are daily receiving instruction in all branches of education, from the lowest to the highest, according to their several ages and capacities. Its superintendents (five in number) having felt it to be their duty, on occasion of the recent disruption of the Scotch Establishment, to adhere to that body that now constitutes the Free Church of Scotland, the patronage and support of the Institution has of course been transferred to that body; and the Institution of the Free Church of Scotland is, as the General Assembly's Institution was before, one of the noblest of all the Institutions that have originated in British philanthropy. While the instruction communicated ranges from the lowest that is given in the humblest village school in Britain, to the highest that is imparted in the halls and classrooms of her universities, it is all based upon, and cemented with, pure and scriptural Christianity. Hinduism is ever represented in its true colors, as a system of absurdity and deceit; no profession is ever made of a compromise with it; and yet this is by far the most largely attended educational establishment in India. Upwards of twelve hundred youths of all castes and classes are enrolled as its pupils, and within a very few of a thousand daily convene in its halls. Surely the man must either be of very obtuse perception or of a very cold heart, who can regard this phenomenon without emotions of no ordinary kind. And now we must take leave of this interesting subject, by again expressing our conviction that the vivid religious interest which was first diffused throughout England by the simple and unpretending letters of Carey, and Martyn, and Marshman, and Thomason, and which now requires a supply of such literature as that of which Dr. Duff's work is a specimen, cannot but be productive of the greatest benefit to India. This Missionary literature has already supplied an important blank in our knowledge of the world we dwell in, and of our brethren who dwell in it along with us. Within a very few years we have had "Ellis's Polynesia," and "William's Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea Islands," and " Medhurst's China" and Moffat's South Africa," besides various works of high merit relating to India. We believe we may safely say that these works, viewed without reference at all to their special objects as bearing upon the spread of the gospel, are to the man of literature, to the philosopher, to the geographer and to the philanthropist, among the most important works that have issued from the press for a long time. This is as it ought to be. The spread of truth is the cause of God: and it is fitting that those who are employed in the spread of the most import 66 ant of all truth should not despise, in its measure and degree, that truth which, though subordinate to that which they are specially called to promulgate, is yet of common origin with it, and fitted in its place to work out the ends and purposes of Him who is the source and fountain of all truth, the only real enlightener of the minds of his rational creatures. It is pleasing to see that before this influence of Missionary literature began in any considerable degree to be realized, it was very clearly anticipated by one of the most eloquent writers of our day, Mr. Douglas of Cavers, with an extract from whose "Hints on Missions," published so long ago as 1822, we shall close this article: "Between Christians and those who are called philosophers, a great and impassable gulph seems fixed; while the first are interested in nothing but what concerns the next world, the second neither care for nor believe in any thing but "the world of to-day," as the Mahometans speak. It is rather singular, however, that those who are looking to the future and the invisible, are the men of action; and that those, whose only world is the present, have never advanced one step beyond professions of philanthropy, nor made the least effort to introduce the improvements of philosophy into the greatest and uncivilized portion of the world. Still it is to be regretted, that Christians will not shew them what Christian benevolence can do for the comforts and embellishments even of this transitory life, and thus there might be some common feeling between two parties, who might gain much by mutual intercourse. The Missionaries, instead of filling their journals with the experiences of particular converts, which have often more connexion with the state of the body than the soul, might be gaining experience themselves of the climate and the country, the modes of thinking, and the prevalent superstitious notions of the people by whom they are surrounded. Whatever they hear or see is matter of information, and of information important to the Mission. In the language, they have both the medium of communication, and the index of forgotten thoughts and events; in the national music and songs, they have the record and the vehicle of the national feelings; and in the tales and superstitions, they have the impression of what the national mind is, and the promise of what it is likely to become, in its strength and in its weakness, in its errors, its aspirings, and its dreams. All around bears on the object on which they have to operate-Man. The order of the rocks determines the soil; the soil the vegetables; the vegetables the animals; and, in the aspects of nature, and the events of history, they possess what constitutes the nation. A person must be sans eyes, sans ears, sans every thing, who can write a Journal interesting only to the religious world, when dated from Benares, Lattakoo, or Selinginsk. Every one at these stations has the power of commanding attention from all who are possessed of any general information; and by one simple process, philosophers, however they might be scared at the mention of the soul, or a future state, would be forced to read through the Missionary Journals. Let a register of the weather be kept: the directions of the winds noted; regular observations made of the thermometer, and, if possible, of the barometer, the Journals of Missionaries will be received with a very different degree of interest by the world at large. Nor would the necessity of making two regular entries into a journal be useless to the Missionaries themselves, in enforcing habits of regularity and observation upon them; while scientific men would łose a little of the terror, which the strangeness of religious notions never fails to excite. This apparently simple measure, and easy of execution, would place Missions in an entirely new light. Missionaries have been considered as a set of ignorant fanatics, unworthy of any attention or sympathy; they have it in their power, by a series of simple observations, to take away that reproach for ever, and to present the most magnificent range of experiences, that has ever been made to science. Every variation of heat from Greenland to the Cape, from Siberia to New Zealand—the direction of the winds, and the fluctuation of the atmosphere from Benares to Astrachan, and from Astrachan to the mouth of the Columbia, might be transmitted regularly to Britain; and, as Missionaries increase, new lines would intersect each other, and other zones of observation be stretched across the globe. Scripture has represented the Renovation of the World under the Image of the Wilderness assuming verdure and the Aspect of Cultivation. It would be a beautiful fulfilment of the prophecy, that it should at once have a double accomplishment, that Nature, receiving fresh beauties aud new riches from the hands of the Missionaries and their converts, should be an outward and visible emblem of that change which had taken place in the mind of man. Let us hope to see the day when all the blessings of civilization will follow more speedily and amply in the train of Missions, than they did of old the conquests and colonies of Rome, and that Missionaries will scatter with a liberal hand the germe of all the arts, and the seeds of all the natural productions, as well as the seminal principle of a better and God-like Nature, Naturae melioris origo, the ever-expanding germe of Renovation and Immortality." We have only to add in a single sentence that we have not professed or attempted to give a regular review of the work before us. We have only alluded to a very few of the important topics on which it treats, and to these with the view of illustrating a special subject. We most cordially recommend to our readers to study the work itself, if they have not done so already. ART. III.—1. On the Influence of Tropical Climates on European constitutions; by James Johnson, M. D. &c. and J. R. Martin. Sixth Edition. London, 1841. 2. Medical advice to the Indian Stranger. By James McCosh. London, 1842. 3. Life in the Sick Room. London, 1844. WHEN India unvisited becomes India visited-when the ideal gives place to the real, and we see and feel, with our waking senses, clearly and palpably, what before we had only dimly dreamt, how many vain delusions are dispersed how manly idle phantoms of the brain plunged headlong into the limbo of vanity. But one impression early fixed upon the mind, though by the young and joyous scarcely heeded, retains its place, as years advance, and we, with advancing years, think more soberly and sadly of the stern realities of life-one impression, which gathers strength and fixedness, and never, never passes away-one impression, of the truth of which experience heaps up evidence upon evidence, and forbids the intrusion of a doubt. The realities of Indian life do not teach us that we are in error, when we set down the climate of the East as pernicious to the health of the exotic European, whose lot is cast beneath a tropical sun. We do not learn, when the dust of Hindustan is on our feet, that India is not a land of sickness. We do not learn that the climate, for which we have exchanged the sunless skies and wintry springs of our own western island, is mild and salubrious; that the gentle breezes, which fan the spicy groves of Ind, waft the blessings of health across the fair land, and bring measureless enjoyment to the senses of all within their refreshing influence-No; let us endeavour to deceive ourselves as we may let us solace ourselves by drawing general conclusions from individual instances (happy the man, who finds one in his own person!)-let us revive the recollection, as forcibly as we may, of the miseries of our dreary England-still the truth is not to be gainsaid that the climate of India is a baneful climate; and that the average health of the European residents in India is very, very mournfully low. We are, by no means, prone to exaggerate. We laugh at the ignorant apprehensions of those, who think that a fever crouches in the turn of every road; that the dust is charged with hepatitis; that the rain is laden with dysentery; and that the very air of heaven is set in motion by the wings of the Azrael of cholera. We do not wish to encourage the belief that the country, in which the lot of so many Britons is cast, is one Where all life dies; death lives and nature breeds, India is not necessarily a huge coffin, nor the sky above it a mighty pall. Many exist here; some live. Death, it is true, mows down its tens and its hundreds-and often with frightful rapidity; but do not fearful epidemics have full sway in all countries do we not read, in the chronicles of European nations, of plagues and distempers and scarcely less fatal influenzas, which destroy multitudes in a season; and is there not ever at work a power which silently destroys whole families, in a manner which we dwellers in the East scarcely dream of; unless, perchance, whilst we are living-perhaps, thriving in the East, we find that our brethren and sisters in the West are following each other in mournful succession to the grave? We have much to contend against in this country; but there are two mighty evils, from which a compensating Providence vouchsafes to deliver us dwellers in the East-the one Consumption, the other Contagion. Rarely is it that the fears of the English in India are excited by either of these great destroyers. The contagious disorders which prevail in India are few, when compared with those which riot at home;* and the hectic cheek, and the hollow cough, and the prominent blue veins, which tell so true a tale of the progress of Consumption, are manifestations which in this country are seldom or never presented to the senses to pain the heart. Still, regardful of these favorable dispensations, it must in all candour be acknowledged that the average of good health in India is lamentably small. Occasional instances-rari nantes -of men, who boast that they are more robust in India than in England, may present themselves to prove the rule by affording the exception; but setting aside altogether the question, or rather the no-question, of comparative mortality, we cannot disguise the fact that the number of sufferers, from disease, in one form or another, among the British residents in India, is out of all proportion to the numbers, which suffer in like manner at home.t This is one of those facts, which it is scarcely necessary to propound, in any other form than an admitted truism. It has been established by observation that out of every 1,000 British troops, stationed in our own Island, 787 are annually attacked by disease, in some shape or other, and that the proportion of deaths to patients under treatment is as 1 to 71; whilst out of every 1,000 British troops in the presidency of Bengal there are 1,717 admissions into hospital in the course of the year, and that one death occurs in every 30 cases. In other words, that the amount of disease among Europeans in India is considerably more than double, and that of mortality upwards of four times, the amount which prevails among the same class of residents "at home.” In the case of the common soldier, we perceive the effects of a tropical climate upon the European constitution, without any of those abatements and mitigations, which, in our present Small-pox is sometimes lamentably fatal even India, but such visitations occur at long intervals. tious fevers, which destroy so many at home, are and hooping cough are experienced in a mild form. among European residents in Scarlet and typhus-all infecunknown in India. Measles + Regard, of course, being had, in this comparative estimate, to the period of life during which the European generally resides in India-from 18 to 50-neither extremes of youth and age, when death is most active, being taken into the account. From a report prepared by Dr. A. S. Thomson, and quoted by Mr. Hutchinson in his work on the Medical Management of Indian jails. K |