of what he leaves. If a friend, of the other sex, calls upon her husband, she retires. She is veiled, or goes in a covered palanquin if she leaves the house. She never mixes in public companies. She derives no knowledge from the other sex, except from the stories to which she may listen from the mouth of a religious mendicant. She is, in fact, a mere animal kept for burden or for slaughter in the house of her husband. A case lately occurred in Calcutta, of a girl being burnt alive on the funeral pile with the dead body of the youth with whom she was that day to have been married. You will be prepared now, Ladies, to expect that such a system of mental darkness will have rendered the sex, in India, the devoted victims of idolatry and such victims no other country, however savage, however be nighted, can boast. What must be the state of the female mind, when millions are found throwing the children of their vows into the sea; when a guard of Hindoo soldiers is necessary to prevent mothers throwing their living children into the jaws of the alligators, these mothers standing and watching the animal while it crushes the bones, tears the flesh, and drinks the blood of their own offspring! How deplorable the condition of your sex, when superstition thus extinguishes every sensibility of the female, and every feeling of the mother, and makes her more savage than the tiger which howls in the forest, which always spares and cherishes its own offspring

At the calls of superstition, many females immolate themselves by a voluntary death in the sacred rivers of India. A friend of mine, at the junction of the Jumna and the Ganges, at Allahabad, in one morning, saw, from his own window, sixteen females, with pans of water fastened to their sides, sink themselves in the river, a few bubbles of air arising only to the surface of the water after they were gone down. The drowning of so many kittens in England would excite more horror here, than the drowning of sixteen of your own sex in India!

But horrors still deeper are connect

ed with the state of female society in India. The English magistrates in the presidency of Bengal, in their annual official returns to the Calcutta government, state, that in the year 1817, (three years ago,) 706 women, widows, were either burnt alive or buried alive with the dead bodies of their husbands, in that part of British India. Is there any thing like this in the whole records of time? Have fires like these, and so numerous, ever been kindled any where else on earth-or graves like these ever been opened? Two females roasted alive every day in one part of British India alone! At noon-day, and in the presence of numerous spectators, the poor widow, ensnared and drawn to the funeral pile, is tied to the dead body, pressed down on the faggots by strong levers, and burnt alive, her screams amidst the flames being drowned by shouts and music. Amidst the spectators is her own son, her first-born, who, tremendous idea! has set fire to the pile, and watches the progress of the flames which are to consume the living mother to ashes, the mother who fed him from her breast, and dandled him on her knees, and who once looked up to him as the support of the declining days of herself and his father.

I have seen three widows thus burnt alive, and could have witnessed many more such spectacles, had they not been too much for my feelings. Other widows are buried alive: here the female takes the dead body upon her knees, as she sits in the centre of a deep grave, and her children and relations, who have prepared the grave, throw in the earth around her: two of these descend into the grave and trample the earth with their feet around the body of the widow. She sits an unremonstrating spectator of the process: the earth rises higher and higher around her; at length it reaches the head, when the remaining earth is thrown with haste upon her, and these children and relations mount the grave, and trample upon the head of the expiring victim!!

O ye British mothers-ye British widows, to whom shall these desolate beings look? In whose ears shall

these thousands of orphans cry, losing father and mother in one day, if not to you? Where shall we go? In what corner of this miserable world, full of the habitations of cruelty, shall we find female society like thiswidows and orphans like these? Seventy-five millions in this state of ignorance! Say, how long, ye who never saw a tear, but ye wiped it away-a wound, but ye attempted to heal it a human sufferer, but ye poured consolation into his heart how long shall these fires burn—these graves be opened?, The appeal, my fair country women, is to you, to every female in Britain. Government may do much to put an end to these immolations; but, without the communication of knowledge, these fires can never be wholly quenched, nor can your sex in India ever rise to that state to which Divine Providence has destined them.

Don't despair-the victims are nu

merous; but on that account shall the life-boat not leave the shore? There can hardly be a misery connected with human existence, which the pity and the zeal of British females, under the blessing of Provi dence, is not able to remove; and if this dreadful case be properly felt in every town of the United Kingdom, these immolations must shortly cease for ever.

Schools must be commencedknowledge must be communicated; and then the Hindoo female will be behind none of her sex in the charms which adorn the female character--in no mental elevation to which the highest rank of British females have attained. Other triumphs of humanity may have been gained by our Howards, our Clarksons, our Wilberforces; but this emancipation of the females and widows of British India must be the work of the British Fair. (Signed) W.W.

The pious men who first converted and civilized our own still ruder ancestors, little foresaw the result of their meritorious labours in a remote island, separated from the extremity of the West: they were many a century at rest in their graves, before the world had seen the glories of the British Empire, the faith and purity of the English Church.

The future prosperity of this Island, the religious, moral, and social character of its inhabitants, will depend upon the pains that are takes, by those who have the power, for their improvement. Let us beware of yielding to that perverse reasoning, or to that torpid indifference to the good of our fellow-men, which would persuade us that we are living among a people incapable of receiving, with sincerity and conviction, those Holy Scriptures which have never been fairly offered without success, nor ever possessed without a blessed influence upon the believer's heart. The very supposition of such a mon

strous exception to the order of Divine Providence is to blaspheme the Word, and to libel the work of God. Difficulties to retard the progress of the Gospel exist; but none that patience and zeal cannot surmount. These difficulties should be known, and when their full dimensions are once ascertained, when the proper course to overcome them is once laid down, they should be dismissed from the thoughts.

The mind which permits itself to dwell with complacence upon obstacles or impediments in the execution of any great design, will begin to doubt, and doubt will soon degenerate into despondence, the bane of every generous attempt, for hope is the very spring of all energetic action. There is no ground for doubt or hesitation upon the propriety of a design to convert, and enlighten our fellowcreatures unto salvation, through a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; the means are good, and the end is great.

exhausted with enquiries at the gate of the palace, I went in, and found the Commissioner of Revenue, Mr. Sawyers, whose kindness to brother Ault had endeared his name to me. He most politely offered accommodation during my stay. So many striking instances of favour from the Supreme, as I had experienced on the journey, filled my heart with gratitude.

Before I enter upon any description of this place, it may not be improper, perhaps, to glance over the ground we have passed. Cities or towns we found none; and large villages, according to European ideas, were equally wanting. It is true, we had sometimes seen small collections of dwellings; but very thinly scattered, being generally many miles asunder. The Kandians are represented as desirous to shun main roads or tracks; and perhaps this may account, in some measure, for the appearance of so scanty a population. Other things have, no doubt, greatly contributed to diminish the number; especially the late unhappy rebellion, and the present awful raging of the small pox, which, in several cases, seems to have baffled the power of vaccination. But, after every allowance, no sufficient proofs exist, that any great number of inhabitants have ever occupied the Wes

tern range of the hills over which we climbed.

In many valleys, as we drew near to Kandy, the mode of cultivating the grounds, after the Chinese, has a very pleasing effect. These valleys are generally small; and the cultivator, considering his plot of grounds, takes advantage of the Fall, in order to convey the water along the sides, or down the middle, at his pleasure. He then begins at the top of the valley, or at the bottom, as best suits himself, and forms one step above another of 6, 9, or 12 inches, until his purpose is accomplished. Nothing can be more enchanting in nature, than one of these valleys, when the corn is full grown. Sometimes the hills rise very high above them in the form of an amphitheatre, clothed with large trees whose dark foliage spreads itself upwards to the dense clouds which creep along their summit, shewing a striking contrast to the lighter green, which appears below; the waters fall over the steps, as if hastening their course to supply the expanding roots with moisture. Perhaps I can give no better view of the whole, than by calling the scene, when the full blade is bending beneath the breeze, what suggested itself when I saw it---a beautiful cascade of corn.

(To be continued.)

Is it not time, that all our churches should think seriously how they may best advance the glory of Christ by the enlargement of his empire? that, after reflection, they should act harmoniously?—and that their exemplary liberality, while it adorns their profession, should furnish the means of communicating the knowledge of salvation to perishing multitudes? Let the Christian retire to his closet; and, after prayer that he may form some just views of the value of the gospel, let him look abroad on the Heathen world-let him recount his own privileges-and then let him ask himself what his Saviour requires at his hands.

In the commencement of every combined plan of this nature, pains should be taken to impress on allTHE NECESSITY OF CONTINUED EXERTIONS. It will be in vain to make a sudden effort, and then let the matter stop. There will be need of Missionaries and of Bibles, till the world shall be evangelized. It is probable that the call for these exertions will be greatly increased. All Christians should, therefore, determine, not to give up the labour while they live, and with their dying breath to press it on others.

The whole course of proceedings on the subject should be perfectly voluntary. If some Brethren and