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DIGAH.

Extract of a Letter from Mr. Rowe to Mr. Saffery, dated Digah, Oct. 1819. MRS. RowE has removed her school, and now rents a place in a populous part of Dinapore, where she has the most flourishing Native School for boys that we have. She has boys brought to our Bungalow every Wednesday, to undergo an examination; and it is most encouraging to see what rapid progress they make. On these occasions, the greatest proficients in each class obtain chintz caps, as rewards; and these fine caps prove a powerful stimulus: such return home with a great deal of glee. Her female department is reduced to one native woman, who comes daily to her, to learn to read, and to work with her needle. She intends letting things remain in their present state, till we see what is likely to be done in our neighbourhood respecting Native Schools. Should there be a prospect of getting a regular supply of pecuniary aid, I hope she will be able to set up a Female School, that shall prove a blessing to many around us. She has lately written a Hindoosthanee spelling book, on the plan of Murray's. The master and boys of her Native School are much pleased with it, and I intend getting it printed, if I can. I am much pleased

with a Native School we have near

will be able to destroy it. The old king died last month, and his eldest grandson is now peaceably seated on the throne. Two or three of his uncles rebelled, and were put to death, together with their families and adherents. The young king is said to be amiable and enterprizing O that his heart may be prepared to receive the gospel on his first hearing it preached. Mr. Judson intended going to Ava some time in the present year, before he heard of the king's death; but we hardly know what to do now, as the mind of the young king is so entirely occupied with state affairs. We must wait the openings of Providence, and we shall, I have no doubt, be directed."

Sister W. is safely arrived at Agra, and intends doing all in her power to promote Native Schools. One of our native brethren went up with her. She writes, that on their way up, thousands of the natives listened to him with the greatest attention, and that he distributed many books.

SUMATRA.

LETTERS have been received from our brethren Evans and Burton, which anafter a pleasant passage, on the 7th of nounce their safe arrival at St. Helena, March. They speak in high terms of Bankipore. The Zemindar (land-holder) they had received from the captain and the kind and respectful attention which refuses to accept any thing for school-officers of the London; and of the Chrisrent, and he and his family are very desirous of being instructed. Some of the boys frequently come to Digah to see me, though they live about four miles off. I fear I shall not be able to set up a school on the other side the Ganges this cold season, as I intended; my funds will not admit of my doing it.

Mrs. Rowe has lately received an interesting letter from sister Judson, dated July 3. I will give you an extract. "Our prospects begin to look a little brighter than formerly in this Mission. Mr. Judson preaches publicly in a building, erected in one of the most public roads. He spends all his time there, from morning till night, in talking and preaching to all who call. Last Sabbath was a peculiarly interesting day to us. The first Burman in all this great empire was bap tized, in the presence of many of his Countrymen, who seemed to wonder at the strangeness of the ordinance. He has given good evidence of having been renewed, and is a great comfort to us in this gloomy country. We confidently hope that others will follow his example shortly, and that the religion of Christ will take deep root here, and that nothing

tian hospitality which they had experienced from the Rev. B. J. Vernon, junior Chaplain of the island, his lady, and other pious friends. It was expected for some weeks; and indeed it appears to that the ship would remain at St. Helena have been somewhat providential that they had to touch at this intermediate it was discovered that they were infected port, for on examining the ship's timbers, with the dry rot-a circumstance which might have rendered the latter part of and Mrs. Evans had both been much in. their voyage dangerous. Mrs. Burton disposed, but had derived considerable benefit from being on shore. The Carnatic putting in here on her way to Europe, our young friends were unexpectedly her family.-We hope to insert extracts gratified by seeing Mrs. Marshman and from their correspondence in our next.

N. B. We omitted to state in our last, that the £300 presented for the support of a Native Missionary, was given by Mr. John Warner of Edmonton.

Printed by J. Barfield, 91, Wardour-street.

THE

Baptist Magazine.

SEPTEMBER, 1820.

MEMOIR OF JOHN HOWARD, ESQ.

dence in distant parts of the country, he seems never to have dissolved the connexion.

THE celebrated John Howard, frequently called the Philanthropist, was born, about 1727, at Clapton, near Hackney, whither His medical attendants thinkhis father had a short time before ing his constitution disposed to removed from Enfield, to which be consumptive, put him on a place he had retired from his bu- very rigorous dietetic regimen, siness of an upholsterer and car- which is said, by one of his biopet warehouseman, which he had graphers, to have "laid the founcarried on in Long-lane, Smith-dation of that extraordinary abfield, and by which he had acquired a considerable fortune.

The house in which the subject of this Memoir was born, is described in a sketch of his life, written some years since, as his own freehold, and as a venerable mansion, situated on the western side of the street. It is now much decayed, and has lately been disfigured.

stemiousness, and indifference to the gratifications of the palate, which ever after so much distinguished him." But notwithstanding these precautions, he was attacked with a severe fit of illness in the house of Mrs. Sarah Laidaire, a widow lady of small independent property, residing in Church-street, Newington, to whose apartments he had reThe church to which he was moved, in consequence of not first united was of the Indepen- meeting with the attention he dent denomination at Stoke New-thought he had a right to expect, ington, then under the pastoral from the person beneath whose care of the Rev. Micaiah Towns-roof he had taken up his abode end. Of this church he was ad- as a lodger, on his first coming mitted a member, but at what to live in this village. He expeprecise period of his life we have rienced, on the part of his landnot been able to ascertain, the lady, so many marks of kind atearlier records of the proceedings tention during his sickness, that of the church still flourishing upon his recovery he was induced, there (if any such were at that by a grateful recollection of her time kept) having been either kindness, contrasted with the mislaid or destroyed; and not- utter want of it in his former rewithstanding his subsequent resi- sidence, to make her an offer of

VOL. XII.

S B

taken in a packet, in the castle of
that place. Here his sufferings
were but little, if at all, diminish-
ed; for after being cast with the
crew, and the rest of the passen-

his hand in marriage, though she was twice his age, extremely sickly, and very much his inferior in point of fortune. Against this unexpected proposal the lady made many remonstrances, prin-gers, into a filthy dungeon, and cipally upon the ground of the there kept a considerable time great disparity in their ages; but without nourishment, a joint of Mr. Howard being firm to his mutton was at length thrown into purpose, the union took place, the midst of them, which, for it is believed in the year 1752, want of the accommodation of so he being then in about the twenty- much as a solitary knife, they fifth year of his age, and his bride were obliged to tear to pieces, and gnaw like dogs. In this dunin her fifty-second. geon he and his companions in misfortune continued nearly a week, having been compelled to lie for six nights upon the floor of their miserable dungeon, with nothing but shelter them from its noxious damps.

straw to

Upon this occasion he behaved with a liberality which seems to have been inherent in his nature, by settling the whole of his wife's little independence upon her sister. Her husband, whilst she lived, uniformly expressed himself happy in the choice he had Whilst at Carpaix he corremade; and when, between two and three years after their mar-sponded with the English prisonriage, the connexion was dissolved ers at Brest, Morlaix, and Dinby her death, he was a sincere nam, aud had sufficient evidence mourner for the loss he had sus- of their being treated with such barbarity, that many hundreds tained in her removal. had perished, and thirty-six were

The country he intended first to visit was Portugal, then ren-buried in a hole at Dinnam in one dered particularly interesting by day. His humanity being excited the situation of its capital, which by this affecting statement of the had been lately visited by a tre- wretched situation of so many of mendous earthquake, that had his gallant countrymen, to much shaken it to its very foundations, of whose cruel treatment he had and a great part of which, with himself been an eye-witness, and thousands of its unfortunate in- even shared in its horrors, he lost habitants, had been swallowed up no time in making so strong a reby the earth. It was to this sub-presentation upon the subject to lime, but melancholy spectacle, the Commissioners of Sick and that Mr. H.'s attention was prin- Wounded Seamen, that they not cipally directed; and he accord-only gave him their thanks for his ingly took his passage in a Lisbon information, but took such immeHanover, diate and effectual measures for packet, called the which had the misfortune to be getting the injury redressed, that captured on its voyage by a he had soon the satisfaction of French privateer. His captors learning, that the prisoners at treated him with great cruelty; war confined in the three prisons for after having been kept forty to which he had more particularhours without food or water, hely directed their attention, were sent home in the first cartel s was carried into Brest, and confined, with the other prisoners that arrived in England, bein

able one. The lady to whom he now became united, possessed, in no ordinary degree, all the softer virtues of her sex; and as far as we can judge from the miniature formerly in the possession of her husbaud, and now in that of her female attendant, she was by no means deficient in personal attractions.

entirely indebted for their deli- | Leeds, Esq. who died some years verance from their accumulated since at his house at Croydon, sufferings to his benevolent and where he had long resided, like timely interference on their be- his elder brother, in what it is half. It is to this event that Mr. presumed he considered a state H. himself refers the first excite- of single blessedness. This alment of that attention to the dis-liance was in every respect a suittressed situation of those of his fellow-creatures, who were sick and in prison, with no one to visit or relieve them, which afterwards so fully occupied the greater part of sixteen years of his useful, but most laborious life. It was some time, however, before the impression thus made upon his mind by the barbarity with which he himself had been treated, or by Though educated in a manner the still greater hardships which suited to her father's fortune and he had seen some of his country- professional rank in life, she seems men undergo, coupled with the not to have imbibed any of that witnessing of other scenes of a love of dress, but too common .somewhat similar nature, had the with females in her situation. As effect of inducing him to devote a proof of this it appears, that all the most active energies of his soon after her marriage she sold being to the devising and carry-some jewels she had no longer ing into execution his benevolent any inclination to wear, and put plans for the relief of persons the money into a purse, called under similar circumstances of aggravated distress.

But we must now return to the contemplation of Mr. H.'s character in the domestic relations of life. He had not been many years in his native country after the hardships he had experienced abroad, before he formed a connexion, which was at once the immediate source of some of the sweetest, and, in its consequences, an occasion of some of the bitterest moments of his existence. This was his second marriage, on the 25th of April, 1758, with Miss Henrietta Leeds, eldest daughter of Edward Leeds, Esq. of Croxton, in Cambridgeshire, one of his Majesty's serjeants at law, and father to the late Edward Leeds, Esq. a master in chancery, and member in parliament for the borough of Ryegate, and Joseph

by herself and her husband, "The Charity Purse," from its contents being consecrated to the wants of the poor, and the relief of the destitute. To how many a thoughtless daughter of dissipation-to how many a fashionable wife, who is now sparkling in her jewels in the dress-box of a theatre,-swimming down the circling mazes of the dance, or losing all the modesty which was once the peculiar characteristic, and the most resistless charm of her sex, in the wanton fascinations of the waltz, as she blazes in the splendour-whilst she rivets the eye of the lascivious, and crimsons the cheek of the virtuous, by the voluptuousness of her dress,-might it be said, in the plain but forcible language of inspiration, "Go thou and do likewise!" Of this valua

ble assistant he was, however, too soon deprived; for his do mestic happiness received a sudden and a final shock, by the removal of the beloved object of his fondest affections, soon after she had given birth to a son, the first and only issue of their marriage. This afflicting event happened on the 31st of March, 1765; and though, as a Christian, Mr. H. bowed with resignation to a blow that laid his dearest enjoyments and hopes of happiness in this world in the dust, as a man, and as a husband, he felt it in all its poignancy.

The minister under whom Mr. H. first sat as a regular hearer, after his settlement at Cardington, was Mr. Saunderson, pastor of the Congregational Church at Bedford, once under the pastoral care of the celebrated John Bunyan. With this church he continued to be an occasional communicant as long as Mr. Saunderson lived, which was but a few years after he himself came to reside in Bedfordshire. Upon the ministry of his successor, the Rev. Joshua Symonds, he continued to attend until the year 1772, when a division in the church took place, on account of Mr. Symonds, the pastor, having avowed the sentiments of the Baptists, which had been those of all the pastors of the church, from its being founded in 1650, till Mr. Ebenezer Chandler, who succeeded Mr. Bunyan.*

After having left England, it was with a design of spending the winter either at Geneva, or in the south of Italy; but that plan he abandoned, upon his arrival at Turin, for reasons which cannot better be explained than from the following extract from his own journal.

"Turin, 1769, Nov. 30. My return without seeing the southern part of Italy was on much deliberation, as I feared a misimprovement of a talent spent for mere curiosity at the loss of many Sabbaths, and as many donations must be suspended for my pleasure, which would have been, as I hope, contrary to the general conduct of my life, and which, on a retrospective view on a deathbed, would cause pain as unbecoming a disciple of Christ, whose mind should be formed in my soul. These thoughts, with distance from my dear boy, determine me to check my curiosity, and be on the return. Oh! why should vanity and folly, pictures and baubles, or even the stupendous mountains, beautiful hills, or rich valleys, which ere long will all be consumed, engross the thoughts of a candidate for an eternal everlasting kingdoma worm ever to crawl on earth whom God has raised to the hope of glory, which ere leng will be revealed to them who are washed and sanctified by faith in

We suppose the opinion that was generally entertained of Mr. H.'s having belonged to the Baptist denomination, arose from his always attending, when in London, the ministry of the late Dr. Samuel Stennett, and from some strong passages in his letters to that excellent minister. We feel no inclination to contend this unimportant matter. Whether he was a Baptist or not, Mr. H. was a CHRISTIAN of the good old sort, whose spirit and conduct are worthy of imita

* In a Life of Mr. Howard, it is said, that "till this period, and there is every reason to suppose until death dissolved the bond of union, Mr. H. still considered himself to be as upon the principles of the Independent churches." This appears likely to be correct, as Mr. H. left Mr. Symonds, and assisted to build the Independent Meeting-house at Bedford; especially if (as his biographer asserts) "he had his son baptized at Cardington." | tion.

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