they are capable of performing, at an unduly extravagant estimate. The Creoles of the inferior classes are little, if at all, better. The only European female ser vants available are soldiers' wives. They are few in number, as well as too commonly given to gin, bitters, and barrack habits, to be tolerated in a quiet household. There are, doubtless, exceptions to this statement, as there are to every general rule; regarding the mass it conveys the conclusion which I deduced from the information gathered in many places.

There are public baths on the Chaussée of Port Louis, opposite the Company's Garden, which are open every day, and good of their kind. The two hotels also furnish hot and cold baths. The majority of private houses are not furnished with baths of any kind.

For sea bathing, a strip of beach near the old salt pans, and within a short distance of the mouth of Grand River, has been appropriated. Small thatched huts have been erected there for the accommodation of ladies, and as the bottom is smooth, sandy, and slopes gradually towards the reef, within which, free from any danger of the invasion of sharks or other sea monsters, whose acquaintance is undesirable, this forms a sheltered and delightful spot for the most healthful of all recreations. The favourite bathing places for gentlemen are the creek at the mouth of Grand River, and a place alongside of the Tromelin causeway.

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The Mauritius must certainly be among the healthiest portions of the earth for Europeans, if immunity from some of the most severe and dangerous diseases of other countries be taken as an evidence of salubrity. To the drunken and depraved there is no safety in any climate, and they are as liable there as elsewhere to pay the penalty of their folly and vices; but for those who lead well-regulated lives, and are possessed of the means of living in comfort, the chances of prolonged existence are as great in the Mauritius as in the most favoured regions of the globe.

The formidable types of Indian fever are nearly unknown, and those of European character are so mild as to be less severe and fatal than in any other place in the world in which British troops are quartered. The mortality of those attacked is less than 1 per cent., and when the reckless habits of European soldiery, from whom the calculation is made, is taken into account, it is an indisputable proof of the singular healthiness of the climate, dependent in some degree also upon the absence of most of the causes of a class of disease too well and fatally known in India.

Of Ceylon, in conclusion, we can have little to say. It can never rival either of the lovely isles previously referred to, either in point of salubrity or general eligibility. Its sanitaria, like our Indian hill stations, are mere watering pots. Bourbon unquestionably stands at the head of the list, and the sister island will, in almost all cases, form the head-quarters of Indian visitors, thus adding the charm of variety to the other advantages of such a voyage. We should strongly recommend visitors to Bourbon to make themselves up into little parties, this disposition would render the arrangements complete, and obviate the inconveniences generally experienced by parties unacquainted with the language, and offering in other respects benefits on which it is unnecessary here to enlarge.

We conclude, as we began, by recommending these Rough Notes to all who are deliberating as to the quarter to which they shall turn their steps in pursuit of health. If they decide on following in the footsteps of our author, they will not fail to make his notes their guidebook. To the general reader, who seeks merely a lively book, des

criptive of men and manners, and the places of their habitation, the book will be an acceptable one. It is unexceptionably printed and "got up ;" and the lithographed illustrations are very creditable to Mr. C. Grant, whom, we believe, we may call the inventor of a method of illustration that we have seen adopted with good effect by artists in England, and which, we believe, will be extensively used ere long.

SANDERS, CONES AND CO., TYPS., NO. 14, LOLL BAZAR.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES.

Journal of a tour in Ceylon and India, undertaken at the request of the Baptist Missionary Society, in company with the Rev. J. Leechman, M. A., with observations and remarks. By Joshua Russel. London. 1852.

We have much pleasure in noticing this work. It is one of very little pretension, but one that we think likely to be of great use among a certain class of readers at home. Of those who take an interest in missions, a great proportion, we believe, belong to the unlearned and industrious classes. To this numerous and most important part of the Christian community at home, general works on India, and other foreign countries, are comparatively unknown; and we extend the remark even to such lighter works as journals of travellers, letters from abroad, and the like. And yet the persons of whom we speak do take an interest, more or less deep, in foreign countries, and especially in those in which are established the missions to which they are accustomed to contribute their money and their good wishes. And it is precisely to meet the wants of that class of readers, that the now prolific crop of Christian travellers' journals, Christian letters from abroad, Missionary Annuals, &c., has sprung up.

But we regard the book before us as belonging to a class which has peculiar attributes and, (we believe) for the class of readers referred to, peculiar attractions. It is a book about foreign missions, missionaries, and missionary life, by one who has seen for himself on the spot, and has formed his own independent judgment of every thing after personal investigation, but who is not a missionary. We hold this to be a great advantage, which missionary books of this kind have over those which are written by missionaries themselves. Books of this kind have certain advantages, which books of the other and more numerous class cannot have, and therefore the well-wishers of missions ought to rejoice in every addition that is made to the catalogue.

Missionaries in general go out (say to India) when they are young and inexperienced. And, although their youth may have the effect of exciting a feeling of paternal interest, as it were, in the minds of the elder portion of the Christian community at home, still the mere fact of their youth renders it impossible that they should be much more than strangers to all the members of the Church or Society with which they are connected, excepting their own personal friends, and the few congregations to which they may have once or twice ministered before going abroad. What we mean to express is, that there is a sort of severance made between the Church at home

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and its missionaries abroad, which it would be well to get rid of. It is true, that now and then a missionary goes home in bad health, and tells the good people of what he and his brethren are doing among the heathen. But to most of the people whom he addresses he is a stranger; and after all is most likely a broken-down invalid, at least for the time being, and more fit for a quiet sojourn in the country or by the sea-side, than for the stirring and laborious work of speechmaking, which seems somehow to be regarded as the natural vocation of the missionary on furlough. Now, apart from the cruelty and impolicy of asking a man to rush hither and thither, and to be always ready at a moment's notice to speechify by the hour, or (what is worse) to do the talking at some good but weak old spinster's tea party, when he ought to be exercising his feeble frame and resting his weary lungs amid the reviving and soothing influences of a quiet country life, we ask, apart from the cruelty and impolicy of such a course, is it the best that could be adopted to secure the end in view? We submit that it is not.

The end in view is to render more intelligent and more intense the interest which the Christian people at home take in the progress of missionary work abroad. Now, it is true that the best man to render that interest more intelligent is certainly the missionary himself, who is able to answer all questions, to clear up all doubts, and to rebut and expose all mis-representations. But what we maintain is this, that his testimony would, in most cases, be vastly strengthened, and rendered much more likely to reach the hearts, and, perhaps, the understandings of those whom he addresses as a stranger, if they also had their own man standing by-the man whom they had known and reverenced for years, and who could say to them, "You bade me go and see 'those things, I have gone and seen them, and I can assure you, that all 'that my friend (as I now can call him) has told you, is true, and much more which I can tell you, although his modesty leads him to pass it over."

We do not mean to insinuate that there is in general any inclination on the part of Christian people at home to doubt or disbelieve the accounts given by missionaries of the people among whom they labour, and the nature of their labours, difficulties, trials, &c. Neither do we mean to insinuate that missionaries are in general apt to err (unconsciously, we mean of course) in the way of mis-statement or exaggeration. We believe that in general the contrary is the case, and that missionaries are more careful in guarding against exaggeration of statement than the Christian people at home are in guarding against too facile belief. But still we hold, that there are many advantages in the plan adopted by the Baptist Missionary Society, of sending out a deputation to visit their mission stations, and report at head-quarters, the results of their personal inquiries. In the present instance, the deputies, Mr. Russel and Mr. Leechman, were instructed to visit the Society's stations in Ceylon and India, and to report. Mr. Leechman, we believe, was formerly a missionary in Bengal himself, so that Mr.

Russel possessed the great advantage of having for his companion one who could interpret for him, and lend him the aid of his former Indian experience in all those little difficulties in which a stranger to the country is apt to be seriously embarrassed and annoyed, especially when the stranger is an elderly gentleman, and accustomed further to the unadventurous life of an English minister of the Gospel. It is not many old gentlemen that would be willing to leave home, and go through all the fatigue and botheration of an Indian journey of several thousands of miles, for any purpose whatever ; and we are sure that very few indeed would go through the fair and foul of eastern travel with the cheerful old-school equanimity that Mr. Russel seems to have carried with him. He sleeps one night in the upper saloon of the Hindustan, and in the morning falls through the ventilationhatch into the lower saloon. This somewhat perilous adventure he quietly dismisses with the remark-" I fell on my feet, which were much 'bruised; but otherwise received no hurt." Near the end of his travels, his palki falls, and he wonders that this is only his second accident of the same kind. And so on, throughout the whole journey, he is always ready to take every thing by the right handle, to look at things that might be vexatious on the brighter side, and when occasion offers, to give vent to a vein of old-fashioned humour in a quiet, fatherly sort of joke. But he seems never to have lost sight of the serious business on which he was bent, or to have forgotten the spirit in which such a business should be gone about.

Now we conceive, that the report of a sober-minded, experienced, elderly gentleman, sent out on such a mission, is fitted to be very satisfactory both to the directors of a Society at home, and to the members generally. There are a thousand things that can be made plain in a few words by a disinterested eye-witness, which a voluminous correspondence would fail to clear up, even if they were worth the trouble. And, perhaps, the greatest demand for such explanations relates to money matters. It is not easy, for instance, for people in England, to understand how three hundred a year in Calcutta is no more than a hundred and fifty in Newcastle or Manchester, and how the parson in India must keep his carriage, while the parson at home walks on his feet. We have heard some amusing stories of the complaints sometimes made of Missionary extravagance. One man, we have heard, asked with up-turned eyes, if it was true that Bengal missionaries had poultry on their tables almost every day! Another inquired whether they had servants to fan them; while a third hinted something about silver tea-spoons and Britannia-metal forks. Now, a man of sense, who has visited the country, will be able at once to clear away all such nonsensical misunderstandings from the minds of the honest, beef-eating, sea-coal-consuming, folks who entertain them. We say a man of sense, for we have heard of an inspector of missions, who put down the hospitality which was shown to himself to the account of missionary extravagance, and who voted gharis and buggies a sinful indulgence. We believe, that he was cured of the