their work
is chiefly noticeable for the characters and adventures of Dr. Judson and
his three wives, and for the interesting display of Buddhism in contact
with Christianity. According to the statistics in an American Missionary
Dictionary, the work they founded has not fallen to the ground either at
Moulmein or Rangoon; while there has also sprung up a hopeful English
Church Mission in the same quarter. The last thing I saw about it was a
mention of the neatness and dexterity of Burmese girls as needlewomen.

Samuel Marsden may be called the patriarch of Australasian Christianity.
There is something grand in the bravery of the bullet-headed
Yorkshireman, now contending with the brutality of the convicts and their
masters, now sleeping among the cannibals of New Zealand. His
foundations, too, have received a superstructure on which we cannot
dwell; because, happily, the first Bishop of New Zealand is not yet a
subject for biography, and the Melanesian Mission, which has sprung out
of it, has not yet seen its first generation.

The Polynesian work, of which John Williams was the martyr and the
representative man, has chiefly been carried on by the London Mission. It
has always been a principle with the Missionaries of the Anglican Church,
whose centre has been first New Zealand, then Norfolk Island, never to
enter upon any islands pre-occupied by Christian teachers of any
denomination, since there is no lack of wholly unoccupied ground, without
perplexing the spirit of the natives with the spectacle of "our unhappy
divisions;" and thus while Melanesia is for the most part left to the
Church, Polynesia is in the hands of the London Mission. Much good has
been effected. The difficulty is that, for want of supervision,
individual Missionaries are too much left to themselves, and are in
danger of becoming too despotic in their islands. At least such is the
impression they sometimes give to officers of the navy. French
aggression has much disturbed them both in Tahiti and in the Loyalty
Islands, and the introduction of Roman Catholic priests into their
territory is bitterly resented. On the whole, observers tolerably
impartial think that the civilization which these married teachers bring
with them has a happier effect as an example and stimulus to the natives
than the solitary ascetic priest,--a true, self-devoted saint indeed but
unable to win the attention of the people in their present condition. In
India, wh