nnell, Dean of
Winchester, but was withheld from publication for the strange reason that
there was so strong an aversion to the establishment of episcopacy in
India, that it was thought better not to attract attention to the fact
that had just been accomplished.

Bishop Middleton, his wife, and two of his Archdeacons (the third was
already in India) sailed on the 8th of June, 1814, and they landed at
Calcutta on the 28th of November. There was no public reception, for
fear of alarming the natives, though, on the other hand, they were found
to entertain a better opinion of the English on finding they respected
their own religion. The difficulties of the Bishop's arrival were
increased by the absence of Lord Moira, the Governor-General, who was
engaged in the Nepaulese war; and as no house had been provided for the
Bishop, he had to be the guest of Mr. Seton, a member of the Council,
till a house could be procured, at a high rent.

One of the first visitors was a Hindoo gentleman, who told him, "Sir
William Jones was a great man and understood our books, but he attended
only to our law. Your lordship will study our religion; your people
mistake our religion; it is not in our books. The Brahminee religion and
your lordship's are the same; we mean the same thing."

The man seems to have been one of those of whom there are now only too
many in India, who have thrown off their old superstitions only to
believe in nothing, save the existence of a Supreme Being, and who fancy
that all other religions can be simplified into the like. This is the
class that has, for the seventy years during which Christianity has been
preached in earnest, been the alternate hope and anxiety of the
missionary; intellectually renouncing their own paganism, but withheld by
the prejudices of their families from giving up the heathenish customs of
caste; admiring divine morality, but not perceiving the inability of man
to attain the standard; and refusing to accept the mysteries in the
supernatural portion of Revelation. Such was probably Serfojee; such was
the celebrated Brahmin Ram Mohun Roy, with whom Bishop Middleton had much
discussion, and of whom he had at one time many hopes, a man of very
remarkable powers of mind and clear practical intelligence. Roy's
endeavour at first was to purify the native forms of religion, and,
recurring to the Vedas, to find a high philosophy in them; but he and the
friends he gathered round him soon became