e
been provided by the same providential foresight as the intellectual
and the spiritual. We have seen how, when he was far enough advanced
in his translation, Carey amid the swamps of Dinapoor looked to England
for press, type, paper, and printer. He got the last, William Ward, a
man of his own selection, worthy to be his colleague. But he had
hardly despatched his letter when he found or made all the rest in
Bengal itself. It was from the old press bought in Calcutta, set up in
Mudnabati, and removed to Serampore, that the first edition of the
Bengali New Testament was printed. The few rare and venerable copies
have now a peculiar bibliographic interest; the type and the paper
alike are coarse and blurred.

Sir Charles Wilkins, the Caxton of India, had with his own hands cut
the punches and cast the types from which Halhed's Bengali grammar was
printed at Hoogli in 1778. He taught the art to a native blacksmith,
Panchanan, who went to Serampore in search of work just when Carey was
in despair for a fount of the sacred Devanagari type for his Sanskirt
grammar, and for founts of the other languages besides Bengali which
had never been printed. They thus tell the story in a Memoir Relative
to the Translations, published in 1807:--

"It will be obvious that in the present state of things in India it was
in many instances necessary to cast new founts of types in several of
these languages. Happily for us and India at large Wilkins had led the
way in this department; and by persevering industry, the value of which
can scarcely be appreciated, under the greatest disadvantages with
respect to materials and workmen, had brought the Bengali to a high
degree of perfection. Soon after our settling at Serampore the
providence of God brought to us the very artist who had wrought with
Wilkins in that work, and in a great measure imbibed his ideas. By his
assistance we erected a letter-foundry; and although he is now dead, he
had so fully communicated his art to a number of others, that they
carry forward the work of type-casting, and even of cutting the
matrices, with a degree of accuracy which would not disgrace European
artists. These have cast for us two or three founts of Bengali; and we
are now employing them in casting a fount on a construction which bids
fair to diminish the expense of paper, and the size of the book at
least one-fourth, without affecting the legibility of the character.
Of the Devanagari characte