plaster. Behind Chowringhee are a number of wide streets with similar, but generally smaller houses, each apart, with offices and servants' houses in the enclosure. When entering the city one sees that strange combination of meanness and dirt with grandeur with which travellers in Eastern lands are so familiar. In the neighbourhood of Government House there are a number of shops in the European fashion, but a very large proportion of the business of Calcutta, we suppose the most of it, is carried on in bazaars, in which there are no showy shops, but where there is abundance of goods of every description. When we went to India, and for many years afterwards, in front of these shops were open sewers, over which customers had to pass on slabs of stone. Amidst houses for Europeans, even in the most aristocratic part of the city, were native houses of every description, many of them miserable grass huts.

Since the time of which I speak, some forty-five years ago, Calcutta has been greatly improved. It has been drained, supplied with good water, instead of being dependent on great open tanks, to which all had access, which no arrangement could keep tolerably pure, and is lit with gas. Open sewers are no longer to be seen, and from the best parts of the city many native houses have disappeared. The changes effected must conduce immensely to the health and comfort of the inhabitants. There is no part of India, we suppose, free from the plague of the musquito, but in all my Indian life I have not been so much tormented in any place by it as I have been in Calcutta. It adds insult to injury. If it would only bite, sharp though its bite be, one could put up with it; but before it bites, and after, it goes on buzzing, as if mocking you, and evades every attempt to catch it. The last time we were there musquitoes were comparatively few, and they seemed to have lost much of their former mischievous vigour. We suppose the improved sanitary arrangements have not agreed with them.

When in Calcutta everything reminded us that we had left our own country behind, though not all our own people. We saw them on every side, but they were a mere handful in the midst of a strange people in a strange land, where man and nature presented entirely new aspects. The look of the people, the exceedingly scanty dress of the labouring class, and the long flowing robes of those in better circumstances, the marks on the foreheads and arms of the Hindus, showing the gods whose worshippers they were, their processions with noisy, unmusical music, the public buildings of the people, the mosques of the Muhammadans, and the temples of the Hindus, with a church here and there to show that Christianity had also its shrines—all brought to our view characteristics of the great land on which we had entered. Bombay, since the opening of the Suez Canal, has made progress which somewhat affects the pre-eminence of Calcutta among the cities of India, but it still remains the capital of British India—I ought rather to say of India—and its position will continue to make it, what it has been in the past, a vast emporium of commerce, the abode of a great population, and a place of most stirring activity. It continues to be the resort of persons of every civilized, and almost every semi civilized, nation on the face of the earth.

My stay in Calcutta of six weeks was longer than I had anticipated, but my time was very pleasantly and profitably spent. A few days after arrival a united prayer-meeting was held: missionaries of all societies were present, the attendance was large, the spirit was earnest and devout, and I then began to realize, what it was my happiness to realize more fully afterwards, the uniting power of the missionary enterprise. I had the happiness of attending services with Native Christians, and of joining them in spirit, though not with understanding. I was especially interested in the noble Missionary Institution of the Church of Scotland, and in the smaller, but promising, school of our own Society. I felt as if the sight of such a number of boys and young men, many of them with most pleasing and intelligent countenances, all learning our language, and, what is vastly better, all taught from the Word of God, was enough in itself to repay one for the long voyage to India. I heard them examined, and was surprised at the knowledge of English possessed by some of them, at the extent of their Biblical knowledge, and at the Christian tone with which they gave replies to questions. I asked a tall, slightly built young man, with a most intelligent face, dressed in the flowing white robe of his people, who had spoken with what struck me as the accent of conviction, "Are you a Christian?" to which he replied, "Yes, in heart; but I fear persecution." To this subject of schools I shall have often occasion to revert in the course of my reminiscences.

During my stay in Calcutta I had much pleasant intercourse with missionaries of different Societies. I was the guest of Mr. Boaz, afterwards Dr. Boaz, of Union Chapel, by whom I was treated with much kindness. Mr. Gogerly had been my fellow-passenger to India. Mr. Lacroix and Mr. Piffard were, at that time, the senior missionaries of our Society in Calcutta. Both were admirable men. Mr. Piffard was a gentleman of property, who devoted himself to missionary work, and laboured for many years most faithfully, without requiring to take, and without taking, any salary from the Society. A short time afterwards he was suddenly carried off by cholera. Mr. Lacroix lived for many years. I had the pleasure of meeting him in my visits to Calcutta, and in his visits to the North-west, and also of frequent correspondence with him. He was esteemed and loved as few have been. He was a man with a commanding presence, tall and well-built, and had a geniality of manner which won all hearts. He spoke and wrote English remarkably well, with a slight foreign accent and sprightliness, an elan, as our French friends call it, which told of his French birth and upbringing. He had a thorough knowledge of the Bengalee language, and used it with a commanding eloquence, to which his voice, look, and gesture greatly contributed. His last illness, the result of his long residence in the enervating climate of Bengal, was borne with Christian patience, and drew forth the sympathy and kindly inquiry of all classes. At his funeral such tokens of respect and love were rendered to him by every class of the community, Native and European, as have been seldom witnessed in Calcutta.