missionary spirit in
England. Yet, as an individual preacher and teacher, he does not seem to
have had much power. His talent was for language and philology; his
perfections were faith and perseverance. In these he was a giant; in
everything else, whether as a cobbler, schoolmaster, indigo-planter, nay,
even as father of a family, he was a failure: but his steady, faithful
purpose enabled him so to use that one talent as to make him the pioneer
and the support as well as the example of numbers better qualified for
the actual work than himself.

His loss left Dr. Marshman alone, and suffering from melancholy more and
more, as well as much harassed by difficulties as to the resources, and
by captious complaints from home. In 1836, a great shock was given to
his nerves by the danger of his daughter. She was the wife of Lieutenant
Henry Havelock, a young officer, who, deeply impressed by Dr. Marshman's
piety, had joined his congregation, and who was destined to become in
after years one of the most heroic and able of the defenders of the
British cause in India. During his absence, she and her three children
had been left at Landour, when their bungalow caught fire in the middle
of the night, and blazed up with a rapidity due to its light, dry
materials. She rushed out with her baby in her arms, but in crossing the
verandah tripped and fell, losing her hold of the child. She was dragged
away by a faithful native servant, who likewise snatched out her two
eldest boys, but the poor baby was lost in the flames, and she herself
was so much injured and overwhelmed by the alarm and grief, that, when
her husband arrived, her state was almost hopeless, and he wrote a letter
preparing her father to hear of her death. From some untoward accident,
no more tidings reached Serampore for three days, and to spirits that had
already lost their balance the suspense was fatal. The aged father
wandered about the house in a purposeless manner, sometimes standing
gazing along the road through the Venetian blinds, sometimes talking
incoherently; and when at last the intelligence arrived that Mrs.
Havelock was out of danger, though his joy and thankfulness were
ecstatic, the effects of these three days were irremediable; he was
hardly ever seen to smile again, could take no part in the renewed
discussions with the Baptist Society, although his mind and memory were
still clear. He died on the 5th of December, 1837, just as the Serampore