whom India is now a common country.' , / The scheme, in general outline, by which the Bishop proposed to roll away this great reproach, to avert this great evil, from British India, contemplated (1) the es- tablishment of a system of education, physically and intellectually vigorous, suited to the requirements of commercial life, or the army, or of the Calcutta Univer- sity, with religious teaching in conformity with the Church of England, modified by a conscience clause for dissenters ; (2) the foundation of a school or schools in the healthy heights of the Himalayas, in which such education should be carried on with the best chance of success to the sickly and feeble children of the plains ; (3) endowment funds to impart permanence and stability to new institutions. * < Macmillan's Magazine/ December 1866. 208 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ca. VIII. The foundations of extended Anglo-Saxon education were laid in the thanksgiving service for the restoration of peace on July 28, 1859. The offertories of that day were to be devoted to the establishment of the first hill school, with a chapel in which its memorial character should be recorded. Other forms of memorial had been thought of: a large and imposing church in the Upper Provinces was proposed ; a general subscription for missions was at one time contemplated. The Bishop preferred to associate so solemn and peculiar an occasion with the principle which was the mainspring of his work in India, that missionary success was miserably hindered and delayed so long as European life in India was not elevated, purified, Christianised. His sermon in the Cathe- dral had for its text the latter part of Eom. xii. 21 ; for Ljjts title, the Christian victory over evilS He recurred with thankfulness to a policy at once calm and just, which had prevailed over the din of passionate invective ; to the heroic endurance and unshaken faith which had met the trials of one most mournful year ; he dwelt upon the restoration of supremacy and security, as an over- whelming responsibility cast upon England ; he exhorted all to be stirred by recollections of the past, by thankfulness for the present, by hopes for the future, by the memory of the brave and good who had gone, to live more truly by faith in Jesus Christ and to confess Him more plainly before aU men ; he pleaded for the work that day begun as one means to the great end of guiding pro- fessing Christians to make their Christianity a reality in a heathen land. The Church of England collections throughout the diocese amounted to nearly Es. 35,000 (3,500/.). Of this sum, 1,500/. formed the Cathedral of- fertory, 1,100/. being contributed by the Viceroy and Lady Canning. From that day the work went on steadily, though slowly, after the manner of all things in India, and 1860 Cir. VIII.] SCHEME OF EDUCATION. 2C9 was far advanced before it passed from the stage of pre- liminary discussion to that of official correspondence. In August of that year the Bishop submitted a definite and comprehensive scheme to Government, comprising three objects : viz. the completion of the Memorial School which the Thanksgiving collections had started ; the es- tablishment eventually of similar institutions in other parts of the Himalayas ; and schools in the plains to sup- plement, at a lower rate, those in the hills. The Vice- roy's reply was dated October 29, 1860, and out of a long State paper, the following extracts are selected to show the position of Government towards the movement. Extract from a Minute by the Governor-General in Council, dated October 29, 1860. 3. If measures for educating the children of the fast increasing European and semi-European community are not promptly and vigorously encouraged and aided by the Government, we shall soon find ourselves embarrassed, in all large towns and stations, with a floating population of Indianized English, and Eurasians loosely brought up and exhibiting most of the worst qualities of both races. I can hardly imagine a more profitless, unmanageable community than one so composed. It might be long before it would grow to be what could be called a class dangerous to the State ; but a very few years will make it, if neglected, a glaring reproach to the Government, and to the faith which it will, however ignorant and vicious, nominally profess. On the other hand, if cared for betimes, it will become a source of strength to British rule, and of usefulness to India. 6. But the Government of India cannot undertake to pro- vide education for either Europeans or Eurasians. It has other things to do, and it would not do that work well : the missionaries cannot do it ; their task lies with those who are not Christians : to wait till private enterprise shall supply schools of the kind required, will be to wait indefinitely. Therefore, the case seems to be exactly one in which a system such as has P 210 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cir. VIII. been proposed by the Metropolitan of India may fitly be encouraged, and liberally aided by the Government. It may be hoped that it will be supported by the British public in India and in England ; but the principle of self-support should be carefully kept in view, to the fullest extent to which it may be attainable. 10. The scheme proposed by the Bishop of Calcutta is, so far as it goes, a thoroughly sound and practicable one. I say, so far as it goes, because it does not profess to supply the wants of those Christian children who are not of the Church of England, and because, even as regards children who are of that Church, or whose parents are willing to accept for them the teaching of the Church of England, it will not, as I understand, put education within the reach of the poorer of them until those whose families are more at ease shall have been provided with it. 11. His Lordship contemplates the establishment in the plains of schools of a humbler and cheaper class than those in the hills ; but it is proposed that the former shall be day- schools only, and that they shall be treated as a future and subsidiary step in the scheme. 12. I am strongly of opinion that schools in the plains should be provided as soon, at least, as schools in the hills. The expense of education at a hill-station must, at the lowest, be beyond the means of a vast number of Eurasian families, settled in the plains. . . . The error into which we are most likely to fall, is that of constructing a scheme above the reach of those whom it is most necessary to benefit ; and this being so, we ought not to begin to construct from the top only. 15. As to the form and extent of the aid to be given by the Grovernment of India, I recommend that, to the sum collected from private subscriptions, as a building and endowment fund, an equal sum be added by the Grovernment ; that, from the opening of each school, it should receive a grant in aid to the fullest extent allowed by the rules ; that, if the school be built where ground is at the disposal of Grovernment, the ground be given. CH. VIIT.] RECOMMENDATIONS OF LORD CANNING. 211 18. I have said that the scheme does not profess to supply the wants of Christian children not of the Church of England. I did not mean to impute thereby any fault to the scheme. It is right and prudent that in this case nothing more should be aimed at than to meet those wants. 20. The schools now contemplated are not charitable insti- tutions ; they are designed for the use of a class, the families composing which can supply abundance of scholars of the Church of England, and which, for the most part, would not willingly pay for the teaching of a school which was not essen- tially of that Church. I have no doubt that the attempt to accommodate such schools to the teaching of children of all Churches would lead to its failure. 23. I have written of schools to be established in Bengal only, because the Bishop's scheme applies only to Bengal and the Himalayas. But if a scheme similar to that should be originated in Madras and Bombay, I recommend that the Government take the same part in supporting and executing it. I do not, however, think it advisable that such a scheme should emanate from the Government. This memorable Minute, confirmed by the Secretary of State, renewed the charter of Anglo-Indian education. Such a charter already existed in the terms of the Edu- cational Despatch of 1854. From many causes, this Despatch, which now reads like a legacy from the East India Company to India, had remained all but a dead letter in respect of English Christian education. Some influential and guiding mind was needed to claim the aid it liberally offered, and to give to such aid the extensive^ development which the country urgently required. It seemed as though the instrument for the work were found when, in the providence of God, Bishop Cotton filled the see of Calcutta. The Government having thus ratified the scheme in its general principles, took up the position of spectators, and only came forward promi- nently when grants of land or funds came under discus- r 2 212 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Co. VIII. sion. They gave the Bishop's project the dignity of an imperial question, and left him unfettered to work it out. \A circular was issued to the clergy as the year closed, with a view to getting subscriptions, and shortly afterwards matters of detail connected with the Memorial School began to claim attention. Simla was selected as the locality, and Government solved the difficulty of a suitable site by making over the ground of a recently- abandoned / cantonment at Jutog, four miles out of the station. The ""Bishop, far away himself, put local business into the hands of a temporary committee, consisting of the Rev. Julian Robinson, chaplain of Simla, and some other residents. With the former, and with officials of the Public Works Department, he carried on for months a brisk correspond- ence, and was always deeply sensible of the efficient aid they rendered to the undertaking while still in its infancy. After many vexatious delays, the Bishop could write, in 1862, that subscriptions and the grant in aid from Govern- ment amounted to 120,000 rupees (12,000/.), part of which he hoped to reserve as the nucleus of an endowment, the rest being available for the purchase or erection of build- ings and for heavy preliminary expenses. He was ready also with a head-master, negotiations having been con- cluded with the Rev. S. Slater. Mr. Slater was at that time in England, but much of his former life had been spent in India and in posts connected with education. His position was a point of great importance with the Bishop, who characteristically refused to entrust the school to the permanent council of ex-officio and elected Go- vernors, until he had installed its first head on his own terms. It was not one of the least benefits conferred by him on education in India, that in the school which he founded, and intended to be a model as to constitution for other schools, he put the head-master in his right place, made him autocratic and independent, and left him to stand or fall by his own merits. CH. VIII.] FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS. 213 The rate of the school payments was a matter very"^ difficult of adjustment. Many deprecated the naming of a figure which might prove too high for slenderly-paid clerks to meet. The Bishop, on the other hand, dreaded future insolvency, if the popularity of the school should decrease ; and he was ready for a sharp contest to prevent an undertaking, intended to be national and permanent, from becoming at any future time a disastrous failure financially. All inquiries had led him to believe that the North- West Provinces and the Punjab could supply boys for one hill school at a charge of thirty to thirty-five rupees per month. He looked forward to a gradual growth of nominations and scholarships to ease the school fees in some cases ; but the material fabric and an endow- ment fund being secured by subscriptions, he strenuously advocated the self-supporting principle as that which should be maintained to meet ordinary current expenses. ' When the buildings are complete,' he once wrote, ' when more boys are admitted, when more money comes in, itj will, I hope, be possible to reduce the terms. Meantime there could be no surer way of securing the failure of the school, than by starting with terms that would involve it in debt.' This fundamental principle which he desired to*\ inforce was in the end adopted, though the actual figure originally named was subsequently changed, when the numbers in the school made it possible to reduce the I terms from thirty-five to twenty-eight rupees monthly^ The annexed letter will show how strongly he felt and wrote on a point which occasioned more serious diversity of opinion than any other connected with the school. To the Rev. Julian Robinson. June 18, 1862. I am very much obliged to you for your long and carefully considered letter of the 2nd inst. 214 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. VIII. With regard to the terms, though I know that your local knowledge and Captain 's is far greater than mine, yet I venture to oppose to it my own disagreeable experience of a very similar case, which leads me to dread, almost above all things, the mistake of placing terms too low. Maiiborough was started under the most promising auspices, under the patronage of the archbishop of the province and bishop of the diocese ; with a committee consisting partly of peers and privy- councillors, partly of practical men of business ; with a large capital subscribed, an admirable site, and a great prestige of popularity. The council fixed the terms at a rate which would not pay, trusting to future development and the liberality of the English public. The result was a series of embarrassments, from which, towards the end of my mastership, the first prospect of deliverance dawned upon the school. I know how great was the odium excited by raising the terms, how disheartening all the pecuniary troubles were to the masters, how near the school was to actual dissolution. Now, it seems to me plain that the terms which you propose will involve the future authorities of Jutog in these same miseries and dangers. I am quite prepared to admit that the policy of my former letter sacrificed the present too much to the future ; excuse me if I think that the policy of your letter sacrifices the future altogether to the present. The subscribed capital will vanish in educating one generation. Nor do I see any reason for such very low terms. You say that we shall, if we announce them, be ' deluged ' with applications. But a deluge is not wanted as long as we can only accommodate forty boys, and a moderate shower is all that will be of any use to us. . . . I am sure you will excuse me for mentioning one caution very necessary in the present aspect of affairs. We have to deal with public money, and there is always a tendency to regard this as less sacred than private funds, because no individual is specially injured by prodigality. I hope, therefore, that it will not be forgotten that the sum which we possess is exceedingly small to carry out a design which is, as you say, to be a real benefit to India, and therefore that the strictest economy will be used in applying it. I am sure that unless this is remem- bered, the scheme now so promising will be a disastrous failure. CH. VI1L] OPENING OF THE MEMORIAL SCHOOL. 215 ' The first boy joined the school on March 16, 1863.' Next day three more came. '* In these words of unadorned simplicity, the first start of the Simla school stands re- corded for the benefit of posterity. Long before the year closed the number reached thirty-five, being as many as the limited space would accommodate. To meet the appli- cations for admission, which continued throughout 1863, more dormitories were shortly added. Early in 1864 the premises at Jutog took in sixty-five boys the utmost number they could receive and the pupils in. the school continued at this figure until the locality of the school was changed, as will be mentioned in the right place. _J Thus, by the opening of the Memorial School, one stage in the Bishop's extensive undertaking was reached, with no greater deviation from the original plan than a commence- ment on a smaller scale as regarded extent of buildings and number of boys than the Bishop at first contemplated. The account here given of the undertaking can yield no adequate conception of the amount of time and corre- spondence arid patience which its prosecution demanded. It must suffice to say that it was entirely incorporated in the rest of the Bishop's work : wherever visitations led him, the concerns of the hill schools travelled also ; every detail respecting their foundation and organization was referred to him, and it was often from remote parts of the diocese that he had to decide on points continually arising. Whatever other matters pressed for attention, there was always in the background the heavy care of an important work being in hand, for which he was personally responsi- ble, and of which, with God's blessing, he must be the directing, controlling, and animating mind. He knew that if he flagged, others would flag ; subscriptions would languish, the public would become impatient. There was much help ; none greater than that rendered by Arch- * Account of the Foundation of Bishop's School, Simla, published under authority of the Governors, December 1869. 210 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VIII. deacon Pratt, who threw himself cordially into the project, and worked, thought, and pleaded for it unceasingly, and eventually became chief treasurer and auditor of compli- cated accounts. But there were deep anxieties likewise. Under these the Bishop's calm temperament, and trustful rather than buoyant or sanguine faith, upheld him, while the confidence ripening year by year in his judgment and practical power upheld others. Meantime the circular to the clergy, issued at the end of 1860, had called forth not only subscriptions for the Simla school, but a great increase of activity in the cause of education generally. Many chaplains in the plains were making efforts to establish local day-schools, and thus to create a fresh link between themselves and their flocks. The difficulty of starting these lowland schools with a sound organization and with some prospect of sta- bility hastened, in 1863, the creation of a Board of Educa- tion. This Board thus became a fresh nucleus of diocesan work, and proposed to help schools founded in accordance with its rules by grants in aid towards buildings, or towards \Jl)e outfits and passage-money of teachers from England. It undertook likewise to sketch curricula of study and procure school-books, and, in short, to be what all work in India imperatively needs, a fixed centre for operations widely scattered, and liable from fluctuations in society to be feebly sustained. As a good omen of future success, 1 it happened that the treasury of the new Board opened with a windfall in the shape of 12,000 rupees (1,200/.), the gift of a private person. This benefactor repeating, in modern phraseology, the hope expressed, in his will in 1800, by the queer old Anglo-Indian Frenchman, General Claude Martin, ' that Government or the Supreme Courts will devise the best institution for the public good, as I am little able to make any arrangements ' entrusted a sum to the Supreme Government of 1863 for churches and schools in the three Presidencies. Lord Elgin, who was CH. VIII.] QUESTION OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS. 217 then viceroy, granted the Bishop's application for the moiety of the Bengal share, in behalf of the Diocesan Board of Education, as- the prospective foster-parent of many schools. ^J This educational sketch may fitly close with a letter to a chaplain. It is one out of many to which the planting of small schools gave rise, and has also an interest, because it indicates that in these lowland day-schools, where the chaplain and the parents come in close proximity, occa- sional difficulties arose to disturb what was otherwise the singularly smooth course, theologically, of the whole move- ment. To a Chaplain. October 1862. With regard to your troubles from persons not belonging to~^ our Church, I was aware that you had experienced some, from a paragraph in the ' Friend of India,' and I will shortly state my opinion upon the chief of them, which I understand to be your rule that all children attending your day-school should also attend your Sunday-school. I do not claim any right to interfere in the matter, for though the * Friend' calls your school ' the Bishop's School,' I do not see exactly on what grounds he gives it that title, except that I am considered generally to have given an impulse to the duty of educating poor Europeans and Eurasians. Perhaps, too, as I lately commented on the alleged want of Church of England instruction for Church of England children in your school, you will be surprised to hear that I do not altogether sympathise with your rule, which is now called in question. But I do not see any inconsistency between my opinions on these two points. Ever since I took up the question of educating the poorer classes of Christians in India, I have desired that the Church of England should act on one principle in regard to it. All persons, whether belonging to the Church or not, should be invited into its schools, on the condition of joining in daily prayers, and receiving scriptural instruction from English churchmen. But the peculiar formulas of our Church were not to be pressed on those whose parents objected to their learning 218 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. VIII. them. This is obviously implied in paragraph 12 of my Pastoral about the Simla school, dated Christmas Eve, 1860, has since been expressly stated by me in answer to a letter of inquiry from another chaplain, and is the principle adopted by the new Madras Board of Education, in a paper just issued by them, and in which my statement or letter above mentioned is quoted as an authority. It has also been affirmed by yourself in your letter just received. The question is, therefore, whether the compulsory attendance at the Sunday-school is or is not in accordance with this principle. Now I think that you would clearly violate it, if you were to compel all the children of your school to attend the English church on Sunday, instead of allowing the children of Presbyterians to attend the Presbyterian service. And if so, it seems to follow that the children should be free during the whole of Sunday to receive such religious instruction as their parents choose, or to receive none at all on that day, except such as they receive from their attendance at service. If parents like to have their children at home all Sunday (except during church-time), I think that they ought to be encouraged rather than otherwise, on grounds wholly independent of the religious question. We cannot too strongly encourage the ties of family and love of home, and I never have thought Sunday- schools desirable in an ideal state of things ; only good because many homes are unhappily irreligious, and many children are unable to receive instruction on any other day. I quite feel the force of the argument that you are naturally more anxious about the spiritual than the secular teaching, and that you therefore desire to have all your flock around you on Sunday, in order to speak to them on the most important of all subjects. But doubtless your religious instruction is not limited to Sunday : you probably have some scriptural reading or teaching daily ; and if, therefore, you were to take those opportunities of setting Christian truth before all your scholars, and to reserve Sunday chiefly for the explanation of the formularies of our Church, excusing, therefore, Presbyterians from attendance, you would, I think, fully carry out the prin- ciples which I have laid down as most desirable under the actual circumstances of India. In writing this, I beg you to believe that I only write as an Cn. VIII.] GOOD AND EVIL OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS. 219 adviser, for I must again repeat that, in the present circum- stances of the school, I do not see that I have any right to interfere in its management ; and, besides, I speak with dif- fidence, from being but imperfectly acquainted with the local circumstances of the case. Undoubtedly I should think the esta- blishment of a rival Presbyterian school at a great evil, and I believe that the real influence of our own Church is strength- ened by securing to itself the secular and scriptural instruction of all Christians, far more than by any other plan of operations. But I can truly say that, apart from all such considerations, I attach very great weight to the other argument which I have mentioned the great importance of leaving Sunday as free as possible for the unrestrained intercourse of parents and children ; giving, of course, all opportunities of religious instruction on that day to those who desire it, and therefore keeping up the Sunday-school for voluntary attendants. 220 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH, IX. CHAPTEE IX. PRIMARY VISITATION RESUMED IN BURMAH LIFE ON BOARD SHIP GOLD- WIN SMITH'S LECTURES BUDDHISM MISGIVINGS ON THE ENORMOUS EXTENT [OF THE SEE OF CALCUTTA JOURNAL EXTRACTS RANGOON PROME CHRISTMAS-DAY AT MOULMEIN EXAMINATION AT THE MISSION SCHOOL BURMESE SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION THE ANDAMANS PENANG MALACCA CHINESE CEMETERIES MISSION SCHOOL FOR CHINESE GIRLS CONFIRMATION AT SINGAPORE RETURN TO CALCUTTA DEPARTURE OF LORD CANNING. IN the cold weather of 1861, the primary visitation was resumed through the British settlements, along the sea- board of Burmah and the Malay Peninsula, down to the gate of Chinese waters at Singapore. The routine work was of the usual kind. There were the scattered civil and military congregations to be visited, the latter involving a voyage of two hundred miles up the Irrawaddi to the frontier garrison of Thyetmyo ; there were churches to be consecrated ; seamen in gaols and hospitals to be visited ; schools and missions to be inspected, and eccle- siastical matters generally to be inquired into, and set in order. The expedition was entirely by sea. So much official care was always taken to facilitate travelling and diminish fatigue, that the Bishop used to be occasionally disturbed by an amount of comfort and consideration which certainly helped to promote the external dignity of the great Eastern See ; and he had to recur to the explanation characteristically found in the belief that had Nero been a Christian, he would certainly have sent St. Paul to visit the Churches in an imperial galley, and ordered the proconsuls to forward him on his way. The ' imperial galley ' on this occasion, however, was only a CH. IX.] VOYAGE IN A SAILING VESSEL. 221 humble pilot-brig, appointed by Government to the tem- porary service ; and its quarters were so limited, that the small deck had to do duty as the Bishop's study, the child's playroom, the general eating and sitting-room for every- body. Many days passed pleasantly when a favourable wind speeded the vessel and tempered the heat, but calms not storms were the drawback of the voyage ; and when the ship lay motionless in the midst of the Bay of Bengal, or mocked hopes of progress by drifting a few miles with the current, the Bishop secretly registered a vow that he would not go forth again except under steam. ' Cer- tainly,' he wrote from the deck of the ' Mutlah,' ' a sailing- vessel is an undesirable mode of conveyance. That one's morality should be seriously influenced by the points of the compass, and depend on the force of the wind, is in itself humiliating. Yet it really requires an effort to re- ceive with perfect cheerfulness the announcement that in the course of twenty-four hours we have advanced eight- teen miles, or receded half a degree of latitude. . . . The uniformity of the life, too, gets wearisome, although it gives me ample time for reading. I read Hebrew and Bengali, and get through sundry books of an historical and theological character. In the evening, after tea, we sit on deck in the balmy night air, and I read aloud Helps or Macaulay on week-days, Trench on the " Seven Churches " on Sundays. ... I must add a word of ad- miring criticism on Gold win Smith's " Lectures," and of thankfulness that a layman of unquestioned ability and mark should stand up in the University in direct opposi- tion to an atheistic school of writers, and really put forth utterances in defence of Christianity more forcible than those of almost any one among its modern apologists.' The tour itself was full of novelty. Much beautiful scenery and the glorious vegetation of the tropics ; the fresh aspect of outward things in countries whose inhabitants are complete aliens from Hindus in race, language, 222 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IX. customs, and religion ; a glimpse of wild savage life among the Andamanese, watched and overawed by the diminu- tive British settlement on Eoss Island, two miles long and less than one in width were all in their turn sources of keen interest and enjoyment. Buddhism was the social and religious feature of special prominence. Buried in India in mouldering sculpture, it is in the more remote East the powerful living faith of millions ; and as such the Bishop made its external aspect and characteristics his study, so far as brief opportunities and much other work permitted. The spurious Buddhism of the Malay Penin- sula puzzled him much, and his discomfiture was complete when, in a Joss-house at Malacca, he wholly failed to dis- cover, by the most energetic inquiries, whether the hideous many-armed idol before him, designated as Fo, was identi- cal in the minds of the placid Chinamen around with the Buddha or Gotama of the Burmese. He ended, however, a four months' visitation with an uncomfortable sense of the whole territory being an unnatural excrescence on the see of Calcutta, and full of responsibility, which it was beyond the power of an Indian bishop adequately to dis- charge. The inspection of a handful of widely separated European settlements absorbed time ill spared from India ; total ignorance of either the Burmese, Chinese, or Malay languages was an embarrassment, and in paying a grace- ful tribute to the Vicar-Apostolic of Pegu, Bishop Bigandet, as a learned Orientalist, the Bishop gave ex- pression to his own feelings, that the Burmah missions needed at their head some one who would make Buddhist literature and philosophy a special object of research and study. The missions, then in their infancy, needed both fostering care and organization. The Bishop was compelled to de- vote an unusually large amount of time to the settlement of local matters, which were producing not only confusion but discord; arid he was convinced that the missions Cii. IX.] CARE OF THE EASTERN MISSIONS. 223 required a more frequent and more personal supervision than he or the Calcutta Secretary could bestow upon them. Such points of difficulty and incongruity were those which made the diocese of Calcutta really un- manageable. Within the limits of North India the Bishop's work was sufficiently varied and extensive ; but a thread of connexion ran through it, and he could feel that his mind was comparatively master of it ; the same kind of work, carried on under the different conditions of practically foreign countries, assumed a totally new aspect, and claimed a different and special line of thought and knowledge. Outward diversity overpowered the inward harmony between the two, and there remained the sense of impotence in the presence of distinct duty, which was vexatious and depressing. The Bishop was at that time ready to give in his adhesion to any plan whereby he might abdicate, in favour of some other bishop, all episco- pal jurisdiction to the east of the Bay of Bengal. Mean- time, so long as he was unrelieved, his responsibility for these territories continued ; and one occupation of the tedious return voyage to India was the writing of a letter to the London Secretary of the Propagation Society, to describe their two missions just visited, and to recommend them to the attention and vigorous support of the parent Society, as each presenting some hopeful points. Through that at Moulmein, the Church of England was making her first aggression upon the religion of Burmah. The Singapore mission was directed chiefly to the Chinese, who form in that city a fluctuating population of many thousands, of whom many are constantly returning to their own country. By God's blessing on evangelistic efforts, a Chinaman may now and again perhaps carry back with him some better possessions than his expert handicraft and his neat box of tools. 224 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON". [Cu. IX, EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. Rangoon. In the evening we drove to see the great pagoda. Taken altogether, with its various dependent buildings, it is one of the most grotesque, fantastic and striking sights that I ever beheld. From the bottom of the hill to the platform the ascent is by a steep succession of steps, under a wooden roof supported by thick posts, generally coloured red. The platform is of immense extent, with the gilt pagoda in the centre, surmounted by the sacred htee, or umbrella a solid mass of brickwork, but con- taining, it is said, in its interior various precious relics, in- cluding eight of Grotama's hairs, and even some memorials of preceding Buddhas. Eound it are a vast number of smaller pagodas, each with its htee ; tall red flagstarYs with streamers floating from them ; lofty trees ; covered wooden buildings elabo- rately carved, with countless niches, each containing a colossal sitting statue of Grotama, always with the same mild feminine semi-Tartar features (the Eajpoot princes from whom he sprang are said to have had Mongolian blood in their veins), and with a robe over him generally gilt, sometimes black. The pagoda itself, as containing a relic, is the object of wor- ship, and the prayers are in a manner addressed to Grotama ; not that he can hear them, or is conscious of the wants of his adorers for he has attained nirwdna, and is therefore in no in- telligible sense existent but by a law of nature the fact of worshipping him leads to births in happy conditions hereafter, and ultimately to nirwana. Hence Buddhists may be said to adore Grotama's memory ; and this is one of the numerous facts in which Buddhism is an anticipation of Comte's religion, and deprives that monstrous invention of even the merit of origi- nality. In their atheism, their denial of a future state continuing through eternity, their adoration of the uncon- scious dead, the exclusively educational work of the priests, and the inexorable supremacy of law, both systems are iden- tical; they have also one good point in common the unfail- ing certainty with which wrong leads the wrongdoer into suf- fering though in this Grotama is superior to Comte, because by the doctrine of metempsychosis he provides a manner in which punishment may follow crime, whereas I do not see how a wicked Comtist would practically be deterred from sin by any such CH. IX.] AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSION. 225 belief, since in this life it is at least not visibly and obviously the case. Comte's devices of punishing a bad man's memory, and dishonouring his carcase, by exclusion from a consecrated grove surrounding the Temple of Humanity, are of course too ridiculous to be of any avail against the present pleasures of vice and self-indulgence. There is no doubt that the Buddhist doctrines are very superior to the Hindu, and that so far Grotama was a real reformer ; but as I looked on one of his devotees praying to the unconscious and annihilated JBuddha, I was, I trust, thankful for the revelation of a High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and for the promise that He would be with us always, even to the end of the world. December 6. To-day I went off to see one of the most en- couraging sights in the East the American Baptist Mission to the Karens. These people generally live up in the hills, but they have villages near Eangoon, and there is an insti- tution for their education at Kemmendine, about three miles from the town, prettily situated in a grassy dale under fine trees. There is a chapel of brick and plaster, but all the other buildings are of wood, perched up on posts in the usual Burmese fashion. They consist of a missionary's house, a school, and a number of cottages for students, close together, almost like sets of rooms in a college, opening out upon a raised verandah, and each divided into two rooms, with a garden behind. The institution is under the care of Dr. and Mrs. Binney, from Massachusetts, who seem both thoroughly absorbed in the work, the wife (like our own Mrs. Smith at Benares) quite as much so as the husband. He has about fifty Karen youths, all not only professing Christianity, but pledged to pastoral and missionary work among their countrymen ; and the nineteen most advanced of these were brought to me for examination. They are, I think, fairer than the natives of India generally ; of course, with broad Tartar features, but most of them of a pleasing and intelligent appearance, dressed like the Burmese. They knew no English, but Dr. Binney interpreted ; they certainly answered remarkably well to a somewhat stiff exami- ition in Scripture. Their other studies are the grammar of Q 226 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IX. their own language, arithmetic, and geography. It was a most cheering sight, and it is a still more cheering thought to re- member that these fifty are only the advance guard of 30,000 Karen Christians, and that the number is constantly increasing ; so that there is every reason to hope that the whole nation will become Christian. They give every evidence of sincerity, contributing most largely to the support of the missions, and, according to the testimony of Colonel Phayre, are most con- scientious in abstinence from all excess in drink, in observance of Sunday, and other Christian duties. Not only should the sight make us thank Grod and take courage, but teach us also many lessons as to the persons to whom missions may be sent with the best prospect of success, and the manner of work- ing them. For instance, here are two sufficiently obvious. Vigorous attempts should be directed to the conversion of all the mountain tribes of India, and every effort should be made to develope the native pastorate. December 10. We have been deeply shocked by the news of Lady Canning's death from jungle fever, caught in her journey from Darjeeling. I can imagine no one more admirably suited for such a position as hers, in grace, quiet dignity, varied accomplishments, kindness, winning manner, and, above all, in high principle and Christian example, nor any one more entirely uninjured or unsophisticated by a Court life and the manifold dangers of wealth and high station. I think her character a proof of the truth of the Lord's words, that it is possible for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Among the pleasures and refreshments of my Indian life, I shall always reckon my opportunities of a quiet talk with her during a dinner or morning visit to Government House. It is sad to think that as she has so faithfully shared all her husband's anxieties during the last eventful six years, she is not to share the rich reward of honour and gratitude soon to be paid in England to services now universally recognised and appreciated. Yet this is but a human and earthly way of viewing the matter, and it is better to dwell on the belief that, as she must have resisted and conquered abundant temptation, she now inherits the blessing promised to him that overcometh. I CH. IX.] PAGODA AT PROME. 227 Prome., on the Irrawaddi. Before sunset the hill about Prome came into view, but for lack of a pilot we had to anchor all night, and we did not reach Prome itself till breakfast-time on Saturday the 14th. The town, wooden of course, like all Bur- mese towns, is very prettily situated in a richly-wooded country ; and immediately opposite, on the other side of the river, are the spurs of the Arracan mountains, looking not unlike the hills about Heidelberg. Across them a road and telegraph-line are now carried to Akyab, and thence the latter communicates with Calcutta. The great sight at Prome is the pagoda, which, even after the Shive Dagon at Eangoon, is very interesting, having sufficient variations and peculiarities to distinguish it from its larger rival. The general features are of course the same. There is the great pagoda in the middle, covered with gilding ; the smaller pagodas, kyoungs, images of Grotama, and flagstones all round the flights of stairs by which the platform is approached. But the carving of the kyoung is, I think, more elaborate and rich than at Rangoon, and the great staircase is really beautiful, rising in a succession of roofs, fretted and carved with ornaments, flowers, human heads, and all sorts of quaint devices, from the bottom to the top of the hill, while on the inside these roofs are supported by long rows of wooden pillars, painted red and gold, and sometimes adorned with representa- tions of the signs of the Zodiac. The images of Buddha are not always in a sitting posture ; sometimes he is standing, with his hand raised blessing the people ; and the small pagodas round the large central one form a connected wall or rampart, with doors leading close up to it, through which numerous votaries passed to deposit their offerings of flowers, coloured cloths, fans, bits of gilding, feathers, and sundry tawdrinesses, actually on the plinth of the sacred structure. As each worshipper presented his offering he struck the large deep-toned, melodious bell which hung in front of the pagoda, and all the time a number of smaller bells, hung to the htee at the top, were tinkling prettily as they were moved by the wind. Besides the ttractions of the pagoda itself and its appendages, there is a ry lovely view from it of Prome, amidst its trees, with the iver, mountains, and forests beyond. The bottom and sides of the hill are covered with zayats large wooden sheds used as resting-places for travellers and worshippers and just in front Q 2 228 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn, IX. of the entrance was an enormous erection, gilt and painted and decorated in every corner, on which rested a glass coffin, con- taining the embalmed body of a poongyie, who had died a year ago. His funeral is to take place in April, and will be cele- brated, according to custom, by setting fire to this glittering pile, and finally blowing it up with gunpowder, and letting off rockets and other fireworks in all directions about it. These modern devices have succeeded the burning of sandal-wood and spices, which used of old to form part of a priest's obsequies. It was from the immediate neighbourhood of this pagoda that Lord Dalhousie carried off ' as a trophy ' the kyoung which is now in the Auckland Gardens at Calcutta : surely a measure of doubtful right, and in any case vain-glorious and silly. It plainly outraged the feelings of the Buddhists, since a rich person at Ava has since erected a new one of costly construction on the exact spot from which the other was taken. I wish that the great proconsul had not forbidden the publication of his papers till we of this generation are all in our graves. Surely we have greater interest in a correct estimate of his policy than our children will have, and it needs much vindication and explanation. Moulmein. Hasting, if possible, to be at Moulmein by Christmas Day, our prospects on Christmas Eve looked gloomy. We could not enter the Salween with the morning tide, as when it was light enough to venture, there was not tide enough to take us in ; so we had to anchor till about 3 P.M., when we entered the river, and saw the port and attempted sanitarium of Amherst, pretty with trees, pagodas, one or two European bungalows, sea, river, and distant mountains. To reach Moul- mein to-morrow in the brig was pronounced impossible. So we landed at Amherst, on a ' stern and rockbound coast ; ' walked on a kind of wall above the shore ; visited the tomb of Mr. Judson a simple headstone on a grassy spot near the beach, with an over-long inscription and made arrangements for getting a Burmese boat which should convey the doctor and me up the river during the night. The boatmen, however, proved faithless, and never came, so that the only result of our negotiation was that we were up nearly all night expecting them, and sending people on shore to find them. Nevertheless, CH. IX.] SCHOOL AT MOULMEIN. 229 disappointed of this hope, we were still destined to accomplish our object far more successfully, and to enjoy, all together, the comfort and happiness of joining in the Christmas services. For on Christmas Day, 1861, at the very earliest dawn, the Govern- ment steamer 'Nemesis,' which had been instructed by the Moulmein Commissioner to look out for us, and help us up the river, entered it from a monthly voyage to the Andamans and south ports of Tenasserim ; the captain being possibly made eager to return, not only by the desire of helping the Bishop, but also by the wish to eat his Christmas dinner on shore. The steamer hove to and received us all on board, and leaving poor Captain Hodge and his officers to follow as tide and wind would permit, we began a rapid voyage to Moulmein. As we went up, the scenery became really beautiful far the most striking that we have seen since we left Calcutta. Both the Martaban (right) and Tenasserim (left) banks of the river are beautifully wooded, and the latter, upon which Moulmein stands, rises up steep from the water. In front of us were some pre- cipitous limestone rocks, which emerge suddenly from the plain, and behind them the long range of mountains which stretch from the Himalayas to Singapore, through Burmah, Siam, and the Malay Peninsula. As a foreground we had the broad river, and presently the varied shipping of Moulmein, with Burmese ships and Chinese junks, gaily gilt and painted, and the European and American vessels dressed out with flags in honour of Christinas Day. A brighter inauguration of the festival I do not remember ever to have experienced. Arrived off the main wharf at 10*30, the captain hurried us on shore, and himself ordered a tikka ghari for us ; at 10-50 we were in the vestry ; and at 11, I amazed the unconscious Moulmeinians by appear- ing in full robes in church. . . . Monday, December 30. I breakfasted at the Society for the Promotion of the Grospel Mission, and afterwards began the grand business of the day viz. a public examination and prize-giving at the mission school, at which I was to take the chair. Of the excellence of the school, and entire success of the public exhibition, there can be no doubt. Established only two years ago, it now numbers 270 boys, the great majority being Burmans, a few Chinese and Europeans, or semi-Europeans. 230 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IX. The buildings are excellent ; there is a capital schoolroom and dining-room, with tank for bathing, and various gymnastic appliances, given in great measure by the munificence of - . The sight of the assembled boys, or rather the whole exa- mination scene, was of almost romantic interest. Nothing- could exceed the picturesque variety of the bright colours of their pustos and turbans, sometimes relieved by the dark dress of an English boy, and the bluejacket and trousers of a Chinese. They were examined for about two and a-half hours in the Bible, geography, English and Burmese reading and arith- metic, and answered remarkably well. They showed their English writing, and sang sundry hymns, chants, and even an anthem, with one or two rounds or catches, certainly with harsh voices, but in capital time and tune. The curriculum is lower than in a good Bengal school, as may be expected, con- sidering the recent origin of this ; but all that is done is well and thoroughly done ; and it is quite plain that if there is some discord between the managers, there is also a large outlay of zeal, ability, and enthusiasm in behalf of the school. So much as to the education which we English are trying to give the Burinans ; but it must not be forgotten that they have a national system of education of their own that all poongyies are bound to teach, and do teach, and that every Burman gentleman spends some time under them in a kyoung, just as an English gentleman goes to college. Moreover, as in every village there is a kyoung, every boy, gentle or simple, has gratuitous teaching offered to him. But as to the character of the educa- tion, I could not obtain anything like a unanimous opinion. Government officers generally, with some exceptions, said that every male in Burmah can read, write, and do a simple sum. Missionaries universally affirm that they often read very badly so ill as hardly to be intelligible and do not themselves un- derstand what they are reading. All agree that, as soon as Burmese education gets beyond mere reading, it plunges into the grossest absurdities, as Buddhist cosmogony, geography, and astronomy exceed even the Brahminical form of those sciences in folly. The chief characteristic of the systems taught by (rotama's disciples is, that they delight in the most inconceiv- able numbers, durations of time, and extensions of space, which transcend all human powers of memory, and almost of imagina- CH. IX.] THE BURMESE PRIESTHOOD. 231 tion, but which are gravely set down in figures ; while beings twelve miles high are of quite ordinary occurrence, and some personages measure 800 miles from eyebrow to eyebrow, and 19,200 miles from the elbow to the tip of the finger. The size and shape of the world and heavenly bodies are all minutely described in the most absurd fashion, the whole being placed under the sanction of religion, and resting on * scriptural authority.' Hence no one questions the necessity of teaching the Burmese Western science, and therefore the English language as the introduction to it. Thus the mission school in Moulmein is universally popular among the Euro- peans, and, strange to say, the Burmese priests themselves seem to regard it with no jealousy, while the number of pupils is constantly increasing. Neither could I get a unanimous ver- dict about the moral character of the poongyies, though on the whole the evidence is favourable. They are very rarely indeed brought before a magistrate for any offence, and there seems no reason to suspect them, as a class, of violating their vow of continence ; though to keep it is rendered less difficult than it might be from their power of renouncing the priest- hood and marrying whenever they please. On the other hand, their scholars are said to be given to foul vices. The poongyies do not practise asceticism at all ; they still keep to the rule of mendicancy, but receive such ample and handsome presents that this causes them no self-denial. I saw nothing of that vacant, half-idiotic expression of countenance which the Bishop of Victoria attributes to the Buddhist priests of China ; and it is generally admitted that the Burmese priesthood are respected by the laity. My impression, on the whole, is that they are a fair average set of priests, doing nothing to raise their countrymen and turn Burmah into a real nation, nor particularly active or self-denying or learned, but maintaining a decent exterior and conversation, according to their lights. That the existence, rapid spread, and deeply-seated influence of Buddhism are phenomena most deserving of study and at- tention, was known to me beforehand, and certainly all that I have seen, heard, and read since I came to these parts has fully confirmed the impression. By his destruction of caste Grotama showed himself a real social reformer, and the good effects of his teaching are visible here in Burmah after he 232 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cfl. IX. has been dead 2,400 years. The great moral defect of the system which he taught is its almost exclusive inculcation, or at least extravagant exaltation, of the passive virtues ; its great spiritual weakness is the entire omission of a personal Grod, or any living and conscious Saviour. The Andamans, January 4, 1862. . . . Eoss Island is a mile long and 800 feet broad, taking into account the double slope of the hill. On the shore are godowns (storehouses), and the native convicts' lines ; on the slope the barrack for the Naval Brigade, one or two bungalows ; and on its apex the wooden palace of the superintendent. It lies almost exactly north and south, just parallel to the Great Andaman. Turning to the east from Captain Haughton's house, you see the Bay of Bengal stretching away to Tenasserim ; to the north there is a pretty foreground, with a sea view broken on the left by promontories, and with the islands of the Archipelago in the distance ; to the south you see little more than Eoss Island itself, but to the west there is a most lovely view the whole extent of the Andaman, with its wooded hills, and Port Blair, forming a great semicircular mass of light blue water, with Chatham Island in the middle. The view is not quite equal to the great scenes of Como or Maggiore, from the absence of the high Alps as a background ; but it reminded us to a certain extent of Killarney. Sunday, January 5. Service was held at 7.30 A.M. for the Naval Brigade in their barrack not at all a nice place for the purpose and I preached extempore on the parable of the Two Sons. At 11 there was, as usual, service in Captain Haughton's bungalow for the other inhabitants of the station ; an objectionable separation of classes, excused on the ground that the barrack is too dirty for the presence of ladies, and the drawing-room too small for 100 sailors and the other residents. Here we began with the Litany. I preached on the Epistle for the day (the Circumcision), and then we ad- ministered the Communion to nine persons, among whom was one sailor. In my morning sermon I had taken pains to explain to my audience that any who liked to come to the second service, and had been confirmed, or were desirous to receive the Communion, would be welcome. These two ser- . e CH. IX.] THE ANDAMAN ISLANDS. 233 ices in the barrack and the bungalow are always held by Government officers the first, of course, fully attended as a part of discipline ; the second, designed for the clerks, apothe- caries, &c., almost wholly neglected. It is the old story of out-stations : where there is no regular clergyman, careless people are glad of the excuse to escape public worship alto- gether, and, as one fears, private prayers also. I must do what I can for the spiritual wants of Port Blair when I return to Calcutta. In the evening we took a sea-side walk, or rather scramble among rocks, shells, and debris of coral, and went nearly all round the island. Our vespers consisted of family prayers, somewhat lengthened. January 6. To-day we went on farther up the harbour in the gunboats beyond Viper and Chatham Islands, and landed, in order to see the nature of the jungle and some traces of the aborigines. The former is not only remarkable for its density, but for the immense height of the trees, of which the majority are wood-oil trees, with a thick fringe of mangoes in front, grow- ing out of the slime of the shore. The trees are joined together by thick creepers, and the prevailing green is broken by flowers, by some trees which have beautiful red leaves, and a great fruit, called by the Burmese the sea 'cocoa-nut,' wholly unlike the cocoa-nut, except in size and outward appearance. We were enabled to walk through the jungle because the place where we landed was a deserted settlement of the natives, who had cut a pathway through it. It was strewn with cockle- shells and sculls of wild pigs remnants of their banquets and led to two or three of their so-called huts. These are of the rudest kind, merely consisting of four upright sticks, support- ing a thatch of rattan leaves, beneath which two people might perhaps crouch in tolerable comfort. The natives are but rarely seen; they are of nearly the most degraded type of humanity akin, it is supposed, to Papuans and the natives of Australia wholly unclothed, but protected from insect-bites by being covered with a red or blue paint. Some words of their language have been obtained, but nobody could tell me whether it was akin to any other known form of speech. They make earthen pots, baskets, boats just capable of getting from island to island or headland to headland, such dwellings as we 234 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IX- saw to-day, and bows and arrows the latter tipped with iron, which they get from wrecks, or sometimes from stealing the tools of convicts and Europeans. Altogether our expedition was remarkable not only for beautiful scenery, but for interest and novelty ; and the transition was strange from the ancient and unchanged civilisation of Burmah to the ancient and un- changed savagery of the Andamans. Tuesday, January 14. We dropped anchor at 10 P.M. last night in the harbour of Penang. When we came on deck this morning, we were startled to see that all the flags on the ships, and at the fort, and consuls' residences, were flying half-mast high. The mournful reason for this was explained ' when the master-attendant came on board, and told us that a telegram had announced the Prince Consort's death. It was impossible to hear of such an event without deep emotion, or to regard it as anything but a great calamity, not merely from the ordinary sympathy and interest which must be excited by the sudden overthrow of the most brilliant opportunities, by the death of one who has so admirably understood and fulfilled the duties of his high position, but because our Queen has so won on the respect and love of Englishmen, that what so nearly touches her we feel as touching ourselves, and our thoughts about her in this overwhelming affliction are of real personal grief. This great loss, too, suggests some anxious surmises as to its possible political effect, and may well add something of reality and fervency to our prayers for the welfare of our Sovereign and our country. Malacca, Januai^y 20. Soon after 6 A.M. I started to con- secrate a new cemetery about a mile from the town. We passed through the Chinese cemetery on the slope of a moun- tain, with all the tombs sloped in a uniform fashion, with the intention of letting the rain run off the grave instead of sinking into it. Each grave occupied a space sufficient for six Eng- lish graves ; this practice being part of the general importance which the Chinese seem to attach to their funerals. Prepara- tions for this event begin when their object is in the prime of health and vigour. As soon as a man has saved some money, his first object is to provide himself with a large, massive, and handsome coffin, and this he commonly keeps in his verandah OH. IX.] MALACCA AND SINGAPORE. 235 as long as he lives. I saw more than one of these strange pieces of furniture as we passed by Chinese houses. Often, too, a friend makes a present of a coffin to one to whom he desires to show his regard, nor is any gift considered a surer proof of attention and respect. The burial-ground which I consecrated is very near the Chinese : a fair number of persons were pre- sent, and Bishop Middleton's version of Psalm xc. ' God, our help in ages past ' was well sung. I walked back with Captain Playfair, who took me into the house of a rich Chinese, which has a court in the middle open to the sky, with a receptacle for rain underneath, like the old Eoman and modern Spanish houses. So, too, an awning is drawn over the opening when the sun shines or the rain falls, and the house is two-storied, with a gallery running round the court on a level with the first-floor, into which the bedrooms open. The two large sitting- rooms are opposite each other, one in front of the court, serving as a kind of entrance-hall, and the other behind it, used chiefly as a dining-room. In this is a very handsome cabinet, on which are placed two tin vessels, each containing handfuls of earth from the graves of the relations of the family. The cabinet, being in the most conspicuous part of the house, seems considered a kind of shrine, and the funereal earth the Penates, pastiles being often burnt before it. The furniture consisted of good chairs and tables, and some gay lamps hung from the ceiling. Singapore. Singapore is more of a European town than any place that I have seen in India, except Calcutta. Besides the long line of houses opposite the sea, there are numerous parallel streets and cross streets, with houses in compounds, re- sembling those about Chowringhee. There is also a Chinese town, containing, they say, 80,000 long-tailed celestials. The other natives are mainly Malays and Tamil-speaking Madras- sees, amounting to some 12,000 or 15,000 altogether; and these, with 1,000 Europeans, mainly merchants and their clerks, form the population of the island, exclusive of soldiers and convicts. We went this morning to the house of correction and convict lines, containing more than 2,000 convicts, from all parts of India and Ceylon, though now the inhabitants, like the Australians, object to any increase of the convict popula- tion an objection which has led to the institution of the 36 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IX. establishment on the Andamans. The whole of the prison arrangements are admirable for cleanliness, order, and method ; and profitable manufactures, and carpenters' work and stone- masons' work, go on within the walls. A good deal of confi- dence is reposed in the convicts as soon as they show symptoms of obedience and amendment. They are allowed to go out and kill the tigers which infest the island (swimming over from the mainland), and they receive half the reward for slaying a tiger which Government offers to freemen for the same feat. From their number, too, petty officers are chosen, who have regular pay, and exercise some discipline over their companions. The chief punishment is confinement to the wearisome occupation of incessant stripping of the fibres of the cocoa-nut to make matting : a culprit is sent into the penal regions of the gaol, and there set to produce a bundle of this, which keeps him at work from morning to night. Irons, too, are occasionally applied, but generally matters go on in a very regular way; and the careful arrangements for the sick, and good ventilation of the buildings, show that in the treatment of convicts, as of all others, Christianity has taught men to be merciful and con- siderate. How different the state of these convicts from the miseries which they would undergo in the prisons of a heathen government ; how different, too, it must be owned, from the former condition of prisoners in England, when their mere presence in court communicated gaol fever to judge, jury, and bar, before Howard taught us our Christian duty in this matter ! From the gaol we went to an institution of an opposite character, a mission school for Chinese girls, taught by Miss Cooke, who is sent out by the Female Education Society in England. Many of these girls were sold by their parents in China to Chinese ship-captains, and brought by them to Singa- pore. This horrible traffic is, of course, opposed in every possible way by our Government, who seize on such cargoes and hand them over to missionaries. I heard Miss Cooke's girls read and sing, and asked them a few questions on the English Bible. It was somewhat absurd to hear them, with their great broad features, and foreign accent, and strange dress, uttering all the regular cut and dried answers which every evangelical mistress teaches her girls in England e.g. to every one of my questions as to the meaning of each separate portion of the CH. IX.] SCHOOLS AT SINGAPORE. 237 parable of the Sower the wayside, the stony places, the thorns the uniform answer was, ' His heart is not changed by the Holy Spirit.' We were also struck, on the one hand, by the ugliness of the girls, and on the other, by the sweetness of their voices. Doubtless the institution of the school is a very great blessing, and its objects and efforts truly Christian ; and I trust that I shall never get so intellectual and so sensitive to the defective details of the evangelical or any other system, as to overlook or undervalue work diligently carried on for Christ's sake, and instrumental in stopping sin and ignorance, and building up His kingdom January 25. To-day I consecrated the new church, St. Andrew's ; a large and very striking building, copied, mutatis mutandis, from Netley Abbey, and certainly good, both in general design and detail ; but ill adapted for hearing, and em- barrassed by an apse, which, though in itself pretty, has the bad effect of presenting an unmeaning and unused space behind the communion-table. I preached on Romans xii. 1, and afterwards held a conference with the chaplain and lay trustees as to the best position of the pulpit, so that the preacher may be audible January 26. At 8 A.M. I confirmed thirty-one candidates, and administered the Communion to about seventy persons, including all who were confirmed. Among them about twelve were Chinese, and eight Madrassees, so that the more important parts of the service were translated into Chinese and Tamil. It was interesting to confirm these Chinese converts in their full national dress, with their long pigtails and other peculiari- ties. And it is plain that real work is going on in the mission, and of a peculiarly hopeful kind, because the Chinese population here is a floating one ; and when those who come here have made money, they return to the cities of the empire ; so that we may trust that a little Christian leaven is perpetually passing from Singapore to the vast multitude at home. Miss Cooke's girls were in pink dresses, like great nightshirts, with wide embroi- dered trousers, and turned-up slippers Singapore will doubtless become a place of great importance, and we have been pleased and interested by our visit ; yet there is, however, a slightly colonial tone about it, and wealth and prosperity produce a sort of self-importance and independence 238 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. IX. which must make it a difficult place to govern politically or to guide spiritually. For my part, convinced that a guiding spirit is wanted for missionary operations here, and that I can- not give them much help from Calcutta, nor enter with prac- tical earnestness into a line of missionary work so wholly unlike that of India, I shall be very glad if I can get rid of the Straits. A missionary bishop ought to be able to minister to his various flocks in their own language ; but only Mithridates or Mezzofanti could do so in Bengali, Hindustani, Burmese, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil, which is the smallest list of lan- guages now required from an ideal bishop of Calcutta. . . . Calcutta, February 24. At half-past 7 we landed at Lush- ington's Grhat, and thankfully and joyfully breakfasted in our own house. Thank Grod for all His mercies, through Jesus Christ. We return indeed with sad remembrances of the mournful events, public and private, which have marked the tour, and es- pecially of one who went out with us but has not come back again. Yet I hope that it is a sign that I am getting more devoted to my Indian life and work. I am thoroughly glad to find myself again in Calcutta, and in the midst of its people, its duties, its interests, its refreshments. May Grod give me grace to use my increased familiarity with them for His glory, and for fulfilling the office and ministry to which He has called me. The preceding extract summed up the record of events during four months' absence from Calcutta. Lady Canning and the Prince Consort had passed away. He who had gone forth in November and returned no more, was the Bishop's temporary domestic chaplain, the Eev. J. Eofe. He left Calcutta ill, in hopes that the sea voyage might arrest an acute attack of dysentery ; but he grew worse, was ordered to England from Eangoon, and died before reaching India. Though young in years and in the service, he was full of promise in all ways, and especially as a preacher. His short career amply justified the mode of his appointment ; for he had been nominated by St. John's, Cambridge, when Lord Stanley, as Secretary for India, placed two chaplaincies at the disposal of that College and of Trinity. A long succession of public and s CH. IX.] DEPARTURE OF LORD CANNING. 239 private losses was mournfully completed when, almost immediately after the return to Calcutta, Mr. Eitchie, the legal member of Council and Vice-Chancellor of the Uni- versity, was called, through one of the sudden and rapid illnesses of India, from his life of goodness and usefulness and from a large circle of friends. Early in March the Bishop consecrated the cemetery in the Barrackpore gar- dens, where Lady Canning was buried. As the sun of a hot Indian day was setting, -the ceremony was simply and quietly performed over the solitary tomb and circumjacent ground, henceforth to be set apart, as the petition for con- secration declared, for the families of the Governor-Generals of India. When all was concluded, Lord Canning kindly greeted the few who were present : he turned to the Bishop and said, ' I think the ground is large enough to justify consecration,' and then walked away slowly and alone to the desolate house hard by. Almost immediately afterwards the scene changed to tate ceremonies and formalities, attending the retirement of one Viceroy and the reception of another ; addresses were presented and replied to, and large parties were ga- thered each evening at Government House. ' On the 18th f March,' in the Bishop's words, c the dignitaries of Church nd State assembled at Government House, shook hands with Lord Canning, and then hastened to Prinsep's Ghat, where the Governor-General's barge was moored. Lord Canning came down to the river in state, got on board the barge, thence to the " Sunamucki," the flat which was to be towed by the steamer " Celerity " to Kedgeree, where the " Feroze " was waiting to convey him to Suez. There was a considerable crowd at the Ghat ; a good English cheer was heard, and a very bad native imitation of it ; the ships were dressed with flags, the guns boomed from the fort, hats and handkerchiefs were waved as the steamer began to move, and last, but not least, in the way of adding splendour to the scene, the great red sun was blazing 240 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [H. IX. away in its evening majesty, just about to sink below the horizon, and lighting up with golden fire the waters of the Hooghly. So departed one of the most conscientious and upright of Indian Governors, and one who, more than any. of his predecessors, has been tried by a combination of public anxiety and private sorrow.' CH. X.] EXTENSION OF MISSIONS. 241 CHAPTER X. JOURNEY TO DARJEELING SUGGESTIONS FOR THE EXTENSION OF MISSION- ARY ENTERPRISE THE ADDITIONAL CLERGY SOCIETY ADVICE TO THE COMMITTEE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF THE BURIAL SERVICE LETTER TO ARCHDEACON PRATT KEEN ENJOYMENT OF HIMA- LAYAN SCENERY JOURNAL EXTRACTS. THE hot months of 1862, from April to November, were spent at Darjeeling, in the Eastern Himalayas the most beautiful, the most rainy, and in some respects the least civilised of hill-stations. Once more settled for a time, the Bishop as usual took in hand some definite branches of business, in order to deal with them more in detail than was possible among the distractions of travelling. He had at this time much at heart an extension of the Propagation Society's work in the north-east of India. Eeference has already been made to his desire that the Moulmein and Singapore missions should be maintained with vigour ; but these only formed integral portions of a larger scheme for bringing within the range of the Society's operations an immense extent of territory peculiarly des- titute of pastoral care, and therefore lying open to any missionary body that would go up and possess the land. He lived to witness only a very partial accomplishment of his wishes ; but his letters on this occasion, as on others when similar objects were in view, remain as records of the method and arrangement which pervaded his pro- grammes of evangelistic work, and of the clear principle that prompted all his suggestions or recommendations to the parent Societies. The scope of the particular exten- 242 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. X. sion urged on the Propagation Society in 1862 will be seen by the following extract from a letter to the Calcutta Secretary. ... I need hardly repeat at any length the arguments which I have all along used, and with which the Calcutta Committee fully coincided, for the adoption of Tezpore by the Society. These were the high character and devoted piety of Mr. , the existence of a church and mission buildings, the local interest in the mission, very real but needing support from the change of officials in Assam, the promising beginning already made, the nucleus of converts and schools, and above all the neighbourhood of hill tribes free from caste, to whom I am most anxious that the Grospel should be preached ; while the example of the Karens and of Chota Nagpore makes me hopeful that under Grod's blessing the results may be great. To these I will now add that the adoption of Tezpore would form part of a much larger scheme which has gradually been forming in my mind from the experience of recent visitation tours. . . . I am very anxious that the Society for Promoting the Grospel should gradually extend its operations systematically through the north-east and east parts of the diocese, including East Bengal, Assam, the hill tribes on the frontier, Burmah, and so down to Singapore. The Church of England is in all ways, whether we consider mission work or the ministry to Europeans, poorly and insufficiently represented there. The territory is an immense one, and can of course only be slowly and gradually occupied. But the hope that it may be occupied by a connected chain of missionary posts is not chimerical, for the Church Missionary Society has a series of missions stretching at no very long intervals in a north-west direction from Calcutta to Peshawur and Mooltan. Just so then let the Society for Promoting the Grospel extend itself from Calcutta to Tezpore to the north, and Singapore to the south. The field would be of varied and hopeful interest. In Bengal, Burmah, and the Straits the Society is already to a certain extent planted. It would have to deal with several great cities, many tribes in various degrees of civilisation, CH. X.] THE ADDITIONAL CLERGY SOCIETY. 243 wholly free from the trammels of caste, Hindus, Buddhists, Malays, and Chinese. In thus proposing a rough division of the diocese between the two Church Societies, I do not mean at all to suspend operations in those more westerly cities where the Propagation Society already has missions. Calcutta and its neighbourhood, Delhi, Cawnpore, Patna, and Roorkee must be carefully main- tained and fostered, and will afford full occupation for students of Bishop's College, and others who may be versed in the Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali languages. But with obvious and legitimate exceptions such as these, I should like to see the Propagation Society established in real force in the east of the diocese, and the attention of young men from St. Augustine's or other missionaries who may be sent out from England mainly turned to that field of action. And I think that the multiplication of clergy in that direction might hasten the division of the diocese, and probably suggest a better division than has hitherto been proposed. Besides thus administering a stimulant to missionary work, the Bishop entered also upon a warm and protracted correspondence with the committee of the Additional Clergy Society in Calcutta. This Society was established by Bishop Wilson in 1843, to provide pastors for small stations for which no chaplain could be spared, and whose residents, frequently to some extent of the non-official class, were willing to bear a portion of the expense. The Society had been well supported by voluntary contributions, and possessed substantial endowment and reserve funds ; the East Indian Eailway Company had evinced a ready willingness to assist in the maintenance of ministers sup- plied through its agency for their European employes ; and as relieving charges upon the public revenue for pastoral objects, it was always favourably recognized and liberally assisted by Government. But at the end of nineteen years the auxiliary clergy in the diocese num- bered only eight ; the Society was becoming unpopular, and its energies appeared crushed under a weight of rigid H '2 244 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. X. rules and traditions at a time when the disproportion between the demand for clergy and their supply was in- creasingly manifest and was becoming a more constant source of anxiety to the Bishop. Sometimes, when on visitation in remote districts, he came across some Government servant of a lower grade destitute even of a Bible, and with literally nothing but the remembrance of Christianity between himself and the heathenism on all sides of him. More frequently he encountered small European and Eurasian communities dependent for all Christian ordinances on the rare visits of a distant chaplain ; and of these, many were willing and anxious to help in obtaining a resident minister, if the means for doing so were facili- tated. In order to meet these varied needs, the Bishop's great desire was to multiply a staff of pastors who, com- bining zeal with activity, would fix their head quarters at small stations, look upon a whole district as their parish, make light of palanquin journeys of fifty or a hundred miles, and itinerate regularly through a large extent of country, so that no Christian family should be left long without the services of the Church, nor solitary tea and indigo planters be abandoned to a careless, and sometimes worse than careless, life without the ' word in season ' of counsel or warning. The Additional Clergy Society, in theory the agency available for supplying such ministers, had practically become almost stationary in its operations, and was disposed to draw a hard and fast line in two directions. It disclaimed any obligation to take up a station where from the number of Government servants a chaplain ought to be employed, and it imposed conditions in the matter of building a parsonage-house, too heavy to be fulfilled by congregations which were neither large nor rich. When the Bishop vigorously took in hand in 1862 the inert condition of the Society, some half-dozen stations were illustrating one or other of these obstacles to the conclusion of arrangements for the supply of a minister CH. X.] DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 245 and conspicuous among them was Port Blair, the mid- ocean British settlement in the Andamans. The com- mittee were vigorous and firm in their defence, pleading the rules of their constitution and their responsibilities in the dispensing of public funds. The Bishop assailed no fundamental principles. The point of his objection was a want of elasticity in the rules framed on those principles, which took no account of the extremely varied circumstances of Indian stations, so apparent to himself in constantly passing through the country. He contended energetically that while the committee took credit for prudence and caution, many Christian communities were, in the terse phrase used many years before by Bishop Middleton, ' virtually excommunicated ; ' he expressed his own strong conviction that increased activity on the part of the Society would be met by a corresponding increase of goodwill and of subscriptions on the part of the public ; he entreated them to rise to the emergency and to ex- change a policy of mere stability for one of more expansion and usefulness. Especially he combated the old traditionary notion, so fatal to all vitality within the Church, of looking to Government only for the supply of all the spiritual ne- cessities of Christians in India. ' There can be no doubt/ he wrote during this correspondence, ' that Government is very liberal to the Indian Church ; compared with any colonial Church, our revenues and advantages are very great : I think therefore that the members of the Church are bound to extend its operations and act with Govern- ment in every possible way, and certainly to respond readily to openings for additional usefulness which are offered to them. I can only restate the opinion expressed in my former letter, that we should go hand in hand with Government in supplying the spiritual wants of stations, whether mainly occupied by Government servants or not, all over the diocese.' Some compromise and a. relaxation of rules to a certain 246 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. X. extent were in the course of time proposed and gladly accepted by the Bishop, to whom such serious divergence of opinion on matters of great practical importance was utterly repugnant. The following letter marks a more pacific stage in the controversy : To the Archdeacon. August 1862. I think that the sub-committee of the Additional Clergy Society yield a good deal, and I am not prepared to say that I wish them practically to yield more certainly not at present. Only I should like the committee when they meet on Sep- tember 9 to take one undeniable principle into account. It is troublesome, and in the end useless, especially considering the constitution of our Society, to hamper ourselves with restrictions such, I mean, as that the committee's contribution to the parsonage-house shall not exceed a certain fixed sum. Any sum distinctly named is sure to be a source of divided opinion in the committee, and will be liable to perpetual alteration, according as the liberal party or the opponents of liberal con- tributions have a majority in the councils of the Society. Hence I urge the wording of the rule in some more general manner, e.g. ' that where a station satisfies the committee that the cost of a house is beyond its means, the committee shall be at liberty to make on certain conditions such a money grant towards its purchase or erection as shall appear reasonable/ The committee will thus be left unfettered to act upon its own discretion in dealing with the varied circumstances under which applications for the clergy of the Society are made. I always think that the standing rules ought to lay down essen- tial principles, and that wide liberty within these principles should be allowed to the executive. Surely this is a lesson to be learnt from the fate of college and university statutes as enacted by our ancestors. Peaceful words were substantiated by helpful deeds, for the Bishop's first act on obtaining an instalment of increased liberality on the part of the Society, was to write to the five stations which he was labouring to get at once occupied, urging a renewal of negotiations on the CH. X.] BURIAL SERVICE DIFFICULTIES. 247 improved basis, and offering in each case a donation of 10 to help to erect the inevitable parsonage-house. Under rules thus modified, and with the increased grant in aid, which on the Bishop's application Government con- sented to give conditionally upon the Society's extending its work, some few stations were speedily supplied with pastors. A year later the obstacle to further progress lay not in the rules or the funds of the Society, but in the difficulty of finding men for a branch of work which was not endowed with the attractions of the missionary calling or with financial advantages equal to that of the State chaplain. With a view to increasing the small pecuniary value of the service, a successful appeal was subsequently made to Government for a grant towards the esta- blishment of retiring pensions. A body of referees in England kindly undertook to interest themselves in the matter, and efforts to procure ministers on the Society's terms were so far successful that the Bishop could write in 1864, that ' he was thankful to say the work of the secretary had become very laborious through the exten- sion of the Society's operations.' The employment of twenty clergy in 1866 formed the best justification of his remonstrance with the Society in 1862. The Bishop was at this time also engaged in a trouble- some correspondence with Government on a case in which the admitted difficulties of the Burial Service were aggra- vated by being brought into relation with the different discipline of the Eomish and Protestant Churches. A Roman Catholic soldier died of delirium tremeris, and was iu consequence refused burial by his priest. The com- manding officer then applied to the Protestant chaplain in conformity with an Order of Council promulgated by Lord Dalhousie, which enjoins Christian burial in all cases except those specified in the rubric, even though re- fused by a Catholic priest. The chaplain also refused on the ground that, as a Protestant, he could not read the 248 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. X, Burial Service over a Eoman Catholic ; and the funeral was therefore conducted by an officer. The case went before the military authorities, and was by them for- warded to the Bishop, the latter step being equivalent to a demand for episcopal censure on a recalcitrant member of the clergy. Meantime the chaplain had himself re- ported the affair to the Bishop, mentioning in his statement that excessive drinking was the cause of death . The Bishop was thus placed at a disadvantage in taking cognisance of the case, since it contained an important feature which did not appear in the representation originally made to the secular authorities. To refuse censure would be to lend apparent sanction to the violation of a Government Order held to be based on the law of England ; to ad- minister it would be doing violence to his sympathy with the scruples felt by very many of the clergy against the indiscriminate performance of the Burial Service, scruples to which he deemed that the case under consideration imparted unusual force. He wrote his views at great length to the supreme Government. As a summary of them, a letter in a similar strain to a private correspondent is annexed, from which it will be seen that he approached the subject on its theological rather than its legal side: To Archdeacon Pratt. Darjeeling, June 1862. I send you a correspondence which stirs up the difficult question of the burial of Eomanists by Protestant chaplains. My opinion, as at present advised, is as follows : I never will support a clergyman generally in refusing Christian burial to a Komanist or a Protestant dissenter. I consider that the English Church has denned the essence of Baptism to consist of the use of water in the name of the Trinity, and by that I inter- pret the rubric of the Burial Service and Canon sixty-eight. It is true there are objections to this view and anomalies in it, but not equal to the anomalies and objections on the other side. I consider therefore that Mr. , by resting his refusal on the CH. X.] QUESTION OF REFUSAL TO BURY. 249 fact that the man was a Romanist, has done but scant justice to his case. But when we come to the case of a Romanist to whom his own pastor has refused burial, matters wear a diffe- rent aspect. For if the literal interpretation of the rubric is pressed, we may reply that the framers of the rubric did not contemplate the toleration of Romish priests at all ; that if the Government appoint Roman Catholic chaplains they ought to accept Roman Catholic discipline, according to which, ap- parently, a priest may grant or withhold any religious office at his pleasure ; that it is hard absolutely to prevent the Protestant chaplain from interfering in any way with the Roman Catholic soldier in his lifetime, and yet to compel him to give him Christian burial when his authorised pastor says that he does not deserve it ; that the ceremony is quite unmeaning, for we do not suppose that it benefits the dead, while of the living the Romanists despise and ridicule it, the Protestants ought to be shocked by it ; and that such a rule degrades the Church of England, both in the eyes of its own members and of dissenters. Moreover, I am inclined to admit Mr. 's argument that the Order of December 21, 1855, violates that of November 10, 1815. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there are difficulties. I suppose that in England the minister of a parish would be compelled to bury a Roman Catholic refused burial on moral grounds by his priest. From the arbitrary power claimed by the priests, the refusal to bury a Romanist might arise from other than moral causes. I can see only two possible solutions : cancel Lord Dalhousie's order, accept the Roman Catholic discipline as well as the priesthood, and determine that when the priest refuses burial no service shall be performed unless the chap- lain chooses to do it, or retain the order, but let there be an understanding that every such case is to stand on its own merits, and be dealt with by the bishop. He could then inquire if the chaplain declined to bury on any other ground than the simple fact of Romanism, and deal with it accordingly. The Government in replying discussed the matter as lying entirely under the jurisdiction, not of the Church, but of the State, They maintained that the Order in Council of 1855, making Christian burial the privilege of 250 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. X. all Christians, whether Bomanists or Protestants, was based on English ecclesiastical law, and could not there- fore be set aside or cancelled ; they intimated that the Bishop's view was erroneous, and that in his proposed lenient admonition to the chaplain he insufficiently re- cognised the gravity of the offence. The Bishop returned to the charge, and changing his position from moral to legal ground, he questioned the correctness of the assumption that the canon law stated to be the foundation on which the enactment of 1855 rested, was in the case under discussion binding on Indian chaplains, being rather, as he conceived, connected with the parochial system at home. With this doubt strongly on his mind, he requested that the Advocate-General's opinion might be taken with especial reference to the 68th Canon. This was done, and judgment was given in favour of the Government. The Advocate-General laid down that the right of all Christians to receive Christian burial, except in the cases specified in the rubric, rested on English ecclesiastical law, no excommunication being valid, except that pronounced by a competent court. He also gave his opinion that far from the 68th Canon being inapplicable to the circumstances of India, it was impossible for a Government chaplain with no rights in the soil or surface of the station burial-ground to claim ex- emption from its obligations. The matter then dropped ; Government were content with an assertion of the law, and the Bishop limited his warning and censure four months after the occurrence to the theological rather than the moral scruples of the chaplain. The contest, indeed, if pursued still further, could have had no decisive result, for a door of complete retreat from the infliction of any penalty on the offender remained open for the Bishop through his inability to hold a Consistory Court. Before leaving England lie had been legally advised never to attempt the process, the machinery for doing so being CH. X.] HIMALAYAN SCENERY. 251 imperfect in India. As far as the case was suffered to proceed, it must be admitted that the Bishop lost it. It remains on record as a testimony to his strong sympathy with clergy compelled to use the Burial Service under all circumstances. The issue of the contest was, however, from the first doubtful, and sympathy with moral scruples seemed for the moment to weaken the judgment of one who was usually peculiarly sagacious in discerning how for the Church could assert her independence without risk of collision with the numerous State enactments which constitute both her guardians and her checks in India. Through the legal decision that was given, the principle in the English Church of mercy rather than sacrifice was vindicated ; but a striking illustration was also supplied of ecclesiastical difficulties in the diocese of Calcutta. It was in reference to another troublesome matter in some respects akin to the one here noticed, that the Bishop once wrote : ' I cannot help being amused at the truly Erastian aspect of these cases, which are an undeniable testimony to the connexion between Church and State, being generally a jumble of some particular Canon, the Anglican view of the doctrines in the Prayer Book, the Queen's regulations for the army, and the status of an Indian chaplain in a military station.' The ecclesiastical matters touched upon in the pre- ceding pages, and others of a like kind, though not demanding a separate notice, tended in a greater or a less degree to disturb the tranquillity which was generally one chief feature of residence in the hills. Amidst the vexations and annoyances to which they gave rise, the Bishop turned to outward nature as a great source of solace and relief. In striking contrast to the disquietude engendered by the divergence or even collision of opinions which marked the considerations of some ecclesiastical or official questions of the time, the soothing yet inspiring 252 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [On. X. influences of scenery full of variety and beauty were always at hand, and made themselves powerfully felt. Wearied within his study by the perplexities of harassing business, the Bishop had only to pass into the verandah to draw refreshment from the sight of mountain ranges lining the horizon on every side and crowned by Kun- chinjinga, which, rearing its enormous snow-clad mass at a distance of less than fifty miles, seemed but a stone's throw from the eye. This great monarch among moun- tains was too often veiled by the mists belonging to a region of heavy and protracted rainfall ; still its near presence brought a sense of repose and solemnity over- powering the turmoil of life's cares, and long periods of ' dim eclipse ' served to throw into more grand relief clear and radiant mornings when every height glistened in the early sun, or nights of almost unearthly beauty, when all nature was illuminated by the light cast from that huge breast of snow bathed in the golden moonlight of India. The matchless grandeur of the Himalayas became a source of deeper enjoyment to the Bishop year by year. The 4 gigantic rampart of eternal snow ' was quite a passion with him : every fine view of it seemed to stir the depths of his soul. His near sight debarred him from observing or studying nature except in her large and grand forms, and beyond a keen interest in physical geography he was quite devoid of scientific tastes. But the imaginative side of his character had been quickened from early boyhood by intellectual culture, by much travelling, and by his in- tuitive sense of all that was really beautiful either in nature or in art ; he thus seemed to have been receiving a life-long preparation for the high and pure enjoyments imparted to his later years by scenery of unsurpassed sublimity and on a scale truly colossal. During tempo- rary residences in the hills he seldom went out for walk or ride without binoculars in his pocket, that no view near or remote might be lost to him. He never, however, Cn. X.] HIMALAYAN SCENERY. 253 rested content with a vague and confused impression of what was around him ; the mental order and arrange- ment for which he was conspicuous were brought to bear on the points of difference in all the snow-cooled settle- ments which break the yoke of a tropical climate from Assam to the north-west frontier. Each peculiar type of scenery in these places to which visitations successively led him, the marked varieties of outline and sweep in the great mountain chains, above all, some grand peak towering from the midst of a near or distant range, were clearly pictured on his mind and noted on 'the tablets of his memory.' Mont Blanc and Monte Eosa had been cherished and familiar names in past years ; no less familiar to him in India became Kunchinjinga and Nundidevi, Gungutri and Jumnutri, and the far away Pir Punjal. EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. June 1862. There is no doubt of the extreme beauty of this place. At first the weather was detestable (almost cease- less rain) and we saw nothing. But after a while matters got brighter, and on Monday morn ing, April 21, we saw for the first time the great view of the snowy range. It is magnificent, the finest that I have seen, occupying one half of the horizon and rising on each side in a series of steps as it were from the nearer hills on the west and east up to the peak of Kunchin- jinga, which is exactly in front of our windows, forty-five miles distant, and is more than 28,000 feet high. It is finer than the view of Nundidevi and its comrades from Almora, because there the different peaks rise separately from behind the near range, while here it is all one grand continuous sweep from Nepal to Bhotan. Nor are other attractions wanting to Darjeeling besides this glorious but seldom-revealed prospect. The green and wooded hills are most picturesquely ranged in three main branches, with deep khuds at the bottom of each. There are not so many sweeps of mountain, range behind range, as at Simla, but the foliage is richer and more diversified, the grass more continuous and English in its appearance, and the views more concentrated and regular. Next to the snowy 254 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cir. X. range, the most characteristic beauty of the place consists in the number and variety of orchids, air plants, and epiphytes which clothe the trees in the khuds ; gorgeous bunches of purple, yellow, and white, such as would be the glory of an English hothouse, are brought up by coolies. Tree ferns too grow, though very inferior to those of Penang: and the trees are generally draped and festooned with creepers. A favourite short walk is round the church hill, or to the top of it, where is a ruined Buddhist monastery, and from which is obtained a glorious view of the snow, with a nearer panorama of the green hills dotted with the white bungalows of the station. From a sketch of a tour into the interior, printed privately by Captain W. S. Sherwill, and from Hooker on the Sikkim Himalayas, I find that Darjeeling clearly means ' place of holiness,' for dorje is a sceptre, as I said, but it is the sceptre borne by a lama, the sceptre of the priesthood ; and that this is its special sense in reference to Darjeeling, and not either a regal sceptre or lightning (which it also means, the sceptre being like forked lightning), seems proved by the existence of the ruined lamaserai on the top of Darjeeling hill. Kunchin- jinga is Thibetan: kon snow, chin = covered, jing = coequal or coeval, and hence Kunchinjinga the ' covered with eternal snow.' Its height is said to be 28,177 feet. Moreover, I find that the name Mount Everest, bestowed upon the great peak in Nepal, which measurements have shown to be the highest known mountain in the world, is somewhat justified by the doubt entertained whether it is exactly identical with the peak called by the Nepalese, Deodanga, a name which, signifying ' (rod's hill,' is quite sublime if its connexion with really the highest mountain could be proved. August. Birch hill furnishes a somewhat longer round, corresponding rather to Jakko, and is adorned by a charming variety of trees, chiefly evergreen oaks covered with creepers, which are less formal and monotonous than the pines and cedars of Simla. Chestnuts too abound, of Italian beauty and luxu- riance. There are very few rhododendrons, but this place is partly supplied by giant magnolias, which were in bloom when we came up. As to clerical work, I take regularly one sermon CH. X.] DARJEELING. 255 on Sunday in the ugly little church of Darjeeling, and a Bible class on Friday at Jallapahar, where is the convalescent depot. There I get from ten to twenty soldiers, to whom I expound with difficulty the epistle to the Romans, into which the chaplain had somewhat unwisely plunged them. I am dis- appointed to find that they will not talk and ask questions : the whole proceeding is a monologue from me, so that though I hope that I may do them some good, and certainly do some to myself by the necessity of speaking very plainly and extempore, I do not reap the benefit which I expected of learning the character and peculiarities of soldiers, which, as having more of them in my diocese than any other bishop in the world, except perhaps the Archbishop of Paris, and just at present, I suppose, the Bishop of Virginia, I am desirous to do. . . My reading has been Hebrew, a very little Urdu, Froude's ' Henry VIII.,' Coleridge's ' Aids,' some of the various works evoked by ' Essays and Eeviews,' and principally the preparation for the press of some expository sermons. We have made acquaintance with a missionary who has been here twenty years, and belongs to the mission established by Mr. Start, a Christian attached to no particular denomination, who still goes about preaching and devoting his substance to missionary work, and is ready to send out any faithful evangelical man, as he expresses it, of whatever persuasion, who is willing to preach the Grospel. So he sent here some four or five Grerman Lutherans, of whom is the only one who has adhered to his original missionary calling, though he has deserted his original form of belief by turning Baptist. But Mr. Start did not supply his staff with adequate means of support, and so all the rest have been driven to secular work for a maintenance, one having become a butcher, another a house agent. So all the funds are now concentrated on - , who has besides a grant of sixty rupees a month from the London Missionary Society. He seems a good honest Christian man, and he has made some progress in the Lepcha language, into which he has translated Grenesis, Exodus i. xx., and St. John. He has, however, made no converts, but two Lepchas come to him to read the Bible. He has no school ; he seems to know very little of the people or their religion, being surprised even to find that we had bought some prayer 256 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [CH. X. wheels and asking where we had got them. Of the Buddhist system he clearly was wholly ignorant. But in truth I do not blame him : he has probably been trained in the belief that his only work is to preach a certain set of doctrines in exactly the same terms to everybody, without any consideration of particular wants and circumstances : I only blame those who fancy that missionary operations can succeed if 'conducted on such prin- ciples as these. A man with no definite creed except, I sup- pose, a belief in the inspiration of Scripture and justification by faith, openly rejecting all branches of the Christian Church, and therefore all the advantages of organisation sends out a number of uneducated Germans to undertake the work of converting a mixed population of Hindus, Buddhists, Maho- metans, and semi-barbarous mountaineers. He does not pro- vide them with funds, expecting, I suppose, that they will be maintained miraculously. What wonder if the majority subside into their natural occupation as tradesmen, and the only one who retains much enthusiasm for the work which he has undertaken, after adopting the opinions of the narrowest and most anti-Catholic of all sects, finds after twenty years that he has effected absolutely nothing ? On Saturday, October 11, S., Mayne, and I went to Hope- town, about twelve miles from Darjeeling. We rode along the Chuttuckpore road to Pacheem, where are sheds and other buildings for soldiers to rest in when on their way to or from the depot, and then plunged into a thick forest on the right of the road through which a horse-path leads to the new English settlement of Hopetown. Here about six bungalows are already built, the site and foundations of a church prepared, and extensive tea plantations in full operation about 2,000 feet below the station, or 4,000 above the sea, 4,500 feet being the greatest height at which tea can be profitably cultivated. For the whole of Sunday the place was enveloped in the profoundest fog. We held two services in our host's drawing-room, which were attended by twenty-two persons, of whom fourteen re- mained in the morning for the Holy Communion. On Monday morning it was fine : and we descended by a path cut through jungle to the tea factory, whence was a lovely view of green hill-sides sloping down to the Balasun, and a vast extent of CH. X.] HOPETOWiY. 257 plain (as far as the Ganges, people said) appearing through an opening in the mountains. The tea making, already seen in Kumaon and Assam, I need not describe. The most novel sight to me was an enormous tea-caddy, a perfect room, holding 200 maunds of tea, which were poured in from above and let out from below, and infused a most delicious fragrance into the nostrils of him who poked his head through the lower aperture. We returned to a late breakfast, then had a plea- sant ride through the forest, but before we were half-way to Darjeeling torrents of rain descended. We decidedly liked the burghers of Hopetown. Our host was Captain Michel, once a private in the artillery, who served under Lord Combermere at Bhurtpore. He received a commission for his good conduct, and afterwards an appointment in the Ordnance Department at Fort William, where he had, as he phrased it, often sat under me at St. Peter's Church. He has retired in his old age with his wife and three daughters to this little settlement, where he has bought land and built himself a large and comfortable bungalow, in which he entertained us with unaffected hospital- ity. He was exceedingly simple and kindhearted, and quietly religious, having family prayers morning and evening. . . . I had a good deal of talk with him and his neighbours about getting a church and a clergyman, and they also desire that the Himalayan school for the lower provinces should be planted in their forest, where they offer a gratuitous site of considerable extent for buildings and playground. October. A recent expedition has been to the Great Eun- geet. The day was glorious, and Kunchinjinga was bathed in rosy light. The road was down to Lebong, then all along that spur, then on a ridge dividing the valleys of the Kungmoo and Rungeet, then through a thick wood by a steep descent to the former river, which is crossed by a bamboo arch just above its mouth, and then through a jungle of tiger grass to the latter. We passed through a succession of varied beauties with grand views of Kunchinjinga, and of the snowless but prominent peak of Tendong, the Ararat of these parts, for on it, according to the Sikkim legend, a boat containing human beings rested after the Flood. Sometimes we went through forest, sometimes o through open glades ; we passed various Lepcha chaits (conical tombs) and some sacred spots marked by flags covered with S 258 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. X. Buddhist prayers and inscriptions, specially, I believe, the celebrated OM MANI PADMI OM of Thibetan theology. The double view of the two valleys was quite lovely, and here was supplied the great deficiency in Himalayan scenery- water for on each side of the ridge along which we rode was seen a rapid mountain river winding between wooded hills, the Rungnoo dashing over rocks, the Eungeet wider and less interrupted, the first flowing down from Senchal, the other from the glaciers of Kinchinjunga. Having crossed the bamboo bridge over the Rungnoo, which is wide and safe, though shaky and without a parapet on either side, we came to the tongue of land formed by the junction of the two rivers, and then emerged from jungle upon the Rungeet, which is also crossed by a bridge, but by one constructed on the same principle as those over the little Rungeet, being a regular suspension bridge of bamboo with high parapets on each side, and hung by ropes of cane to the rocks on either side. Recent storms, however, have dashed away the bottom, so that we could only admire the bridge as a picturesque feature in the landscape, not use it to cross into Sikkim. The river flows through a deep valley, with high green banks on either side, crowned by pines ; the Pinus longifolia is, I believe, the name of the species, in shape like the stonepines of Italy in Turner's pictures, but of a lighter and brighter green. We got to the river by ten, and were of course eager for breakfast, the means of preparing which had been brought down by the faithful Khansama over night. As we approached, we saw the smoke of his fire rising cheerily from the water side, and soon after- wards were conscious of the boiling kettle, fish just caught hissing in the frying-pan, and all other means of refreshment for weary limbs and empty stomachs. After breakfast we lay among the rocks under the shade of the trees, and then strolled along a wooded path which would have ultimately led us, through great difficulties, and not without sleeping in a malarious jungle, to the Teesta, which receives the waters of the Rungeet about ten miles below the cane bridge, and conveys them to the Brahmaputra. The walk showed us many beautiful peeps and reaches of the river, sometimes rushing through ledges of rocks, sometimes flowing smoothly but always very swiftly. We could see the hills about the Teesta at right CH. X.J THE TCHIBU LAMA. 259 angles to our hills, and shutting out the prospect to the east. We returned home about seven in bright moonlight, after a really delightful expedition, the most varied in beauty of any that we have taken at Darjeeling. Sir John conveyed me the whole way there and back, but I rested him by frequent walking. The distance to the Rungeet is about twelve miles. Among the events of these last days, I must not omit a visit from the Tchibu Lama, a Buddhist priest of high rank, Vakeel to the Eajah of Sikkim, and a fast friend to the English, from whom he has received a large grant of land on Simombong, a hill between Tongloo and the valley of the little Rungeet. He was attired in red with a yellow cap, and as he approached, the fern collector prostrated himself flat on the earth. The Lama talked very bad Hindustani and so did we, so that I could not get out of him as much Buddhist theology as I could wish, especially as to the position which the Delai Lama at Lassa occupies in the system, and how he fits it with Sakya Muni of old, and the next incarnation of Buddha who is expected hereafter. He told us, however, intelligibly how a new Delai Lama is chosen or rather revealed to the Thibetans. When the Delai Lama dies, the people wait eagerly till some child in Thibet of five years old announces himself as his successor. As soon as he does so, articles of furniture and dress are brought to the child, and he is asked to select those which belonged to his predecessor, i. e. to himself, since he is only the new manifestation or incarnation of his predecessor. Then a number of servants are submitted to his inspection, and he points out those who attended on him in his former existence. ' This is my khansama,' ' this is my bearer,' he says, and so on, as Tchibu explained to us, going through the various Hindustani names for servants. If he passes correctly these two tests of the property and the servants, his claims to the spiritual sovereignty are admitted, and he is duly installed and wor- shipped at Lassa. November. As to Darjeeling I look back upon our stay here with mixed feelings. I am thankful for its glorious scenery and for the robust health which has been granted to me and mine. I am thankful too for leisure to get through various kinds of private work, study, parochial ministrations, and diocesan s 2 260 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. X. business, which have been full of interest to myself, whatever may have been the amount of benefit conferred on others. But I cannot say that I have liked the superabundance of rain, which, together with cold and lack of roads, has hindered plans for trips into the interior which at Simla are both easy and most enjoyable. However, the good which we have received has very far outweighed the evil, and for this and all His dispensations we heartily thank our heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ. To his Son. Darjeeling, Whit-Monday, June 9, 1862. . . . And now I have two requests to make of you ; one very easy of accomplishment, the other more difficult. 1. Do take care that we have a school list of this Mid- summer and of all future half-years as long as you are at Rugby. It would help us much more to realise your progress if we saw your place every half-year. 2. I wish that, all being well, you would make a real effort to get out at Christmas. I always used to hate quarter pro- motions, as sources of a quarter's idleness and hinderers of a half-year's prize. So pray get out of the line of them if you can, unless indeed you could get out in October, in which case I will accept another quarter promotion thankfully for the sake of your more rapid advancement. But I shall be satisfied with Christmas, and this I earnestly desire. I should think that you would find the ' Phcenissse ' hard, and I never take much pleasure in Euripides, though he is now and then pathetic. At present, however, I suppose that you will be more occupied with the observation of caesuras and constructions than with the woes of Jocasta or frenzy of the two brothers. Well, having now delivered myself of my thoughts on Rugby and your duties there, I return to the Himalayas, and proceed to describe a most active frisk which your father took this morning, and which showed, I think, extraordinary juvenility in a person whom the ' Burmese Times ' described as ' our venerable Metropolitan.' We have lately had a most un- expected . burst of quite glorious weather, at a time of year CH. X.] VIEW FROM THE HEIGHTS OP SENCHAL. 261 when we should naturally look for a deluge of rain. About six miles from Darjeeling is a mountain called Senchal, nearly 9,000 feet high, the plateau at the top being occupied by barracks, but above this rises a conical hill to the height of some 400 feet, from which we heard that there is a wonderful view. Unsuccessful attempts had already been made to see it. At last, yesterday we thought that during this halcyon weather a great effort must be made. So this morning I was up before five, saw that the sky was fair, and at half-past five was on the back of Sir John, accompanied by Aunty on Scarecrow, and Mr. Mayne on Snowdrop (a perfectly black steed). The road first ascends the high hill of Jallapahar, then descends it to a meeting of mountains called the Saddle, then ascends Senchal through a magnificent forest, and the desired cone is at the end of the Senchal parade-ground. Off we set, and so safe do I feel on Sir John, that though I never did and never can take kindly to riding, or think it other than a necessary bore in these regions, yet I actually cantered and trotted along with the rest of the party, who are all thorough equestrians, and even ventured to career at full tilt along the parade-ground in full view of her Majesty's 38th, just emerging from their beds. At the foot of the cone we dismounted, and had a steep climb along a slippery path through jungle, and were wholly breathless when we reached the top at 6.55, exactly 1 hour and 25 minutes after quitting the house, which, considering the precipitous nature of part of the road, I consider was a great triumph, at least for me. Most splendidly were we rewarded. The view is of enormous extent and almost unequalled grandeur. It is a complete panorama. Beginning from the north-west, we saw the Singalela hills, steep, black, craggy, snowless, from 10,000 to 12,000 feet high, which divide us from Nepal. Above them rose three conical hill-tops, perfectly white, of which the central is Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Proceeding towards the north, another group of Nepal snow mountains appeared above the Singalela. Due north of us rose our own beloved Kun- chinjinga, second of earthly mountains, just forty-five miles from us, of course to us infinitely grander than Everest, since we saw all its snow and part even of its un snowed side, as there was no Singalela to hide it. Kunchinjinga is in Sikkim and Thibet, 262 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [OH. X. Then came a long line of snowy peaks and ridges, stretching away east through Bhotan, including one about which the Lepchas, a tribe in Sikkim, have a tradition resembling the resting of the ark on Ararat, for to this hill, Tendong by name, they say that the only two human beings who escaped the deluge retreated. The hills gradually vanished from our view, and below them we saw the valley of Assam. Southwards a great line of hill, called the Mahaldaram Eange, projected from Senchal, forming the watershed which divides the waters which flow into the Brahmaputra from those which seek the Granges. This terminated with Kursiong, and then sank into the Terai and the plain of Bengal, which lay stretched before us in apparently infinite expansion, diversified by jungle and river courses. The rest of the view to the west was filled up by Senchal hill and its barracks, Jallapahar, and Darjeeling, which seemed to unite itself to the Singalela. We saw fine flourishing English settlements, Darjeeling, Jallapahar, Senchal, Kursiong, and Hopetown, and, strange to say, no native town, a sign that the motto 'Ex Oriente Lux 'is now reversed, and that Europe is giving back its light to Asia. But only conceive the wonderful nature of the view, the hundreds of miles which were stretched before us of Nepal, Sikkim, perhaps Thibet, Bhotan, Assam, Bengal ; the two highest mountains in the world, and a host of others higher than any Andes or Alps. I regard the sight as one of the noteworthy moments of my life ; and the whole party shared my enthusiasm. My next desire is to bring your mother up, which I hope may be accomplished, all being well, by going up over night and sleeping. But it can hardly be yet, as this fine weather must cease, I should think, at once. We went down a little more leisurely but not lazily. Just as I was descending on our house I heard nine strike and the prayer bell ring, and about five minutes after nine I was dismounting. Your aunt rode into the compound just before me, and it was so pleasant as I was turning in to hear Ursula's ringing voice shrieking out, ' Well, Aunty, have you brought papa back ? ' . . . CH. X.] SCIENCE AND EDUCATION. 263 To Professor Conington. Darjeeling, June 14, 1862. I am very much disposed to agree with the view which you take of University subscription. I entirely concur in disliking the two extremes, the imposition of the Articles on the one hand, and the abolition of all tests on the other. A declaration of belief in Christianity would be objected to as vague, and I should myself prefer some definite formula. Why not either the Mcene or Apostles' Creed ? The latter appears to be the rule of faith which the Church of England imposes on her lay members. I also quite concur with your remarks on Arnold, and feel myself more and more falling back on him as the one of the few eminent men in our time who have united Liberalism and Christianity. You will see by the ' Christian Intelligencer ' for June, that we also have a university discussion going on, and the allusion to yourself will show you that I wrote the article. As I cannot have the proofs to correct up here, you must throw the blame of being called indefatigible on the editor. I also send you some official papers on the subject which will explain to you the matter more fully. They are to be laid before the senate to-day, and the syndicate (i.e. the Hebdomadal Council) per- sist in recommending the foundation of the two chairs. But in the senate matters will run, I hear, very evenly. Here, too, I believe that we have discovered the true mean between the extreme evangelical view of compulsory Bible instruction in every school, and the extreme secular one of a purely govern- mental non-religious system. My article explains how pro- fessorships of science help religious education : their foundation would act as a grant in aid facilitating the establishment of Christian institutions. If the senate adopt the proposals of the syndicate, there will follow an address to Government requesting the foundation of two chairs of natural and experimental philosophy. . . . 264 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. X. To Godfrey Lushington, Esq. July 1862. . . . There are matters of great interest in your letter touching the present position of the English Church, and of religious belief in England. Into these I will not enter at length, partly because I have not yet read your father's judgments, which are of importance in discussing the former, partly for the reason that I gave at the beginning of this letter, that after a morning spent in writing a sermon and two prac- tical essay-like letters to Government on soldiers' institutes and chaplains' allowances, I really need recreation in writing to an old friend rather than a yet more abstruse disquisition. I will only express my grief that one characteristic of our pre- sent jeunesse doree is an entire want of positive conviction, not only on minor matters, such as the authorship of the second epistle of St. Peter, but on matters of primary and essential importance, whether spiritual, such as the reality of revelation, or practical, such as the way in which people should be edu- cated. And this absence of positive conviction seems to me a most formidable evil, and fatal to all true greatness and use- fulness. I cannot but think that a person who suffers from it is, to a great degree, responsible for it, though some of the blame rests with and others of various schools, and, alas ! partly with myself, so far as I have failed to influence anyone in a right, or have influenced them in a wrong direc- tion. I think also that the youth of the present day are given to speak sneeringly, unfairly, and almost profanely about creeds and articles without having really examined the subject. With these observations against one party in the present disputes, I turn from a sad and wearying subject, conscious, however, that there is plenty to be said against other parties also. We are happily all well and enjoying ourselves in a place of glorious walks and rides. Your goddaughter both rides a pony and learns a hymn ; and, as old Dr. Wordsworth used to say to us in Trinity Chapel when he praised or quoted his brother's poems, ' false delicacy shall not prevent me from ' telling you that she is a most charming little girl, and a constant source of delight both to her mother and to me. Cu. X.] NATIVES OP DARJEELING. 265 To the Rev. J. N. Simpkinson. Darjeeling, 1862. Again, as in 1860, we spend our summer in the Himalayas, but this time nearer to their eastern than their western ex- tremity. Darjeeling is a small British station hemmed in between the three semi-barbarous states of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhotan. . . . Our chief human beings are Lepchas, said to be the aborigines of these mountains : fair in complexion, wholly beardless, with long hair twisted in tails down their backs, so that it is hard to distinguish men and women, Buddhists after a sort, filthily dirty, not dainty in their food, inasmuch as they eat cats and snakes, and performing their devotions by the singular process of twisting round and round small brass cylinders on a wooden handle, each revolution being a prayer. Our English neighbours are, for the most part, de- voted to tea, not to drinking it, but to planting it, for which purpose the lower slopes of the hills are being rapidly cleared of jungle, and the produce of the plantations is exceedingly good. The speculation is said already to answer very well, and if the natives of India generally become a tea-drinking race, it will be exceedingly lucrative for many years. Grreat numbers of people are crowding into the business, and the result must be to make India more of a colony than it has been, but I trust that we shall not be altogether Yankeeised or Australianised. The existence of this class makes me ex- ceedingly anxious to push education in India, and I am happy to say there is some prospect of my Simla school coming into operation next year. As to English theology and Church, I cannot throw much light upon them from Hindustan, and I shrink from writing about them more than is needful, as many of their aspects are now distressing and exciting. The Lushington judgment, I should think, would be a discouragement to prosecutors, for if it closes some doors it opens some wider than ever, and those the very doors through which persons are now most eager to press. But I invite you to write on such subjects ad libitum, for one of my chief distresses here is that I have no one with whom I can freely interchange opinions on matters which require full consideration. An able theologian in the diocese, with 266 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. X. whom I once made an attempt to talk, seemed so shocked and horrified at the bare mention of 'Essays and Reviews,' that I found it useless to continue the subject. At the same time I cannot deny that the horror excited by the book in the minds of really pious men who know Greek and Hebrew, and are therefore capable of forming opinions, is a strong condemnation of the reckless manner in which that unfortunate work was pitchforked into the world. To his Son. August 1862. . . . How came about the brilliant victory gained by Marl- borough over Rugby at cricket ? Surely you ought all to be ashamed of yourselves. I fancied you nearly invincible, and here you are beaten in one innings. Of all my three injunc- tions given to the school on that last prize day, this was the one which I least expected to be fulfilled. The others were, you know, to improve the chapel, which of course could be done by money, and to get the Balliol, which I fully expected Ilbert to do ; but this beating of Rugby in cricket I did not anticipate. Your mother and I went up to Senchal the other day, and stayed there, I one night, she two. The accommodation was primitive but not comfortless. We occupied officers' quarters kindly lent to us. The hill is rich in flowers, ferns, and very good raspberries, as large as cultivated raspberries in England, and of a beautiful scarlet colour. Owing to rain and mist, we could not see the great view which I described to you in a former letter, nor indeed did we go up with any expectation of doing so. On the top of the hill two great greenhouses are built, in which the curator of the botanical gardens in Calcutta is carefully nursing and propagating a number of cinchona plants, which are one day to cover the mountain side with luxurious trees, and supply the whole Anglo-Indian army with quinine. They are procured from Java, but originally from the Andes. We have been much grieved at the death of our dear old uncle, the Dean, though at eighty-two a longer life was neither to be expected nor perhaps desired. But he had always been kind and affectionate to me from my boyhood to my bishopric : he was an earnest, simple-hearted Christian, and at the same Cn. X.] LORD CANNING. 267 time a humorous and entertaining companion. I do not recollect exactly how much or how lately you have seen him, though you have been to the deanery more than once, the last time being in 1858, with us. There is one point in which you might exert yourself to gratify us more than you do, and that is by returning to the practice which used to afford us so much pleasure, of writing to us regularly every fortnight. You profess to have altered your time of writing from the Calcutta to the Bombay mail, but the truth is that you write by neither. The last Bombay brought us nothing, and to-day in comes the final batch of Calcutta letters without any from you. Eemember that sepa- ration from you is the great sorrow of our life, and at least do not increase that sorrow by your own neglect. There is no news here worth telling you. Our life is as quiet as possible. I really get more and more reconciled to the necessity of riding, and quite enjoy a brisk trot. Sir John is sleek, lazy, and obedient. To the Rev. Dr. Stanley. Darjeeling, September 9, 1862. I need hardly say that I have often thought of you with true sympathy as I heard of the trials and interests and enjoy- ments of the last months. With regard to the sorest of the first of these I could not write to you at the time, not knowing where or when a letter might reach you, but I sent a few lines to your sister, not forgetting that she was suffering like your- self. I repeat now what I said to her, that, during that agitating year 1858, when I was whirled about between hopes, fears, excitements, sorrows, new duties, new scenes, and new interest, your mother's brave words and affectionate sympathy had no small share in strengthening me for the work which (rod had given me to do. I have myself, as you will have heard, had to bear my part in some melancholy duties this year, though I was away at the worst time, when Lady Canning died, and the funeral was performed by the archdeacon. But as soon as I returned to Calcutta, Lord Canning wrote me a note to ask me to come to him, and 268 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [H. X. we had a long interview in his dreary-looking sitting-room at Government House, with its rows of cupboards and red boxes, and white unornamented walls. He began to speak of her, but could not go on, and fell back sobbing in his chair. Considering that his manner was chiefly marked by a cold and stern dignity, I never saw before a stronger instance of the heart asserting its absolute supremacy. . . . Next day he wrote me a note to thank me for having written to him at the time of his loss, and said that he had found it impossible to do so when I was with him. A week afterwards I went down to him at Earrackpore (where he spent every Sunday after her death), and consecrated the new cemetery which he has con- structed in the park ' for such Governors-General of India and their families as shall die in India,' and which is almost as lovely from its situation and foliage as the Protestant burial ground at Lisbon. Three days after this I was sitting opposite to him at the entertainment which he gave in the marble hall at Govern- ment House to welcome Lord Elgin ; three days more and I received his parting shake of the hand, and accompanied him to the steamer, which was to take him down the Hooghly ; four months more and I read the mournful telegram announcing that he too was gone. He was a very mirror of honour and integrity, the pattern, as far as I could see, of a just, high- minded, unselfish, and fearless statesman ; kind too and con- siderate for others, a terror to evil doers, but a praise to them that do well., without any personal bias or any ill feeling against those who had opposed him. . . . Lord Elgin has shown that he does not prefer popularity to duty by rejecting a numerously signed and clamorous petition for the pardon of an unhappy European soldier, sentenced to death for shooting a native. The man was no doubt greatly to be pitied, but could not have been pardoned if the principle of equal justice between the dominant and subject races was to be maintained. To the Rev. The Secretary of the Vernacular Committee of the Christian Knowledge Society. 1862. I request you to bring under the notice of the Committee the propriety of translating into Bengali and Urdu the accompany- Cn. X.] THE MISSIONARY PRAYER. 269 ing selection of passages from the sermons of Doctor Arnold ; they might, I think, be especially useful among young men of education. In thinking them well fitted for the purposes of our Com- mittee, my opinion is fortified by the judgment of Professor Banerjea, who has read through the book and recommends it for translation. He has marked with his pencil one or two passages, which, though applicable to England, would be scarcely intelligible in India, and which therefore should be omitted. There is also one extract which I have marked for omission, because, though true in itself, it is connected with a view with which I do not concur, and which I am sure that the author would not have thought necessary to set before the natives of India. To the Bishop of Madras. Darjeeling, 1862. ... I am not clear about the law concerning the question on which you wrote in a former letter your right or mine to issue the missionary prayer. I have, however, some observa- vations on the subject from Doctor Phillimore, but they are in Calcutta, and as I do not exactly remember their purport, I will not write fully on the subject at present. But, meantime, thus much I may say at once. I sent the suggestion home to the late archbishop, asked him whether he objected to any of the changes suggested, and also called his attention specially to the prayer for British India, and further asked his opinion about the difficulty of the preface to the Confirmation Service, to which my attention was first called by Bishop Chapman, which assumes that all to be confirmed have been baptized in infancy, which is not the case in a congregation of native con- verts. In his reply, very shortly before his death, he made no objections to anything, expressed his approbation of the prayer for India in a form nearly identical with the one finally sanctioned, or of any equivalent form of words, and gave an opinion about the Confirmation Service, which led to a circular to the missionaries, of which I will tell Mr. Abbott to send you a copy. Hence I think that the changes have had the primate's sanction, or certainly have all been made with his cognizance. Now I am by no means certain that the Archbishop of Canter- 270 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. X, bury has legally much more right than I have to make such changes, but some are absolutely necessary, and the absence of a missionary prayer in India has long been a standing reproach urged by Dissenters against our Church. Observe, too, that I have only authorised it, i.e. said that I shall not interfere with any clergyman who chooses to read it : of course neither you nor I could compel it. Besides, what help is there ? Who could introduce what is so deeply needed ? Strictly speaking, perhaps only Parliament, and I do not think that it would be easy to introduce into the House of Commons any Bills about the Liturgy. To a Director of Public Instruction. 1862. ... I have read the ' Friend of India's ' remarks on figs and thistles, and as I have not on former occasions agreed with his criticisms on your department, so neither do I now. I am particularly glad of your assurance that the normal schools of which he speaks with such interest are really efficient institu- tions, and I am thankful that you regard the new place as 6 moderately hopeful.' I need hardly add that I wish it all success. I do not, however, quite agree with your general remarks either as to the evangelisation or education of a country. The view that the former must descend from the higher to the lower orders is hardly borne out by history. Certainly it was not the case with the first preaching of the Gospel, as we may gather from the Acts, and are distinctly informed by St. Paul* The Eeformatiori, too, took a strong hold on the common people generally before it reached the nobles. In Henry VIII.'s time the middle and lower classes were reading the Bible and being burnt for heresy while the king was still denouncing Luther, and but for the conjugal necessi- ties of Henry, and political necessities of Elizabeth, the English Reformation might probably have been postponed till the time of Charles I. The only facts in your favour, as it seems to me, are the conversion of the northern nations at the fall of the Eoman empire, and these are apparent rather than real, because they were brought about not by the influence of the upper classes of each race, but by the will of its king or leader, CH. X.] EXTENSION OF EDUCATION. 271 and after all they were scarcely conversions in the strict sense of the term. As to education, if the upper classes of India were Christian, I should then believe that it would penetrate by a legitimate development from above to below, because there would be in them a new moral and spiritual principle, which would make them anxious to impart to others the benefits which they have themselves received. But as it is, while they are fettered by caste, by pride, by selfishness, I do not see any prospect of this, and so I think that the duty of educating the masses falls upon us English as having at once the power, as being the dominant race, and having, or being bound to have, the will from possessing the Gospel. Nor do I think that the consideration of the number of rupees per mensem to which education admits a man need enter into the question. If, as I have always been told by Long, Banerjea, and others of the missionary clergy, the people do already flock in considerable numbers to the schools of the Grurus, surely by training the Grurus we shall almost force them by the laws of nature to improve the instruction which they give, for no one who possesses a right knowledge of facts would (without some strong personal motive) deliberately impart a false view of them. No professing teacher who has learned how to teach would abstain from teaching properly according to what he has learned. We certainly do not want for the Bengal peasantry the standard of the first Examination in Arts any more than we expect the English peasantry to pass the Little Gro, but we do want to make a beginning of national education for the masses in India as we have done at home, and if the normal schools are well looked after I cannot see why the scheme which you are now starting should be barren of happy results. 272 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XI. CHAPTER XL VISITATIONS OP THE CENTRAL PROVINCES IMPERFECT ECCLESIASTICAL ARRANGEMENTS DIFFICULTIES IN TRAVELLING THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL LETTERS BENARES NAGPORE MHOW SAUGOR JHANSI CAWNPORE CONSECRATION OF THE MEMORIAL WELL AGRA BEGUM OF BHOPAL CASTE EMEUTE IN ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE THE BISHOP'S SPEECH LETTER TO GOVERNMENT ON ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES LETTERS. IN November 1862, the Bishop left the hills for the Central Provinces. On the banks of the Ganges, he met his old friend and chaplain T. H. Burn, who had just arrived from England with a fresh instalment of health again to be exhausted in an Indian climate before two years were over. But the pleasure, though short-lived, was great to the Bishop. In his journal he wrote : ' Besto- ration to Burn is indeed a cause of the most abundant joy, and I thank God for it as a real comfort and help to me in my many needs and frequent perplexities.' The Central Provinces, the latest political division of British India, had been formed through the amalgamation of the province of Nagpore, annexed by Lord Dalhousie, with the Saugor and Nerbudda territories. In 1862 an exceed- ingly vigorous local government was rapidly establishing order and security ; civilisation was slowly following, but ecclesiastical arrangements were in a peculiarly crude and incomplete state. The presence of chaplains from the Presidency of Madras at Kamptee and Seetabuldee, the two chief stations in Nagpore, was an anomaly and source of confusion. Scarcely a church was to be seen except the fine modern one at Seetabuldee, and nu- merous communities of Europeans, connected either dr. XI.j JUNGLE TRAVELLING. 273 with Government or the Great Central Bailway, then in course of construction, were springing up, with a very i nadequate supply of pastors. The whole region presented an unbroken soil for the Additional Clergy Society, whose labours the Bishop had so recently been stimulating. The Bishop's route lay through Benares, Mirzapore, and Jub- bulpore, to Nagpore, where Christmas was spent. Thence, in due time, he reached the Nerbudda river, and, crossing it, passed through Holkar's territories, to visit the remote stations of Mhow andlndore, and finally, by way of Saugor, Jhansi, and Gwalior, regained the North- West Provinces and the land of railways, which seemed like life from the dead after a protracted experience of jungle travels. For this final section of the primary visitation presented throughout its course a sample of the same primitiveness of arrangements and barrenness of comforts for travellers which still linger in many parts of our Eastern empire, recalling the general aspect of British India within the memory of the present generation, and reminding the Indian bishop of these days that, amidst all the alle- viations of his exile, he has occasionally to encounter on a small scale the loneliness, difficulties, and privations which fell to the daily lot of Heber, in his almost exploring journey in search of a few scattered clergy. As far as Nagpore the Bishop's progress was tolerably smooth, but from that point the toils of the tour fairly set in. The distances to be traversed were far less formidable from length than from the lack of resources for speedy locomotion in a region just roused from the semi- barbarous stagnation of native rule. During many days and nights doolies (a lighter sort of palanquin) formed the chief homes of the Bishop, the chaplain, and the doctor. Occasionally the way lay simply through jungle. Tigers happily unseen were constantly heard of, and at one mountain ghat or pass, haunted by a man-eater, a whole village turned out with blazing torches as an T 274 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XI. escort through the perilous defile. Much help was afforded both in British territory and in the small native States, and tended to mitigate, though it could not avert, the annoyances arising from execrable roads, from the want of the usual staging bungalows, and the paucity of palanquin-bearers. Not much room, however, was left for the external adjuncts of a dignified position when comforts were few, when the commissariat supplies were scanty and precarious, or when for a night journey the capacious side of an elephant was accepted as a satisfac- tory exchange for the dusty doolie. But the kind wel- come that awaited the travellers at every halt on their way, and the evident comfort and pleasure derived from Christian ordinances by those for whom their cele- bration was only a casual privilege, were the best reward for fatigue and discomforts. A visitation extending over three years and a half had served to reveal the needs of Christians sprinkled over the vast area of Northern India. Its completion left the Bishop with the conviction profoundly impressed on his mind that, amidst all the varied work of the diocese, no duty lay more prominently in his path, or was more entirely a personal responsibility, than that of providing the helps and ministrations of the Church for scattered sheep in the wilderness, in order that, as he once wrote, ' no one should be allowed to feel himself neglected or forgotten/ This visitation journey was all but the only one which I did not share with my husband. The following ex- tracts from an unbroken succession of letters addressed to myself will afford a sketch of his life between December 1862 and February 1863 : Benares, November 30, 1862. . . . Yesterday I had a fatiguing, but by no means unin- teresting, nor, as I trust, unprofitable day. At seven I pro- ceeded to Sigra, and had some early work with each ordination CH. XI.] ORDINATION AT BENAKES. 275 candidate separately. After breakfast all the missionaries and candidates assembled, and we had a really profitable conversation on various missionary topics training colleges for natives, for example. I also propounded to them several questions which Stanley had asked Burn in England, and got to most of them very sensible and sufficient answers, which I hope to communi- cate to him. I wound up this part of the business by a short address on John xiii., and then had to listen, or rather to sit in a chair without listening, while Burn administered those wearying oaths and subscriptions to the candidates. . . . Three hours were then devoted to visiting Jay Narain's college, the training school ; and at 4 P.M. I confirmed forty- eight natives in the mission church. Altogether I was on the go for eleven hours, and was glad of a quiet evening. This morning at seven Burn and I took the parade service for the Bays. It was in the open air ; the men were drawn up on three sides of a square. Burn read a brief selection from the prayers, and then I preached extempore, the whole thing being over in twenty minutes, which was about equally divided be- tween prayers and sermon. To keep them standing longer in their stiff uniforms, with carbines and twenty rounds of ammu- nition, would not be conducive to their edification. At eleven I held the ordination and preached. There was a large con- gregation, and altogether, including the candidates, no less than fourteen of the clergy partook together of the Holy Communion certainly an impressive and memorable event in the most sacred of Hindu cities. All appeared in surplices, which had a decorous appearance, and was also memorable in a small way, as showing that evangelicals no longer consider it a point of duty and orthodoxy to prefer the uglier and less appro- priate to the more picturesque and seemly garment. I have seen again here , and cannot but think that a man of such eminence wastes his time by spending three hours a day in teaching geography to the first class of a mission girls' school, while he might be the most effective of native pastors and evangelists. He is, I suppose, more or less the victim of irresolution, arising from the convulsive effects of a change of creed on a man of such deep feelings and subtle intellect, like the many now in England who are kept from a life of real usefulness by over-speculation on unsolved and T 2 276 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XI. insoluble difficulties. When I see all these missionaries and their wives at work, wholly given up to the endeavour to pro- mote the highest welfare of these Hindus, I feel that here is one great branch of the true evidence to the reality of Christi- anity, and to many of its doctrines, such as conversion, the difference between the Church and the world, spiritual holiness and self-sacrifice. The other branch is the New Testament it- self, the life of our Lord and the moral teaching of His apostles. So we come to Coleridge's conclusions, that the two proofs of the truth of the Grospel are Christianity and Christendom. And against these proofs F. Newman and Theodore Parker and Comte thunder in vain. Maihor, December 9, 1862. . . . We had a visit yesterday from the Eajah of Nagode ; he was splendidly dressed in gold brocade, with chobdars preceding him with silver maces, announcing his titles : ' This is he,' they exclaimed, ' whose head is as high as the heavens,' and so on. He is an insignificant-looking man, with his face bedaubed with mire and ashes, and though only about forty, he has scarcely any teeth, owing to excessive eating and drinking. He brought with him his son and heir, an intelligent boy, whom he ordered to recite for our edification the names of a hundred Hindu gods ; and then, which was more to the purpose, to read from a book in the Nagri character. We advised him to have the youth taught English, which he says is going to be done. One wishes that this poor boy could be brought up under some better influence, but our Government is right not to separate forcibly these princelings from their fathers ; and an English tutor has been engaged for the boy, though, as the finances of Nagode can only afford meagre funds for education, it is not likely that the instruction will be first-rate. In the evening, after dinner, we came on here, which is yet another native State whereof the rajah is a minor. These princes of Central India are Rajputs, sprung from the noblest and bravest blood in India ; but cer- tainly, from the specimens that we have seen and heard of, their degradation appears to be complete. Jubbulpore, December 11, 1862. ... At Maihor my opinion of native princes was raised. Soon after breakfast, a present of fruits, sugar, and sweetmeats CH. XL] INDIAN RAJAHS. 277 arrived from the rajah, with a request that he might be allowed to visit us. As we had admired the picturesque fortress and city, we expressed our desire to visit him at his palace. This is situated at the end of the long street of the city, which is walled with towers, like one of the Punjab towns. It is a regular castle, which we enter through gates covered like porcupines with projecting iron points. Within them is a very pretty garden and shrubbery, thickly planted with orange trees, whose bright fruit glittered in the sun as they did at Seville in 1850. The actual abode of the rajah is a picturesque old house in the middle of this shrubbery, with a court in the middle, enclosed with two rows of colonnades of genuine old Hindu architecture, elaborately carved and ornamented. After the rajah's officials had lionized us over the house, we were placed on three chairs, and presently his highness entered and occupied the fourth. Unlike his toothless neighbour at Nagode, he is a handsome manly boy of nineteen, attired in his shooting costume a brocaded jacket, white trousers, and a cap of red and gold, bordered with fur. He has been educated for two years in the Government College at Agra, where he was taught by Charles Pearson ; but now, wearying of the society of Government professors, and preferring that of leopards and tigers one of which he has lately shot he has returned to his ancestral home. He spoke English fairly, and though he showed a little of the usual Hindu curiosity by some personal questions, yet there was so much grace and dignity about him, that he interested and pleased us. But, alas ! though he looks promising now, his future can hardly be a bright one, since there is no one near to improve or elevate him, and his life must, one fears, be an old story of self-indulgence and super- stition. In such a case, I think shooting a most profitable occupation. Seoni, December 18, 1862. . . . On Tuesday morning we quitted Jubbulpore. I shall not describe all the petty vexations of the journey, but confine myself to the speech with which an overseer of the road dis- missed us just at sunset one day : ' You will not find, right rev. sir (sic), that the travelling is very convenient. There are four or five tigers between this and Seoni, the road is very bad and full of rocks, the bearers are very weak and can scarcely 278 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XI. carry at all, and the dak bungalows have no roof.' However, here we are, not having encountered any tigers, nor any rocks absolutely impassable ; but the other two parts of his prediction were true enough, for though we have been here seven hours, some very important luggage is still behind, and we are lodged in the office of the electric telegraph, the dak bungalow being in the state which he described. The air is fresh and cold, as we are 2,500 feet above the sea. If you look at the map which I gave you, you will see that the Vindhya range pushes out branches called the Khyonne and Deva Hills, and Seoni is on the tableland formed by the latter. We have ascended two passes since we left Jubbulpore, which itself is raised far above the valley of the Granges by the Kuttra Pass, which we ascended on the day after leaving Mirzapore. These hills form a watershed, and we have crossed rivers flowing respectively to the two seas on Tuesday the Nerbudda, which runs into the Indian Ocean ; and this morning the Wyngunga, which is in fact the main stream of the Grodavery, and reaches the Bay of Bengal. Eesidency, Seetabuldee, Nagpore, Christmas Day, 1862. My first thought this morning was on the great trouble and privation of not wishing you in bodily presence a happy Christ- mas. I wish it for you most truly in heart and spirit, and I pray that Grod's great blessing may be with you, and darling Ursula, and our boy, so far away from us, and give you each heavenly help according to your need, to reproduce in your hearts and conversation that Divine life which was this day begun for our salvation. So, too, may He help and bless all others whom we love, far and near, whether kinsfolk or tried and affectionate friends. Christmas Eve was a bustling day enough. At seven we dashed out (I use the phrase to express the rapidity of our movements, and of the tag-rag of sowars and other attendants who follow at our heels) to see the Rajah of Nagpore, representative of the dethroned Bhonsla dynasty. Our real object was to see his palace, which is of course cha- racterised by the usual mixture of dirt and tinsel, but is remarkable as a fine specimen of Mahratta architecture. It consists of long colonnades and arcades of carved wood, each pillar being the trunk of a teak-tree, with projecting eaves, oriel windows, and flat roofs. The general effect is very CH. XI.] SPIRITUAL POWER OF THE BRAHMANS. 279 massive and sombre, unlike the wooden architecture of Burmah, but specially interesting when compared with it by one who this time last year was in the midst of Burmese kyoungs and poungye houses. The rajah is quite of a low caste a Sudra but he had a crowd of frousy objects in attendance, whom he called ' hamara Brahrnanlog,' and whom Temple treated with but little deference. Certainly if these tykes really keep the rajah in complete order, force him to maintain them, impose penances and fines, and mix them- selves up with his whole life and death, it is an instance of the triumph of the spiritual over the secular scarcely reached by Gregory the Seventh or Becket. For there he stood, blazing with gold and jewels, with gold and silver maces round him, and attendants fanning him, and with the Chief Commissioner and the Bishop treating him with great civility, on a raised platform. Two or three steps below were these Brahmans dirty, mean-looking ; some in their dotage ; in coarse white garments and bare legs, no better in appearance than the coolies who had borne our palanquins. Yet they appear to be quite necessary to him, and to exercise over him a complete spiritual despotism. This scene took place near a temple of Krishna, in his garden, of which they were the ministers and guardians. I afterwards visited and examined the mission school of the Scotch Free Kirk in the city ; returned to the Residency for a hasty breakfast at eleven, and then flew out again to inaugurate a new school for Europeans and Eurasians, got up in accordance with my ' Minute,' and, if not the actual fruit of my labour, at least the result of a stone which I set rolling; so that I regarded its commencement with special interest. At 4 P.M. out again to consecrate two burial-grounds, and at 8 an immense banquet. Hoshungabad, December 31, 1862. .... On this last day of the year I write to you with a thankful remembrance of its many mercies. Thank Grod for our continued health and strength, for the child's satisfactory growth in all ways, for the return of Burn, for definite progress about the Simla school, for the impetus given to some diocesan work, for many family blessings in England. The sorrows that have most troubled me are the public deaths which India has this year had to mourn, and the undeniable growth of the 280 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XI. difficulties connected with Scripture and Church questions, which continue without any opposition, or solution, or attempt at rectification with which I can thoroughly sympathise. A true Christian prophet is sorely needed. May Grod raise up among us those who are fitted to strengthen the bulwarks of His Church ! Panibijwara, Sunday, January 4, 1863. In my last letter I did not tell you all my cause for dis- quietude ; for Burn, having imprudently walked too long in the morning after the sun was up, and then found no more wholesome breakfast than a cup of hermetical soup, seemed to be fast becoming quite ill : happily, however, the arrival of some tea from the railway sahib refreshed him, and a moderate repast of cold chicken so restored him that he started at night much as usual. I went to call on the railway sahib to thank him for his tea, and found that he was overflowing with desires of hospitality, which he made good by sending to the tent, un- known to me, a huge hamper of provisions, so that a day which began with famine ended with feasting. I was greatly amused with the conversation of the tehsildar (a village functionary) who accompanied me to the sahib's house, followed, of course, by an immense tag-rag from the town. His whole mind and that of all his attendants seemed set on the glorification of Seoni, which is a very clean town, of exceedingly pretty archi- tecture. This they assured me was the only genuine Seoni, the other Seoni through which we had passed being a spurious, imperfect Seoni ; the one Seoni Chipara, the other Choti Seoni. Their Seoni was the centre of wealth and enlightenment ; here the railway would come, here was a school, here the bunniahs (grain-factors) were men of fabulous riches. They even seemed offended at my supposition that tigers were rare in these parts. On the contrary, they assured me they abounded ; only last week an inhabitant had been devoured ; I was quite mistaken in supposing that they could produce fewer tigers than their neighbours. We left this paradise at night, and on the morn- ing of January 2 reached a civil station of recent origin called Hurda. The next day a carriage drawn by trotting bullocks conveyed us to the bank of the Nerbudda, which we crossed in boats, and then took to our doolies, which had been sent on over night. We were now in the territories of Holkar, and after CM. XL] HOLKAR'S 1IOH3EMEX. 281 travelling* for nine miles came to Khattaganu. Here we found that the Maharajah Holkar had despatched ten sowars to escort us through his dominions wild-looking horsemen, quite unlike those in English territory, dressed in white, with red turbans, bare legs, and slippers, and each carrying a spear ten feet long. Under their protection we trusted ourselves at nightfall to the unknown men and perils of this foreign State ; but hitherto we have found the people even more civil and attentive than in our own provinces. We reached this place at eight this morning, and here the far-reaching forethought of an English official had caused a tent to be pitched, so we are spending our Sunday in quiet and comfort, though in a complete jungle, and with no other outward reminder of religion except, alas ! the tom- toming and horn-blowing from a Hindu temple. We have, however, just had a short service, with a sermon of Archer Butler's eloquent and argumentative, but somewhat abstruse. The jungle wherein our tent is pitched absolutely swarms with doves and peacocks. Mhow, Epiphany, 1863. .... We left our forest resting-place at Panibijwara on Sunday night, and ascended a range of hills by a most exe- crable road, but reached Ragoghur yesterday in good time. Here we found our circumstances improved: there is a dak bungalow, the first except one that we have seen since Nag- pore. A bundle of letters was sent out from Indore, together with sixty-eight commissariat bearers and an elephant, sent by the general commanding at Mhow to speed us on our way ; so we spent the day quietly, and just at sunset re-entered our doolies, hoisted the luggage and servants on the elephant, and were conveyed with extraordinary rapidity thirty-two miles to Mhow. The agility of the bearers was unparalleled. They lite- rally ran at full speed twenty miles without stopping, except just to move the doolies in the usual fashion. At the end of the twenty miles they made a grand invocation of Rama, set us on the ground, lit an immense fire, and sat round it smo- king, laughing and talking. After an hour's rest some of them shrieked out, ' Burhao, Bhai ; uthao ; chalo.' * They got up and accomplished the remaining miles by five this morning, when they deposited us at Mhow, at the padre sahib's house, * Get up brothers ; raise the doolie ; start. 282 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XI. and I got into a real bed for an hour and a half for the first time since Christmas Eve. Mhow is an ugly place perhaps the ugliest cantonment that I ever saw. It is quite as brown and burnt as Allahabad or Cawnpore. It is almost wholly treeless. Very few of the houses have compounds, but are stuck promiscuously, and on no plan or system, about the arid and rocky plain. There is only one relief to the view : as almost everywhere in Central India, there are distant hills ; but these also are mere treeless rocks. Sehore, January 16, 1863. .... We arrived here very early this morning, and such urgent requests have been made that I will stay over Sunday, and give them service and celebrate the Holy Communion, which they say is almost unknown here. We are already be- hind our programme, owing to the ceaseless delays in travelling ; but after much deliberation I have consented to remain, for the community here numbers thirteen adult Europeans, who seem anxious for Church ordinances and deserve encourage- ment. Moreover, we are ourselves undoubtedly tired and travel-worn, and not disinclined to profit by a short rest in a household where both comfort and godliness seem to prevail. We are now in the territory of the warlike Begum of Bhopal, who, greatly to my disappointment, is gone to Agra; for I should have been deeply interested in seeing a Mussulman Semiramis who freely admits gentlemen to her presence. The ' Nawab Secundra Begum,' to give her her full title, seems a very enlightened female. A queen-regnant in a Mahometan dynasty is in itself singular, but this one is also a reforming Mahometan woman, which is a yet stranger phenomenon. She has wholly cast aside all restraints of the Purdah and Zenana. She gives large dinner-parties, herself appearing at dessert and making an excellent speech in return for the toast of her health. She exerts herself to do justice and bring land into cultivation ; she is learning English ; she is at once respected and feared by her subjects; she is very munificent more so than her small revenues warrant and devotedly attached to the English rule. She mounted the throne through a disputed succession, which was compromised by marrying her, the heiress of one line, to the heir of the other, and then, when her hus- band died, proclaiming her queen. Her mother, they tell me, CH. XL] FORTRESS OF SAUGOR. 283 still exists, but is just like an old Ayah in dress and appear- ance ; whereas the Begum is attired in bright colours, wears a lace jacket, a handsome chudder, and, above all, the ribbon and star of the Order of India, of which she is extremely proud. Saugor, January 22. .... At 8 A.M. yesterday we were passing through the city and beneath the frowning walls of the fort of Saugor. We are now again in British territory, having re-entered the Central Provinces, and certainly the cleanliness and good repair of Saugor is a pleasing contrast to the frousiness and ruined con- dition of Bhilsa, Garripoor, and other cities under native rule. To-day the fort has been visited, which rises above the lake and commands the city. There is a fine extent of wall with picturesque round towers, but the walls are said to be weak and incapable of standing a siege. Here, in 1857-58, all the residents of Saugor, three hundred in number, including the present chaplain and his family, were shut up for six months, for fear of the Grwalior contingent, till they were relieved by Sir Hugh Kose. The true way of realising to oneself what the mutiny was in its daily bearing on all English life in India, over and above its more conspicuous horrors, such as the events of Cawnpore, Lucknow, and Delhi, is to open one's ears to little facts narrated by persons who have gone through such a period. Thus, said , the only accommodation allowed during these six months for himself, wife, and five children, for all purposes, day and night, except that they dined when it did not rain under a tree, was half a small verandah, in which they were separated from the occupants of the other half by a pur- dah or curtain. Lullutpore, January 28. .... We left Saugor two days ago, and have quitted the Central Provinces and are again in the familiar regions of the North-West. The country is all stones and rocks, and as ugly as need be. The news from Peshawur is very sad. French, who is the life and soul of the Derajat mission, is prostrate with jungle- fever, and, though recovering, must go to England immediately ; and poor Eoger Clark, the younger brother of the Clarks with whom we breakfasted at that old Mussulman's 231 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XI. house in the city, has died of dysentery. He was only twenty- eight, and this loss, coming after that of Tuting, is not only a great blow to the work in those distant regions, but it makes one seriously anxious about the safety of Peshawur for Euro- pean life ; a fact hard to realise when one remembers that glorious girdle of mountains which encircles it. You recollect how seriously it has been visited twice since we came to India by cholera. I should think it very likely that the city is un- safe from defective drainage and Eastern dirt, and that the missionaries ought never to sleep there, which I fancy they have been doing. I have written about this to Eobert Clark, who is now absolutely alone, where a few months ago there were four missionaries, all apparently in strong health. When these events occur I sometimes reproach myself for not thinking more about the missionaries ; for my daily administration and routine duties bring me into such far closer personal contact with the chaplains, that I am apt to forget the other division of my clergy ; and yet there is no body of men more worthy of all thought and sympathy. Jhansi, February 2. .... The most interesting event here has been the conse- cration of the memorial building and cemetery erected over the remains of sixty-six persons murdered here in 1857, a pre- paration on a small scale for the Cawnpore ceremony. Acci- dental circumstances made it more than usually striking. The chaplain had made some blunder about the time, and we did not reach the spot till the sun had set and the moon risen. We walked round the building, reading Psalms xxiii. and xlix., and then, taking my stand on the steps of the monument, with a soldier on either side of me holding a lantern, I proceeded with the consecration service, while through the dim light of moon and torch gleamed the white surplices of Burn and Beamish, and the red uniforms and swords of the officers, while the dark dresses of civilians filled up the background. I gave a short address on the occasion, reading the opening verses of John xiv. as a consolation in looking back on those who are gone, and a source of strength in case any of us should be called to like suffering. The moonlight, too, had the advan- tage of obscuring the monument, which is ugly and inappro- priate, though erected, I am sorry to say, by Government, and CH. XI.] THE CEMETERY AT JIIANSI. 285 in no parsimonious spirit, for it is formed of handsome blocks of Agra stone. But the whole design is bad. First there is a space walled in to be planted as a garden, according to the plan now generally followed, which is well enough, though I doubt whether in ' stern and rockbound ' Jhansi a very pretty garden can be made. However, flowering shrubs of some kind will grow anywhere in India. In the middle of this rises a cupola on open arches, mounted on a flight of steps, and within are tablets to the fallen with texts of Scripture. Now I object to the cupola as wholly undistinguishable from the Mahometan tombs and domes scattered all over the country, whereas surely this monument should have been plainly and markedly Chris- tian. It is true that at the top there is a small stumpy object which I am told is a cross, but which to my short sight looks just like a fleur-de-lys. Then the cupola rests on mean-looking Grecian pillars, with a great many formal straight lines, and a hideous urn at each corner. These urns are quite unmeaning, they are stuck on wholly unconnected with the general design, and are either senseless terminations to the four corners, or else are copied from some Roman tomb where urns actually contained the ashes of the dead ; but as the English do not burn their dead, the urns are mere absurdities. When it would have been so very easy with all that good stone to erect a Gothic memorial cross, like the ' Martyrs' Memorial ' at Oxford, I grieve very much over this mixture of Paganism, Mahome- tanism, and ugliness. I have also seen the fort, guided by Captain Baillie, who was one of the first to storm the breach when Sir Hugh Eose took the city, and had for a long time afterwards the guardianship of the fort itself, which now, dis- mantled and gunless, has been made over, with the city of Jhansi, to Scindia, whose soldiers, in uniforms exactly copied from ours, guard its gates. The fort rises above the city on a steep hill, and looks outwardly just like an English castle Conway, for example though, as we came near to it and into it, its real history was revealed by Hindu gateways, formed as usual, not with true arches, but with pseudo or quasi arches, by stone brackets and corbels projecting one beyond the other from the capitals of the pillars upwards, and again by Maho- metan additions, in which, of course, arches abounded. Still less English, I rejoiced to think, was a huge and hideous red 286 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [di. XT. figure of G-anesh, inviting worship from those who passed the gateway. The most interesting spot in connection with the siege was the window from which the Ranee dropped and made her escape to Grwalior, only, however, to meet her death in the fort there. On the morning of her flight a native went up to the officer commanding the nearest English picquet, and told him that the Ranee would descend from that window at a particular hour of that day. The officer disbelieved the man, knew him to be a rebel, supposed him to be a spy, and ordered him to be shot. But his information turned out quite true ; and it seems likely that he was a relation of a man whom the Ranee had beheaded the night before, and whose headless trunk was found in the fort when our troops took possession. Cawnpore, February 11, 1863. . . . . At 5.30 P.M. to-day came off the grand ceremonial. On the whole I think that it may be pronounced successful. There were very few hitches none of importance the scene was undoubtedly most picturesque, and the service solemn. The assemblage was august : the Viceroy and Vice-queen, with all their attendants ; Sir Hugh Rose and his Staff ; Wingfield and his Court from Oudh ; all the chief authorities from Lucknow, Allahabad, Futtehpore ; the Archdeacon and nine other clergy, and finally some thousand soldiers the 46th, some troops of the Bays, and a battery of artillery. Thornhill having conducted Lord Elgin to the steps of the monument, I advanced with the Archdeacon, Burn, and Stamper to its foot, and Thornhill read the memorial signed by the Viceroy, 'in the name of the Christian subjects of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.' The chant then began, first round the interior of the monument, then across to the larger burial-ground, where are the two original crosses, and then to the smaller one. The service then proceeded as usual, Psalm xc. being sung. After this the troops were all moved up as close to the steps as possible without pressing too much on the other people, and then, with the Viceroy on one side and the Archdeacon on the other, I delivered my harangue. I con- fess that at first my heart beat fast and I was quite nervous ; for the spectacle was very impressive, the audience numerous and critical, and with nothing whatever to help or prompt or remind me of what I had determined to say, I entertained some fear of CH. XT.] MEMORIALS AT CAWNFORE. 287 breaking down. In truth, the few first sentences actually spoken were more or less different from those which I had arranged. But at last I warmed with the sight and the sub- ject, forgot bystanders, went on with fluency and no embarrass- ment, keeping very faithfully but not slavishly to the address which I had prepared. The prayers which followed were read by Stamper, and then came the hymn and blessing. People seemed pleased, and some very much impressed by the solem- nity. The change which has come over Cawnpore is wonderful. From a howling wilderness it has become an attractive and pretty station. Christ Church, now the property of the Society for the Propagation of the Grospel, rises with its handsome tower from the midst of a well-arranged compound, and above all, sixty acres of land in the middle of the station have become a garden full of shrubs, flowers, and grass-plots, which are kept green even here by copious irrigation from the canal. In the middle of this garden the ground has been raised so as to form a mound, and on the top of this mound is the Grothic octagon screen surround- ing the fatal well and the scene of the ceremony just described. The screen and covering of the well are of stone, most beauti- fully carved, the whole of the details being due to the taste and untiring care of Mr. Thornhill, who has been here for the last three months superintending the erection of the monu- ment. A vine-leaf and passion-flower ornament which runs round the screen inside is of especial delicacy and finish, and of a truthfulness which would satisfy Euskin. The graves of the soldiers and others who died when Cawnpore was reoccupied by Sir Colin Campbell, at the end of 1857, are in two groups, each enclosed by a very tasteful iron railing, and planted with shrubs. The two original crosses, the spontaneous and most inte- resting memorials of the soldiers themselves, are carefully pre- served and included in the larger of these two inclosed burial- grounds. Of the whole arrangement I can say, what very seldom can be said of modern artistic efforts, that I should not wish a single detail altered in any way. The essentially Christian character of the Cawnpore memorials is most satisfactory, and it is fortunate that the persons who, publicly or privately, were most concerned in their erection were Colonel Yule, Thornhill, and Lady Canning. They might have been as ugly and pagan- like as the building at Jhansi. 288 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XI. Agra, February 18. .... I began this Ash Wednesday by service at St. Paul's Church, which is now finished, the spire having been one of the works on which the sufferers from the famine were employed. But for the absurd stumpiness of the chancel, it would be one of the best churches in India. In the afternoon the Arch- deacon and I went over to Secundra, which in 1859 was a mass of ruins, but now is completely restored : church, mission buildings, and Christian village all built up again ; printing press in full operation, and about three hundred children clothed, taught, and rescued from starvation. Indeed, fifty girls recently admitted were rescued from something more than starvation. Who shall say that such labours of love are not the proper work of missionaries ? The city of Agra is sur- rounded at this time by a belt of green from the young wheat and other crops, which cuts it off from the brown desolation of the surrounding country. In driving about to-day we have greatly admired the pains taken to improve as well as to restore Agra since the mutiny; the good roads, well watered and planted, the very pretty new gardens, the ornamental railing which encloses the compounds of the public buildings, the general look of comfort, neatness, and elegance which pervades the English station, the pains taken to keep in repair and beauty all the glorious buildings of the native city. On the whole, I consider that Agra, with all these secular attractions, the me- mory of Akbar and its other historical associations, its four Church of England churches, its vigorous mission, extensive Orphanage, and flourishing Missionary College, is the brightest jewel in the mitre of Calcutta. I have also accomplished my great desire of a state visit to the Begum of Bhopal, who received us in her Durbar tent, Major Hutchinson doing the honours. She is a most pleasant-looking old lady, chatty, with a clearly marked sense of humour, and signs of a firm will tempered by kindness and good-nature. Her attire was not beautiful ; red pantaloons dotted with gold spangles, a tunic of blue and silver, and a shabby old brown cloak thrown over her shoulders to keep all together. She had no head-dress, but her hair was tugged violently backwards and gathered into a dishevelled top-knot. I believe that Lady Canning gave her a CH. XT.] THRALDOM OF CASTE. 289 handsome head-dress as a hint to improve this part of her costume, but in vain. She displayed her star of India, her present just received from Lord Elgin, and finally her grand- daughter, a child of four years old, named Sultan Jehann Begum, who, when first introduced, whined and whimpered at the sight of strangers, but was coaxed by her grandmother into display- ing her accomplishments, which consist mainly in a knowledge of English as abstracted from the most singular spelling-book I ever saw. I promised to send her one more advanced. I then complimented the old lady on the state of her territory, the beauty of her city, and the excellence of her sowars, with which I had been provided in passing through her dominions. She presented me with a nuzzer of five gold mohurs, which she earnestly requested me to bestow on some charitable object, and I told her I should give them to the Simla school, and so departed. One incident during the Bishop's stay at Agra claims notice, since it brought him into contact with a question of caste, the subtle and enthralling spell of which is ready to assert itself wherever Hindus are gathered together, even though under the levelling influences of a vast system of English education. A short time before, the principal of St. John's College, an important school belonging to the Church Missionary Society, had ad- mitted a boy whose father was a Christian, but who be- longed to the low sweeper caste. Out of three hundred scholars, more than half, offended at the low parentage of the new pupil, at once seceded from the school. The event made a great stir, and it was maintained in many quarters that as inferior schools existed, the introduction of a low caste boy was a needless affront to students of a higher grade. The case was easily explained. The boy had received an education up to the point given in vernacular schools, and desired more knowledge, which lie was competent to receive and to use profitably. The matter was in no way treated by the missionaries as a religious question, nor as a social one from the u 290 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XT. heathen point of view ; mental and moral qualifications, not the accident of birth, were the conditions of admission into the college, and justice and consistency would have been violated had any other course been pursued. The firm maintenance of the boy's rights was an event full of interest, for the act was a protest, far more forcible than any words, against caste bondage on the part of a religion which knows no caste. Thirty years before, Bishop Wilson had energetically and decisively pronounced against any toleration of caste among the converts of South India. When the sweeper boy at Agra was ad- mitted on his own merits into a school open equally to Christians and non-Christians, but governed only on the Christian principles of equity and fair dealing, caste re- ceived another of those shocks that are slowly but surely endangering its hold over national Hindu life. An oppo- sition unusually strong and very vigorously maintained was attributed by those best acquainted with the circum- stances to the existence of a large colony of Gujerati Brahmans settled at Agra in Akbar's time, who form a compact body, and are extremely bigoted. Not only did the secession of the students result from their influence, but seven teachers employed in the college, caste fellows with them, were forced to give up their posts. The mal- contents applied for admission into the Government Col- lege, but were refused, on the ground that their reasons for desiring a transfer to another institution were insuffi- cient. The Brahmans then set up for themselves, and established the Victoria College, which still remains a rival to the other educational institutions in Agra. In time the Missionary College entirely revived, the seceders were fully replaced in numbers, and the progress of the students, as tested by the examinations of the Calcutta University, became even more marked than in earlier years. But when the Bishop presided on the prize day, which occurred during his stay at Agra in 1863, neither OH. XI.] CASE OF CASTE AT AGRA. 291 the recollections nor the results of the storm so recently encountered had passed away. A large number of visitors were present on the occasion, but the attenuated ranks of students testified to the cost at which the claims of justice rather than of expediency had been satisfied. The occasion thoroughly animated the Bishop. A train of old associations was awakened by a call to address a band of English-speaking and educated youths, not on ordinary generalities, but on a specific and exciting incident bound up with the constitution of their school. He felt himself, too, in the right place in lending what support he could by his presence and his words to missionaries who were passing through an annoying crisis, and reaping for the moment unpleasing fruits from a line of action courageously carried out regardless of popularity. After a few preliminary remarks, he entered at once upon the exciting subject with the energy of one who speaks not to say something, but because he has something to say: The introduction (he said) of a low caste boy has led to a formidable secession. It is therefore quite impossible for me to avoid entering upon an irritating topic ; but I can assure you I will do my utmost not to discuss it in an irritating manner. Now if the present difficulty has arisen from any attempt to perpetuate caste within the Christian Church, there could of course have been but one opinion on the subject. No one can doubt that the principle of caste is totally opposed to the spirit of the New Testament. It is owing to the energy of my revered predecessor Bishop Wilson, that no practices savouring of caste were perpetuated among the converts of South India, and his decision will, I trust, never be altered or tampered with by any of his successors, certainly not by me. But the question now before us is of a slightly different character, for though this college is under the management of Christian Ministers, yet it is not a branch of the Christian Church ; and some per- sons have asserted that it is not a religious question at all, but only a social one, and that, as in England, social distinctions are u 2 292 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XI. fully recognised, so they should be here. ... It is quite true that social distinctions are the rule in England, but the great difference between the principle prevailing in England and the caste system of India is, that in England there is no insuperable barrier to prevent a man by his industry or ability rising from the bottom to the top of the social scale ; whereas in India, if the arguments of the seceders had prevailed, it would have been ruled that no industry, no ability, no education, no enlighten- ment could ever make a boy born in the lowest caste fit to share the advantages opened to the higher orders of society. . . Students of this college are well read in English history ; you remember therefore the instance of Wolsey, and in more recent times examples of rise in life not less striking than Wolsey's might be indefinitely multiplied. . . . And it is this interlacing of ranks, this recognition of merit and absence of exclusiveness, which has made England what she is. The English practice has been faithfully imitated by the Agra missionaries. A low caste boy desired a higher education than the schools suited to his position by birth could supply. To have refused him ad- mission would have been a faithless, an un-English, an unchris- tian act. . . . The number of students in this college is a matter of secondary importance, but it is necessary that this college should be faithful to the true principles of Christianity and freedom. . . . We have no wish to overthrow such gradations of rank as must always exist in every well-ordered community, and we are ready to make all reasonable allowance for national traditions, feelings, and prejudices. But we do desire that every Hindu boy, from the highest to the lowest, should have within his reach all the opportunities of education and improve- ment of which he can avail himself, and should feel that he is not excluded by any impassable barrier from a career of useful- ness and honour. This principle has long been the glory of England ; we trust that it will one day be the glory of India. The maintenance of it is, I am sure, a mere question of duty, and from it, by (rod's help, none of us intend to swerve. Shortly after the return to Calcutta the time came round for writing the annual official letter addressed to the Viceroy in Council, which undertakes to give a resume of ecclesiastical work during the year, with CH. XI.] THE CENTRAL PROVINCES. 293 statistics of the diocese, and to call attention to its special needs. The Bishop made use of the opportunity in 1863 to bring under the notice of Government some ecclesi- astical inconveniences in the Central Provinces which had just been visited. These provinces, when made into a separate local government, had been annexed to the Presidency of Bengal. The Nagpore division, however, being on the confines of the Madras Presidency, had been viewed as belonging ecclesiastically to the Bishop of Madras, and two of his chaplains were posted at the seat of the local government, doing duty at the large civil and military stations of Kamptee and Seetabuldee. The chief commissioner found the inconvenience of having a double episcopal jurisdiction within the length and breadth of his territory, and applied to the Bishop of Calcutta to have more uniformity introduced. This opened the question as to which see was legally respon- sible for Nagpore, and it was referred to the Advocate- General. He looked up the matter, and found that the Acts of Parliament creating the dioceses of Madras and Bombay had declared them to be conterminous with their respective presidencies, leaving by inference all the rest of India to the Metropolitan See. Under this view the Bishop of Calcutta appeared to become responsible for ecclesiastical matters in many large and small native States which, though really in no diocese at all, contain a quota of European officials either civil or military. It was legislation more honoured in the breach than the observance, for bishops of Madras had long visited Chris- tian congregations in Berar and Mysore, and in Nagpore, where, as has been said, their chaplains were established. Similarly the Eajpootana States had been tacitly recog- nised as under the episcopal jurisdiction of Bombay. The opinion of the Advocate-General left no doubt that the province of Nagpore, on its annexation to the Bengal Presidency, had passed to the Northern See. Bishop 294 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XI. Cotton therefore accepted it as an integral portion of his diocese, visited it in 1862, and then reported to the Supreme Government on the points which called for re- arrangement in the Central Provinces. In the first place, he represented the anomaly and inconvenience of Madras chaplains serving in the diocese of Calcutta, but not holding his license ; and urging his inability to remedy this evil by supplying the stations of Nagpore from the limited number of chaplains allotted to Bengal, he re- newed the frequent but often fruitless request for an increase of the State Establishment. In the next place, he desired, with regard to these regions, a revision of the ecclesiastical map. The fatigue and loss of time incurred in journeys to reach the detached and remote stations of Mhow and Indore, had led him to contemplate, as an obvious and feasible improvement, the transfer to the Bishop of Bombay of the Christian congregations in certain native territories which lie in close proximity to his diocese, and,in one direction, intersect it. Vagueness about jurisdic- tion and eccentricities in boundaries offended the Bishop's innate love of symmetry and of a clear and distinct field of labour, just as incongruities in his position as Bishop of Burmah had the year before disturbed all his notions of homogeneous and connected work. A remedy for the evils of Central India was more accessible than for those of Burmah. By an Act of William the Fourth's reign, passed doubtless with a view to future needs or territorial changes in British India, the Sovereign in Council had power to alter and assign the limits of the Indian Sees. The purport, therefore, of the Bishop's representation to Government was to urge that by a formal and authori- tative declaration, Mysore and Berar should be declared to be henceforth attached to the diocese of Madras, Eaj- pootana and Baroda to that of Bombay, and that to the latter should also be ceded Malwa and Scindia's terri- tories, with other small native States known as the Central OH. XL] INDIAN SEES. 295 Indian Agency. An order of the Queen in Council as- signing these ecclesiastical boundaries on a geographical rather than a political principle would thus have sufficed to reduce within more manageable limits at its south- western extremity the huge northern diocese which Lord Dalhousie's annexations had doubled. But the Bishop's representations made in 1863 and renewed in 1864 bore no fruit. The whole subject was postponed by the Indian or Home Governments to a more convenient day ; a day which will probably not dawn until the dream of another Indian See shall become a reality, or until some point of ecclesiastical discipline shall arise to inforce a more pre- cise definition of the territories and jurisdiction of the Indian bishops. To the Rev. Dr. Vaughan. Saugor, 1863. .... I will not affect not to be sorry at your refusal of Gloucester and Bristol ; not because I do not thoroughly appre- ciate your work at Doncaster, or doubt that there are many cases in which the parochial minister is far more extensively useful than a bishop, but because there are so very few per- sons who seem to me to combine the moral and intellectual qualities, and the liberal orthodoxy in theological and ecclesi- astical matters, which are wanted for a bishop in these anxious times. I should have liked to read a Charge on ' Essays and Reviews,' Church rates, and education delivered by you from your chair in Gloucester Cathedral. However, we cannot doubt that God's blessing will rest on a decision so plainly based on the consideration of where you could be best and not where you could be greatest. ... As to my own special busi- ness during this visitation, the chief thing which has troubled me is the paucity of clergy in these parts. The country is one of the least civilised and advanced parts of India, and is greatly cut off from more frequented regions by want of roads and bridges. Of course at the great civil and military stations there are Government chaplains, but there are a number of small communities of Christians which cannot be provided with separate clergymen, and yet can be rarely visited by the clergy 296 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XI. of the larger stations. Some of these places are the head- quarters of civil districts, each having perhaps a Deputy-Com- missioner and his Eurasian clerks, a civil surgeon, and an officer of police, with their families ; sometimes there are engineers and contractors employed to carry on public works for Government or in the construction of the railway ; in all these places the people were very glad to see me, and desirous that I should hold service and consecrate the small cemetery. I have always exhorted them to have family prayers, and to meet together every Sunday for public service, and the latter at least is generally done. There are besides, occasionally, entirely isolated European road overseers and railway folk to be looked after. I found two of the latter ill, and one of them told me (and the doctor quite confirmed his statement) that he had been made ill by living all alone in a place in the jungle, where he could not procure, for love or money, a sufficiency of wholesome food, not even of tough and lean fowls, generally the unfailing resource of travellers in India. Of course, such persons also ought to be helped and visited by clergy stationed in some central position, whose travelling expenses when on spiritual duties, under a written order from me, Government is always ready to pay. Indeed, we ourselves have learned to sympathise with people suffering from want of food. Some- times, when we have outstripped our followers and arrived at a tent some hours before our supplies, we have, I fear, been very sulky under the pressure of famine. To his Son, Calcutta, 1863. .... We hope that the next mail will bring us some account of your confirmation. It certainly would have been a great happiness and interest to me to have laid hands on you myself, but I should not have thought it right for a matter of personal feeling to delay your right to receive the Holy Communion, and perhaps to throw your preparation into the charge of some far less efficient teacher than those who have conducted it at Rugby. I wish that you would read over my three Confirmation addresses at the end of my Marlborough Sermons, and also a sermon called ' Outward and Inward Changes, (p. 97). They contain all that I should have been able to say CH. XI.] ANTIQUITIES IN CENTRAL INDIA. 297 to you on the subject. Now I can only commit you in very earnest prayer to (rod's blessing, and I trust that you feel that you are not only called to a thoughtful life of duty, but also specially to a Christian life, that is, to the belief that in all temptations and troubles you must seek help and comfort from the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope that you, my own darling, will have grace to see that a life of duty and a Christian life are in truth inseparably connected ; and when I speak of doing your duty in Christ's strength, of course you understand that this strength is to be obtained by habits of prayer. To begin these habits steadily, and to persevere in them through the changes and chances of life, should be the chief lesson which you have learned from your Confirmation and from sharing the Body and Blood of the Saviour who died for you. May (rod bless you, dearest, and give you wisdom to think of these things while you are yet young, and before habits are formed which hinder good intentions from coming to maturity. One of the pleasantest parts of dealing with boys used to be that the work with them was hopeful. To the Rev. F. W. Farrar. Palace, Calcutta, April 9, 1863. I am once again in my own house after an absence of eleven months. Seven of these were spent in inhaling the pure breezes of the Himalayas at Darjeeling ; four in hard travel- ling and ' confirming the churches ' in Central India. The journey through it in the cold weather was invigorating and inspiriting, a relief after long travels through green but monotonous Bengal or the brown and desolate North- West, which has received so deep and lasting an impression from the taste and extravagance of the great Mussulman emperors. Nevertheless, I saw two very grand architectural relics of the past. The first was the great Buddhist Tope at Sanchi, near Bhilsa, which looks like a combination of Druidical, Assyrian, and Grecian art. There is a huge mount faced with stone like Silbury Hill, or Marlborough Mount, but much smaller, as you may suppose, from its being covered with masonry, round which is a great stone railing of upright and cross beams, covered with carving like a smaller but more artistic Stonehenge, and pierced by four entrances, two still adorned by 298 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XI. magnificent gateways covered with bas-reliefs, the columns having wonderfully grotesque capitals formed of elephants, dancing-girls, and other incongruous forms. There are also bas-reliefs in various stages of art, some being worthy to be classed with the ^Egina though hardly with the Elgin Marbles. My other architectural sight was the grand old Fort of Grwalior. This frowns from the top of a lofty and very steep table rock, and consists of massive walls appearing to grow out of the natural cliff (the face of which is carved with Buddhist emblems and images), terminating in a great Hindu palace with towers and oriel windows, and a long line of quaint decora- tion in blue and yellow enamel formed of birds and flowers and various patterns. Up to this place we mounted by a very precipitous path on the back of an elephant, from which I felt as if I were constantly sliding, and after passing through its courts under the escort of some officers, came to some beautiful ruins of Jain Temples (the Jaina sect is a schism from Buddhism) of red stone, absolutely covered with elaborate carving. In contemplating the splendid works of our Hindu and Buddhist predecessors, or again, the great remains of the Mahometan times, the Taj at Agra, the Palace at Delhi, the mosques at Jounpore, nay, even the fairy-like grace of the entirely modern Sikh temples at Amritsur, it is impossible not to chafe a little at the thought that we, the English lords of India, have done so little to adorn it with beauty, and that in particular the buildings for Christian worship are some absolutely ugly, scarcely one more than just pleasing and tasteful. However, I must say that during the recent tour I was a little consoled in this point, and I saw structures, not churches, which will do something to ransom our name from this reproach. Some of our railway works are magnificent. The bridge nearly a mile long over the Soane, near Patna, now finished and traversed by trains, is not only a specimen of engineering, but is exceedingly light and beautiful. And the still unfinished railway bridge over the Jumna at Allahabad is in loftiness and grandeur, though not in length and grace, even superior to the Soane Bridge. These works will at least roll away the reproach that if we were to be turned out of India, we should leave nothing behind us but the ends of cigars and fragments of soda-water bottles in the j ungle. CH. XII.] TRANQUILLITY OF INDIA. 299 CHAPTEE XII. ORDINARY LIFE IN CALCUTTA PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS IN THE BISHOP HIS POLITICAL OPINIONS THE CATHEDRAL SERVICES THE BISHOP AS A PREACHER CHURCHES AND CHURCH ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA MEMO- RIALS OF THE MUTINY CHURCH AT CAWNPORE CEMETERIES AND MURAL TABLETS INSCRIPTIONS AT LUCKNOW CHAPLAIN'S WORK THE BISHOP'S INTEREST IN SOLDIERS RELATIONS WITH CHAPLAINS EFFORTS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL SERVICE LETTERS TO CHAPLAINS. Six hot months of 1863 were spent at the palace in a quiet round of ecclesiastical duties and occupations, and were barren of incidents worthy of record. It may be said indeed that the whole of the Bishop's Indian life derived far more variety and interest from the ever- changing scenes supplied during constant and extensive travels, than from an eventful course of State affairs. The years following the mutiny enjoyed to a great extent the calm that succeeds a tempest. Among the few episodes productive of temporary alarm was the ' White Mutiny ' of 1860. It was wholly quelled when one very young English soldier and ringleader paid the forfeit of his life for instigating resistance on the part of the European troops of the Company to their somewhat abrupt transfer to the Queen's service. There were also the small border wars of Umbeyla in 1863, and of Bhotan in 1865 ; and here and there chronic Mahometan fanaticism tried to raise its head and foment intrigues. Such breaches of the general peace, though troublesome at the time, were comparatively slight and transitory ; and the Bishop was called upon during eight years to watch the gradual progress of a new era in Anglo-Indian policy, 300 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XII. rather than to share the anxiety of any great national disturbance. Within his own sphere of action, ob- structions to his projects arose mainly in the world of nature. Floods, cyclones, droughts, of no rare occurrence in tropical lands, followed by disastrous and lingering results, .were the public calamities which most closely touched the ecclesiastical department. Belief funds for some sudden emergency or widespread distress claimed precedence ever and anon over other appeals for volun- tary contributions, and formed one of the chief impe- diments to a steady and rapid progress on some special lines of Church work which were taken in hand. The period which this memoir has now reached was, how- ever, under all aspects eminently tranquil. The absence, therefore, of incidents calling for separate notice, affords an opportunity for a glance at some traits in the Bishop's character as they found expression in his personal and private life, or could be traced in the general direction of matters relating to the Church. The chief occupation during many weeks was the preparation of the second Charge. It engrossed much of his time and attention, and he seldom quitted his books and the quiet seclusion of the house, except to attend to some call of business from without. Such calls chiefly arose from the com- mittees of the various Diocesan Societies which are the head-quarters of ecclesiastical operations carried on between far-separated extremities of British India and British Burmah. The Bishop strongly felt their practical use, and when in Calcutta he regularly attended their meetings, not only as president, but as an active working member. His clear head and good memory made him a trustworthy referee on matters of detail and on local points with which visitations brought him into contact, while confidence in his sound judgment secured attention to his views on manifold subjects that came under dis- cussion. He thus became a connecting link between CH. XII.] COMMITTEES OF DIOCESAN SOCIETIES, 301 centres of organization, and the widely-scattered work administered from them. His personal sway over these council boards is best described in the words of an eye and ear witness, who was occasionally associated with him at meetings for educational or general pur- poses : c Amid irritating discussions, he would exercise self-restraint, and sit still as if he were indifferent or had nothing to say; but keenly observant all the while, he would watch his opportunity, and then, with the utmost composure, give utterance to a few well-weighed, well- digested remarks, which, clearing up all obscurities and setting aside all irrelevance, seldom failed to carry the convictions and gain the concurrence of all present.' * Life in Calcutta, though full of repose and comfort, and afford- ing seasonable refreshment after the fatigues of protracted travel, was in the hot weather comparatively monotonous. All were astir in the house by six in the morning, and the Bishop, buried in the depths of a huge Chinese chair, generally took an early Bengali or Hindostani lesson in the cool end of the noble verandah which runs round the south and west sides of Bishop's Palace. At nine, prayers and breakfast assembled the party, and a long morning of work followed. After the two o'clock luncheon, a lull falls over Indian life, although the siesta of olden time has ceased to be more than the rare indulgence of modern days. The Bishop sought refreshment for an hour in light literature, and then resumed his work with very little intermission till the sunset drive. There were often guests at dinner ; he liked evening gatherings ; they did not in- terfere with graver duties, and were so real a refreshment at the close of a day, trying from its heat and from long- sustained occupation, that he seldom thought the heat too great for a dinner party at his own house or elsewhere. He appeared to best advantage socially in a small circle * ' Free Church of Scotland Monthly Record ' for January 18C7. 302 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [On. XIT. of persons with whom he was intimate. He always felt his deficiency as a promoter of general conversation, and his natural shyness, often mistaken for coldness, made it necessary that he should be met half-way. Though seeking from choice the society of those who could supply infor- mation or who suited his literary tastes, he had too much kindliness of nature to be intellectually fastidious, and he could always accept the common interests of busy life in India as a ground for much pleasant social intercourse, while his sense of humour was kindled at once when it came into contact with quaintness or originality of any kind in another person. This marked feature in his cha- racter was, however, very little known in India ; it could only assert itself in the warmth of close intimacy and old associations, and these were wanting in a land where he chiefly lived officially. But the humorous element, sup- pressed, not extinguished, was still there, gladdening and enriching the small domestic circle, appropriating to itself all that was ludicrous in the incidents of daily life, and blending with his deep earnestness in a harmony which formed the singular charm of his nature, for those who knew the real man under the shy and reserved exterior. Its main outlet in India was supplied by the child whose presence was a silver thread in her father's life. He was always accessible to her, and was ready at her summons to turn away from engrossing occupation and to pass for the moment into the region of grotesque fancy in which they carried on a kind of by-play in life. He was not muscular enough for boisterous sports, and had no taste for them, but from the recesses of his arm-chair in which he sat, or rather lay, apparently absorbed by some book or business, he would pour upon her a stream of humour very grave and quiet, yet indescribably comic and original, with precisely the result he desired, that of making the child as susceptible of odd and absurd ideas as he was himself. CH. XII.] DAILY OCCUPATIONS. 303 The large and handsome library was an addition made by Bishop Wilson to the palace. In it the Bishop worked daily, often at the cost of much weariness to the flesh, during many consecutive hours, for he never became re- conciled to the damp climate of Bengal. The heat was thoroughly galling to him at times, chiefly because it for- bade him that temporary refreshment in the open air which had always constituted one great source of the pleasure he derived from an English garden. The only substitute was a change of occupation, and when weary with writing, he turned to the newspapers and current literature. He was an insatiable reader, and though not an especially rapid one, there were few works of note falling in with his occupations or tastes of which he did not make himself master in India. Leisure was no leisure to him unless the books were at hand to form its pastime. In travelling, books and papers of all kinds filled his car- riage or palanquin, and they were seldom laid aside while daylight lasted. A good novel always had a place among them. The perusal of Scott, or of some other first-class author, used to be noted in his diary with the apologetic explanation that it was due to ' a long dak journey,' or ' a thermometer at 90,' or to ' a convalescent stage in an attack of fever.' The ' heaven-sent power ' of fiction to beguile and refresh the sick or the weary was often thus put to the test in the chequered phases of Indian life, and proved its supremacy in many an hour of tropical lassitude and ennui. The letters interspersed in these pages serve to exhibit and illustrate his opinions on political and theo- logical points, though from having to deal practically with the latter, these assume the greater prominence. Through his views on either subject a vein of conservatism runs which may have seemed to his younger correspondents at variance with the spirit of that earlier intercourse to which many felt that they owed their first liberal impulses. It was not that he was changed, but that the times were 304 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XII. changing, and there was, doubtless, much in the tenden- cies of modern religious and social thoughts with which he had no sympathy. His political opinions had been formed in early life, and they were matured as life went on in strength and stability. They rested on a firm foundation of religious convictions, and of a philanthropy enlightened by reading, observation, and reflection. He yielded to no liberal in earnest sympathy with all progress that had for its aim the elevation and christianising of England or of nations influenced through England; but unquestionably he was averse to any premature deposit of power in the hands of those whose education was not such as he deemed an essential condition for its beneficial exercise, and he utterly distrusted legislation which was merely a conces- sion to popular agitation. With the independence result- ing from the settled convictions of a peculiarly calm and balanced mind, he refused to be hurried or beguiled into the acceptance of advanced theories for the solution of problems in human affairs, which in his opinion rested on unsound or even dangerous principles, or were the result of hasty generalisations. His mind was in all things practical rather than speculative, and new views projected upon society were valueless to him unless they could stand the test of principles on which his own political creed had been deliberately built up. In the presence of ardent reformers in a restless age, he was one of those who cling with courage and tenacity to old landmarks of thought, and claim a longer lease for venerable and time- tried systems. For the solution of all questions he looked rather to a realization of the high standard of which he believed existing ideas and systems to be capable, than to what is called a reorganization of society. In 1860 he thus summed up his political creed to a correspondent : ' Detestation of the regime in France, profound sympathy with Italy, fear of impending democracy in England, are cardinal points in my politics just now.' Cn. XII.] THE CATHEDRAL OF CALCUTTA. 305 During residences in Calcutta, the Cathedral services were an object of constant interest to the Bishop. Realising intensely as he did the glory and majesty of Christian faith speaking through a pure worship in the midst of miser- able and imperfect religions, and feeling in his own per- sonal experience the perpetual freshness of the Church's services rather than what has been called ' their tender monotony,' he greatly desired that the English Church should everywhere assert and strengthen her influence over wayfarers in a foreign and heathen land, through a careful and attractive rendering of external obser- vances. To this general feeling there was added in the case of St. Paul's Cathedral one of genuine reverence for his venerable predecessor, of whose episcopate it stands as a noble monument, and whose memory he desired should be honoured by every effort to maintain adequately the position of the mother Church of the diocese. It was long, however, before the Bishop felt any attachment to his own cathedral. He thought it a failure architecturally; the music was indifferent ; and any expansion of the ser- vices was impossible so long as no means for lighting it existed. Moreover, in the case of one so faithful and true- hearted as he was, it was impossible to transfer affections like books and chattels to the other side of the world, and he long and painfully felt the contrast between the slightly known and fluctuating English congregation and the familiar audience in the much-loved school chapel. His interest and pleasure in the Church increased as some changes and improvements which he suggested or sup- ported were gradually brought about. The daily morn- ing service had to yield to obstacles peculiar to the climate, but new vitality was imparted to the commemoration of holy days and seasons, and especially, after the introduc- tion of gas, to the arrangements for a weekly evening ser- vice, which, to use his own words, ' he desired should afford profitable opportunities for rest and meditation to 306 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XII. those constantly absorbed in the business of a great city.' Variety and edification in the services were promoted, and a salutary incentive to good and careful preaching was sup- plied by the frequent appointment both of missionaries and chaplains as select preachers for special occasions or for a course of sermons on a special subject. A voluntary choir, composed chiefly of boys from some of the schools, was substituted for one of paid singers. The Bishop was no musician ; but he had a true and cultivated appreciation of music, and he could direct what he expected others to carry out. In his heartfelt aspirations after the Apos- tolic ideal of a Christian Church, both organist and choir were viewed as those who had gifts for the edifying of the body of Christ Thus he wrote on one occasion : ' I am quite sure that it is essential for the organist not only to have a knowledge of sacred music but to be a religious man, one who would feel it as much a matter of conscien- tious duty to train his choir and make the musical service effective, as a good clergyman does to prepare his sermons carefully and visit his parish faithfully. We want no flourishing voluntaries, we want reverent performance of chants, hymns, and simple services, and a choir trained to take pleasure in the opportunity of adding solemnity to God's worship. This was realized to a considerable extent in the chapel at Marlborough, and I am sure ought to be and may be in the cathedral at Calcutta.' The Bishop when in Calcutta rarely preached more than once on a Sunday. Throughout his life the delivery of two sermons in one day was a serious physical exertion to him, and his estimate of the importance of preaching among ministerial functions was too high to permit him to multiply sermons at the risk of a hurried and care- less composition of them. He wrote none during visita- tions except for special occasions, and only renewed his supply when leading for a time a stationary and more settled life. His sermons were not attractive through Cn. XII.] SEKMONS. 307 biilliancy of style, and their language was persuasive rather than eloquent ; but they were always listened to with interest and attention in India chiefly because they reflected a well-stored and cultivated mind, and a heart filled with yearning that all hearers should share that faith and hope which were its own great strength and joy. A memorial of his preaching remains in a course of ex- pository discourses on the epistles of the Church year, published in 1863. The preface discusses at some length the question of the value of sermons in an age in which they are frequently disparaged, and points out some remedies for their improvement. This preface called forth at the time a letter of some interest from one of the Indian clergy. While acknowledging, as suggestive and valuable, the views therein expressed with respect to sermons as a medium of instruction in the Bible, he in- timated that its author might have gone further, and have dwelt on the cultivation of another necessary qualifica- tion for a successful preacher, viz. the study of character and of the human heart. The remark hit, indirectly, a weak point in preaching, which, from many points of view, was far above the average. The sermons, to which this preface was the introduction, are deeply earnest and practical ; they sound many depths of Christian holiness, and bring evangelical truth to bear, in its strength and in its tenderness, upon the world's sins and troubles ; but they lack originality, and display little of that power of reaching the secret springs of life, or of analysing human nature, which gives its possessor the master key to all consciences. If, however, stirring thoughts are somewhat wanting, care and accuracy in the elucidation of scripture abound, and familiar passages of the New Testament are brought out for non-classical readers into the clear light of a revised translation. For aid, either in critical exposition, or in the more general construction of his sermons, the Bishop drew largely upon his private X t> 308 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XII. reading. There was no unworthy plagiarism in this process. He used laughingly to protest against the ne- cessity that ' every sermon should be evolved out of the depths of a man's inner consciousness ; ' with his great simplicity and humility he seemed content to be always a learner from. others, and with true singleness of aim he set himself to make his pulpit ministrations acceptable and profitable, and to raise a higher standard of preaching in the diocese. Hence, while avoiding the mere appro- priation or literal reproduction of other men's thoughts and writings, he made constant use of them in the service of his hearers. The result was a mode of preaching, which, in India, had a force and value of its own. In a country where books are rare, and readers still more rare, it was possible both to edify and instruct educated con- gregations by the clear views and well-arranged matter of a preacher who kept himself thoroughly abreast of the age, and conversant with the critical labours and the theo- logical speculations of the day. Many new churches were built during Bishop Cotton's episcopate. They were needed to meet the devastations of the mutiny, or the requirements of an increased English army ; and under an Imperial policy less restrictive in regard to places of worship than that of the Court of Directors, small but exceedingly neat churches were erected throughout the Punjab, and have formed a lasting memorial of Sir Robert Montgomery's administration of the province. An improvement in church architecture was perceptible during the later years of Bishop Wilson's life, and as the boundaries of the empire advanced, the unsightly style of edifices prevalent in Bengal was left behind. The problem is yet unsolved of reconciling the demands of the architecture of Northern Europe with the exigences of a tropical climate ; but a church at Seeta- buldee, in Nagpore, almost the latest annexation to British India, others at Umbala, and at some stations of the Pun- CH. XII.] MEMORIAL CHURCHES. 309 jab, are witnesses to the improved taste which had begun to manifest itself before 1857. The mutiny, terrible though it was, had a beneficial influence in this direction. Many places in India have received an enduring conse- cration in the eyes of Englishmen through the sufferings and sorrows of which they were the scenes ; and a desire naturally arose that when churches were needed in any such localities, they should be worthy of events which in some measure they commemorated. One of the most successful churches in the diocese of Calcutta is at Futteyghur, in the North-West Provinces, and oversha- dows a well which was the burial place of many Europeans who perished during the rule of the neighbouring Nawab of Furruckabad. Another is Christ's Church, at Lucknow, standing on the line of march taken by the long train of worn men and feeble women and children who formed the retreating garrison from the Eesidency in November 1857. A church at Cawnpore, raised in mournful asso- ciation with the mutiny, was remarkable for the host of difficulties which long delayed its erection. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel desired to build a Mis- sion church by subscription as a memorial of their mis- sionaries and catechists who had fallen in the Nana's massacre of June 1857. The scheme was started in Eng- land in ignorance of local circumstances, and appeals for contributions in India met with only a feeble response from those whose sympathies with respect to the object in view took a wider range. A church for the troops occupying Cawnpore was much needed ; an appropriate site for such a church existed on the ground which had formed the famous intrenchments of General Wheeler, and included the well where the dead of his hard-pressed garrison were nightly buried. This counter scheme for a church, which would be partly built by Government funds, and would not only meet a public need, but have a me- morial character of great and general interest, diverted 310 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XII. public sympathy and subscriptions from the Society's pro- ject, and destroyed all hopes of aid from India towards its execution. Negotiations on the subject between the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Govern- ment passed through the Bishop's hands. The ends he desired to bring about were, to secure a memorial church worthy of the site and its associations ; to obtain another church to meet the requirements of the Mission ; and to utilise the money subscribed in England, which amounted to 1,800/. By the end of two years a compromise was effected. The committee in England for raising the sub- scriptions agreed to make over the funds to the Indian Government, and in exchange the Society received Christ's Church, another Government church in Cawnpore, situ- ated conveniently near to the Mission premises, and in this they erected a tablet to the memory of their mission- aries. The bargain was a substantial but scarcely an attractive one for the Society ; the prestige attached to a strictly memorial building was forfeited, and the sub- scription fund became simply the purchase-money of a large and convenient, but not especially fine church. It was a disappointing, though inevitable termination of a project set on foot in England at a moment when ardent excitement about India prevailed, and eventually thwarted by local circumstances unfavourable to all hearty or unanimous action. The erection of the memorial church thus passed into the hands of Government, who desired to do it well. The sum of 12,000/.* was allotted for the building, and the design was thrown open to four archi- tects, with a bonus for the successful competitor. Lord Canning made the distinct suggestion that theLombardic style of architecture should be attempted, as one new in India, and better adapted to the climate than Gothic; * This sum included the English and Indian subscriptions, which to- p-ether amounted to nearly 6 ; 000/. The balance represented the Govern- ment grant. CH. XII.] CEMETERIES. 311 and by minute and careful instructions lie evinced his desire that the memorial church, no less than the beauti- ful monument round the well, should rise as a fitting emblem of the Christian religion in the blood-stained city of Cawnpore. Cemeteries and their monuments presented a field for im- proved taste, no less than the fabric of the churches. The Bishop had a peculiarly strong feeling about the Christian burial-grounds in India, knowing that in many secluded spots tluey formed the only visible sign of Christianity in a heathen land ; and it fell to his lot to consecrate them under an unusual variety of associations. Many in exclusive connexion with the mutiny, the one spot in the kingdom of Cashmere reclaimed from the pollutions of heathenism for the burial of Christians dying in that beautiful valley, or again, the garden cemetery at Barrackpore, were con- spicuous amongst those marked by special interest or re- collections. When setting apart these places sacred to the dead in the formal service of consecration, the Bishop seldom failed to utter a few extempore words of counsel and comfort so needful in a land of sudden separations and frequent loneliness ; such words now seem invested with a deeper solemnity since the day when he who spoke them passed onwards from the consecration of a cemetery to ' bid the world farewell.' The cemeteries in the hills are surrounded by such glorious natural beauty that it is difficult wholly to dis- figure them ; and of one recent Viceroy it has with truth been written, that 4 in his own Highlands the descendant of Bruce could not have found so fair a resting-place as in the burying-ground of Dharamsala, overlooking one of the grandest of Indian valleys, itself overlooked by snow-clad peaks rising to 16,000 feet.' But in the plains a vitiated taste has long prevailed, and some of the older cemeteries present a ghastly spectacle of pyramids, obelisks, urns, or broken columns, blackened by age and crumbling under 312 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XII. the decay which rapidly invades brick and mortar con- structions in a damp tropical climate. As with some churches so with some public monuments raised after the mutiny, sad and solemn recollections were at hand to second the suggestions of a higher taste. Suc- cess was, however, only partial ; and while the beautiful monument round the well at Cawnpore is above criticism, it was a matter of regret to the Bishop that in one or two cases opportunities were lost, through a deficiency of artistic skill, of enriching British India with a few Chris- tian monuments of a high order. Still, in the ordinary cemeteries, and among private monuments, improvement in matters so necessary to the decency and order of the Christian Church was slowly making way. Many chap- lains, by their care and zeal on such points, were ripe for better defined rules about cemeteries. A revision of these, after providing for the fulfilment of Government re- gulations, left the clergy more free to embellish what had been dreary wildernesses, to guide the taste of those among whom they ministered, and to introduce by degrees the simple slab or tasteful cross, the latter being the one emblem usually absent in earlier times from Christian graves. Mural tablets, though seldom successful decora- tions of a church, increased considerably in number after the mutiny, since they often formed the only earthly link between those lying in a remote or unknown grave and surviving relatives. The legal form of a faculty, pur- chased by a fee of Es. 50 (5/.), for permission to erect a tablet, secured a censorship over the inscriptions. It was strange how frequently these were open to criticism, re- ference being made to the Bishop in some cases which called for a protest not only against bad composition, or false sentiment, but against bitter or even revengeful ex- pressions utterly out of place on a Christian monument. He was directly and personally concerned with two tablets of great national interest ; viz. those erected to Cn. XII.] THE CLERGY OF INDIA. the memory of Sir Henry Lawrence and Sir James Outram. The inscriptions as they now stand on these tablets, placed in the church in the civil lines at Lucknow, were remodelled by him from the original drafts, and letters are extant which remarkably illustrate his appre- ciation of very different features in the characters of two Indian heroes, and his desire, by well-weighed expres- sions in the inscriptions, to do equal justice to both. On arriving in India he found an active and zealous body of clergy. Many were accepting with cheerfulness labours by no means light, and some were exposed to much personal inconvenience and discomfort through im- perfect or uncertain military arrangements. The Bishop used to say that during the mutiny every class had its heroes, that of the clergy being no exception. Some of their number had fallen victims to the enemy or to sick- ness ; many others, while serving with troops in the open field or in the beleaguered garrison, or ministering to feeble women and children shut up in some chance place of re- fuge, had been tried in the balances of peril and priva- tions, and had not been found wanting. Jennings, Pole- hampton, Harris, are now added to honoured names in the Indian ecclesiastical service. They have entered into their rest while many still remain who toiled and suffered during that same trial-time, but were spared to resume their wonted labours in a time of peace among civilians and Eurasians, or with compact masses of English soldiers. The Bishop always saw in a British regiment an inex- haustible field for pastoral energy. No sooner did he land in India than the temptations and the needs of the English soldier excited his attention and sympathy. He entered warmly and actively into every movement, whether emanating from chaplains or from the army authorities, for the increase of reading-rooms and institutes, and any healthful recreation which could wean the men from vice, and disarm a time of peace in a tropical climate of 314 LIFE OF BISHOP COTIOX. [Cfl. Xlf. some of its evils. He rejoiced with thankful joy over many bright examples of chaplains wisely guiding the strong, but often peculiar religious instincts character- istic of the serious-minded soldier, or using with energy and perseverance such opportunities of laying hold of the careless and godless as might be afforded by voluntary church services, and careful preparation for confirmation, or by the ministrations in hospitals, which at times become of overwhelming magnitude and importance. Much of his work for the clergy was directed to strengthening the hands and vindicating the pastoral position of those who were appointed to military stations. Through official representations made from time to time, lie obtained for them a more recognised footing in regi- mental schools, more control over such church services as were voluntary and independent of the regular parade service, and the removal of some obstacles which stood between soldiers and a free attendance at the Holy Com- munion. The Bishop's personal ministration to soldiers, though necessarily only occasional and narrow in their range, had a very distinct character. His sermons ad- dressed to an exclusively military congregation were often as close and individual in their application as those which had been preached of old to an audience of schoolboys. He always regarded the absence of candidates for confir- mation from cantonments as one of the greatest blots on a chaplain's work, and in reference to this particular service he once wrote to a friend in England : ' In spite of the frequency and sameness of confirmations, I am glad to say that I never lose my sense of their deep value and solemnity, and always go to the ceremony with a fresh and living interest.' When on visitation, service in the military hospitals was a regular and prominent part of his work ; and, when resident at a hill station, he fre- quently held a bible-class with the men. The marked interest which throughout his Indian life he evinced in tr? ::; CH. XII.] ISOLATION OF THE CLKIIGY. 315 a profession far removed from his own tastes, received a seal in a paper dated May 1866, and found with his will. In it he expressed his willingness, c as the son and the father of a soldier,' to be buried in a military cemetery, ' because,' he added, ' some years of my life have now been spent in trying to help chaplains to do their duty to soldiers ; moreover, the soldier's profession is the best pe of a Christian's warfare with sin.' A few letters at the end of this chapter will best illus- trate the intercourse between the Bishop and the clergy a diocese which afforded little scope for theological ntroversy, but a very wide field for the development of purely practical work. The clergy were often much iso- lated, and a manual of suggestions drawn up by Bishop ilson was their chief guide in a service so centralised at everything, from controverted ecclesiastical points own to the sale of grass in a church compound, goes up Government. But no text-book of advice or instruc- ons could meet every case of collision provoked by over- sensitiveness and struggles for prerogative. Feuds between aplains and the military authorities, and sometimes tween one chaplain and another, constituted the real clesiastical troubles of the See of Calcutta, and called r an exercise of judicial functions on paltry and per- nal points which was exceedingly distasteful and irk- me to the Bishop. It became necessary to speak or to write unpalatable words, liable, perhaps, to be misunder- stood ; but his aim was always to meet such cases with fairness and kindness, and to give due weight to every extenuating circumstance. On one occasion an annoying affair was under discussion with a friend who assumed that the Bishop would handle it severely ; he replied, 6 Amongst my titles the one I like best is "Father in God," and I desire never to forget it when I have to censure any of the clergy.' Yet more thoughtfully and solemnly he wrote on another occasion to a correspondent : ' I hear 316 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON". [Cn. XIL that Mr. is dead. His was a very troubled life, and as his faults seemed to arise a good deal from phys> cal temperament, he has at last found rest. My relations to him had more than once been so unpleasing that it is a matter of thankfulness to me that we parted friends, ant that, after his last illness began, I had opportunities o, seeing and helping him. It is painful to think of sepa- rating in anger from one who will be seen no more til we meet at the Judgment/ The Bishop's efforts for an improvement of the eccle- siastical service in outward things can only be cursorily noticed, though they were spread over the whole of hi? Indian life. Strongly deprecating anything which tender to make secular motives take the place of zeal, he still maintained that men worked at an unfair disadvantage with their fellowmen when fixed for the best part of life in a service which, though respectably paid, offered no preferment, except that of one archdeaconry, and bestowed rewards only in such exceptional times as the mutiny for long and faithful labours. He frequently made repre- sentations to Government respecting the dead level of the service, and his own difficulty in providing for the spiritual wants of large and important stations, appoint- ments to which, though nominally a testimony to the value of a chaplain's services, were in reality, from the heavy expenses attached to them, a fine upon his income. One great measure of improvement was that of a revision of the rules about pensions, and will be referred to hereafter. Time and perseverance, and, it must in all justice be added, the favourable attention accorded by Government, brought about also some other advantages. A few parsonage-houses were built ; an increase of salary was granted at some of the larger and more expensive stations ; by the revival of an old rule, free passages were allowed on board troop- ships between England and India ; the substitution of fixed promotion to a higher salary at the end of ten years CH. XII.] EFFOETS ON BEHALF OF THE CLERGY. 317 for an uncertain rise depending on vacancies among the senior chaplains, was granted by the Secretary of State. All these were real boons to the ecclesiastical service. The suggestion of them did not in every case originate with the Bishop, but he was the only medium of negotia- tions in which State considerations and private interests were mutually confronted, and which, therefore, often needed cautious and temperate management. One distinct oosition which he maintained for himself was that of standing between the ruling powers and a body of clergy who, from their limited numbers and comparative isola- tion, have but a slight collective voice or influence in a country to which many give most loyal and faithful ser- vice. The peculiarities in their public position deepened the Bishop's sense of responsibility towards them, while a vast capacity for sympathy, though hidden under an undemonstrative manner, with private troubles and anxi- eties incidental to a land of exile and a perilous climate, led him to keep their interests always in view, and to exert influence at all times to assist and befriend them. Letters to Chaplains. I860. I am much obliged to you for your letter and interesting information which you give about your work at . Most heartily do I sympathise with your feeling that personal growth in holiness often seems too much for our own strength, and the duty of labouring for others becomes a depressing burden. But I do not know that I can give you any further advice than such as is obvious. It is quite certain that if we neglect our works for others our own souls suffer from it ; that the two duties are inextri- cably interwoven, and that by praying to Grod for grace to fulfil the one, we are at the same time promoting the other. I should not feel too anxious, were I you, about the expres- sion and outward exhibition of religious feeling in my flock. Perhaps from being reserved myself, I have always acted on 318 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XII. the belief that the great thing to care for is the evidence of the life. If the Lord's Table is neglected, if in ordinary society gossip and calumny are prevalent, if any of your flock are leading self-indulgent and godless lives, then you have great need for anxiety, watchfulness, and intervention. But the expression of religious conviction in conversation often depends on a person's natural temperament. Doubtless you should contend against a low and worldly tone, and language implying indifference to duty or the absence of Christian faith and hope. But, in general, I think that you must exercise a Christian influence by being yourself a pattern of diligence and good work, by mixing with your parishioners in a kind and friendly way, and showing rather indirectly by quiet influence, that the life of every Christian must be bound up with obedience and love to Jesus Christ than by bringing such truths prominently forward in ordinary conversation. 1860. It is my hope to be at - - in the course of December, and to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. I shall be ready then to hold a confirmation and perform any other necessary episcopal offices, and I send you the notice of confir- mation which should be read to your congregation. Your charge, I suppose, is almost purely military, and doubt- less you are prepared for difficulties and disappointments in dealing with soldiers, especially in India, where climate, want of occupation, and often a necessary suspension of church ordi- nances from the illness or absence of the clergy, conduce to indolence and forgetfulness of Grod. But from my observation during my visitation I feel sure that a slow but steady im- provement is going on in the army, and that the services of a devoted chaplain are gratefully appreciated. I earnestly hope that you will find this to be the case in your own special sphere of duty, and that you will begin it in a hopeful and cheerful spirit, which is generally one necessary condition of success. It is my earnest prayer that (rod's blessing may rest upon your labours, and that you may be the means of imparting to many comfort, encouragement, and the true knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Cir. XII.] INFEEQUF.XCY OF COMMUNION. 319 1862. I notice in your returns that the Holy Communion has been administered at - - only on Easter Day and Whit Sunday. I think that it should unquestionably be administered every month. Doubtless it is much to be regretted that the number of communicants should be so lamentably few as seven, but I am sure rare administration tends to diminish the number. People cannot think that to be the central ordinance of the Christian religion of which they are only invited to partake three times a year. You ought to make it the chief effort of your ministry to restore your people to a proper sense of their duty in this matter. If they wilfully disobey Christ in one of His plainest commands, and throw away a great and precious privilege, I do not see how they can expect His blessing to keep them from sin. Sermons on the subject, and the monthly administration, seem to me two obvious remedies for so great an evil as habitual neglect of the Lord's Supper. I cannot help expressing my regret at a letter which I saw on the subject of your desire to be a honorary magistrate, in which it was said that you complained that you had too little to do. It was sent to me when the Lieutenant-Governor asked my consent to your appointment. Doubtless - - is not a station affording so much scope for work as Benares or Meerut, but I should have thought that sufficient work might be found. The acquisition of the language might facilitate a little missionary work, the study of theology has an obvious bearing on the composition of sermons. It has struck me that you may desire to be moved from - - to a place where there is more room for activity, and that such a change may be good for you. There is always a fear of our vegetating if we stay too long in a quiet place. To His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief. 1862. I have the honour to acknowledge a letter from the Adjutant- General of Her Majesty's forces to* my domestic chaplain, dated Simla, July 19, 1862, inclosing two letters from the I\ev. Mr. - , the one to the Adjutant-General, the other to your 320 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XII. Excellency's Military Secretary, on the subject of 'increased opportunities to pious soldiers for holding religious meetings among themselves,' on which my opinion is requested. Such meetings are now very common throughout India, and I have no hesitation in expressing generally my approbation of them, and my desire that they should be encouraged. The only new question introduced by Mr. - - is, whether your Excellency should give them your official sanction ; and if so, under what conditions and restrictions. I think that in every military station where there is no soldiers' chapel (such as I have seen at Lucknow, Ferozepore, and Peshawur) it would be desirable if a room could be set apart for the religious meetings of well-disposed men, but that the regulation of the meetings held in this room should be en- trusted to the chaplain, and no one else. By this I do not mean that the chaplain need always be present, which would be a heavy tax upon his time and undesirable on other grounds, but that all proceedings should be subject to his veto, that his advice and general direction should be sought, and that he should be present whenever he thought proper. Places where no chaplain is stationed are, or ought to be, regularly visited by a chaplain, and on the occasions of his visits he should make regulations for these religious meetings, and inspect their proceedings. If there is any military station unvisited by a chaplain I ought to be informed of it, that I may attach it to some chaplain's district as an outstation. The main objects of these meetings would be prayer and the reading of Scripture ; but, in the latter, conversation on the portions read is almost necessarily included, nor should I decline to sanction this through fear of controversial discussion. The singing of psalms and hymns, too, is a proper element in such meetings. I have only once heard of any serious harm arising from these meetings. The members of one of them were so far forgetful of humility and church order that they ceased to re- ceive the Holy Communion from their clergyman in church, and administered it to one another in their prayer-meeting. I need hardly say that besides the ecclesiastical irregularity involved in such a proceeding, it implies a lamentable degree of self- righteousness and sectarianism, and I should be very sorry if CH. XII.] AMUSEMENTS OF SOLDIERS. 321 meetings which are in themselves well calculated under God's blessing to improve the moral and religious tone of the army, were to be denied by evils altogether opposed to the true spirit of -Christianity. It is for this reason that I have spoken strongly on the necessity of placing any room officially provided for them under the chaplain's superintendence. 1862. I have read your letter with great interest. I need hardly say that I warmly approve of the plan of soldiers' clubs, and fully appreciate the exertions which you have made and the interest which you feel in the welfare of your men. ... I pass on to details and to the questions which you put to me about amusements and the approbation which you desire that I should give to your sanction of theatricals. I do not give an opinion on the subject hastily. I know that it is generally considered as a matter of course that clergymen should dis- approve of play acting, and that military chaplains should refuse all sanction to military theatricals. But this fact would only incline me to form my opinion the more carefully, lest I should follow a popular cry without consideration. Nor have I formed it without talking on different occasions to more than one chaplain well acquainted with military stations, so as to correct my own want of experience. And the result is, that I agree with the opinion most common among my brethren, and could never, were I a military chaplain myself, give my sanction to theatrical amusements among my soldiers. The reasons which influence me are such as these. It is quite certain that the pieces likely to be acted are generally of a coarse and vulgar character and very question- able morality. They would be the ordinary farces of the pre- sent day, and no one, I suppose, can pretend that they are in any way improving. It is vain to say that the chaplain can control the selection of the pieces ; the officers and men would never consent to too strict a censorship ; and if the chaplain attempted to exercise one, his object in sanctioning the theatre would fail, for the theatre would cease to be attractive. Again, theatrical amusements are exceedingly exciting and absorbing. When they are going on those engaged in them Y 322 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. XII. think and talk of nothing else, and there is an end of serious occupation or devotional feeling. I have seen something of this on a small and carefully-guarded scale, having been myself edu- cated at Westminster, where plays were performed by the boys, and where certainly the results were questionable, in spite of many safeguards and circumstances which would not exist among grown men. It may add force to this argument when I say that it is strongly felt by Mr. Norman, who is so often mentioned by the speakers at your meetings as a great authority in soldiers' clubs, and is the founder of the one which has acquired the widest popularity. He not only would have nothing to do with the theatre, but hoped that the Outram Institute would draw men from it ; nor are theatricals allowed in connection with the similar institution at Fort William. I am told by persons of experience that, as a fact, the theatre is looked upon in a regiment as injurious to the progress of Christian feeling and conduct among the men. When a soldier determines to amend his course of life he always turns away from it. To be much given to the theatre is regarded as a sign that a man is careless about the highest things. . . . You defend theatres in your speech by citing the proverb, ' Out of two evils choose the least.' I should be inclined to reply by another saying, not less commonly quoted, but sanc- tioned by higher authority, Shall we do evil that good may come ?' Your programme includes many safe amusements : concerts, lectures, reading-rooms, cricket, bowls, gymnastics, are all not only innocent, but positively desirable. Bagatelle, which you unjustly class with theatricals, and similar games seem to me quite harmless in the army, where gambling is strictly pro- hibited by military regulations. Of course it must be a condition that there should not be an approach to playing for money ; but that, I believe, will be cared for by others, so that you will be relieved from supervision in that respect. ] 863. You ask me whether it is lawful at a small out-station to celebrate the communion when only one person remains to par- take of it. I answer with a good deal of hesitation. Undoubtedly, it is not CH. XII.] CHURCH SERVICES IN THEATRES. 323 only intended by the Church, but regarded as a point of great importance, that the Lord's Supper should be strictly a com- munion, at which ' we being many should be all partakers of one bread.' And therefore a clergyman should, as a general rule, certainly not administer to one person only. Still I cannot overlook the fact, that at , where there is only one communi- cant, the whole congregation only amounts to five, that of these, four may be hindered from coming by youth, by not having been confirmed, nor being ' ready and desirous ' to be so, or other causes ; and that the Lord's Supper is doubtless a special privi- lege and blessing to a person living in so remote a place and in so small a society. The existing state of things too in India was one never contemplated by the framers of our Liturgy. Hence, judging from the analogy of their own directions in the last Rubric to the Communion of the Sick, I think a clergyman justified in such a case as that of in communicating with one person only. 1863. .... I quite admit that during the rains the service for the troops can neither be in the open air nor in the church of - . If therefore there is positively no other building in the can- tonment which can be used except the theatre, I must perforce assent to such a humiliation of our Church service. But I have the greatest possible dislike to the proposal. The associations of the place will, I should fear, be fatal to any feeling of rever- ence on the part of the men. I always deprecated the services in the London theatres, but I should think that all the evils of such services would be doubled and trebled in the case of a soldiers' theatre, when the very same persons assembled to wor- ship in it on Sunday have perhaps been acting some ridiculous farce in it on Saturday. I therefore give my consent if it is a matter of absolute necessity. And if you are really reduced to preach in such a place, I hope that you will exert yourself to the utmost of your power to make the service solemn and devotional. I do not think that you can refuse baptism to the adult soldier on account of his occasional deflections from the right path, if he seems to you humbly and heartily to desire it. Of course you must speak to him very seriously about the guilt and peril of inconsistency, and you must watch him well after his Y 2 324 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XII. baptism, especially with reference to attendance at the Lord's Supper. But, unless you think him insincere in his desire for baptism, or to be plainly actuated by worldly motives, or to be ignorant of the fundamentals of Christianity, he has, I think, a moral right to the sacrament of initiation into Christ's Church. 1863. You are not justified, by the law of our Church, in reading the burial service over an unbaptized child. For though it is true, as you say, that Canon XVIII. only mentions one out of the three exceptions prescribed by the Rubric (probably from not considering that the body of an unbaptized person would be brought to the church or churchyard at all), yet if ever a canon appears to conflict with the Rubric, you are bound to obey the Rubric and not the canon. For the Rubric is part of the Prayer Book, and therefore was made the law of England by the Act of Uniformity, and is included in the promise which you made at your ordination. But you have made no promise to obey the canons, except the thirty-sixth ; many of them are inapplicable to the present time, many are habitually vio- lated, and it is generally understood that they are only binding on the clergy in so far as they are enforced by their diocesans, who must judge how far each canon can and ought to be en- forced or not. But the claim of the Rubric upon you is alto- gether closer and more binding than this. Thus far I give you my official answer to your letter, which is briefly that you were wrong in reading the service over an un- baptized child, and must not do so should a like case occur again. If, as you were informed, a chaplain did so on another occasion, he acted wrongly. But I do not blame you, being in doubt, for deciding in favour of the kinder course, and giving the dead and the parents the benefit of your doubt. I know that this necessity of refusing the burial service to an unbaptized child is often a trouble to a kind-hearted clergy- man, called to sympathise with parents in time of affliction. If, indeed, the baptism was omitted through carelessness or in- difference, then the want of the burial service is a proper rebuke to those who, having undervalued the benefit of a Christian ordinance in health and happiness, cannot claim the consolation of one in sorrow. But if, as in the case which you mention, a Cii. XIL] SUBJECT OF SPONSORSHIP. very young infant dies suddenly, without previous sickness, then the want of such comfort is no doubt a hardship. I have known of a clergyman who in such a case has accompanied the body to the grave, and there read to the parents some passages of Scripture, and prayed with them, not using any of the prayers in the burial service. I do not know that I have any right to authorise such a proceeding certainly not to order it. But it is nowhere forbidden ; and if any one of my clergy, in such a case as I have described, were to adopt it, I certainly should not in- terfere with him or censure him. But the use of the burial service I have no right even to permit. 1864. I think that you adopted quite the right course about the baptism at - . Such matters are difficult, and we are often in India required suddenly to decide some point altogether new to us, and are compelled to interpret and apply the directions of the Church as well as we can. I have no doubt that you were led to a right decision in the case which you have reported to me. With regard to the other case at - , on which you ask for rny advice, can you not induce persons from charity and Christian regard for a child, who may be exposed to such immi- nent peril, to become the sponsors ? You might be godfather yourself, or Mr. - might consent to undertake the responsi- bility, which I need not say in such a case would be a very real one ; and surely some Christian lady would consent to share it. Generally my advice is this : if the child is ill, the case is clear baptize it privately. If the child is not ill, try to get the right number of sponsors. If you cannot, then, as the sacra- ment of baptism is of higher obligation, as resting on Christ's command, than the ecclesiastical institution, however edifying, of three sponsors, baptize it with yourself and Mr. , or one of you, for the sponsors, and endeavour, in case of the father's death, to retain your influence over the mother, so as to prevent her relapse into heathenism. This, Mr. - - , as a missionary, is specially bound to do. I will not close my letter without expressing the real pleasure and thankfulness with which I have heard from more than one quarter of the great value attached to your ministry at , and the respect and esteem which you have deservedly won from your parishioners. 326 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XII. 1864. .... By all means administer the Lord's Supper to the Presbyterian, if he is willing to receive it according to our forms, and you know of no moral impediment. I am quite convinced, on historical grounds, that the Kubric ordering that it should not be administered to unconfirmed persons was only intended as an internal code of discipline in our own Church, and not designed to exclude from communion Christians of other Churches. I have no time to go fully into my reasons for this opinion, which was given to me when I was a young man, by one who had very great knowledge both of history and divinity. One reason only may be mentioned. William III. and the early Hanoverian kings, and other foreign Protestants resident in England before them, had never been confirmed, but surely cannot have been excluded from the holy communion. As to rebuking a person of advanced age who is living in sin, or has sinned openly without repentance first be very care- ful as to your facts. Be quite sure that you do not act on mere rumour, and so bring a false charge. Nothing is so likely to turn a wavering person in a wrong direction as the sense that he is treated with injustice or accused without reason. But if your facts are unhappily clear, then I cannot advise you to shrink from the duty of remonstrating with the culprit. Only, as a young man, you must do so humbly, affectionately, and discreetly ; as one who is weak and prone to sin ; you must do so gently and thoughtfully, considering ' thyself lest thou also be tempted.' Doubtless, John the Baptist is the great preacher of repentance, and so far is the model of all who deliver the same message ; but in taking him as your pattern, you must consider the vast difference between yourself and him, and while you follow him in principle, you will assume a tone of far less authority than his. It is to me a matter of sincere thankfulness if you have found in my charge any help in perplexity and support in your work. 1866. I certainly think that there ought to be a sermon when the holy communion is administered first, because the communion CH. XII.] THE COMMUNION OFFICE. 327 service is the only one in which a sermon is positively ordered ; secondly, because the occasion is one of peculiar solemnity, and it may be hoped that a few words of Christian exhortation, earnestly spoken at such a time, would be peculiarly impressive ; thirdly, because unhappily the portion of communicants to non- communicants in a military congregation is so small, that, for the sake of a very few, you deprive the vast majority of a means of edification. To the first of these reasons I imagine no answer can be re- turned. To the second you will object to the length of the service. You propose to meet the difficulty of the third by requesting non-communicants to remain and witness the ad- ministration. With regard then to the second, I do not wish the sermons on such occasions to be long. A few sentences on the nature of the sacrament, which some are neglecting, and of which others are going to partake, a short practical exposition of the epistle or gospel which have just been read, or something in the style of Dean Groodwyn of Ely's admirable ' Short Sermons preached before the administration of the Lord's Supper,' would satisfy all that I require, and be probably more impressive than a long formal essay. As to the third, the practical difficulties are great. Without the concurrence of the officers, the thing must be a failure ; and even if they consent to remain, it is hard to force the soldiers to do so ; while, if they are not forced, it is very unlikely that they will stay of their own accord. But, even if they do, I doubt whether it is desirable to encourage them to stay ; that is to say, it may, I think, be very right to urge a man who is kept from the Lord's Supper by ignorance of its nature to re- main and see for himself how simple and yet how impressive a rite it is, and it is quite possible that the actual sight of what is done may remove prejudices and turn him into a communi- cant. But to effect this desirable end, one stay in church during the administration of the holy communion would generally, I suppose, be sufficient. I am not ignorant of the distinction which is made by some modern writers on the sub- ject, between the 'representation' and 'partaking' of Christ's sacrifice, nor of the other arguments which are used to justify the habitual presence of non-communicants. But I am entirely 328 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. XII. unconvinced by them. It seems to be, both from the New Testament and the Prayer Book, that the essence of the whole benefit is in the eating and drinking ; the habitual substitution of mere presence at the communion for partaking of it would lead to dangerous error, and be hardly in accordance with the spirit of the last clause of Article XXVIII. Cn. XIII.] METROPOLITAN CHARGE, 329 CHAPTEE XIII. REVIEW OF THE CHAKGE OF 1863 METROPOLITAN VISITATIONS MADRAS - BOMBAY. Ix September 1863 the time came round for the de- livery of another charge as the opening act of a second visitation, which was to be at once diocesan and metro- politan. The charge was widely read in England, with as deep an interest as that which attended its delivery in India. Much was expected from one of so genial a character, such wide and hearty sympathies, so keen yet calm an insight into all that came under his cognisance. Nor were these expectations disappointed, except in some perhaps who looked chiefly for originality of views, or the disclosure of some new means of access to the Indian mind, and who forgot, what the Bishop himself could never forget, that the one thing above all else required in such a charge was help and counsel for his clergy in their daily duties, and amidst their actual perplexities and trials ; counsel to be given by one who, though standing at their head, chose rather to place himself by their side, sharing their labours, entering into their difficulties, and patiently endeavouring to attain their point of view, before he offered advice which thus alone could be made at once acceptable and effective. After noticing with thankfulness the marvellous progress made in five years towards repairing the effects of the mutiny, he passed on to consider, first of all, ' the perils, hopes, arid duties of the Church in India.' The subject was approached from the vantage-ground of accumulated experience and extended knowledge. 330 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [On. XIII. When the Bishop delivered his primary charge in 1859, he had been only a few months in the country, and it was from impressions and observation chiefly limited to Cal- cutta that he touched upon points affecting the welfare of the Church in a diocese extending from Peshawur to Singapore. But it was otherwise in 1863. During four years of constant travel he had fully realised the spiritual needs of a large English army ; he had made (as passages in this Memoir constantly indicate) the moral and spiritual needs of European and Eurasian middle-class life, the pas- toral care of the isolated English home in a foreign land, objects of peculiarly personal charge and responsibility. Just as the collections for the poor Christians in Judea took such hold of St. Paul's mind during some two years of his ministry that they claimed a foremost place in his Epistles even when treating of the subliniest doctrines of the faith, so with Bishop Cotton no prominence seemed too great to give to this paramount object of the Church's attention and duty. A close analysis of his counsels arid exhortations on this occasion would be superfluous, since the subject rises so constantly to the surface in journals and letters. It will suffice to say that, postponing for the moment the discussion of missionary operations and of those great theological topics which, as a bishop, he felt it to be at that crisis an imperative duty to discuss, he directed the attention of his hearers, first of all to the European portion of the Church in India ; to a review of what had been accomplished ; to notices of work then in progress, or to suggestions for work still needing to be undertaken ; while with renewed emphasis he gave utterance to the hope that, as Bishop Wilson's episcopate had been distinguished by the increase of churches, so his might be distinguished by the increase of schools and of other kindred channels through which the restraining and elevating influence of the Gospel might flow. CH. XIII.] EVANGELISATION OF INDIA. 331 4 Turning next to the prospects of missionary labour, lie dwelt with mixed feelings of regret and hopefulness on the well-known fact that it was chiefly among the lowest castes, and, still more, among the aboriginal tribes of India, that Christianity had made, or was likely to make, substan- tial progress. Seeing, however, in the success already granted in such quarters a plain indication of the Divine will, he urged persevering exertion in the same direction, commending especially to the Church Missionary Society a new field of labour opening among the Gonds of Central India, and to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel a similar field among the Cachari aborigines of Assam, and the hill-tribes above the Brahmaputra ; while more universally he looked to the instruction and improve- ment of the ryots, and to the extension of female education throughout India, as the most hopeful agency for pro- moting the ultimate evangelisation of the country. Of the immediate prospects disclosing themselves for the reception of Christianity among the upper and more cultivated classes of Hindus, he spoke with greater hesi- tation, appearing, it may almost be said, to be himself attracted rather towards the Mahometans, whose closer approach to Christianity he pointed out, and the neglect of whom, in the general work of missions, he earnestly deprecated. To those friends at home who looked to him with confident trust, as one specially qualified to win his way with thoughtful and educated Hindus, and who had formed, perhaps, too high an estimate of the prevalence and nature of the doctrine of the Brahmo Somaj, this part of the charge may have been somewhat disappointing. It was not to any want of sympathy with the cultivated classes, or to any disparagement of the im- portance of the movements at work amongst them, that scantiness of specific and successful efforts in their behalf could be attributed. The Bishop's attitude towards edu- cated Bengalis, amongst whom adherents of the Brahmo 332 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIII. Somaj form only a limited party, was, like the whole of his public life, in truthful harmony with his own character. His calm temperament withheld him from strongly pro- nounced demonstrations of sympathy with intellectual progress which, in its religious aspect, reflected much of the latitude of modern thought. He desired to be the guide of those who in humility and sincerity were finding their way to the gospel of salvation rather than to be known as welcoming with enthusiasm every mental phase in men who, while breaking with heathenism, were con- tent to stop far short of Christianity. He regarded the actual state of things around him as one of transition, out of which, he was well assured, would come at last a general recognition and acceptance of Christian truth. But the merely negative and destructive period must first be brought to an end. He was too sadly impressed with the self-sufficiency, the merely deistical belief, and worst of all (as their own confessions showed), the licentious morals of ' young Bengal,' to welcome the abandonment of Hinduism, unaccompanied with the sense of sin or consciousness of the need of a Redeemer, as any positive approach to Christianity. Even in 1863, how- ever, he saw signs of a better day at hand ; and it was with a confidence which brightened as he looked forward that he exhorted the Church of Christ, while waiting patiently for the coming opportunity, to use all efforts meanwhile ' to surround the educated classes of India with the power of Christian evidence, Christian example, and Christian influence.' Penetrated himself in early manhood with convictions decidedly evangelical, Bishop Cotton ever retained substantially the same basis of re- ligious sentiment under the broader system of theology which his maturer judgment approved ; the devout per- sonal element deepening indeed and strengthening with the growth of his character, as he drew nearer and nearer to the sad and sudden end. Hence, it went to his CIT. XIII.] CONDITION OP THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 333 heart to see how English influences over the native mind, and the spirit of inquiry which had been stimulated by the beneficence of English rule, and by the glories of Euro- pean civilisation, were neutralised, or even perverted wilfully perverted in their spiritual aspect by the endea- vour of philosophical writers at home to turn aside the stream of conversion from Christian channels. And, like his friend Dr. Duff, to whose memory he paid in this charge a touching and eloquent tribute, he determined that, whatever else his work in India might be, it should at least be distinctively and resolutely Christian. The duty, therefore, to which he felt himself most im- peratively called was to keep alive and kindle to a brighter lustre the beacon of Christian example in India itself; to elevate the condition of existing converts, and to clear away the mutual prejudices which too often obscured their relations with their European brothers ; while, for the further abatement of the darkness resting on the land, whether as regarded the supply of fresh missionaries for the purpose, or the proof to be held up to the Indian mind of the nature and effects of our holy faith, he felt that the hopes of the future must still mainly rest on Christian England. It was with these objects ever present, if not uppermost, in his thoughts that he turned to review the state of things at home (1) as they affected the National Church, and (2) the Church at large. In the National Church, after remarking with sorrow the growing disinclination of young men of ability to enter into holy orders, he noticed with much regret (as one cause among many) the dissatisfaction very widely ex- pressed with the existing formularies of the Prayer Book. In this matter, like his friend Dr. Yaughan, he firmly depre- cated change. Though willing to consent to such an altera- tion in the terms of subscription as was soon afterwards carried into effect, and desiring also a revision of the Lectionary (such as is now all but accomplished), and still 334 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIII. more of the canons, he feared to see concession carried further. Eeviewing the objections urged against the bap- tismal, the burial, and the ordination service, and against the recital of the Athanasian Creed, he pronounced in every case, after a candid consideration, against the necessity for change, with the one exception of the burial service. In this case, the scandals incident to the indiscriminate use of the office were brought into special prominence in India, where an Anglican chaplain might find himself compelled to read it over some Eornan Catholic soldier whom the Eomish priest had judged unworthy of the rites of sepulture as prescribed by his own Church.* Here accordingly, especially after the admissions which have been made by the Bishops themselves in Parliament, he recommended that the service as it now stands should be reserved for communicants only, while for others a shorter and less explicit form should be drawn up. In all the other cases he urged that the explanations offered of obnoxious expressions by thoughtful and approved divines ought to be accepted as sufficient, though he would gladly have seen such explanations embodied also in declaratory rubrics. Whether such rubrics, lying wholly in the Prayer Book, while the expressions objected to were persistently enforced, would either conciliate Dissenters or satisfy remonstrant Churchmen, will probably be doubted, and more than doubted, by all except those who are already content. But, even on the score of ex- pediency, the question of a revision of the formularies is undeniably a very difficult one ; and on the higher ground of truth and consistency, and agreement with Scripture, Bishop Cotton's remarks deserve the respectful attention of all right-minded men. Very remarkable, too, is the testimony which his Indian experience enabled him to offer to the merits of the Prayer Book : so suitable did he find it, and so acceptable also to the native congre- * See ch. x. p. 247. CH. XIII.] THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS. 335 gallons in his diocese ; while the same experience con- firmed him no less in his approval both of the baptismal service and of the Athanasian Creed. The repugnance felt by some to the strong language of the former could not but be modified, he felt, in a country where every Christian must be conscious of the wide difference sub- sisting between the heathens around and those who, however careless and inconsistent in life, were yet recog- nised members of Christ's body, the Church; while, with regard to the latter, he pointed out how errors which we are apt to regard as things of the past are in full activity even yet in the East, under the influence of Oriental systems of religion and philosophy ' and we may well pause before we expunge from the records of our Church an ancient protest against the application of these ten- dencies to Christianity;' a protest which will be needed again 'whenever the educated classes of India generally embrace the Gospel.' Lastly, passing on to the ' hopes, perils, and duties of the Catholic Church,' he fixed his attention chiefly on the great questions of the nature of inspiration, and the mutual relations of the various parts of Scripture ; ques- tions which, then as now, were agitating Christendom, and which had been stirred, more especially in England, since his departure by the publication of ' Essays and Keviews,' and of the works of the Bishop of Natal. With these high and momentous questions no mind was more prepared than his to deal in a devout yet fearless spirit ; and few were so capable of doing it. Acknow- ledging, on one hand, the irresistible claims of reason in matters of critical investigation, and firmly believing that such investigation, fairly pursued, would but confirm the conclusions of faith, he unhesitatingly pointed out that the patent facts of various readings in the sacred text, of discrepancies in statement between the sacred writers, and of altered or irreconcilable quotations in 336 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. XIII. the New Testament of passages from the Old, necessarily refuted the theory of a plenary verbal inspiration : a theory which is nowhere advanced by Scripture itself, while the Vedas and the Koran, in significant contrast, do actually make such a claim for their contents. On the other hand, he still more earnestly maintained that the acceptance of the Gospel as a revelation from God im- poses necessarily and at once upon every sincere believer a submission of the understanding and judgment to the Divine voice, involving the acknowledgment of a special inspiration accorded to the sacred records, and setting limits to the province of criticism in dealing with them. What those limits exactly are he w r as far from thinking himself competent to define, though some guiding land- marks seemed to him unquestionably evident. Indeed, he did not consider a precise definition as either attainable or desirable, regarding it rather as part of each man's moral probation to order his steps with reverent care upon that holy ground. For himself, he feared chiefly to err on the side of presumption ; and in this spirit he suggested to his clergy some of the principles which he strove habitually to keep in view. Thus, while. he readily admitted that ' on matters of natural phenomena the writers of Scripture speak according to appearances and not in language scientifically correct,' and while he would not refuse to believe with Bishop Ellicott that men in- spired to communicate moral and spiritual truth might in matters of narrative be liable to * such incompleteness and such imperfections as belong to the highest form of purely truthful human testimony/ he still reserved the right of expecting that on many controverted points a maturer science and a deeper historical research might yet come round to confirm the statements of the Bible. The moral difficulties in Jewish history were fully solved, he was persuaded, by the principle, everywhere perceptible, and in some places plainly avowed in Scrip- CH. XIII.] WETTINGS OF THE BISHOP OF NATAL. 337 ture, that God deals with the conscience according as it is able to bear His precepts, and that thus accordingly He had disciplined the chosen people, ' not forcing on them a standard of morality which they could not have appreciated, but raising them far above every contem- porary nation,' while also leading them onwards and ever onwards, through many imperfections, to the light which was to be unveiled in Christ. Above all he protested, with the loyalty of a devout trust that knew no bounds, against any hypothesis which could impugn the perfect wisdom and sufficiency and the trans- parent veracity of Christ himself. Whatever train of human reasoning seemed to lead to such a result, that he required every Christian unhesitatingly to reject, waiting in faith, if need be, for the further knowledge which would justify the decision. Hence, he strongly con- demned ' the reckless speculations to which a new impulse had been lately given by the Bishop of Natal.' With respect to the Pentateuch itself, he was ready to admit, if necessary, the composite nature of its authorship, and its obligations possibly to patriarchal records preceding it, and to the hand of Ezra in its final redaction ; but his whole soul revolted from the thought that it owed its existence to Samuel, or some later writer. Such a theory in his judgment not only imputed the crime of forgery to those holy men, but controverted the authority of Christ Himself, who had definitely owned and appealed to both Moses and his writings, and with that, overturned the very foundations of our faith. And, though willing and ready to believe that such disastrous consequences were not contemplated by Bishop Colenso himself, and uniformly showing this spirit of charitable trust, in a subsequent correspondence with some of the Bishop's apologists, and again with Dr. Eowland Williams, who had written to complain of some expressions in the appendix to the charge, he yet would not depart a hair's-breadth from z 338 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XIII. the position lie had maintained, nor even qualify the stern rebuke which he pronounced on those whom he considered to have failed in deference to the divine authority of Christ. Nor would he admit the too depreciatory estimate formed, as he thought, by others of the Old Testament in its relation to Christians. That part of Scripture he re- garded as retaining still its divinely-appointed office of ' a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ' an office which he believed it to possess, not for a time only, but in perpe- tuity ; not for the Jews only, but for the whole human race. In connexion with this subject there is one passage of his charge so striking and important that it must be quoted at length : It is a remarkable proof of the world-wide power of Scrip- ture, that points which are felt as difficulties by one class or generation are seen to be of the highest importance by other sections of the great human family. I have lately been struck by two instances of this. No parts of the scriptural records have been more severely criticised than the Mosaic cosmogony and the doctrine of sacrifice. One of the best known papers in the volume of ' Essays and Reviews ' undertook the refutation of the former ; and more than one vain attempt has been made to show that the latter has no connection with our Lord's death, and no part in the Christian scheme. Such are the opinions of students who have grown up in habits of thought exclusively European. We bring the Gospel to India; we persuade a few thoughtful men to accept Christ as their Saviour, and we find that these very parts of Scripture strike home to their hearts as full of instruction. In a lecture delivered in London, Professor Gannendro Mohun Taj ore thus speaks : ' Cosmogony forms the esential basis of all religious development, as far as we are able to collect. Hence the vast importance which must ne- cessarily be attached to the Mosaic cosmogony, notwithstanding the many and perhaps everlasting disputes which may be raised against it. The Hindu cosmogony is the mythical development of the historical realism of the Mosaic ; and the absence of the notion of a personal and living God in all false religions, and CH. XIII.] SACRIFICE AND MIRACLES. 339 its conservation in Judaism. . . . forms the most remarkable feature in the religious history of mankind.' And the Kev. Krishna Mohun Banerjea sees in Christ's sacrifice the explana- tion of a remarkable feature in the religion of his countrymen. ' We find,' he sa^s, ' that in the inscrutable wisdom of God there could be no remission of sin apart from sacrifice, that Christ was revealed in the primitive age of the world as the great sacrifice for the sins of men, and that immolation of animals was ordained as typical of that rite. . . . While the ceremonial performance of the rite was kept up probably everywhere, its object and intention were gradually forgotten. . . . The zeal and assiduity with which it was maintained in our country is accounted for by its transmission from age to age as a primitive practice ; but the inability of our ancestors to give the least intelligent explanation of the rite, and the want of any infor- mation in the oldest of the Vedas on its connection with the celestial fruits of which it was believed to be productive, are enigmas which can only be understood by the light of the Biblical history.' Miracles furnish another instance of the same kind. If there are some scientific minds which cling so closely to the conception of law that they are unwilling to imagine any interruption to it, there always have been other minds to which miraculous agency seems an essential part of the evidence of Christianity, proving that the Gospel was the work not only of infinite goodness, but of infinite power. Surely, then, God's wisdom is vindicated by the provision made for the spiritual needs of all His children. At great turning points in the world's history miracles have proclaimed His especial presence, but in the ordinary course of events His fatherly care has been manifested in the unbroken supremacy of those wise and merciful laws which His providence has impressed upon His creation. All these facts show that the Bible contains a uni- versal revelation, and confirms the truth of Bacon's words, that c the Scriptures, being written, to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contra- dictions, and differing estates of the Church . . . have in themselves infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part.' The charge concluded with an earnest exhortation to z 2 340 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIII. the clergy to trust and to put forth in their ministry the full power of the Gospel an exhortation singularly im- pressive in the mouth of one whose Christian energy had been so largely manifested, and who showed so habitually, even in the most unguarded moments of social intercourse, how truly he himself lived by the principles which he inculcated. Very shortly after the delivery of the charge the visitation of the other Indian dioceses commenced. The right of the Bishop of Calcutta to make this visitation as Metropolitan dated from the time when the sees of Bombay and Madras were created. Bishop Wilson had encountered some difficulty in getting this right recog- nized by the Indian Government or by the Court of Directors ; but he firmly upheld it, appealed to his letters- patent, finally overcame the financial and other objections raised against the quinquennial visitation, established the precedent, and the formal official sanction is now given as a matter of course. As complete isolation with respect to his special work is the portion of every Indian bishop, the advantage of an occasional interchange of opinions and experiences with those sharing the same office and respon- sibilities can hardly be gainsaid. This was the view of the approaching tour taken by the Metropolitan in 1863, mingling with bright anticipations of the rich and varied in- terests inseparable from extensive Indian travel. Intending to go forth, as he said, more as a learner than a teacher, he determined to leave episcopal duties, as far as possible, behind him ; and to effect this, he caused to be withdrawn, under legal sanction, from the mandate announcing his visitation a strange clause suspending each suffragan from exercising the functions of his office while the Metro- politan was in his diocese. The following letter is a link between Calcutta and the southern presidency : CH. XIII.] VOYAGE TO MADRAS. 341 To Professor Conington. Steamer 'Nemesis,' Bay of Bengal, between Calcutta and Madras, November 11, 1863. It is impossible to be actually on board a Peninsular and Oriental steamer, in the midst of passengers bound for England, without some longing thoughts of home, old friends, and Edward. There is much to remind us of England in the habits of the ship : Englishmen waiting on us at dinner instead of Mussulman khidmatgars, luggage directed to South- ampton, and a hundred minutiae of like kind. I complete the crropyr} by sitting down to write to you. Yet, though I certainly should like to come home and see you all, I am sure that none of you will feel otherwise than glad that we both like India better and better ; that there are many schemes of usefulness afloat, which I should be reluctant to abandon or leave uncared for> even for a time, in their present nascent condition ; and that I doubt whether it would be right to come home just now, except from the pressure of illness, or other dire necessity. It seemed possible two months ago that such pressure might actually arise, for I was visited, as you may have heard, by a sudden and severe attack of acute dysentery. But, by (rod's mercy, my recovery was rapid and complete, and I feel now as well as if I had never been ill. From my opening sentence you will have discovered that our usual winter tour is begun. This time, the diocese being finished, I am on the ' metropolitan ' visitation to Madras, Bombay, and Colombo ; Stuart, secretary to the Church Missionary Society, acting as my chaplain in Burn's place. I look forward with much pleasure to seeing Grell at Madras, and he is to accompany us to Bombay, as is also his chaplain, W. S. Smith, formerly, as you may remember, head prefect at Marlborough, and now Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. One of the chief interests of the last two months in Calcutta has been the proposal for a memorial of the services of Dr. Duff, a Free Kirk missionary of great eminence, who, after more than thirty years' efficient service of a remarkable and original character, is now leaving India, with broken health. His great merit consisted in the stand which he made against atheistic education, and the Christian turn which he gave to 342 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIII. the intellectual movement which of late has agitated the mind of young Bengal. Three meetings of mingled Church- men and Dissenters were held at the palace on the subject, and two rival schemes proposed : one, a hall and library for the Bible Society ; the other a lecture-hall to be placed near the Presidency College, and new University buildings, in which lectures should be given, and meetings held on Christian subjects and others of a cognate character. The first would have been mainly for the use of Europeans, and planted in the European quarter ; the other for the use of Europeanised natives, and planted in the native quarter. Opinions were divided, not according to the tenets of Church and Dissent, but according to the affirmation or negation of the Arnoldian principle of doing secular things in a Christian way, and sanctifying by the presence of Christ's Spirit all intellectual and other earthly occupation. I dislike nicknames, and still more any savour of self-complacency ; but I do think that the discussion illustrated the distinction between narrowness and breadth, and that on the side of the latter were not only all persons of really cultivated minds and extensive Indian know- ledge, but also quite as great an amount of earnest Christianity as among the supporters of the narrower view. Some could imagine no missionary work or really Christian influence except such as consists in printing, publishing, and distributing the Bible ; and all these were for a Bible house in the European quarter. But others stoutly argued that to treat general subjects from a Christian point of view, to promote good and benevolent works, to show that the Church is now as ever in the van of civilisation, is a more direct continuation of Duff's work than the other, and more likely to influence the educated Hindu. Happily this view prevailed, chiefly through the energy of Sir Charles Trevelyan ; and a committee, with me for its chairman, was named to carry out the scheme of a lecture-hall in the native city I have written and delivered my second charge, and it will, I hope, reach you in a mail or two. It has also to be delivered at Madras, Bombay, and Colombo, mutatis mutandis. It took me a long time and a deal of work to write it, and already I see divers defects in it. It is of an eclectic character, and will not thoroughly satisfy High Churchmen, Evangelicals, CH. XIII.] VOYAGE TO BOMBAY. 343 or Liberals : each will pick plenty of holes in it. I will not anticipate or deprecate your criticisms by any further remarks or explanations. The first halt was at Madras, under the hospitable roof of its Bishop, then only recently settled in his Indian field of labour. A week was spent in constant and varied occupation. The charge was again delivered, and sermons were preached. There ' was much cordial intercourse with the clergy, and much profitable inspec- tion of schools and institutions which have long had a firm root in the Southern diocese. The Bishop brought with him the scheme just started in Calcutta for a national memorial to Dr. Duff, and procured for it, at an influential meeting, with Bishop Gell as chairman, an acceptance and sympathy at once ready and liberal, and free from all presidency narrowness or jealousy. In order to bring about a much desired conference between the three Indian prelates, the Bishop of Madras consented to visit the northern parts of his diocese by way of Bombay. A double episcopal party, therefore, quitted Madras on November 20, and took the railway to Beipore, on the western coast. Here a Government steamer, busy on various official errands, was in readiness, and became the private yacht for the voyage up to Bombay. The steamer put into Honore, in North Canara, and the party landed for a three days' excursion to the Gerseppa Falls, where all were much refreshed by grand scenery, by rest and holiday among rocks and jungle, and by the fresh air of hills 2,000 feet above the sea. The ' Dalhousie,' obeying episcopal commands, anchored yet again for a day, to enable the travellers to see in ruined buildings and fine but empty churches the ghost of what the great ecclesiastical city of Goa once was. Bombay was in due time reached, and the Bishop's journal will give some notices of the stay there. 344 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. Xltl. Monday, November 30. We anchored in Bombay harbour at 6 A.M., but it was so hazy that our arrival was unknown till nearly 8, when we landed and drove to the Bishop's house, where we were most cordially received by the Bishop and Mrs. Harding. In the evening we attended the first of a series of special services to be held in the cathedral during Advent. The Litany was read, 'Sun of my Soul' was sung, and the Bishop preached. The cathedral is an old and sub- stantial building, with massive chunam pillars and arches, and its internal modern fittings are extremely good. There are a stone pulpit and reading-desk. Wednesday, December 2. The three Indian Bishops held to- day a lengthy conference, and talked over plans and difficulties. It is a rare and happy event for all to be together : perhaps it never occurred before, and I find it a real help and comfort ; for an Indian bishop is a very isolated being, hardly ever seeing anyone whose work is precisely like his own. I hope that some good may come of our meeting. In the evening we went to the new church at Colaba, one of the finest in India, built as a memorial to those who fell in the AfTghan war, and designed by Henry Conybeare. The east end is formed by an apse with three painted windows, and the gem of the cathedral is a beautiful recumbent figure of Bishop Carr by Noble, one of the best monuments that I have seen in India. The church is one of the oldest in India, built in the ' ante- episcopal period,' and certainly, from the manner of its ' dedication,' justifying the appointment of bishops. We find in the record of the chaplain of the day, that on the day of its opening there was full service with a dinner, after which the governor, chaplain, and other officials of primitive Bombav adjourned to the vestry, and there drank success to the new church in cups of sack ! However, it received a more decorous consecration from Bishop Middleton on his first visitation. Thursday, December 4. To-day Stuart and I walked up to the top of the hill overhanging the episcopal residence, and there, after enjoying some really lovely sea views, we came to the gates of a Parsi sacred enclosure, but were prevented from penetrating further than just inside them by the prohibitions of a person who advanced to meet us with three or four attendants, and called himself the padre. He did not, how- CH. XIII.] VISIT TO ELEPHANTA. 345 ever, object to our taking a rapid glance of the buildings from the gate, nor did he decline giving information as to the object of each. There was the fire .temple, with a pyramidal roof, in which the sacred fire is always burning, fed with sandal and other fragrant woods. There was a building with three arches, like a gateway, where a funeral party offer their prayers. There was the house for the padre himself. Finally there was the Dakhma Tomb, the Temple of Silence, as such structures are sometimes called a circular roofless tower, surmounting a deep well, and looking like one of the buildings which mark the openings into the Kilsby tunnel of the North Western Eailway. The priest informed us that inside this tower is a sloping shelf, divided into three compartments, the upper one for men, the middle for women, the lower for children ; and that when a corpse is brought for burial, it is placed on its proper compartment and left there to be devoured by the hideous vultures which are always in waiting on the top of the tower. The bones from time to time are swept into the bottom of the well by a priest, and there are drains to carry off the water. If a Parsi dies at a distance from a Dakhma, his body is exposed on the top of the highest hill in the neighbourhood. Some time ago an adventurous but un- scrupulous Scotchman climbed up one of these towers, and took a sketch of its ghastly interior, which has been engraved, and of which Dr. Wilson sent me a copy. Saturday, December 5. After two days of constant work in seeing and examining schools, a holiday was considered lawful, and so to-day was spent in a visit to Elephanta, which was made exceedingly agreeable by the kindness of Sir Bartle Frere, who lent us his little steamer, the ' Grulnare,' for the purpose. The party included the three prelates, with their appendages, and the governor's aide-de-camp. Elephanta is about six miles from the island of Bombay, and we had a delightful run across the harbour, which was thronged with shipping, including a ship of war. The town of Bombay itself has not a striking appearance from the sea, as it is placed quite low, and its buildings look scraggy and dishevelled. But the hills above the town, the islands about the harbour, and the abundance of ships within it, make up a glorious view, which increases in beauty as distance conceals the defects 346 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIII. of the buildings. Eleplianta is an island rising into two conical hills covered with wood, and there is a long flight of apparently modern stone steps from the shore almost to the entrance of the temple. This is formed by a spacious aperture made in the rock, surmounted by grass and jungle, with four pillars in front. Two rows of carved pillars divide the cave or principal temple into three aisles, and there are two side caves or minor temples opening out of the large one to the north and south. The work is entirely Brahmanical, and the whole excavation is dedicated to Shiva. In each of the three caves is a chapel, also cut out of the solid rock ; and nothing- gives a better notion of the enormous labour bestowed on the work than to walk round one of these chapels and observe the smoothness both of its walls and of those of the surrounding- temple, and the immense amount of rock which must have been cleared away in the construction. The caves are adorned by bas-reliefs and statues on a large scale. In the principal temple immediately facing the spectator as he enters, is a huge trimurtti, a three-faced bust 1 9 feet high, representing Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the latter smiling on a cobra which is twisted round his arm. To his glorification all the bas-reliefs are devoted : one represents his marriage with Parvati ; another the birth of Granesh, his eldest son ; another, Shiva and Parvati quarrelling ; in a fourth Shiva appears as an ascetic, squatting like Buddha, for whom indeed he has here been mistaken, though the appearance of a Buddhist figure in a Brahmanical cave would be of course impossible. The most unpleasing represents Shiva as about to sacrifice a child : he has eight arms, in one of which he grasps the child, in another a sword, in a third a bowl to catch the blood, in a fourth a bell to announce the beginning of the sacrifice. Two fine figures of tigers guard the entrance to the cave on the left as you enter the great temple, and round the central chapel are represented gigantic slaves. The view from the entrance of the cave, of sea, islands, and mountains, with the soft light of sunset spreading over them, was most lovely, and was an agreable change as we turned our backs on the emblems of Hinduism, which even in their grandest form are more or less repulsive, and must inspire sorrowful thoughts, since they represent a system which, unlike the idolatries of Greece and Home and Egypt, is still rampant in the world. CH. XIII.] A MISSIONARY SERMON. 347 We had a pleasant voyage back to Bombay, landed at Mazagon, and reached the episcopal abode at about 8 P. M. Friday, December 11. . . . This evening I went to a meeting of nearly 300 educated natives, Hindus and Parsis, including Jugganath Sunkusett, the Hindu member of Council, Manockjee Cursetjee, and others, collected by Mr. James Wilson of the Church Missionary Society, who seems to be gaining as much influence among this class as his older and more famous namesake of the Free Kirk. To these I was requested to give a sketch of ' progress ' in Bengal, and accordingly I proceeded to deliver a missionary sermon, and was so moved by the occa- sion that I extemporized with very tolerable fluency for an hour. I protested against the confusion between ' progress ' and mere go-a-headism ; said that, unless intellectual progress was accompanied by moral and spiritual progress, it involved a good deal of retrogression a statement which I illustrated by a sketch of young Bengal, and by some of the facts already produced in my charge. From the need of a moral and spiritual element in all true progress, I went on to inquire how it should be supplied ; said that if we believed in God at all, we must believe that He would reveal His will to man; examined the claims of Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Mahometanism to be the vehicles of such a revelation, and ended by trying to show that in Christianity alone is the moral and spiritual ele- ment contained, the answer given to the cry of conscience, and the true voice of Grod heard. Speeches were made in reply by four persons^ all in the style of mingled flattery and liberalism to which one is accustomed in Bengal ; but none, I fear, showing any depth of conviction, or intention of practical application ; all probably illustrating the three first kinds of ground in the Parable of the Sower. The most real and most hopeful was by a Parsi bearing the truly Sassanian name of Ardeshir Framji. A large dinner-party at the Bishop's terminated the day. Saturday, December 12. I breakfasted with Dr. Wilson, and saw many interesting curiosities, picked up in Egypt, Syria, and India. I happened to repeat a statement I had heard, that the Eoman Catholics are far more trustworthy in business than the Parsis or Hindus, whereupon he remarked that the Mahome- tans were also superior to either of these two latter sects ; and that he considered that Divine truth, in proportion as it is 348 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [C. XIII. apprehended, though it is mixed up with a very defective system of religion, and even with much positive falsehood, influences the heart for good and raises the moral standard. In the evening we all went to the house of Jugganath Sunkusett, where was a grand exhibition of the schools of the 'Students' Literary and Scientific Society,' which is managed entirely by Hindus, and, in spite of its ridiculous title, does a really good work, for it educates about 450 girls. All these were assembled, and the first classes in Mahrathi and Gruzerathi examined in grammar, geography, and singing. The girls looked simple and modest, and except for their vile nose-rings, were very prettily dressed; they seemed to answer well, and the institution is highly creditable to its promoters, and very hopeful. The secretary's report was good and sensible, and insisted on the importance of teaching the girls their own lan- guage as well as English, though it appeared that some of the committee are so unpatriotic as to wish the vernacular alto- gether abandoned. Sir Bartle Frere made a good speech, in which he showed the folly of such an opinion ; and I followed with a harangue chiefly addressed to the clergy, of whom many were present, and intended to convince them that, in spite of the necessary absence of the Christian element from this move- ment, it ought to be encouraged, as a real sign of native vigour and energy, as removing from India the sin and scandal of deliberately leaving one whole sex in utter ignorance and degradation, and therefore as preparing the way of the Lord, and making rough places plain. Indeed, I think that if we abolish female infanticide and Suttee, and rejoice when the natives denounce them, without inquiring whether they do so on precisely Christian motives, so we ought to support any war which may be made on female abasement, even though it is not waged in the only way of which we can thoroughly approve. Sunday, December 13. I preached twice, in the morning at Colaba, and in the evening at Byculla. This was the last day of a most interesting, exciting, enjoyable, and I think not profitless fortnight, in which every one, from the Governor downwards, has done his utmost to show us attention and make us happy, and during which the warm and hearty hospi- tality of our kind host and hostess has never flagged. Bombay is decidedly inferior to Calcutta in the article of CH. XIII.] CONFERENCE OF THE BISHOPS. 349 houses, and in its general effect as a city, but is beyond all comparison superior in natural beauty. In female education it is before it ; I am told that women in the West of India never were so secluded as in Bengal, and that therefore their emancipation is an easier matter. In some points heathenism is more rampant here than with us : one sign is, that here almost every Hindu, including even Jugganath Sunkusett, has a dab of paint on his forehead to show his devotion to some particular god a practice which young Bengal has altogether abandoned. Thus ended the visit to the second city of British India, and the foregoing extracts may seem inadequate representations of all that filled up the hours from early to late of many hot and trying days. Speaking generally, the inspection of schools entered largely into the pro- gramme of occupation, for they are in Bombay numerous and nourishing, and interesting from being supported and encouraged as much by the natives as by Christian societies, and directed to a great extent to the education of both sexes. Time was economised during the shorter sojourn of the Bishop of Madras to bring the three prelates into frequent conference, a practical result of which was the issue of pastorals to clergy and laity on the oft-repeated tale of India's wants, and England's duties towards her. In all ways it was a fortnight full of enjoyment to the Bishop, whose energies seemed to rise with each new demand upon them. A notice of this visit to Bombay would be incomplete without allu- sion to Dr. Wilson, the Free Kirk missionary, who, leading native education there as Dr. Duff has done in Calcutta, is also well versed in Oriental learning, and is a fountain of information on subjects connected with surrounding races and religions. Greatly to the Bishop's satisfaction, Dr. Wilson accompanied the expedition to the caves of Karli (to be noticed in a subsequent letter), and, by his extensive knowledge on a difficult subject, turned the sculpture of the grand rock-cut temple into 350 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIII. a legible page of remote Indian history. Of these two, whose paths in life thus for a moment crossed, one has entered into his rest ; to the other it has been accorded to reach the fortieth anniversary of his arrival in India, and to receive a public recognition of his sustained and enlightened labours for the spread of knowledge and of truth. The editor of an Indian periodical closes with the following true and kind words a notice of the event : ' The present writer well remembers the keen delight with which our late Bishop on his visit to Bombay ex- plored the stores of information that Dr. Wilson had at his command. The sympathy between these two re- markable men was of no ordinary kind. They seemed to coalesce at once as kindred spirits, distinguished alike by intellectual vigour and by high moral purpose and philanthropic aims.' CH. XIV.] VISIT TO COLOMBO. 351 CHAPTEE XIV. VOYAGE TO CEYLON COLOMBO TINNEVELLY THE SYRIAN CHURCH LETTERS. THE Peninsular and Oriental mail steamer landed the Bishop's party in Ceylon late in December. Christmas was spent at Colombo with the Bishop and Mrs. Claughton ; New Year's Day at Kandy, in the spacious country-house of the Governor, surrounded by its beautiful tropical garden. Eighteen days were devoted to the usual busi- ness, to the sight of much good work prospering in the hands of the Bishop of Colombo, and to visiting various places and objects of interest in a country widely differing from India in races, customs, and natural features. India was regained by a most unpleasing passage on board a most unpleasing steamer, in which the voyagers were tossed for double the necessary number of hours on the chopping waters of the Gulf of Manaar. This wretched vessel, misnamed the 'Pearl,' had brought out Dr. Livingstone to the mouth of the Zambesi, and it was suggested that the voyage might stand on record as among the hardships of his life. It may be a yet further con- jecture whether experience of the ship's peculiarities did not facilitate on his part its ready sale to a former Governor of Ceylon for service as the official yacht of the island. The party landed at Tuticorin, in a southern corner of the great continent of India, and commenced at once the tour through the Christian districts of Tinnevelly, to which the Bishop had long looked forward as a valued privilege of his metropolitanship. Dr. Cald- 352 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [CH. xiv. well, of the Propagation Society, met the travellers on their landing, and was their most kind guide and escort during the ensuing fortnight. The Tinnevelly missions are now so famous that selected extracts from the Bishop's journal need but little preface. The missions and Christian settlements are chiefly congregated in the southern portions of the province, and are spread over an undulating district of red sand. Vegetation is mainly limited to Palmyra palms, their cultivators being Shanars (Palmyra-climbers), who draw from them their food and their wealth. Hence a rich man's worldly substance is computed not by the number of his acres of ground, but by the number of his trees. It is the business of the indus- trious Shanar to ascend some fifty trees, many of these being ninety feet in height, twice a day during eight months of the year, to extract the saccharine fluid by an incision into the flower-stalks, underneath the crown of fan-shaped leaves. Fresh from the tree this saccharine juice forms the family breakfast ; boiled into a hard black mass, the mid-day meal ; and by its sale, rice and curry (the staple Indian dinner) are procured. These Shanars are an aboriginal tribe ; and it is from a devil worship, partially overlaid with superstitions and caste prejudices derived from their Hindu conquerors, that Christianity has reclaimed them. Schwartz, Janicke, Satyanaden, Ehenius are honoured names in the small band of Lutherans who first sowed the seed which has brought forth an hundredfold. The Church of England now owns the missions, and her two great societies are, by labour carried on in close proximity, and in entire co-operation, adding yearly to a federation of 50,000 native Christians, isolated and compact within itself through low social standing and by peculiarities in geographical position and industrial pursuits. Nine missionary stations and centres of Christianized rural life were visited. At each in turn the travellers were received with a kind and cordial CH. XIV.] A TAMIL CONGREGATION. 353 welcome from the missionaries, and a very noisy, though not less hearty, one from the native Christians, who escorted them into their village, and again at their departure, with a deafening clang of bells and gongs. At each station there were Church services to be held, the Bishop's sermon being translated clause by clause to the Tamil congregation by the local missionary ; there were addresses to be received from catechists, school- masters and village headmen ; there were piles of sugar- candy to be accepted, if not consumed. The Bishop's elaborate journal recorded at length all that was seen and done. The few extracts annexed will serve to illustrate the general character of a fortnight's occupations : EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. Palamcotta, Sunday, January 10. . ... I went to the Tamil service, and was received at the mission church by Church Missionary Society missionaries and native pastors. A congregation of about 500 was assembled in a somewhat ugly church, to whom I preached, with Mr. Sargent's interpretation, on Kom. xii. 1 , the first verse of the epistle for the day. I was much struck to-day, at morning service, by the devout and intelligent manner of the native Christians. During the sermon they were constantly referring to their Bibles, and some were taking notes of it, with iron styles on palmyra-leaves. Stuart afterwards, through Mrs. Sargent's interpretation, ex- amined two classes of women in the substance of the sermon, and told me that they had thoroughly taken it in. Moreover, the responses were repeated with fervour, every one knelt during the prayers, and the whole scene was one from which many an European congregation might have learned a profitable lesson. Monday, January 11. In the evening we drove to the town of Tinnevelly, two miles off, to see the great temple. This temple, dedicated to Shiva, under a Tamil name meaning Sub- stantial Father, was our first specimen of the great Southern pagoda. It is of an enormous size, occupying the whole centre A A 354 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XIV. of the city, which clusters round it, the houses choking up its walls, as used to be the case with French cathedrals before Imperialism began to make up for its moral wickedness by material improvements. The temple is a square, inclosed by four walls of enormous length, with gateways piercing each wall, and crowned by richly-ornamented truncated pyramids. Outside are some huge idol-cars, and at the principal gate the two temple wardens and some other officials were waiting to receive us ; but the usual tomasha of dancing-girls, elephants, and Brahmans had been forbidden by the collector. Within the vast inclosure are a great variety of buildings and gardens. There are long corridors, with low roofs supported by sculptured pillars of stone ; generally painted, sometimes whitewashed, so as to lose the appe arance of stone ; sometimes carved with representations of grotesque monsters, especially a very peculiar one named the Tali, who was supposed to eat nothing but elephants, which he is represented as crunching. There are 6 halls of a thousand pillars,' as they are called ; gardens planted with palms and plantains, a large tank, and many dark covered recesses, appropriated, we were told, to deeds of evil. The shrine containing the idol was carefully closed, but near it were some images of bulls covered with plates of silver ; and the jewels of the god were exposed on a table for our inspection, and some of them were very beautiful, especially an enormous uncut emerald. It did not seem to me that the architecture and general plan of the temple were impressive or beautiful. The clustering of the pillars is sometimes picturesque, but the low roof, the whitewash, and the absence of any decoration or striking feature except these pillars, greatly marred the whole effect. In one way, however, the temple is very effective : never before has the combination of folly and wickedness in the Hindu religion been so prominently brought before me. I was never before more struck with its utter inferiority both to Buddhism and Mahometanism. Here is a huge pile of buildings, with a large endowment both in lands and cash, and a crowd of officials, dedicated to absolutely no purpose except childish trifling and immorality. The Brahmans and other officials have literally nothing to do but to perform certain absurd ceremonies in honour of their idol. Here is a specimen. In the garden above mentioned is a kind of dais, surrounded by a deep trench. In hot weather GH. XIV.] MISSION WORK IN TINNEVELLY. 355 the image is brought out, and reposes on this dais while they fill the trench with water, in order that the idol may cool him- self ; just as the English gentlemen (so one of the Brahmans explained it) go to the sea-coast or to the hills when it is very hot at Palamcotta. Tuesday, January 12. To-day was a contrast to yesterday, being entirely devoted to the Christian institutions, by means of which the missionaries hope some day to take possession of the purified temple of Tinnevelly. We breakfasted with the missionaries, and had some talk as to the process by which con- versions are now going on. They seem to be continual, and are chiefly produced, Mr. Sargent thinks, not by any single agency, but, under God's blessing, by the manifold influences by which Christianity spreads from house to house and village to village, through relationship, friendship, influence, example, preaching, and the mere presence and neighbourhood of the Grospel and its teachers. Four families came on New Year's Day to Mr. Sargent for instruction ; and they have now a small church built in the very focus of heathendom, Tinnevelly itself, at which about twenty families worship as a counter influence to the dancing-girls. We saw and examined altogether four educational institutions, viz. two boarding-schools for girls, a large school for boys, chiefly heathens, where English is vigor- ously taught, and a training institution for catechists, from which, through the remains of antiquated prejudice, English is excluded. Barring my great objection to this defect in the system of the preparandi class, I thought that all these schools were in their several ways good and effective, and I thank (rod for so complete an agency towards the accomplishment in India of the chapter which we heard last Sunday evening : Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts and upon the cattle, your carriages (the idol-cars of Tinnevelly) were heavy laden, they are a burden to the weary beast : they stoop, they bow down together, they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. May the Lord hasten it in his time ! Saturday, January 16. For seven miles to-day we passed through sand and palmyras, and at last reached the great Church Missionary Society station of Megnanapuram (' town of true wisdom '). The schools here are very good. We spent two A A 2 .356 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii. XIV. hours in examining them in Scripture, history, arithmetic and the geography of India; the last alone being imperfectly known. The church, still unfinished, is a building of very considerable beauty, in correct Early English, with lancet windows, light Gothic arches, ornamented with the dog-tooth mouldings, a clerestory, and a tall spire ; the two last incom- plete. The side aisles are finished, but the nave is covered by a temporary roof. It is the finest church that I have seen in this presidency, and one of the best in any of the three pre- sidencies. Sunday, January 17. The scene at morning service was very striking. On the floor of the fine church were seated about 1,400 dusky Hindus, neatly dressed catechists, school- masters, &c., in white ; women often in gay, but not gaudy, colours ; the poorer or unofficial men only with their waist- clothes school-children massed together in two squares : all profoundly attentive to the sermon, and joining heartily in the responses. The singing, too, was excellent soft, melodious, and reverential. Mr. Thomas, now in England, is the doer of these good deeds at Megnanapuram, and must be a remarkable man, combining missionary zeal with manifold tastes and accom- plishments for architecture, as shown in his church, and for music, as shown in the singing of his congregation. I much regret missing him. Suviseshapuram (' Gospel-town '), Monday, January 18. The schools were briefly disposed of by all coming to family prayers, where they sang a hymn well, then read the Psalms for the day, and then listened to the interpretation of an exposition from me, half in the form of question and answer, of a chapter in St. Matthew. Then we had service in a pretty church in fair Gothic style with a good tower. There I preached to a congregation of about 1,200 on one of my favourite passages, Ephesians ii. 8-10, which I consider more perfectly and con- cisely unites the teaching of faith and good works than almost any other passage in the Bible, except perhaps Titus ii. 11-14, to which I also referred my auditors. The address from the* catechists and schoolmasters, with the usual ceremonial, fol- lowed the service ; but with this the good folk of these parts were not contented. Immediately round Suviseshapuram are from thirty to forty Christian villages, and each of these sent Cn. XIV.] EDYEXKOODY. 357 a deputation to greet us, consisting of its headmen, catechists, and one or two principal inhabitants, bearing plantains and sugar-candy. I was much pleased and interested by the knowledge which Mr. Schaffter showed of the spiritual state of each congregation. As each passed before me, he said to me a few words about their progress or declension, with a nice dis- crimination, perfect sincerity, and kind consideration for their difficulties, which proved him to be a most zealous and efficient pastor of these flocks scattered in the wilderness of heathendom. The scene quite reminded me of the Seven Churches in Asia. I tried, when anything very special was said, to say a few appro- priate words of advice or encouragement to the people. Tuesday., January 19. This morning, soon after 6, Dr. Caldwell, kindest and most efficient of guides to the labours of others, carried us off to see his own. We passed over a tole- rably green region of grain and palmyras, and sometimes through avenues of neerns or banyan-trees, to his neat village of Edyenkoody (' abode of the shepherd '), which is its original name, not, as in the case of most other villages, imposed by missionaries after its inhabitants became Christian, but existing in heathen days, and an unconscious prophecy that it would one day be blessed with a Christian pastor. One of the most successful operations of Edyenkoody is lace-making, which Mrs. Caldwell has imported from Buckinghamshire, and which women carry on in the verandah of the parsonage. This lace is so much sought throughout India, that the profits of each woman average eight rupees a month, of which four rupees are for herself and four for the mission. I examined the school, and afterwards catechised and lectured the bible-classes of men and married women, which met in church at 2 o'clock. Otherwise the day was a quiet one, tolerably free from work ; whereat I rejoiced, for I am feeling a little overdone. The village is arranged in regular streets, and planted with neem-trees, while more than one great tamarind affords shelter for the headmen and pur- chayats, where causes are heard and determined. Part of the land here is planted with cotton : the whole place shows abundant signs of order, industry, and resolute improvement, proving that godliness has indeed the promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come, and which could not but remind us of the prophet's words, that the desert shall blossom 358 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Ce. XIV. as the rose. Altogether Edyenkoody has been a most worthy close of our deeply interesting tour in Tinnevelly, than which no province is better worth visiting, both for the Christian be- liever and the mere philanthropist ; for, quite independent of the religious aspect of the great work here accomplished by Grod's grace, the mere progress of education, especially female edu- cation, and the moral, intellectual and material improvement of about 50,000 low-caste Hindus, is surely an object for un- mixed joy. How long, I wonder, will it be before Government education produces so happy a result ? Friday, January 2 2 . Last night, late, we arrived at Nager coil, a suburb of the native town of Kotan, and the headquarters of the London Missionary Society in Travancore. We were most kindly welcomed by Mr. Dennis and Mr. Duthie, and are lodged in the house of the latter. In the afternoon I proceeded I record it with all due terror of the ' Guardian' to the mission church. A row of chairs was placed for the visitors, and two large bible-classes one of catechists and schoolmasters, the other of women sat on the floor. I gave them a tolerably searching examination in the rudiments of Christian theology, chiefly following the order of the Apostle's Creed, and the answers generally were remarkably good, especially those given by the women a striking contrast to the condition of the female sex before Christianity spread its influence over the land. One woman showed herself capable of meeting Colenso in argument ; for when the text ' Jesus increased in wisdom and stature ' was mentioned as a proof of His perfect humanity, I asked whether that threw any doubt over the infallibility of His teaching. She replied by saying, that the Spirit was given to Him without measure when He began His ministry. Finally I addressed to them a few words of exhortation. Surely the fact that an English bishop could take his seat between two Nonconformist ministers, examine and harangue their flock on the foundation of the faith without introducing a word of which they seemed to disapprove, and receive after- wards their warm thanks for what he had said, is a proof of the essential unity of Christendom, or at least of rational and evangelical Christendom. After dinner we took an affectionate farewell of Dr. Cald well, whose presence during this part of the tour has been of inestimable value, from his practical manage- CH. XIV.] TRAVANCORE. 359 ment of our journeys, his knowledge of the people, and his floods of Sanscritic and Tamil lore. Once more on the west coast of India, in the kingdom of Travancore, the Bishop's party made straight for the Syrian Church. Their way led through the ' backwaters * strips of inland sea lining the coast like Venetian lagunes. Up these they passed in small narrow rowboats, and on January 25 they reached the beautiful station of Cottyam, as rich as Ceylon in tropical scenery and vegetation. Cottyam is the headquarters of the Church missions of Travancore, and is also one of the centres of the Syrian Church. This withered branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church has always had a powerful attraction for leaders of the Anglican Church in India, the bishops of the latter having included it in their ' visitations ' as much as if their letters-patent enjoined the duty. Claudius Bucha- nan, in his researches among other bodies of Christians, drew the Syrians out of the silence and seclusion of long years, and made a beginning in the great work of turning their scarce manuscripts into print. The first Protestant bishop of British India examined their doctrines and their archives with the profound interest of a scholar, and his immediate successor corresponded with the Metran or Metropolitan of his day. It is easy to imagine the zeal and enthusiasm with which the fervid prelate, Daniel Wilson, after witnessing the celebration of mass, preached to the assembled congregation on Evangelical truth. But the permission to Protestants to preach to the Syrians was subsequently withdrawn. Their relations towards the Church Missionary Society, which at the time of Bishop Wilson's first visit were in a critical state, became shortly afterwards entirely hostile. A college, shared by both Churches, and intended to be the passage of the Syrians to ordination, was a fruitful source of discord. At Bishop Wilson's second visit, some years later, the property had 360 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIV. been divided, the. building was made over to the Syrians, and the rupture was complete. The two communions are now more friendly in their mutual relations, but each retains its independence. ' A gentle hand and a master mind ' would seem especially needed for the maintenance of salutary influence over a Church which survived the crushing persecutions of the Inquisition of Goa, and which numbers on its muster-roll of bishops, men like the Metro- politan Mar Dionysius, who, sixty years ago, with that same spirit of independence that has flashed in more modern utterances of Eastern patriarchs, replied to the overtures of Buchanan, ' I would sacrifice much for union ; only let me not be called upon to compromise anything of the dignity and purity of our Church.' With the Metran in office in 1864 Bishop Cotton had no personal intercourse, for he was absent ; but the Cathanars, or priests, with their usual courtesy and willingness to receive if not to follow counsels, asked if he was really the suc- cessor of ' Bishop Daniel,' and requested him to address their congregation : ' so I spoke to them,' to quote a pas- sage of the journal, ' a few words on the need of Christian unity, and the deep importance of the points on which the Syrian and English Churches are agreed, which I briefly enumerated, ending with an exhortation that, as to those on which we differ, we should pray that the Holy Spirit may guide us into all truth.' There were indications in 1864 of slight progress and reformation. The Metran then in office permitted the Syrians to be students in the new college, built since the quarrel by the Church Mis- sionary Society, and was developing other liberal tenden- cies. Still, while the Church reposes tranquilly on its connexion with Antioch, and on the due observance of a formal ritual, and does little for the spread of light and knowledge within its borders, or for the evangelisation of the heathen without, its aspect is rather that of an ancient ecclesiastical relic than of a living member of Christ's CH. XIV.] THE SYRIAN CHURCH. 361 Body. The Syrian Church has been so fully described in the memoirs of Bishop Middleton and Bishop Wilson, that it will be sufficient to subjoin the following brief notice of points which were made the subject of special inquiry during the short stay at Cottyam here recorded. EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. January 1864. . . . I had some conversation with Marcus, an old and infirm Cathanar, and with Philippus, a younger one, through an interpreter, and abundance of talk with the Church Missionary Society's missionary, Mr. Baker, and with Greorge Matthan, who was ordained deacon in his national church, and in spite of his secession to ours, in consequence of the unscripttiral practices and stagnant condition of the Cathanars, retains a very kindly feeling to his brethren after the flesh. How the Church ceased to be Nestorian, and to what degree it is now exactly Eutychian, are points on which I could not get satisfactory in- formation. Greorge Matthan thought that when the Portuguese tried to force Eomanism on the Syrians, they sought aid from Antioch, and thence obtained Jacobite bishops ; but they have had Nestorian bishops since that day, for Marcus showed me the grave of one of them in front of the altar of his church. I was told that, during the service of consecration of the bread and wine, the specially Jacobite form of doctrine is stated ' One very Emanuel, who cannot be divided into two natures.' At present, in the ordination service the Cathanars are made to anathematise both Nestorius and Eutyches, for there seems to be some slight difference between the Jacobite and Eutychian dogma. . . . The font, which is near the entrance of the church, is large enough to immerse an infant, but not an adult. If an adult is baptised, water is poured so completely over him that he is practically immersed in it. He stands by the font, and nearly its whole contents are emptied upon him, and flow down over the floor of the church. There are a good many ceremonies besides the simple baptism the exorcism of evil spirits; the chrism; the breathing upon the water by the priest ; a strange plan of mixing warm and cold water, with the assertion that c John mixed water for baptism, and Christ sanctified it, went down 302 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XIV. into it, and was baptised ; ' and an investiture of the baptised person with a girdle and crown, of which the latter is removed by the priest seven days after the baptism, with a prayer that the child may receive instead of it a crown of glory. The doctrine of regeneration in baptism is strongly stated, and the personification of the infant by the sponsor, to which Simpkin- son so vehemently objects, is found in the Syrian service. 6 Those that are at variance with each other shall not com- municate until they be reconciled ' (from the Syrian canons, cf. our Rubric). The administration of the Holy Communion to the laity in both kinds is expressly enjoined by the canons, but ' if that be impossible [why ?], the priest shall dip the body in the cup, held by the deacon, and then administer it.' Buying, selling, and travelling, (except for urgent necessary affairs, or on the compulsion of Government,) are forbidden on Sunday. Rest on Saturday is forbidden as Jewish. Metrans are buried under or close to the altar ; priests in the body of the church ; laymen outside the church. The Syrians, (at least of Cottyam,) are apt to treat irreverently the remains of the dead ; they bury a corpse in a grave which has been previously occupied, throwing the bones which they find in it into a great pit overgrown with weeds and nettles in the corner of the churchyard. I find that they offer prayers both to and for the dead ; but as to the latter kind of prayers, their doctrine is very much less objectionable than that of purgatory, as they only maintain that the final state of each soul is not always decided till the day of judgment, and that meantime it is possible that the prayers of the Church may prevail with G od to pardon at the last those in whose behalf they are offered. They do not profess to know much about the present condition of the departed, but believe that they are affected by the memory of their past lives, their general abode being an unknown region called Paradise, though some who have lived very wickedly are already in hell, from which, however, it is possible that prayer may rescue them The Syrians would, but for Church schisms, acknowledge five patriarchates : Rome, to which they would allow precedency if they were in communion with it, Alexandria, Constantinople, instead of Ephesus, Antioch, and Jerusalem or Csesarea (the CH. XIV.] CONDITION OF THE SYRIAN CHURCH. 363 two being united like Bath and Wells). To these was added a patriarch of Seleucia and Ctesiphon for Arabia and Persia. The chief of the Abyssinian Church is not to be allowed to make himself a patriarch, but is a metropolitan under Alexandria. Metropolitans are under patriarchs, and conse- crated by them. The Metrans are to ordain, at the entrance to the chancel, widows as deaconesses They hold part of the Apocrypha Tobit, Maccabees, and, I suppose, Wisdom to be canonical. Philippus was anxious that I should get him a copy of the Book of Maccabees, which he did not possess. They include Clement's Epistles in the New Testament Besides Nestorius and Eutyches, they anathematise in the ordination service all heathens, Jews, astrologers, Leo, the Synod of Chalcedon, Paul of Samosata, Julian the Apostate, Arius, together with (convenient vagueness) 'all whom the Syrian Church anathematises ; ' and to these the late Metran expressly added Luther, but his name has been removed by order of Mar Athanasius, the present Metran. After the kiss of peace in the Sunday service, there is a long commemoration of departed saints, including James the Lord's brother, Ignatius, Clement, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Dioscoros, Cyril, who is styled ' a lofty and true wall, and the professor who openly acknowledged the manhood of the Son of Grod ; ' James Bara- dseus, from whom, I believe, they are called Jacobites, Ephraim, and Simeon Stylites Practical corruptions seem considerable, and their general condition ignorant and somewhat degraded, certainly from the level of Christianity, though not, I rejoice to think, to the level of heathenism ; for they are described as a quiet, indus- trious, and at least fairly respectable generation, while their houses, to judge by one which I entered, are very neat and clean. Spite of the quarrel with the Church Missionary Society, which arose mainly, I am assured, from the desire of some of the Syrians in the late Metran's time to finger the property of the college, the neighbourhood of the English Church is plainly improving the Syrians ; and the present Metran, Athanasius, who was not at Cottyam during our visit, is a reformer. He does not hinder his people, nor even his deacons, from pursuing their studies in our college ; he has 364 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [C'n. XIV. encouraged the Cathanars to give the cup to the laity, the practice having generally been to give the wafer dipped in the wine ; he has ordered them to say the prayers as far as possible in Malayalim, and even to preach, though they have a difficulty in obeying this order, as none of them have been trained or accustomed to do so. Unhappily, he does not seem to carry much weight personally. Nor is there much help to be hoped for from Antioch, where the Church is sunk in superstitious bigotry, and whence a prelate named Curilos has lately been sent to check and watch the reforming tendencies of Athanasius. To the Dean of Westminster. St. Thomas's College, Colombo, Ceylon, January 4, 1864. ... I cannot say with what pleasure I think of you as ruling the noblest and grandest of our English churches the one to which, in historical and religious interest, even Canter- bury must yield ; the one in which I worshipped as a boy, was confirmed, and was consecrated to the great work of my life ; the one which (more even than St. Paul's), brings you into influential contact with London society, and gives you oppor- tunities of leavening with good its frivolity and selfishness. Do you remember that in 1858 you and I drank tea to- gether in Dean Trench's drawing-room ? I wonder whether in 1868, when, if alive, I shall be entitled to furlough, we shall drink tea together in Dean Stanley's drawing-room. As to the school of Westminster, in which, spite of other influences, I still feel considerable interest, I see only two courses open by which it can be made worthy of its great name, and restored to usefulness. Either make it a great day-school for the city of Westminster, retaining boarders in the college, and others who like to come, or move it bodily to some pleasing country retreat, and make it a rival to Eton, Harrow, and Rugby. Its con- nexion with the Abbey may be retained through yourself, and by bringing the boys up once a year to a great service and other public display at election-time. There is no tertium quid, except to leave it a comparatively insignificant institution with 120 boys. I shall be curious to hear your judgment on the CH. XIV.] GOA. 365 play. The four selected for representation (Andria, Eunuchus, Phormio, Adelphi) seem in any case indefensible. . . . Most earnestly, too, do I hope that Grod's blessing will be on you as a husband, as well as in your work as dean, though, doubtless, Lord Elgin's premature death throws a shadow of melancholy over this part of your new life. All India has been impressed by the really magnanimous calmness with which Lord Elgin waited for the fatal hour, in full certainty that it was at hand ; the thoughtfulness with which he gave such directions that the public service might not suffer, and that his widow might travel home in comfort ; and which seemed the fitting end of a life spent not on his own amusement or enjoyment, but in the service of his country. The chaplain of Dharmsala wrote to me in admiration of the peaceful composure and reverent devotion with which he received the Sacrament, in entire consciousness that it was his last communion. . . . There has been so much to say about you and yours, that it seems rather a bathos to descend to my own personal move- ments. This year the visitation has been metropolitan, and began on the birthday of your prince and of my daughter. Out of the objects which the tour has presented to us, I shall, more tuo, select three for a few concluding remarks. These shall be (1) Groa, (2) Karli, (3) the Dalada Temple at Kandy. (1.) Groa is a very pretty place as far as scenery is con- cerned, and the visit to it was made singularly pleasant by the courtesy of the Portuguese Governor, and the attractive qualities of his aide-de-camp, Dom Grenge de Mello, whom he deputed to escort us and show us all the sights. But he who has just read Buchanan's description, and expects to see it realised, will be disappointed with Groa. Much that Buchanan describes has vanished for ever. The convents are all sup- pressed ; the monks are driven away ; a few nuns (about eleven) survive in the Abbey of St. Monica, but no novices are admitted. The great Augustinian convent is a ruin. Of the Inquisition buildings nothing can be seen but the foundations cropping up from the dense jungle. The Viceregal palace is pulled down, and both Viceroy and Archbishop have transferred themselves to healthier regions, the one at New Groa, the other at Kabendar. Three churches of importance alone remain the 366 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOJS". [Cii. XIV cathedral, St. Cajetan, and the Church of the Bom Jesus all are large, some beautiful. The second of them is attached to a Theatine convent, where some cells have been thrown to- gether, and turned into a set of rooms for the Governor, who usually spends Holy Week there. The third church contains Xavier's tomb, and therefore all the remaining interest of Groa. The shrine is adorned by four fine bas-reliefs in bronze, repre- senting Xavier preaching, baptising, persecuted and dying ; and on the top of the shrine, which is very lofty, rests the coffin of solid silver containing his body. Just outside the chapel is a portrait of him, said to be perfectly authentic, and representing a face of marvellous pathos and devotion. I confess, however, that while he deserves the title of the Apostle of India for his energy, self-sacrifice, and piety, I consider his whole method thoroughly wrong, its results in India and Ceylon most deplorable, and that the aspect of the native Christians at Groa and elsewhere shows that Romanism has had a fair trial at the conversion of India, and has entirely failed. Let us only hope and pray that Protestantism may do better. The one bright example of a flourishing and industrious settle- ment of native Eomanists is at Bettia, near Nepaul, and with it neither Xavier nor the priests of Groa had anything to do. (2.) Karli took us back to a yet earlier form of worship, the cave being, it is believed, one of the earliest efforts of Buddhism. It is really magnificent. Having sufficiently admired the sur- rounding landscape, you stand at the richly-carved entrance of a vast excavation, hollowed into a shape resembling the choir of a great Grothic cathedral, divided into three aisles by two rows of columns, with fantastic capitals composed of elephants and their riders, ending in a semicircular apse, which is filled up (as the east end of a Christian church is by its altar), by a daghoba, a bell-shaped structure covering a relic of Buddha or one of his saints. Hard by the great cave, by climbing up the rock, you come to a vihara, or monastery, with the monks' cells arranged in rows, all excavated from the rock, and a common room in front with a stone ledge, on which doubtless they sat and taught their disciples. On the other side of the cave, also excavated from the rock, is an apartment for the lodgment of pilgrims. The whole is attributed, on evidence fairly satisfactory, to the time of Asoka, the great patron of CH. XIV.] TEMPLE OF THE DALADA. 367 Buddhism, about 200 B.C. It is one of the most striking of Indian sights, and illustrates and is illustrated by the Bhilsa topes, which I saw and imperfectly described to you last year. (3.) From Buddhism prostrate and extinct in India, we passed to the temple of the Dalada, and there saw it alive and ram- pant in Ceylon. Max Miiller will have taught you to recog- nise dens and oSovs in dalada, and to perceive that this temple contains Sakya's tooth, the most sacred of Buddhist relics. A promise was given that we should see the tooth itself ; but when we reached Kandy we were told that the keeper of the key had gone away perhaps a civil excuse for not showing what they are very reluctant to show. However, I did not care much for the tooth itself, which is, I was assured, merely a long piece of discoloured ivory, unquestionably part of an elephant's tusk. We were carefully admitted to see all the paraphernalia which surround it. The temple itself is small and rather tawdry with red and yellow paint ; the chapel in which the tooth is enshrined is so minute that we could hardly squeeze our party into it. In front of the shrine is a silver table, covered with flowers offered by the faithful. The tooth is guarded by a large iron cage, secured by many locks, within which is a silver gilt shrine in the daghoba (the tope of Bhilsa, the pagoda of Burmah), richly adorned with jewels, and doubt- less both pretty and gorgeous. Within this daghoba are six others, each decreasing in size, and within the seventh lies the tooth. Candles burned before it and about it ; the smell of the flowers was exactly like the odour of incense, and the resem- blance of the whole to the chapel and shrine enclosing a Roman Catholic relic was most striking. In another chapel hard by are some costly images of Buddha, of rock crystal ; and at no great distance is a colossal image of him, thirty-six feet long, lying down, with his head resting on his hand, supposed to be in the act of receiving nirvana. To the Rev. G. G. Bradley. Cape Comorin, January 21, 1864. We have just finished a fortnight's most interesting visita- tion of the Tinnevelly missions. I can assure you that I have been deeply impressed with the reality and thoroughgoing 368 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ca. XIV. character of the whole business : and I entreat you never to believe any insinuations against missionary work in India, or to scruple to plead, or allow to be pleaded, in your chapel, the cause of either the Society for the Propagation of the Grospel or the Church Missionary Society. All the English humbug, the petty rivalries between the two societies, the nonsense which one hears from a wandering ' deputation,' vanish in this land where the real work is going on, and the actual contest is waged between Christ and Belial. In Tinnevelly, the two societies work hand in hand, their districts interlace ; and we were escorted continually by a Society for the Propagation of the Grospel missionary into the domain of a Church Missionary Society man, some five miles distant from his own, and met altogether for family prayers, a cheerful breakfast, a pleasant practical talk about parochial and evangelistic plans, a joint inspection of schools and church, and other parochial institutions. The whole country is now mapped out into regular Christian districts, each furnished with a substantial church, parsonage, and schools in its central village, and with small prayer-houses in the minor hamlets. A thoroughly good simple vernacular education is given all over the country, and there are four efficient training-schools two for schoolmasters, one for cate- chists, and one for mistresses. In one of these, and also in a large central school at Palamcotta, the capital of the pro- vince, English is taught ; in the others instruction is given through the medium of Tamil. And to one of these training- schools (for masters) is attached a regular playground and gymnastic apparatus, where I witnessed cricket being played, and poles climbed by tawny Indian Christians, with light white garments wrapped round their middles; and where, at Christmas, there had been athletic games worthy of Marlborough, includ- ing flat races, high jumps, sack races, and every kind of exhibi- tion of muscular Christianity. In every parish there are short services morning and evening, which all attend when not hindered by house or field work ; and bible-classes of men and women, systematically taught, some of which I examined, and found the women most intelligent and correct in their answering. Compare this, I entreat you, with the condition of women in a zenana ! Industry, order, cleanliness, domestic purity, improve- ment in worldly circumstances, are all conspicuous among the CH. XIV.] SUCCESS OF THE T1XXEVELLY MISSIONS. 3G 9 Tinnevelly Christians, and if they are still somewhat given to prevarications and untruthfulness, yet we must remember that this is the national vice of India, and that Christianity can no more eradicate it all at once, than it eradicated by a sudden blow impurity from Corinth or Ephesus, or worldly selfishness from the higher and drunkenness from the lower ranks of English society. Most of the converts are Shanars, a caste corresponding to our small farmers, and chiefly occupied in the culture and climbing of the palmyra tree, from which they extract sugar ; some are Pariahs. But the leaven is spreading upwards, and I myself had a conversation with two inquirers of the caste next to the Brahmans, who seemed to me at once intelligent, humble, and earnest in their Christian aspirations. As to the temporal results of the Gospel in these parts, one person told me that society is getting turned upside down, and instead of the Shanars being in debt to the Brahmans, the Brahmans are now borrowing money from the Shanars. Alto- gether, I do not think that anyone can go through the Tinnevelly missions without being the better for it ; and I feel that my own faith in the Grospel has been strengthened by the journey, and by the actual sight of what Christianity can do. ' I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.' To his Son. Ootacamund, February 6, 1864. We are deeply thankful for the improved accounts of your health. The banquet and charades of Christmas Eve would have furnished sufficient proofs of recovery, without the addition of the cracked table and cascade of port wine. Your restora- tion is indeed a great mercy, and I rejoiced to read in one of your letters that you were ready to acknowledge by whose hand this mercy had been sent. We have had very hard travelling of late, and have, I think, deserved a brief rest in the hills, up at Ootacamund. The Nil- gherries are a projection from the Ghats, the grand range of mountains which run north and south from Bombay to Cape Comorin, and the name means Blue Mountains, since the part of the Ghats against which they abut are of a most lovely blue tint, especially near sunset such a tint as Turner should have per- B B 370 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XIV. petuated on canvas. We had breakfast and luncheon at Coonoor, the first station on the hills, and afterwards had a most toilsome ascent in bullock carriages to Ootacamund, twelve miles further, which we did not reach till 10 P.M. We found rooms secured for us in a most comfortable hotel, and slept like tops. The place has many great attractions. It is a little more than 7,000 feet high, and therefore delightfully cool ; in fact, in the mornings and evenings piercingly cold ; and it is situated in a kind of basin of table land surrounded by hills, so that it is possible to drive about in carriages, the only difficulty being that the horse is an animal as nearly unknown in the ' benighted ' Presidency of Madras as it was to the American Indians when the Spaniards landed on their coast, and were imagined to form part of the animals on which they rode. Hence horse- carriages are outrageously dear, and bullock -carriages are used instead. The flowers are most luxurious : in wild flowers, indeed, I see nothing to match Darjeeling, with its glorious orchids and air plants ; but of English garden and semi- greenhouse plants roses, geraniums, heliotropes, verbenas, and the like the profusion is quite wonderful, the roads being bordered by whole hedges of them. The great inferiority to the Himalayan stations is in the want of a snowy range. The Nilgherries rise scarcely 500 feet higher than Ootacamund, and their tops are mere green mounds. Hence a person who remembers the magnificence of Grungutri or Kunchinjinga feels something like contempt when an Ootacamundian, in a voice of triumphant self-complacency, points to a snub-nosed hill as 4 Dodabetta, the highest peak in South India.' Of course, the Nilgherries, as seen from the plains of India, are fine mountains enough, but from Ootacamund, which is nearly at their top, their elevation is but paltry. We have been to visit a wild hill tribe here called the Todas, the aborigines of the Nil- gherries, who live in houses like inverted boats, made of bamboo and rattan, about seven feet high, and perhaps eleven long and six wide, wholly without windows or chimneys, and with no approach but through a door about eighteen inches square. They were rather good looking and friendly folk, with long black hair, and raiment very scanty for such a climate, and "invited us to enter their dwellings. This your mother declined to do, but Mr. Stuart and I crawled in on our hands CH. XIV.] USES OF AFFLICTION". 371 and knees, but were nearly blinded by the smoke of a wood fire which blazed in the house, and by a kind of perpetual miracle does not envelop it and its inhabitants in the flames. Their food is rice and milk, their property bullocks. They had a temple shaped like their houses, but would not allow us to enter it. Combining the useful with the spiritual, they store away in it their ghee and other provisions. Except the Andamanese, they are the wildest people that I ever saw. Ursula was not with us on this occasion, but was so excited by our description that we must, I think, take her to see our Toda friends. To Professor Conington. Ootacamund, Nilgherry Hills, February 10, 1864. Since I wrote to you last, I find that the fears and anxieties which you expressed in your letter to me have turned out only too well founded, and that you have been deprived of the affection and support of your brother. I saw a pleasing little notice of him quoted in the ' Friend of India ' from the ' Spectator,' which gave me the first intimation that he was actually taken from you, and since that the sad news has been repeated from many quarters. You know me too well to doubt that my thoughts were with you, even amidst the multifarious interests and distractions of a rapid visitation tour. You have been much tried lately by family losses and illnesses, but it is not hard to discern in them an element of mercy and fatherly love, as far as they directly affect you. A man of books and thought in the midst of the most intellectual society of an intellectual and sceptical age requires to be reminded practically that he needs something higher than intellect to rest upon, and that ' whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.' And, of course, a word like this, which might be spoken to any active minded man at Oxford, has a very real and definite application when spoken by me to you, remem- bering, as we must, all our letters and many conversations on such subjects, and the doubts, difficulties, and temptations by which we have been both troubled in different degrees and manners. I feel myself, at the sight of death and trouble, how utterly powerless are the nostrums of Congreve, or New- man, or Colenso ; how certainly there is no rest for us except in B B 2 372 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. XIV. Christ. May you, my dear old friend, find there abundant rest, and be enabled to believe with your whole heart that ' thy brother shall rise again.' Our tour, just beginning when I wrote to you last, is now verging to its close. We are resting for ten days in this delightful and bracing climate, till we must descend upon hot Madras in time for the next Peninsular and Oriental steamer to Calcutta. We both look forward to our return there with hope and pleasure, and are both getting really to like India. Once I remember comparing my feelings towards the diocese and India with those entertained by Arnold to Rugby school and Rugby town, the diocesan work being my plant, and India my pot. I now formally recall that comparison, and declare that I like the pot as well as the plant. To Mrs. Tomkinson. Coonoor, Nilgherri Mountains, February 17, 1864. I have formed a habit, a praiseworthy one I think, of writing to you a letter of pure chit-chat at the end of each cold weather tour. I am sure that it is good occasionally to write on absolutely general and public topics, and to banish difficul- ties, uncertainties, private concerns altogether, just as it is desirable to vary the real work of life by seeing fine scenery, or by reading a number of the ' Small House at Allington.' I consider that this has been the most interesting and note- worthy of all our tours, except, perhaps, the first, from Calcutta to Simla, in 1859-60, when everything was new. The recol- lections of that journey are most delightful, but the one now ending is only second to it. As to races and religions, we have seen Parsees at Bombay worshipping the setting sun, and exposing their dead on high towers to vultures; we have recalled the past greatness of Buddhism in the magnificent cave at Karli, and witnessed its present apathy and degeneracy in the priests and worshippers of Kandy, who gather round the temple where Buddha's tooth is enshrined ; we have visited Syrians at Cottyam, anathematising Nestorins and the Council of Chalcedon, and repeating the Nicene Creed without the words acknowledging the double procession ; white Jews at Cochin, some with blue eyes and light hair, boasting of the CH. XIV.] , INDIAN SCEXERY. 373 perfect purity of their Hebrew blood, like St. Paul to the Philippians, but without the accompanying confession that ' What things were given to him these he counted loss for Christ ; ' black Jews in the same place, probably either Hindu converts to Judaism, or illegitimate descendants of the white Jews, not, as some have vainly imagined, fugitives from Pharoah Necho, or I know not what other Egyptian king ; castes and races on the west coast, including two royal families, in which, owing to the horrid custom of polyandry, the inheritance, and even the rajahship, passes to the sister's son, as the only one certainly inheriting the family blood ; and lastly, a mountain race in these hills called the Todas, exacting tribute, as lords of the soil, from certain Hindu folk who fled up here from the persecution of the Mahometans, and worshipping in a manner which would gratify the Comtists as a purely industrial form of religion, since it consists entirely in churning butter. To this enumeration of races and religions I must thankfully add one which deserves a paragraph to itself, the Christianised peasantry of Tinnevelly and Travancore, a most encouraging and edifying sight. The parochial system is carried out much more thoroughly than in England ; my only fear is that it is too thorough, that the people are kept too much in a state of drill, and that enough play is not allowed for national and individual characteristics. However, the whole aspect of things is most cheering. Of the intelligent knowledge, and orderly, industrious, and religious habits of our fellow Chris- tians in the extreme south of India there can be no doubt. Descriptions of scenery are always tiresome and vapid, unless undertaken by a Kingsley, a Kuskin, or (let me add from old boyish recollections) a Mrs. Badcliffe, so I shall only enumerate a few of the most striking places and views we have seen : The Falls of Grerseppa, with the ghat leading up to them ; the Groa Eiver ; the views from Elephanta towards the Bombay harbour, and from the heights above Bombay towards Elephanta ; the magnificent view of mountains and valleys from Khandala at the top of the Bhore Grhat on the Bombay Railway ; the road from Ofalle to Colombo, with its sea, rocks, and groves of cocoa- nuts ; Kandy ; Cottyam ; some peeps along the backwater which, like a series of Venetian lagoons, forms the watery highway through Travancore and Cochin ; the view from the 374 LIFE OF BISHOr COTTON. [Cu. XIV. top of Dodabetta, highest of the Mlgherries, and several views about Coonoor down the pass, and over the plains at the foot, though Charlotte need not think that the Nilgherries, with all their beauty, can compare to her own Himalayas, from the ab- sence of the glorious snowy peaks piercing the blue sky, or tinted with the colours of sunrise and sunset, which are perhaps the most sublime of earthly sights. There was also great interest in seeing the character of the whole west coast of India from the sea from Bombay southwards, including the grand chain of the West Ghats, from which the Nilgherries and some other groups of hills are projections ; and especially in standing on the very extremity of India at Cape Comorin, looking over the waste of waters on which Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs, Portuguese succes- sively struggled to India, and to see how the huge continent manages at last to get itself finished. Cape Comorin, however, in itself is not a fine object ; it is the last expiring effort, and a very puny one, of the great convulsion which upheaved the Ghats. To make up for this, it is surrounded with a number of legends about Shiva and his wife Parvati, and to bathe in the waters near it is a very effective way of getting rid of one's sins. We did so, but I do not know that I have been morally much the better for it since, though doubtless, after a night's journey, I was physically invigorated, and, therefore, on an old (but probably transient) view of P.'s, that virtue and vice depend mainly on atmospheric and climatic influences, I perhaps shared the benefits which the worshippers of Shiva derive from the lustration. While standing on the Cape, S. and I recalled the day, just four years ago, when, hoisted on an elephant, and reading a very amusing letter from the said P., we approached Jamrood, the north-west extremity of India, and looked down upon the Khyber Pass. Between these two extremities we have seen and done a great deal ; would that the doings were at all in proportion to the opportunities given to us, and the countless mercies for which we have so much reason to be thankful in our Indian life. As to work, there has been a suspension of confirmations and clerical business, but perhaps rather more abundance than usual of preaching and haranguing. The charge was delivered with parched throat four times. Spurgeon-like, I preached in Tinnevelly eleven times in a fortnight ; and the practice there of presenting an CH. XIV.] STUDY OF ENGLISH IN INDIA. 375 address to the metropolitan in each Christian settlement, led to interminable minor harangues. Still, on the whole, there was an agreeable sensation of being a visitor, a learner, and an inquirer, rather than an official teacher and decider of contro- versies, which is necessarily my position when on a diocesan visitation. To Rev. H. Venn. March, 1864. ... It is needless for me to speak about Tinnevelly. The evidence of reality and thoroughness in the work was even more striking than I had expected, and I have nowhere seen more reverence and attention in church, or listened to more hearty and devout congregational singing and responses. There is only one subject on which I think it necessary to write, because it is one on which opinions seem still in some degree divided, though the tendency is, I think, inclining to the view which I am going to advocate. I am strongly convinced that the time has come when the study of English should be more encouraged than it has been among our converts. Of course I do not advocate its in- troduction in the ordinary village schools, any more than I should wish to have Latin taught in the national schools of England ; but I do wish it made a part of the training of catechists and schoolmasters for the following reasons. In the first place, without English a man cannot obtain that efficient theological character which a teacher at least ought to have received. It is true that some of our standard works in English theology are translated, but we all know that a trans- lation is not equal to the original, and some of the so-called translations are mere epitomes and abstracts. Now all who have had to do with the Universities must remember how cramping and unsatisfactory is the use of cram books and abridgments, which the inferior tutors at Oxford and Cam- bridge substitute for the original works of our great authors, that so they may push their pupils through their examinations with the minimum of trouble and also of profit. But again, the study of English is spreading further and further among the heathen. We must not allow the Chris- tians to be inferior to them in knowledge, and in the power of 376 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XIV taking a good social position. The influence of the native Christians ought to be such as gradually to leaven all society. Again, there is a great and increasing desire among the Christians to learn English ; I am quite sure that to put any hindrance in their way chafes them with a sense of unkind- ness and injustice, and leads to those evils which were justly deplored in the report of the Punjab Missionary Conference. I do not overlook the arguments which are urged in favour of an exclusively vernacular training. It is said that a know- ledge of English, being exceptional, makes a young man con- ceited, gives him European tastes, and produces in him indif- ference to his countrymen. But first, in proportion as the knowledge becomes less exceptional, these evil results will diminish. Next, this is only arguing against the use of a privilege by its abuse, which is seldom satisfactory. If the knowledge of English confers substantial intellectual benefits on its recipient, we may trust that (rod's grace will ward off any moral dangers which may follow. The more Christian and prayerful the student is, the less likely is he to be vain or un- patriotic. Also, it is said that our trained students, by knowing English, are tempted away from mission work to some lucrative secular employment. This will not be the case with those who are most remarkable for piety and devotion ; as to the rest, it may at least be hoped that their Christianity will to some extent influence the heathens who are their fellow members in the professions which they adopt. In any case the argument cuts two ways. If we are reluctant to part with some of our school- masters we should be glad to provide secular employment for others who turn out for any reason inefficient teachers ; but if they do not know English this cannot be done. They cannot be provided for in a Government office, for example, where they might be useful, and we are saddled with them for life. There is, however, an argument against teaching English to those who are to be masters in vernacular schools, which un- doubtedly deserves attention. It is said that unless they are trained in the vernacular they will not be familiar with tech- nical terms in various branches of learning, such as arithmetic and geography, and, above all, that they will not know thoroughly the vernacular text of Holy Scripture, and there- CH. XLV.] TH ' KEW REFORMATION.' 377 fore will not be efficient teachers of a village school, where the vernacular is all-important. But this evil will be entirely met by adopting the suggestion of Mr. Spratt, a missionary, who seemed to me no less remarkable for thoughtfulness and sound sense than for earnest piety, and whose training institu- tion for masters at Palamcottah is admirably conducted. He proposes to give the ordinary lessons to his pupils through the medium of the vernacular, but to teach English as a foreign language for two hours a day, so that it would occupy the same place in his training college which Latin and Greek take in an English school. This plan seems to me quite to meet the difficulty, and at the same time materially to diminish some of the objections mentioned above Let me, in conclusion, thank you for sending me various educational documents, and keeping me informed of all that is going on in England on that subject. Sir Charles Trevelyan is disposed to be most useful in forwarding education here, and would take a much more active part in it than he does if he were less overworked and absorbed in his budget and other financial duties. But we never had a Government more disposed to give free course to missionary education than we have now. The latest proof of their friendship (though but a trifling one) is the readiness with which they have assented to my request that your secretary, Mr. Stuart, might be made a member of the university senate. To Rev. F. Farrar. Bishop's Palace, March, 1864. I was very glad to get your letter, which broke in agreeably upon the fatigue and excitement of the longest, most varied, and most interesting tour that I have yet taken. From such a whirl of exciting and novel objects it was well for me to be recalled by home letters to the no less pressing interests of England. Among those referring not to private but to public anxieties, yours, with its dissertation on present theological controversies, caused me at least as much thought as any, especially from your repeating the sentiment which is very commonly expressed now-a-days, that we are ' on the eve of a new reformation.' I candidly own that it is a maxim with 378 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XIV. which I have no sympathy, and which I do not clearly under- stand. That there is at present a great theological agitation going on is of course clear. That people who have long tried to scoff down all the current doubts and difficulties, and obsti- nately oppose even the consideration of them, are severely to be condemned is also clear. Moreover, if I could fancy that by reformation you meant constant improvement, growth in knowledge, piety, wisdom, and good works, I should trust that we are not on the eve but in the very midst of a new reforma- tion, since I never believe that the Church of Christ is to stagnate and to refuse to admit and assimilate to its own system new discoveries, new forms of prayer and praise, in accordance with new wants and new projects of evangelising the world and turning its kingdoms into the kingdoms of the Lord. But I imagine that by a new reformation is merely meant a general belief in these current biblical speculations, and that its apostles are to be Kenan, and others in our own land. If so, I really cannot see a single feature in which their writings and preachings resemble those of the men who are usually called reformers. Their speculations undoubtedly tend to Deism (Kenan's somewhat further), to the denial of a super- natural revelation, to the reduction of our Lord to the level of Plato, Buddha, and Mahomet, though morally doubtless their superior, and perhaps more fully enlightened than they by the Spirit of Grod. Luther and Melancthon restored our Lord to the dignity which St. Paul and St. John believed Him to hold, and which had been tampered with by the Komish addition of other mediators to His "all-sufficient intercession. The refor- mation of the modern reformers is a denial of primitive and apostolic truth ; that of Luther was a restoration of it. Again, the matters about which people now interest themselves are purely intellectual ; those for which our fathers fought and suffered were spiritual and moral. Compare, in mere import- ance to the world, a creed of which the leading article is that Samuel forged the Pentateuch, with that which was mainly concerned with our justification in the sight of Grod. What an articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesice is the question whether Jeremiah palmed off the book of Deuteronomy or King Josiah. If the difficulty about the six days of Creation is insoluble, what difference does it make to the moral condition of man- CH. XIV.] MODERN SPECULATION. 379 kind, unless, indeed, it can be proved that the world has no personal Creator, in which case doubtless our religion will be more nearly akin to that of the Puranas than to that of the Gospel. And this is just what a little provokes me in that talk of a new reformation. If it is meant that we are to cease to be Christians, that the Nicene creed is about to be disproved, and if with it the writings of St. Paul and St. John are shown to be either forgeries or insanities, then I quite understand that we are to have a reformation with a vengeance, though I should be unable to give that name to the change which is coming upon us. But if the meaning of the term is that we are to hold our ears perpetually open to a long continued utterance of German hypotheses, then I must beg to retreat partly behind the mantle of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who has, I think, dealt a deadly blow to such conjectural criticism, and partly behind the bulwark of practical work and humble efforts to improve spiritually and morally, which rest, as I believe, wholly and exclusively on that faith in God as re- vealed to us in Christ which Kenan consciously and designedly, Colenso unconsciously and undesignedly, and other writers, through presumptuous dogmatism and the love of vituperation, are, in my opinion, labouring to undermine With regard to your work on the mixed origin of the human race, if, as you say, you can disprove from Smpture the fact of our common descent from Adam and Eve, then I cannot see that by publishing the book you will run counter to the current flow of thought among your brethren of the clergy. Eather you will fall in with it, by basing the facts of history on a scriptural foundation, and by clearing away false infer- ences from the Old Testament. What is objected to, and I think justly, is the practice of Colenso, Wilson, and others of that school, of absolutely ignoring and vilipending the autho- rity of our Lord and the Apostles, or the express statements of other parts of Scripture, for the sake of some baseless or half- formed conjecture, or some alleged scientific discovery im- perfectly ascertained, and of which the full bearings are not known. If you can prove both by Scripture and by science that we have not all the same parentage, then even Archdeacon Pratt himself can only welcome you as a coadjutor and ally, ifter all, this view has been propounded, I believe, in the 3SO LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIV. ' Genesis of the Earth and Man,' which, whether convincing or not, for I never read it, has certainly not exposed its author to martyrdom or any minor persecution. To the Most Rev. Mar Athanasius, Bishop and Metran.* 1864. I regret very much that I had no opportunity of seeing you during my visit to Travancore. There were many subjects on which I should have desired to confer with you, as some of my predecessors have done with your predecessors. I was much pleased with my short intercourse with your Cathanars and people, and desire to thank them, through you, for the kind- ness and respect with which they received me. It is my earnest prayer that Grod may prosper all wise and Christian endeavours for the improvement of the venerable Syrian Church in Travancore, in which I feel the deepest in- terest, and with which our English Church has many bonds of connexion. This is not the time or occasion for discussing the points of doctrine on which our churches differ ; but I may per- haps be allowed to mention some of the practical agencies by which, through the grace of (rod's Holy Spirit, the Church of England has nourished and acquired much influence among the people, and by which doubtless the Syrian Church, through the same all-powerful guidance, will recover its primitive im- portance and purity. The first is the example of high principle, blameless living, unselfish devotion to Christ's flocks, and labo- rious activity on the part of all who exercise spiritual authority ; the next is the circulation of the Holy Bible among the people, and their intelligent acquaintance with its contents ; the third is the diffusion of education, both theological and secular, among the clergy, including of course the careful preparation of candidates for holy orders ; the fourth is preaching ; and the last which I will mention is the celebration of Divine service in the vernacular language of the people. I doubt not that all these subjects have engaged your attention, and I heard with thankfulness at Cottyam that you had shown a special interest in the last two of them. I heartily hope that you will succeed in your efforts to teach all your Cathanars how to preach, and that you will be able gradually to substitute Malayalim for * This letter was in answer to one from the Metran, expressing his regret at his absence from Cottyam during the Bishop's visit. t'ti. XIV.] EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA. 381 Syriac in the public prayers and reading of Scripture, as priests and people get accustomed to the change. I respect- fully commend to your watchful care the other means of im- provement also which I have ventured to bring before you, being quite sure that such practical reforms furnish a firm basis for doctrinal reforms. I value your church, as one which retains, like our own, many primitive customs and principles, while it repudiates the usurpations and innovations of the Papacy ; and if the best elements in the spirit of the Keforma- tion could be added to the best in the spirit of antiquity, I see no reason why your clergy should not stand side by side with ours as powerful agents in the blessed work of winning India to Christ. Such sentiments have been expressed by former Bishops of Calcutta, and I trust that we shall not always be disappointed. Perhaps the happy day, when we can fully act together, is re- served for our successors rather than ourselves, but it is our duty to labour and pray for it. Meantime I am sure that both the English metropolitan of India, and the metran of the Syrian Church have noble fields of Christian usefulness before them, which must one day become a common field, if only they have grace to exert themselves in proportion to the several opportu- nities which (rod has given to each in abundant measure. With the fervent hope that (rod's spirit may pour out His grace and blessing on your clergy and people, I remain, &c. 382 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cfl. XV. CHAPTER XV. BETURN TO CALCUTTA MEETING WITH SIR JOHN LAWRENCE ACTS BEFORE THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL SEAMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY PASTOR FOR CALCUTTA CONSECRATION OF ST. JAMES'S CHURCH TITLE DEEDS OF THE SIMLA SCHOOL INTERCOURSE WITH NATIVES CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY BETHUNE SOCIETY LECTURES VISIT TO LUTHERAN MISSION AT RANCHI CATHEDRAL LECTURES TO HINDUS THE BISHOP'S INTERCOURSE WITH AN INQUIRER. ON reaching Calcutta, in March 1864, the Bishop had the great satisfaction of meeting Sir John Lawrence, whose recent installation in his high office had been hailed both by natives and Europeans as an event full of hope and promise for India. The new viceroy was already vigorously at work, investigating official depart- ments with the practised eye of one to whom all grades of State duty were familiar. At their first interview, the Bishop found him buried in papers, with neck-tie dis- carded, and with attire generally in accordance more with comfort than conventionality. 'Excuse my dress, it's very hot/ said the viceroy, with the true distaste of a denizen of the Punjab to the hot-house climate of Bengal, and then plunged at once into a series of inquiries about the Christians in South India. In the Legislative Council a long and useful session was drawing to a close before the first blow was struck at the imperial dignity of Calcutta by the transfer of the seat of government to Simla for the hot weather and rains. Two measures were in hand, both of which had a special interest for the Bishop. One, which he characterized as a piece of just and wise legislation, was for regulating marriages CH. XV.] ACTS RELATING TO MARRIAGES. 383 between Christians. He had long felt the need of a more explicit matrimonial law for India, some strange and hasty marriages performed by chaplains, either through igno- rance or indiscretion, having come before him officially. The draft of the bill was freely submitted to him, and he had a hand in framing some of the clauses so as to tie tightly the hands of the clergy, and make positive legal enactments a barrier against any irregular performance of the marriage ceremony. The other measure, for re- gulating cantonments, was akin in some respects to] the Contagious Diseases Act, subsequently passed in England, and thus raised the grave and difficult question of the propriety of interference on the part of the State to con- trol the worst vice and the most formidable physical evil of the British Army. The clause referring to this point provoked opposition, and an effort was made to get the Bishop to protest and memorialise against it. This he was unwilling to do, though feeling that inaction exposed him to the charge of lukewarmness on a very serious matter ; but his self-restraint and calm judgment seldom failed him as safeguards against impulsive action, and he never gave the weight of his name or support to any public movements without being sure both of the grounds and the necessity for so doing. To an official who desired his support against the measure he thus wrote : .... The point which makes me hesitate is just this. There is an evil rampant of such intensity, that no words can be too strong to describe its horror. Certain powers are to be taken to check it which do not necessarily, but may possibly, involve immoral consequences. You will say that a person in the position of a bishop, the chief pastor of our national church in this country, ought at least to be able to make up his mind on such a subject and not to hesitate. If I was a member of council, and called upon to give my vote on the bill, of course I must do so ; and if I expected that it would be carried out in the way which you fear, I should certainly vote against it. 384 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XV But my case is rather different. To write to Government against a measure which I believe that they support, is to take upon myself the responsibility of obstructing schemes which may be employed with comparative freedom from wrong doing, and which at all events are designed, and in the judgment of persons who have looked more deeply into the subject than I have done, are calculated, to stop a great national scourge and source of untold misery. It is this from which I shrink ; from stepping forward, ^nd, as it were, going out of my way to hinder a general measure before I know that it will be badly used. And here comes in my other difficulty connected with the character of the present Government. It is long, I think, since we have had one in which thoughtful Christian men ought to feel greater con- fidence. Not the viceroy only, but others who are my personal friends, are men, I am sure, of the highest principle, and would not sanction anything immoral or anti-Christian .... one thing I strongly feel is that all such legislation is at best unsatisfactory, because it begins at the wrong end. The true remedy ap- pointed by God for this evil is marriage, and no considerations of expense or inconvenience ought to deter the Government from increasing the number of married soldiers. I have indeed heard that they do not marry up to the percentage allowed. On the other hand, it is also said that this is only true of some regiments, and that more men would marry if there were more comforts and advantages attached to marriage. In any case, if the statement is true it at least proves that the restriction is va- lueless, and might therefore be taken off. And together with marriage there ought to be an active and general encourage- ment of all such means of recreation and healthy occupation as experience proved to be acceptable, and the sanitary com- missioners have recommended. And, moreover, care should be taken that there are churches enough, schools enough, and chaplains enough ; and the retirement of superannuated and useless chaplains ought to be facilitated in every way. In March the foundation-stone of a Seaman's Home was laid. The Bishop drew up a short form of prayers for the occasion, and the viceroy's speech marked the begin- ning of a fresh effort to befriend a very forlorn section of CH. xv.] SEAMEN'S MISSION. 385 the population in Calcutta. The number of seamen, at all times considerable, receives a temporary reinforcement annually, when in the cold season ships of all nations fill the ports, and first class merchantmen, lying in the deep anchorage of the Hooghly, close along the public strand, impart to the city one of its chief embellishments. The sailors, of whom many are Scotchmen, Danes, Swedes, and Americans, once on shore, too often plunge recklessly into the usual vices of a large city, with results which, hastened and aggravated by a tropical climate, consign numbers of them to a premature grave, or to long weeks and months of hospital life. A Seaman's Mission had been set on foot in 1852 by Bishop Wilson; but the work had outgrown the ministrations of one pastor, and it was at Bishop Cotton's request that the Home and Colonial Society sent out a second river chaplain to share the pastoral duty of ministering from ship to ship. A dis- used vessel granted by Government provided a floating church, and also a library and reading room, as a place of quiet, though exceedingly hot, retreat for the better disposed among the rough and weather-beaten crews. The Home on shore was taken in hand solely by the Government to place some further humanising influences within reach of a homeless and friendless set of men, and to provide some refuge from the body and soul killing temptations of the Oriental grog shop.* Another class, for whom, as yet, little had been done, was composed of the usual dregs of the population in a large city, living almost beyond the pale either of Christianity or morality. In Calcutta it consists chiefly of half-castes, * The floating chapel, together with another used for the servants of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, was totally destroyed in the cyclone which occurred in October 1864. The river chaplain felt that not only his vessel but his work was wrecked, when church furniture, harmonium, and library were engulfed in the waters of the Hooghly, and no trace remained of all that had been accumulated with much care and trouble for the comfort and convenience of the seamen in port. C C 386 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XV. who inherit the worst vices of a European and Asiatic parentage. They speak a patois of English or Portuguese mixed with Bengali or Hindustani ; the restraints of morality are little known among them, and if left to them- selves, they sink so deep in ignorance and superstition as scarcely to be conscious of any distinction between the Christianity which they nominally profess and the hea- thenism around them. The ' City Mission ' had worked zealously for many years among the lower ranks of the Eurasian population; but it was conducted mainly on Dissenting principles, and many chaplains as well as the Bishop desired that the Church should not lie under the reproach of ignoring the moral and spiritual degradation that existed in the lanes and alleys of the city. The need of the hour was a missionary pastor conversant with the native language, who should penetrate into haunts of wretchedness, and by simple services held wherever a decent quarter could be secured or hearers collected, carry the gospel with him, and set some better way of life before those to whom the name of Christ was all but unknown. The difficulty lay less in finding a pastor than in providing the means for his support. No assistance could be expected from Government beyond a small grant in aid. The retention of so many State chaplains in Cal- cutta to supply its churches was always looked upon sus- piciously by Government, and hints and murmurs on the subject were only silenced by the defence set up by the Bishop, and successfully maintained during his lifetime, that if the chaplains were numerous, the demands upon them were many and various, and their duties heavy. Neither were there any charitable or endowment funds available. The only remaining resource was that of volun- tary contributions. The Bishop, through the chaplains, laid the case before the vestries of the various Calcutta churches ; he urged the liberal provision made by the State for the spiritual necessities of the European congregations as a Cn. XV.] HOUSES FOR THE CLERGY. 387 motive for liberality in their turn on behalf of those who were incapable of self-help, and requested a monthly as- sessment on the offertories or other church funds, which, supplemented by the allowance expected from Govern- ment, would raise the needed stipend. The response to this appeal was prompt and cordial. A rousing letter of remonstrance was written to one church which stood aloof and declined to do anything, and in the course of a few months a student at Bishop's College was ordained to a new field of Church work in Calcutta. A ceremony of interest during the year was the conse- cration of St. James's Church, which had been built not as an additional place of worship, but to replace one that had fallen down some years before, a calamity not unknown in the soft swamp of the Ganges delta. The new church, designed by a professional architect, was a massive and handsome building, a witness to Eurasians, in whose quarter it stood, that the ugly structures common in Bengal were not the necessary types of all ecclesiastical architecture. It also formed the centre of a more com- plete parochial organization than usually prevailed in Cal- cutta. A large school was attached to it ; a hall, at tha,t time projected, was shortly afterwards built for lectures and meetings, as a memorial to Eobert Bruce Boswell, a name imperishable in the annals of Bengal chaplains; and a residence for the chaplain gave unity and complete- ness to the whole. A well-built, well-ventilated house in India is to a great extent a defence against fever and other illnesses of the country. The Church Missionary and Additional Clergy Societies, fully alive to this, erect good dwellings for their ministers, on sanitary grounds ; but in the case of chaplains, a substantial house is a boon attached to only a limited number of stations. Hence arose the Bishop's constant efforts to find ways and means of multiplying what would certainly not be allowed as free gifts from the Government, but might be gradually c c 2 388 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XV. provided by the combination of local subscriptions and State aid. In a brief recapitulatory notice of occupations during several weeks the following entry occurs : ' One of rny pleasantest public acts has been putting my signature to a deed sealed with the episcopal seal, founding and declaring the statutes of "the Bishop's School," near Simla, as the new institution is called by a kind of popular acclamation ; so I trust that now I have done something permanently for the good of the diocese, and I pray that He, through whose mercy it has been accom- plished, may grant to it His blessing, and make it a home of godliness and good learning.' Such was the work carried on for the European branch of the Church. But the distinguishing feature of the Bishop's residence in Calcutta of 1864 was his intercourse with natives, both Christian and non-Christian. His health was, by the blessing of God, sustained during several months of great heat, and no illness arose to impede the execution of distinct work, with which, as was his wont, he desired to stamp a distinct period of time. The kind recognition which has been so freely granted to the Bishop's friendly advances to wards' the native community is the more valu- able because they were necessarily imperfect and occasional. From this point of view, as from many others, an Indian bishop's position is one of isolation. Unlike civilians whose official duties bring them into daily contact with natives of many grades, he has no such link to turn to account. Moreover the bishop can never represent reli- gious neutrality. Though strictly a servant of the State, he will always be looked upon as the head and leader of a proselytising church, without possessing that passport to toleration which the professed missionary holds as he exhibits his self-denying life in the eyes of multitudes, and goes freely in and out amongst them. In the common course of daily life the bishop's path seldom crosses CH. XV.] THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. 389 that of the educated Hindu. The gulf is great between those who are within the pale of the Church and those still outside it. A chief pastor directing his care and attention mainly to the former may easily miss, during long years, those points of contact with the latter which do not readily reveal themselves but must be sought for and even created. One leading principle of the Bishop's Indian life was that the Christian Church must labour either directly or indirectly to exert an influence over the native mind equal to that which was so widely and .powerfully exercised through secular education. To this work he exhorted and stimulated others ; to it he person- ally devoted such time and opportunities as were available during his brief and intermittent sojourns in a city which was the chief seat of intellectual activity among natives. Through the University he found one of the desired links with the educated classes. He was always on the Syndi- cate, and in 1864 acted for the vice-chancellor during his absence, and was president of the Faculty of Arts. He thus obtained a distinct voice in the direction of the studies of the place, and it may therefore be well to insert here a notice of the University and of his rela- tions with it, which has been contributed by Professor Cowell, formerly Principal of the Sanscrit College in Calcutta, and now Professor of Sanscrit at Cambridge. Bishop Cotton arrived in Bengal when a great experiment had been just commenced by the founding, in 1857, of the Calcutta University. Ever since the memorable despatch of 1835, by which Lord W. Bentinck established the principle that the study of English literature and Western science should henceforth supersede the exclusive devotion to Sanscrit and Arabic, with their obsolete systems of science and philosophy, English has become the staple of the education given in the Government higher schools and colleges ; and the native students have abundantly proved, by their enthusiastic appre- ciation of English literature, how wise the change was which was ms introduced. A new era then began for India. No longer 390 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. Cn. XV. secluded in its own world of ideas, no longer isolated from the rest of mankind, the Hindu began to awake from the torpor of ages to a new activity and interest. We are just beginning in our day to see the effects of this mighty movement ; but it needs little foresight to prophesy that the superstitions which have so long brooded over the national mind will be gradually dispelled, and the nation will regain that conscious activity which once raised it to a foremost place among the creative races of the earth. The press is now busy in every native language ; native newspapers are issuing in every great city ; a vernacular literature is slowly springing up which will gradually transform mere spoken dialects into cultivated instruments of thought ; and everywhere in India (to quote Lord Bacon's words in the ' Novum Organon ') we hear on all sides, as in a mine, the sounds of new explorations and onward progress. The rise of the Brahmo Somaj, and its rapid extension in the great cities, the native agitation for female education and for the remarriage of infant widows, are proofs how the leaven of English educa- tion is working in the national mind ; and perhaps no country in the world, at the present time, offers such an exciting spectacle as India to the philanthropist and the philosopher. Bishop Cotton, on his arrival in Calcutta in 1858, found the university already established, two entrance examinations had been held, and in 1858 the first examination for a B.A. degree, in which two Hindu students from the Presidency College passed with success. The numbers have year by year steadily increased ; in April 1857, 244 candidates presented themselves for examination, of whom 115 passed in the first, and 47 in the second division; while, in 1864, 1396 candidates presented themselves, of whom 143 passed in the first, and 559 in the second division ; and in the examination held in December 1868, 146 students passed in the first division, 435 in the second, and 313 in the third. In the B.A. examination of 1869, 14 students passed in the first division, 33 in the second, and 30 in the third, without taking into account subsequent examinations for honours and the M.A. degree. Such a move- ment as this is almost unparalleled in history, and even our railroads and telegraphs, however vast their effects, are less important in their influence on the social and moral condition of the Hindus. Cn. XV.] CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. 391 Bishop Cotton from the first took the deepest interest in the university and the progress of education which it so successfully stimulated. When in Calcutta he was continually a member of the Syndicate or ruling body, and he always took the warmest interest in the various questions connected with the working out of the scheme, especially in the selection of books for the examinations. Thus one of his suggestions was that in every B.A. examination some one of Bacon's great works should be one of the text-books in English, and consequently the first or second book of the 'Advancement of Learning,' or the first book of the translation of the 6 Novum Organon,' became a re- cognized portion of the student's course. The Hindu mind is naturally dreamy and imaginative ; it loves literature intensely, but chiefly for its poetical or rhetorical beauty ; and such books as these are the very diet which it needs to brace its intellectual fibre. The study of Bacon opens a new world to the Hindu student, he learns to widen his interests and deepen his mental sympathies, and the charms of fiction and poetry no longer exclusively engross him as his eyes open to the ' fairy tales of science and the long result of time.' But the Bishop could not be blind to the grand defect in all Grovernment education the necessary exclusion of all Christian teaching. Few will hesitate to concede that, in the peculiar position which we hold in India, this exclusion was an unavoid~ able condition of a Grovernment scheme of education. The grants in aid are freely given to any missionary school which trains its students to reach a certain standard ; the junior scholarships are open to all the students in the university en- trance examination, and are simply prizes for which the students of Grovernment or private institutions are equally eligible, and similarly the senior scholarships are equally open as prizes for the first public examination. But in the Grovern- ment schools and colleges religion is excluded ; and though the teacher is left free in his private capacity to exercise what moral influence he may possess, his lips are necessarily closed in the class-room, and there secular knowledge can alone be taught. In 1862 a very interesting discussion was raised in the Faculty of Arts of the Calcutta University by a proposal of the Rev. Dr. Duff, that the professorships of Law, Medicine, Civil Engineering, Sanscrit and Arabic, now attached to the Presi-. 392 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XV. dency, Medical, Civil Engineering, and Sanscrit Colleges, and the Madrisah, should be converted into University professor- ships, open to duly qualified students of all affiliated insti- tutions ; and that new professorships should be founded of Physical Science, Natural Philosophy, and Paideutics. The proposition was rejected except so far as regards the professor- ships of Physical Science and Natural Philosophy; but the minority appended some vigorous protests, and the following is an extract from that written by the Bishop : 6 The present Government scheme of education in India can, in my opinion, only be accepted as one of transition. It is liable to the four great objections, that it is incapable of edu- cating the whole man, from its necessary omission of the religious element ; that it is a system of thorough centralisation ; that, in proportion to the numbers who benefit by it, it is enormously expensive ; and that it does not encourage private efforts. Considering the peculiarity of our position in India a Christian Government ruling over a nation which is not Christian, and called upon to initiate a scheme for the edu- cation of the people I think that the State was not only jus- tified in acting as it has done, but even bound to do so ; I think, however, that it is also bound to hasten (as far as can be safely done) the substitution of a system not exposed to these objections, and, therefore, to adopt all such prudent measures as are likely to assist institutions founded or main- tained by private munificence, and gradually to retire from the position of actual instructor of the people, and retain only the function of aiding, promoting, inspecting, and rewarding education. This I conceive to be the footing prescribed to us by the Educational Despatch of 1 854.' These views were afterwards expanded into a paper, published in the 'Calcutta Christian Intelligencer' for June 1862. He there remarked : * As to the non-religious character of Government education we are not among those who think that this can be avoided. Something, no doubt, may be done by voluntary Bible classes out of school hours, and we have always deeply regretted the needless interference of our late Lieut.-Governor with their extension by his (as we think quite unauthorised) insertion of the fatal condition that they must be excluded not only from CH. XV.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 393 the school hours but from the school buildings. Still, if that condition were cancelled, it is not likely that many of these classes would be formed, and we cannot think that it would be either just or expedient for Government to introduce the Bible into their schools any further than by sanctioning these classes. Bible reading or teaching, conducted by heathens, we utterly abominate. All that we ask from Grovernment in reference to the present system is to take the greatest care that persons of high moral character are appointed to educational offices, and we readily acknowledge that this has generally been the case.' The following extract is interesting in more points than one, where the Bishop sketches the way in which one or two univer- sity professorships would benefit the general cause of educa- tion : ' Thus material pecuniary aid will be given at once to all the colleges, governmental and non-governmental alike, but espe- cially the latter, which cannot afford, depending as they do on small endowments, or voluntary contributions, or the payments of scholars, to maintain first-rate men as teachers of the various distinct branches in which instruction should be given to members of a university. Thus, too, teaching power would be saved, for as it is probable that but few students from each college would seek this special and additional instruction, the same teacher would be available for all. Thus, too, the way would be prepared for gradually separating the details of edu- cation from State management (except as far as inspection is concerned), since the quality of the instruction given to the students of the non-governmental colleges would be improved. Thus, finally, encouragement would be given to individuals and societies, to natives and Europeans, to establish schools and colleges, since the cost of doing so would be diminished, and the chief difficulty, that of supplying adequate training for the abler and more advanced students, would be removed. For example, it is clear that the Church of England does not take at all an adequate part in the education of the native youth of Calcutta. Either of the great societies of that Church might, we imagine, set up a college in some part of the city, without interfering at all with the other educational insti- tutions which already exist there. Or if not in Calcutta, then 394 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XV. at least such a college might be instituted in Howrah, whence the railway steamer would daily convey the selected students to hear the Professor's lectures at the university.' These concluding words of the Bishop's did not fall in vain. The Cathedral Mission College was established by the Church Missionary Society in 1865, c chiefly,' it is said in the notice of it in the ' University Calendar,' ' at the instance of the late Bishop Cotton, who, in his last charge, delivered in 1863, ex- pressed his earnest desire to see a Missionary College established in connexion with the Church of England, in which native undergraduates might be educated up to the B.A. standard under purely Christian influences.' Calcutta at the present time presents the nearest parallel which the Christian Church has ever seen to what Alexandria was in the second and third centuries ; and it is such men as Bishop Cotton who seem the prepared instruments to turn the restless and wayward activity of such periods into healthy channels. In an eminent degree he united clear views of truth with a large-hearted sympathy for an inquirer's difficulties ; and we may be sure that there was a special work to be done when he was called to a position for which his previous life and character so peculiarly qualified him, and that, unexpected and sudden as was his removal, it was not until that appointed work was done. The Bishop found another means of access in a small way to the educated classes, or at least evinced his good- will towards them by the delivery of occasional lectures on subjects of general or popular interest. The Bethune Society, a literary and scientific institution, had been established some years before by the combined efforts of Europeans and Asiatics. Very soon after the Bishop's arrival in India, the Presidentship fell vacant, and Dr. Alexander Duff, on certain conditions, accepted it. On the foundation of the Society in 1851, a fundamental law, in accordance, perhaps necessarily, with the spirit of the times, had laid down the secular principle so strongly, that practically all allusion even to 'the Being, Providence, or works of God ' was prohibited. For this was substi- CH. XV.] THE BETHUNE SOCIETY. 395 tuted in 1859, in the rules revised under Dr. Duff's auspices, ' the liberty to admit on fitting occasions reve- rential and respectful allusions to God and revealed re- ligion.' Scarcely a dozen words were needed to make a change great enough to indicate a revolution of thought in the minds both of Englishmen and Hindus. From being denounced as ' godless and atheistical,' the Bethune So- ciety became an arena on which men of strong Christian convictions could aid in the diffusion of intellectual light. The great Scotch missionary had again come to the rescue of religion ; the Bishop and others were at hand to use wisely and well the newly conceded liberty. The Bishop was enrolled among the honorary members of the society, and he gave occasional and carefully written lectures as circumstances permitted. In the 'University of Cam- bridge,' the ' Clouds of Aristophanes,' ' the employment of women in humane and charitable works/ he found social and literary subjects through which, without hiding his own faith, he 'reasoned' of wisdom, and truth, and purity, or set before his Eastern hearers not shadowy ideals of excellence, but human characters who, by high thoughts and by noble or by lowly deeds, had borne witness to a greatness of soul and goodness of heart unknown as yet even in the better part of national Hindu life. The lecture of this year to a large audience on the ' Clouds ' produced some criticism ; it was intended to suggest rather than broadly to draw a parallel between Athens and Bengal the old orthodox Brahmariical party being represented by Aristophanes and his friends; 'young Bengal ' by Alcibiades and the liberals ; and the ' Brahmo Somaj ' by Socrates and his disciples. The Bishop, how- ever, carried his reticence somewhat too far, for some hearers commenting on the lecture declared that the Bengalis had had their Socrates in Dr. Duff; whereas the view taken was that the Athenians never heard the true message that Dr. Duff delivered to Bengalis, until 396 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XV. it was proclaimed on Mars Hill, and the prediction hazarded was that as Socrates failed for lack of a Divine revelation, much more would the Brahmos fail if they re- fused to listen to a revelation that has been given. In the hot month of April a journey of three hundred miles was undertaken in order to visit the mission in Chota Nagpore, a district of hill country north-west of Calcutta. A Lutheran mission had been at work for twenty years among aboriginal tribes bearing different names, but all grouped together by Hindus under the contemptuous designation of 'Kols,' i.e. 'pigs.' As usual, the intro- duction of Christianity among a population free from the trammels of caste had been attended with marked suc- cess, and a colony of 6,000 Christians settled in Eanchi, the chief town, and among surrounding villages, was fast making the district of Chota Nagpore the Tinnevelly of North India. But work spiritually so flourishing was in a deplorable condition financially. The mission had been started in the first instance by Pastor Gossner, of Berlin, and was in connexion with two parent committees in that city. The divided councils which prevailed in these com- mittees call for no notice here ; it is sufficient to mention the unfortunate results which ensued to their missionaries by the reduction of the salaries already, even on a German computation of requirements, miserably small, arid by the stoppage of funds for the maintenance and extension of the schools. The local mission had two staunch friends in the Commissioner of Chota Nagpore and the chaplain of Hazareebagh, the nearest European station. It was at their solicitation that the Bishop, with Archdeacon Pratt for his companion, undertook a pilgrimage to investigate the condition of the missionaries, and to devise, if possible, some remedy for their troubles. The heat and fatigue of the journey were fully repaid by the extreme interest of the visit. It revealed a native Church on a scale without a parallel in North India, strong in discipline, compact in CH. XV.] THE MISSION AT KANCIII. 397 organization, and numbering its converts annually by many hundreds. It was a hope-inspiring pledge of what all India may one day be ; and even in its purely external aspect the spectacle of an impressive Western ritual blending with the daily life of rustic and obscure Eastern tribes was one of rare and picturesque interest. The Bishop at once rose to the full appreciation of all that was unfolded before him. True to himself, it must be added, he could not avoid detecting a humorous feature in his somewhat ambiguous position at the moment. Indeed, it is doubtful whether 1 he did not cherish for his own amusement the secret suspicion that at first the good Lutherans were not quite at ease about a friendly inter- vention from a prelate who ' might possibly seize them by the aid of the secular arm, and compel them to swallow the Thirty-Nine Articles on the spot.' How misplaced was even a transient alarm in the presence of one who, desiring unity, was yet absolutely tolerant of differences ; who, truly believing that his own Church set forth the more perfect way, knew nothing of ecclesiastical annexations where the gospel of Christ was having free course and was glorified ! The journal may now describe the animated and im- pressive scenes in the Christian settlement of Ranchi on Saturday and Sunday, April 23 and 24, 1864 : .... Attached to the mission is a large serai, built for the reception of the native Christians, who come in for the Holy Communion and other special occasions from distances of forty and fifty miles, and here rest on the Saturday and Sunday nights, each receiving from the mission a mat to sleep on and some firewood to cook food. There we found ahout two thou- sand assembled, some without and some within the serai, who gathered round us, bowing and stretching forward their hands ; but instead of saying Saldm, they all said Yesu sa hay, ' Jesus be with you,' which the missionaries have taught them to sub- stitute for Ram Ram and other heathen salutations. Meantime the school children and others walked in procession singing to the church, a solid and tasteful stone building with a rather heavy 398 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XV. tower, needing a spire to relieve it. Within, it consists of a nave and side aisles, with a clerestory, and a chancel terminat- ing in a polygonal apse raised considerably above the nave, and connected with it by a flight of steps. In the middle of the chancel is the Communion table, with a large cross worked upon the cover, and near it the font full of water. We took our seats near the chancel to witness the baptism of one hundred and forty-three converts and children, of whom the former have been long under instruction, and are admitted to baptism on being able to understand and to repeat the Creed and Command- ments, with portions of the Lutheran Kleine Kcutechismus, and Showing, both by adequate testimony and a probationary resi- dence at Kanchi, that their moral character is good. The church was soon crammed full of natives ; F. Batsch, in a full sleeved black gown and bands, stood in front of the Communion table, and summoned the elders of the Christian congregation, in number about sixty, to gather round him in the chancel and on the steps ; the candidates were placed in front, and the choir sang very sweetly the Kyrie Eleison and a hymn, a converted Brahman, now named William Luther, playing the harmonium. The candidates were addressed, questioned, prayed for, repeated the Creed and some of the Commandments, and were then summoned to ascend the steps, where each was baptized with the words (in Hindi) : 'I baptize thee into the death + of Christ, in the name of the Father, + and of the Son, -f and of the Holy Grhost. + Amen.' At each of the words marked + the minister poured a handful of water on the head of the baptized person. After a convenient number had been baptized, he signed each with the cross on the forehead, and then sent them down the steps to be replaced by a fresh set of candidates. While this was going on, the choir sang the Te Deum, and the effect of that grand verse, ' The holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge TheeJ sung just as these people reclaimed from savagery were received into the love and care of Jesus Christ, was quite sublime. None of the great ' functions ' of St. Peter, with Pio Nono and all his incense and peacock's feathers, could excel in conception or in impressive solemnity the scene in the crowded church, the white robed candidates thronging the steps, the minister baptizing in the midst, and the choir chanting out the triumphant hymn of Ambrose and Augustine. CH. XV.] PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 399 Sunday, April 24. Our host's servants call me the Maha- cfuru (great teacher), and certainly they must think that I work my disciples pretty severely, for to-day we went four times to church. We had our regular morning and afternoon English services. Both were held in the Lutheran church, cordially lent to the English whenever a clergyman is here, so that I cannot see why a home newspaper should have made such a caterwauling about my consenting to lend English churches in military stations to Presbyterian chaplains, when Scotch regi- ments need such aid. Between the two English services was interposed the ordinary morning service of the natives : it was very liturgical in its character, including hymns, the Kyrie, a confession repeated by the whole congregation kneeling, the Nicene Creed, and the regular Epistle and Grospel for the fourth Sunday after Easter, of which the latter was read from the pulpit and then expounded by F. Batsch. When he had finished, he told them that it was an occasion of great joy to them that the < spiritual father of all India ' (so this non-episcopal Protestant styled me) had come to visit them, and that I had consented to address to them a few words of counsel. So he came down from the pulpit and stood by me on the top of the steps of the chancel, whence I delivered an exhortation to godliness and good works, dwelling greatly on truthfulness, as I find that the Christians here, as in Tinnevelly, are not free from the heathen vice of pre- varication when examined in a court of justice. This F. Batsch translated into Hindi, after which I read the Lord's Prayer in that language and gave the blessing. There were about twelve hundred native Christians in church ; the rest were gathered outside. In the evening we again were present at the service, when the Lord's Supper was administered to six hun- dred communicants. There, too, the forms resembled our own : there was an address, a confession, and an absolution; our Lord's words were repeated as a consecration, then the Ter Sanctus was sung by the choir, the communicants went up the steps and knelt all round the table, and received the elements, which were given them with words nearly resembling those which we use. All these services have been deeply interesting and im- pressive ; the character of the Christian families for purity stands very high ; drunkenness, a great vice of the Kols, is very greatly checked among them, and the officials speak thoroughly well of 400 LIFE OF- BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XV. them in all respects but the one I have mentioned, and even that charge they qualify with the remark that very few of them come into court, and that those who do are generally the worst section of them, often unbaptized, but calling themselves Christians because they are inquirers. Discussions with the missionaries occupied the rest of the Bishop's time during his three days' sojourn at Ranchi. At the end of the first long conference he pro- pounded four possible courses for their consideration : (1) that a great effort should be made to interest India in the work ; (2) that a letter should be written by him to the Gossner Committee in Berlin, representing the great merits and the great needs of the local mission ; (3) that they should join the other committee and merge the Gossner Committee in it, (4) (with the reservation that he came not to proselytise or build on another man's foundation) ; that the negotiations which Pastor Gossner had begun should be resumed for the absorption of the mission by the Church Missionary Society. At a later conference it was decided that the second of these sug- gestions should be adopted at once, and the fourth held in reserve, the senior missionary declaring that he should have no difficulty in submitting to re-ordination and con- forming to the English Church, and also giving satisfac- tory replies to the Bishop's inquiry, how a change of ritual or of Church organisation would be received by the native Christians. On reaching Calcutta, the Bishop's first care was to redeem his promise, and write to the secretary of the Gossner Committee in Berlin. The main purport of his letter was to intreat that the im- poverished condition of the mission might receive imme- diate attention, and he hinted indirectly at the remedy for present difficulties which was afforded by the well- known wish of its founder for its incorporation into the English Church. He wrote also, at the same time, to Mr. Venn to prepare him for a possible, but not probable, CH. XV.] CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT THE MISSION. 401 overture from Berlin. It is needless to add how earnestly he represented that the proposal, if made, should be accepted, as opening a mission field white already to harvest, and one also which would be in geographical connexion with the work then recently taken up by the Church Missionary Society among the Santhal tribes in the neighbouring hills.* Eefreshed and encouraged by the sight of this living peasant church among the hills, the Bishop descended upon Calcutta, to make a fresh effort to meet the doubts and difficulties of re3tless Bengali minds, to water with a rill from the fountains of Christian truth the dreary wastes of a cold scepticism or a creedless morality. Six lectures ' On the Need, Evidences, and Difficulties of a Supernatural Eevelation' represented this effort. They were delivered in the nave of the cathedral by the Bishop, Archdeacon Pratt, and two missionaries of either society. The Bishop, with his usual moderation, spoke of the lectures as an attempt to place, in a simple and unpre- tending way, the arguments for Christianity before Eastern inquirers troubled through doubts suggested by Western unbelievers. It was, however, an impressive sight ; a sight realising an aspiration of Bishop Wilson's on his foundation of the cathedral ; a sight full of hope for the future, when a congregation of non-Christian Bengalis voluntarily assembled in the metropolitan church of India to listen to the grounds of the Christian's hopes, and to be urged to accept the Christian's faith as the one answer to spiritual cravings. The Bishop opened * These letters remained without any results, and the later history of the mission is briefly this : It continued to exist for five years, chiefly through help collected in India, but the breach between the missionaries and the Berlin Committee grew wider. Charges brought against the former were examined and refuted by an auxiliary committee in Calcutta. But the connexion with Berlin was finally severed, and the missionaries had to give up all the property, church, schools, dwelling-houses, &c. Union with the Church of England was again sought as a remedy, and in 1809 the Chota Nagpore mission was absorbed into the Propagation Society. D I) 402 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XV. his lecture with the quotation of a passage in which Ernest Eenan, in his ' Vie de Jesus,' acknowledges Chris- tianity as an historical fact, and its founder as a pure and holy teacher. In addressing an audience conversant with modern writings, he thus far admitted the common ground of agreement between himself and the able and attractive French writer ; but only to show how short could be their way together, how widely their paths diverged, when he went on to set forth the need of a supernatural intervention which should raise mankind from the depths of misery, and to claim for the instrument of this intervention a Divine origin. The a priori proba- bility of a supernatural exercise of Divine power and love to reclaim a sin-laden world, which philosophical systems had failed to purify, was always with the Bishop an argument of irresistible force for Christianity as a Divine revelation. From this starting-point, he dwelt upon the infamies of the world at the time of the Christian iBra, and the inability of current philosophical systems to furnish remedies capable of regenerating the mass of moral corruption. But he followed more faithfully the bent of his own mind when he passed from the outward to the inward evidences of the truths he sought to recom- mend ; when, turning aside from historical facts, or the arguments of reason, he placed the heart and conscience above the intellect, and urged with persuasive earnestness his own deep conviction that Christianity alone, accepted as a system divinely and supernaturally given, can achieve peace and order in the world or within the individual soul. Willing and ready he always was to give to intel- lectual arguments their full weight, and to sympathise with intellectual difficulties, however little they disturbed the serenity of his own faith. But as a minister of Christ, he cared rather, in addressing non-Christian hearers so abundantly nourished with intellectual food, to set the momentous subject before them on its evangelical side, Cii. XV.] LECTURES IN THE CATHEDRAL. 403 to claim the Christian revelation as the one supreme and ultimate satisfaction amidst the moral conflicts and the spiritual yearnings to which the universal conscience of mankind bears witness. To the Brahmos (the philoso- phical sect of which his audience was mainly composed) he pointed out the deficiency in their religious system, 1 so far as it borrowed from Christianity its ethics, its hopes, its forms of prayer, but refused the confession of a Divine Saviour, as the only Mediator between God and man, the sure refuge for the sin-laden soul. Courteously recognising in this leading sect an intellectual and moral effort to rise out of the abyss of Hindu degradation, he disputed its assumption to rival Christianity as a regene- rating element, or its power to do more for the spiritual elevation of India than Greek and Koman philosophers had done for the heathen world. To Eastern hearers, whom he addressed as ' guests in his own cathedral,' he quoted the struggles of Augustine, in order to utter the earnest hope that they too might be led through a 6 tangled thicket ' of deistical or pantheistical guesswork to the highway of the Christian revelation, and at length find repose like Augustine in the blessed conviction, 1 Oh, Lord, Thou maclest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it find rest in Thee.' I had at that time gone for a few months to England. The letters which I received from the Bishop described each lecture, as week by week a similar audience gathered in the cathedral, and the following extract has some points of special interest : June 1861. . . . On Monday some of the natives who heard my lecture on the previous Friday were invited to come and demand my explanations and discuss any difficulties arising from it. It was rumoured that many were to appear, and accordingly we mustered strong on the Christian side ; but after all only four came, and of these two were Christians ; the D D 2 404 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XV. other two were and Keshub Chunder Sen, a well- known leader of the Brahmo Somaj. The latter was thus quite outnumbered ; but we treated him very courteously, and gave him full scope for expressing his convictions, which he did in a remarkably simple, earnest and pleasing way. His . account of the reasons for which he believed in Grod, prayer, and the spiritual life generally, without revelation, was in- teresting and reasonable ; but he entirely broke down in some of his arguments, partly from an insufficient education, partly from the Hindu indifference to facts and history. Thus he seemed surprised at our maintaining that the idea of a Church, which he said that the Brahmos hold tenaciously, was altogether Christian, and borrowed by his sect from the New Testament, saying that he thought it had existed everywhere, apart from revelation ; and he avowed that his chief difficulty in believing the Scriptures was that he could see no connexion between facts and morals. He even said that, assuming the facts of Christ's resurrection to be demonstrably proved, he did not see that it need influence our belief or practice, further than as a kind of illustration of the immortality of the soul. We had tea, sandwiches and ice, all which he eat without scruple, and the whole party attended prayers in the chapel. ... On Friday the second lecture came off, by Banerjea. The attend- ance was about the same as before, and the lecture was ex- ceedingly interesting and successful, admirable as an English composition, and most telling and impressive as an argumen- tative exhortation. This praise chiefly applies to the second portion ; the first was merely a kind of Paleian sketch of evidences, but the second part brought the subject home to India by copious references to Hindu religion and philosophy, showing how the necessity of a revelation had been felt by the old Rishis, and how many faint shadows of the truth appear in their writings. The allusions to ' our ancestors,' ' our nation,' ' our Rishis,' &c., quite recalled to my mind the thought of St. Paul preaching to the Jews. Some of the applications of Scripture, too, were most forcible, and Stanley would have been delighted to hear the opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews adduced to show that there were fragments of revelation in the Vedas. CH. XV.] SERMONS ON CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE. 405 Immediately after the delivery of the lectures at the cathedral the Bishop and his company of lecturers re- peated them in the Free Kirk Institution, at the request of Dr. Duff's successor in the Free Church Mission. An audience of 250 in the cathedral rose to 800 in the hall belonging to the Scotch Mission, which, from being situated in the native quarter of the city, had a great advantage over the remote English church in point of locality. The Bishop followed up this movement in a different direction, by giving a short course of sermons on the moral and social effects of Christianity to the usual European congregation on Wednesday evenings at the cathedral. The attendance was good, and in writing to me about them he remarked, ' I am sure the sermons have been popular : a vain-glorious assertion you will say ; but I am so thankful for the success of any attempt to throw life into the cathedral services.' During these same weeks one waverer on the way towards Christianity crossed the Bishop's path, and for a time entered within the circle of his daily cares and in- terests. This disciple had long enjoyed the influence and friendship of one of those professors in a Government college to whose agency, when, as in this case, sound learning was combined with true Christian faith and practice, the Bishop ever looked for the most effective impressions on Hindu society. On the professor's de- parture for England, the Bishop undertook to carry on the spiritual training of the youth, who for many weeks used to come to the palace on Sunday afternoons for reading the Bible and conversation. Unhappily, his case was like that of many others. He had broken utterly with heathenism, his mental powers were called into free activity by good education, he was full of thought on moral and spiritual concerns, and he could appreciate the value of Christian counsels ; but he never reached the point of making a public profession through baptism ; he 406 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XV. could assent to everything in Christianity except the obligation to take up the cross. From this he shrank from year to year, and remained in the perilous condition of having his moral life sustained by no definite faith. When the Bishop last saw this inquirer, he was a Govern- ment official in the country, and all seemed prospering outwardly with him. In his neat attire, and with his well- appointed palanquin and servants, he was a perfect type of a Bengali gentleman holding office under a safe and civilised rule. They had a long conversation, and the Bishop, on being asked afterwards what he thought of him, replied, ' I trust he is in a more hopeful state than when I last saw him.' The following letters arose out of the personal inter- course which took place during the Bishop's residence in Calcutta in 1864 : June 1864. I have received your letter, and am very sorry to hear of your serious illness. I trust that the pain is Grod's way of bringing you to Himself. You know that He has not sent it without designing it for your good. I have never yet spoken to you about baptism, because it would be premature to do so, and because the proposal ought to come from your side rather than mine. But your letter obliges me to say one thing on the subject, because your countrymen are sometimes apt to be deficient in prompt decision and force of will. You must not hesitate too long between two opinions ; you must not remain half a Christian and half a Hindu, Remember what Elijah said to the people on Mount Carmel : ' If the Lord be Grod, follow him ; but if Baal, then follow him.' I do not say that you are to hurry on a step for which you are not prepared, and adopt a faith of which you are not convinced. But no decision is a fault. Time is short. We cannot spend too much of it in making up our minds ; the ' night cometh when no man can work.' It will indeed be a grievous loss if you sever yourself from the Bacred ties of family and earthly worship, and do not replace them by those of Christianity. CH. XV.] LETTERS TO AN INQUIRER. 407 And this leads me to another subject. Is it quite impossible that both should be retained ? The Christian recognises no opposition between them. On the contrary, the Gospel purifies and sanctifies family life, and Jesus Christ on more than one occasion gave His blessing to it in a peculiar manner. Can you not live at home as a Christian, conforming to such habits as are indifferent such as special rules about food? Do not answer this letter unless you are unable to come on Sunday. It will be sufficient for you to speak to me about it when you do come. In the words of the Lord Jesus, I trust ' that the Comforter,' who is the Holy Spirit of God, ' will guide you into all truth,' and give you a right judgment in the perplexing questions which you are called upon to decide, September 1864. I was very glad to hear from you, and particularly to learn that your health has improved. I will make a few remarks on the difficulties which you have sent me, though some of them would be better solved by a commentary on Scripture than by a letter. With regard to your personal difficulty as to decision in religion, I agree with you that intellectual concurrence without the corresponding love in the heart is of no great value, if you will allow me to add the words, ' in producing Christian practice.' But it is, I think, of very great importance in re- ference to the question of embracing Christianity. If you are intellectually convinced of its truth, it occurs to me that it is your duty publicly to profess yourself a member of the Christian Church. It is a question whether the ' corresponding love in the heart' can be expected til} you are under Christian influence and a partaker in Christian ordinances. We find in the Acts, that those who received the words, and acknowledged the Divine claim, of Jesus of Nazareth, were baptised, and then were built up in faith and love by the preaching, worship, and other means of grace in the Church, and especially by the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The Epistles show us that many joined the Church whose love in Christ was cold, and whose obedience to Him was scanty. The Apostle Paul himself tells us that he was always pressing on to the things which are before, and that he counted not himself to have apprehended, i, e. to have fully 408 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. XV. realised, the glory of the Christian name and character. Church ordinances are especially intended to warm the sluggish heart. It would be a real happiness to me to receive you into the Church by baptism, if it please Grod to spare us both till February next ; and from the account which you give of your state of mind in your letter, I feel perfectly justified in pressing that course upon you, provided that you adopt it with sincere conviction, even though you may be conscious of much weak- ness and many shortcomings. I will add a few words more about self-examination, and Groulburn's book on ' Personal Eeligion.' I entirely feel that we ought to examine ourselves and look into the condition of our own hearts, and am conscious that I myself am rather apt to forget this duty. But, after all, I think that it may be carried too far ; that self-scrutiny may become morbid ; and it seems to me that a native of India may be especially liable to this error. In the first place, Christ is the Redeemer of each man, and not himself ; and the way for each of us to be redeemed is 4 to think with will, mind and affections upon Christ ; and not in himself ' I am quoting Coleridge here. In the second place, the true tests of our spiritual condition are not our feelings, but our actions. * He that loveth Me,' says our Lord, ' keepeth My commandment.' The exact working of our desires, hopes and fears, of the degree of our repentance, faith, and disinterested love, depends on various causes, some external to our own hearts and minds. The state of the will is shown by the life. If 6 to will is present with us, but how to perform that which we will we find not,' the remedy is in such resolution and prayer as leads to action. Above all things, I exhort you to practice. You may be assured that I will not forget you in my prayers, and I desire also to claim an interest in yours. It seems to me, if it is not presumptuous to scrutinise the course of Providence too narrowly, that the hand of Grod is mercifully guiding you to the Christian Church, and that the decisive action and practice which I venture to recommend should lead you to follow that guidance, to throw in your lot with Christians, and then to determine on that calling and mode of life, especially if it please Grod to restore your health, in which you may appear most likely to promote the glory of His holy name. CH. XVI.] CONNEXION WITH MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. 409 CHAPTER XVI. THE BISHOP'S RELATIONS WITH MISSIONARY SOCIETIES EXTENSIVE FIELD OP MISSIONARY WORK ITS CHARACTERISTICS QUESTIONS OF PROMINENT INTEREST IN MANAGEMENT OF MISSIONS THE BISHOP'S PERSONAL RE- LATION TO MISSIONARIES SYMPATHY WITH THEIR DIFFICULTIES HIS POSITION TOWARDS INQUIRERS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY HIS VIEWS ON NATIVE EDUCATION AS ADMINISTERED BY MISSIONARIES GROWTH OF FEELING ON THE SUBJECT AMONG MISSIONARIES LIBERALITY OF VIEWS ON THE PART OF THE STATE LIMITED AMOUNT OF MISSIONARY SUCCESS THE BISHOP'S MAXIMS OF ' QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE ' AFFAIRS OF BISHOP'S COLLEGE LETTERS TO THE SECRETARY OF THE PROPAGATION SOCIETY. THE case of the inquirer mentioned in the last chapter was the only one with which the Bishop came into per- sonal and continuous contact. His work was to aid and guide missionary thought, rather than to share missionary labours. As president of the local committees in Calcutta, he maintained official connexion with the two great so- cieties, the ' two arms of the Church of England ' labour- ing for the conversion of India. The transaction of busi- ness with these committees was always a source of interest to himself; and harmony and good-understanding were never endangered by any disregard on his part of the twofold relation in which he stood towards the work that they administered. As Bishop of the diocese, he confirmed the native Christians, took cognisance of points strictly ecclesiastical, and ordained and licensed mission- aries ; but he never swerved from the decision at which he arrived quite early in his tenure of the see, of declin- ing to ordain a missionary except on the title of a pre- sentation by one society or the other, and he disclaimed, 410 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON, [Cn. XVI. as a general rule, any control over details of manage- ment beyond that which his vote as a member of a committee gave him. This theory of his position was maintained quite as much in the interests of the parent societies as of himself. The bent of his own mind was so utterly opposed to all loose and irregular action for the furtherance of the great cause at stake, that it was always his sincere desire and, so to speak, his friendly policy, to uphold the distinct position occupied by the Church Missionary and Propagation Societies, and to vindicate a compact and organized system, such as they represented, as the only effectual means of grappling with the false religions of an empire. Moreover, he felt so keenly the responsibility involved in the care of the Churches among professing Christians, that he experienced a sense of per- sonal relief in sharing the supervision of the Church in her missionary character with two powerful agencies prac- tically representing the zeal and sympathy of the Church of England. The following letter bears testimony to his appreciation of the two societies, and it also exhibits the distrust with which he invariably met the aspirations of volunteers for a difficult and arduous work, whose zeal might be praiseworthy, but was often not according to knowledge : 1861. .... My chief object in writing is to answer your appli- cation for employment in the diocese, and the conditions which you annex to it. I own that I do not like these conditions. I should be the last person to undervalue independence of action, or to desire unduly to fetter it, and I fully agree with the opinion that government by a bishop is more in accordance with Church order, and likely to be more successful, than govern- ment by a society. But it appears to me that the Propagation Society really, in theory as well as in practice, and the Church Missionary Society, as at present administered, at least practi- cally, do place their missionaries, in all theological and ecclesias- tical relations, under the sole control of the bishop ; indeed, I CH. XVI.] CONNEXION WITH MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. 41 L may say, in all relations except those of temporal and pecu- niary character, in which it is, on all accounts, much better that he should only interfere as president of a managing committee, and not in his episcopal character, with which they have no necessary connexion. During your diaconate, I should think it contrary to Church order, and otherwise in- expedient, to give you the sole charge of any mission ; and after your second ordination, it would probably be necessary for you to learn to act in union with some colleagues, certainly in connexion with some general system. I do not think that a person who would be unable to do so would be likely to sub- mit very readily to a bishop who should think himself called upon to interfere with his proceedings. Indeed, I might have given a briefer answer without entering into all this reasoning. The thing which you ask is, as you have put it, impracticable. I have no means of employing clergymen in this diocese except in connexion with some society or with Government, or at least with some person or persons associated with myself in the administration of trust funds. But if I had merely stated this, and left you with this answer, I should not have expressed my feeling, that a mere impatience of control is not Christian inde- pendence, but a snare against which we ought to guard ; that the system of the English Church, and certainly of the Propa- gation Society, which, I think, faithfully represents it, does pro- vide for the combined subordination and independent action of the clergy, in a manner which ought, in my opinion, to satisfy any thoughtful Christian that he would have full scope for his activity and originality, within such limits as must be imposed, if we are to have any order or discipline at all. I must there- fore reply to your letter, that, under present circumstances, I could only ordain you in connexion with the Propagation Society (I assume that its constitution is more akin to your own feelings than that of the Church Missionary) ; that, in after- wards appointing you to a station, I should do my best to meet your wishes and idiosyncrasies, and that I should be very glad to see your zeal and self-denial, your earnest Christian faith, and intellectual ability, enlisted in the service of our Church ; and that I shall think it a subject of real regret if any restless- ness or dislike of control, or other questionable feeling, should prevent you from devoting yourself to that high and holy 412 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVI. calling to which (rod's providence seems to have been hitherto directing you. Beyond the limits, however, of well-defined relations with the societies, there lay ample scope for the far- reaching personal influence of the chief pastor. By regular correspondence the home secretaries were kept in full possession of the condition of their affairs in North India. Existing missions were, as to their strength or their weakness, freely criticised ; new ones were suggested, and their adoption recommended by arguments of a practi- cal kind ; new fields of labour were mapped out, always on some definite principle, whereby each society, while abandoning no footing already gained, might in a time of profound peace systematically extend its borders. It was, of course, far more easy to suggest than to get what was suggested carried out. It remained an abiding source of vexation and disappointment to the Bishop, that through the vast territories of Eastern Bengal and Assam, Church work among the heathen continued to be represented by only one small mission. The late episcopate was full of interest from a mission- ary point of view. Many of the older missions had been planted in the great cities which, extending from Calcutta to Peshawur, form the vertebrae of British dominion from Bengal to Afghanistan. In these the missions, imme- diately on their revival, after the shock of the mutiny, struck their roots again more deeply and firmly. Schools resumed work vigorously and successfully, and the edu- cation and elevation of native women became increasingly a subject of care arid attention. North India has always been a cherished quarter in the vineyard of the Church Missionary Society. The Indus has been crossed, the Punjab occupied, and among the fanatics of Peshawur, and in the benighted native kingdom of Cashmere, that society now occupies the most advanced outposts of diffi- culty and of peril. Evangelistic efforts have become CH. XVI.] VAKIETIES OF MISSION WORK. 413 co-extensive with English conquest, and therefore with that heterogeneous mixture of races and religions alike in little except in their opposition or indifference to Christianity. Missionary labour, having thus to take account of wide ethnological and linguistic, as well as religious diversity, ceases to be monotonous, either in its ordinary routine or in its claims on the mental powers of its agents. In his latest sermon to missionary candidates, when urging the need of intellectual industry no less than of spiritual zeal, the Bishop thus surveyed the length and breadth of the mission field : Between the wild and Arab-like Mahometans of our North- West frontier, the bigoted Hindu of Benares, the soldier-Sikh of Amritsir, still dwelling proudly on the recent memory of sovereignty, the supple and highly-educated Bengali of Calcutta, and the half-barbarous members of some aboriginal hill-tribe, there is as much difference as between the natives of Lystra, the Jew of Palestine and Thessalonica, the philosopher of Athens, the luxurious merchant of Corinth, the superstitious devotee of Diana at Ephesus, and all the other varieties of human nature, with which St. Paul was required to deal, and in all of which he laid the broad and deep foundations of Christ's Holy Catholic Church. Whenever any future historian shall treat of Chris- tianity in India during the great post-mutiny period, one topic of interest will be found in a review of the causes which have contributed to bring about more elasticity in the theory of evangelistic labours. A merely general reference to this subject is alone admissible in these pages ; but it may safely be said that, as the position of mis- sionaries now benefits by a tone of policy and public feeling which, advancing from neutrality, has become distinctly friendly, so also their opinions and views have moved onwards, and have acquired breadth and liberality greater than of old. A wide field for the free ventilation of broad principles underlying practical measures was 414 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XVI. furnished by the development and organization of the indigenous Church of India. Earlier theories, through which converts, dwelling almost exclusively in the secure retreat of a mission compound, have been guarded and nurtured with something of hot-house culture, have been yielding to broader views, which recognize that the true place of abode for native Christians is in the heart of their own villages or large cities, in the midst of their brethren after the flesh, where, with a native pastor and his church, Christian households and worship may wit- ness for Christ's Church to surrounding heathens. The encouragement of a healthy independence and of a spirit of self-support both in temporal and spiritual things in the native congregations, the position of the native pas- torate, the relations between European missionaries and their converts, avoiding on the one hand undue inter- ference, and on the other neglect or indifference, have been taken up as questions pressing for consideration or adjustment. In the Punjab they assumed a special pro- minence. In that fair province the vigour and inde- pendence of its robust and proud races have seemed destined, in the providence of God, to provide a natural corrective to errors which had, in some instances, accom- panied the planting of the Christian Church among the feebler and more pliant inhabitants of Bengal. Such points appertain less to the construction of an infant Church in this or that particular mould, after this or that ecclesiastical pattern, than to the work, so pre-eminently important, of engrafting Christianity on the national life of the East, of Christianizing native races without denationalizing them. The consideration of these questions brought about real synods, when, as in the con- ferences held in the Punjab or elsewhere, clergy and laymen, Churchmen and Dissenters, met together to ex- change views which were the product either of matured reflection or of quick practical observation. Hearty and CH. XVI.] PKOCESS OF EVANGELIZATION. 415 intelligent discussions for the same purpose imparted a vital interest to the Bishop's visitations to local missions, and left upon his mind a thankful sense of the reality of the work that was going on. It is not claimed that his direct influence prompted each progressive step in the theory of mission work ; but he passed from province to province of his vast diocese with a warm heart and an 'open mind,' and it was under much support, drawn from his clear judgment and his power of disentangling leading principles from crotchets or prejudices, that other men thought and worked out their thoughts. Opportunities for personal intercourse with widely- separated missions were necessarily few and of brief duration ; but they were always turned to some practical account, and they tended much to strengthen the re- lations of mutual regard and confidence which sprang up in very early days between the Bishop and several of the principal missionaries. One bond of union between them was his sincere sympathy with their difficulties. Though many of these, of a more external character, have been diminished by the more open recognition yielded in recent years to the cause of missions generally, the individual missionary still often pursues his labours under the discouragement of indifference on the part of those whose sympathy and support would be much valued. A sense of this stimulated the Bishop con- stantly, when on visitation, to excite interest in the local mission among the residents of the adjoining station, and to commend it to their friendly sympathy ; and the same feeling could impart to his occasional sermons on mission- ary subjects a vividness of application and almost pic- turesque freshness of style, contrasting strongly with the insipid and conventional handling with which the theme is often treated. Other and more perplexing difficulties, those namely which beset the guidance of men's souls from the darkness of heathenism to the light of the 416 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVI. Gospel, must increase with, the increase of education. They draw largely upon the intellectual resources of missionaries, and the Bishop earnestly desired that they should be recognised as reasonable and inevitable diffi- culties, and be met not only with the zeal, but with the sympathy and large-hearted wisdom of which St. Paul is the great apostolic model. Had he been called to the work of an actual missionary, he would have entered upon the conflict with the bigotry or puerile superstition in which millions in India are still enshrouded, with the recognition of some common ground even amidst over- whelming differences ; he would have sought out the grain of truth hid in every system, however debased, which man has erected between himself and an Unknown God ; he would have been full of sensitive considera- tion for the most ignorant among those who were asked to receive a new faith at the hands of conquerors and rulers. He never heard a false religion inconsi- derately or contemptuously denounced in the presence of its votaries without a jar in his own mind. Once, indeed, he wrote with more bluntness than was usual with him, c If I were a Hindu, I am sure I should feel exceedingly angry at hearing my religion so abused.' There were both strength and tenderness in the position of the Bishop's mind towards the spiritual cravings and intellectual doubts, the shattered faiths and philosophical systems, which have a place in those phases of thought through which the more educated Hindus are passing. To win such men to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ, was the work to which, without reservation, he believed the Church to be called, though he was the last to underrate the manifold obstacles that lay in her path. He was always perplexed and troubled by the inability evinced by some among those long accustomed to contact with minds in many stages of moral and spiritual progress to estimate the length and strength of CH. XVL] SYMPATHY WITH INQUIRERS. 417 the conflict which so often precedes the acceptance of a new and transforming faith. With himself, it was through- out his Indian life a subject of true interest to analyse the various arguments, or to observe the different mental bias, by which men were attached towards Christianity or withheld from it. He never accepted shortcomings in belief as an equivalent for Christian faith ; but he could recognise such shortcomings, and understand them. It is much to be regretted that so little of what he thought and felt on this subject was committed to writing. It was one less tangible, less bound up with direct and immediate issues, than many others of a more practical kind, and little now remains beyond the memory of his views on a point of supreme importance in the propagation of Christianity. The following letter is the only one extant on this class of subjects. It was written in behalf not of inquirers, but of some converts from Mahometanism, and was addressed to a missionary who was engaged in meeting difficulties brought forward by them relating to the inspiration of the Scriptures. After an enumeration of English theological works which bore on the question, the letter proceeded : I will now make one or two remarks on the whole question. I think it very important, as I said before, that when your converts speak of the need of maintaining high views of inspiration, because the Mahometans regard the Koran as a nazil hua from God, they should recollect the essential and unmistakable differences between the Bible and the Koran. The two contrasts (1) That the Koran professes to be one revelation dictated by Grod to one person, while the Bible is a series of revelations scattered over fifteen hundred years, communicated fully to mankind through the medium of various selected agents, whose characters plainly appear in the different books which they wrote ; and (2) That the Koran has not a single various reading, while the Bible has thousands are so strong that Mahometan converts should be accustomed from the first to believe that the E E 418 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [dr. XVI. conceptions of the Koran and the Bible are fundamentally dif- ferent, except in the single particular that both profess to convey a Divine message to men's souls. As Mahometanism is a religion of fatalism, and as the notion of Grod incarnate is abhorrent to its stern and unsympathising form, so its sacred book claims to be nothing more than the pure voice of (rod ; but as Christianity attaches as much importance to man's free will as to Grod's so- vereignty, and regards the humanity and divinity as mingled in the person of Christ, so in its sacred books there is a human as well as a Divine element ; and it has pleased (rod that in their transmission to us they should suffer from human infirmity, though His providence has preserved them from any such cor- ruptions as affect the integrity of His messages which are trans- mitted to us in them. Your converts must accept these facts as involved in their admission to the Church of Christ, and they should be reminded that it is no proof of faith to try to make the Bible as like the Koran as possible ; but rather to find out the exact truth of the case, and accept it as resulting from the wisdom and purpose of Grod, and as distinguishing the revelation which He has given from the pretended message which is falsely at- tributed to Him, Again, I think that it is important that they should feel that these questions of the manuscripts, various readings, &c., are, after all, except for defensive purposes, of small consequence, and that, for the conversion of their brethren, they must look, not to their intellectual enlightenment on these matters, but to the conviction of sin, the sense of spiritual need, and the discovery that in Jesus Christ alone that need can be satisfied. And this leads me to give you one more recommend- ation, that inquirers should above all things be encouraged to read the Bible, with a view, not to these critical questions, but to its moral and spiritual aspect ; then they must see that the assertion that the Koran is infallibly dictated is untrue, and that the comparison between its Divine claims and those of the Bible introduces far wider considerations than those of the words and letter of the text ; they must acknowledge, as Dr. Kay says, that the Koran is * radically out of harmony with the Bible ; that it belongs to a different order of things, and that undoubtedly an inferior one.' And this, as it seems to me, is the arena on which the conflict must be fought, with a view to conversion. CH. XVI.] VIEWS ON NATIVE EDUCATION. 419 With regard to the Bishop's views on native education, they are condensed in the following letter, written to a missionary in 1SG1. The opinions therein expressed lay at the root of all that he at any time suggested or stimu- lated in this branch of missionary operations : . I think that you are quite right to throw yourself heart and soul into your first class. Think what an effect Arnold pro- duced on his sixth form at Rugby mainly by the constant display before them of Christian principle, piety, energy, truth, justice, and an earnest devotion to their improvement. Do not be disappointed if as yet you see no spiritual life, no con- versions. Work on in faith and hope, doing earnestly your own duty, and leave the result to the Spirit of Christ. I believe that quite as many conversions have been produced by missionary education as by bazaar preaching. In any case, I am sure that lessons in Christianity, systematically given to intelligent young men, by one whose character they reverence, and to whom they are personally attached and grateful, must produce a mighty hidden effect, even though immediate fruit may be delayed. Besides, you have hardly been at work three months. Believing, too, as I do, that the conversion of India must come from native agency, I think that such agents are more likely to be drawn out by the influence of a class-room than by words scattered over a crowd in a bazaar. The other day, at a meeting of the Syndicate of the University, I expressed my hope that in time all the Grovernment Colleges, except the professional colleges, might be abolished, and the money devoted to a great enlargement of the grant-in-aid system, and to the development of the University, as the two legitimate (because at once central and indirect) organs of Government education. One member announced his entire acquiescence ; another said, ' The time has not yet come.' That may be true, because I doubt whether the missionary bodies are yet prepared to step into the gap ; but it is the goal to which we should direct our efforts, instead of the impracticable scheme of introducing the Bible into all the existing Grovernment schools. It is the view, too, to which the most thoughtful persons interested in missions are gradually and surely tending. 420 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XVI. Thus was the Bishop's faith strong in those schools or colleges in which the respect and affection so readily yielded by the Eastern disciple to his Guru might be transferred to the Christian teacher. In them, too, he saw the most promising seedground for a native pastorate, of whose future he always spoke and thought with en- thusiastic hopefulness. The ordination of three native pastors, occurring almost immediately after his arrival in his diocese, was an early pledge of the reality of the work that had fallen upon him ; and the vision of indigenous Stigands and Lanfrancs taking the place of the foreign Theodores and Augustines always mingled largely with his conception of the national Church of India. To native pastors, ' Christian pundits,' built up in sound learn- ing, he looked for the real efficacy of that disputing daily in the thronged bazaars, and under the village tree, of which, while carried on only by Europeans, he often doubted the efficacy. In a native clergy ministering to those with whom they are identical in race and feeling, he discerned (in the words of one who once eloquently pleaded their cause in an English pulpit) ' the new vessels for the new wine, familiar with language, thoughts, and difficulties to Europeans so unintelligible, incapable of the mistakes and misconceptions with Europeans so inevitable.' * When the Bishop went out to India, he was very doubtful as to the amount of prominence conceded to education in the machinery employed for the conversion of the country. On his first visitation tour, which covered a large part of Upper India, he carefully examined each successive mission school, and always made its condition a point of comparison with that of the Government school hard by. As time went on, missionary thought on this subject undoubtedly became progressive. The * Sermon preached in St. Mary's Church, Oxford, June 10, I860, by Arthur Penryhn Stanley, D.D., at the request of the Rev. T. V. French, Principal of Agra College. CH. XVJ.] MISSIONARY SCHOOLS. 421 doctrine that secular knowledge must hinder the entrance of spiritual light into the soul, if still held in theory, was ignored in practice ; and if there remained some mission- aries who, as the Bishop used to put it, ' did not believe in schools,' there were others who were becoming in- creasingly dissatisfied with the share they had in native education. With these the eventual substitution of the system worked by them for that carried on by the State was no mere vision or sentiment, but a practical measure to be kept steadily in view, and only needing time to bring it about. On the other hand, signs were not wanting of a willingness on the part of the civil powers to open a wider field for that education, combined with instruction in religion, which is the only kind that missionaries will administer. Here and there, in a small locality where two schools were not needed, the one set up by Go- vernment was closed, the other under Christian influence being left in exclusive possession of the ground : and this principle was carried out on a larger scale, in instances where the Government schools of a whole district peopled by hill- tribes free from caste prejudices were placed under the sole management of missionaries. By this arrange- ment the Church Missionary Society obtained a secure footing among the Santhals of the Eajmahal hills. A similar overture in behalf of the hill-tribes around Chit- tagong fell in so entirely with the Bishop's scheme for the occupation of Eastern Bengal by the Propagation Society, that he earnestly advocated the measure, ' trusting that the opportunity would be thankfully accepted by the venerable Society to whom it was thus offered.' An indefinite extension laterally of missionary instruction through the dense masses of the ryots or peasantry was facilitated by the relaxation of grant-in-aid rules, which was conceded by the Secretary of State to the repre- sentatives of the Church Missionary Society. In all such arrangements the Bishop heartily rejoiced, as steps in 422 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVI. the right direction. He fully acknowledged the power and the soundness of the education diffused by the State ; but he hailed with thankfulness, and stimulated by per- sonal influence, every effort to overtake the State system in its strength, and to supply its one great deficiency. Among vigorous and independent efforts on the part of missionaries for the attainment of this end, none during his tenure of the See was more noteworthy than the establishment of the Cathedral Mission College in Cal- cutta ; for through it the Church Missionary Society entered into competition with Government in the training of the upper classes of natives up to the B.A. degree in the University. The years of his episcopate were not marked by any great accession of converts. The harvest reaped from seed widely sown was very scanty, and the baptisms were significant rather from the classes which supplied them than from their number. But the Bishop would not admit a tale of baptisms as the only test of advancing Christianity, and he never encouraged sanguine anti- cipations of any great and present ingathering into the Church. Eather he saw in the high intelligence of the native races an impediment to the passive and ready surrender of their minds and consciences to anything so momentous as a new faith. On one occasion he wrote in reply to anxieties ex- pressed about the small increase of converts : I allow with sorrow and disappointment that there seems to be a lull in missionary success generally in Upper India, except in some special cases, as that of the German Mission at Chota Nagpore, which is directed to an aboriginal tribe and not to Hindus. I allow that were there an entire stagnation of baptisms, we should have great cause for anxiety ; but still we must not be too anxious to reckon up carefully the number of annual con- verts, and fancy that all the good we are doing must be measured CH. XVI.] BISHOPS COLLEGE. 423 by them. I trust that if there are not many actual conversions, a Christian influence is gradually spreading, and that agencies pre- paratory to the Grospel are becoming more and more powerful. These general views upon ' quietness and confidence ' being the motto for all missionary work converged to a point in the matter of Bishop's College, the central insti- tution of the Propagation Society's operations in North India. Bishop Middleton was its founder, several home societies contributed liberally to its erection, and the Pro- pagation Society was from the outset its sole trustee. The objects contemplated in its foundation were the education and training of European and native candidates for the ministry, and the promotion of Christian literature both in English and in the vernaculars. The high tide of Tractarianism which rose in England after 1840 cast a wave even on India, and produced some years of aliena- tion between Bishop Wilson and the College. Calmer days followed, when its studies and discipline were guided by wisdom and moderation as well as by sound learning. The Church Missionary Society withdrew the prohibition against any of their missionary students entering the College, and Bishop Cotton, after five years' experience, recorded in his charge of 1863 ' his unshaken confidence ' in it. But the home Society seemed scarcely to share the revival of hopefulness which was felt in India. Greater results appeared to be expected than could be guaranteed by persons struggling with the constant interruptions and disappointments which surround all Indian work. A large proportion of the Bishop's correspondence with the Society's secretary in London was taken up with a defence of the College, and with the effort to dispel the distrust with which committees and sub-committees were apparently inspired. Disappoint- ments no doubt had marked the career of some who had been educated within its walls ; but, on the other hand, 424 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTOX. [CH. XVI. the education and training supplied by it had opened a door into the ministry for Eurasians, that neglected class of whom the Bishop always spoke as having long laboured under portentous disadvantages, and whom he earnestly desired to see raised in the social scale, and to be made to feel that a vocation in the Church was open to them. It has been already stated that in its literary department also, translations of the Psalms into "Urdu and Bengali had emanated in quite recent years from its press, besides an able and remarkable book on Hindu Philosophy by the Eev. Krishna Mohun Banerjea, one of the professors. On all these facts the Bishop took his stand, and steadily maintained that, in spite of many dis- advantages, the College was doing much good and useful, though not showy, work, and that, as the one institution in the diocese which supplied sound theological learning and opportunities for ministerial preparation, its position was unassailable. On the resignation of Dr. Kay, he wrote as follows to the home Society : .... I have reserved for the end of my letter a few re- marks on the most important event which has lately befallen the Indian Church Dr. Kay's resignation of the Principal- ship of Bishop's College. I will not now dwell on the loss which his departure is to the College, and, if he does not return to India at all, to the diocese ; but I am anxious that the Society should appreciate the great importance of our College, of which I have a growing conviction. I am sure that it is getting more and more essential to the successful working of the diocese, and that people are beginning to feel this. The Church Missionary Society, in India at least, is now very friendly to it, and the son of one of their missionaries has lately been a student there. One of their clergy in Upper India told me that he had two or three promising native Christian boys in his school, whom he hoped in time to send down to Bishop's College, to finish their education, and, if possible, to be trained for the ministry of the Church. Besides its missionary functions, it discharges another of great and increasing utility. Several young Englishmen, Cu. XVI. ] USEFULNESS OF BISHOP'S COLLEGE. 425 Scripture-readers and others, have been sent there to be pre- pared for orders, and then placed under the auspices of the Additional Clergy Society, and other bodies, to minister to scat- tered communities of Europeans in different parts of the country. In this way, too, the influence of the Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel and the College will, through them, make itself felt more and more. I hope, therefore, that the Society will believe that a really great and important work is going on in their College, that a thoroughly efficient Principal will be chosen, and that if any alterations are proposed they will be well considered, and perhaps I might ask that a sketch of them should be sent out to India before they are finally determined upon. This letter was written in February 1866. At that time the affairs of the College were undergoing investiga- tion at the hands of a sub-committee in London, and a report upon them was shortly afterwards sent out to India. Great divergence was manifest between the views of the home Society and those of their correspondents in India, on several points connected with the condition and prospects of the College. The Bishop had, however, become so convinced of its vitality and capacity for self- development to meet the growing wants of the country, that he had entirely adopted the proposal long advocated by those who in India were best acquainted with its working, that the institution should be severed from the parent Society in respect of direct control or management, and begin an independent existence. The letter to the London secretary, after the receipt of the report, was one of the last that he wrote, being dated September 1866. Its insertion here is, therefore, an anticipation of events chronologically, but it sums up his opinions on an important missionary institution which, through evil report or good report, was a prominent subject in his correspondence with the parent Society throughout his Indian life. The letter may also form a natural close to these brief notices of the Bishop's connexion with missionary work generally : 426 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVI. .... It cannot be denied that Bishop's College labours under considerable disadvantages with regard to the constitu- encies which are to supply its students, and our chief effort should be to enlarge these, or at least, the one of them on which it ought chiefly to depend. At present it has three. 1. Students and probationers for holy orders of purely English blood. These are furnished chiefly by the Additional Clergy Society, being Scripture-readers and others, w r hom the Society desires to see trained and ordained for ministering among the English settlers in India, and especially at railway stations. In preparing such persons for the Christian ministry, the College does a very good work, and, as far as I have seen, does it very well. It is, however, necessarily a modern work hardly foreseen by Bishop Middleton, and also a very limited one, since most of our additional clergy come from England. At present, there are two such probationers in the College, both gaining great advantage from it. 2. The Eurasian community. Of this body the sub-com- mittee speaks, as I expected, in the language of distrust, and I am far from denying that they are justified in doing so. I admit that in more than one case the ordination of a Eurasian has turned out a matter for regret. Still, it seems to me un- Christian to despair of a whole race ; and to open the clerical status to them is undoubtedly, under God's blessing, one means of improving and raising them. I trust, therefore, that there will be no discouragement given either to the admission or or- dination of East Indians as such, though it is plainly necessary to be very careful in regard to the latter, and each individual candidate must be well weighed and tested before he is accepted either by the Society or by myself. 3. Since, then, the English and Eurasian portions of our con- stituency are necessarily small, we fall back on those who ought to be, on all accounts, traditional, national, and religious, the chief care of the College the natives of India. But here we have a difficulty not noticed in the sub-committee's report. Our native constituency is almost limited to Bengal. It is more and more clear that the Hindustanis, i.e. the people of the upper provinces, have almost an insuperable aversion to the climate of Calcutta. If they can help it, they will not go there CH. XVJ.] GOVERNMENT OF BISHOP'S COLLEGE. 427 as students, and this must always be a difficulty in extending the circle from which Bishop's College is to draw its supplies. It is true that the lower provinces ought to supply plenty of students, but then, unfortunately, the College is practically almost limited to the missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Now, the missions of the Society in Bengal, except Mr. Driberg's, are not very nourishing nor numerous, so that the students cannot be numerous either. This is one of the main reasons why I have advocated the separation of the College from the Society for the Propagation of the Grospel its inde- pendent endowment, and the formation of a separate trust, with the Bishop as visitor. It strikes me, that by making the College really diocesan, instead of keeping it attached to one particular Society, a large constituency would arise, from which its students might be drawn ; more persons would be interested in it, its influence extended, and its usefulness increased. And I believe the only complete and satisfactory way of doing this, would be to raise a large sum by way of endowment, to hand this and the College itself over to a Board of Trustees (of whom the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel should nominate a portion), to give to this Board or to the Bishop the nomination of the Principal, and to leave the College to work out its destinies in India without any interference from England. Should this be considered too sweeping a measure, a less satisfactory but tolerably hopeful form of the same general plan would be that the Society should be trustees of the College and its property, but that there should be a separate endowment, large enough to pay all College expenses, including salaries of Principal and tutors, administered, together with the whole discipline of the place, by the College Council, under the Bishop as visitor, the Society merely receiving an annual report of the state of the College and the use made of the money. To leave the men sent out to teach and rule the College as much as possible to their own unfettered judgment, controlled by that of the Bishop as their natural head, seems to me the best way of securing their undivided energies, and throwing them on their own resources for success. The committee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London is too distant, and generally too little acquainted with facts, to be an efficient governing body. 428 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ca. XVI. But, before all thmgs, the great thing now to be desired is the appointment of a Principal."* The vacancy has now con- tinued for a long time, and its longer continuance is hardly fair to Mr. , and must be injurious to the College. Send out a good active man with some 'ideas ' in his head, and his judg- ment and opinions, formed on the spot, will be worth many re- ports of sub-committees. Let him come out with the report and the proposal for endowing the College before him, and then, with his help, plans can be formed on the spot and carried out with the necessary assistance from home. I hope that you will not think that my desire to make the College more or less independent of the Society rises from any distrust of the latter, or from insensibility to the great services rendered by it to the College and the diocese. With the Society I always have heartily co-operated, and always hope to do so ; but I think freedom and local government essential to a place of education, and that rules and regulations framed without local knowledge must be theoretical and are often mistaken. * Dr. Kay resigned his post at Bishop's College early in 1866, but he had left India, from ill-health, eighteen months before. Hence the discharge of the work of the office by an acting Principal had been, as stated in the text, of long duration. CH. XVII.] LIFE IN CALCUTTA. 429 CHAPTER XVII. RESIDENCE IN CALCUTTA OP 1864 AFFAIRS AT SIMLA MEMORIAL SCHOOL AT JUTOG PRESBYTERIAN MOVEMENT THE BISHOP VISITS SIMLA RESUMES VISITATIONS AS FAR AS LAHORE RETURNS TO CALCUTTA LETTERS. ALTHOUGH the vigorous and varied work which an earlier chapter has related went far to dispel the monotony of the hot months of 1864, many clouds hung over the residence in Calcutta during that year. There were deaths, some very sudden, others very mournful (espe- cially amongst the latter, that of Mr. Burn at Nainee Tal, in the Himalayas), which cast dark shadows round the Bishop's path. One trouble, too, which touched him very closely, was my departure for England, necessitated by broken health, and with me, of the child also, who could not be left behind. The Bishop called the nine months of our absence ' his year of desolation ;' and I never saw him so cast down as at the parting on board the steamer, when we were homeward-bound to see friends, and, above all, the boys, after five years of separa- tion, while his only prospect was a return to the deserted house, to many weeks of most trying heat, and to daily cares and labours, uncheered by any remnant of family life, prized by him as the well-spring of his truest earthly joys. He was provided with the best security for his comfort that was possible, in the presence of Mr. Cowie (now Bishop of Auckland), as his chaplain, who to bright cheerfulness and untiring energy added a real attachment to the Bishop. In truth, the Bishop stood in need of much watchful care. As work grew under his hands he 430 LIFP: OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. xvn. withdrew more and more from any share in domestic or personal arrangements ; and, except that he retained a careful supervision over his library, and exercised a close scrutiny over his banker's book and private finances, he renounced all concerns with the lesser, more practical de- tails of life's business. It was not that he was lazy or luxurious ; but a sense of dependence upon others in- creased gradually, almost unconsciously, upon him, and he was like a child in his reliance upon those about him for the arrangements, or comforts, or even the safeguards of his life. His even and unselfish temper, and the grace of character, in which affectionate ease was blended with much quiet dignity, made such ministrations a labour of love on the part of those who stood to him in the close and confidential relations of domestic chaplains, although, as he said, ' he knew they often sacrificed their comfort and convenience for his.' In August he prepared to go forth again on visitation. The sharp illness of the preceding year was a warning that the season of extreme damp after the first rains had better be avoided, and matters of business had arisen to sound a distinct call for his presence at Simla. One point under consideration was a fresh local habitation for the Memorial School, carried on at that time at Jutog, where it had first been placed, and the Bishop's personal help was much desired to decide the question of a fresh site. Letters further on will help to explain the circum- stances of this matter, and also of another which was producing much local excitement. The latter referred to a request he received while still in Calcutta, that the Church at Simla might be used for a Presbyterian service. The movement was got up by subordinate officials closely connected with the Government, and being supported by a certain number of members of the Church of England, was not wholly devoid of a sectarian character. The Bishop was thoroughly vexed and troubled by the CH. XVJL] NEED OF HIS PRESENCE AT SIMLA. 431 request. It was a clear encroachment upon the limits within which the loan of the churches had received his own sanction and that of the Government ; it placed him in the ungracious position of being compelled to refuse a favour for which there was so far a plea that the church accommodation arid ordinary services were insufficient for the needs of a station which was crowded with the season residents ; and it revived, under a new and an- noying aspect, the vexed question of 1860, which had then included the whole subject of indiscriminate inter- communion in church worship. The Bishop entirely upheld in theory the principle that in India, of all coun- tries, the Christian Church should exhibit her unity rather than her divisions, and he carried out the theory in prac- tice so far as he was able ; but beyond a certain point he was always met by the fact that the Church intrusted to his keeping was, in India as in England, ' established ' in law and order, prescribing limits to her comprehensive- ness which he could not pass. On the present occasion he could not have granted the request without running counter to the policy of four years before. But that policy had been deliberately formed on arguments forcible and satisfactory to his own mind ; and a somewhat general laxity of ecclesiastical feeling in the country during inter- vening years had tended to confirm him in it. He was fully aware how easily a liberality capable of conciliating other communions might be interpreted as undue laxity, and alienate Churchmen ; he maintained that to admin- ister the Church of England in behalf at once of her own adherents and of Dissenters was an impossible task, and this conviction had been forced upon him as years went on, quite as much by the obligations and responsibility of his office, as by any personal feeling engendered by doctri- nal differences. To a correspondent he wrote about this time : ' I am quite willing not only to co-operate with Dis- senters on common grounds, and to surrender all exclusive 432 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON [Cn. XVII. and offensive Church privileges (such as the sole validity of marriages performed by Episcopal clergy and marriage registrars), but also to meet them as far as possible in concessions such as the loan of our churches to Scotch regiments, who must either hold their service in them or be exposed to the sun of May or the torrents of July ; but as to making our churches and burial-grounds com- mon, and mixing up all so-called " Evangelical Pro- testants " in a confused mass, I can only say, in spite of Arnold, that it is impossible to govern a diocese on such principles, on account of the disgust which it causes to those whom I have to govern ; that I doubt whether an individual bishop has any right to play such tricks, or to lose sight of the chief peculiarities and distinctive merits of the English Church, in pursuit of an unpractical pre- tence at unity; and, moreover, that in all such matters every concession comes from the Church side, and none from the dissenting. If I get more and more of a High Churchman, I shall be made one by captious arid perverse agitations.' In dealing with the dissenting movement at Simla, the Bishop travelled again over the weary grounds of reason and explanations why the request for the church could not be granted ; but his letter to the chaplain of the station failed to arrest the agitation, and a memorial was presented to the Viceroy, soliciting the use of the English church for the ministrations of a Scotch chaplain. As will be seen, the Bishop's letters take up the matter at this point. Many of his friends urged his presence at Simla as the best means of settling the affair ; so to Simla in due time he went, and spent September there with Sir Charles and Lady Trevelyan, who kindly offered him a hospitable home during his brief sojourn. With them he passed a very pleasant month, thoroughly enjoying a rest in an invigorating climate, and with society exactly to his taste, the supreme Government being then in residence. He was soon in the midst of the affairs of Cir. XV1L] THE SCHOOL AT JUTOG. 433 the school, and assisted at the selection of a site for the new buildings within the station of Simla, combining much beauty with salubrity and other advantages. The school then existing at Jutog was of course visited. He presented with profound pleasure his prize for divinity, after looking over the examination papers, to a Dissenter, one Carey, great-grandson of the well-known Baptist missionary, and with equal pleasure the second for the same subject to a son of the headmaster, an undoubted Churchman ; the two together forming, as the Bishop trusted, a testimony to the catholic and equitable principles on which this school of his creation was governed. He preached often to over- flowing congregations ; the number of communicants was very large ; and he saw with thankfulness proofs of the beneficial influence of active work, and of the sight of upright Christian goodness in the highest quarters, in a place which has often been called the Capua of India. He had much private conversation with the Viceroy ; he always considered opportunities of personally getting the ear of Government as eminently conducive to the good of the diocese, and was never disposed to agree with Bishop Heber's theory, that the Bishop of Calcutta was Dest placed in the centre of the diocese, as all business with the Government could be done just as well by cor- respondence. After a month of mingled work and re- freshment, he went by way of Dharamsala and Dalhousie to Lahore, thence retraced his steps, spent Christmas at Lucknow, and reached Calcutta early in 1865. His letters to me may again supersede his journal : To his Wife. July 1864. .... The Presbyterian affair, though by no means over, has assumed a better aspect. The memorial asking for the use of the church has been presented to the Viceroy in council. He has addressed a very moderate letter to me, fully acknowledging my rights in the matter ; but, in consequence of F F 434 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XVII. the want of church room at Simla, recommending the request to my favourable consideration. I have replied by a long letter, stating all the difficulties : the fury of the English clergy and High Church laity; the positive hindrance to a zealous chaplain which may be interposed by a limitation of the use of his own church ; the sweeping nature of the prece- dent which Simla will set ; the discouragement to all Anglican interest in the architecture and adornment of churches, and the entire and manifest distinction between the wants of a Highland regiment and of a few Presbyterians at a hill-station occasionally visited by a Scotch minister on leave. Coupling all this with strong professions of loyalty to the Government, and gratitude for all their liberal help to my projects, and to the Church of England generally, I have said that it would be a real grief to me to refuse a positive recommendation from them, and therefore that I hope, after reading my array of reasons, the recommendation will be withdrawn. The policy is partly Fabian, since I hope that the correspondence may be kept in this uncertain state till I go to Simla, and partly intended to secure in any case favourable conditions, strictly limiting the use of the church, if it must be yielded, to this year's exigency. ... It is plain that, dependent as we are on Government for more than half our efficiency, it would never do for me to attempt the role of Gregory VII., in the hope that Sir John Lawrence would be reduced to that of the Emperor Henry IV. To a former Pupil. July 1864. ... I entirely admit your plea for not coming to me as my chaplain ; indeed, it would have been ridiculous to urge it as a duty on anyone, least of all on one who has so many ties at home. I -often think of you with pleasure and a kind of yearn- ing to see you again. Indeed, considering how slight our connexion was when you were at school, there is no one among my pupils to whom I feel more closely drawn. Possibly thai illness in has had some influence on my feelings to you at all events, they are deep and genuine, and to hear from you or about you is a real pleasure. It is an inexpressible happiness to me to read in your letter words which imply that I exercisec a good influence over you at school, and helped you to take a CH. XVII.] KETROSPECT OF SCHOOL LIFE. 435 worthier view of life than you had done, and to recognise your duty to (rod and Christ. For, as life goes on,"especially now that I am a good deal alone, I often turn back in thought to the years that are gone, and ask myself whether all that long school-time of mine produced any really Christian fruit, or was at all an ad- equate exercise of my calling as Christ's minister. And such an acknowledgment as yours, spontaneously offered, is a consola- tion and an encouragement., I rejoice that you are all happy together at , and am sure that you are doing a good work there. Your influence, I trust, will always be fresh and practical; you will not trouble yourself with theological diffi- culties ; you will teach boys to serve (rod and to lay hold of eternal life, undisturbed by the depth of the Nile mud, or the number of the first-born. It does sometimes provoke me to observe the vast interest which these questions excite, com- pared with the feeble efforts which are made to raise men's minds to the love of Grod. To his Daughter. July 21, 1864. I have bad news for you to-day. Poor parrot is dead ! I cannot make out why he died : certainly Maharaj took care of him, and gave him plenty of seed and water, and he always eemed to me very happy, till one day Maharaj observed that le was ' bimar ' (sick), and next morning, when I went to see lim, he was clinging to the lowest part of his perch, panting, and very unhappy. That day he died. I have sent him to bhe Asiatic Society to be stuffed for you, so that you may again look at his pretty green back and red stomach ; but he will never frighten Aunt Julia again, or croak at us like a jog when we pass him on the verandah. I have got your letter, written on June 28, when you were getting near Aden. I liked your letter very much, but I want ;o see you. my pussy, my pussy, why don't you come and say, ' Night night ! ' to papa ? What do you think ? Mr. Nesfield has carried off Dhulip Sing to Darjeeling. Peter does not want him ; Dhulip had nothing to do, and was getting more like a pig than a pony ; so ] would not sell him, because I hope that you will want him at VEurree next year ; but I told Mr. Nesfield that he might use F F 2 436 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XVII. him till December, when he can buy another pony, and must then send him back to go up to Murree. So Dhulip and his syce started by the train on Tuesday night, and by this time I hope are at Purneah. I shall want to know all that you think of Granny, and brother Edward, and Hyde Park, and the Pantheon, and the gold-fish, and the talking dolls, and everything else that you see. P.S. What do you think the cow has done ? She and her calf were sent to feed in the cathedral close, and when the people went to bring them to their stall at night, where do you think they found them ? Inside the cathedral ! To his Wife. Allahabad, August 1864. ... If you desire a general view of these weeks of desola- tion, I can say that, as to their occupations, they have been numerous, and I trust useful. But it has been a mournful time. Besides the two near sorrows which came in such quick succession, the deaths of Scott Smith and Harris helped to complete a background of gloom. Yet the time went fast, and now sometimes the parting in June seems only a dream, and I can hardly believe that you are not now at the palace awaiting my return. I sometimes think that you must regard the humorous tone of my letters as inconsistent with the general character of these weeks ; and even on looking over this one, there is doubtless an incongruity between its tragic opening and the sketch of the Patna visit ; yet the letter is written in the natural strain in which my thoughts and words flow when turned to different themes. Till I actually begin to think about it, I am never -conscious of anything comic in the grotesque phraseology of some of my narratives ; so you must take all as you find it ; for, in truth, in this busy world of ours, one thought soon thrusts back another, and tears and smiles follow each other in rapid alternation. To the Same. Simla, September 1864. . . . Here I am quite safe and very well, just arrived, an in a most comfortable apartment, with good fire, long sprawling CH. XVII.] PLANS FOR THE JUTOG SCHOOL. 437 sofa, and easy-chair. We slept last night at Syrie, and started early this morning. Then came the long, long tug up the mountain ; and then I really felt quite enchanted, as the rhododendrons and deodars began to close in upon me, then the bungalows dotted about, then the well-known September drizzle, and finally a very hearty and warm reception from the Trevelyans, and charming packets of letters from England, with good news of all the home circle. God grant that it may not be all too good to last, and may He make me duly and actively thankful for all this sunshine after the clouds. To the Same. September 11, 1864. . . . Here, of course, all the details of the Presbyterian fracas have gradually come to light. My letter went first to Grey, as belonging to the Home Department, and he posted off with it to the Viceroy, pronouncing it unanswerable. Sir John would not allow it to be unanswerable, but did allow (the important point) that it was sufficiently strong to make it undesirable to move in opposition to it. To this opinion all the Council came round ; consequently, it was agreed to let the matter drop ; and as my letter was an answer to a Government letter, and therefore, according to etiquette, did not require a reply, none was sent. I am greatly indebted to the good offices of Maine and Grey in this business. Both have stood by me steadily from the beginning to the end. ... I have been over to Jutog, and the chief thing which impressed me was the unfitness of the place for a school. It is beautiful and healthy voila tout. To carry on the school in three detached bungalows, at consider- able intervals, is fatal to discipline. The distance from the doctor, too, is most serious. In the winter the solitude of the place is a great objection. Jutog was pleasant to the eye, has been tried, and found wanting. Yet we have spent a large sum upon it ; what must be done ? At this juncture a Deus ex machind in the shape of the Supreme Government descends from the empyrean, and announces a plan of establishing a military ophthalmic hospital, for which Jutog is well suited. Government will buy our bungalows for what they are worth, and, it is hoped, will find us a site in Simla too. Meantime, no 438 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. XVII. harm has been done by the sojourn at Jutog. It is the only place where we could have got seventy boys together ; and they at least have been educated, and will form a beginning for the permanent Simla school. Slater is well satisfied with the con- duct and progress of the boys ; so also, which is more impor- tant, is the Director of Public Instruction, who has announced, unsolicited, his readines^ to give us a monthly grant in aid for every boy in the school, thus giving us an immediate and con- siderable increase to our income. To the Same. Simla, September 24. ... I have read the 'Apologia' with great interest, and though it gives me the impression that Newman has a subtle and tortuous mind, I do not think him dishonest. His victory over Kingsley is complete ; his book is in beautiful English, his autobiography is a curious chapter of Church history, his defence of Rome places its pretensions in a clearer sight than I ever saw them before, and perhaps on a more logical basis ; but he entirely fails to convince me that I should find any refuge from modern difficulties under the auspices of the Pope. The questions of fact, critical and other, which disturb people now-a-days, are surely no more solved by the assurances of Pius IX. that they are not difficulties than by the assurances of the 'Record.' And this assurance of Pius IX. that all is right is, in fact, the sole security which Newman gives us. Strange that it should be a security to so able a man as he is. To the Same. October 1864. ... I think that my stay at Simla, besides being extremely pleasant, has been really useful. The question of moving th< school has been settled ; and I hope, too, that life has beei thrown into the working of the school by my presence in th< Governors' meetings.* The relations with Government have * The site of Knollwood was the one selected out of ten that wt examined, but then an unexpected difficulty arose. The rajah to whoi the land belonged would neither sell nor give it, nor take other in ex- change. The Governors offered him a sum of money greater than the value CH. XVII.] BOATS ON THE EAVEE. 439 been more than friendly really hearty ; I have got to know and value Sir John, besides cementing alliances with many others. I have started a grand scheme for carrying out still further the hill-schools vision, and an appeal on the subject to the diocese has been prepared. In spite of these uses of Simla, I am not inclined to give up Murree next year. If there really is a bishopric of Lahore, 1865 will be our last chance of seeing Cashmere. I am not quite sure, too, that I may not be more efficient by going up for a short time to Simla, and giving a general fillip to things, than by displaying all my weaknesses through a whole season. To the Same. October 23. . . . Cowie and I quitted Dalhousie through a very pretty mountain-pass, with a glorious view at last of the Ravee emerg- ing into the plains through steep wooded banks, even more picturesque than the view of the Sutlej from Kotgurh. We slept at a dak bungalow built by the Rajah of Chumba on the river's bank, where it first becomes at all navigable, and next morning embarked on the singular craft employed for its navigation in these mountain regions, and which I beg you to describe to Ursula. A charpoy bedstead is placed upon two large mussicks, each made from an entire buffalo's hide, and on this charpoy the traveller sits or lies. At the head and also at the foot of the charpoy is another mussick, on which a man lies upon his stomach, grasping the charpoy with his hands, and paddling in the water with his feet. We had five of these conveyances one for me, one for Cowie, one for Shadrach with a little luggage, one for David with a little more, and the fifth for the remainder of the luggage. Hence, you see, that altogether twenty deceased buffalos were needed for our con- veyance. Thus we descended the river ; and whenever I was in front, and looked back at the advancing fleet, I was amused by of the land ; the Punjab Government offered a khilut, and promised honour- able recognition of the favour. But it was not till the middle of 1866 that the rajah agreed to take in] exchange a village near Subathoo. Building operations were of course delayed till this bargain was completed, and meantime the Government postponed its ophthalmic hospital, and let the school continue at Jutog till the new buildings were ready for use, in 1868. 440 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVII. watching the ten pairs of human legs moving up and down in the water like oars. Generally we floated along pleasantly enough ; sometimes we were violently tossed up and down in a rapid, and sometimes the torrent was either so swift, or the water so shallow, that we had to get out and walk along the shingly shore. The drawbacks were two : when going through a rapid we were terribly splashed once I was drenched to the skin, and latterly the sun was very hot. The scenery was beautiful the whole way ; wooded banks, sometimes very lofty, sometimes varied by naked cliffs, and often by great pro- jecting bastions or buttresses of rock, formed by the windings of the river, which had undermined its banks in different places. Moreover, there were old native forts, Rhinelike, perched on the crags. We landed at Shahpore, about forty-eight miles they said, in five and a-half hours ; when the river is fuller, it is done in four, or even three and a-half. Here are the remains of a particularly fine castle, frowning at a great height above the river ; and to this we climbed painfully up a stony path under the mid-day sun, as one of its towers has been made into a dak bungalow. Here we found a buggy and dogcart from Madhopore, and after a bath and breakfast had a pleasant drive of seven miles along a shady lane, and then reached the house of a zealous Churchman named Colonel Dyas, the overseer of Punjab canals. To the Same. Lahore, November 1. . . . To-day I went, before breakfast, with the Lieutenant- Grovernor to the American mission schools in the city, seeing the picturesque Wuziri Mosque en route. I was greatly impressed with the schools, for the indefatigable and virtuous Yankees have covered Lahore with a whole network of schools, and they gathered together in their principal building 900 boys for my inspection. The sight of them, all with their picturesque dresses and bright turbans, seated on tiers of benches, was most striking, and I cannot doubt that (rod's blessing must rest on the unwearied and self-denying efforts of Forman, the mission- ary who devotes himself to the school. Indeed, the fruits are already manifest. There is a great diminution of hostility to Christianity, and Forman says that whenever he is preaching in a bazaar, and a disturbance seems impending, some of his old CH. XVII.] SCHOOLS AT LAHORE. 441 pupils, though not Christians, are sure to gather round him and keep order. I fear it is too true that the Church Missionary Society's missions in the Punjab are not so effective as these Presbyterian efforts, and that education is scarcely taken up really and heartily. They certainly want a bishop at Lahore, and if there is none, I shall try and secure an annual visit from Stuart, and rule that all the missionaries shall meet him to hear the views of the Bishop of Calcutta and the Corresponding Committee, and carry out during the rest of the year the arrangements agreed upon. To the Same. Ferozepore, November 6. . . . Two occurrences here have been of considerable interest, one on private, one on public grounds. The regiment here is the Royal Fusileers, who at this time of the year have an annual fete to celebrate their Crimean exploits, consisting of a grand mess banquet and some soldiers' games. At the mess dinner a large piece of old-fashioned plate was displayed a kind of massive silver shield, with a portrait of Sir William Myers (a miniature on ivory), who was killed at Albuera, where the regiment gained much renown, for its central ornament, and the names of all its officers who died in the Peninsula engraved below. Among these was ' Thomas Davenant Cotton.' After dinner Major Marten, the commanding officer, made a speech about Alma and Inkermann, and then proceeded to say that they had not only met to celebrate these victories, but to receive me as their guest, and proceeded to tell the whole story of my father's death quite correctly. ' On November 10, 1813, at the battle of the Nivelle, a gallant captain of this regiment, by name Thomas Davenant Cotton, fell leading on his company,' &c. (with more description). ' There had been recently born to this captain in England an infant son, and that child is our guest of to-night, the present Bishop of Calcutta.' It was really very effectively done. My health was drunk, and with me were coupled the other clergy present, including Father Alfonso, the Popish priest, on whom I had therefore to bestow a sentence in my reply, which I did by stating that the Churches of England and Rome in the army must postpone all differences to the one great object of raising in every way the moral character of the 442 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVII. soldier. The public matter of interest was a most wonderful native confirmation. You remember those Muzhibi Sikhs (the 32nd Native Infantry). There has always been a strong Chris- tian tendency in them, varying and uncertain, from the few and far between visits of the missionaries, and since these have ended, not growing at all. But all who were baptised have remained faithful, nearly all have fairly good characters, and their children, for whom there is a school, a very good one. Since the regiment came to Ferozepore, Smyth has held an Urdu service every Sunday for the Christians in it, visited them in hospital, regarded them as part of his flock, and prepared sixteen for confirmation. Though he has been unable to undertake any work with the heathen, yet these proceedings have roused again the Christian inclinations of the regiment, and they expressed a wish to come and see their comrades con- firmed. Accordingly, on Thursday, November 3, the church was crammed : the chancel by candidates for confirmation and Christians of the regiment, the transepts by the people of the station, the nave by all the heathen soldiers ; and we proceeded with our Urdu confirmation, Smyth reading the Litany, Cowie the preface, and I the rest. What the heathen thought, I do not know ; but the station people declared that the sight was one of the highest interest, many saying that they could never have believed that they should see such a thing in India, and that it had quite opened their eyes to the reality of missionary work. To his Daughter. Ferozepore, November 9, 1864. I cannot write to you a long letter, for I have been ill, and am still weak and lazy ; but I must send a line or two to my dearest little girl on her birthday, and say, as you do to me ' May Grod bless you and keep you from all harm ! ' Also have to tell you of a birthday present. I told you that Mr Cowie had brought a dog, named Dot, with us. One morning we found that Dot had got five children ! They are very pretty little puppies, and Mr. Cowie means to give one of them to you. As they were born at Lahore, they are to be called aftei the five rivers of the Punjab : Jhelum, Chenab, Eavee, Beeas Sutlej ; and you are to have Jhelum. If you come back safe to CH. XVII.] BAREILLY AND SEETAPOKE. 443 India, and go to the hills next year, he will be a nice little com- panion for you in your walks. I want to ask you some questions about your travels in England : Did you go to Doncaster in a dhooly ? Which is furthest, Doncaster to Chester, or Coonoor to Metrapollium ? Did you find the < Pearl ' at St. Leonard's ? Do the ladies at Cheltenham go out in jonpans ? Did you go to Lichfield in a dak ghari or a bullock waggon ? Has Granny a good Khansama ? There, that is all that I can write, except that I hope that you are a good and wise girl now that you are seven. To his Wife. Bareilly, December 1864. . . . My visit to this place cannot fail, as you will believe, to wear a melancholy character, in spite of the genial hospitality of our host, Mr. Inglis. For I cannot but think of the genuine pleasure and interest with which Burn would have entertained us, of the talks over old days, of the diocesan events of the year, and of his own work at Bareilly. To him now, however, such matters, except so far as they help on the triumph of Christian holiness, must appear infinitely small; but while the world is still around us, such meetings with old friends, pupils, and fellow-helpers are precious. I missed him greatly yesterday at the consecration of the church, which now completes the attractiveness of Bareilly. It is a Lombardic building, of brick, effective, though rather heavy outside, but strikingly good within, with its long nave of round arches, thick pillars, with capitals adorned with acanthus-leaves, and clerestory windows. The wooden roof is lofty and bold in design, so that altogether it is one of the most successful churches in the diocese. To the Same. December 22. ... On Tuesday, the 20th, we reached Seetapore, and here we found a new regiment, the 12th, just arrived from England. We proclaimed our intention of holding service, and did hold 444 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVII. a spirited and effective one. The colonel marched his men to church, declaring that, after a cessation of regular services, they were ready and desirous to go ; and the service was most hearty. The regiment has a first-rate bandmaster, once a chorister, and thoroughly conversant with sacred music ; and he has trained up an excellent regimental choir of men and boys, who chanted the Canticles and sang two hymns in admirable style, so that it was the best military singing that I have heard. Stirred up by all this and by the interest attaching to a regiment just landed from England, to whom India is unknown, I extempo- rised a sermon with as much vigour as I am capable of dis- playing, on ' How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land.' CH. XVIIL] RETURN TO CALCUTTA. 445 CHAPTEE XVIII. EFFECTS OF THE CYCLONE IN CALCUTTA ORDINATION CATHEDRAL CHORAL GATHERING VISIT TO KRISHNAGHUR CATHEDRAL MISSION COLLEGE CONVOCATION OF UNIVERSITY VICE-CHANCELLOR'S SPEECH THE WAR IN BHOTAN DUKE OF BRABANT DEPARTURE FOB THE NORTH-WEST HALTS AT DELHI AND LAHORE ARRIVAL AT MURREE LETTERS TOUR IN CASHMERE THE MARCH SRINAGAR MEDICAL MISSIONS OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY SIGHTS AND ANTIQUITIES IN THE VALLEY EXPEDITION TO ISLAMABAD JOURNAL EXTRACTS RETURN MARCH BY ABBOTTABAD ARRIVAL AT MURREE. WHEN the Bishop reached Calcutta, early in 1865, the fearful cyclone of the previous October had not passed away from men's minds, and its effects were still visible in the loss of some of the finest trees, and in the great gap in the wall of the cathedral, filled up with canvas in place of the east window, which had been blown in and hopelessly shattered. The palace, like most substantially- built buildings, and possessing no tall chimneys to catch the wind, was very little injured. The devastation on land fell chiefly on the trees and church spires or steeples, and on the property of the natives. Their fragile houses, their granaries, their rice crops over a large area of the south-eastern part of the delta, were swept away by the wind, and still more by the ' bore,' the terrific storm- wave, which rushed up the mouths of the Ganges, swelling them and their tributary rivers into far-spreading and desolating floods. Thousands of human beings were left houseless and beggared by the havoc of a few hours. Owing to his absence up country, the Bishop missed the extraordinary spectacle on the Hooghly of the finest ships being torn from their anchorage, hurried helplessly 446 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XVIII. to ruin, and flung one upon another, battered and broken, in huge masses of wreck and confusion. In a brief journal extract the Bishop reviewed his work at the end of a few weeks' residence at the palace : Marsh 1865. Seven weeks have been spent in Calcutta, and I have got through the work that I desired to accomplish. I have heard with my own ears how things are going on in all the Diocesan Societies, and shall feel conversant with matters as they arise on visitation. I have had a native and a European con- firmation, and an ordination of four priests and seven deacons. A good deal of pains was taken with the examination. Besides the papers, viva voce morning expositions and general inter- course, we had the whole party assembled in the chapel on two afternoons, made each read parts of the service and of the sermon which he had done in the examination, and criticised and advised them freely. I was amused at the subject which Cowie selected for exhortation to them. One of his most remarkable characteristics during the late tour was his vehe- ment dread of being late : so his parting precept to the can- didates was, ' Always be in church a quarter of an hour before service begins, and when the communion is administered half an hour.' His more formal exhortation to them, when he preached the sermon on the day of ordination, was admirable ; one of the best ordination sermons that I ever heard. A choral gathering in the cathedral, planned at the last clerical meeting, last August, was successfully carried out under careful superintendence. Full choral service was performed by a hundred and fifty voices, but nothing attempted that was not quite simple ; no solos, no unmeaning anthems selected only for their music and not for their words, only plain chanting, musical responses, and hymnody. I preached to a very large congregation, including almost all the members of Govern- ment ; the Imperial Council having courteously adjourned that it might spend the morning in harmony instead of disputation. Accompanied by Stuart I took a four days' tour among the Church Missionary Society's missions east of Calcutta, through a country bearing grievous marks of the cyclone. Three hundred and ten native Christians were confirmed. Doubtless CH. XVIII.] CATHEDRAL MISSION COLLEGE. 447 the Krishnaghur district is in a very different state from that pictured in the fervid anticipations of my predecessor and of the earlier missionaries ; but I am assured that the Christians are better morally, and more self-dependent, than at my first visit in 1859, when, as it was said, 'the missions were in their very lowest condition.' Some of them, as at Bollobpore, are pretty well off in worldly matters ; at Kapasdanga they are lamentably poor, and find the high price of cotton a great hindrance to being decently dressed. The * widespread de- vastation' of the American war is spread even more widely than is at first sight obvious. In Calcutta the most important missionary effort in con- nexion with our own Church recently made, is the opening of the Cathedral Mission College in a native house not far from the Amherst Street mission. I went to see it, found about 150 boys diligently at work, briefly examined and harangued them, expressing my hopes and aspirations for them in general language. I trust that God's blessing is upon it : it realises very completely some of my most cherished wishesthe com- mittal of the higher education of India to good and earnest Christians, the union of secular and religious learning, the application of missionary efforts to the educated Bengalis, the greater prominence of our own Church in educational matters in Calcutta. I visited the College on a day almost wholly devoted to education ; for in the evening the convocation of the University was held, when Maine, as vice-chancellor, made one of his wonderfully fluent and polished speeches, but inferior to that of last year, partly from its greater abstruseness, partly from his extravagant laudation of the study of physical science, by which, in a somewhat Comtian and Bucklerian spirit, he said that that of history was to be guided, and which must, he added, be the main instrument of University education. Surely to this there was a double objection, first the implied positivism, and secondly the comparison between the method and the results ; for even if the discoveries of physical science are as grand as Maine says, it does not follow that it should furnish the best means of education. The results of theology | are the most important of all results in the estimation of a believer in revelation ; but a man trained exclusively in theology is half educated and apt to be narrow-minded. 448 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XVIII. On secular politics the chief event was the disastrous turn given to the Bhotanese war by the expulsion of our troops from Dewangiri. In consequence of this, it was thought necessary (greatly against the wishes of the Viceroy) to send English soldiers into the unhealthy Dooars and district sepa- rating Assam from the Himalayas. I saw the troops, who were going to be reviewed by Sir John Lawrence, Sir Hugh Rose, and the Duke of Brabant a striking military spectacle it was, but it was impossible not to shrink from the thought of the almost certain fate of many, doomed to die not by the attack of the Bhotanese, but by the far more painful assaults of fever and dysentery. A certain degree of excitement and novelty was thrown into Calcutta society by the arrival of the Duke of Brabant, travel- ling in India for the sake of a warm climate in winter, as he is threatened with consumption. He had quite the royal arts of remembering everybody, and saying something civil and agree- able to each person to whom he was introduced, telling me, for instance, that he had seen my photograph at Meerut. From his connexions and position he is almost a representative of the European history of our time : son to the first king of Belgium, grandson to the (for the present) last king of France ; substi- tuted, as it were, for the child who, had the Princess Charlotte lived and reigned, would now have been heir to the throne of England ; himself called to carry on the succession to the kingdom which is the only remaining result of the revolution of 1830. I met him thrice, twice at Government House, once at a very pretty fete given by Beadon in his honour at Belvedere. The desolation ended on March 3. The ' Moultan ' was three days after her time, and at the very last moment, when fully expected on March 2, was delayed by the ' James and Mary ' for nearly twenty-four hours. The guns were fired at 8 A.M. on the very day which I had appointed for the English con- firmation, in the certainty that the ship would be in, so that my new chaplain's first confirmation experience might be on a large scale and of a service decorously conducted. At 10-15 I drove to the cathedral, ordering the durwan to strike the gong twice as soon as the travellers drove in. Just as the choir were singing the response to the second clause in the Litany, the two blows were heard ; however, I went on quietly, CH. XVIII.] JOURNEY TO THE NORTH-WEST. 449 and confirmed my 159 candidates, and then drove home. When I reached the house, I found the child at the front door ready to greet me, and her mother in the drawing-room, both radiant with English health. It was one of the happy moments of life, and I humbly thank Grod for it. Almost immediately after our return we all quitted Calcutta for the far North- West. Thanks to almost con- tinuous railway communication, the continent of India was quickly spanned, ample rest to break the long journey being also secured. At Delhi, where a long halt was made, the Bishop laid the foundation-stone of a church for a mission of the Propagation Society. It was partly intended to serve as a memorial of the ruined mission of 1857, and thus its erection was some compensation for the disappointment which befel the project of the Society for a church of a similar character at Cawnpore. Passion Week and Easter were spent at Lahore, and before the end of April, Murree, the delightful hill retreat for the Punjab, was reached. The winter in the Himalayas had been very severe, and snow was still lying deep in nooks and corners of the valleys, where the sun could not pene- trate. The house engaged for the Bishop was uninhabit- able, from the effects of snow and storms. It was left in the hands of workmen; but .a temporary refuge was at hand in an unoccupied house, kindly lent by the late Mr. Eoberts, Financial Commissioner of the Punjab, and very shortly the great campaign of the year, the long contemplated and greatly desired expedition into Cash- mere, was accomplished. Before entering upon it, the following letters will find their natural place : To his Son. Government House, Lahore, Easter Day, 1865. We received your letter just as we returned from church this morning, and I need not say that we were much shocked by the news which it contained of poor Boyle's death. He was G G 450 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cir. XVIII. one of the cleverest, and at the same time one of the most affectionate, of my Marlborough pupils, and one of my most regular correspondents. Almost the last letter that I had from him contained a handsome donation to my educational schemes for the diocese. He will be a loss also to the school, to which he was warmly attached, and in which he must have been a very competent teacher. It is always sad to see a promising young man cut off in the opening of a career of usefulness, and to think of the grievous sorrow and disappointment to his father and mother. But the Easter services on such an occasion bring with them the best consolation. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. And if we look at the matter more correctly, the grief would be far greater in fact, it would be one of which one would not dare to speak or think if he who is thus unexpectedly cut off had been careless and wicked. We have lingered here a little longer than we intended, partly because on one day your mother was a little out of sorts, though she is now well again ; partly because I would always rather stay quietly in a house in Passion Week than travel, if I can avoid it ; partly because the snow on the Himalayas has been so violent and so recent, that we were advised not to be in too great a hurry to ascend them. A slight alteration too has been made in our plans by the affliction of a native prince. There are several ways into Cashmere, one of which is the private route appropriated to the Maharajah, leading through his capital Jummoo, over the Bunihal Pass ; not particularly beautiful, but possessing some advantages, chiefly in that it avoids the ordinary crowd of tourists, and enters the valley at a convenient point. By this no one may travel without the Maharajah's permission, but this permission is generally granted to persons of a certain rank in the table of precedence, and has been given lately to the Lieutenant-Grovernor of the Punjab and the Commander-in-Chief. Accordingly, application was made by Government that I should go that way, which met with a ready acquiescence, and an intimation that the Maharajah would be much pleased if we would pay him a visit at Jummoo on our way. For this plan, therefore, we made our arrange- ments, when suddenly one of the Maharajah's wives died. As he has a great number of these appendages, the event did not ' CH. XVIIL ] THE PUNJAB. 451 seem one of very great importance, and probably not one of very great rarity ; but it turned out that this lady was his 6 favourite ' wife, and he was plunged into the most inconsolable grief. We were desired to put off our visit for six weeks, though six had elapsed since the death when he sent us the message, and on our saying that we could not possibly stay waiting in Lahore till June, were told that we could not go to Jummoo nor by the Bunihal route at all, but must enter Cashmere some other way. We, however, were not the greatest sufferers. An order was issued directing all the shops in Jummoo to be closed, and buying and selling to be suspended for two months, and it was further ruled that no marriages are to be celebrated in the province for a whole year. The end is that we have had to alter our plans, and are to enter Cashmere by Eawul Pindi and Murree instead of Jummoo. To Godfrey Lushington, Esq. April 1865. . . . The Punjab is undoubtedly, as you know, in many respects the most remarkable province in India, not only from its rivers, rampart of Himalayas, and stalwart native inhabitants, but from the character of its English rulers. It has produced not only great men such as the two Lawrences but a number of other persons Edwardes, Macleod, Montgomery, &c. who are first-rate administrators. The almost universal Puritanism of the province, united with extraordinary vigour of action, reminds one of Cromwell's times ; and there is a general spirit of munificence, unselfishness, and charity abroad among these Anglo-Punjabis, which reconciles me even to the perpetual sight of Cumming's works, which seem the chief source of their theology, or at least are an essential part of every library. There is a great deal of earnest Christianity among them, but there is a slight tendency to persecute, or at least to disparage, High Churchmen, even of the most inoffensive type, which prevents me from regarding them as thoroughly liberal. Nevertheless, with some inconsistency, or perhaps because their instincts are better than their logic, the churches which they have built are the prettiest and most ecclesiastically correct in India. If they come to grief in any way, it will be from their inveterate and offensive habit of vehemt nt self-laudation. The other day G G2 452 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVill. I was present at a great educational meeting and prize dis- tribution at Delhi (included in the Punjab since the mutiny), at which the pupils of various colleges and schools were assembled and harangued by a Punjab official. Besides the most violent panegyrics on all masters and teachers, they were actually told that the fame of the Delhi Government College had penetrated even into Europe, and that there the expression 6 a Delhi scholar ' was regarded as synonymous with ' a good scholar.' Finally, they were exhorted to diligence by the following peroration : ' Remember that you are pupils of the noblest College of the noblest city of the noblest foreign dependency of the noblest Government in the world.' There : I have given you this sketch because you once said that I only write about my work, and never send you any pictures of Anglo-Indian society ; so now you have a brief account of one very important section of it, particularly im- portant now, since it has attained its apotheosis by the elevation of its greatest man to the viceregal throne. To Arthur Watson, Esq. May 1865. The money which you have from time to time procured for me for missionary purposes has been given of late to the erection of a native church at Delhi, partly on account of the importance of the place, partly because a good site and a con- siderable sum of money had been obtained for that object, and it seemed desirable to use every effort to get a beginning of the actual building made. You will be glad to know that this is done, and it is due to you and those who have contri- buted to tell you something about it. The Delhi mission belongs to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and therefore, according to the ordinary views of England, must be of a High Church character. Its staff consists of three clergy one a native of remarkable ability, whom I ordained both deacon and priest, and who, besides a thorough acquaintance with the ordinary languages of India, is familiar with English, Greek, and Hebrew. Besides these there is a trained English schoolmaster, and a very good native one (a Christian). Eound these have gathered a small body of native Christians, of whom I have lately confirmed fifteen. There is also a large school for CH. XVI1I.J CHURCH WORK 1JS T D^LHI. 453 heathen boys, thronged with pupils, planted by the missionaries in the most populous part of Delhi, and affiliated to the University of Calcutta, where a good education is given under Christian auspices, and where the facts of the Grospel are imparted to the boys. Moreover, there are four girls' schools one for destitute orphans or children deserted by their parents, who are brought up as Christians, and with whom are of course combined any of the daughters of native Christians ; a second for adult Hindu women ; a third for adult Mahometan women, and a fourth for little heathen or Mahometan girls, to whom some of the pupils of the second and third give lessons. Among both pupils and teachers are princesses of the house of Timour, now living in great poverty in miserable huts in Delhi, though once occupants of the Imperial palace ; though there, I suppose, their lives were spent in dirt, ignorance, and quarrelling, and probably in not a little of neglect and pri- vation. Hence it cannot be denied that Christianity approaches Delhi not only as the imparter of a particular doctrine, but as the civiliser and regenerator of the whole man (and woman too), bringing with it not only a new creed, but also a new life. The church, you will observe, is intended entirely for missionary purposes, and the services will be wholly in Hin- dustani. Primarily, of course, it is meant for the services of native Christians, but it is probable that a good many heathen folk will attend them, as they do in a church which the mis- sionaries of the Church Missionary Society have built near the principal gate of the great Sikh city of Amritsir, where the heathen form a considerable portion of the Sunday congrega- tion. Moreover, I should notice that the Delhi church is partly intended as a memorial church. The mission was established just before the mutiny, and on May 11, 1857, almost every- body connected with it was murdered : Jennings, the chaplain of the station ; Hubbard, the senior missionary ; two catechists preparing for orders, a native Christian doctor, together with the commissioner of Delhi and the commandant of the King's guards, both members of the mission committee. Altogether the occasion of laying the first stone was one of great and varied interest. It was done on Monday, March 27, in the presence of the chief civil and military authorities of the place, a number of native Christians, both Anglican and Baptist, and 454 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [CH! XVIII. a considerable concourse of Hindus and Mahometans. A form of service had been drawn up, and was read partly in English, partly in Hindustani. Mark Edward Currie, once at Rugby, in my house, and commandant of the palace guards till a little while before the mutiny, read the inscription to be placed under the stone, which I then laid in the usual manner, de- dicating the future church to St. Stephen. I then made a short harangue in English, and finally gave the blessing both in English and Hindustani. A good church was the one thing- needed to complete the efficiency of the mission, and there- fore I rejoiced very much in the actual commencement of the work. I trust that this short account will prove that my appli- cation of the missionary sum bestowed through you has not been an unwise one.* At 5 A.M., on May 2, a bright party quitted Murree. It included the Bishop and myself ; the child and her governess ; Dr. Lyons ; the new domestic chaplain, Mr. Hardy, and the retiring one, Mr. Cowie, going to officiate for the season to the European sportsmen and tourists, who now annually frequent Cashmere. The usual endless tail of natives attached to camp life completed the retinue. The ladies travelled in dandis, i.e. litters of a very comfort- able form peculiar to the Punjab. They are constructed of leather or cane, and netted cord, slung on a pole, and carried by two men, and are so light and narrow that wherever a man can go, on the roughest path, a dandi can follow. The child had a special conveyance, duly described by her father. He also had a dandi as a resource on very bad roads ; but a pony was likewise on duty, ' Toghluck ' by name, ' on account of my pleas- ing recollections of a visit recently paid to the ruins of Toghluckabad, and also because the pony, like the * The font in tins church for adult converts who desire baptism by immer- sion is a large marble sarcophagus inscribed with the words ' Buried ivith Him in Baptism? The administration of the rite by immersion is not uncommon in Indian missions. The climate presents no impediments, and it meets the objection of Baptists, who are apt to tell Church of England converts that a sprinkling with water is no regular baptism. Cu. XVIII.] CASHMERE. 455 Emperor, is a Pathan.' The dinner-bell, rung through the camp by the chaplain, broke all slumbers while it was still dark, and the daily start began very soon after 4 A.M. ; for the marches were often long, or toilsome, from the steep ascents, and the tents were seldom reached, after a half-way halt for breakfast under a tree, until the sun was high and fierce in the heavens. Heat, dust, fatigue, were often trying ; but the memory of these passed away like the morning mist. Not thus transient were recollections of that fine open-air life among the mountains, with its daily interest of the onward march, the new encampments ; of social gatherings seasoned with some grotesque incidents of travel, of sunset strolls, and evening tea at the tent-door, with the moon above and the foaming river below ; of Sundays, true rest days for wanderers, whether man or beast, when the small congre- gation and the English liturgy made a visible, though transitory, church on the hill-side. Seventeen days were spent at Srinagar, the capital of Cashmere. The houses allotted by the Maharajah to Europeans lie beyond the confines of the city, which abounds in dirt and misery. They are dotted about on the green flat banks of the river, and are often shaded by plane-trees of magnificent growth, but they are strictly Asiatic in construction and cleanli- ness. It happened, moreover, that among the visitors of the season was a literally Egyptian plague of brown hairy caterpillars. In one long avenue the poplar- trees were gaunt white skeletons, every leaf, together with those of the vines which clothe their base, having been de- voured. In the tents that were still in use the creatures swarmed, assailing all indiscriminately, invading every- body's dress, and dropping down from the canvas sides and roofs even into the episcopal cup of tea, the owner whereof calmly awaited them, and compared himself to Bishop Hatto and his rats. The contrast between the face of nature in this fair 456 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XVIII. valley and the unhappy aspect of the people whose home it is, was truly mournful. Even the children had a worn and poverty-stricken look, as if the blight of the benighted rule under which they were bom and reared fell upon them at an age usually impervious to care. Both in the Mahometan and Hindu quarters (wrote the Bishop in his journal) the population seemed to swarm ; in the latter I never saw a greater number and variety of the sectarial marks on the forehead. The people nearly all seemed in a state of dirt and squalor, and certainly the work of christianising such a population under such a sovereign seems at present, humanly speaking, impossible, no European being allowed to stay in the valley during the winter, so that any little good which might be done is annually suspended for six months. One man whom baptised was twice put into prison on some frivolous pre- tence, and one of the authorities sent for him and told him that he should have some money given him if he would declare that made him drunk and in that state baptised him. He was at last protected by the Resident, and is now 's servant. The case seems one in which we can only say, ' that Thou would 7 st rend the heavens and come down, and leave in (rod's hands the means of rescuing these crowds from their miserable condition. Meantime I believe that Elmslie is knocking at the only gate which has any chance of being opened, and that his labours deserve all help and encouragement. This 'one gate' was the medical mission, just started at Srinagar in connection with the Church Missionary Society. In 1865 it was but the day of small things with an attempt to set forth Christianity in that heathen kingdom through deeds of mercy. By God's blessing the work has been sustained since that time, though amidst many hindrances, requiring all the patience and faith of the good man who has returned year after year to continue his ministrations to suffering Cashmeries in temporal and spiritual things conjointly. The Bishop's journal thus de- scribes the scene, at that time entirely new and strange : Cn. XVIII.] MEDICAL MISSION AT SKINAGAR. 457 I went this morning to see Dr. Elmslie and his patients. When I saw the process which he adopts, it struck me that Christianity appeared in its most beneficent aspect. About twenty-four invalids were seated on the floor in his verandah at 7 A.M., and addressed by a catechist, who read and expounded to them in very plain and simple Hindustani a portion of the Sermon on the Mount. Most of them seemed very attentive, some made occasional remarks and assenting comments, a small minority were listless and uninterested. The address, which I could readily follow throughout, was thoroughly good and practical. After this, Elmslie retired into another room ac- companied by two intelligent young native Christians, whom I confirmed the other day at Amritsir, and whom he is teaching to compound medicines. They were so sharp, careful and modest, that they formed a very pleasing part of the general illus- tration of Christianity in its effects. Then the patients were admitted one by one, kindly questioned and examined, and remedies administered. Many of them were abominably dirty, and were exhorted to wash all over ' tamam badan saf karo. 5 One man suffered from chronic rheumatism, and a dose of physic was prepared for him by Sekander (one of the young assistants), but he entirely refused to drink it from an impure vessel, as con- trary to the rules of his caste. As every vessel touched by poor Sekander or any other of us was impure, nothing remained but to give him the medicine in a solid state, and tell him to mix it with water in his own lota. Dr. Lyons, who was present, said that, according to his experience in the plains, all Sepoys, and nearly all who come to the dispensaries for relief, have got over this prejudice, though there indeed the men who mix the medicines are not Christians. Altogether, considering the ignorance and wretchedness of the patients, and the entirely disinterested character of the mission, the scene appeared to me most interesting and edifying, and could not fail to remind me of Him who went about all Gralilee preaching the Grospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. It appears that there are some native doctors in Cashmere ; but as Hinduism prevents them from learning anatomy, they are useless in all serious cases. Only a minimum of pastoral or ecclesiastical work was 453 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XVIII. possible in Cashmere. Beyond the consecration of a cemetery, and a share in the Sunday services held in the Resident's house, there was no work to break in upon a brief season of real holiday. The Bishop, like the hand- ful of Europeans who adjourn to the valley for a brief period of the year, bent for the most part on errands of sport, had left all business behind him. While they hunted bears, he surrendered himself with keen enjoy- ment to the other attractions that were around. Some places of exquisite beauty lying away from the main course of the river provided the more distant expe- ditions, and sights within the city or in its immediate vicinity furnished full occupation for other days. They included Hindu temples, dating back to 200 B.C., re- vealing in their Doric architecture the Greek influence of the kingdom of Bactria ; the Fort ; the shawl manu- factories ; memorials of Mussulman supremacy in the Shalimar gardens and the Mshad Bagh or ' garden of bliss ' (scenes of the loves of Jehanghir and Nurmahal) ; in the long poplar avenues, or again in the Jumma Musjid. Now that Hinduism is in the ascendant, this mosque is dirty and dilapidated ; but it is one of the finest and most curious in India, with a cloister which is literally rather than figuratively a ' forest ' of 384 pillars, each pillar being the trunk of a deodar pine. Temples at Bhaniyar, near Baramula, at Pandrethan, and on the top of the Tacht-i-Suleiraan, were all visited and noted ; but extracts from the Bishop's journal will be restricted to the description of ruins and temples seen in his ex- pedition up the valley as far as Islamabad. These great architectural remains, complete specimens of a distinct Cashmerian style of architecture, and as yet only imper- fectly examined, were to him an immense addition to the natural and more popular attractions of the country. General Cunningham's paper was in his hands as a guide- book. Incited by Mr. Cowie, he went beyond the inves- CH. XVIII.] TRAVELLING IX CASHMERE. 459 tigations of 1848, became for the moment a practical an- tiquarian, and started fresh excavations to bring to light one of the finest of the ruins ; but, though he explored these sacred buildings with careful observation, looking at everything with his own eyes as well as those of other men, and even offered the substance of his journal as a contribution to the antiquarian lore of the Asiatic Society, he had neither the leisure nor the knowledge to be a scientific archaeologist, and the value of his descriptions or conclusions can be estimated correctly by those only who have studied the difficult and obscure subject of Indian antiquities. To his Son. Srinagar, Cashmere, May 14, 1865. Here we all are in the valley which the old French traveller Bernier has seriously pronounced the original abode of Adam and Eve, and of which Moore sings Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, With its roses, the brightest that earth ever gave, and which undoubtedly is sufficiently beautiful to merit a great deal of panegyric. The approach to it is not free from fatigue and exertion. We left Murree on Tuesday, May 2, and entered the valley on Thursday, May 11, reaching its capital the next day. . . . Our attendants are innumerable ; personal servants of every kind. . . . And besides these the Maharajah of Cash- mere has attached to us a superior official to see to our supplies and comforts, together with a jemadar and twelve of his Sepoys to guard our person. After leaving Murree we had only twenty miles of British territory to traverse, and then we bade adieu to good roads and dak bungalows, and had to take to our tents and steep mountain-paths. The boundary is the Jhelum, at a small village named Kohala. The river looked so rapid, that it was difficult to see how it was to be crossed ; however, we were all stowed away in a great barge, then pulled by a rope some way up the stream, let go, immediately whirled round by the current, and finally propelled by about a dozen sturdy strokes of the oar to the opposite shore, where we were landed amidst rocks and mud in the territory of the Maharajah 4GO LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [On. XVIII. Eumbeer Sing. Here some of his officials received us with many salutations, and brought for my special conveyance a kind of litter furnished with red cushions, and shaded by a canopy of a Cashmere shawl. As I should have had to sit crosslegged in it, I preferred my humbler dandi ; but the royal litter appeared the very thing for Ursula, whom it held in a convenient position, so she was immediately transferred to it, and called the Eosherana Begum a princess whose splendid conveyance and dignified deportment are described by Bernier in his account of the journey of Aurungzib from Delhi to Cash- mere, which he visited 200 years ago, partly to recruit his own health, partly to gratify the whims of the said Eosherana, with a train of 300,000 human beings, and elephants, mules, and other quadrupeds in proportion. Our road was excessively steep, going up the mountain-side straight from the Jhelum by short zigs and zags, but presenting to us beautiful views of different turns and reaches of the river. From this point eight marches, i.e. days, brought us to Baramula, where the valley begins. Details of the marches would be wearisome. Suffice it to say, that the scenery on the way had three great attractions : the foaming Jhelum roaring below us, pent between steep banks, which sometimes rose into magnificent red cliffs ; occa- sional snowy peaks rising above the nearer hills ; and the most beautiful vegetation, including some quite European as roses, jessamines, horse-chestnuts, walnuts, mulberries, buttercups, clover, hawthorn, vines, and oleanders ; some quite Himalayan, deodars and grand pines ; some peculiar to Cashmere in size and umbrageousness, namely, plane-trees of height, width and extent such as I never saw before, the trunk of one being 34 feet in circumference. Through country of this character we advanced at the rate, on an average, of twelve miles a day, seventeen being our longest and six, a tremendously steep ascent, our shortest march, till we reached Baramula, where the river emerges from the valley and begins its descent into the plains of India. Here it is navigable, and we were accordingly trans- ferred to a long narrow barge with thirty-six rowers, eighteen in front and eighteen to the rear of a sort of raised dais, some- thing like an enormous tea-tray covered with a red floor-cloth, and surmounted by a red canopy with curtains all round. In this we voyaged up the river. We were accompanied by Cn. XVIII.] SRINAGAR. 461 seventeen other boats of ruder construction, bearing the other members of our party, together with all our camp, baggage, servants, and other appurtenances. About 2 P.M. on Friday, May 11, our fleet entered the city of Srinagar (' holy city '), of which the Jhelum forms the principal street, the houses being built on each side of it, and coming flush down to the water, with landing-places at intervals. So far it bears a distant resemblance to the grand canal of Venice ; but, on the other hand, there are no fine buildings, most of the houses being in a most rickety tumbledown condition, of wood or un- burnt bricks none with any glass in the windows, which are closed with wooden shutters or greased paper. Some few houses are better, chiefly the abodes of shawl merchants, and two buildings on the river are of some pretension, a mosque and the Maharajah's palace, the latter containing as a private chapel a temple of Krishna, with a gilt pyramidal roof, which glitters brilliantly in the sun. The river is crossed by several bridges, each of which consists of a narrow roadway supported on two or three piers, composed of logs of wood laid crosswise, increasing in width as they rise from the river, so as to form an inverted pyramid. One or two have shops on them like the Eialto or Old London Bridge. Having passed through the city, we came to a flat district covered with a pleasant green sward and planted with planes and poplars, along which some bungalows have been built by the Maharajah for European visitors. One of these has been assigned for our use, but it will only hold your mother, Pussy and myself, so we have pitched tents all round for the rest of the party, and use the largest of them for our dining-room. The valley is about 5,200 feet above the sea, it is very green and fertile, so well watered that in parts it looks swampy, and enclosed by a complete girdle of magnificent snowy mountains, which divide it on one side from Thibet and on the other from India. Just behind our camp a steep rocky hill rises about 1,000 feet from the valley, called the Takht-i- Suleiman (' Solo- mon's throne '), and from this the view in the early morning is certainly first-rate. The English visitors here every summer are numerous : the young officers on leave amuse themselves by shooting (espe- cially bears) and fishing, or rather spearing fish. This amuse- 462 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XVIII. ment is denied to the natives, at least in the neighbourhood of the city, by the Maharajah, because his guru, or spiritual pre- ceptor, told him that his father's soul had migrated after death into a fish, and this fish might be killed. This we were told by one of the royal officials. ' But why,' we asked, is not the fish as liable to be killed by a European as by a Cashmerian ? ' ' That,' replied our informant reverentially, ' God only can explain.' EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. May 22. . . . At 4 P.M. we landed at Aventipura, a village on the right bank. Here there are the remains of two magni- ficent Cashmerian temples, built by King Aventi Varrnema, in the ninth century A.D., dedicated to Siva, and called respectively Aventiswami and Aventeshwara ; swami and ishivar, when they stand by themselves, being generally applied to that divinity. The two temples are about half-a-mile apart, and both are completely in ruins. The larger one, Aventeshwara, consisted, like the temple near Nowshera, of a quadrangle with a gate in the middle of the west side, surrounding the raoy, or shrine, of the god. Parts of the gateway walls remain, and are ornamented by a series of little models of temples in bas-relief, like that on the top of the pillar near the Jumma Musjid in Srinagar. The shrine, or temple proper, is a mere mass of con- fused ruins. The foundation of the surrounding peristyle can be traced, and according to Cunningham it was 216 feet long, by 190 feet broad, containing eighty-six recesses, from which we deduct two for the side doors, so as to leave the favourite number of eighty-four for the reception of as many emblems of Siva. This number eighty-four is found in many temples, e.g. at the Tahkt-i-Suleiman ; it is said to have been specially connected with the worship of the sun (twelve signs of the Zodiac multi- plied by the seven horses attributed to him in Hindu mytho- logy), but is also introduced in the worship of Siva. The Aven- tiswami temple was smaller than the other, but otherwise nearly identical in plan. At present, its ruins have one great advantage in that a portion of the peristyle, about twenty feet long, still may be seen in great beauty, with fluted pillars standing a little in front of a series of recesses each formed by a CH. XVIII.] RUINS AT AVEXTIPURA. 463 trefoiled arch within a triangular pediment. It is probable that the whole peristyle remains buried in the earth, for the ground, has, whether by the lapse of time or by an earthquake, silted up, and the portion which is now exposed was discovered by some excavations ordered by Cunningham. We were so much inte- rested in the place, that we asked our jemadar whether some more digging could not be carried on, whereupon, with the promptitude of a paternal government, he gave the hukm, and about twenty coolies came from the village with spades, and began to dig in a place where we saw some signs of ruins below. The result of their labours will be seen, I hope, on our return. As in the other temple, parts of the gateway remain, but the vaos is a heap of huge stones. Here occurred an incident which reminded me of Edie Ochiltree's ' I mind the bigging of it.' Cunningham asserts positively that the complete over- throw of these two shrines could not have been caused by an earthquake, which would simply have prostrated the building in large masses, but must have been effected by gunpowder, and therefore probably by the iconoclast Sikander, if gunpowder was known by the Cashmerians A.D. 1400 ; otherwise by Aurung- zib. This opinion we who had read Cunningham were impress- ing on the jemadar and other native auditors, when an old man from the village exclaimed that he himself had seen the shrine of the smaller temple thrown down by an earthquake fifty years ago. Against this strong evidence is the curious fact that the earthquake has in both cases spared the compa- ratively harmless gateway, and overthrown the actual abode of the idol ; a distinction which would have been much more likely to be made by Sikander. Perhaps the earthquake com- pleted the work which he or Aurungzib began, and carried it yet further by burying the peristyle. There are other remains proving that Aventipura was once a considerable city among others, the broken and almost obliterated steps of a fine ghat. I ought to mention that the names and dates of the two temples at Aventipura are inferred, by a sound process of reason- ing, by Cunningham from the old history of Cashmere called the ' Raja Tarangiri.' Wednesday, May 24. We rode this morning four miles to the picturesque village of Bhowan, or Matan, for it seems to bear both names, the latter being pronounced exactly Mutton. 464 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XVIII. There are beautifully clear springs and tanks full of fish, also a temple of the sun close to them, with a kind of dharamsala attached. It is the first temple of that deity that I have seen in India, where Wilson says that it is hard to find one ; but at Matan it is plain that his worship has come down from very ancient days. A festival, however, is celebrated in his honour in many parts of the country in February, and called Bhaskard Saptami. Surya is represented in his Matan temple as a squatting Hindu, with a rosary in one hand and a cup in the other, seated in a chariot drawn by one horse, instead of the seven generally ascribed to him, perhaps with reference to the seven planets, and on the horse's neck, in the same squatting posture, is perched a diminutive charioteer. We walked for about a mile between the mountains and the rapid river Lidar, one of the affluents of the Jhelum, to see the Buddhist caves. The hills have been scarped by the river, which now flows at a little distance from them, and come down to the plain in cliffs, from which numerous square chambers have been hewn, once the abode of Buddhist monks. There are two principal caves ; the first which we entered is hardly worth visiting, especially con- sidering the horrors which await the visitor. It is called the cave of Bhima Devi, and is a straight narrow fissure in the rock, widening at the end into two small chambers, which are filled with bats, who, disturbed by the torch which precedes the traveller, fly all about him, flapping against his face, and nearly poisoning him with their smell. There is nothing to see in the way of art or antiquities, though a shapeless mass of stone in each chamber is regarded by the Hindus as holy. But the other cave, that of Bhaumaj o (Sanscrit, Bhaumajyotis ; the planet Mars, according to Cunningham), is highly interesting, as it contains the most perfect temple in the valley. It is ap- proached by a steep path, and finally by a short ladder ; at the entrance is a doorway with two pediments, one within the other, each having a trefoiled tympanum. On entering the cave, which is fifty-five feet long, twenty-five feet broad, and from ten to twenty feet high, you see a flight of steps before you, above which is the vaos^ quite undamaged either by earthquakes or Aurungzib. The natural walls of the cave itself may be considered to supply the place, on a small scale, of the peristyles of Aventipura. Happily, there were no bats here, so we could CH. XVIII.] RUINS OF MARTAND* 465 examine the temple at our leisure, which appears now to be frequented by worshippers of Siva, though Cunningham speaks of it as certainly Buddhist ; I suppose on account of its position in a cave, and the resemblance of the neighbouring rock-hewn chambers to a vihara. Buddhism seems to have prevailed in Cashmere. The temple has the usual pilasters, square-topped doorway, pediment, and trefoiled tympanum, and the interior decoration of the ceiling was formed by an immense lotus. The pyramidal roof is broken as usual into two portions, which indeed seems the traditional form of Cashmerian roofs ; for those of the resi- dent's house, the Shalimar pavilion, and most houses of any pretension, consist in like manner of two parts, so as to form a sort of squat and low double pyramid, of course of wood and not of stone. We returned to Bhowanj and breakfasted alfresco, with luxuriant foliage above and gurgling waters around, and then rode up to the great architectural sight of Cashmere, the magnificent ruins of Martand. This word is Sanscrit for the sun, and in this splendid temple we have a distant link of the chain of worship which has descended to the little sanctuary which we saw in the morning, and which, I suppose, goes back to the ele- mental worship of the Vedas, and the time when the kindred, Aryans of Persia and India had substantially the same religion. The temple of Martand is on a grand plateau, rising from the valley, and backed by lofty mountains ; the ruins are extensive, the separate buildings on a colossal style and highly orna- mented. The general plan is the usual one, with which we are now familiar. There is a quadrangle 220 feet long by 142 feet broad, containing, according to rule, 84 fluted columns, with very considerable intervals between them, which arrangement forms another distinction, besides some which I have noted before, between Cashmerian and classical architecture. Of the peristyle a considerable portion the fluted pillars being in advance of a series of trefoiled arches is still standing. In the middle of the west side is a grand gateway, and opposite to this, in the centre of the quadrangle, approached by a flight of steps, is the temple proper, now wholly unroofed, but very lofty, and containing three distinct chambers -the porch, trpovaos and va6$ of Greek temples the two former decorated with bas-reliefs of the sun's wives, and the Hindu triad ; the H H 466 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XVIII. last perfectly plain, probably as containing a splendid image of Surya in his chariot and seven, on which all attention was to be concentrated. In the back wall of this sanctuary is a semi- circular opening, through which, doubtless, the light during the day would fall wholly on the image, just as in the Karli cave, by a similar opening over the entrance, all the light falls on the dagoba at the end. At sunset, however, this effect would cease ; but then the light would fall through the west door on the image, and doubtless bring out into great brilliancy its many colours. On each side of the central building are two wings like the Greek Trrspco/jiara, detached from it, though formerly no doubt connected by a roof ; for part of the entablature still pro- jects from the northern wing towards the central temple. These wings, according to Cunningham, were probably dedicated to Siva, as the Rajah Tarangiri speaks of temples of Siva (under peculiar titles) at this place, as well as of the sun. Cunningham, moreover, believes that not only the temple itself, but the entrance chamber, each wing, the west gateway, each corner of the quadrangle, and a central porch in each of the other sides, were covered by pyramidal roofs. In one of the corners a pillar is still standing by itself, which seems intended to bear its part in supporting one, and in the middle of each of the long sides of the quadrangle is a pair of large fluted pillars, advanced beyond the line of the peristyle, and apparently de- signed for the same use. It has been discovered by induction that the height of a Cashmerian temple was twice its width, and hence it appears that the pyramid over the sanctuary would be seventy-five feet in height : so also would be that over the west gateway ; the others would be lower. The whole mass of building, the wide quadrangle, the trefbiled arches, the tall pillars and the vast group of twelve pyramids, must have been a most magnificent sight. Such a building, too, was worthy of its grand position, which commands a view all down the green and fertile vale. Unfortunately there was, as has often been the case, a haze over it : the valley, its trees and grass and many waters, were all tolerably plain, but we could see only in- distinctly the two long lines of snow-capped mountains, which stand on each side like hoary giants guarding their treasure, and the Baramula end of the valley was invisible. From the temple we rode for some time along the plateau, and then descended CH. XVIII.] BEAUTY OF CASHMERE. 467 into a region just like a sponge filled up with mountain tor- rents, brooks, and rice-fields. We forded the river Arpat, which, rising in the snows to the north-west of the valley, joins the Jhelum near Islamabad, and at last emerged from the slosh at Atchelul, a charming spot, where the ruins of a Mogul palace and pleasure-ground are at the foot of a hill covered with deodars at the top, and at the bottom with various kinds of fruit-trees. Our camp was pitched under plane-trees, and surrounded by cherries, pears, mulberries, and plums, all of course unripe. Thursday ', May 25. It would be difficult to exaggerate the beauty of the walk which we took on the morning of this Ascension Day, and though there was no church for our worship, it would be hard to pass a morning of such entire enjoyment without grateful thoughts of its great Author and of our Blessed Lord, now seated at the right hand of His Majesty on high. We kept on high ground along the base of the hills, and passed through a perfect shrubbery or pleasure-ground, which proved that nature's horticulture and landscape-gardening can some- times accomplish all the conceptions of the most skilful artist. The green sward was as soft and springy as if it was regularly mown. Trees were planted, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, exactly in the right places. The roses were in profusion, scenting the air, and sometimes of the brightest colour. Other flowering shrubs, the berbery and the wild indigo, occa- sionally were found. Glades opened out amidst the trees. Sometimes a group of deodars appeared a little above us on the hill-side. A brook murmured through the lawn, and birds were singing all about the cuckoo, the skylark, the blackbird, the dove, and the famous bulbul itself. So we went on till we descended into lower ground, very watery, like that of yesterday, crossed one or two branches of the river Bringh, and then began to ascend a low range of hills which divides the upper part of Cashmere into two valleys, one formed by the Bringh and one by the Sandrin, which, uniting at Islamabad, and receiving the Arpat and Lidar, form our friend the Jhelum. From the top of the pass we had a grand view, the snowy mountains to-day being in great beauty, as there was a storm last night to clear the air. We saw Martand and a good way down the valley, though here the projecting range on which we stood interfered with the extent of the view ; but we could see quite up the 468 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XVIII. valley to the magnificent mountains, generally about 14,000 feet high, which divide Cashmere from Chumla. The long Pir Punjal range, so to call it, though I believe that the name is properly restricted to the pass, was close to us. From this eminence we again descended to a land of slosh and fertility, to Shahabad on the Sandrin, where we breakfasted and had our tents pitched. . . May 26, We regained the Jhelum at Islamabad and de- scended the river to Aventipura. Here we stopped and landed to see what our excavators had done. To our great joy we found about twenty feet of the peristyle uncovered on the opposite side of the quadrangle to the portion already laid bare, displaying a continuation of the trefoiled arches and orna- mented pillars, with the detached columns in front. Part of the architecture has fallen down just before the arcade. I have no doubt that the whole peristyle, of course more or less broken and battered, exists below the ground, and there seems no reason why we should not get it all uncovered,, under Cowie's superin- tendence, by which means an interesting addition will be made to the sights and antiquities of Cashmere. We took a general survey of the ruins again, and noticed the human-headed birds within the trefoiled arches of the part previously uncovered, which also form part of the Martand decorations. On the return from Islamabad the camp at Srinagar was struck and the journey back to Murree commenced. The Maharajah's barge and boats carried the travellers down to Baramula. Here the Jhelum ceases to be navi- gable, and the marching life was resumed* The home- ward route took the right bank instead of the left. In due time the vile paths and unbridgecl nullahs (brooks) of the Maharajah's territories were exchanged for well-made roads, types of British civilisation, and for the very pretty suspension-bridge thrown across the Kansuck, by which the Hazara district and English territory were gained. A halt at Abbottabad broke the final journey to Murree, where by the end of June the patched-up house supplied repose and an acceptable shelter from the increasing heat. This record of a time of great enjoyment and of many CH. XVIII.] RETURN TO MURREE. 469 blessings may close with one entry from the Bishop's journal a simple and spontaneous outburst of feeling, which, with the writer, always found a vent more readily through his pen than through words: June 2. As I devote much of my journal to recording scenes of physical beauty, I shall to-day note one of moral beauty. As I was passing leisurely along the road above the strange bridge of a single rope at Uri, by which the natives sling themselves across the river, Hardy, who had gone on ahead to see to the breakfast arrangements, suddenly met me, breathless and hot with fast walking. 'Hurrah!' he exclaimed, ' I have caught you in the nick of time. I thought that you would like to look at the bridge through my binoculars, so I have brought them back to you.' It appeared that for this purpose he had returned two miles, so that, merely to give another person a moment's pleasure, he added to the day's march a long hot walk. 470 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIX. CHAPTEE XIX. FURTHER PROGRESS OF EDUCATIONAL PLANS CAINVILLE HOUSE SCHOOL TRANSFER OF ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL PURCHASE OF MR. HADDOCK'S SCHOOL LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION FRESH APPEAL FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS FINAL EDUCATIONAL PASTORAL LIFE AT MURREE JOURNAL RECORD OF WORK COLD WEATHER VISITA- TION OF 1865-6 DISTURBED STATE OF HAZARA DISTRICT DESCENT OF THE INDUS HISSAR DELHI AGRA CORRESPONDENCE. THE leading occupation during a four months' residence at Murree was a further prosecution of the hill-schools' movement. An earlier chapter in this Memoir brought the movement down to the birth of the Simla school and of the Diocesan Board of Education in 1863. For some months afterwards the Bishop was comparatively resting on his oars, and was waiting until time and events should ripen for further personal efforts. There was, however, no lull in the educational activity of the diocese. The Board of Education was giving much aid in the establish- ment of boys' and girls' schools in the chief cities of the Presidency, thus supplementing the hill education by that corresponding education in the plains which those most friendly to the Bishop's special scheme desired should not be lost sight of. A girls' school in the hills, rivalling in efficiency and stability the schools projected for boys, was established solely by the energy of Archdeacon Pratt. He had co-operated from the first most actively and heartily in all the educational measures that were on hand, and in 1863, when the Bishop suspended for awhile his personal exertions, and declared that 'he was really ashamed to ask the public for money for Cu. xix.] ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL, CALCUTTA. 471 any fresh object,' the Archdeacon seized a favourable opportunity for planting a girls' school at Mussourie. He set on foot a subscription throughout the diocese which, when doubled by Government and aided by a grant of 100/. from the Christian Knowledge Society, and another of 40 O/. from the Board of Education, amounted in eighteen months to 60,000 rupees (6,000/.). With this sum a property was bought, and a small reserve fund secured. The school when once opened was made over by deed to the Bishop and Archdeacon as ex officio trustees of the Board of Education. Thus Cainville House, Mussourie, was added to the trusts attached to the see of Calcutta, and a very important step was taken towards rolling away the reproach that in a great Pro- testant diocese a large share of the female Christian edu- cation beyond the limits of Calcutta was carried on in convents. As 1864 advanced the Bishop began again to take the initiative, and concentrated much of his time and attention upon what may be called the second part in this educational enterprise, with a view to the establishment of Himalayan schools, standing in the same relation to the North- West Provinces, Eastern Bengal and Assam, as the Simla school did to the Punjab. Circumstances had arisen to facilitate this further expansion of the work. St. Paul's School, in Calcutta, had long been in an unsatisfactory state. From various causes it had become unpopular, and was ceasing pay its way. The remedy suggested for this state of ecadence was either to amalgamate it with some more ourishing school in Calcutta, or to transplant it to the ills. The Bishop wavered long about this latter alterna- ive. The temptation was great to take a step which might renovate a sickly institution and be at the same time subservient to his own plans. On the other hand, St. Paul's School was bound up with the memory of Archdeacon Corrie, who had founded it for the inhabitants of Calcutta, 472 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XIX. and of Bishop Wilson, who had enriched it by one of his many acts of munificence. Moreover this school was almost the only one in Calcutta representing distinct Church of England teaching* Elsewhere the influence exercised by the Church was of a hazy kind, being overpowered to a great extent by Presbyterianism or by a vague Bible Protestantism. On one occasion the Bishop wrote in reference to this point, that ' he was fairly frightened by the dissenting tendencies of some of the Calcutta places of education, fearing that a time might quickly come when disgrace and embarrassment might ensue from the absence of any distinctly Church school in the Presidency city.' However, a committee, who carefully and laboriously investigated the affairs of St. Paul's School, at length counselled a transfer to the hills as the best remedy for present evils, and the Bishop eventually did not dissent from the conclusion thus arrived at. In 1864, the school premises, standing on valuable ground in Calcutta, were sold, a property was bought, finely situated in the beauti- ful sanatarium of Darjeeling, in the Eastern Himalayas, and thus a second hill school came into existence. In the case of a third, the question was mainly one of money. A large private school had been flourishing for some years at Mussourie, under the management of the late Rev. E. Haddock, its proprietor. It was for a higher class of boys than those educated at Simla or St. Paul's School, and the fees were higher in proportion, In 1864, Mr. Maddock was ready and willing to sell the school. The Bishop wished to buy it, and include it in the chain of hill institutions ; 112,000 rupees (12,000/.) were asked for the property and goodwill. It became, therefore, a question whether the money could be raised, The Simla school was in full operation, its applications for entrance greatly exceeding its powers of admission ; the Diocesan Board of Education was popular, and receiving large financial support ; the Bishop deemed that the time was CH. XIX.] HILL SCHOOLS. 473 come when an onward step might be taken without undue rashness. Owing to delays inseparable from all Indian work, it was not until the following year (1865) that any definite scheme for the purchase was set on foot. The Bishop desired that the Board, as the centre of all educa- tional enterprise, should be the agent in the transaction. Early in that year he hinted his wishes to the committee ; subsequently he submitted a distinct proposal, which was strongly supported by the Archdeacon. Its purport was that the Board should at once make itself responsible for the purchase-money by sinking its reserve fund (about 2,500/., in Government securities) in the property of Mr. Haddock's school, and trusting for the large remaining balance to a flow of private subscriptions, which the Go- vernment grant would double. In July he thus wrote to the secretary : I am desirous that before the September meeting of the Diocesan Board of Education, the measures by which it is pro- posed to purchase the Rev. R. N. Haddock's school should be thoroughly considered. . . . * * The Archdeacon and I have had a good deal of correspondence on the question, and the result is that he has drawn up the very clear and able minute which accompanies this letter, and with which I desire to express my entire concurrence, as con- taining the best plan for raising the money necessary to bring about this important end. tit It will doubtless occur to the Board to inquire whether the purchase of Hr. Haddock's school is so important an object that it is worth while to pledge the whole of their endowments for the sake of securing it, and whether we shall not thereby cripple our means of giving help to schools which may be projected in the plains. To this I can only answer that the present oppor- tunity seems to me so very great, that it is worth while to risk something for the sake of securing it. By the permanent foundation of these three schools, at three important hill stations, in the three chief provinces of the presidency, we . 474- LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Ce. XIX. provide a connected chain of Christian education, under the direction of the Church of England, for the middle class of the whole diocese ; we thus actually realise what was spoken of six years ago as quite visionary. I well remember then the remark, that though nothing short of three schools would suffice for the actual want, yet that, if the present generation raised one, at Simla, this was all that could be expected. But here we have the power of securing the three put before us in a manner which we may well regard as providential. Again, I would remind the Board of the importance and standing which Mr. Haddock's school has acquired in the diocese ; that, by purchasing it, we secure not only the land and buildings, but its one hundred boys, its goodwill, its reputa- tion, and also, through Mr. Maddock's liberal offer to restore 10,000 rupees of the price, the means of beginning at once the application of its advantages, in the form of scholarships to boys who cannot afford to pay the full charge for education. Schools in the plains have already come into existence in considerable numbers through our aid : Calcutta, Howrah, Lahore, Allahabad, Rangoon, and Moulmein have all been helped by us to found cheap schools, and Lucknow, Singa- pore, and Nagpore are provided for in other ways. This list includes the seven seats of government in the presidency, and two other important places. At present, owing to the impetus we have given to education, there is some fear lest, as in the case of , we may encourage abortive schemes which depend on the zeal of some active local official, and fall to pieces when he is removed. It is of great consequence that we should bestow our help only on schools which, from their proved importance, are tolerably sure to be permanent. . . . With these remarks I heartily commend the scheme to the favourable consideration of the Board, in the belief that to secure Mr. Maddock's school for the permanent advantage of the diocese, is one of the best objects to which they can apply their resources. Much of the letter from which the above extracts are taken was devoted to the consideration of ways and means for raising the money, points which had only a temporary and limited interest. It will suffice for the Cn. XIX.] RESERVE FUNDS. 475 general reader to catch sight through these extracts of the Bishop's mind in respect of this business, and to know further, that the managing committee met his overtures at once with ready attention, and shortly after- wards responded by a cordial assent. The agreement entered into between the Board of Education and Mr. Haddock stood as follows : 6 That on January 1, 1867, one lakh (100,000 rupees, or 10,000.) be paid to him for the school premises and goodwill. Half the profits of the school to be paid over in each succeeding year, on January 1, till the total purchase-money, 120,000 rupees (12,000^.), is paid off.' This bargain very shortly cancelled itself. Contribu- tions flowed in so freely during 1866 towards the Bishop's entire hill-school scheme, that by a very slight borrowing from the general fund, the purchase-money for the Mus- sourie school was realised before twelve months had elapsed, and in November 1866 the Archdeacon reported that the whole price of the school would be in the Bank of Bengal by the close of that year. While still awaiting the decision of the committee, the Bishop had begun to make collections for another object which he had equally at heart. For each of the three hill schools actually or prospectively in his hands, he desired to raise and invest a moderate reserve fund, of which the interest only should be spent, as some security against an incumbrance of debt, should fluctuations in prosperity arise. A circular had been issued a short time before, commending the matter generally to the clergy and their flocks. The Bishop now followed it up by vigorous personal appeals, addressed during the sojourn at Murree to influential persons and private friends, both in India and in England. His action in this matter was a strong illustration of the quiet concentration of purpose with which he placed an object definitely before him, and 476 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. XIX. then relaxed neither effort nor energy to secure its ac- complishment. To his original appeal in behalf of the memorial school at Simla six years before, the remem- brance of the crisis through which British dominion in India had just passed lent a spasmodic and popular force ; but in 1865 the intrinsic importance of the cause was its only credential to public favour. Distrusting, therefore, the efficiency of printed appeals only, he supplemented them by private commendatory letters, as the only way by which, under God, his end could be attained, and these were written, two or three in a day, during the comparative leisure of a residence in the hills. Those who know the irksomeness of copying rather than com- posing letters, can estimate the weary labour of writing a hundred and sixteen, which were only slightly modified repetitions of each other. The sums required for the combined purchase and en- dowment schemes was 250,000 rupees (25,000/.). The Government grant would reduce the demand upon the public to half this sum. The Viceroy in his private capacity promised 100/. ; the Board of Education 150/., besides investing its reserve fund in the purchase of the Mussourie school property ; and the Society for Pro- moting Christian Knowledge 250/. ; each subscription to be repeated annually for three years, during which the endowment fund was to remain open. These were sub- stantial pledges of more general help, and the Bishop's labours did not go unrewarded. As Christmas 1865 the last of his life drew near, he was cheered and encouraged by the receipt of many goodly contributions from donors, both in England and India, friendly to him- self or his projects. The undertaking was no doubt large and comprehen- sive. Viewed on its financial side, it might be called hazardous, though not more so than kindred projects which are daily started in the world. Neither was it on CH. XIX.] EDUCATIONAL SCHEMES. 477 a more extensive scale than in the Bishop's opinion the cause of sound Anglo-Indian education demanded ; and in this opinion he had the firm and steady support of men whose judgment was equally calm and dispassionate with his own. As has been already said, the subject of ex- tended education had begun to occupy the attention of English officials in the Punjab before the mutiny arose. The Bishop's special work lay in giving, when circum- stances again became favourable, immense impulse to the movement then started, in developing it, and in extend- ing to the whole Presidency what was in the first instance contemplated only for one of its provinces. Undoubtedly from the outset he entertained in his own mind the whole scheme, which was only carried out by instalments, and held that nothing less than three schools in the salubrious climate of the hills would attain the desired object. Existing interests were, nevertheless, from the first, care- fully respected, and Mr. Haddock's private school would have been gladly accepted as the educational provision for the North-West Provinces ; but the Bishop never lost sight of the necessities of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and as early as 1862 he took steps to secure a site for a school at Darjeeling, and was quite prepared for vigorous efforts to get it established. A concurrence of circum- stances, however, as has been seen, led to the transfer of an existing school in one case, and to the purchase of an existing school in another. The work of creation became thus exchanged for that of absorption and consolidation, and in the end the only addition made by the Bishop to institutions already existing was the school established at Simla. tThe schools have not been planned on any exaggerated timate of the numbers likely to fill them ; that at Simla is the largest, and its quarters are calculated for less than two hundred pupils. Neither is the material fabric in either of the three hill schools pretentious or ornate. 478 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. XIX. Naturally the Bishop desired and hoped that the Simla school (the one monument raised in British India to commemorate a general and almost national thanksgiving for the restoration of peace after the mutiny) might have a local habitation worthy of its memorial character ; but, apart from this feeling, in one specific instance, and a general desire that the other school premises should be constructed with as much regard to the health of Euro- pean and semi-European boys as the costly barracks that are occupied by English soldiers, he gave economical con- siderations their full weight, sought only to secure durable buildings adapted to their purpose, and carried every available rupee to the account of scholarships and en- dowments. The last educational pastoral was dated from Delhi in January 1866. Written with the usual clearness and vigour, it had also all the fulness which was still neces- sary, for no abridgment of the oft-told tale would effect the desired object in a country where the supporters of any good work are widely scattered and perpetually changing. Patiently the Bishop retraced the rise and progress, and recapitulated the main features of the work he had in hand, dwelling upon the increasing numbers of middle-class Christians, the paramount necessity of healthful training for their children, the certainty that if this were neglected, future generations of English and mixed blood would be distanced in knowledge and in- telligence by Hindus and Mahometans. Acknowledging what had been done by contributions during the last few months in behalf of the purchase and the several endow- ment funds, he pressed on the notice of the public what still remained to be done, and with something of the peremptoriness of one who has a confidence that he will not ask in vain, he wrote : I shall not be satisfied that the work is properly carried out CH. XIX.] EFFORTS TO EXTEND EDUCATION. 479 unless, in January 1867, the Diocesan Board enters on the possession of Mussourie, unencumbered with debt, and unless, in July 1868, each of these three schools is endowed with an invested capital of 50,000 rupees (5,OOOZ.). To do this, 25,000 rupees will be required, of which Government will contribute half. Thus I must ask the public to raise the sum already subscribed to 125,000 rupees by July 1868. In words expressive of sincere thankfulness for wide- spread liberality and deeply-valued support, and of earnest and devout hopes for the future, this, his last manifesto on a subject that had engrossed his Indian life, ended : It only remains that I should heartily thank those who have already come forward with their contributions, especially, perhaps, though, indeed, it is invidious to particularise, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which has now for more than a century been ever among the foremost in doing good to India ; His Excellency Sir John Lawrence, for much public and private encouragement ; the Venerable Archdeacon Pratt, for the wise counsel and ready help which he has given to me in this as in many other works undertaken for the welfare of the diocese ; and those headmasters in England who have shown a truly kind and brotherly sympathy with this attempt to spread Christian education among a neglected class, by making collections for it in the schools over which they preside. All, however, who have contributed have my hearty thanks ; and I trust that the constant calls upon my time and thoughts made by the pastoral charge of this great diocese will serve as my excuse if I do not write a separate letter expressing this to every one who has actively promoted the scheme, which I now once more commend to the blessing of God, and the bounty of His Church. This circular being issued, and the cause pleaded by it committed to the favour of the Anglo-Indian public, a lull came again over the Bishop's personal efforts, and during a few ensuing months he had little to do beyond registering the donations with which his appeal was answered. He was to the last anxious, but not despon- 480 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XiX. dent about the ultimate fulfilment of his wishes, though possibly he might have waited long for it. But it was not permitted to him to witness an early or remote realiza- tion of his hopes ; it was willed, in the providence of God, that other men should enter into his labours, and that by his death, and not by his life, the unfinished work should be accomplished. The general character of the life at Murree is described in one of those short sketches into which the Bishop usually expanded, at the end of any continuous sojourn, the brief ' three-line ' journal, resumed when travelling was suspended, and devoted to a brief and quaint notice of each day's events. He liked Murree much, and en- joyed as usual the fine mountain walks and occasional expeditions, and the sight of range on range of hills meeting the eye on every side. He liked also the pleasant social circle, which included many able members of the Punjab Government ; men whom he used to delight in describing as ' simply and practically religious, and imbued with a strong sense of the supremacy of duty and of the majesty of work.' While, however, much refreshment was drawn from outward sources, the ques- tion of the usefulness and profitableness of his own life seemed to be gaining increasing ascendency in his mind, and the sense of the grave and solemn purposes for which his lot had been cast in India to be ever acquiring fresh strength. A brief review of a definite period inserted in the record of ordinary daily occupations, and disclosing simply and unaffectedly the earnest and devout prin- ciples by which he desired to guide his life, took the place with him in a great measure of more distinctly religious effusions. There were some years of his life during which, at long intervals, he committed to writing thoughts of a more devotional and contemplative kind ; but the practice was not a congenial one it never CH. XIX.] DIAEIES OF RELIGIOUS LIFE. 431 became habitual, and was deliberately abandoned. A passage written in a manuscript book in 1863, recording this intention, is so characteristic of the writer, that its insertion claims a place in a memoir which can only touch lightly upon points over which he who is the sub- ject of it threw while in life a veil of reserve. I have completely altered my method of writing in this book, and I doubt whether I shall ever return to the old way. Some time ago I read some religious biographies (especially one), in which extracts from private journals of this nature were printed. They certainly gave me an impression of unreality. The writers seemed often to fall into mere talk : into vague statements of doctrine, or expressions of feelings about themselves, which are at least unnatural, and which I can scarcely think were altogether realised. It is perhaps hard even to write in a religious journal without a secret fancy that it may some day be seen, without the intrusion of the unblest desire for human applause. This is dangerous to sincerity, to reality, to depth of Christian conviction. At least, it is in my case, though perhaps not in the case of others. Therefore I resolved to give up all record of my private feelings in such a book as this. But, on the other handj religious writing is a help to self-recollection, and a means of meditation, which is to me always a difficulty. I have therefore substituted for a record of personal feelings passages from the Bible, with a brief reflexion on each. I trust that I have derived good from writing these, and from looking back at them from time to time, I hope to continue the practice, and may Gtad be pleased to bless it to my growth in Christian wisdom and holiness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus turning away from elaborate introspective search- ings of heart and spirit, the Bishop, with the true naturalness of his character, made his outward life the test of inward nearness to God and Christ, and in short passages like the following was wont to record little beyond the practical work which, wherever he found himself, he desired to begin, continue, and end in sole reference to his Master in heaven. I i 482 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ca. XIX. Murree, June 1865. I shall now discontinue my daily journal, returning, I hope, to a regular mode of life. After so much enjoyment, and so much experience of Grod's goodness in the uninterrupted health and safety of our party, some useful work becomes on all accounts a duty. My desire is, during the next four months, to take a considerable part in the Church services, both on Sunday and Wednesday, and to do something in the following directions : to read a great part of Augustine, ' De Civitate Dei ; ' to lay a foundation of Sanscrit, by going through Monier Williams's Grammar ; to write an article for the ' Calcutta Review ' on the education of Europeans and Eurasians ; to push vigorously my scheme for the three hill schools, and to make a beginning of two works which I long to accomplish, or see accomplished, in the course of the next two or three years, if Grod grants me life and health, but which I approach with trembling, from considerable distrust in my own power to do much to wards either (l)a book of Christian evidences adapted especially to the nineteenth century and the Brahmo Somaj, and (2) a small book on Christian practice and devotion for young men coming from England to India. I have also plenty of books, such as the last volume of Merivale's ' Rome,' Raw- linson's ' Ancient Monarchies,' Max Miiller's last set of Lectures on Language, Perowne ' On the Psalms,' &c., in which I hope to make some way at odd times. Such is my purposed work, of which, if I accomplish half, I suppose I ought to be contented, and it rests with a higher will than mine whether I shall accomplish any part. But I humbly commit it to Grod's mercy and blessing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. October 14. The time is now approaching when we must quit this most pleasant place of summer sojourn. As to diocesan business and places, I have been mainly occupied with the scheme for founding the three hill schools, of which it is hard to overrate the importance. Besides this, in conjunction with Colonel Lake, I took measures for transporting the intended Punjab Girls' School from Dharamsala to Simla. I also assembled at breakfast one morning all the Lahore officials, and Mr. Finch, CH. XIX.] EXEGETICAL LECTURES. 483 the officiating agent of the Punjab Kail way, to consider how we can manage to place a clergyman at Naulakha, the railway- station of Anarkulli. A parsonage will, I hope, be provided by subscriptions in India ; but, after the meeting, I drew up an appeal to the shareholders, requesting them to allow a certain percentage to be deducted from their salaries, to form a ' Punjab and Delhi Eailways Clergy Fund,' like that which, by the Arch- deacon's exertions, is being gathered for the East Indian Railway. My definite pastoral work has included one sermon on nearly every Sunday, and pastoral visits to the Lawrence Asylum, and to Nunkote, about twelve miles from Murree. Service has been held in church every Wednesday, and during this time I have delivered a course of eight expository lectures on Joel, Jonah, and Obadiah, which I prepared with care by the help of Ewald, Pusey, and the Dictionary of the Bible. And lastly, I had every Friday a meeting for Bible reading and explanation at our own house, and went through the Epistle to the Gralatians, my expositions being materially aided by the new and admirable edition of the epistle by Lightfoot, the best addition to our exegetical literature which has yet resulted from the critical movement in England. The meeting was well attended ; and some of the higher officials of the Govern- ment were always present. Now, as the administration of the Punjab is certainly as able and vigorous as any in India, this fact at least shows that statesmanship and an efficient discharge of this world's highest and most difficult duties are entirely compatible with earnest Christian faith, spite of all the chatter of the day about the increasing repugnance of intellectual men to the ordinary religious teaching given in our churches. When the exposition of the Oalatians was over, four weeks still remained, and during these I went to the weekly bible-class established in the barracks, and attended by some twenty or thirty soldiers of the convalescent depot. With them we read and discussed the last four chapters of St. John's gospel. This brings me to record the degree to which I fulfilled my intentions as to reading which I set down on June 14. I have read thirteen books of the ' De Civitate Dei,' always with interest and instruction, even when it was plain that Augustine's argu- ments and criticisms were wholly wrong for it is a book suggestive alike by its errors and its truths but generally with i i 2 484 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XIX. great profit, and often with considerable benefit to my sermons, of which three were suggested and enriched by it. I have also gone through the greater part of the Sanscrit grammar, and can at least read the Devanagari character, and know what Sanscrit is like, besides having gained much ocular demonstration of its . importance in comparative philology, and of the cousinhood of Hindus, Greeks, Eomans, and Englishmen. The educational article for the < Calcutta Eeview' is written, and the proof corrected. On the other hand, of the two works mentioned on June 14 as to be accomplished, God willing, in two or three years, I have done very little to (1), from lack of books, and nothing at all to (2), from lack of competence to the task. I collected a few notes and references on Evidences, but as to the book of devotion, though I read a good deal of Thomas a-Kempis, and Bright's ' Book of Ancient Collects,' I always felt as if to begin it, I needed more quiet and deeper Christian experience than I have. The lectures on the Prophets too occupied time, which might have been devoted to these pro- jected works. The last volume of Meri vale's ' Eome,' Kawlin- son's ' Ancient Monarchies,' Kaye's ' History of the Sepoy War,' Howard on the ' Travancore Syrians,' and Lathbury's ' His- tory of the Prayer Book ' (the last a truly dull, and somewhat prejudiced book), formed the chief elements in my armchair and sofa studies. I also went carefully through Fremantle and Broderick's collection of ' Privy Council Judgments,' and was converted by it from distrust of the Judicial Committee to a contented acquiescence in it, and a strong sense of its impar- tiality. Not liking to let my Hebrew slumber altogether, I read the ' Book of Kuth ' in Wright's edition, and I wrote for the ' Christian Intelligencer ' short accounts of this, of ' Light- foot on the Galatians,' and of the ' Privy Council Judgments.' So ends a quiet and happy time, for which I humbly thank our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord. The cold weather visitation of 1865 began with an expedition into the Hazara district, which was then in a very disturbed state, through Mussulman fanatics and assassins who were keeping up a chronic state of alarm. Just at that time, a bandit chief, named Samundhar, from the independent territory of Mulkah, on the other CH. XIX.] VISITATION OF 18t>5. 485 side of the Indus, had been captured, and was lodged in the gaol at Abbottabad, awaiting his trial for divers acts of cattle-lifting and kidnapping her Majesty's Indian sub- jects, conveying them encased in mussicks (buffalo-hides) across the Indus, and then demanding their ransom. On his capture, his followers sent a message, brigand fashion, to the officials of Hazara, that if he were not at once released, some European would be carried off and kept as a hostage. Hence guards and armed escorts were everywhere enjoined ; the Bishop and his chaplain had a night and day attendance of soldiers with loaded carbines, and Samundhar's followers were kept at bay. At Attock the Bishop had again the great delight of seeing the fine junction of the Indus and Cabul rivers, with Akbar's fort frowning above ; and at Peshawur, on his last birthday, he made the following entry in his journal : Peshawur, October 29'. My birthday found me at the furthest limits of my diocese. I spent part of its leisure in writing to and about my boy, whose long absence is the greatest trial of my Indian life. I trust that my work here may leave behind it some results to make up for a sorrowful and unnatural separation, and that he, in accordance with Christ's promise, may find the want of father, mother, and sister supplied by hearing and doing the Word of God. From Attock the whole party, now reunited, descended the Indus to the frontier of Scinde, then crossed to the left bank at Dehra Ghazee Khan, and travelled to Moultan and Lahore. The last week of December was devoted to a visitation of the Hissar district, south of Delhi. Once more, in January 1866, the Bishop visited Delhi; his journal bearing witness to the ever-fresh enjoyment afforded by a sight of the Jumma Musjid, the palace of the Moguls, the grand tombs without the walls, and the general view of the great city. Once more he gazed on 436 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIX. that 'thing of beauty,' that 'joy for ever,' the Taj Mahal, at Agra. Here, too, he held all but his last ordination. The admission to deacon's orders of two natives, on this occasion, raised the native pastorate to fourteen, nine of whom had been ordained by himself, in the course of seven years. From Agra he once more took one of those expeditions of combined work and pleasure which he loved so well, and making what has been called one of the finest marches in North India, he visited Futtehpore Sikri, to see again, as in 1859, the great palace of Akbar ; Bhurtpore, for the sake of its history, and Muttra for ecclesiastical duties. Early in February he was again settled at Bishop's palace, and the following letters pre- sent, in his own graphic style, the main points in the life and occupations of the preceding months : To the Dean of Westminster. % July 1865. ... I have just received, and am reading with much pleasure, the ' Gruardian ' of May 24, containing the Convocation debates on the Court of Final Appeal and the new Causes. I highly approve of your speeches, and of the friendly but characteristic interlocution between you and GK A. Denison. Moreover, I think you, Harvey Groodwin (possibly by this time Bishop of Chester ?), Blakesley, and others very wise and public-spirited in taking so much interest in Convocation and its proceedings, thereby preventing it from incurring contempt as a purely one-sided assembly. At the same time it ought to contain lay- men, and to be united with the York Synod. I trust that dissenting rancour will not prevent the Clerical Subscription Bible from passing the Commons, which would be far more inexcusable than the shipwreck of the bishopric of Lahore, which it has already effected. The next ecclesiastico-political question which I desire to see taken in hand by a Eoyal Com- mission is an alteration of the table of lessons ; and I trust that thus, by a moderate and gradual course of bit by bit reform, we shall greatly improve and emancipate the Church, without alienating and disgusting High Churchmen. I long to hold an Cn. XIX.] HOME POLITICS. 487 ordination without the necessity of exacting the ' unfeigned assent and consent.' I have read 'Lightfoot on the Galatians ' with great admiration : it is at once candid and critical, and at the same time conser- vative of Christian truth and historical fact against theorists and hypothesis-framers, which is at present my ideal of apolo- getic theology. To the Rev. H. Bell. August 1865. . . . This rejection of Gladstone at Oxford is a great scandal and a great misfortune. That the ablest statesman of the day, being at the same time an earnest Christian and Churchman, and devoted beyond all other politicians to practical schemes for removing the greatest blot on our national escutcheon the degraded condition of the poor should be turned out by a highly educated and mainly clerical constituency, is, I think, a real disgrace to us. I am afraid the Marlborough bridegrooms did not feel the duty of staying in England to vote for him. To Bosworth Smith, Esq. Kohat, November 1865. ... I delayed my annual letter to you till I had seen in the paper the actual announcement of your nuptials, which, owing to our distance from the sea, reached us late. I heartily con- gratulate you on the successful accomplishment of the marriage, and on being able thus early in life to enjoy the blessings and fulfil the duties of domestic life. A wife to take care of you, ' halving your sorrows and doubling your pleasures,' and a home of your own, are precious gifts of God, and I trust that His blessing will be upon you in the use of them. . . . We are now, as you will gather from the date of this, engaged in the annual work of visitation, and I am going down all the stations on the frontier which separate us from the wild tribes of the Paropamisus, Afridis, Khyberees, Wuzeerees, Pathans of other kinds, and Belooches, and who form a long narrow border between us and the scene of our greatest crime and blunder of recent years, the kingdom of Cabul. Our main highway for this journey is the Indus. We embarked on this famous river at Attock, the place where Alexander probably 488 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Ca. XIX. crossed it, but not where he began his voyage down it, as he must have entered it from the Hydaspes ( Jhelum), at the point where it is joined by that and the rest of the five rivers of the Punjab. ... A fleet of four vessels conveys us down the river, and they are not, I should think, materially different from those used in Alexander's time. They are merely clumsy barges, almost flat-bottomed, and drawing very little water (the river up here is shallow and rapid), propelled when necessary by four huge oars, two at the prow and two at the stern, but often left to float down the stream, which runs at the rate of six or seven miles an hour. . . . We all keep very near each other during the voyage, and can migrate from one boat to another without much trouble. We are off at sunrise, stop at about 9 '30 for breakfast, and again as soon as it is dark, when we dine. During the night it would be unsafe to proceed. Hitherto, while we are in the mountainous country, the river has been picturesque, but its banks are soon, we are told, to become flat and ugly. The scenery is wild and peculiar : steep rocks and cliffs of a dark grey colour on each bank, generally wholly without vegetation, sometimes diversified by a few stunted trees. Peaked rocks, too, rise from the middle of the stream, which sometimes has been compressed into very narrow limits, one place being marked by the common legend of a horse leaping across the river, and not unfrequently the boats are carried briskly down rapids, where the water whirls and foams so as to cause a little excitement as we pass the rocks. . . The boats themselves are comfortable ; the time is spent pleasantly enough in reading, writing, talking, and looking about us ; the mornings are bitterly cold ; the heat at 2 P.M. is consider- able, but not oppressive. All along the river, sometimes on its bank, sometimes at distances of thirty or forty miles inland, are the military stations which I visit, an escort of native cavalry being always sent down to bring us safely in, and protect us from the fate of poor Mr. Moens ; for an Afridi chief is very fond of carrying off anyone whom he can catch, generally some fat Hindu tradesman, whisking him up into the mountains, and holding him to ransom. In fact, they are just like Italian brigands, or Highlanders of Rob Roy's type. Kohat, from which I date, is one of these military stations : here a church and cemetery have been consecrated, service performed, eccle- Cu. XIX.] CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM. 489 siastical matters looked up ; and civilities and hospitalities received from the officers. . . . Since I began this, the telegraph has flashed to us the over- whelming intelligence of Lord Palmerston's death. I call it overwhelming, not from any great admiration for him, though I have latterly appreciated him more than I used to do, but on account of the crisis which must follow in English, and possibly in European, politics ; in which view I suppose that his death is the most important which could happen except that of Louis Napoleon. You and the Eadicals (unless the soft influence of a wife has mitigated your radicalism) will probably rejoice in it. I do not mean in the death personally, which would be malignant, but in the removal of a drag from Liberalism. On the other hand, the Tories will also rejoice in the removal of the man who kept a great amount of floating uncertain demi- Conservatism on the side technically called Liberal, but they must execrate their luckless fate, which delayed the event till the elections were fairly won by their rivals. . . I regard this present position under their present chief as a Nemesis upon them for their conduct to Peel, aggravated and repeated by their recent crime and folly in the rejection of Gladstone at Oxford. . . Edward is now in the agonies of his final cramming for Woolwich : I shall be thankful if he succeeds, though I do not expect it ; for if he fails, his heart is set upon the line, to my mind the most profitless and perilous of professions, except perhaps that of an Assam tea-planter, and one which I could only consent to his entering from my deep conviction that any profession which a boy deliberately chooses is more profitable and less perilous than one into which he is forced or persuaded by his father. To Professor Conington. November 1865. .... In writing to you I always feel one doubt : whether you prefer my telling you of my travels and work in India, of which, except for my sake, you cannot desire to know much, or criticising public events in England, about which one is apt to utter platitudes which you have already seen in the ' Times ' or heard in the Common Eoom. I shall give you a slight mixture of both this time, and shall, by a hysteron proteron, begin with 490 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIX. the last "of the two general topics, and say that, as to a new Whig Premier, I should, on the whole, have been willing to give Gladstone the fair trial which he must have ; or, if the time is not come for him, then I think that Lord Granville or Lord Clarendon would have been preferable to the actual chief, who however was probably inevitable. As to the Eeform Bill, which will, I suppose, be proposed, I am no democrat, and all my prepossessions are in favour of the schemes of theorists like Lord Grey; but I conclude that any plan like his is im- possible for a people who boast of being so simple and prac- tical in our tastes as we do, and therefore the only question with me is this : The great, crying, terrible evil of England is the pauperism, the enormous difference which separates classes, the practical heathenism and physical misery of the masses. Will a democratic Reform Bill remedy this ? I cer- tainly doubt it ; but if there is any probability of it, I should feel it wrong to oppose it, even if it costs us the aristocracy and the establishment of the Church. But in carrying such a reform, I should trust Gladstone more that anyone else, because he, alone almost among statesmen, seems to have an adequate appreciation of the need that the spiritual and material welfare of the people should be provided for to- gether. . . . Turning now to ourselves, since we left our summer sojourn at Murree we have been travelling over the western extremities of India, and are now descending the Inclus. . . The river, which for the first few days flowed between picturesque mountains, has now utterly flat and uninteresting shores, the Suleiman Range which separates India from Cabul being too far off to be seen. In going inland to the stations, however, we have seen it, and especially admired one prominent mountain of the chain, the Takht-i-Suleiman (Solomon's Throne), 13,000 feet high, very peculiar, and like a throne in shape ; so that Solomon, when visiting the Jinn, is said to have selected it as the spot where- unto he desired his green carpet to convey him, that from it he might gaze upon the plains of India. This story reminds me, and may remind you, that I have now actually been gazing upon those plains for seven years ; and one begins to ask, what have I done all that time ? any good to make up for so utter a change of life ? I should like to live to see four Cn. XIX.] OBJECTS OF HIS WORK. 491 works in good progress towards completion: (1) The organi- sation of a system of education for Anglo-Indians, through hill schools for both sexes, and the Diocesan Board, aided by Gro- vernment ; (2) a supply of clergy for the railway stations ; (3) a better pastoral oversight of all classes of Christians in the city of Calcutta ; (4) vigorous efforts by lectures, schools, colleges, friendly intercourse, and in time more directly reli- gious means, for evangelising the educated natives of Bengal. I mention these four, not as the only, nor necessarily the great- est, works which English Christianity should effect in India, but as those with which I have become most directly and per- sonally connected. To the Dean of Westminster. Bishop's Palace, February 1866. .... We left our Himalayan retreat on October 16, and proceeded in the first instance to Peshawur, then turned back, and commenced a long round, containing three distinct novelties: (1) the descent of the Indus to the frontier of Scinde, with excursions from the river towards the roots of the mountain barrier which separates India from Afghanistan, and of which the grandest point is the Takht-i-Suleiman ; (2) a journey through the desolate regions of Hissar, bordering on the great desert of India, chiefly effected by a carriage drawn by four camels ; (3) a short but very pretty tour from Agra to Muttra, the birthplace of Krishna, by Futtehpore Sikri, the scene of Akbar's glories ; Bhurtpore, where old Lord Combermere achieved greatness and threw a certain reflected lustre over his kinsfolk ; Deeg, the most remarkable specimen of modern Hindu architecture and princely life ; and Grovadhun and Bindabun, altogether given up to Krishna and impurity. The heroes of the first of these three regions are Solomon, Alexander, and three Pathan chiefs of Humayun's reign Ismail Khan, Grhazee Khan, and Futteh Khan who established on the frontier three camps (dehra), which have now become the flourishing towns and English stations of Dehra Ismail Khan, Dehra Grhazee Khan, and the purely native and insignificant one of Dehra Futteh Khan, and have further given to the whole country the name of Derajdt ('the encampments,' jdt being a Persian plural). The heroes of the second region are Mahmoud of 492 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XIX. Ghuzni, who took the Hindu fort of Sirsa ; the Emperor Ferozeshah, who used to hunt incessantly in the jungle, now cleared away, certain lions, of whom the last was killed by a Mr. Fraser, in 1828 ; and various English adventurers who tried to carve out for themselves principalities or large estates during the general break-up which began with the death of Aurungzib, and did not end till the Mahrattas were put down. Of the third region the heroes are yet more miscellaneous : Krishna, the giant Grunze, the Bhurtpore rajahs, Akbar, Lord Comber- mere, and a man probably descended from Grunze, being 7 feet 6 inches high, and requiring sixteen pounds of corn for a meal, who exhibits himself at Deeg to astonished and half-affrighted travellers. The mode of conveyance in the first journey was principally by four large native boats. . In the second journey we were, as I said, chiefly dragged over the desert by camels, the carriages being lent by the rajahs of Puttiala and Jheend, two Sikh princes who dwell in the territory between the Sutlej and the Jumna. This journey was very cold and fatiguing, and afforded less compensation than the others in the way of secular interest, but perhaps more interest of a higher kind ;. for from the rarity of religious ministrations there, our presence seemed nowhere more acceptable. Three churches were consecrated in this desolate region. The third journey was luxuriously performed in the carriage of the Maharajah of Bhurtpore, who in entertaining the cousin of the Poliorcetes of his territory, was not sheltering a member of a hostile house, since he is grandson of the infant whom Lord Combermere placed upon the throne which was withheld by a usurping uncle. The only great city, not included in the limits above indicated, which I saw for the first time during this tour, was Moultan, a place of some interest from the murder of Anderson and Vans Agnew, which sealed our possession of the Punjab, and from abounding in tombs of Mahomedan saints, covered with beautiful tiles of varied colours like the encaustic works of Wedgwood and others in modern days. It is said to be the hottest place in India. On approaching the tomb of Shamach Tabreez (Shamach = the sun, cf. Beth Shemesh) we were told the reason of this excessive heat by the guardian of the shrine. Shamach Tabreez, he said, was a very holy fakir who came to Moultan 250 years ago, but the people refused to receive him, Cii. XIX.] MOULTAN. 493 or to listen to his preaching, desired him to leave their city, and declined to supply him with any kind of food. A disciple, however, brought him some game from the jungle, and he begged from the churlish Moultanese fire wherewith to cook it. This they also refused, whereupon the fakir said that if they would not help him to cook his food, the sun should do so ; and accordingly, by his prayers, brought the sun near enough to Moultan to provide him with an excellent roast hare. Once there, however, the sun declined to return to his former place in the heavens, and so the people of Moultan are still punished for the impiety of their ancestors by an extra allowance of heat. This, however, is the case only in the summer ; when we were at Moultan the climate was cool and pleasant. The tour, I trust, was not unprofitable ; two at least of the missions Agra and Amritsir were in a state of great vigour and efficiency. I consecrated altogether sixteen'churches for European worshippers, and laid the corner-stone of another. . . Altogether life here passes very happily, though of course with some draw- backs ; but I hare never felt otherwise than thankful that I came to India, and had so great and effectual a door opened for doing some good in life. My main regret has been that I have made so little use of it. However, that is a matter rather for oneself than one's friends. 494 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XX. CHAPTER XX. THE BISHOP'S OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE IN 1866 STATE AID AND VOLUN- TARYISM REVISION OF PENSION RULES SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING ECCLESIASTICAL SERVICE INCREASE OF ARCHDEACONRIES VIEWS ON EXTENSION OF EPISCOPATE COADJUTOR BISHOPS ALARMS FOR THE POSITION OF THE INDIAN CHURCH LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF LONDON THE CAPETOWN CONTROVERSY LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN REMARRIAGE OF CONVERTS 7 ACT TWO LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT. A SPECIAL interest is attached to the Bishop's public cor- respondence in 1866. All that he wrote during these few months, before his sudden summons to resign his charge, has served to place on record his latest views and wishes for the work that he had in trust. Diocesan matters of mere routine, which usually largely occupied his pen, seemed for the time to recede before the expo- sition of broad and practical schemes, formed and ripened during eight years, in the general interests of the Indian Church. In an article contributed a few months before to the ' Calcutta Eeview,' he had traced the rise and progress of the ' Anglican Establishment in India ' from the days of William III., when, at the request of the residents in Bombay, ' two godly ministers ' were sent out to administer the Protestant religion in all garrisons, and ' to instruct the Gentoos as should be servants or slaves of the Company.' After describing its progress down to the present times, he asks : And now what improvements and developments does our Church require in that branch of its operations which concerns Europeans and East Indians ? . . . Undoubtedly, a Church esta- blishment in India is as necessary now as it was when Wilberforce and Buchanan and Bishop Porteus and the Church Missionary CH. XX.] VOLUNTARYISM. 495 Society clamoured for it. Its work would be mainly with the army and those in the employment of Grovernment, though of course it must extend its charge to all with whom it is brought into contact. Obviously, too, this establishment, if it exists at all, should be an efficient one, and able to compass the objects above indicated ; but, beyond this, the development of the Church should proceed from within, and the aid of Grovernment should be given only in proportion to the liberality of its mem- bers. . . . The combined action of the State and of individual Churchmen, guided by the ecclesiastical authorities, will, under (rod's blessing, place the Anglo-Indian Church on a satisfactory basis. Voluntaryism, thus put forward once more as a power- ful lever of profitable Church work, was no new principle in India. Substantial charities, still in full operation, represent the helping hand stretched out in bygone days to relieve want and sickness among the Christian popu- lation. Bishop Wilson gave a new development to this same principle by the foundation of the Additional Clergy Society and the Seamen's Mission, a pastoral agency being thus provided, mainly through private support, for Europeans living beyond the reach of Government chaplains. His successor invoked it incessantly through his appeals to all members of the English Church to pro- mote education within her borders, and to maintain her position as the foremost among Protestant communities in carrying the Word and Sacraments into the jungles of British India. A considerable augmentation of the re- serve funds of the Church Building and Additional Clergy Societies ; a threefold increase of agents employed by the latter society ; an investment of 7, GOO/., contributed by the shareholders of the East Indian Eailway towards the support of pastors along the line, and the great increase of schools throughout the diocese, are all tangible results of the late episcopate, and to these results the steady flow of voluntary aid largely contributed. But while thus successfully pressing on Churchmen the 496 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XX. duty of self-help, Bishop Cotton none the less laid claim to a continuance of that support from the State which for 200 years has been a source of strength to the Anglo- Indian branch of the Established Church, gradually making that Church what it now is, a compact organisa- tion, possessing, through its close and peculiar connexion with the State, foundations of stability, and a reserve fund of strength far beyond what falls to the lot of many struggling colonial Churches. One ecclesiastical measure, with which the Government were directly and exclusively concerned, was that of a revision of the regulations respect- ing chaplains' pensions. It was only completed in 1866, and demands more notice than the brief reference to it made in a former page. The movement was started in the Madras Presidency in 1862, and the case in outline was this. The changes impending after the mutiny led the chaplains to review their position. The amalgamation of the Company's forces with the Queen's threatened the destruction of the Military Fund, subscription to which by Government chaplains was compulsory and formed an insurance for a surviving family. Salaries were insufficient to afford a surplus for savings in days when the cost of living was constantly increasing ; and the pensions, which had been reduced in 1834 from 365/. to 290/. a-year, were inadequate for the support of a family after re- tirement to England. The only prizes that gilded the service were the two senior chaplaincies in each Pre- sidency, to which a somewhat higher salary was assigned. These posts, however, were but shadows of benefits to the service generally ; the simple fact of seniority secured them to six members of the whole body. They exer- cised, moreover, in some degree, an injurious influence, by inducing chaplains to linger on, in the hope of suc- ceeding to them, when it was evident that their energies had been seriously impaired by a tropical climate. The Madras chaplains carried with them a large majority of CH. xx.j CHAPLAINS' PENSIONS. 497 their brethren in the other Presidencies in desiring to surrender these senior chaplaincies, and to receive in exchange a return to the higher rate of pension that had prevailed before 1834. It was well known that the case would obtain no official consideration unless it were shown that no extra expenditure would be incurred, and the memorial of the chaplains was drawn up on a basis of careful calculation, which, it was believed, left no financial flaw. Lord Elgin's government, before whom it was laid in 1862, arrived at different conclusions, and while viewing the proposal favourably in its general scope, rejected it as entailing increased outlay upon the State. A stone, however, had been set rolling which was not likely to stop. The Bishops and the chaplains were equally interested in the movement. The subject was dis- cussed in many conclaves during the Metropolitical Visi- tation of 1868 ; and at Bombay a fresh scheme was drawn up, signed by the three Bishops, which, retaining the main features of the former one, and vindicating the correctness of previous calculations, was partially recast so as to have more chance of acceptance with the authorities. Its reception by Sir John Lawrence's government was more favourable, and it was forwarded to the Secretary of State. At the India House the question was mainly one of finance. Supporters of the measure in India advocated it in behalf of the chaplains and of the Church's welfare. To bring it into harmony with all these require- ments was a work of time and difficulty ; and long cor- respondence ensued. The proposed return to the former rate of pension after twenty years' service was conceded, but only as a substitute for the senior chaplaincies ; the interests of existing incumbents had to be considered, and three years' grace was allowed, during which the next in succession might elect either to assert his claims, should a vacancy arise, or to relinquish them, for himself and for the service generally, in favour of the higher K K 498 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cii. XX. pension. Hence the operation of the new measure was prospective only, and liable to indefinite postponement. Many chaplains whose time of service was far advanced, having no inducement to remain when the senior prize had, for them, become practically already abolished, were willing and anxious to resign the service, and were only deterred from doing so by the fear that a premature retirement might permanently forfeit the new rate of pension. But the officials of the India House, alarmed by the prospect of a sudden enlargement of their pension list, long shut their eyes to this point in the case ; and it was not until 1866 that the Bishop obtained the accep- tance of his recommendation that all chaplains desirous of retiring on the completion of their twenty years' ser- vice, should be permitted to do so on the existing pen- sion, and await its rise until such time as the senior chap- laincies should lapse. One clause in the scheme ema- nated solely from the Bishop of Calcutta viz. that which made retirement compulsory after twenty-five years' ser- vice, for all chaplains, except such as might be especially recommended to the Secretary of State for prolonged ser- vice. This enactment was naturally unpopular with a few members of the ecclesiastical service, who, after long re- sidence in India, had become indifferent about returning to England ; but the Bishop looked upon it as an essential corollary of a measure intended to benefit not only the clergy but the Church. It would be invidious to say more than that his strong and repeated, and in the end successful, representations to Government on this point, rested on the conviction, formed through some painful experience in the earlier years of his episcopate, that less than any department of work in India could the ecclesiastical service afford to dispense with the regular infusion of freshness and vigour that England alone could supply. The small sum at issue in each case, amounting only to 70/. a-year, and the small number of Government CH. xx.] CHAPLAINS' PENSIONS. 409 servants at any one time affected by revised pension rules, might seem disproportioned to a correspondence which ran its course, at the rate of Indian progress, during four years. But distinctions of ' little and large ' are rightly forgotten in the presence of a grievance to be redressed ; and it may not be wide of the mark to infer that this special act of legislation owed much to the support afforded by a Viceroy whose former Indian career had been contemporary with that of a whole generation of chaplains, and who would be not less alive to inequalities in their position than to deficiencies in their ministrations. Other suggestions having in view the well-being of the Church and her ministers, and resting, for the most part, on the principle of grants from Government supplementing voluntary efforts, were embodied in some of the Bishop's latest official correspondence. Such suggestions pointed to a more general erection of parsonage-houses ; to the development of more lay co-operation in the Church by vestries and churchwardens ; to the establishment of a pension fund for the widows and orphans of chaplains, to take the place of the military funds which, as was ex- pected, were swept away in the great changes subsequent to the mutiny. Another measure recommended by him as eminently conducive to the welfare both of the Church and clergy, was the raising of some two or three chaplain- cies into archdeaconries. The expense would be slight to the State; for the extra allowances granted to the chaplains of Malacca and Singapore, on account of the great expense of living in the Straits Settlements, would revert to India on the transfer of the Straits to the Colonial Office, and become available for a slight increase of salary for arch- deacons. The establishment of a few such posts, with a very moderate pecuniary advantage, the Bishop strongly recommended as a legitimate mode of breaking up the dead level of a service which he did not shrink from characterising as ' somewhat stiff and prosaic,' and of K K 2 500 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XX. placing in the hands of the bishops an occasional piece of preferment for members of the clerical body who, by character and attainments, were fitted to advise and guide their brethren. He pressed such appointments also in the direct interest of the Church, believing that archdeacons placed at extremities of the diocese, such as Lahore, Nagpore, and Eangoon, would exercise a salutary oversight of the clergy, so long as there was no division O O/ ~ o of the diocese to insure a more frequent and regular episcopal supervision. The Bishop's latest view with reference to an extension of the Indian episcopate arose partly out of the collapse of the attempt to create a fourth see solely by the State. The subject had never been lost sight of since the subdivision of the one original diocese into three. Bishop Wilson, when in England in 1846, advocated a bishopric of Agra, with all the force of his personal character, and of his long experience of the needs of India. But the Court of Directors, languid in those days in building churches, were not likely to be forward in endowing bishoprics, and they did nothing beyond giving the venerable prelate a respectful hearing. A cry for more bishoprics mingled largely with the zeal which the mutiny awoke among Anglican Churchmen. A clause providing for the erection of a new see was inserted in the Bill that transferred India to the Crown, but was withdrawn ' as irrelevant to the matter in hand.' The first Secretary of State for India under the Imperial Government, while pronouncing himself favourable to the question, cautiously removed it ' to a distance by suggest- ing, in an interview with Bishop Cotton, in 1858, that he should first traverse his ecclesiastical territory, and then pronounce upon its wants. Thus the matter was laid to rest during the first visitation, which lasted during three years and a half. The Bishop's own views on this ques- tion were set forth in the preface to his second charge, delivered in 1863, and they were expressed again with CH. XX.] EXTENSION OF THE EPISCOPATE. 501 very slight modification in 1864, when he was consulted in reference to Sir Charles Wood's intention of bringing a Bill into Parliament for the erection of a new see in the Punjab. These views were characterised by his usual practical judgment and moderation. He had an abiding sense of the anomaly of Burmah being ecclesiastically administered from India, and of the needless toil imposed on the Bishop of Calcutta by unequal and ill-arranged ecclesiastical divisions of India itself; but he never took an exaggerated estimate of the fatigues and burdens of the metropolitan see, nor urged relief to himself per- sonally as an argument for its subdivision. On the other hand, he was fully sensible of the benefit that both the clergy and their work draw from the near presence of one standing towards them in the position of an influen- tial counsellor and guide. There was also the vexatious fact that the mere mechanical process of traversing so great a territorial area monopolized time, strength, and energies which might have been profitably devoted to more concentrated work in behalf both of Christians and non-Christians. It was on these grounds that he always supported a division of his see as a ' desirable and bene- ficial ' measure. As time went on, the arguments for the creation of a separate diocese east of the Bay of Bengal lost much of their force, in consequence of the impending transfer of the Straits Settlements to the Colonial Office. The Bishop then warmly advocated the claims of North India to a second bishop, and when the project of erecting a see at Lahore was negatived in 1865, by parliamentary opposition, he sincerely regretted that an opportunity was lost for creating a fresh centre of Church work in one of the most encouraging provinces of India. An exten- sion of the episcopate by the direct interposition of the State having thus become increasingly improbable, his suggestions for effecting it took a different direction. In writing on the subject, in these last months of his 502 LIFE OF BISHOF COTTON. [CH. XX. life, he recommended that an Act of Parliament should empower the Queen to permit in any part of the pro- vince of Calcutta the consecration of bishops to be wholly or in part independent of State support. Through such an enactment an extension of episcopacy would, he ap- prehended, become possible in localities where the English communities were prepared to meet State aid half way, or in others where the native Church would make itself wholly responsible for the support of a bishop. The needs of an indigenous Church, the future glory of India, were present to many minds. The organization of the increasing Church of Tinnevelly was engaging the at- tention of missionaries in South India, and to some of these it appeared that the time was fast approaching when, for a Church numbering its tens of thousands, and with considerable funds in trust for ecclesiastical purposes, the administration of these funds should be less in the hands of Europeans than of a largely extended native pastorate, headed by a native bishop. Two extracts may here be given from what the Bishop wrote in 1866 on the subject, in reference to the native Church. The first is from the article on the Anglican Establishment mentioned above, and has a special interest now that the arrangement therein suggested for India has been carried out in more than one home diocese : .... As to the appointment of 'coadjutors' to the present bishops, we do not mean coadjutors 'cum jure success ioni-sj in which relation Bishop Courtney stands to the Bishop of Jamaica, but officers like the chorepiscopi of ancient times, or the suffra- gans instituted by the still existing statute of Henry VIII. The former, T^S %&>pas sTrla/coTrot, (country bishops), were appointed, as a diocese became enlarged by the conversion of Pagans, to execute the functions of a city bishop in villages at a distance from the cathedral. The suffragans of the sixteenth century (who must be care- fully distinguished from the ordinary diocesan bishops of a pro- Cu. XX.] NATIVE BISHOPS. 503 vince under a metropolitan deriving their name from the votes or suffrages which they gave in his synod) were attached as assistants or episcopal curates to the several sees, and were to perform such functions as might be assigned to them by the diocesan. It is true that the chorepiscopi were abolished in the twelfth century, for ' arrogance, insubordination, and in- jurious conduct,' and that the English suffragans soon fell into desuetude ; but we trust a better fate would attend the intro- duction into India of a class of assistant bishops, who might at once lay a foundation of independent self-supporting native churches, and relieve the diocesans of part of their work. . . . A suffragan appointed for such a purpose would, we hope, be a native, which would be a step towards the formation of an indigenous Church. To the Rev Henry Venn, February 8, 1865. As it is getting near post time, I am hardly able to enter at length upon Mr. 's important letter. But would not one way of meeting his views, and removing my objections, be to consecrate a native as coadjutor to the Bishop of Madras, with such work as the diocesan bishop assigns to him ? And it might be agreed that he should receive a salary from the Church Missionary Society, or from the Church Missionary Society and Society for the Propagation of the Grospel together, on condition that he ordinarily resides in Tinnevelly, and takes the charge of such native congregations as are handed over to him. Then he might also be employed in travelling at inter- vals about other parts of the diocese, and confirming the Tamil congregations more frequently than can be done now. He should be consecrated by the metropolitan and two of his suf- fragans, and not removable without the metropolitan's consent. In this way the geographical difnculty would be obviated, my serious objection to separating Europeans and natives into different Churches would be removed, the general influence and supervision of the Bishop of Madras would be retained for Tinnevelly, and the native bishop's position, in reference to the English missionaries residing near him, would be less ambigu- ous than on any other plan. Doubtless the question of disci- pline in connexion with such a bishop must be carefully con- sidered, as we learn to our cost from the mass of troublesome 504 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XX. technicalities now before the Privy Council ; and I have no doubt that an Act of Parliament would be necessary. It seems to me that power might be given to the metropolitan, on the application of any diocesan bishop, with the sanction of the Crown, to consecrate such a coadjutor to the diocese of the bishop making the application ; Government not being charged with his salary. In this way I might myself hope some day to have both a Bengali and Hindustani coadjutor. I think that some such plan as this would be at once ecclesiastically correct and practically useful. The foregoing suggestions were for the most part thrown into the form of official letters by request of the Viceroy, and had been already discussed in private con- versations with him. The Bishop did not live to see any of his counsels carried out, and it must be a matter of doubt how far they would have secured attention. As it is, they remain like bread cast upon the waters, to be found again perchance on a future day when the Indian Church shall have assumed some new aspect, or shall have taken up some new position ; contingencies, under the shifting effects of the changes and chances of the world, of which the Bishop never lost sight. He was thus shadowing forth a future of gradual growth and expansion of the Indian Church from within, at a time when she appeared for a moment exposed to the danger of prema- ture development, through the ecclesiastical crisis with which all the dependencies of the British Crown were threatened. In the spring of 1866 he received intelli- gence from home that the Bill before Parliament for placing colonial bishops on a new and more independent footing would probably include India in its operation. The notion of the Indian Church being as yet ripe for an independent and self-supporting position was, to his mind, beset by practical difficulties. His opinions on this subject in the abstract were by no means rigidly Erastian. He regarded the principle of pure voluntaryism on which CH. XX.] GOVERNMENT OF THE INDIAN CHURCH. 505 the infant native Church rests as a sure guarantee for eventual freedom and self-government. But the circum- stances of English congregations are widely different. He looked upon a close alliance in their case between Church and State as productive of great mutual benefit, and as necessarily interwoven, under the present condition of things, with the whole civil arid military administration of the country. The following extracts from a letter which he lost no time in writing to the Bishop of London, contain his protest against any hasty or premature disturbance of the unique ecclesiastical system of India : I have been disturbed by a letter just received from Mr. Venn, of the Church Missionary Society, in which he says that, though the Bill just brought into the House of Commons by Grovern- ment to decide about the status of colonial bishops does not refer to India, yet the lawyers think that it will override the Acts on which the Indian patent rests. I wish to say very earnestly that, in my opinion, the prin- ciples on which the status of colonial bishops may be settled are at present altogether inapplicable, and that I should esteem it a serious and quite peculiar misfortune for the Church here if anything were done to unsettle its connexion with the Crown and Church of England. It should be remembered that our Church in this country is in a state of transition, and that it would be quite premature to attempt to fix at present its permanent condition. We are a small Christian body in a heathen country, and the majority of Englishmen in India have no intention of remaining here permanently. These two facts are alone sufficient to show that the Church in India is in an entirely different position from the Church in a settled colony with a fixed Christian population. . . . Special features in the external aspect of the Indian Church were then pointed out: the complete subordination of the chaplains, in respect of work and residence, to the exigencies of the State ; the transitional and tentative nature 506 LIFE OF BISIIOr COTTOX. [Cii. XX. of arrangements bearing on the organization of the native Church ; the danger of independently appointed bishops without synods as a controlling agency ; the numerous difficulties of convening a synod in a country of vast size, and where clergy and laity are bound hand and foot by Government regulations ; the futility of imposing synodical decrees, even were synods practicable, upon clergy who, for the most part, regard India as only a place of temporary sojourn, hoping eventually to resume ministerial work under the mother-Church at home. After dwelling upon these various difficulties, he con- tinues : The ahove, I think, are reasons against hastily altering the present arrangements of the Indian Church, and I confess that I can see no reasons for so doing. In a colony which has an independent legislature, it is, I dare say, unconstitutional to issue letters-patent and create a jurisdiction without the con- sent of that legislature ; and a colony, properly so called, where English people of all ranks are permanently settled, and where all as a rule profess Christianity, has an undoubted right to say what form of Christianity shall he established among them, or whether any shall. At all events, with such a colony the ques- tion is only one of time ; it is probable that one day it will be an independent nation. The training of the mother-country is preparing it for this end; and then, at least, an English sove- reign would no more issue letters-patent to its bishops than to the bishops of the United States. But India differs from such a colony in every particular: it has no independent legislature ; the councils which exercise legislative functions are created, and may be destroyed, by Parliament, and are in no way repre- sentative bodies. The governors, judges and councillors are Englishmen, appointed for a few years, and then going home. The permanently settled European population is quite insig- nificant ; the country is heathen, its independence is not con- templated, or if contemplated, only as a distant possibility. The commonwealth of India is essentially part of the great English imperial system ; and such also the Church had better remain, at least till it is fitter than it is now to walk alone. It seems Cn. XX.] GOVERNMENT OF THE INDIAN CHURCH. 507 hard that because grave difficulties have occurred in South Africa, in a case for which Parliament had made no provision at all, therefore the Church in India should be revolutionised, which is regulated by perfectly intelligible and straightforward Acts of Parliament, and in which, as far as I can see, such a difficulty could be reasonably and constitutionally met. For I consider that it would be a revolution to send out a bishop consecrated by the Queen's licence only, and apparently not bound by the ecclesiastical law of England (or at least not prevented from altering it) ; and further, for the reasons given above, that such a revolution would be altogether premature, although, doubtless, we look forward to a day when the Grospel will have spread in India, when the present anomalous condi- tion of its European inhabitants will have assumed a more settled form, and when the Church will require more indepen- dent powers than we possess at present. That the revolution may not take place in our time (for I suppose that I should not be deprived of my letters-patent without my own consent, and that the clergy and I would retain the status and advantages which were promised to us when we came to India) is a reason why I am able to argue the matter from an independent posi- tion, with a view rather to my successor's interests than to my own, and to the Church of the future rather than to the Church of the present. Thus for a brief moment the Bishop was brought into personal contact with questions and conflicts that were disturbing the Church at large. Any notice in these pages of his views with reference to the special contro- versies of South Africa, must be necessarily inadequate to a subject at once difficult and so profoundly and widely agitating. In common with all thoughtful men he watched the course of these controversies with anxious interest. He had spoken freely in his second charge of the reckless speculations that endangered the faith of the weak and unlearned ; in the pages of the ' Calcutta Christian Intelli- gencer ' (a small Anglo-Indian periodical, to which he fre- quently contributed terse and vigorous comments on passing events), he deplored the way in which, in one instance, 503 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [Cn. XX. these speculations were dealt with. In 18G4, while sympa- thising very really with the difficult and trying position of the Bishop of Cape Town, he recorded the thoughts and opinions to which the recent charge of that metropolitan gave rise in his own mind. The reasoning pursued in that memorable charge appeared to lead to the denial of the Queen's supremacy (that great expression of the rights of the laity as members of the Church) within her own dominions, and to the assumption of a claim to decide grave theological and ecclesiastical questions by the will of a single bishop. The Bishop of Calcutta brought these theories home by putting the question, how would such a case work in India? With a tinge of humour, half inadvertent, half irrepressible, he contemplated himself sitting in all but solitary judgment on an heretical suffragan, and following up his condemna- tion by a summary deposition of the offender, and the consecration of another prelate in his room. Without venturing to assert that a crisis such as had arisen in South Africa was impossible and inconceivable in India, or hazarding any theory as to his own mode of dealing with it ; without controverting Bishop Gray's able and powerful defence of his legal rights, he was prompted by all the instincts of charity and fair-dealing, and self-distrust, to deprecate for himself, no less than for other metropolitans, the possession or exercise of irresponsible powers, and to desire such amendments in English ecclesiastical law as should reach the points raised in the South African Church, and deal with them wisely and well. For, in commenting on the struggle which was rending that distant Church, he never lost sight of its twofold aspect; of the exhibition of doctrinal laxity on the one hand, and the assumption of ecclesiastical despotism on the other. His own profound faith in the power and majesty of the Bible revelation disarmed fears as to the ultimate result of what he did not hesitate to call the extravagances of latitudinarianism ; CH. XX.] POWERS OF METROPOLITANS. 509 but the question whether the Church was to be governed by law and order, or by the arbitrary will of indi- vidual bishops, was, to his mind, one of lasting importance, one that ought not to be overlooked in the midst of excitement occasioned by a particular theological contro- versy. His own recoil, in mind and spirit, from conclu- sions to which the theories and teaching of the Bishop of Natal tended, enabled him to express with all the more freedom his disapproval of the measures taken by the Metropolitan of South Africa in condemnation of his suffragan. The perils and perplexities which during recent years had been gathering around the holiest and gravest matters, awoke in him, as in many others, a fresh burst of loyalty towards the Established National Church of Eng- land, and he mourned equally over the prevalence of loose doctrines within her borders, and over her inability to deal with them. Just as he greatly desired that some one should arise with the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind to meet the times in defence of Christian faith, so also he urged, as one of the chief, needs of the age, the construction of some tribunal through which the English Church, while avoiding dogmatism or perse- cution, might declare authoritatively the truth of which she claims to be the depositary. The following remarks were written in connexion with this subject, at the beginning of 1865 : .... It is probably no exaggeration to say that never since 1689 has the English Church been so near a schism as at the present moment. The dissatisfaction felt at the judgment of the Privy Council in the cases of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson has been very deep, and in this dissatisfaction is of course involved the constitution of the Supreme Court of Appeal. At this we cannot wonder. A tribunal of which the majority consists of lawyers, will always be anxious to decide as little as it can, and to avoid theological difficulties as far as possible. These decisions on questions of doctrine are new, . . . and the result is 510 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cu. XX. that we are drifting, by a kind of negative process, into a fresh set of doctrinal definitions and declarations, not made by the Church, as a body, but by a lay tribunal, which is always inclined to guide itself by the principle of what may be called without offence political expediency the principle, that is, of keeping things smooth, and avoiding all violent results. It is, however, very hard to see how the Judicial Committee can be remodelled in any satisfactory way. The Cape Town proceedings do not incline us, nor will they incline the laity and Parliament of England, to substitute a clerical for a lay judicature. . . . Pro- bably Lord Brougham's plan, by which the Judicial Committee, perhaps with the episcopal privy councillors excluded from it, should consult the Bench of Bishops on questions of doctrine, just as the House of Lords consults the judges, would be the most feasible remedy, only with this modification, that they should consult a mixed body consisting partly of bishops, partly of divinity professors, and other eminent theologians. For the bishops neither are nor are likely to be (indeed, it is scarcely desirable that they should be) the most distinguished, still less the only divines in the English Church. In any case, we think that the Judicial Committee should be forbidden to embody any elaborate theological disquisitions in their judgments, and should merely declare (for example) : ' We do not find that Dr. - , in the passages of his recent work brought before us, has contradicted any article or formulary of the Church, and we therefore acquit him of the charge brought against him.' In this way the character of the judges, as mere interpreters of the language of our formularies, would be obvious, and no attempt made to give expositions of doctrine, which the judgment now under discussion certainly appears to do. At the same time we do not at all wish to make it easy to accuse and condemn a clergyman for heresy. The comparative freedom of the Scotch Church, for instance, has not always led to happy results. It would have been wise, we think, to have borne with so great a man as Edward Irving longer than the General Assembly did ; and one of the ablest defences of Christian truth which has recently appeared is written by Mr. Campbell, who was ejected, we believe, for some offence against Calvinism. . . What we want is some fair tribunal which shall do justice on CH. XX.] THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE. 511 both sides, repressing the extravagances of latitudinarianism on the one hand, and of hierarchical absolutism on the other; for at present the two evils are playing each other's game. We earnestly pray that (rod's Spirit may put it into the hearts of some wise and good men to devise such a solution of our embarrassments. The following letter was an utterance from the East on the recent Pan- Anglican Synod : To the Bishop of Cape Town. Bishop's Palace, May 22, 1866. I have just received your letter of February 18, containing an extract from that of the Archbishop on the subject of a meeting of all the bishops of the Anglican communion in London, to take counsel on the various difficulties which now beset our Church. You are quite right in saying that in my charge of 1863 I expressed my conviction that some general assembly representing the Church of England in its various branches and provinces was highly desirable ; and that there is a danger in multiplying colonial and missionary bishops, without any organisation by which all may be kept in mutual dependence, and compelled to act in brotherly union, according to the Church's law. But I confess that in writing that sen- tence, I contemplated something more than a meeting of bishops, convened by the Archbishop, without any power of enforcing its decrees. I spoke of a general synod of bishops, and of other clergy and laity fairly representing the whole Church of England, and meeting under the control of the English mon- archy and Parliament, and under the presidency of the successor of Augustine. The decrees of an assembly of bishops, convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, would no doubt be entitled to great deference, and have much moral weight ; but I do not see that such a body could alter or adapt to colonial wants a single rubric or canon of the Church of England, or compel any single bishop to introduce into his diocese any one of its recommen- dations. Whether therefore, it would be worth while, for the sake of such a meeting, to take so strong a step as to summon all the colonial bishops from all points of the world to London, is extremely doubtful. 512 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XX. But, however this may be, we in India are powerless in the matter. Our temporal position is regulated wholly by Act of Parliament, down to such minute details as furlough rules. No power on earth can enable me to go to England before Novem- ber 1868, except an Act of Parliament, or the visitation of so formidable an illness that my medical attendant would be able to certify that I cannot safely continue in India. The Bishops of Bombay and Madras are tied down by similar rules. I do not know what the case may be with the Bishop of Colombo ; but as he is strictly a colonial and not an Indian bishop, though in the province of Calcutta, and as no Act of Parliament was passed to give validity to his letters-patent, he is probably dependent for power to go home, or at least for retaining any part of his salary during his absence, on the Government of Ceylon. But with us in India it is not even a question of retaining or renouncing our salaries : to go home, except in accordance with the provisions of the Act, is an ipso facto resignation of an Indian see. P.S. Copies of your letter shall be sent to other bishops of the province. It is with great diffidence that any reference is here made to so complex a question as that which was involved in the Bill for the ; Bemarriage of Converts,' which in this year was a prominent act in the legislation of the Indian Government. The measure was intimately connected with the organization and discipline of the native Church ; and if it was right that the Bishop should take, as he did take, an active part in the discussions carried on outside the Council chamber, it seems right not to pass by the subject entirely. It will be easily understood by those whose acquaintance with Indian matters is only superficial, that cases arise where Christianity is accepted by a husband or wife, while the other partner remains in heathenism. The tendency of such conversions being to produce de- sertion on the part of the latter, the convert is left to the alternative of enforced celibacy, or of a marriage of doubtful legality. This state of things had been under the CH. XX.] KEMAKKIAGE OF CONVERTS. 513 notice of the Government of India for many years. At- tempts to remedy it had been made without success, and laws passed from time to time for the regulation of Christian marriages failed to touch the peculiar circum- stances of the native convert. For him, in the words of a high authority, ' the matrimonial law was immersed in doubt, and exhibited an amount of confusion that could only be described as chaotic.' A statute had been passed in the reign of George IV. under which it was possible that a native convert marrying during the lifetime of a heathen wife might be punished for bigamy. The operation, however, of this statute was always open to doubt; it was only in force in Presidency towns, and was eventually repealed by the Penal Code. The Penal Code affixed penalties to the contraction by a person, having a husband or wife living, of any marriage which should be void by reason of its taking place during the lifetime of such husband or wife; but prior to ]864 it was not clear that a marriage entered into by a native convert, forsaken by his heathen wife, was void, since no law, then existing for the regulation of marriages, de- cided how a Christian stood towards a marriage contracted when he was a heathen. It was through Christianity that the Eastern convert had learnt that a man cannot have two wives at once, and the canon law of the religion he had adopted seemed to favour the theory of the first union being in his case void, by its sanction of remarriage in the event of desertion on religious grounds. From this point of view, supplied by the Christian Church, a considerable proportion of native Christians had long looked upon the original union as dissolved, and had contracted fresh ones, which many missionaries had so- lemnised with such simple religious forms as they thought suitable to the circumstances. The uncertainty over- hanging the law was tacitly admitted by the fact that no proceedings had ever been taken against converts L L 514 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XX. contracting these second marriages, nor against any minister for performing them. In 1864, however, Mr. Anderson's Act was passed for the regulation of mar- riages between Christians, in which it was laid down as a condition of their validity that 'no husband or wife must be living.' Native converts came at once under the operation of this new law ; from that time, marriages which could not previously have been said with cer- tainty to be prohibited, which certainly never had been punished under any existing enactment, became at once punishable offences. It was, therefore, urgently neces- sary that the law should take cognisance of the native convert ; should define the extent and weight of his obligations towards the first marriage, and legislate for his peculiar position as a Christian who had formed ties while still in heathenism, such ties having been repudiated by the still heathen partner. This the State undertook to do by a Bill brought into the Viceroy's Council, in November, 1864, by the legal member. Mr. H. S. Maine. Though the proposed measure was at the outset stamped with a secular character, it was impossible to eliminate the arguments of Christian theology from a subject bound up with the condition and morality of the Christian Church. In the speech delivered when leave was asked to bring in the Bill, the subject was carried back into remote Christian ages. An ancient as well as a modern history was claimed for it ; and attention was called to the fact, that the question of a dissolution of marriage on religious grounds was coeval with Christi- anity, having arisen from the moment when the first conversions had produced a condition of things analogous to that which presents itself in India at the present day. The further progress of the measure was suspended at its first stage, in order to afford time and opportunity for a free expression of opinion from Christian and non- Christian quarters. With Christians, the scriptural test CH. XX.] MARRIAGES OF CHRISTIAN CONVERTS. 515 was that by which the measure ought to stand or fall, and the application of this test made the Indian clergy for a brief moment controversial. Opponents of the principle and object of the measure were in a minority numerically ; but in force of character and position, especially in the case of native pastors, the leaders of argument on either side were so evenly balanced, that, as was said, 'the Legislative Council might well decline under such a con- flict of opinions to take upon itself the responsibility of refusing redress on the ground of theological reasons alone, to those who, but for these reasons, would be admitted to be entitled to it.' The scriptural ground taken by one party was the prohibition, in Matthew v. 32, of any sepa- ration except for adultery ; the scriptural ground taken by the other party was the sanction of remarriage de- duced from the interpretation of 1 Corinthians vii. 15, Avhich maintains that the apostle contemplated not the unbeliever's own act of self-separation, acquiesced in by the Christian partner for the sake of peace, but a release from the original marriage-bond, with the liberty to contract a new one. The Bishop's views were embodied in a pas- toral letter which he issued in 1865, while the Govern- ment measure was lying before the country. Beyond expressing strongly a desire that' a judicial divorce should in every case precede the judicial permission to remarriage, he abstained from criticism on details in the Bill, for which he was unfitted through his limited acquaintance with native feeling and customs, and confined himself chiefly to the theological argument. For the sake of those who might look to him for guidance, he entered into a full analysis of the passage in the epistle to the Corin- thians, and defended the interpretation which claims apostolic sanction for the lawfulness of remarriage under the circumstances that had raised the question. But while tli us declaring his full concurrence with the prin- ciple of the proposed act of legislation on scriptural 516 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XX. grounds, he went beyond a mere critical disquisition on a text ; and a no less valuable portion of the pastoral was that in which he gave exhortation and counsel against a hasty abuse of the liberty about to be provided, and reminded missionaries, and native Christians through the missionaries, that the measure of the convert's legal rights was not the measure of his moral duties ; that the liberty conceded by the law ought to be claimed only when patience, conciliation, and forbearance had failed to win back the alienated partner. On another point intimately bound up with Christian ethics, the Bishop's own words shall be transcribed : I will only notice one other point, which can hardly be called an argument against the measure, but yet is entitled to our most thoughtful consideration, since it is calculated to excite against it the feelings of some whose Christian experience is the deepest, and whose faith in Christ is the most earnest and practical. It is said, that this separation from a heathen wife is the cross which a new convert has to bear for his Lord's sake ; and what, it is asked, is his conversion worth, if he refuses to bear it ? And so he is urged to seek his consolation, not in re- marriage, but in Christ's promise as recorded in Matthew xix. 29. Now we have seen that cases may arise in which a convert is bound to submit to this sorrow as well as to all the others which usually accompany his conversion. But it does not follow that this should be enacted by law and made compulsory. On the contrary, if it can be shown, as I think I have shown, that the author and first preachers of the Grospel did not intend that this particular cross should necessarily be borne by those whom Grod's Spirit calls from darkness to light, surely we have no right to force it upon them ? Their difficulties and troubles are already sufficiently terrible ; the impediments to conversion are numerous enough ; a Hindu or Mahometan who comes to Christ for life eternal, must, as it is, generally give up father, mother, brothers, sisters, lands, and possibly children also. If his fellow-Christians can lawfully save him from one other privation a privation which, above all the rest, touches his spiritual life, and endangers his Christian steadfastness surely they are bound Cn. XX.] DIFFICULTIES OF CONVERTS. 517 to do so, lest they fall into the condemnation pronounced against those who offend one of the little ones who believe in Christ. Doubtless, we look forward in faith and hope to a day when India will be a Christian country, and when therefore the liberty tolerated, or, as I rather believe, enacted by St. Paul for a state of transition like the present, will be necessarily withdrawn, because no case for its exercise can ever arise. Till then, it seems to me that just as Moses was permitted to enact for the Jews a temporary and exceptional law, so the Indian Legis- lature is bound, by some measure like that now contemplated, to remove this stumbling-block from the path of Christ's dis- ciples. When the Bill reached its final stage in the councils of the Legislature, there was little to impede its course. The theological scruples of a limited number of the clergy were powerless to arrest the passing of a measure which claimed to be based on the authority of canon law, and upon the general practice of the Christian Church ; and the small amount of dissent emanating from the non- Christian population of India justified the opinion ex- pressed at the outset, that the sentiments of this section of the community were those of indifference. Many of the provisions of the Bill turned upon abstruse points in Hindu law arid custom, and cannot be noticed here ; but in its general scope it was simple and intelligible, and had features which imparted a human interest to the dry technicalities of law. It was to be a law of liberty, and no man's conscience was to be constrained. Nobody would be compelled to marry converts if he had scruples on the point : but, on the other hand, the State would impose no penalties on a minister remarrying them ; and again, the object of the Bill was to promote, not divorce, but the reunion of the married couples. The respondent in a suit instituted for this end was to appear personally, and under the shelter of the law, and withdrawn from the influence of her family, to decide of her own free will whether she would return to her husband or persist in desertion of him. 518 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XX. The object of this procedure was to ascertain "how far the refusal to join her Christian husband arose from absolute alienation, caused through his change of religion, or, as was maintained to be frequently the case, from some miserable prejudice ' respecting meat, drink, or raiment,' implanted in her mind by the heathen relatives around her, and capable of removal by argument or persuasion. Should such procedure, renewed if necessary at intervals during a fixed period, prove ineffectual to win back the heathen partner, the convert was held by law to be no longer ' under bondage,' but free to marry elsewhere. . The Bishop's journal thus records the completion, on March 31, 1866, of a second great act of legislation dis- tinctively in behalf of native Christians : ' The long disputed question of the remarriage of native converts deserted by the heathen partners was happily settled by the passing of a Bill legalising such marriages, after certain preliminaries, and with certain safeguards, in accordance with the obvious meaning of 1 Corinthians vii. 15, and the opinion of the Church catholic throughout the world. I attended the meeting of Council at which the Bill was passed, and heard a really admirable speech from Maine, unanswerable in its reasoning, and contain- ing a noble piece of eloquence about the evil of neg- lecting and overlooking native Christians.' It is well remembered how the Bishop returned to the palace repeating the concluding sentence of that memorable speech e We will not force any man to be a Christian ; we will not even tempt any man to be a Christian ; but if he chooses to become a Christian, it would be shame- ful if we did not apply to him and his those principles of equal dealing between man and man, of which we are in India the sole depositaries.' Two letters may be here inserted. The first, addressed to the editor of a leading Anglo-Indian newspaper, affords in a small compass a glimpse of the divided feeling in CH. XX.] MODE OF DEALING WITH CONVERTS. 519 India with respect to the Bill. The second has an in- terest as explaining why Mahometans did not come under the provisions of the Eemarriage Act : Delhi, January 8, 1866. ... I have sometimes thought also of writing to you about the Remarriage of Converts Bill. I have abstained from doing so for two reasons better than want of time. The first, because I suppose that the Bill, or some satisfactory modification of it, is sure to pass. The second, because I said my say completely in my pastoral letter, and have never seen any real attempt, in all the writings against the Bill in the fi Christian Intelligencer ' and elsewhere, to grapple with the answers which I there attempted to give to the objections alleged against it on scriptural or histo- rical grounds. It would, of course, be very presumptuous and absurd in me to say that these answers of mine cannot be re- futed ; but I am sure that they have not been, but that much of the subsequent writing against the Bill has simply passed by the pastoral letter as if it were non-existent. This may, of course, arise from its dulness, or from the confused manner in which I have expressed my arguments; but the arguments remain untouched. For example, I saw the other day a re-statement of the assertion that the early Christians tried to drag the case of desertion under that of spiritual adultery, in order to bring it within our Lord's permission of remarriage, thereby proving that they did not interpret 1 Corinthians vii. 15 as all the sound commentators do now. But I showed in my letter, not on my own authority, but on that of Hefele, who is a great patristic scholar, that this was a mistake, and that the passages quoted about spiritual adultery really refer to the case of a con- verted wife or husband relapsing into idolatry. So, too, people go on saying that everybody would be contented with a Bill for dissolving marriage in case of adultery on the part of the recu- sant partner, wholly overlooking Mr. Maine's moral objection to the proposal, which, to my mind, is unanswerable, and also the notorious fact that the principal English High Churchmen, such as Archdeacon Wordsworth, are opposed to remarriage in case of adultery, but perfectly willing to allow it in case of a heathen's desertion, arguing (and justly) that the interpretation of 1 Corinthians vii. 15 is far easier than the explanation of 520 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XX. the differences between the records of our Lord's words given by the Evangelists. ... It may be well, too, for me to remark, in reference to the petition which has been presented against the Bill, that people have no business to call it the ' petition of the clergy of the diocese of Calcutta.' A clear majority of the clergy have re- fused to sign it, though there were very good reasons for not getting up a counter memorial. I had declared my own opinion in my pastoral ; many of the clergy have announced theirs in letters, either to me or to Government ; not a few have signed the petition from the Protestant ministers and missionaries, who, by the by, have rather unluckily designated themselves as living in or near Calcutta, for they have got signatures from Tinnevelly and Amritsir. This reminds me that all the Tin- nevelly missionaries, both of the Church Missionary and Propa- gation Societies, have declared, in separate minutes, their approbation of the Bill, that of the Propagation missionaries, drawn up by Dr. Caldwell, being a very able performance. You will find it in the ' Christian Intelligencer ' for December. To a Missionary. Bishop's Palace, July 9, 1866. It is undoubtedly true that the reason why Mahometans were exempted from the Converts Divorce Bill is that, in the opinion of the authorities of the Mussulman religion, the mar- riage is ipso facto dissolved by the apostacy of either husband or wife. This has been repeatedly stated by Mr. Maine in council, by the select committee appointed to consider and amend the Bill, by Mr. Muir, by the Mahometan petitioners, who quote all the passages on which the opinion is founded, by Moonshee Amir Ali, and by the Mujtahid or chief priest of the Shiahs at Lucknow. On these grounds, it was thought unnecessary to pass a Bill authorising the remarriage of a convert from Maho- metanism deserted by his wife, because such remarriage is not unlawful now. I have frequently stated that, in my opinion, the passage 1 Corinthians vii. 15 is sufficient to show that such remarriage is authorised by the law of Grod ; and as this view is affirmed by the Roman, Grreek, and Presbyterian Churches (i.e. by all which are bound by the Westminster Confession), by the followers of Luther and Calvin, and, not indeed by any formal Cu. XX.] ATTITUDE OF THE CLERGY. 521 decree of the Anglican Church, which has never pronounced upon the subject, but by many eminent men among its divines, and, to the best of my belief, denied by none of them, I do not think that I am presumptuous in adhering firmly to my own conviction, nor neglecting the rule quod semper ', quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. . . . It is of course possible, as the Mahometans are excluded from the Bill, that the lawfulness of the remarriage might be the subject of an action at law, and that the remarried husband might be required to show that he had not committed bigamy. I believe that it would be easy to show this, the Mahometan woman having ceased to be his wife, by the act of his con- version ; and that the Legislature assumed this in framing their Bill, is, as I have said, certain. Still, Mr. Maine frequently allowed to me, in talking over the matter privately, that such an action was possible, though he added that there could be no doubt as to the decision of the Court. In the present case, from what you say of the woman's friends, such a suit is highly im- probable ; but there will be a danger of it till the High Court has given a formal judgment to the effect that the conversion of a Mahometan operates as a divorce. Of course, therefore, this letter only gives you my authority to perform the marriage as an ecclesiastical act. I cannot shield, except by advice and evidence, either you or your convert from any possible, though very improbable, legal troubles which might follow the re- 522 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. [On. XXI. CHAPTEE XXL SOCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH NATIVES IN CALCUTTA YISIT TO PlTSHALfs BUSINESS IN THE UNIVERSITY LETTERS DEPARTURE FOR ASSAM JOURNALS AND LETTERS RETURN TO KOOSHTEA THE BISHOP'S CONSE- CRATION OP A CEMETERY RETURN TO THE RIVER UNPROTECTED CAUSEWAY HIS EATAL FALL. THE hot months of the year glided away peacefully and happily, though the few inmates of Bishop's Palace were unusually parched by the heat of May and June. The rains of July refreshed them somewhat, and the Bishop remained well in health, and found in constant work the best antidote to the relaxing effects of another hot season in the plains. There was the usual pleasant intercourse with the social circle in Calcutta, which he always liked to maintain, both from principle and incli- nation. An attempt was made to extend friendly hos- pitality beyond the limits of European society, by two soirees given, the one at the palace, the other at the house of a Church Missionary Society's missionary, to several of the leading Hindus in Calcutta. No Eastern ladies were present. One of the guests, who was a Christian, remarked, speaking for himself and some members of his family, also converts, ' I wish we could get our ladies to come with us.' There are cases in which habit and national custom continue to assert, even after the adoption of Christianity, a singular power, and the freedom of the Christian religion seems almost to increase the reluctance to emerge from Eastern seclusion. It is a feeling which commands respect and sympathy in days when the tendency is rather to encourage a rending CH. XXI. ] INTERCOURSE WITH NATIVES. 523 of the veil between the Eastern woman and the outside world, although, as yet, the safeguards either of Chris- tianity or of education to fit her for the glare of a less restrained existence are few and slender. In spite of the absence of ladies, however, the evenings passed very pleasantly. The native gentlemen expressed a gratifica- tion, which their English hosts fully reciprocated; and the Bishop was well pleased to find in pleasant con- versation and fruit ice a neutral ground on which edu- cated men of different races and religions could meet under a private roof and exchange the courtesies of civilised life. In July a day was spent with some wealthy Bengali landholders. Two brothers were doing good among their countrymen and dependents by the establishment of schools, reading-rooms, and a dispensary. Unfortunately, the lustre of their philanthropy was dimmed by the feuds which, after the manner of too many Bengalis, had di- vided the brothers and their families ; the wealth which was so well spent in one direction sufficing also for inter- minable lawsuits. On account of some disclosures on this head, the Bishop had grave doubts about the propriety of visiting the place, and the only argument that weighed against his scruples was one that has unhappily too often to be urged in India, that those on whom a cloud rested were not worse than the average of their countrymen, whether educated or not. So the visit was paid, and was ostensibly to mark appreciation of public-spirited un- dertakings carried out on a very liberal scale. ' Some- thing besides English literature is needed to regenerate a nation,' was the journal comment on an expedition which was full of interest and presented no drawbacks beyond regret over some inconsistencies in the life of real benefactors of their countrymen. With a satisfaction wholly unqualified, the Bishop spent another day with the Eev. J. Long, of the Church 524 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOK [Cn. XXI. Missionary Society, among his Patshalas in a missionary district a few miles out of Calcutta. The Patshalas are the original and indigenous village schools of India, reaching back to unknown antiquity ; and when left only in the hands of the gurus or teachers, they are miserably neglected or mist aught, the scholars sometimes being unable even to read. In some places Government, in others the Vernacular Education Society, takes them in hand, places a circle of them under the charge of an inspector (in the latter case, a native Christian super- intended by a missionary), and establishes at once the system of payment to the guru ' by results.' In the Society's schools the inspector also introduces some ele- mentary Christian teaching. A number of these gurus, ' much brushed up by contact with Long and his Chris- tians,' had gathered at Thakerpukur to meet the Bishop, and in return he went with them round about the district, penetrating through damp jungle, and crossing nullahs or brooks, to reach some schools situated among the low lands that are almost a swamp in the rainy season. He was very much pleased with what he saw. The schools proved on examination to be quite as good as an average English village school, were thoroughly native in idea and appearance, and yet had received a most successful in- fusion of a Western and Christian element. The Bishop took as usual his full share in the affairs of the University. One important piece of business before the governing body was connected with the muni- ficent gift of two lakhs of rupees (20,OOOZ.) from Premchund Eoychund, a great Bombay millionaire. The disposal of the money raised a sharp contest, and the old professorship controversy of 1862 was revived. Many of the opponents of the proposed scheme were, as before, strongly in favour of the principle involved in Govern- ment education ; and even those who might allow that CH. XXI.] AFFAIRS OF THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. 525 the idea of University professorships was right in theory, still maintained that it would be premature to attempt such a sweeping change in the system of higher education. In their view, the University, though a great success, could in no sense be said to have as yet become an indi- genous institution, for no colleges had as yet been founded by natives, and missionary colleges could not be con- sidered permanent institutions, when a large proportion of home supporters still objected on principle to expending the funds on education instead of more directly evangelis- tic work. The Bishop again supported the professorship movement, both in the Syndicate and in the Senate, but in vain ; and he had only the consolation of seeing the success of another plan suggested by himself, but only as a pis aller, for founding certain annuities in the nature of fellowships, to be called Premchund Eoychund Studentships, and contended for by Masters of Arts in an examination equal in pretensions to one for Oriel or Trinity fellowships. This year also witnessed the final arrangements for the memorial to Dr. Duff. The subscriptions were handed over to the University to found scholarships. The form which the memorial thus took was by no means that which the Bishop and many others had desired, and was a very disappointing substitute for the hall which had been ori- ginally proposed. In such a public hall, in the native quarter of the city, for meetings, lectures, conversaziones, all serving as links between the educated and intelligent of Eastern and Western races, many of Dr. Duffs friends had seen the fittest symbol of his life's work, and the most suitable memorial of the leading position he had held in native education. A letter of the Bishop's in 1863 will have served to indicate the difficulties which from the first embarrassed the scheme for a hall. It was taken up again, and pushed forward warmly in 1864, when 526 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. XXI. he and many others amongst its supporters doubled their subscriptions. But stiffness of views among Europeans, and Bengali lukewarrnness when a testimony of respect and honour is to pass from words into deeds, divided the counsels, and crippled the funds. The committee found themselves eventually compelled to accept a compromise, and to fall back on the foundation of University scholar- ships, useful in themselves, but very inferior as a me- morial to the projected hall. The few letters annexed find their right place here : To his Son. Bishop's Palace, April a, 1866. We were very glad indeed to get your first brief sketch of Woolwich, and much interested by it. I quite appreciate the self-satisfaction with which you say you ' strut about in your uniform.' When the right of wearing it has been gained wholly by yourself, and not by my making interest with military magnates of my acquaintance to get you a commission in the Line, a little pleasure in the new costume is perfectly legitimate. I remember the intense satisfaction with which I began to exercise any small privileges when I was elected Fellow at Trinity: my delight in using the College plate when enter- taining my friends at dinner, or in giving orders for the library ; nay, even the secret chuckle with which I walked over the grass-plots, forbidden to less exalted persons. Such re- miniscences seem childish and absurd, but there are childish and absurd elements in human nature, and they furnish, in spite of ourselves, some portion of the rewards of any success. However, it would not be well that we should confine our attention to these small results of our own exertions ; and so I doubt not that you are rising from the contemplation of your uniform to the contemplation of your work, and to the duty of using these two years as a grand opportunity for preparing yourself for usefulness in the profession which you have deli- berately chosen, and have, by (rod's blessing on your own efforts, been enabled to enter. We should like to know in your next something about the difference between Engineers and CH. XXI.] LETTER TO HIS SON. 527 Artillery, the advantages of both, and the prospects that you have of obtaining one or the other. . . . Also I should like to know something about the ecclesiastical arrangements of Woolwich. Where do you go to church on Sunday ? Is the service hearty and devout ? By whom are you preached to ? Have you daily public prayers ? From the sketch of your time given in your last, you seem to be very seldom left alone. Do you ever play cricket or any other game ? Again, Macaulay lays stress on the impor- tance of a historian inquiring into the character of a nation's 6 repasts.' Of what do the Woolwich dinners consist ? Are they and the other meals taken in a hall ? Do you have wine- parties and other academical entertainments ? Is the discipline mainly that of a college or of a school ? Have you each a separate room, or couple of rooms ? Having asked you such a multitude of questions, I proceed to impart in return a few facts. The main one is the flight of poor little Puss, by which name, and not Polly, she is designated in India. She departed for Simla on the evening of the Tuesday in Passion Week, in a copious flood of tears, accompanied by Miss Maclean, two male attendants, an ayah, and escorted to the station by Hardy. Such, you see, is the state in which she makes her Oriental progresses. . . . We have great confidence in the worthy chaplain and his wife to whose care we consign her, and I have myself experienced their tenderness, having been ill at their house at Ferozepore, when on visitation in November 1864, and nursed with the greatest devotion. To-night I am going to give the Hindus a lecture 'On the Employment of Women in Religious and Charitable Works,' in which I intend to describe Sisters of Charity, beguines and deaconesses, and to suggest that, instead of burning their widows or condemning them to household drudgery, it might be better to see if they cannot be employed in acts of womanly beneficence. A quantity of glib talk and profusion of compliments will follow the lecture : of course nothing will result from it directly, but it may be considered as carrying on the dripping of water on the rock. To the Same. May 27, 1866. ... I am sorry to say that the peasants of Orissa, Krishnagar, and other districts of Bengal are suffering severely from famine, 528 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. XXI. and its invariable accompaniment, pestilence, in consequence of the deficiency of last year's rainfall. The accounts of the starvation and other miseries which we received were very distressing, and we began a subscription ; but Government has come down with 20,000^., which has, for the present, rendered private benevolence unnecessary, and ships laden with rice are being sent down the Hooghly to the Orissa coast. I doubted myself whether it was right to stop the subscription, and I urged the Secretary to the Board ofEevenue to continue it, and announce that all the money given by individual charity should be doubled out of the Grovernment grant, so as to prolong its operation and give an impulse to private efforts. I think that anything which brings the English into kindly relations to the Hindus is politically and socially advantageous : of no other charity is Shakspeare's famous line It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes more emphatically true ; for when the peasantry see how we help them in times of distress, they must feel that there is some advantage in a European and Christian Grovernment, and that it would not be desirable for them to return to the paternal care of Aurungzib and Suraj-ud-dowlah. But the Secretary thought that what Grovernment had given must be spent at once. We hear regularly from or about Ursula. . . She is getting fat and ruddy, and, like Jeshurun when he ' waxed fat and kicked,' has occasionally turned restive under her instructress. The last accounts were better ; she was asked to a pic-nic, and was not to go unless the lessons were thoroughly well said a threat which had produced reformation. To his Daughter. Bishop's Palace, Whit Sunday, 1866. We have come back, you see, from Barrackpore, where we stayed in the Grovernor-Grenerars house, but we thought it hotter even than Calcutta. It was pleasant, however, to take a nice walk at 6 in the morning in the garden and park by the river- side ; and on Sunday I went across to Serampore, had tea with Mr. Stuart, and preached for him. As we were driving from the Sealdah station home on Monday evening, we came across a violent storm. The wind blew so furiously that I expected CH. XXI.] LETTEKS TO HIS CHILDREN. 529 it to upset the carriage, and we were glad to find ourselves safe under the portico. Mr. Hardy followed in his buggy, but had been kept at the station by the folly of Pecko, who wished to get out of the train in some unlawful way, and was in con- sequence seized by the police. So Mr. Hardy had to stay and rescue him, and thus came in for a worse part of the storm than we did. He was nearly blinded with the dust, and also wet through. He could not get on in one place against the wind, but had to drive to the side of the road, and wait till the gust was over. So he, too, was very glad to get home. On Wednesday there was another storm, but that was chiefly rain, which came down in such bucketsful, that we could not get across to the cathedral service. And on Friday there was a third storm, when the thunder was like cannon going off close to us ; so that altogether, you see, we have had a most dis- turbed week ; and whenever there has been no storm it has been dreadfully hot. . . . Dr. Smyth tells me that you are getting fat enough to marry Sir John Falstaff. Edward will be quite pleased to hear it, for he was shocked at being told that you were so scraggy. Perhaps you need not go to England by the mail of June 23, if Dr. Smyth still finds your frocks unable to button. Now, good bye, my own little Puss ; do not let us hear any- thing more about crossness at lessons, &c. To his Son. July 1866. The frightful heat under which we were groaning when I last wrote to you has happily ceased. Ever since June 15 the weather has been cool and pleasant, with clouds constant, and showers frequent. But the change was too great and rapid for some people, and a good deal of not very serious illness has been the result. The thermometer, standing at 96 in the afternoon of June 14 in my library, was at 82 at the same hour of June 15. ... June 14, the last day of the great heat, was the first of a much direr calamity ; for on that day the telegraph conveyed to India the terrible news of the failure of the Agra and Masterman's bank. I say terrible, for in truth the suffering consequent upon it will, I fear, be spread very widely, especially M M 530 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XXI. among the widows and children of old Indians ; for it was the favourite bank of the civil and military services, and its shares were a common investment for the savings of Indian officers. It was an immense concern, with branches in France and China as well as in London and India ; it was thought immovable, paid dividends of 8 per cent., and had just erected (or rather, had not quite finished) a real palace in Calcutta, in the Venetian style, with an open loggia by way of verandah- one of the few buildings in the city showing at once solidity and originality of design. The depositors, of course, only lose their money, but the shareholders will have to pay up the full amount of their shares, whereof only half had been paid before the crash. . . . Personally I had, happily, nothing to do with it, but several of the diocesan and other charities and trust funds were more or less involved in it, which will have to be replaced by larger subscriptions. Several of the clergy have lost remit- tances which they had just sent through this bank to wives and children in England. Meantime, since I began to write the above, a telegram has come from England, which nobody can understand, saying that things there are turning out better than was expected, that the ultimate loss will only be a million sterling, and that there is to be a voluntary liquidation. If so, depositors will ulti- mately, I suppose, be paid in full, and even shareholders will not lose everything. But again, if so, it is asked, why did the bank stop ? for the million could have been realised by calling the remainder of the money due on the shares ? Altogether business men are puzzled, depositors and their wives are flut- tering with hope, and we wait anxiously for the mail. . . . You cannot think in what a fever of excitement we are kept now by the fitful flashes of the telegraph. I decidedly hold that, for the ordinary imparting of news, this Indo-European line is a mere nuisance. Of course for grave emergencies it is very important, but for the common everyday intelligence it is only a source of unsatisfied curiosity and frequent blunders. We know, for instance, that war has broken out in Saxony, Silesia, Venetia, and near Frankfort, that the ministry were beaten on the borough franchise, and that they have in con- sequence resigned. But what led to the immediate outbreak of the European struggle ; who has been ' sent for ' in conse- CH. XXI.J INDO-EUROPEAN TELEGRAPH. 531 quence of the retirement of Lord Russell; why, if he has resigned, another telegram should predict a dissolution of Parliament ; how it came that the ministry were beaten on the borough franchise, when they had carried their more important change in the county franchise on all these, and a multitude of other elucidations of the bare facts announced, we are left in complete ignorance. . . . Our state was pleasanter, I think, when we first came to India, and the telegraph only united Calcutta and Gralle. For then, a week before the arrival of each mail, we had a summary of news from Gralle, like the headings to the chapters of an interesting book, and afterwards, on the actual arrival of the steamer, we received the details of the matters which we had been discussing and speculating on during the intervening seven days. . . . To the Rev. R. Duckworth. Bishop's Palace, Calcutta, July 6, 1866. I was very glad to get your letter, and am much obliged to you for your valuable exertions at Oxford on behalf of my hill schools, carried on in conjunction with my worthy cousin of Worcester. When you have completed the collection, you will enhance its value if you will kindly send it as soon as you can to ; for as soon as it is transmitted to us we invest it, and the securities of the Indian Government are now so low (owing to the failure of the Agra Bank and other commercial disasters), that the time is particularly favourable for the investment of money. By this time I suppose that you have left Oxford, and have your home in one of the royal palaces. I congratulate you on being selected for so important a post ; a great proof of the esteem in which you must have been held at Oxford, and a great opportunity for doing good. For, as in a constitutional monarchy the true function of kings and princes is to influence society, it is a blessing when they are so trained that their influence may be Christian and intelligent. I hope that you will make your Leopold as wise a man as his great-uncle of Belgium, and a considerably better one than most of his great- uncles on the Brunswick side. You will, no doubt, see a great deal of interesting society, and watch the course of many M M 2 532 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XXI. interesting events, and I trust that the connexion will be alike profitable to yourself and to your pupil, in whom we must all be truly interested, from that feeling of loyalty which, if it sometimes degenerates into flunkeyism, is yet in itself one of the safeguards of England. I have now begun to date official documents ' in the ninth year of our consecration,' and though such whiskers as I have are grey, and my hair considerably mottled with the same tint, yet I am thankful to say that I have on the whole very good health, and that the climate has dealt very mercifully with me. . . . We start in August, all being well, on a two months' expedition by river into Assam, the great tea province, where there are a number of scattered tea-planters who should be looked after, and provided, if it may be, with clergymen and churches. Just now the weather in Calcutta is pleasant, as we are in the midst of the rains, which have come down so copiously as to wash away a great part of the East Indian Railway, and stop communication between Bengal and the upper provinces. It is fortunate that no mutiny is going on. On August 1 we left Calcutta for Assam. Half a day's journey on the Eastern Bengal Eailway took us to Koosh- tea, where the Government steamer ' Koel,' having the barge ' Ehotas ' in tow, was awaiting us. The latter had been again kindly lent by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and this comfortable private yacht became the luxurious mode of transit during the last visitation as during the first, seven years before. As the Rev. E. Norman, one of the cathedral chaplains, was at that time prostrate under severe illness, Mr. Hardy remained be- hind in Calcutta to take his duty, and Mr. Vallings, secretary to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, went in his place as chaplain to the Bishop. Dr. Powell was in medical charge of the party, which also included Mr. and Mrs. Woodrow as guests, for whom the spacious barge afforded ample accommodation. As a school inspector Mr. Woodrow did some work for CH. XXI.] VISITATION IN ASSAM. 533 Government by looking at the Assamese schools, and profited by two months' leave to visit some private property in the Cachar district. For the Bishop, the expedition was for the most part a repetition of the earlier one through these same watery regions in 1861, all contemporary notice of which was suppressed, for the general features of the two visits w r ere the same, and to the second was imparted a peculiar interest from being the Bishop's last visitation. Except for some increase in tea-planting, five years had made no difference in the condition of a province which has been called the Bceotia of India. The Assamese inhabitants of the plains, few in number, and stupefied with opium eating, are useless for the development of the country's great resources ; and the wild hill tribes of Garos, Merees, Nagas, &c., are as yet scarcely approached either by civilisation or Christianity. A few small and detached European settlements and missions carry on existence, under difficulties, amidst the fever-giving jungles of a region in many parts fair and beautiful in outward aspect, but years behind the rest of India in the conveniences or comforts, or even necessaries of life. Almost at the outset of the voyage a fatal event occurred as a strange prelude to that which marked its close. On the first Saturday, August 4, as evening prayers on the barge were ended, about 10 P.M., the party were startled and saddened by news from the steamer anchored ahead that one of Mr. Woodrow's servants had rolled over in his sleep on deck, and fallen overboard. A buoy was thrown out at once in the dark, and a boat put out immediately ; but all search was fruitless. The catastrophe remained a sad memory till its disastrous repetition, exactly nine weeks from that evening. The steamer and barge passed from the* river Gorai, on which Kooshtea stands, into the Poddah, another branch of the Ganges, and thence into the Jabooma, leading into the Brahma- putra, of which it forms, indeed, the main channel at this 534 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [CH. XXI. southern part of its course. The stations visited were Goalpara, Gowhatti, Jeypore, Sibsagor, Nazeerah, Now- gong, up to Dibroghur, each place being situated either on the great river, or on some tributary ; for as yet Assam has not advanced beyond that normal condition in which nature's watercourses form the only highways. Descend- ing the Brahmaputra, the party reached Dacca early in September, and thence, threading through another net- work of rivers, they made their way to Cachar and Sylhet. After leaving Sylhet. the ' Koel ' anchored in the Surma, a broad rnuddy river ; row-boats were put in requisition for navigating a smaller tributary, and finally mere canoes took the travellers up a most lovely, but very shallow, mountain-stream, overshadowed by rocks and tropical vegetation ; and thus, still by no way but that of water, the foot of the Kossiah hills was reached, and they were ascended for a brief sojourn at Cherrapoongee and Shillong. At every halt, weekday or Sunday, services were performed, and the holy commu- nion administered ; confirmations were held, and native schools visited ; and considerable collections were realised for the Additional Clergy Society or the hill schools fund. For these two objects the Bishop had for a long time, when on visitations, deliberately preached, as standing in greater need of support and advocacy than mission work, which has a reserve fund of stability through connexion with home societies. The following letters and journal extracts describe some of the features of a tour which derived its chief interest from that which remained to the last an object of the Bishop's unceasing care and anxiety the lonely life of the English settler with its few safeguards and its many temptations : Wednesday, August 16. This morning we entered the Tezpore nullah (creek), which, though absolutely dry in the cold weather, will now float the steamer. It is formed by a CH. XXI.] MISSIONARY SCHOOLS IN ASSAM. 535 large island covered with tall reeds, which here interrupts the course of the river, and leaves this narrow passage between itself and the right bank. After anchoring, we were soon visited in succession by Captain Lamb, the Deputy-Commis- sioner, Major Bivar, the Judicial Commissioner of Assam (my Dibroghur host in 1861), and the two missionaries Hesselmeyer and Endle. . . . The Hesselmeyers are from Hanover, but his politics are entirely Prussian. He rejoices in the annexation of his nominal country, hopes that Prussia will never let it go, considers that his real country is Germany, and that Prussia is the obvious instrument for restoring German unity, as Pied- mont was for effecting Italian. This, he says, is the view of all patriotic Germans ; and the true object of all their recent policy, including the seizure of Schleswig-Holstein, has been not the aggrandisement of Prussia, or the erection of a new petty member of the Frankfort Federation, but the creation of a united Germany. I entirely sympathise with him, just as I should feel myself if we English were desirous of suppressing a grand Duke of Yorkshire, or rescuing Kent and Sussex from the dominion of France. Thursday, August 16. After breakfast we went on shore to Hesselmeyer's normal class, which consists of ten Christian boys of different races : two Cacharies, two Merees (strong-built mountaineers, with thick tower-like legs), and the rest Assamese. They answered creditably in the Bible, the outlines of geo- graphy, and arithmetic as far as the rule-of-three and interest. They are intended, when sufficiently trained, to return to their villages as Christian schoolmasters ; Hesselmeyer having at present nine schools under his charge in the neighbourhood of Tezpore, and others near Mongledye, between this and Gowhatti, where Endle hopes, after the present rains, to establish himself as resident missionary. Afterwards we visited the Government school, where a native Christian named Soonderam, whom I had seen at Goalpara in 1861, is headmaster. . . The building is one of the worst that I have seen among Government schools, insufferably hot and ill ventilated, and denied by a horrible stench of bats, such as I have not experienced since I was in the cave of Bheema Devi last year. To-day's post brought the news of Norman's death a great loss to the cathedral and the diocese, for his gift of preaching 536 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XXI. and his eminent practical ability. I fully believe, too, that his powers were devoted not to his own glorification or aggran- disement, but to the service of God and fulfilment of his ministry in Christ's Church. Friday ', August 17. At 8 we had service in the church: morning prayers, and a sermon from me for the Additional Clergy Society. . . In the evening there was a confirmation of twenty-four candidates ; three tea-planters, six other speakers of English chiefly Eurasian or Portuguese Sepoys from the 39th Regiment, of which a wing is here stationed and fifteen Assamese. As I find that Assamese is too unlike Bengali for a service in the latter language to be of any use to a congre- gation of the former, I confirmed all the twenty-four in English, the most important parts of the service and a large portion of my address being translated into Assamese by Hesselmeyer. . . . Saturday r , August 18. As it seems certain that the ' Rhotas ' will considerably retard our progress against the strong stream of the Upper Brahmaputra, and as it is quite certain that we cannot take it up the Sibsagor river, if indeed even the steamer can go up at all, we this morning reluctantly trans- ferred our property from the luxurious villa in which we have hitherto voyaged to the straitened quarters of the ' Koel.' As the upper end of the Tezpore nullah is closed, we had to back out of it to the extremity of the island which forms it, the ' Rhotas ' following, and being moored there in order to be picked up, all being well, on our return. It was about 10 A.M. before we were once more moving, now single-handed, up the broad stream of the Brahmaputra, and a good deal of the day was spent in shaking down into our new and far less comfortable abode. . . . We passed Bicherath on the right bank, and the upper part of the Kullung on the left about 4 P.M., and voyaged as usual on a vast expanse of water, with banks jungly and wooded, and distant mountains on each side, till sunset. Sunday, August 19. We had our two services as a fort- night ago at 11, and as soon as we anchored. . . . We have now got beyond Bhootan, and the mountains on the right bank are inhabited by Duphlas and Abas, on the left by Nagas. We reached to-day the place where the river is divided into two branches by the Majueli Island, the right hand stream being the Lohit, the left the Dihing. Our course was up the Dihing, CH. XXI.] THE DIKHO. 537 which is in itself of enormous width, and yet is carrying down only half the water of the vast Brahmaputra. Monday, August 20. We were delayed a little by a fog this morning, but, nevertheless, at 10 o'clock we anchored near the mouth of the Dikho, close to the godowns of the Assam Tea Company, where Vallings and Woodrow went ashore to send a note to Sibsagor, requesting that elephants might be in readiness for us here on our return from Dibroghur next Saturday. This mode of reaching Sibsagor was necessary, because the Captain had heard that the Dikho, no less than the Kullung, had too little water in it to be navigated by the ' Koel.' However, this landing changed the aspect of events and our plans. Woodrow fell in with a friendly Scot, a man in the employment of the Company, who informed him that the river had lately risen considerably., and that the steamer could go up to Sibsagor with perfect ease. He even came on board, and personally dispelled the fears of the Captain, so that he consented to go either now or on Saturday. It was deter- mined to make the voyage at once, since thereby we should give Sunday to Dibroghur the more important place of the two since the river might fall as suddenly as it had risen, and since the Captain might change his mind once more on receiving from some friend at Dibroghur a less encouraging picture of the Dikho. Accordingly we weighed anchor, glad to escape the mosquitoes which were buzzing about the ship in myriads during our pause at the godowns, and after steaming for about a mile up the Brahmaputra, we made a sharp turn to the right into the narrow stream of the Dikho, which, rising in the Naga hills to the south-east of Assam, here enters the great river on its left bank. It soon became evident that any difficulties which might be in store for us would arise not from lack of water, for the monotonous shriek of tin bdm mila nali in never ceased, but from the narrowness and tortuous character of the river to which the somewhat agitated Captain was now committed. Very frequently we bumped against the muddy banks in rounding some of the exceedingly sharp turns, but we always injured the banks more than they did us, except once, when the collision loosened some rivets in our bow, though above water-mark. In the lower part of the river the banks are covered by the densest jungle ; but gradually we 538 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XXI. came upon cultivation, passed a Meree village of considerable size and population, and wound our way between crops of sugar-cane, gardens of plaintains, and pretty wooded country backed by the Naga hills. Finally, just after sunset we an- chored off Sibsagor, where the river is rather wider than usual. Tuesday ', August 21. Captain Sconce, the Deputy-Com- missioner, and his brother, an old Marlborough pupil of mine, came on board before breakfast. . . . Wednesday ', August 22. To-day the Captain desired to take the 'Koel' down to Dickomukh,to have plenty of time for gather- ing in coal enough for the voyage, not only to Dibroghur, but back to Growhatti. And as Sibsagor is very deficient in means of accommodation and supplies of food, the ladies were carried off in the steamer, and the circuit house made decently com- fortable for the gentlemen of the party. Moreover its principal room was very neatly arranged as a temporary church, by Mrs. Sconce. . . She hung texts in illuminated characters on the walls, and made two platforms, one for the pulpit and one for the communion table, strange to say, out of opium boxes, which come into Assam in large quantities containing food for the untameable, but now somewhat restrained, appetite of the Assamese ; and when their contents are emptied, are sold and used as a moveable flooring to keep away the damp which exudes through the ordinary brick floors. These platforms were covered with carpets, and the communion table with a purple cloth and surmounted by a picture of the Crucifixion. Yet in spite of these skilful arrangements the service furnished an extraordinary example of the destitution of Sibsagor. We had assumed that the station would supply the bread and wine for the sacramental elements, and it was only just before service that we discovered that there was none. We applied to Captain Sconce, whose house was close by. He said that he had some sherry, though no port, but that at that time of day (10 A. M.) it was impossible to produce a morsel of bread. So Woodrow had to spring on one of the few ponies that were in waiting to gallop down to the steamer (a mile off, and just getting up her steam for starting), and to bring up a bottle of port-wine and some bread. Many other arrangements of the station show it to be on the very confines of civilisation. Time, food, and servants are equally unknown at Sibsagor. There are no CH. XXI.] NAZEERAH. 539 clocks. Fowls cost an immense sum ; there are'no sheep, because the grass will not support them ; and gram is very dear ; beef is unknown, because the death of an ox nearly causes a mutiny amongst the Assamese. Ayahs are unattainable ; so the ladies work, dress, teach, feed, and take out walking all their chil- dren, with no help but that of some girl who consents for large wages to come and do ayah's work for a portion of the day. Altogether it is a dreary place, but its inhabitants were cheer- ful, and ready to make the best of it. Thursday r , August 23. At 4 A.M. the heavens looked gloomy for the expedition to Nazeerah. It poured as if it never meant to stop. At 11 four elephants arrived, and as the rain had diminished, we packed ourselves up in waterproofs and ascended the beasts, which, as generally in Assam, are arranged in a most comfortless way, with no howdah or pad, but a simple seat, on which you are perched sideways, with feet hanging down un- supported. Soon after leaving Sibsagor we plunged into a dense jungle, with only a path left (of course deep in mud and slosh), which was wide enough for the passage of an elephant. There were large trees in the jungle, such as peepuls and banyans, with a very thick undergrowth of tall grass, bushes and creepers ; among them magnificent convolvuluses, and other climbing flowers. Beautiful butterflies, too, were buzzing about when the rain ceased. There were some clearances for tea, but William Sconce said that they had not turned out profitable. We also passed several cottages and shops, and one very large break in the otherwise uniform jungle, where there was an abundance of rice-fields. In the midst of the j ungle we came upon the gateway and ruins of the old palace of Grhergaon, where the Assam princes resided, and which was afterwards, said Sconce, occupied by the Mahometans. The gateway consists of large blocks of stone ; the ruins are of stone and bricks intermingled. After two hours and a quarter of considerable discomfort, the elephants deposited us on the bank of the Dikho, and a ferry- boat came across and conveyed us to Nazeerah. This place is wholly the property of the Assam Company, who though now exclusively occupied in making tea, have the right to carry on in their land any operations developing the resources of the country. Hence they decline being called the Assam Tea Company, as they not unfrequently are. The station consists 540 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [On. XXL of their godowns and offices, and the bungalows of their officials, of whom the chief, a Scot named John Smith, drove down to meet us, and conveyed me to his house in a buggy. He came out nine years ago from Aberdeen, in the service of the Com- pany, and is now superintendent of all its large concerns, with twenty-three tea-factories under his immediate direction. Though the day was as unfavourable for our purposes as it could be, twenty-six assistants and others engaged in tea-making assembled at it besides our own party. I preached, and the holy communion was administered. . . . Afterwards I had a long talk with John Smith about the means of placing a clergyman here, which he allows to be most desirable ; for, as he says, 'among all these scattered young men, there really is no one to exercise any good or improving influence, and the solitude of a tea-planter's life is a great temptation.' I am to state my plans in a letter which he will forward to the Directors of the Company at home. At 7. 30 we left Nazeerah, after a visit which, though short and hindered by bad weather, was long enough, I hope, to remind the inhabitants that there are Church ordinances in India, and to inform me of their wants. We could not have stayed longer for lack of sleeping accommodation. Our ride from it was as tiresome as our ride to it ; we had one heavy shower of rain ; the moon struggled from behind dark clouds, the forest looked weird and ghastly, fireflies took the place of butterflies, and the strong smell of decaying vegetable matter reminded us that to pass in the night through a dense jungle in the rainy season is not altogether a healthy process. However we reached Sibsagor conscious of no other worse effects than fatigue, immediately embarked on board the bholio of the c Ehotas,' which we brought up in tow of the steamer, and proceeded down the Dikho. Woodrow steered the jolly-boat of the ' Koel ' down. The sleep which we had expected after our elephant journey was effectually driven from our eyes by new enemies, in the shape of countless and most venomous mosquitoes. We were not sorry when on Friday, August 24. At 6 A.M. we emerged from the tortuous mouth of the Dikho, and found the ' Koel ' waiting for us in the Brahmaputra, having finished her coaling at the godowns yester- day, and come up here as the nearest point to our course. . . . Dibroc/hur, Sunday r , August 26. This morning the very CH. XXI.] DIBROGHUR. 541 pretty church was consecrated by the name of St. Paul's. The impediments which hindered this in 1861 have now vanished ; there is no desire that the church should be open to all denomi- nations; it has been handed over to Government, whose consent to the wish of the residents for its consecration was duly notified, and the service was performed in the usual way. Among the communicants were two catechists, and the wife of one from Chota Nagpore. Among the coolies now constantly imported into Assam for the tea-plantations are several of the Kol Christians, with whom I made acquaintance two years ago at Ranchi. These catechists were sent up with them by the missionaries there, to watch over their Christian faith and prac- tice, and to-day presented themselves as communicants in the English church. . . . Afterwards we held a highly interesting service. The catechists, who seem to do their work thoroughly well, have not only acted as pastors, but as evangelists, and have prepared for baptism several other immigrants who had already been attracted to the Grospel from seeing its fruits at Ranchi. Among them is a Mahometan from Furrackabad, whom business took down to Chota Nagpore, but who was refused baptism by Batsch because he had two wives, and declined to repudiate either. I certainly have myself the very gravest doflbts whether such an interpretation of the Christian law of monogamy is right, since it involves a distinct violation of a contract lawfully contracted in ignorance of any higher rule, and leaves an unoffending woman, not only in sorrow and humiliation, but in the most obvious peril. I cannot but think that, however strongly St. Paul would have forbidden a Christian to marry two wives, he would not have refused baptism to one who already had two. However this may be, I was not called upon to decide the question, for one of the wives has lately died, and therefore the objection to the man's baptism is removed. He was therefore baptised by me to-day with ten others, one an infant, in Dibroghur Church. There was a diffi- culty about the service, for the Kols of Chota Nagpore have learned to speak Hindi, and do not understand the theological terms derived from Arabic and Persian in the Urdu prayer-book. Nor have I ever read any Hindi. However, Vallings and I from our knowledge of Bengali, with the help of Colonel Rattray and the catechists, managed to put the service for the baptism of 542 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Ce. XXI. adults into a form which was said to be intelligible to the native hearers. ... A large native congregation assembled round the font, and I had the great privilege of receiving by baptism into Christ's covenant eleven of (rod's children, happily reclaimed from ignorance and wickedness, and brought back to their Father's house. It was a deeply interesting occasion, and I trust will stir up my flagging zeal in missionary work, which is sometimes apt to be a little obscured by the more pressing- interests of hill schools and other wants of the English in India. Tuesday, August 28. The morning of 's birthday, on which in 1861 I was just approaching Dibroghur, was this year spent in the uninteresting but necessary occupation of inspecting its church, cemetery, and registers, and writing in the record book. One of the most glaring defects is the want of any wall or railing round the compound of the church or parsonage, and indeed about all the compounds of the place, in consequence of which cows and goats seek refuge from the rain in verandahs and drawing-rooms, and keep the occupants of a mansion awake all night by lowings and bleatings. This is one consequence of the utter deficiency of labour in Assam. The population, greatly reduced by the wars of the Hindu and Mussulman times, received a final blow from the Burmese, who massacred a large number, and carried off yet more as slaves. The remainder, half stupefied by opium, are content to cultivate enough rice for their own consumption, but as a rule decline all unnecessary work, and seem indifferent to the acquisition of wealth. Hence the necessity of importing coolies from Bengal to work the tea-plantations, and also of rice to feed them. This has led to the contract law, which, however just and merciful in principle, has in its present operation greatly discouraged the industry of the province, ruined several planters, and closed about five gardens this year in the Sibsagor district only. For the law compels the planters to pay the coolies, on an average, 5 rupees a month for a certain amount of work, besides extra pay for any overwork, and further to sell them rice at 1 rupee a maund. But, during the present famine in Bengal, rice costs 5 rupees a maund at Calcutta, to which must be added the freight to Assam ; so that at present the loss to the planter on this part of his business is tremendous. Indeed, I was told at Nazeerah that at one time this year the rice which the Company CH. XXI.] DACCA. 543 was selling to their labourers at 1 rupee had cost them 8 rupees. By a recent change in the law, the planter is allowed to charge 2 rupees for rice, or the market price, if it is under 2 rupees; and as it is expected that, when this year's copious crops are gathered, the price will be Is. 8cL, the tea interest is supposed to be looking up, and is expecting golden returns next year. . . . The day ended by a pleasant dinner-party at Colonel Rattray's, whose drawing-room is hung round with Indian curiosities. Among them were a knife used at Meriah sacrifices, arms of various kinds, and small figures of human heads, with which a Naga decorates his person, as representatives of the actual skulls which he has detached from the bodies of his enemies, and which he finds heavy for constant wear. Colonel Eattray has a set of five of these heads, four of men and one of a woman, fastened together, to be worn round the waist. He bought them from a Naga for a bottle of rum. Dacca, Sunday, September 9. The fever was better this morning, and I was happily able to take my usual part in the service, though I doubt whether I have felt such difficulty in doing so since 1859. How thankful I should be for the change that has taken place in my health since that disastrous autumn. . . . On the whole, we of the English Church have reason to be ashamed of our position at Dacca. The fragments of Hseberlin's mission, which existed in 1861, have now vanished, the chaplains here having done nothing to keep it together, and everything has passed into the hands of the Baptists. Next to Calcutta there is no place in Bengal where education has made so much progress as at Dacca ; for besides the college, there are several good aided schools, and a large body of Brahmoists is forming in consequence. The fields seem white to harvest, but we Anglicans are doing nothing to gather in the crop. Doubtless, we must not hinder the Baptists in the work, but I wish that there was a chaplain who would come here in a missionary spirit, and having but a small English con- gregation, lay hold of the educated young Hindus. The race of Corries and Martyns is perhaps necessarily extinct ; the zealous men who would act if they could in their spirit are sent to large stations, where regiments and hospitals take up all their time, and the incumbents of small places are often past their prime. Mr. Wise dined with us, who has known Dacca for forty 544 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XXI. years, and laments its fallen state. In his early days a Court of Appeal for East Bengal sat here, four judges driving to court in their carriages, with silver sticks carried before them ; now a single judge walks down to cutchery in a solah topee. He not only remembers Heber's visit, but Lord Combermere's, who arrived with a grand aquatic procession of twenty large pinnaces. Sylhet, Tuesday, September 18. Sylhet is undoubtedly a pretty place, and the view from one end of Mr. Cockburn's verandah is a very striking one. But it is too much embedded in forest and jungle, and its heat, mugginess, and mosquitoes are dreadful drawbacks. The Cockburns, whom I always knew to be kind, faithful children of Mother Church, and desirous to do good, showed to-day that they possess these virtues by inviting all the tea- planters in the neighbourhood (one from a distance of thirty miles) to attend service and meet us at luncheon. They were mostly young, and are, I believe, generally acknowledged to be superior in morals and manners to some of their brethren else- where, perhaps because there are roads, and Sylhet and civili- sation are approachable. One of them was an American, who had been a captain in the Confederate army ; the first Southerner, or American sympathiser with Southerners, that I ever met. He was of Maryland, and was careful to inform me that he was a member of the Episcopal Church. Another was a Tasmanian, anxious to impress on me the superiority of Tasmania in climate, and indeed in almost everything, to all the other Australian colonies, which he evidently regards as vulgar upstarts, Tasmania alone having some pretensions to antiquity. A third gave me a frightful account of his misery and all but death from an attack of cholera, when he was far from all help (having lost the key of his medicine-chest), and from which he was rescued, humanly speaking, by the oppor- tune arrival of another planter with remedies, who had heard of his peril from some natives. Altogether, I was interested in these guests, and thought the Cockburns' civility to them highly commendable. CH. XXL] HIS INTEREST IX MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE. 545 To the Rev. J. Thomas. Barge ' Rhotas,' August 1866. I was, as always, very glad to get your letter, especially as it gave cheering accounts of the gradual disappearance of the debt, which, if I live to return to England, I hope to find utterly vanished. I used never to be quite easy about that ninety-nine years' lease under which the College is held. Of that I suppose that twenty-three have expired, and how can Marlborough take its place by the side of Eton and Winchester if in seventy-six years (the days of our grandchildren), its property might be resumed by the Lord Ailesbury of the day ? I should rejoice to hear that when the debt has gone, the attention of the council is turned to the work of acquiring the property in freehold. The money would not be sunk on a mere fancy ; the rent of the buildings would be saved. ... I have started to Assam on visitation, chiefly to look after the tea- planters scattered through that province, where, however, there is also a fairly successful mission of the Propagation Society, and some native Christians. The tea-planters are, I fear, too often a godless set, and I should be glad to place a new clergy- man and church in one of the less accessible parts of the country. The highway is the vast river Brahmaputra, and we travel luxuriously in a great barge, or, as it is called, a < yacht,' towed by a steamer, which is allowed to the Lieutenant- Grovernor of Bengal to visit the watery parts of his territories, but which he, not wanting to use it this year, has lent to us, . . . and as the weather in the rainy season is, as a general rule, cool and pleasant, our existence is sufficiently easy and enjoyable. Of course, when we reach Assam there will be work to do, but during the ten days or so of our voyage to it we have a complete holiday. I heard from the other day, who seems very happy, and though still vehement (one could hardly wish him other- wise), less denunciatory than usual, which I trace to the influ- ence of a gentle and sensible wife. I should be very thankful if he could feel himself comfortable in taking orders, which the relaxation of the terms of subscription may perhaps render possible, as I do not think that his difficulties were ever fundamental, and he always seemed to me to retain a firm N N 546 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XXI hold on Christian faith and hope. ... I am very glad to hear that Edward is going to Stafford Rectory again ; it is a place where he gets nothing but good. To Arthur Watson, Esq. On board the 'Khotas,' river Brahmaputra, August 4, 1866. . . . Let me thank you for the continued liberality of your response to my appeals for the hill schools, which are still, and will be till 1868, if I live so long, my chief object. I will say nothing about its recent progress, because I hope to send you a report early in 1867. . . . As the journey from Calcutta to Growhatti (the chief town in Assam) occupies ten or twelve days, and as during that time we are quite excluded from post offices, European information is unattainable except at long intervals. At present, on this 4th day of August, we have only read newspapers up to the return of the Queen from Balmoral, her fruitless effort to patch up the Whig ministry, and her sending for Lord Derby. The telegram, however, has informed us that he is in power ; that Lord Stanley has the Foreign Office, and Lord Cranborne, India. I trust the latter will send out zealous and sensible chaplains, recommended by the tutors of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. In like manner, as to the greater contest in Europe, the newspapers have only brought us to the seizure of Hanover and Saxony, and the defeat of the Italians near Verona ; but the telegram speaks of the complete triumph of Prussia, the withdrawal of Austria from the Bund, and the surrender of Venetia to France. ... As to the war, I am altogether on the Prusso- Italian side. I even half repent of having joined in the ordi- nary abuse of Bismarck ; not, I trust, from any disposition to worship success, but because he seems to have conceived, held firmly, and carried out vigorously a great and noble idea the unity and nationality of Germany so that his policy in the north of Europe is precisely that for which Cavour and Ricasoli have been justly admired in the south. The Austrian cause is plainly indefensible on any principles of right and justice ; indeed, all pretence to them was thrown away by the occupation of Holstein. CH. XXL] ANTICIPATIONS OF RETURN TO ENGLAND. 547 Turning to domestic matters, Edward's success at Woolwich was a great pleasure to us. Not that either of us had the least wish for him to go into the army aTrA-ws, but as he had set his heart upon it, we wished him to enter in an honourable way. And the separation from him has been such a sorrowful drawback to the happiness of the last seven years, that a proof that he has been using his time profitably was a most blessed consolation to us both. To Bosworth Smith, Esq. -Shillong, in the Kossyah Hills, September 26, 1866. . . . You also urge me to pay England a visit. I do not want urging on that head, for I desire it not only for my own sake, but because I think that I might, with God's blessing, do some good to the diocese by interesting people at home in its wants and welfare. But I am fettered by no less formidable an impediment than an Act of Parliament, through which it is impossible to drive a coach and six, or rather to steer a P. and 0. steamer. The Act empowering the Crown to found and endow the See of Calcutta, provides that the bishop shall in no possible case leave the country till he has dwelt and worked in it for ten years. My ten years expire on November 12, 1868, and if I live so long, I hope then to avail myself of the liberty which the Act concedes, and to go home either on eighteen months' furlough or permanently, according to health and a variety of other circumstances, which need not be con- sidered till they are developed in the course of Providence ; not, indeed, that I should sail on November 12, or for some months after it. All doctors say that after ten years in the tropics, it would be very unsafe to arrive in England in midwinter (it was probably the cold after India that killed Lord Canning) ; but I hope, if no untoward event occurs, to be in England before many months of 1869 are over. It is a long time to look for- ward to, and the anticipation of such a return to friends and country is so delightful, that I often doubt whether it is right to indulge it ; but in India the scale of my work and plans is so large that I am absolutely compelled to forecast more than is desirable : and as we believe in a Father who is in Heaven, and not in jealous Nemesis, I trust that as lonj as I form any H M 2 548 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XXI. scheme in submission to His will, I do not displease Him by looking forward to a legitimate source of happiness ; and though I speak with rapture of even this distant prospect of England, you need not fear that I am getting weary of my work in India. I take as much interest in it, and feel its importance as much as ever, though I believe that the time is coming when a short intermission of it, and the refreshment of intercourse with those at home, would be good both for me and for it. As for the sentence above, in which I contemplate the possibility of resignation in 1869, you need not infer from that that I desire an old age of idleness. I think it very unlikely that I shall resign then : but health and other things are uncertain ; a Bishop of Calcutta must be capable of a good deal of physical endurance in the way of travelling, and putting up with discomfort ; and I thought it better, as your letter had extracted from me a statement of my future intentions, to state them fully, and impart to you the future contingencies which they may involve. To Mrs. Tomkinson. Shillong, on the Kossyah Hills, September 22, 1866. I have been a long time in acknowledging your very accept- able present of ' Bernard's Lectures,' but I can thank you very sincerely for the book, not only generally because it was your present, but for its own sake. I read it with great interest, and I hope profit. I thought it clear, logical, often eloquent ; and as I was at the time preparing four sermons for our Wednesday evening services in the cathedral, on the date and origin of the four gospels, I often found in the lectures, which travelled over the same ground, hints which facilitated and improved my own work. These lectures, and Hessey's on Sunday, are very satisfactory recent results of the Bampton endowment, which has often been wasted on singularly profitless discourses. . . . With regard to Ursula, whose return to England at the end of this year has been urged both by you and Edward, I will say a few words to prove that we are not regardless of your exhortations, but there are some considera- tions in favour of keeping her until 1868. It certainly is, or ought to be, a great advantage to a child to be with her parents as long as possible, unless the parents are worthless CH. XXI.] SHILLONG. 549 folk ; at all events, it is in accordance with the laws of nature and will of Grod, and I always consider the separation generally necessary not only one of the great pains., but one of the most glaring evils of Indian life. As soon as I return to our steamer at Chattuck, on the river Surma, where I have left the mass of my books, I will transcribe for you a passage from Southey, quoted and highly commended by Thackeray .... Where is Shillong, you will ask, and where the Kossyah hills ? The Kossyahs are a wild mountain tribe, not Hindus, with lan- guage, religion and customs of their own, tamed by forty years' contact with Europeans, and occupying a range of mountains 6,000 feet high, and containing wide plateaux of table-land, rising from the Brahmaputra in Lower Assam, and stretching over to Sylhet and Cachar, and the river Surrna. Cherra Poonjee has long been an English settlement and sanitarium in these hills, but the rainfall there is scarcely credible (from 500 to 600 inches a year) ; moreover, it is at the end furthest from Assam (now rising in importance on account of the tea), and is on a small piece of table-land, so as to be incapable of wide expansion. Hence, the Assamese officials have set up a new sanitarium on their side of the hills, thirty miles from Cherra Poonjee, with a more reasonable amount of rain, where they are building houses, cutchery, &c., are projecting barracks, and are hoping to be allowed to reside during the hot months, and even to transfer the native troops from Cherra. S - is at Cherra, and I have come over here to see after the ecclesiastical wants and capacities of Shillong, the road being rough and the accommodation limited, so that she was left behind. To- morrow I hope to return, and then, after giving the Cherra Poonjeeites a Sunday, we all intend to descend on our steamer, which is left on the bosom of the Surma, and begin our voyage to Calcutta. I am enjoying, and so, from a note just received, is she, our whiff of mountain air at the end of a somewhat hot and muggy journey ; the country is fresh, open, invigorating, not unlike the Downs of Surrey or Sussex, only with the grassy hills better defined, and more peaklike and mountainous in outline. There are some very pretty spots indeed. Last night we had an eclipse of the moon, and the hills echoed with the drumming and shouting of the people, endeavouring to drive away the wicked giant who had laid hold of it. ... 550 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. [Cii. XXI. October 2. We have again reached our steamer, and after being aground for some time this morning, are proceeding down the Surma or Barak (in this maze of rivers it is hard to know where one name begins and another ends) at the rate of ten miles an hour. I send you the passage from Southey's letter to his wife : 'If your feelings are like mine, I will not go to Lisbon without you, or I will stay at home and not part from you. For though not unhappy when away, still without you I am not happy. For your sake as well as my own and little Edith's, I will not consent to any separation ; the growth of a year's love between her and me, if it please God she should live, is a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable in its conse- quences, to be given up for any light inconvenience on your part or mine. On these things we will talk at leisure ; only, dear, dear Edith, we must not part.' [Quoted by Thackeray as a proof that Southey was a fi true gentleman.'] However, I do consent to part at the end of the cold weather of 18678, when I am quite willing, and think it better, that U. should precede us to England by a year. 1868 must, if possible, be spent in Calcutta, and the trouble of arranging for a third season for U. at Simla would be greater than it would be worth while to encounter for the sake of the (I trust) few months' interval between her descent from Simla and our own flight. These letters were among the latest that were written. The last entry in the journal bore date October 1. With an unfinished sentence the manuscript page ended ; the book laid aside for the ink to dry was never to be re- sumed. Thus the pen of one who was truly a ready writer rested from its work ; thus, with mournful sudden- ness, was closed the journal so regularly and accurately kept, that for eight years it had formed an autobiography the correspondence in which a shy nature found a vent for all its earnestness and all its bright humour, and in which so much of the mind and life of the writer were faithfully pictured. CH. XXI.] HIS LAST WORDS. 551 The few remaining days need only the briefest record. Dacca was reached in the steamer on Wednesday, October 3, and the whole party again transferred them- selves to the ' Bhotas,' which was at once attached to the steamer for the return voyage to Kooshtea. The Bishop had a fresh touch of the fever, which he invariably caught during any protracted sojourn among river damps. On Saturday, October 6, he got up far from well; but he mended as the day wore on, and had a long conversation in the forenoon with Mr. Woodrow on some school matters. The vessels were anchored at Kooshtea by mid-day, when the party broke up, some proceeding at once by train to Calcutta ; the Bishop and myself, with Mr. Vallings, remained on board for the evening work. The Bishop ate his luncheon, and appeared decidedly better. Between three and four, when lying on the sofa in the pleasant sitting-room of the ' Ehotas,' he said suddenly, ' Shut all the windows.' They were open to let in the cool air, for the day was cloudy and pleasant. His hands were very cold, and a fresh fever fit seemed coming on ; but some strong hot tea revived him, and at five o'clock he left the boat for the consecration of the cemetery, feeling not otherwise than equal to the exer- tion. He expected to return by seven, dine, and leave by the night train. At the service of consecration he gave, as was his wont, a short extempore address. In words remembered and recorded by the very few to whom he last spoke as a bishop and minister of the Church, he reminded his hearers ' that such consecrations were for the benefit of the living, not of the dead ; that departed souls suffered no injury if their bodies were left in a desert place, or on a field of battle, or in any other way were unable to receive the rites of burial ; that the solemn ceremony of consecration was to enable the living in a better manner to pay the last tribute of affection, and to retain a more solemn and permanent impression 552 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. [Cn. XXI. of the awful truths which give eternal importance to the questions of life and death.' After the service was over, he lingered to discuss some ecclesiastical arrange- ments with the very few residents of the small station, and twilight was fast passing into darkness when he reached the river-bank. Owing to currents, churs (sand- banks), and the precipitous nature of the bank, it was impossible to bring any vessel up close. The 'Ehotas' was lying in the full stream ; an intervening flat was at anchor between it and the shore, and this flat the Bishop prepared to reach. But, between himself and all to which he was looking forward as perhaps still to be per- mitted to him in this world unfinished work and fresh formed plans ; active labour yet for a space in India ; dawning hopes of England and English friends between himself and all except the Master he had striven faithfully to serve, there lay many yards of the rapid rolling river. Somewhere on the perilous causeway of planks bridging the waters his foot slipped ; he fell, and was never more seen. The increasing darkness, an unsteady platform, his near sight, the weariness of a frame enfeebled for the time by fever, had all doubtless a share, humanly speak- ing, in the great calamity foreknown in the counsels of Him ' who moves in a mysterious way.' Every effort was made to rescue, to recover him : all who are ac- quainted with the current of an Indian river will know how infinitely slight would be the chance of success in the one endeavour or the other. There were those to whose lips, on hearing the mourn- ful tidings, the simple Bible words arose ' And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him' 553 CONCLUSION. THUS he passed away, at a time, when, beyond dispute, his powers were at their highest. It was only in the somewhat bent figure, in the hair flaked with white, that signs of age, almost prematurely revealing themselves, testified to the effects of sojourn in a tropical climate. His strength continued equal to the demands of a life involving frequently much bodily exertion and fatigue. His constitution had shown an unexpected degree of elasticity in India ; for though illness overtook him from time to time, his power of rallying seemed to increase, and he could throw off an attack of fever better in 1866 than in 1860. His mental energies, far from suffering any abatement, had for long appeared to expand under the demands laid upon them, to rise year by year to a higher level, and to become continually more fitted to deal adequately and comprehensively with the numerous matters that came within their range. Any brief and general summary of the Bishop's work in India will naturally first take note of that work in con- nexion with the intellectual movement among educated Hindus. It is a movement which, dealing in its spiri- tual aspect with the inner life, stands wholly apart from the civil polity of the country, and yet appears to con- tain the germ of a sway over the national heart, deeper and more extensive than that attained by many other regenerating influences. Among those who in these days watch with keen interest the development of this re- markable product of European rule and civilization, the 554 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. position assumed towards it by a leader in the English Church justly challenges scrutiny and criticism. The Bishop assuredly never underrated the vast importance of this movement, nor of the responsibilities of the Chris- tian Church towards it ; but results, great or tangible, were scarcely to be hoped from it in the work of esta- blishing Christianity as the all-sufficient solution of moral and spiritual perplexities. Many influences now con- tend for mastery over minds roused from the torpor of centuries into an activity of intellect which the free thought of an inquiring age is constantly stimulating. Christianity is only one amongst these influences, and the Bishop, like any other observer of the tendencies of modern views, knew well how long and arduous must be her contest for supremacy. There are many, doubtless, for whom the interchange of argument with subtle, though often superficial, thinkers, would have a peculiar fascination ; but the Bishop, whose mind was far more practical than metaphysical, had no taste for controversy for its own sake, and, capable as he was of large-hearted sympathy with doubts and difficulties, he never cared to encourage transcendental speculations which have so much attraction for the dreamy and imaginative Oriental. Moreover, the points at issue between himself, as an upholder of Christianity in its integrity, and those who inclined towards intuitive philosophical systems, were too vitally important to be handled simply as disputed in- tellectual problems. He would have been utterly un- true to himself had he ever sought to win the native mind through any surrender of the fundamental tenets of revelation. In the course of this memoir it has been plainly indicated how alien to his own convictions were those views current in modern theology which, professing to expand the Christian system, tended, in his estimation, to lower it. It would have been at the cost of harsh in- consistency if, in the interests of an all-comprehensive CONCLUSION. 555 toleration, he had lent his sanction to those partial approximations towards Christian faith which clearly reveal their Western origin ; for one remarkable feature in the higher religious thought of the East at the present day is the outward form and coherence which it has rapidly and quite recently acquired, keeping pace, as it were, and assimilating itself with the latest developments of liberal theology in Europe. When the Bishop went to India in 1859, a small band of disciples, now known as the Brahmo Sornaj, the highest and purest of those sects which have discarded heathenism, were, for the first time, giving an outward expression to a theistic faith in an organized devotional worship of great purity and sim- plicity. It was not until 1866 that the famous lecture of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, on the character of our Lord, brought that teacher into wider prominence as the leader of the sect, and stamped the creed of the Brahmo Somaj with a conception of Christianity plainly reflecting the teaching of a modern school of European writers. That the lofty sentiments and inspiring reli- gious enthusiasm which distinguish some of these writers should find a quick response in cultivated Oriental minds, no one could more entirely understand and acknowledge than the Bishop. But so far as the tendency of such teaching was to substitute an eclectic theism or an aesthetic morality for the evangelical truth of the JSTew Testament, he was at issue with it. Varied are the portraits now drawn by sentiment or philosophy of the Son of Man ; but it was the Christ as portrayed and apprehended by St. Paul, by Augustine, by Luther, by Arnold, whom alone the Bishop could offer for the ac- ceptance and refuge of Eastern minds thirsting for the Water of Life. It may perhaps be safely and correctly said that the Bishop found his most congenial and satis- factory point of contact with Hindus through the sure and firm paths which a liberal education had opened. He ever 556 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. cherished the sound and solid intellectual training involved in the theory of that higher education which has now full play in India, as the main instrument for bracing and invigorating the native mind, and securing that mental discipline which must be preparatory to an impartial and reasoning acceptance either of the truths of science or of the facts of history, and among such facts he of course classed those which belong to Christianity and its history in the world. In his fearless advocacy of all broad edu- cational measures ; in his efforts to expand and invigorate the education administered by missionaries ; and to in- fluence, from a Christian standpoint, that education which is in the hands of the State, the strength of his position in reference to the native community is mainly to be found. But the more indirect influence exercised by the force of a character so steadfast and so true, cannot be overlooked. As Bishop Heber's name is to this day remembered and venerated by Christians in India outside the pale of the Anglican communion, so it is certain that Bishop Cotton's name wih 1 be handed on through many generations of Asiatics, whether Christians or not, as one who desired that, in default of higher grounds of union, forbearance, charity and goodwill should be the bonds of connexion between men of different races, nationalities and religions. The highest hopes entertained in 1858 by friends in behalf of the Bishop pointed to his fitness, at a peculiar crisis, ' to heal the wounds and assuage the strifes ' caused by the recent mutiny, and to exhibit a ' large-hearted phi- lanthropy, bounded by no distinctions of race or creed.' After he was gone, the verdict alike of English laymen, missionaries, and natives, testified how fully a brief career had fulfilled those hopes. It is in the domain occupied by the European portion of the Church in India that the labours of the late episco- pate were truly and substantially fruitful. The mark left by the Bishop on Asiatic intellectualism may have CONCLUSION. 557 been fainter than some perhaps expected. Direct mis- sionary operations may have been characterised more by the silent growth of broader views than by manifest results in a great accession of converts ; but the hold which he maintained over the Church among professing Christians was firm, vigorous, and effective beyond all gainsaying. He had the diocese, so far as Europeans were concerned, thoroughly in hand ; he had learnt its distinctive peculiarities ; he had gauged its wants, and if he could not fully meet these, he kept them incessantly in view, and was gradually multiplying ecclesiastical resources to bear upon them. From this point of view, the contrast is great between the first and the last of the letters written annually to Government on the affairs of the diocese. That of 1859 dealt merely in a general way with ecclesiastical matters, which were just beginning to flow again in ordinary channels after the convulsion of the two preceding years. In 1866 a similar report was a thankful record of schools increased, clergy multiplied, and a general development of ecclesiastical agency, through the harmonious co-opera- tion of State aid and voluntary effort. To the latter the Bishop was largely indebted ; his appeals were constant, and never in vain ; but his great strength lay in the official support so liberally and consistently extended towards him. The times were doubtless favourable. During some years there was a buoyancy in Indian finance which now seems almost mythical, and much good work that the Bishop had at heart reaped the benefit of large grants from the public revenue. In a higher sense also the age had improved. A desire for respectability and godliness among nominal Christians was no longer limited to the few who, on leaving England, did not leave all religious instincts behind them ; and the Bishop's views and wishes received attention and co-operation in quarters where zealous leaders of the Indian Church had of old met only 558 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. obstruction or indifference. The highest civil power recognised duties and responsibilities towards Europeans in India of every class, and discharged them by con- sistently aiding and trusting the chief pastor, throughout his active and progressive administration of the eccle- siastical department of the State. Valuable for its own sake was the financial assistance of the Government, but it was almost more valuable as a pledge of moral support. It does not fall to the lot of many men to receive so marked a tribute to capacity and influence as that which was rendered to the Bishop by the acceptance of his educational scheme within one year of his arrival in India, and its adoption by the Government, in every detail, before two years were over. Thus the firmly established schools in which that educational scheme was embodied, remain a conspicuous monument of the Bishop's tenure of the see ; but they no less represent the influence which, quickly acquired, he quietly but surely sustained, and by which, as it has been happily said of him, ' he made public functionaries, either in the army or the State, not his suspicious opponents, but his natural friends and allies.' Yet he did not make his way by qualities that were dazzling or commanding. His abilities were good, and had been constantly cultivated, but his intellectual powers were sound rather than showy. He was not a rapid nor an especially fertile thinker. In acuteness of intelligence and quickness of perception he was deficient, and work so successfully prosecuted was evolved out of patient and industrious reflexion, rather than inspired by any flash of genius. The great personal weight that he carried lay in the mental energy and practical ability which eminently distinguished him, and in the breadth and sound common sense of his views, combined as these were with powers of conciliation that were proof against the jarring elements of daily life, and with a sincerity CONCLUSION. 559 of aim and purpose on which others rested as on a rock. Far too guileless to possess that form of vanity which makes some men strain after leadership and prominence, he knew no ambition except that of being an instrument for the furtherance of God's kingdom in the world, and of turning his occupancy of the see, whether for a longer or a shorter time, to some high and definite account. He knew by many unmistakable signs how secure, in working for this end, his self-created position in India became. There are expressions in his journals or letters which under this aspect might, to a general reader, seem to be tinged with a spirit of vanity. The inference would be erroneous. Few people could be more wholly devoid of self-consciousness than the Bishop. When any work was accomplished, any onward step secured to- wards the ends he had at heart, he deeply and heartily rejoiced ; but it was with a joy that first rose in a rush of thankfulness to Him who gives all good things. One source of his ever-widening influence arose, un- doubtedly, from the marked spirit of earnestness with which he adopted the great interests of India as his own, living and working, so long as he was spared, for these alone. He realised the lessons read to England by the great mutiny, with a force quite equal to that felt by those who had lived and suffered through it ; but had there been no mutiny, he would none the less have felt all that is involved in the fact of England holding India ; and he brought to bear on his own share in that mighty trust a statesmanlike sagacity and breadth of view, no less than the philanthropy of a Christian. In his mind there was no distinction, as regards the motives and prin- ciples of action, between the work of the missionary and that of any soldier or civil servant of the State. The disinterestedness and self-abnegation by which the former are characterised were to him the rule of life to be fol- lowed by all. Every influential word that he uttered, 560 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTOX. either as a preacher, or as the projector of some useful work, or as the exponent of the duties of England to- wards India in some more popular form, was a protest against the miserable notion that an Englishman's exist- ence in India is an untoward and unwelcome accident, with no obligations beyond a perfunctory discharge of duty. He spoke as he felt, when at any time he sought to stimulate in others that power of studying and enjoying a great country, which was to himself a personal blessing, so far as it tended to diminish the sense of exile, which he never wholly lost, and to fill the void in his life caused by the want of the warm friendships of England. It would be difficult to overrate his keen interest in the historical antiquities, the many noble sights, the merely external features of India. To find in every successive visit to her great cities some point overlooked, or forgotten, or imperfectly understood, was to make all objects minister to his own thirst for knowledge, to draw from the trea- sures of this world things new and old. ' The more,' he once wrote, ' residents in India feel how wonderful a country it is, how rich in scenery, architecture, historical recollections, the more they will feel that it is worth living in, worth working for, worth restoring to the greatness from which it has fallen.' These are words that may fitly stand as the motto of a life full of active and faithful toil, but redeemed from all that was narrow or merely practical by high mental culture, and enriched by intellectual tastes of marked purity and correctness. Yet it is the grace of a deeply Christian spirit that casts the brightest halo round the Bishop's memory. In the first burst of general sorrow, in October 1866, it was said that his sudden removal had made men brothers through a common grief ; so many were there who could remember some special link wrought by a word or act of personal kindness. For from the depths of his essen- tially gentle soul there had often issued, as occasion CONCLUSION. 561 arose, the language of justice and fairness, recognising the rights of all ; the conciliatory expressions tempering remonstrance or rebuke, the words of condolence and sympathy, so happy in their form, so relieved from every- thing that was commonplace, that they supplied to mourners their choicest consolations in the hour of bereavement. Such outward graces were the truest index of an inward Christian faith, working so secretly and unobtrusively, that few beyond those who shared his daily life knew its strength and steadfastness* The fol- lowing words* written to a correspondent in 1858, are expressive of the principles that guided him to the last, and indicate how entirely a sense of the necessity and of the sufficiency of Christianity to meet moral and spiritual needs overpowered intellectual difficulties : ' I do not overlook, and have from time to time been disturbed by difficulties connected with the details of Christianity, but I suppose that my turn of mind is too practical to enter into the subtler disputations which disturb others ; for myself, I feel rest in the conviction that outside Christianity all is blank, desolate, hopeless, and that with faith in Christ all true holiness is inseparably connected.' Of this inseparable connexion in his mind between two things not to be put asunder, the ordinary course of his life afforded constant illustrations* One may be given as a sample of many others. He was blessed by nature with a remarkably sweet and even temper ; but in India a land of many irritations and small worries it was often tried, and was especially liable to be discomposed if anyone's carelessness or forgetfulness occasioned a breach of that punctuality which, out of regard to others, he was scrupulous in maintaining in all business arrange- ments. A cloud would gather for a few minutes on his countenance ; he looked angry because he felt so, but ordinarily, by entire silence, he arrested the hasty word on his own lips, and forbade altercation or argument in others. Sometimes, though very rarely, expressions of o o 562 LIFE OP BISHOP COTTON. annoyance escaped him : his self-condemnation afterwards was truly the godly sorrow that worketh repentance, arid could spring only from the heart and conscience of one who feels that he has for the moment failed in allegiance to Him in whom alone lies the strength for a sinner's struggle and victory. No traits in the moral and spiritual side of the Bishop's character were more consistently de- veloped than those of self-restraint and self-discipline. His outward career ran for the most part tranquilly and happily. None of those sorrows that shatter a life and lay it low, fell to his lot ; it seemed as if his gentle nature needed not such fiery chastening. In lesser trials common to all, in transient visitations of illness, in cir- cumstances of vexation or perplexity, he heard and obeyed the call for the exercise of patience and self-government ; in the most trivial temptations, he strove to maintain that warfare against sin for Christ's sake which made his whole life, as it ripened towards its close, a religion, a devotion, an act of faith. While still a young man, the exchange of faith here below in the things that are not seen for the visible presence of the Saviour hereafter, was an anticipation dwelt upon by him in more serious moments with a fulness of assured trust and joy, not always the possession of one on whom the world, through a goodly heritage of temporal blessings, has a strong hold. The habitual sense of the near though invisible presence of Christ which pervaded his whole earthly life, is well drawn out in the following passage, written by one well- known in the Indian Church : I could say much, and with truth, of many excellent traits in the Bishop's character his never-failing gentleness espe- cially ; his quiet cheerfulness ; his carefulness in economising fragments of time ; his patience in working out the details of any plan of practical usefulness which he had resolved on ; and, most marked of all perhaps, his habitual endeavour to form an equitable judgment on all things and persons. CONCLUSION. 563 This last prevailed so strongly, as sometimes, if I mistake not, to be a source of weakness to him. But the main distinctive thought which is associated with him in my mind, is that he was one who seemed to me more than any other person whom I have known, to labour system- atically to embody in his life the precepts and character of Christ. Should I be liable to be misunderstood if I said that, of the two successive Bishops of Calcutta under whom I laboured (and whom I both loved and reverenced), the one seemed to me to have had his religious life moulded predominantly on the first eleven chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, the other on the remaining five? Bishop Wilson was, I am sure, truly zealous of good works, and Bishop Cotton truly evangelical in doctrine ; but the impression left by them on their diocese corresponds, I think, to what I have described above. -The one seemed animated by an ever-present sense of (rod's wondrous mercy in the redemption of fallen man ; the other by a lively conviction that Christ was carrying on a great regenerating work upon earth in, and by means of, His faithful servants. I will only add, Sit anima mea cum illis. The Order in Council notifying the Bishop's death ran as follows : Home Department Ecclesiastical. Simla, October 10, 1866. The Eight Honourable the Governor-General in Council has learned, with the deepest sorrow, the death, through a calami- tous accident, of the Eight Eeverend George Edward Lynch Cotton, Lord Bishop of Calcutta. There is scarcely a member of the entire Christian com- munity throughout India who will not feel the premature loss of this prelate as a personal affliction. It has rarely been given to any body of Christians, in any country, to witness such depth of learning and variety of accomplishment, combined with piety so earnest and energy so untiring. His Excellency in Council does not hesitate to add the expression of his belief that large numbers, even among those of Her Majesty's subjects in India who did not share in the faith of the Bishop of Calcutta, had o o 2 564 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON* learned to appreciate his great knowledge, his sincerity and his charity, and will join in lamenting his death. By command of the Eight Honourable the Grovernor-Greneral in Council. Ei C. BAYLEY, Secretary to the Government of India* The outburst of private regret and sorrow which found so general an expression in India when a bright career was suddenly cut short, is almost a more solemn remem- brance for all who cared to observe and note it. The Bishop's active, zealous work, the sincerity and guileless- ness of his life, the attractive charm of his character, seemed to assume at once fresh proportions in the minds of many who spoke from their hearts, as they mused on him who was gone from their midst. A chaplain whose intercourse with the Bishop had been only brief and occasional, thus wrote : ' In my retired and isolated life, I have met with very few able or distinguished men, and certainly never had the privilege of friendly intercourse with one who was so thoroughly in earnest, whose life was so consistent, and whose soul was so engrossed in the work his Master had given him to do. Whatever improvement recent years may have witnessed in myself, any increased interest and diligence in the discharge of my duties I may attribute, under God, to the influence of the late Bishop. His preaching and his kind familiar intercourse during one brief period, the interest he has always taken in the circumstances ,and concerns of his clergy, no less than the general character of his whole life, have greatly endeared him to me.' A layman wrote : ' . . . The loss of one whom I always found a wise coun- sellor and a sympathising friend is a real personal gri< to me, besides which I cannot but feel that there was n< one whom India could less afford to lose. There is n< one whose influence for good was more widely spn and more deeply felt than his. He was at the same tim< CONCLUSION. 565 so thoroughly in earnest in his own convictions and deeds, and so wisely tolerant in his dealings with the convictions and prejudices of others.' The above ex- tracts are but fragments of much that was expressed in the freedom of private correspondence by those who more immediately shared his work. But from many likewise of those outside the English Church there came the same recognition of his comprehensive charity and far-seeing wisdom, and of the bright and holy example of his life. From these came also the testimony, at once honourable and memorable, that to the late Bishop other Protestant communities had learnt to look up as to their natural head. The local Anglo-Indian press, usually devoted to purely secular topics, freely opened its columns to a feeling and accurate review of the life so suddenly closed. Its tri- bute of respect to the Bishop was just and generous when it spoke of him as ' pre-eminently a man for the times,' and ' in whose short tenure of the See more active work for the Church in various directions had been set on foot than usually falls to the lot of most men ; ' or, again, as one who, ' a teacher by training and by choice, was having gradually but surely yielded to himself the lead in the great educational movement now quickening India.' One passage from the ' Indian Daily News/ comprising much in a short compass, and full of affec- tionate reverence, deserves a less abridged notice. 4 Few persons occupying so high, and at times so delicate, a position have been more generally or more deservedly popular. JSTor was the late Bishop's popularity of sudden growth ; it was rather the result of his steady consistent walk in all things sound and good, combined with vast powers of conciliation. An admirable tact was one of the great causes of his almost uniform success in what he undertook. Few have possessed in so high a degree the calm patience which works while it waits ; few have 566 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. exercised that discriminating power of using rightly timesr and seasons with such shrewd wisdom and care. Thus, step by step, Bishop Cotton triumphed over prejudices raised by a manner at first deemed stiff and reserved, and won upon the hearts of men. . . . Years hence, long after the excitement and shock occasioned by the suddenness of his death shall have passed away, the name of Dr. Cotton, associated with much that was calm and dignified, yet meek and gentle, will be a household word; his great efforts for the improvement, socially and in- tellectually, of the most neglected in India, will be bear- ing fruit in abundance, and he, whose material presence has been removed so suddenly and mysteriously, will live in the grateful memory of thousands.' Missionaries mourned for him with a wholly filial re- verence ; they spoke of him as one who had been to them a ' good gift from God.' As individual men, or through the united voice of conference or committee, they re- corded their sense of his fatherly counsels ; of his broad and suggestive views touching their great work ; of his fresh and ready sympathy with their successes or their disappointments. Now that his name, his life, his sudden loss, are rapidly passing out of sight, there are mis- sionaries who still speak of him as one who was 'the beloved and revered head of the Indian Church.' The sentiments of regret, at once so warm and so general, on the part of the native community, are best condensed by a brief reference to the proceedings of the Bethune Society. This Society, it will be remem- bered, is for literary and intellectual objects, and styles itself ' a great lever of progress in India, aiming to achieve the total annihilation of race-feeling and race-hatred/ It was a curious coincidence that, on the occasion of meeting for afresh session in November 186 6, the Christian Bishop shared with a non-Christian Hindu the Eajah Per tap Chunder Sing, late vice-president of the Society CONCLUSION. 567 the expressions of regard and regret awarded so freely in the minutes of the day's proceedings to the philanthropy and large-hearted toleration of the one, to the en- lightenment and great munificence of the other. Baboo Kissorychimd Mittra, in seconding the resolution of which the Bishop was the subject, thus concluded : * . . . Benevolence was the distinguishing trait of the cha- racter of the lamented Bishop, and it was a benevolence fettered by no distinctions of creed or colour or clime. He never ceased to exercise that divine attribute of which his exalted office made him minister. While Dr. Cotton was sincerely and unaffectedly religious, he was entirely free from that narrow-minded bigotry which curtails the usefulness of so many members of his profession. His toleration, his freedom from sectarianism, and his zeal in the cause of progress, endeared him, while living, to all classes of his fellow-citizens, and will associate his memory, now that he is no more, with their esteem and gratitude. He was one of those happy but rare natures which could embrace all that was good in the latitudinarian tendency of his age, its aversion for all bigoted religious exclusiveness, and its large philanthropy.' The following valued passage, commenting upon the possible impression made on the native mind by the Bishop's life and character, is from the pen of one who in 1866 held the office of president of the Bethune Society. The manly gifts of an English officer were in the writer's case combined with the literary tastes of a student, and he possessed all those qualities of head and heart which fitted him no less than the Bishop, of whom he so warmly speaks, to bridge the gulf between Eastern and Western races, and to earn the confidence of the most cultivated section of the native community : * . . . We question very much if even the most intimate friends of the late Bishop in the least degree expected that spontaneous outburst of regret which the news of his sudden death evoked from the educated natives of Bengal. This is at least a testimony to his character which his surviving friends may regard 558 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON, with profound satisfaction. It is the unbought and unsought- for testimony of the non-Christian portions of the community to the practically Christian character of his life and doc- trines. . . , Many years have passed since the confidence of the natives of Bengal was gained by any European gentleman so completely as by this Christian Bishop. . . , Their feeling amounted to more than common regard. We never met an educated native who did not speak of him with respect and affection, The reception he met with at a meeting of the Bethune Society in April this year was enthusiastic and respectful. , . . His sudden death, cut off as he was in his prime, in the midst of his career of usefulness, has caused a feeling of general mournfulness throughout India, which the mention of his name and the recollection of the great things he was contemplating cannot fail constantly to recall. Still as his life was a pattern and example to all, influencing thousands for their advantage, it is possible, we think, that his death may not be without effect upon even the most indifferent among the community. Cold and callous must be the man who cannot deduce some profitable reflection from the contemplation of that pure and spotless life, that unselfish devotion to duty, that untiring energy on behalf of others. His was the white plume, ever foremost in the good fight of faith, which it becomes every Christian to labour to follow. And not alone every Christian. That which is to them a natural duty, will come, we think, with advancing time, to be regarded by the natives of India as a sign and beacon in the distance, towards which it will be their privilege to shape their now wandering course. We may be sure at least that when they talk, as talk they do, of Englishmen, they will never mention without respect and affection the name of the late Bishop. Nor will it be possible for them to recall that name without recollecting that bright example he set them during his lifetime, that noble charity which drew their unconverted hearts towards the Bishop of the Church.* Of all the former distinguished occupants of the great Indian See, the one whom Bishop Cotton undoubtedly resembled was Heber. In brilliant gifts of imagina- * < Dr. Cotton/ Calcutta Review, 1866. CONCLUSION. 569 tion he was of course inferior to him, though he probably had the advantage in useful practical powers ; but they were much alike in the cultivated tastes which invested a life of exile with many fresh interests, and still more alike in those attributes of urbanity and peculiar gentle- ness through which the varied classes and races that crossed their path were attracted towards them. It is now a matter of interest to trace some earlier links in a chain of associations connecting the one with the other, and finally completed by the tenure of an office which formed the work of each unto death. At the beginning of this century intimacy and intercourse be- tween the families of the Hebers and Cottons was close and frequent. The rectory of Stoke in Shropshire, held by George Cotton, Dean of Chester (Bishop Cotton's grandfather), was within a short distance of Hodnet ; his son James, afterwards Dean of Bangor, and Eeginald Heber were contemporaries, and when young curates they served together as volunteers in a regiment raised in Shropshire in the time of the Peninsular war. Years passed away, and from 1840-44 George Cotton had the Chol- mondelys, Bishop Heber's nephews, as pupils, in his house at Rugby. Between him and their mother, the Bishop's sister, a warm friendship arose, which was strengthened by an occasional visit paid in the Rugby vacations to Hodnet Hall, where she, as Mrs. Macaulay, was living until her death in 1845. Mrs. Macaulay was a woman of much ability, and possessed also a keen sense of humour. The visits to her house were of the most joyous character, and contemporary letters show how thoroughly she and her guest understood and appreciated each other. The hereditary reverence and admiration which George Cotton had through life felt for the pure and beautiful character of Reginald Heber, was naturally profoundly intensified when he was suddenly called to fill his chair in India, While feeling how great an example 570 LIFE OF BISHOP COTTON. of zeal and devotion he had before him in his immediate and venerable predecessor, his frequent allusions to a still earlier one seemed to indicate a sympathy engendered by kindred temperament and tastes. In one of his earliest letters to a chaplain who was changing his presidency, and who had somewhat invited counsel and admonition, the Bishop closed a few words on charity, moderation, and consideration for the feelings or the prejudices of others as follows : ' You are now going to minister by the side of Heber's grave ; I trust you will remember how completely this was Heber's spirit.' At the close of his much enjoyed South India visitation, he had two regrets that he had failed to see the temples of Madura, and that he had not been able to look upon the tomb of Bishop Heber at Trichinopoly. A cheque signed in the last month of his life was for a donation towards the repair of that same tomb. When the mournful news of October 1866 was wafted to England, there was one to whose memory rose a passage from a sermon of Dr. Arnold's, in reference to the equally sudden removal of his predecessor forty years before. The words it con- tained seemed to belong equally to either of the two, whose lives, though in the annals of time far apart, had been knit together by the same holy grace of character, by the same sacred office, and by the strange likeness of their deaths. Not by words only, but by many munificent deeds, the Bishop's memory has been honoured. The Council of Marlborough College at once founded a scholarship of 50/. a year bearing his name. Memorial windows at Eugby and at Marlborough will long connect his name with the two school chapels, the services in which had been so fruitful in building up his own inner life. In the school of his own creation at Simla his portrait in oil now hangs. Subscriptions for the purpose were gathered in by the headmaster, Mr. Slater, chiefly from CONCLUSION. 571 the parents of boys, and therefore from a quarter where wealth does not abound. The amount collected, though inadequate under ordinary circumstances, was accepted by Mr. Eddis. He had painted in 1852 the original portrait which has now a final home in the Arnold Library at Eugby. Taking in 1868 this picture as a basis, he made the painting of a modified copy of it his own work, and not only produced a very successful likeness, but added a picture of which any institution might be proud, to the few fine works of art that are very gradually decorating the British possession of India. But any local memorials, substantial and valuable as they were, became subordinate to the great collective effort that was made to carry on the consolidation of the hill schools up to the point at which the Bishop had ever aimed. The work had yet two years to run when all scenes of this life closed for him, but it was not for a moment allowed to drop to the ground. In his name, and for his sake, it was taken up in India and in England. Archdeacon Pratt on one side of the world, a band of faithful friends on the other, started fresh appeals. In England old Eugby and Marlborough pupils were its secretaries and treasurers. Through contributions muni- ficently given in both countries, that undertaking was accomplished from which the first projector and organizer had been removed with solemn suddenness. By the solid foundation of the three schools, it is humbly hoped that a pledge has been afforded of God's continued blessing on a work indissolubly connected with the Bishop ; on a work, begun by him as a memorial of a great deliverance, and completed as the worthiest memorial that could be raised to himself. APPENDIX. THE allusion in the concluding chapter to the financial position of the hill schools was brief and general. A few statistics, in the form of an Appendix, may possess interest for some among the numerous subscribers in England whose liberality materi- ally contributed to the consolidation of the schools. It has been stated in the text of the memoir that the sum which in 1865 the Bishop announced as necessary for his purpose was 25,000. Of this only a portion was raised during the last year of his life. Upon his death the work at once assumed a memorial character, and the sources from which a large sum was eventually derived were four in number : (1) the proceeds of his own three years' appeal, started in 1865, amounting in round numbers to 14,262. ; (2) the fund subscribed as a memorial to him in India, 3,670. ; (3) the fund contributed with the same object in England, 4,032Z. ; and (4) the Govern- ment grant, which, being equivalent to the amount of the fore- going private subscriptions, made the total 43,926. This sum of 43,92 6. was that with which Archdeacon Pratt had to deal when, from the close of 1866, he acted as sole treasurer and trustee of the Hill Schools' Fund. The first great charge that came upon it was the purchase-money of the school at Mussoorie, viz. 12,000. It was further reduced by the substraction of 1,800., the moiety of the Memorial Fund raised in India. By the terms of the appeal issued in No- vember 1866, this was to be appropriated to the schools esta- blished in the cities of the plains; 30,128. therefore became eventually available for the three hill schools. 26,420. were sunk in Endowment Funds-) distributed in the following proportions : APPENDIX. 573 Simla Endowment Fund .... ^9,830 Mussoorie .... 5,360 Darjeeling .... 11,230 3,608. remained in hand, to meet charges for repairs and altera- tions of buildings purchased at Mussoorie and Darjeeling, and to form a floating balance available for the passage-money and outfits of masters from England, and for many contingent expenses. From these figures it will be seen how greatly financial results outran the Bishop's expectations. In 1865, 5,000. was the amount of endowment for each school that he allowed himself to contemplate; yet before 1868 had closed, the amount available for the two schools that most needed help had doubled that figure. The three hill schools have now been in working order and in regular operation for the last few years. In the Simla school the number of pupils has been steadily maintained in proportion to the available accommodation. An increase since the new buildings were opened indicates that the full com- plement of 150 boys may before long be reached. Besides receiving general religious instruction, the boys are educated usefully in Latin, English, one Indian vernacular, history, geography, a short course of mathematics, and certain optional studies to suit distinct tastes. The English language has a much more important place in the curriculum than the Bishop, from want of acquaintance with the deficiencies of Indian boys in this respect, had originally contemplated. A small number of the boys educated at Simla have passed the entrance examination of the Calcutta University, and others have been admitted into the Government Engineering College at Eoorkee ; several have become employes of Government as clerks, or in the Police and Customs departments. Fifteen exhibitions are annually distributed by the Governors, of sufficient value to reduce the annual school expenses from 36. to 24., and are provided by the grant-in-aid given on the report of the Government school-inspector. The only present drawback to the prosperity of the Simla school is that of a debt which still burdens the finances. To complete the buildings a loan from Government had to be incurred. The first stone was laid by the Viceroy, Sir John Lawrence, on September 26, 1866, 574 APPENDIX. only ten days before the founder of the school was called to his rest from all earthly work. The premises, now finished, include dining-hall, class-rooms, and dormitories for 150 boys, a head-master's house, and rooms for under-masters, hospital, chapel, and a playground. The Governors have undertaken to pay off the debt of 5,000. in ten years, and hope that subscriptions may help to bring about its earlier disappearance. The school at Mussoorie still remains a higher class school of nearly 100 boys. The fees are higher than at Simla, and a liberal rather than a commercial education is given, the standard of instruction being more advanced both in classics and mathematics. Boys have passed from it^in quite recent years with credit through the entrance examinations of the Calcutta University and of the Eoorkee College. There are two very good exhibitions, founded by the original proprietor, the late Kev. E. Haddock, who liberally remitted for this object 1,000. of the money he received on the sale of the institution. The school prospered much for three years under the Eev. A. 0. Hardy, domestic chaplain to Bishop Cotton, who undertook the charge of it at the close of 1866, when efforts to procure a head-master had been beset with the difficulties which too often impede their selection in India. An University man suc- ceeded Mr. Hardy when, at the end of three years, he resumed his work as a Grovernment chaplain. With respect to the third school, St. Paul's, at Darjeeling, either from the miscarriage of letters, or from some unex- plained cause, information which was solicited has not been received. It is believed, however, that its general character approximates to that of Simla rather than Mussoorie, the pupils being for the most part drawn from the lower ranks of Grovernment officials, and requiring a middle class education as the best preparation for their future career. This school has in some respects had more difficulties to encounter than the sister institutions. A long interregnum after the departure of the first head-master, through the difficulty of obtaining a suitable successor, was an adverse circumstance. Except for such untoward incidents, there is no reason why it should not succeed like the others ; and in all probability when the long talked of railway through Eastern Bengal facilitates com- APPENDIX. 575 munication with the foot of the hills, the school will attain a prosperity worthy of its healthy and beautiful site. But all the three schools, in their efforts for real success as places of education, have as yet to contend with many difficul- ties incidental to India. These arise partly from the pre- mature removal of boys, from causes dependent on the fluctuating fortunes and frequent change of residence among middle class Anglo-Indians, and from carelessness and negli- gence in homes in which tenderness rather than wisdom often prevails. Time will prove the best corrective to this latter class of impediments to the success of the hill schools. The effects of good moral and physical training, though as yet in some cases needlessly interrupted, or prematurely cut short, will declare themselves more hereafter. Boys even now join the Himalayan schools from Sukker, far down the Indus, and from other equally remote places of North India ; and it seems impossible but that they, when grown to manhood, will not in their turn seek to place and to retain their sons in institutions designed to be fruitful in health both for mind and body. The new schools will amply fulfil their mission for this generation if they succeed in kindling that sense of the value of education which must be the parent of consistent efforts to secure it for the children yet to come. Difficulties in the way of education which arise from the changing circumstances of Anglo-Indian families are more intelligible, and excite real sympathy. So rapid are the attacks and so sudden the results of illness in India, that families living in affluence, and respectably maintaining their children at school, are constantly reduced in a day to pauperism through the death of the head, the ' bread winner,' of the household. It has been with the view of meeting such cases, and also to increase as far as possible the utility of the schools, by bringing them within the reach of persons respectable in calling and position, but with very limited incomes, that Archdeacon Pratt has recently opened a 'Hill Schools Nomination Endow- ment Fund.' Its object is to raise a sum of money which will be made over as a trust to the Diocesan Board of Education. It is proposed that in small stations where there are children needing education, but whose parents cannot meet the expense, 576 APPENDIX. the higher residents in the station should raise a small local subscription which, with a proportionate aid from the interest of the fund in the hands of the Board of Education, may so reduce the school fees as to bring them within the reach of slender or greatly diminished incomes* This fund, to which the Grovernment grant-in-aid is promised on the usual prin- ciple, was opened in 1869, and will close in 1871* Should any English contributor of former years retain an interest in the cause of Anglo-Indian education, and be disposed to aid this fund, or to contribute towards the removal of the debt still clinging to the Simla school, the editor of these pages would thankfully receive and transmit any donations, if sent to her at 24 Lower Seymour Street, Portman Square, London. 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