n see, is reparable in a much shorter time than I
should at first have supposed. The Tamil fount of types was the first
that we began to recast. I expect it will be finished by the end of
this week, just a fortnight after it was begun. The next will be the
small Devanagari, for the Hindostani Scriptures, and next the larger
for the Sanskrit. I hope this will be completed in another month. The
other founts, viz., Bengali, Orissa, Sikh, Telinga, Singhalese,
Mahratta, Burman, Kashmeerian, Arabic, Persian, and Chinese, will
follow in order, and will probably be finished in six or seven months,
except the Chinese, which will take more than a year to replace it. I
trust, therefore, that we shall not be greatly delayed. Our English
works will be delayed the longest; but in general they are of the least
importance. Of MSS. burnt I have suffered the most; that is, what was
actually prepared by me, and what owes its whole revision for the press
to me, comprise the principal part of the MSS. consumed. The ground
must be trodden over again, but no delay in printing need arise from
that. The translations are all written out first by pundits in the
different languages, except the Sanskrit which is dictated by me to an
amanuensis. The Sikh, Mahratta, Hindostani, Orissa, Telinga, Assam,
and Kurnata are re-translating in rough by pundits who have been long
accustomed to their work, and have gone over the ground before. I
follow them in revise, the chief part of which is done as the sheets
pass through the press, and is by far the heaviest part of the work.
Of the Sanskrit only the second book of Samuel and the first book of
Kings were lost. Scarcely any of the Orissa, and none of the
Kashmeerian or of the Burman MSS. were lost--copy for about thirty
pages of my Bengali dictionary, the whole copy of a Telinga grammar,
part of the copy of the grammar of Punjabi or Sikh language, and all
the materials which I had been long collecting for a dictionary of all
the languages derived from the Sanskrit. I hope, however, to be
enabled to repair the loss, and to complete my favourite scheme, if my
life be prolonged."

Little did these simple scholars, all absorbed in their work, dream
that this fire would prove to be the means of making them and their
work famous all over Europe and America as well as India. Men of every
Christian school, and men interested only in the literary and secular
side of their enterprise, had their active s