There is an unpublished letter of John Wesley's on the subject, which shall be inserted here. It is addressed to his brother, who has docketed it, "Ghosts and Witches." "Whitehaven, May 6th, 1774. "DEAR BROTHER,-I never said a word of 'publishing it after my death.' I judged it my duty to publish it now. And I have as good a right to believe one way, as any man has to believe another. I was glad of an opportunity of declaring myself on the head. I beg Hugh Bold to let me think as well as himself, and to believe my judgment will go as far as his. I have no doubt of the substance both of Glanvill's and Cotton Mather's narratives. Therefore, in this point, you that are otherwise minded bear with me. Remember I am, upon full consideration, and seventy years' experience, just as obstinate in my opinion as you in yours. Don't you think the disturbances in my father's house * were a Cock-lane story? To the same effect he speaks in his Journal, under date of May 22d, 1776. And lastly, April 7th, 1782, he says, " With my latest breath will I bear my testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the invisible world; I mean, that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages." City-Road, August 16th, 1845. THOMAS MARRIOTT. P.S. See his query on Witchcraft, Arminian Magazine, vol. ix., p. 265, at the bottom. REMINISCENCES OF A MISSION TO THE MYSORE. CHAPTER II.-MADRAS. (Continued from page 860.) On the last day of the sixteenth century, that spring-time of great men and great events,—the century of Luther and Knox, Galileo and Bacon, Tasso and Spenser,—the virgin Queen of England affixed her name to a deed, incorporating "the Governors and Company of the Merchants of London trading to the East Indies." Little thought the clear-sighted Elizabeth that such a transaction was destined, in the providence of God, to give a wider sweep to the sceptre of her successors than any other of her reign. Little thought the "merchant adventurers" that, in the scroll then presented, they laid the first stone of a monument to their country's prowess far more colossal than any her Edwards or Richards had reared. And little did the century that followed promise the occurrence of such wonders. The early days of British enterprise in the East-like the youth of Clive, who first raised it from adventure to empire-were remarkable only for a total want of promise. Overawed by the Portuguese, beaten by the Dutch, circumvented by the French, and despised by the natives, they maintained * See Wesley Family, vol. i., pp. 247–290. + Works, vol. iv., p. 76. a precarious existence of little measures and mighty murmurings. The islands were their great desire; but, driven by the jealous Dutch from one post after another, they sought refuge on the coast of Coromandel. Here, again, pursued by their rivals, they were compelled to abandon their first settlements at Masalipatam and Pulicat. At length they found rest at Armegon; but that settlement proved unsuitable for trade, and another was desired. Thirty years after the signing of the first charter, Shri Ranga, Raja of Chandragheri, granted powers to purchase land, for that purpose, to Mr. Day, the English Agent at Armegon. At the place so assigned was a local Naik, whose father was named Chinappa; and, in deference to the wishes of this officer, the new town was, after his father, called Chinappa Patam, or the city of Chinappa; under which name, contracted into Chinapatam, it is still known among the natives. The origin of this great city, like that of others more ancient and more renowned, was sufficiently humble. "At the Company's first beginning to build a fort," wrote the local agency to the Presidency of Surat, "there were only the French Padres, and about six fishermen's houses; so, to entice the inhabitants to people the place, proclamation was made, in the Company's name, that, for the term of thirty years, no custom of anything to be eaten, drunk, or worn, should be taken of any of the town-dwellers." * But the Theseus of Coromandel, intent, like his Athenian prototype, on an aggregated population, did not confine his inducements to mere fiscal immunities, but proceeded to add ecclesiastical attractions. He, as already stated, encouraged the settlement of Capuchin Monks; not, as Mr. Hough very naturally supposes, with the view of affording the benefit of their instructions to the members of their own communities already settled in the Company's territory, but for a reason, to him, far more cogent; namely, "in order to draw the Portuguese from San Thomé, who, being considered as Europeans, would add to the military reputation of Madras, consequently attract the resort of the natives, and with them an increase of trade." + Thus, at the foundation of our oldest existing Presidency, religion was made the ready slave of secular advantage,―a procedure which, however derogatory to our national character, has, unhappily, not been confined to obscure factors and struggling enterprise, but been too often adopted by exalted dignitaries, presiding over an empire, the very magnitude of which might have made salutary impressions of responsibility. Fourteen years after its foundation, the new city had attained such importance, as led to its being erected into a Presidency, having Bengal dependent. During the early part of its existence, the whole Carnatic was swept by the armies of Viziapore and Golconda; but the new factory was too insignificant to excite their jealousy, and therefore escaped unhurt. The first enemy who threatened its peace was Doudd Khan, one of Aurengzebe's Generals, who, in 1702, laid ineffectual siege to it; after which time it enjoyed forty years of peace, rapidly increasing in commerce and importance. In September, 1746, Labourdonnais arrived on the coast; a man who, by genius, courage, enterprise, and moderation, was equally fitted to conquer or govern; and who, had his employers in France only possessed similar range of foresight, and had he met with a coadjutor, instead of a rival, in Dupleix, would, in all human probability, have crushed the nascent power of England in the East. He had imported to the Mauritius a number of Africans, called, in the histories of the times, * See Orme's Fragments, Note xxxviii. + Ibid. Caffres, but more likely Mosambiques; had them trained in military discipline; and, with an army consisting of one thousand French, four hundred Sepoys, and four hundred Africans, aided by a fleet from which the English Admiral commanding in those seas had run away, he commenced a vigorous investment of the place. Five days reduced the garrison, consisting of two hundred men, to the necessity of signing articles of capitulation, by which it was agreed that the French should take formal possession, receive a stipulated ransom, and then deliver up the place to the English. But Dupleix having already formed the project of an Eastern empire, with France for its head, and himself for its executive, foresaw that the English would be dangerous rivals; and, in direct opposition to the honourable remonstrances of Labourdonnais, violated the agreement, marched the authorities in triumph through Pondicherry, bravely repulsed the Nabob of the Carnatic, who appeared with a large force to claim fulfilment of a promise that Madras should be his reward for services rendered to the French against the English, and retained the place for three years, until compelled to resign it by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle. Though these proceedings were for the time so disastrous to the British, yet to them may be traced the foundation of that pre-eminence which they shortly after began to acquire, and have ever since maintained. Up to this time, they were under awe of the prowess of the Mogul armies, and formed their own solely of Europeans. Dupleix gallantly defeated a Mogul force by one of very inferior numbers, and had in his ranks an efficient auxiliary, formed of natives whom he had trained to the European mode of warfare. Thus he taught his opponents, as Peter the Great said Charles XII. did the Russians, the way to beat himself: the English learned the superiority of European to native valour and discipline, as also the possibility of raising from the natives an efficient force; they were not slow to practise these lessons, and by so doing have become masters of India. The flight of ten short years brought another French armament under the walls of Fort St. George. Count de Lally was a man of great bravery and talent, whose enmity to the English was not the result of national jealousy, as in the case of Labourdonnais, or of personal ambition, as in that of Dupleix; but of that fierce religious rancour which characterized the Irish Papist of his days, and is far from being yet extinguished. He landed in India with the full intention of extirpating the British from that country; marched on Fort St. David, where they had been sheltered during the time that Madras was in the hands of the French, took it, and razed it to the ground; occupied Arcot; assailed Madras, taking Blacktown, and laying formal siege to the Fort. The siege was active, the defence resolute: two months elapsed before any decisive advantage was gained. The breach was reported practicable, the assault ordered for the hour when the moon should set; Lally exulting in the hope of a triumphant to-morrow, the besieged determined to repel him or die; when Admiral Pocock appeared with an English fleet: the besiegers broke up precipitately, and fled; their opponents became assailants in their turn. After several minor actions, Lally sustained a decisive defeat at Wandewash, and the power which a few years before had been paramount in the Deccan and Carnatic, was reduced to dependency on the alliance of the Mysorean usurper. Since that time the thunders of Fort St. George have reposed; and the place where, only two centuries ago, there were "about six fishermen's huts," has for many years been the second city of Hindustan, giving a home to nearly half a million inhabitants, presiding over a territory wider than the great kingdoms of Europe, and boasting an army of above seventy thousand men. The climate of Madras is hot, the thermometer often rising to 100° in the shade; sometimes being known to reach 110°; and in the coldest night of winter not falling below 65°. But, as the absence of marshy ground prevents those exhalations so deadly in the tropics, and as the wide Bay of Bengal both protects it on the east from all noxious influences, and serves to fan its inhabitants by cool, refreshing gales, there is greater salubrity than in many a more temperate place; and not a few "old Indians" prefer it, with all its heat, to the cooler regions of the Mysore. The most unpleasant part of the year is in the month of May, when the sun is vertical; and, concurrently with this, a wind from the west brings all the heated air of the peninsula in a scorching current, feeling like a furnace-blast, and producing a disagreeable irritation of the skin, known by the name of "prickly heat;" so that to drink a cup of tea subjects you to a sensation like the simultaneous prick of a thousand needle-points. It is a familiar fact, that wherever two portions of atmosphere are at different temperatures, the dense air of the cooler region will press in upon the space occupied by the lighter air of the heated one; as every one knows who has ever sat at the window of a crowded place of worship, or other warm room. Now, as this principle acts equally on the large scale as on the small, its effects are very observable in the winds which prevail in those regions of the earth where climate is not subject to endless vicissitudes, but annually exhibits its phases with little variation. Thus at Madras, when, shortly after the summer solstice, the lands to the north become greatly heated, the winds naturally tend in that direction, and thus the westerly gale becomes south-west, which wind brings from the Indian Ocean immense quantities of rain, the clouds carrying which break against the western Ghauts, or are expended on the table-lands of the Mysore, transmitting only occasional showers as far as Madras. Again, after the autumnal equinox, the regions lying southward become more heated, and the consequent rarefaction of the atmosphere in that direction demands a supply from the north. To meet this, vast currents of air rush southward, and, receiving in their course the natural trade-wind direction, blow from the north-east, and burst upon Madras, in the month of October, with terrific effect. The barometer falls half an inch, the air becomes still and oppressive, portentous clouds load the sky, and the monsoon opens with thunder, lightning, and rain, which far surpass anything witnessed be yond the tropics; while the wind beats fearfully, and the roaring of the surf makes wrathful interchange with the peals of thunder. For more than six weeks there is a succession of such storms, with bright intervals; and then succeeds a period of dry, clear, and, for Madras, cool, weather. So accurately is the commencement of this season of tempests reckoned on, that, on the 15th of October, the flag-staff at the Fort is annually struck, as a warning to ships in the Roads, that their anchorage is no longer safe; and when any are hardy enough to delay their escape for a day or two, they not unfrequently suffer shipwreck for their temerity. Besides these unfailing annual phenomena, God has made a daily provision for moderating the temperature of those sun-burnt shores. The sea does not absorb heat so rapidly as the land; consequently, under the sun's rays, the atmosphere of the latter becomes warmer, and thus the denser air of the sea presses in upon the land, causing an agreeable current, known by the name of the sea-breeze, which rises before noon, and blows steadily till the day has spent its sultriness, and evening cools the land. Again: the land radiates its heat more rapidly than the sea, and thus, in the sun's absence, sinks to a lower temperature; so that its atmosphere, in turn, becomes cooler, consequently more dense, and so presses out upon the sea, making what is called the land-breeze, which rises about midnight, and blows from the shore till morning. These arrangements of divine Providence beautifully exemplify the truth, that God "rejoices in the habitable parts of his earth, and his delights are with the sons of men." Did he not care that the earth should be peopled, and that men should live in comfort, how differently might he have arranged the distribution of land and sea, and so rendered whole continents, if habitable at all, the arid nursery of a miserable and complaining population! We find that, in traversing the surface of the globe, the equator wholly escapes the great continents of Asia and Europe, crosses Africa and America at points where the breadth of the land suddenly decreases, and touches no great island but Borneo and Sumatra. Thus by far the greater portion of the earth's surface included by the tropics exposes to their torrid heats, not the habitable plains, which drought would desolate, but the pathless and homeless sea, whose waters yield to the same influence those abundant evaporations which serve to fertilize the land that our Father's hand has gathered beneath milder skies. By this gracious arrangement the continents are both saved from destructive heat, and provided with copious irrigation. But were it otherwise,― were the great continents spread around the torrid zone, and the oceans now so beneficially occupying that region transferred to their present site, then the aggregation of such masses of land beneath tropical suns would engender a heat, in all likelihood, destructive to animal life; while, on the other hand, the waters, acted on by more languid suns, would have but a slow evaporation, and, consequently, the supplies of rain become scanty, as the necessity for their profuseness increased. Under such a distribution, extreme heat and defective moisture must induce wide-spread sterility, and if not destroy, at least sorely embitter, all existence. The same benign wisdom is also manifested in the allocation of the great ranges of the Mountains of the Moon, the Himalaya, and Andes, in those parts of the three continents where the copious rains and large rivers, which they attract and originate, are most necessary to constitute the adjacent countries "habitable parts." In our favoured clime these reflections are not so likely to arisé, as where the blaze of fiery suns, "in a hot and copper sky," makes one feel that if Providence had not provided means to "abundantly water the earth," life must shortly languish. There the eye is far more open to the records, and the ear to the voice, by which nature proclaims the mercies of her Author. The bright testimony, "God is love," is seen equally emblazoned on ocean and plain. "The trees of the field clap their hands, the floods lift up their voice," even "the mountains and hills break forth into singing," and all creation speaks eloquently of His wisdom and grace from whom it sprang. CHAPTER III.THE JOURNEY UP THE COUNTRY. ABOUT Sunset on the 27th of August, on the compound, or grass-plat, in front of Mr. Crowther's house stood four palankeens, looking like dwarf omnibuses dismounted. About fifty natives, with dusky skins, and drapery of tarnished white, surrounded them. These consisted of four sets of bearers, each numbering twelve; for, though only six carry at a time, |