e to bring the boy up in the Church would have
destroyed all chance of his obtaining the provinces, and probably have
deprived him of the protection of the Company, who dreaded the suspicion
of proselytizing. Still it is very disappointing, and requires all our
trust in Swartz's judgment and excellence to be satisfied that he was
right in leaving this child, who had been confided to him, all his life a
heathen. Serfojee learnt the theory of Christianity, was deeply attached
to Mr. Swartz, and lived a life very superior to that of most Hindoo
princes of his time. His faith in his hereditary paganism was probably
only political, but he never made the desperate, and no doubt perilous,
plunge of giving up all the world to save his own soul. Was it his
fault, or was it any shortcoming in the teaching that was laid before
him, and was that human honour a want of faith? It puzzles us! Here was
Swartz, from early youth to hoary hairs unwavering in the work of the
Gospel, gathering in multitudes to the Church, often at great peril to
himself, yet holding back from bringing into the fold the child who had
been committed to him, and, as far as we can see, without any stipulation
to the contrary. Probably he thought it right to leave Serfojee's
decision uninfluenced until his education should be complete, and was
disappointed that the force of old custom and the danger of change were
then too strong for him; and thus it was that Serfojee was only one of
the many half-reclaimed Indian princes who have lived out their dreary,
useless lives under English protection, without accepting the one pearl
of great price which could alone have made them gainers.

It is just possible that there may have been too much of a certain sort
of acquiescence in Swartz's mind, missionary as he was. He did not
attack the system of caste, with its multitudinous separations and
distinctions. Of course he wished it to be abolished, but he accepted
converts without requiring its renunciation, allowed high-caste persons
to sit apart in the churches, and to communicate before Pariahs, and did
not interfere with their habits of touching no food that the very finger
of a person of a different caste had defiled. He no doubt thought these
things would wither away of themselves, but his having permitted them,
left a world of difficulty to his successors.

He lived, however, the life of a saint, nearly that of an ascetic. His
almost unfurnished house was