Christian Missions to China.

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sometimes persecuted, according to the dispositions of the reigning monarchs. At present there are 170 Roman Catholic missionaries in the empire, and they are said to have about 200,000 adherents. But Mr. Medhurst observes that there is nothing in the Catholic worship, or in the character of the priests, calculated to give the Chinese a very exalted idea of Christianity. In the former, they witness graven or molten images, processions, tinkling of bells, candles, and incense, exactly resembling their own religious rites, and, in the latter, a number of ignorant and idle monks, professing celibacy, but with indifferent moral characters, shaving their heads and counting beads very much after the fashion of the Budhist priests. A few Catholic missionaries still make converts of the lowest and poorest Chinese, who occasionally appear at the churches, and receive, each of them a small donation of rice, for which service they are sometimes called, in Portuguese, "Rice Christians." The first Protestant mission to China was sent out by the London Missionary Society in the year 1807, and amongst the earliest missionaries was the celebrated Dr. Morrison, who, after a labour of ten years, succeeded in mastering the Chinese language, so as to compose a dictionary of it, and a translation of the Scriptures into the Chinese tongue. Within the last few years a great impulse has been given to missionary enterprise in China. Medical missionaries, both from Britain and America, have gone out, and hospitals have been established in Canton, Shang-hai, and some of the other cities, where relief has been afforded to many thousand native patients; and every opportunity has been taken, at the same time, of circulating tracts and expounding the doctrines of Christianity. These medical hospitals are highly prized by the Chinese. The art of medicine is at a very low ebb with them, and the gratuitous relief so extensively afforded, has been duly appreciated by their naturally kind dispositions, and has tended much to soften the asperities arising out of a national defeat. According to a list given by Mr. Smith, there are at present forty-four missionaries in the different towns along the coast; and others are on their way, both from England and America.

"The present lamentation," says Mr. Hamilton, in his spirited little tract on Chinese Missions," is, that China does not contain the power which can evoke the highest goodness or allay the most abandoned vice. The Emperor cannot do it,-the ancient laws cannot do it,-the maxims of the sainted Confucius cannot, -the magic of Taouism cannot, the miracles of Buddha cannot, and we may add, the Madonna cannot, the priests with their Latin prayers cannot,-the monks who are to sail from Marseilles this summer, with their cargo of crucifixes and beads and dead men's bones, cannot. But the Gospel can! The Gospel can

open the fount of tenderness in bosoms where it has forgot to flow. It can pluck the deadly drug from the opium-smoker's skinny hand, --it can wrench the infatuating dice from the gambler's delirious clutch,-like the Egyptian princess it can snatch the drowning babe from the whelming stream, and rescue the outcast infant from the vagrant's blinding steel :-and it can put truth in the trader's inward soul, and give new meaning to his language,-it can make the Chinese yea be yea, and their nay be nay. All this the Gospel can effect; and, with the help of God, all this the Gospel will. And it is the true ennobler of the affections and sublimer of the feelings. Let but its gladness thrill through spirits which in the apathy of ages hardly know what gladness is, and with what a grasp of earnestness will brother seize the hand of brother! With what a look of admiring affection will the Christian husband recognise that Christian partner, whom he now despises as a cipher and oppresses as a drudge! And with what starts of wonder will the quickened spirit view the glorious things of creation, and the blessed things of life issuing in rapid resurrection from under the tomb-stone of old custom, from their long burial in the grave of ancient commonplace! That Gospel is mighty; and let but its clarion-peal-let but its jubilee-reveille echo through the sleep of these enchanted ages-let its omnipotent blast dispel the nightmare of these supine but uneasy years, and the millennium of misery end in the vision of a Saviour present and Divine ;-and oh! what a shout of power will bespeak the nation born! what a song of praise that proclaims the three hundred millions alive again!"

ART. VI.-THORNTON's History of British India, Vol. VI.

THIS Volume has come out at an awkward juncture, when the events to which it relates have lost the freshness of news and not acquired the interest of history. Mr. Thornton might have taken "Incedo per ignes" for his motto, and so indeed might we-for we find the task of reviewing to be only second, in point of difficulty and delicacy, to that of writing a history of contemporary transactions. The influence of the feelings under which we suspect this volume to have been written, becomes from the first perceptible in the author's hanging as it were in the wind, and loitering through a hundred pages over questions of no very exciting or enduring interest, instead of rushing on, as was his wont, to tales of war and battle.

Though we cannot follow exactly in his footsteps, and may spare room for lengthened notice of only one of the topics touched upon in these preliminary pages, we think it well to mention

what they are, that our readers, if they wish for it, may know where to seek for information.

The volume opens with the controversy in 1833 between the Court of Directors and the Board of Control, when the latter threatened to send the former to jail, but thought better of it. The particulars of this most amusing case are given in the first twenty pages, and may be recommended to the attention of all who question the use of having a permanent body of independent gentlemen, like the Court of Directors, interposed between our Indian empire and the ever-fluctuating administration of the mother-country.

The next matter noticed is the removal of Lord Heytesbury in 1835, on the sole ground of contrariety of party views, from the post of Governor-General; and here we would call attention to the remark of one of the most accomplished members of the Court, cited at page 37, that "India was of no party, and the Court of Directors were considered to be perfectly independent of all political influence."

The account commencing at page 74, of the attempt made at Lucknow in 1837, on the death of the King of Oude, to defeat the arrangement resolved on by our Government with regard to the succession, is well worthy of perusal, though justice is there hardly done to the conduct of the Resident Colonel Low; who, while separated from all support, and surrounded by a furious mob, some of them with drawn swords and others with pistols pointed at his head, trying in vain to intimidate him into performing obeisance to the lad whom they had seated on the throne, preserved his serenity amid the most imminent danger, and thus extricated himself and saved the palace and the city from becoming the scene of massacre and pillage.

If any of our readers have ever been induced to attend the meetings occasionally got up in London by the agents of the Ex-Rajah of Sattaralı, they will be able to appreciate the justness of the following remark of Mr. Thornton on that chieftain's case:

"Of all the powers of India, that of the Mahrattas is the least calculated to call forth honest sympathy; and a foreign apologist can scarcely be listened to with patience, because it is scarcely possible that he should be believed to be sincere. If the misguided princes of the East, who lavish large sums in the purchase of European agency, were aware of the precise value of that agency, they would soon withhold their useless liberality, and retain in their coffers the wealth they so dearly prize, but which in such instances they dispense so foolishly." -P. 93.

We come now to the only one of these preliminary topics upon which we can afford to enlarge, and that is the Press.

of addresses, as the object of it was superior to the common run of men.

The first steps in the career of public life of one who could thus go on to the very end, awakening affection wherever he went, and accumulating it as he advanced on his course, must be an object of no idle curiosity to all who like to watch the development of a powerful mind in its dealings with the world. The young Charles Metcalfe went to India about the year 1802, and after passing with credit through the college, then just founded in Calcutta, was appointed to be an assistant in the Governor-General's office. Getting excited by the stirring events then passing in upper India, he asked for and obtained Lord Wellesley's permission to proceed and join the grand army assembling at Agra, under Lord Lake, towards the end of the year 1804. This was at the time when the disaster, known by the name of Monson's retreat, had checked but not shaken our power. The emergency was met with commensurate energy, and the Commander-in-Chief equally beloved by the Native as by the European soldier, was in the field to repair whatever mischief had been done.

The post of the Governor-General's Political Agent with the army--a post, as we shall show in the sequel, often necessary, but always invidious-was filled by Mr. Græme Mercer, to whom young Metcalfe was appointed to be an assistant. He went by Dawke, (that is in a palankeen with relays of bearers,) from Calcutta, and was attacked on the road between Lucknow and Cawnpore by banditti, in his encounter with whom he lost the top joint of the fore-finger of his right hand. This compelled him to stop for a short time at Cawnpore, but he joined the army on the day when it took up its ground at Muttra on the Jumna, about 30 miles above Agra, where our enemy Holkar had been previously encamped.

Mr. Mercer, the Political Agent, had a seat at the general table of Lord Lake, with all the rest of the staff, and his assistant Metcalfe was necessarily admitted to the same privilege. There is reason to believe that Lord Lake did not like this young assistant's coming up in the way he did, without any previous reference to him, and the more so, probably, because he came from the Governor-General's office, where all the young men were more or less in Lord Wellesley's confidence. In his secret soul the old warrior probably regarded the civilian as a spy, and being a very abrupt plain-speaking man and not over discreet, he is said to have given vent to this feeling in terms by no means complimentary to his new guest, sneering at the same time at those whose business it was, without risk to themselves, to comment upon the actions of others who were daily encountering danger.

The late Lord Metcalfe-" The Politicals."

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The position of the young civilian, enduring such a slight from the Commander-in-Chief at his own table, must have been very embarrassing. To resent it would have been absurd; yet something to counteract its effect was absolutely necessary for the maintenance of his own character. With a judgment and nerve rarely to be found united at so early an age, he seized the first occasion of a service of danger to take the point from one part of the reproach addressed to him, while, by the tact and discrimination of his general conduct, he removed every impression of his mission being that of a spy. When the fortress of Deeg was attacked, he got the Commander-inChief's permission to accompany the storming-party, and by his gallant bearing completely won the old warrior's heart. He soon became a special favourite, and was ever after called by Lord Lake, "his little stormer." We can vouch for the accuracy of this anecdote, and we think it well worthy of record, were it only for the light it throws on the position of a class of officers in some degree peculiar to British India, whose duties are ill understood at home, where their actions have consequently been of late not a little misrepresented.

We allude to the Political Agents, or "the Politicals," as it is now the fashion to call them.

In running down this section of the service, men in and out of Parliament, men with and without Indian experience, have joined together with a harmony of virulence, indicative one might almost think, of some common motive of greater force than a mere concurrence of opinion on a matter of official expediency. The very constitution of the department is misrepresented, even by some who affect a familiarity with the details of Indian administration; and in a recent Number of a contemporary Journal it is spoken of as if composed principally if not exclusively of members of the Civil Service. Now the fact is, that though many members of that service have risen to the highest places in the political department, still the department itself is open to the aspiring of every branch of the Indian service. În proof of what we say, it is only necessary to mention, that although Lord Metcalfe, the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, Sir R. Jenkins, and Sir W. Macnaghten, were civilians, their contemporary political agents, Sir J. Malcolm, Sir D. Ochterlony, SirT. Munro, and Sir H. Pottinger, were military men, while Mr. Græme Mercer, under whom Lord Metcalfe began his career, belonged to the medical branch of the service.

The functions of the department are as little understood as its composition; and we find it spoken of in the article above noticed

Quarterly Review for October, 1846. Article VII,