ed his garden, and always for others,
until he created at Serampore the botanical park which for more than
half a century was unique in Southern Asia.

We have in a letter from the Manse, Paulerspury, a tradition of the
impression made on the dull rustics by the dawning genius of the youth
whom they but dimly comprehended. He went amongst them under the
nickname of Columbus, and they would say, "Well, if you won't play,
preach us a sermon," which he would do. Mounting on an old dwarf
witch-elm about seven feet high, where several could sit, he would hold
forth. This seems to have been a resort of his for reading, his
favourite occupation. The same authority tells how, when suffering
toothache, he allowed his companions to drag the tooth from his head
with a violent jerk, by tying around it a string attached to a wheel
used to grind malt, to which they gave a sharp turn.

The boy's own peculiar room was a little library as well as museum of
natural history. He possessed a few books, which indeed were many for
those days, but he borrowed more from the whole country-side.
Recalling the eight years of his intellectual apprenticeship till he
was fourteen, from the serene height of his missionary standard, he
wrote long after:--"I chose to read books of science, history, voyages,
etc., more than any others. Novels and plays always disgusted me, and
I avoided them as much as I did books of religion, and perhaps from the
same motive. I was better pleased with romances, and this circumstance
made me read the Pilgrim's Progress with eagerness, though to no
purpose." The new era, of which he was to be the aggressive spiritual
representative from Christendom, had not dawned. Walter Scott was ten
years his junior. Captain Cook had not discovered the Sandwich Islands,
and was only returning from the second of his three voyages while Carey
was still at school. The church services and the watchfulness of his
father supplied the directly moral training which his grandmother had
begun.

The Paulerspury living of St. James is a valuable rectory in the gift
of New College, Oxford. Originally built in Early English, and rebuilt
in 1844, the church must have presented a still more venerable
appearance a century ago than it does now, with its noble tower in the
Perpendicular, and chancel in the Decorated style, dominating all the
county. Then, as still, effigies of a Paveli and his wife, and of Sir
Arthur Throckmorton and his w