was
appalling. The old Colonel-commandant had not heard a sermon for twenty
years, and thought every sentence on the text, "Walk in love," was a
personal attack on himself. He refused to attend another service, or to
bid the Bishop farewell! And when the Holy Communion was celebrated,
nobody knew what the offertory meant, and scarcely any one was prepared
to respond.

Yet in contrast to these English, a small band of Hindoos, four men, six
women, and five children, presented themselves, asking permission to join
in the service, and to have their children baptized. They had been once
Roman Catholics, but an old Dutchwoman from Ceylon had taught them most
of what they knew; and they had a Hindostanee prayer-book, whence they
held a service every Sunday, but leaving out the Absolution and
Benediction, which they rightly perceived to be priestly functions. Two
of them were servants to an English officer, and they were all nearly
related. They were perfectly respectable and trustworthy, and looked
well dressed and intelligent. The Bishop tried to bring about an
application from the Company to the Nizam, to defray the expenses of an
occasional visit from a chaplain to the Christian officers and residents
in his employ, but he was answered that "it would form a dangerous
precedent."

The next step was into the Bengal presidency, always with the same kind
of adventures; quaint civilities of the presentation of flowery garlands
bedecking the neck and arms, given by the native princes, with a
sprinkling of rose-water, and sometimes an anointing with oil; and then
an endeavour to stir into Christian life the neglected English military
and civil officers stationed in their dominions.

One of these, a gentleman of good birth and repute, actually went on
smoking and gurgling his hookah when the Bishop was beginning family
prayers, apparently with no more perception that it was anything that
concerned him than if he had seen a Mahometan turning to Mecca, or a
Parsee saluting the rising sun. Indeed many of these Company's servants
had been sent out when fourteen or fifteen years old; and, if in a remote
station, had been left without anything external whatever to remind them
of Christianity.

This journey extended to the Himalayas, where the Bishop had four months'
repose at Simlah, then in its infancy as a resort for wearied East
Indians; and on his descent from thence, his first halting-place was
Kurnaul, where he found