1879 - Tucker, H. W. Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn [Vol.I] - Chapter X. 1850-1851, p 326-392

"UNDINE" SCHOONER, AT SEA,

Long. 170 E.; Lat. 27 S.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I am writing to you in the midst of a majestic thunderstorm, on the bosom of the wide Pacific, and about halfway from New Caledonia, which I have left, and New Zealand, to which I am returning. The little Undine is alone on this wide waste of water; yet not alone; for here we see the wonders of God without distraction from the works of man. Your letter of 12th September, 1849, is lying before me, and though you are not a very good correspondent, I have taken it up first out of a heap of forty other letters--a compliment which, I hope, will make you mend your manners for the future. Accept my hearty congratulations on your attainment of the "Jus trium liberorum;" but please to remember, that as you are only a junior assistant, and therefore a "Proletarius," you are bound to hold at least one of your boys liable to military or naval service, at the command of the Bishop of New Zealand, or any other amphibious power invested with the right of conscription. It is not enough that you should

buy inferior substitutes by pecuniary contributions; you have learned and taught Greek Grammar long enough to know that summary of missionary duty, the more forcible, in some respects, as coming from a mere heathen orator,

prothimian deikteon eisferontas exiontas. [Greek]

Dedicate your very best boy to the mission work; and, without forcing his inclination, lead him steadily to look upon a wild hill in New Caledonia as a more noble post than a Fellowship at Eton, or even the Provostship of Kings. For such it is. What man in his sober senses, and with his Demosthenes before him, to say nothing of the Bible, would sit down in the prime of life with the deliberate purpose of spending a quarter of a century, like -----, in collecting butterflies. And yet there are butterflies too in New Caledonia, glorious butterflies, which flew across my path as I climbed up a lovely waterfall at Weine, on the east coast of that Island, radiant with the deepest blue, and as large as dragon-flies. Did I catch one? Not I; I would not catch, much less impale upon a pin, that type of the Immortality of the Soul, especially in a country where man is still in the grub, and waiting to be adorned, like those bright insects, with wings of silver and feathers like gold. When will the day of bursting come to all these human chrysalides in these dark islands? May one of your sons be there to see a whole pagan nation spring up out of the ground, and mount up on the wings of the converted soul. I have no better wish for him or for you, than that he may be a zealous evangelist, and that you, when you are dazed and flattened by your work, may be lightened and leavened by the report of God's blessing upon his labours. Do not suppose that I undervalue your present duties, but understand me to mean only that paidagogia and paidopoua [Greek] are both vain, unless they send forth more labourers into Christ's harvest field.

Your affectionate Friend,

G. A. NEW ZEALAND.

JENGEN, NEW CALEDONIA,

Lat. 20.40. East Coast.

May 17th, 1850.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,

WHEN I am put out of my present stewardship by Joseph Hume, or any other potentate, I shall hope to have the offer of the Mastership of the Remove at Eton, that blissful region which enjoys a monopoly of the little knowledge of geography, which the school possesses. My stock is daily increasing, as you will find to your cost by the list of outlandish names, unknown to Arrowsmith and to Wylde, which stand at the head of my letters. You will wish me back again at one of those modern examples of "fanum putre Vacunae," Boveney Chapel or Dorney Church, as a relief from the annoyance of a correspondent, who carries you beyond the limits of all existing Gazetteers. Well, then, my dear friend, comfort your heart with the thought, no matter where I am, that I am still the same friend, who lived next door to you in Keate's Lane, where we were wont oarizemem alliloisi, [Greek] as you went to and fro about your work, and as I looked out of the window for the lack of work. Be sure that "my heart untravelled still returns to you;" and that no foreign travel, unconnected with duty, would ever compensate me for the removal from Eton. I would rather be at the Weir than at Niagara; in Poet's Walk rather than at Helicon; and in your "lane of Hems!!" rather than on the Bridge of Sighs. But when travel comes with a duty for its motive, how enjoyable it then is. If I could have wafted you during the last week to the calm, sunny, blue waters of these reef lagoons, with the bright green and tree-bespangled hills of New Caledonia towering over the topmasts of my consort, H.M.S. Fly, how truly and sympathetically we should have enjoyed the combination of everything that is highest in interest, or brightest in colouring, or most graceful in form, or most majestic in size. But this may not be, till modern science shall have attained to the utmost limit of locomotive power, by enabling the electric telegraph to carry passengers as well as messages. Surely New Caledonia is a lovely country. Such waterfalls as I saw yesterday, such rocky piles and minarets of dark grey stone as I am now surrounded by; such a river as I have rowed into this afternoon, with tufted groves of cocoa-nuts sheltering the

neatest bee-hive houses, and hanging gardens of yams and taro on the heights; and dingles of dark wood, which tell where the hidden watercourse has fed the trees during the scorching heat; and bright green mountains towering over all, and running up into the deep blue sky, as if to teach us how prodigal nature is of her charms, to waste them thus upon eyes which cannot discern beauty, and hearts which cannot admire it.

But believe me that it is not true that "only man is vile." This race of men are not vile; but, as Cook found them, the most friendly people in the world. How could they be vile, for whom Christ paid the price of His blood? How can they be vile to us, who have been taught by God not to call any man common or unclean? I quarrel with the current phrases of the "poor heathen," and the "perishing savages," et id genus omne. Far poorer and more ready to perish may be those men of Christian countries who have received so much, and can account for so little. Poorest of all may we be ourselves, who, as stewards and ministers of the Grace of God, are found so unfaithful in our stewardship. To go among the heathen as an equal and a brother is far more profitable than to risk that subtle kind of self-righteousness, which creeps into the mission work, akin to the thanking God that we are not as other men are. Who can say, that the heathen are more guilty because they have not the Gospel, than we who have received that Gospel, and of whom its fruits will be required?

I am now far advanced in my second round of inspection, for it is nothing more at present, of this Melanesian field. I am waiting tor the opening of the door which is now just creaking on its hinges. I wrote to you an explanatory letter from Anaiteum in August last; 1 and I need only now add, that a second course of observation over the same field has confirmed the impressions under which that letter was written: and that I have now no reasonable doubt of the gradual success of a steady, persevering, and faithful effort to evangelize the "mingled peoples" who have flowed forth among these islands from every story and every window of Babel. Our Propaganda is already begun, and it is time that it should be; for on

the little deck of the Undine, I have had at the same moment the representatives of ten languages or dialects. Here they are to send you again, "pertusum terebrare salinum," to bore yourself by poring into Arrowsmith for salt which you will not find--

1. English.

2. New Zealand.

3. Samoan, Navigators'.

4. Rarotonga.

6. Lifu, Loyalty Islands.

7. New Caledonia--one out of many.

8. Anaiteum, New Hebrides.

9. Tanna, New Hebrides.

10. Futuna, New Hebrides.

Was not that an ethnographical feast to be all collected in a cabin 12 feet by 8?

"Five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,
And when the pie was opened the birds began to sing,"

a literal fact for eight of the above languages, exactly twenty-five "black birds" in all, with ten white ones, were baked, boiled, and stewed in the Undine for two days between Tanna and Anaiteum in bad weather; and I promise you, that when the pie was opened the birds did begin to sing; and I the epops [Greek] of the party at least as heartily as the rest. The occasion was the restoration to their country of fifteen Anaiteum men, who had been taken to Tanna, and the removal of the families of some native missionaries from Samoa and Rarotonga, whom we found ill at Tanna. However, I have never yet felt anything equal to the cabin of the Victorine, a French egg-boat, in which I once crossed from Cherbourg to Southampton, and with this assumed datum of discomfort, everything that I now meet with stands higher in the scale. You will say that this is poor comfort, but try it before you reject my panacea for every evil of life.

Your truly affectionate

G. A. NEW ZEALAND.

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AUCKLAND,

July 24th, 1850.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--

And now clearer than ever--welcome to hearts large enough to hold you, and to houses small enough to pinch you, that between the largeness of heart-room, and the narrowness of house-room, you may enjoy that happy mean of comfort and discomfort, which represents most truly our state of trial on earth. Lose not one moment in coming to us, either by land or water. Captain Rough will point out to you the best way of proceeding, either by crossing at once to the College Creek, or by going to the Chief Justice at Taurarua, from which the College Force, andres ti iitheoi te kai eilipodes elikes vous [Greek], will fetch you and your baggage, as soon as we hear of your arrival.

Your truly affectionate and ever

Grateful Friend,

G. A. NEW ZEALAND.

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND,

Thursday, August 29th, 1850.

MY DEAR--

You will hear from my sisters of our safe arrival here on the 6th of this month, and something of our first impressions; and I dare say if you like it, you will see the daily details of our life at the college during the last three weeks, so I am not going to repeat these things now; but to give you, as far as I can, the result of our first view of all around us, while it is fresh and lively, and to trace, as far as I can, the likeness of the reality to the picture and imagination which we have so long had before the mind's eye, and so often talked of with you. I used to think that when we were here

"Although, 'tis fair,
'Twill be another Yarrow; "

but it is, I think, both within and without, strangely like one's fancy and conception of what it would be; so much so that our first evening with the Martins at Taurarua was so true to one's fancy of such evenings, that I was continually asking myself whether it was not all a vision of fancy, instead of a real scene before one's bodily eye and ear. And so also when we accompanied the Bishop and Sarah home next day. Everything was so like one's imagination of it, that I became quite bewildered at first. Now we have settled down quite into a "homy" feeling and habit as to the reality of our existence here and all around us, which will soon absorb all former ideals of the place, and the community, and the work; and even now I wish I could hear your questions, in order that I might know on what points to enlighten you. First, however, as to the Master mind, the great founder, the humble lowly worker of all. Is he still what he was when he left us?--What we have believed him to be all these years while the world was between us?--What do we find him?--All that he was; all that we believed; all that you can understand better than any one can describe. You can feel, too, the glow of heart, the deep joy it is to feel this, day by day pressed home to one's conviction, and unveiled before one's eyes in all the soberness of truth and reality. To find, as my husband says, "that it was nob any mere fancy,

any imaginary greatness and goodness, with which memory and friendship had invested him in absence, but that he is in his simple, unvarnished reality, more than all he had thought and trusted to and reverenced for these nine years past. You can think how happy it is whenever we are alone together, to hear him sum up all he told me of their converse, with such thoughts as these, and with the thankful expression of his sense of the blessedness of our own lot in being thus made members of a 'Holy House;' and of the way in which Bishop Andrewes' words came home to one now with an individual appropriation of the thought, as well as an intercessory petition for others in our own land, which we have been wont to associate with the expression, especially in this day's (Thursday's) prayer. As Charles says, the singleness of purpose, the entire devotion of himself and all he is, and all he has--the entire renunciation of self and all belonging to him in comparison with the duty and the object of the present moment, is so shown forth in his daily life, so transparently open to all who have eyes to see and hearts to receive the witness of such an example, that one must be dead and dull indeed not to feel continually the all-pervading power of such a life. And great, indeed, must be the responsibility of living thus in the light, as the lesson of our first Sunday here seemed to teach in the warning of Gehazi's sin,--that a man might live in a prophet's house and serve him, who is a servant of God, and yet have a worldly heart and spirit.

Gradually, however, as we hear more and more, and see the real state of things here, how much what is planted must need time to grow, and how he is obliged to wait and lay by, as it were, for the periods of renewed action; and still more, as one feels that he is the one man to pioneer the way and lay foundations, as all this comes to one--my husband owns that he "cannot gainsay or resist the wisdom with which he speaks," though he is thankful to find the judge quite joins with him in his feeling that a drag-chain rather than a spur is needed on his favourite Melanesian Mission; and is disposed to watch his widening schemes in that direction with a zealous regard for this country, which (as he agrees with Charles) must after all be the real battle-field in behalf of the coloured race, and

also with anxiety for the personal health and safety of the bishop himself, which they all feel is certainly risked in each one of these voyages. It is some satisfaction to find that the chief and most influential means which he looks to for the accomplishment of the object, is the education of youths from these islands at this college, and not to the planting of mission stations in the islands themselves. The great varieties of language amongst them is a bar to this, and points rather, as he thinks, to the need of gathering them together from all parts, and teaching them English, and so making our tongue the missionary language, as the Roman was in former days; a conclusion, as you will see, very different from that which he upholds so strenuously for this country, where the speech is one, the needs of mastering the language, in order to reach the people in this generation; while he would do his best to teach English to the rest. I do not wonder at the hold these islands have upon him, after hearing his stories of his intercourse amongst them, and especially about the boys he had here last summer, and whom he hopes to fetch again when the climate makes it safe. One little fellow from Lifu especially, who was like a child in this house to him and Sarah, and a brother to Johnnie, and whom they nursed so tenderly in. his sickness, the bishop earnestly hopes may return again. You will hear more about this little Thol; and if a letter reaches Willy from his father, as I trust it will--in which he tells him of his parting with the little fellow when he took him home last April--how they went apart into the copse wood, and how Thol knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer, and a little prayer for Johnnie; and how he begged him to come back again and fetch him. Johnnie talks about his little companion still, and how he used to say that Johnnie should go home with him, and his mother would carry him about on her back and give him sugar-cane.

You should hear his stories of the quiet way in which he walks through any mention of State interference and ecclesiastical law, apart from Church authority. They would amuse you greatly; such as his refusal at Wellington to marry an English gentleman to a Jewess (the civil form, or the Jewish, being open to him), or to open the

burial-ground of the Church of England to all denominations (the only reason why they desired it being to save the expense of fencing the ground allotted to themselves). How quietly in both instances, when the legal penalties attached to the refusal were alluded to, he replied by a common-sense protest against the introduction into a new country of the burthens and precedents of the old (especially in regard to the Church which had no State aid here, but which would flourish, he doubted not, under persecution), which were found to work ill even there; while he expressed his readiness to submit to the sentence of the law, playfully remarking, "that after weeks in his tiny schooner at sea, the prison-rooms would be spacious, and the prison fare luxurious, and the leisure of a few weeks to write letters and do business, rather a boon than otherwise." You can fancy how this sort of appeal turns off and disarms objection, and how he walks through opposition of this kind, like a giant rejoicing to run his course......

If he can ever find time to put on paper all his thoughts and plans for the college and its foundation in a system, I think there would spring out of it his earnest view of the duty of the Church as to education: that the clergy must take it into their own hands by doing the work. "Deacon schoolmasters all over England would make speeches and agitation at Willis's Rooms needless," he says; and I believe if anything brought him back to England, that is the crusade which he would preach and lead; that, and an Episcopate of "500l. a year bishops," given to hospitality, and not "clothing flunkeys in purple." These are the two points on which all our conversation on home affairs ends. These, with the restoration of Cathedral Institutions to their true objects, are the burden of his song; and I believe he thinks, if the Church will not arise and work out this reformation in herself, that the scourge will chastise her into a better mind.

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AUCKLAND,

Sept. 16th, 1850.

MY DEAR DR. HAWTREY,

If I have deferred writing to you among my letters to Eton friends, it was because I thought you would be most interested in hearing of the bishop, and Mrs. Selwyn, and

of my college life--not that I have forgotten you or yours, and all your kind interest in us. Indeed, Eton and its people are bound up in my "bundle of life," in a way that I hope will never admit of loosening. To tell you the truth, there is nothing that pains me more in my brief acquaintance with the people in Sydney and here, generally speaking, than their utter lack of sympathy or interest in England and English life. The bishop, and Judge Martin, and my colleague, Mr. Lloyd, are the only men that have a heart large enough to contain much beyond the local interests of the colony. I should add, however, the Governor, who is really a large-hearted, large-minded man--a thorough gentleman, whom it is a positive pleasure to meet and know. He was an old Sandhurst cadet and student, and consequently we have many points of rapport, and besides is a literary man, and takes delight in many studies which I could wish I were more versed in, but can only profess interest about. Your handsome present of French Mathematics has delighted him exceedingly.

The bishop and myself are the only persons in the colony almost that possess libraries; and the taste for such things has to be created, as at present a mere utilitarian idea of education prevails. Perhaps, for the purposes of the settlers here and the clergy, a practical education is the best suited, and I must confess that I quite quail before the attainments of some of my scholars, who will make most valuable missionaries among natives, and round a "seagirt isle." Only conceive what a thoroughly autarkis [Greek] man will be formed out of a boy who, at the age of 19 knows more Divinity than most of the boys at Eton in the Sixth Form, who is thoroughly acquainted with French and Maori; and as there are some of the former people here as settlers, this is an utilitarian acquirement, as well as a literary one. He is a good musician, and able to teach the natives singing--a good mathematician, and able to sail the Undine from hence to the New Hebrides and back--taking sights and managing the rigging, &c. He is gentle withal and humble, and the only thing I desiderate in him is a little life, and somewhat of the quickness of an Eton boy. That is the most trying part of my school duties. After the alertness of an Eton boy's mind, it requires some patience to see the sluggishness of the

colonial movement. Of course none of them are scholars in our sense of the word; they devote too little time to mere scholarship, having to pay for their support by bodily work (for none of their parents can or will pay for them), so that two hours a day, four times a week, is all a boy gets of school. He is either printing, or farming, or weaving, or digging, or making shoes, &c., the rest of his time. Altogether, it is a strange life we lead here. I am sure I never realized it before I came, and I suppose I thought about it as much as most people at Eton; but I will try and put you in possession of our principle and practice; and when I say our, I mean the bishop's,--for only his vast head and noble heart could conceive and execute so complicated a plan.

The first generation of converts to Christianity is passing off rapidly from this scene, and the middle-aged folk now are very nominal Christians indeed. They have abandoned cannibalism certainly, and the horrors of frequent war, thank God; but their moral and religious state is very questionable. The old chief, close by us, is a heathen, for example, and he and many of his people point to the bad lives of the Christian people as their stumbling-block--just as people at home point to the bad lives of the communicants as a reason for their not becoming so themselves. The fact is, that they are not educated; they are instructed a little, but all their habits are heathenish. The bishop was told by the missionaries, that it was impossible and visionary to attempt to break through these habits. His faith was too great to allow him to leave it unattempted, and his perseverance too strong to be easily deterred or baffled. He established the college, to which he draws as many as he can afford, which is only fifty--for the funds from England have failed this last year or two by 1,000l. He first has a native school for children (it stands about 100 yards from this; his house, and the chapel is between us). There are twenty or twenty-five of these little brown mice, living in a wooden Swiss-like cottage, with a master (a candidate for Holy Orders) and an assistant--one of the scholars, nineteen or twenty years of age--to look after them. They learn English, arithmetic, singing, writing, and Scripture--dig in the garden, and keep the kitchen-garden in order--make and mend their own clothes, which are not

extensive, a suit of Nottingham drill, i.e. a pair of trousers and a little smock-frock, and a shirt. They are guiltless of shoes and stockings. When they are 13 or 14 years of age, they are drafted off into the labour departments (to which about twenty-five more belong, and live in different houses, under the superintendence of students), and become either bakers or cooks, weavers or shoemakers, carpenters or farmers, &c., attending school half the day, and working the other half at their trade or occupation.

We are fortunate enough to have a good kind of people about us in the college establishment, to superintend these departments. We have, for instance, living close by, opposite the college, an old pensioner, who was a weaver; then the farmer is an excellent man, who failed rather on his own account, and is glad to conduct our farm, which he does admirably. It is to the interest of every one of these departments to make the members work, as the firm receives two-thirds of the profits, after all the expenses are paid, the other third going to the college general account.

At 7 o'clock A.M. we all meet at chapel, and the service is partly chanted; the natives know enough English to chant the Te Deum, Jubilate, &c. You know how deeply I felt the need of such a commencement of every day at Eton, and yet how inexpedient I felt it to have all the school compulsorily in our whole service, without the relief of music. The bishop authorises here a curtailed service, and, as Ordinary, suits it to our wants and circumstances. At half-past 7 they all breakfast in hall--from 9 to 10, religious instruction--from 10 to 2, different classes, either for study or work. I have the scholars and candidates for Holy Orders, in the Bishop's absence. At 2, hall--we all dine together. There is an upper table for the clergy and ladies: the different departments dine together, presided over by their foreman, at different tables--plain, good, wholesome fare. From 4 to 6, school, or work--at 6, tea in hall--7, chapel. The evening is their own for reading, &c. I found that they had not been in the habit of preparing their lessons for school, but learnt them in school. I have introduced the goodly Eton practice; and so get an extra subject done, and less idleness and gossip in the evenings.

Of course, in the above account, farmers and carpenters

cannot break off their work for school; so they have two whole days devoted to school--the rest to work.

The attachment of the natives to the bishop is wonderful: they fully appreciate his care for them. Some ill-conditioned English people were trying to poison their minds the other day, about his having so much land here, while he forbad the clergy to purchase land for themselves. They saw the fallacy in a moment. One lad cried out, "Ah! but the Pihopa does not buy the land for Willy and Johnny, but for 'tatou katoa' (us all); while the other Pakehas buy for their Willies and Johnnies."

Apropos of Willy and Johnny, you will all be delighted to hear that Mrs. Selwyn has a little girl, born on the 5th of this month--both mother and child are doing well. It was a great comfort to us that she was born before the bishop left us for Sydney, on the 7th, to attend the Synod of Bishops.....

I have been very little away from the college, and hardly know any of the people at Auckland.....

The bishop will now be able to move about his diocese, or visit the Northern Isles with more confidence and comfort. He is certainly more aged than I at first fancied, but Mrs. Selwyn looks much the same.....I must not omit to tell you and my Eton friends, that we have bought 300 acres of land round the college, with some of the Scholarship Endowment, you all so kindly founded--and it takes in a fresh-water lake, with the auspicious name of Waiata Rua, "the two Psalms." Gentem faciemus utramque Unam animis.

Believe me ever,

Your attached and grateful Friend,

C. J. ABRAHAM.

"I am just on the point of setting out on a most interesting errand, to meet the Bishops of the Australian Province at Sydney on the 1st October. We have many important subjects to consider, among others the formation of a 'Board of Missions' for the dark and almost unknown Archipelago, into the skirts of which I have thrice penetrated, and the third time with some clear hope of success, by the introduction from the five scholars whom I carried back in May last to the Loyalty Islands and New Caledonia. I hope to interest the sister Churches in the same work, of which I am willing, if required, to take the active part, if they will supply me with the funds. Very soon there will be nothing in me but will 'suffer a sea change.' May my sacrifice be salted with salt, and with fire. Pray for me, from your equally missionary position, as one amongst thousands who scarcely know God."

TO THE VERY REV. THE DEAN OF ELY.

"MOA" BRIG, AT SEA,

Lat. 34. S.; Long. 164. E.

Sept. 13th, 1850.

MY DEAR BROTHER,

Your ready acceptance of the office of proxenos [Greek] for one of my "twins of learning," scarcely yet born, emboldens me to write to you again and communicate some further particulars of the plan of Trinity College, Porirua. And first I must remove an objection raised chiefly by members of my own family, that I am attempting too much.

To this I answer that those who assigned to me all New Zealand as my diocese must bear the blame of this, for I cannot see any part of my diocese destitute of the means of obtaining "sound learning and religious education" without making an effort to supply the defect.

There is little or no communication between Auckland and Wellington: each town therefore requires its own distinct institutions.

I have devoted much money, time, and effort to the establishment of St. John's College; and I am now able to leave it with comfort and satisfaction in the hands of two trustworthy presbyters, Rev. J. E. Lloyd and Rev. C. J. Abraham. Under these circumstances I consider myself bound to do as much as I can, during the next few years, for the southern settlements.

Experience has proved that collegiate institutions must be set on foot very early in the outset of a colony, or the difficulty, as at Sydney, will be found almost insuperable.

We have abundant experience of the willingness of friends in England and in New Zealand to assist in founding such institutions, as we have already at St. John's an estate of 1,000 acres, buildings to the value of 5,000l., and stock of various kinds, by which our expenses are already much reduced. The name of Trinity College, Porirua, was no sooner announced, than Mr. Harrington, secretary to the New Zealand Company, gave 300 guineas towards the endowment fund.

But the immediate cause of the early establishment (if early it can be called) of Porirua College, was the goodwill and zeal of my native scholars of the Ngatiraukawa

form or other, upon all members of the foundation, but is regulated in its application by due regard to the physical and mental qualities of the scholars.

We have not yet arrived at the second stage of development, but we are looking forward to the addition of an order of "oppidans," or "commoners," who may live in private houses under their own tutors, and enjoy the full benefit of the All-Souls' statute, being allowed to be "bene vestiti and mediocriter docti." We shall probably not admit them into the college hall, but allow them, as at Eton, to dine with their own tutors, in such luxurious manner as the parents may be willing to pay for; but without the power to make our college fare contemptible by the side of their better-furnished tables. These separate houses will in fact be smaller colleges, where the tutors will cater for the public taste, with as much freedom as may be compatible with the general statutes of the whole collegiate body. At Eton there are three grades--

Master's House,

Dames' Houses,

College:

all conducted on different scales of expense.

All the students will be united in one general system of academical instruction, and public examination. You must not think that I am resting these plans upon pure theory, for my own short experience has supplied the following facts in favour of the industrial system as a preparation for Holy Orders.

I have ordained--

2 Country Settlers,

2 Farmers,

1 Printer,

1 Weaver,

1 Spinner,

besides three medical men. I am not therefore inventing a new plan, but only endeavouring to give full effect to a course of events which I found already in progress. The only difference between us and the old universities in this respect will be, that we shall at once place all our

poor scholars in some working department instead of giving them exhibitions in money or commons before their ability or industry has been sufficiently proved. All trades alike, and all the oppidan or commoner students, will have equal access to the college examinations, and through them to the Theological Studentships.

You may accept my assurance that, if you will kindly interest yourself and your Trinity friends in this plan, you will never find me exceed in any respect the amount which may be available in England. I say this in self-defence, as I have lost my character with Letitia and Fanny, who look upon me as an inveterate spendthrift. As I have the opposite character in the colony, I can strike a mean between the two extremes of my character, as contrasted at the antipodes. The truth is, that with five large settlements all craving for everything, I have never been able hitherto to prevent the local trustees from spending more than their allowance. But I have now taken effectual means to prevent this excess for the future.

The scholarships at St. John's College are now ten in number, endowed with sums of from 500l. to 700l. each. This in itself may be taken as a proof that it is better to begin early. Five years produce but little effect in our slow operations; but to have laid such a foundation is no inconsiderable help for the future.....

I am now on my way to meet the Bishops of the Australian Province in Synod on the 1st October. After that, God willing, I must visit Mr. Enderby in his antarctic principality, and return by Stewart's Island, Otokou, Akaroa, Port Cooper, Wellington, and Nelson.

A grand campaign in New Caledonia is in store, God willing, for next winter.

I remain,

Your affectionate brother,

G. A. NEW ZEALAND.

"UNDINE" SCHOONER, AT SEA,

Sept. 2nd, 1850.

MY DEAR AND INEXHAUSTIBLE FRIEND,

If ever letter from you was precious to me, you may be sure it was the one which Abraham brought to me in person, to enhance a pleasure which in itself scarcely admitted of increase.....

Though your letter was chiefly on matters of business, yet friendship in you is so practical, that even details of money matters evince the fulness of your affection. By spending every shilling that I could get, and cutting down everything like an expense to the lowest point, I have just been able to receive Abraham and Lloyd into an institution, which has enough in it, I hope, to show, in working-model, its spirit and principle, though still far short, of course, of its possible development, the extent of which is incalculable. With what joy and thankfulness I have seen those two good men, my rose and shamrock, twine themselves together in conference, and vie with one another which should do most to root up the thistles, moral and material, which have grown up in my path! They seem to feel them more than I do, for I am so accustomed to them, I suppose, that

"Similes habent labra lactucas,"

as Cato, apax yelasas, [Greek] said when he saw an ass eating thistles; and from familiarity with such food, I have ceased in some degree to feel the prickles. But I am conscious sometimes, that a mind upon which physical difficulties make little impression, has been worn by continual conflict with minds incapable of even understanding the principle of the work in which they are engaged. If England wishes to waste men in her colonial bishoprics, let her continue to send them out without a staff of competent assistants; and then feed them with the disciples of fifth-rate grammar and middle schools, in which class of men, the lowest order of attainment is usually found in combination with the highest standard of assumption. My imprisoned sorrow, of which I have rarely complained before, breaks out thus in thankfulness, now that its day is past, and the comfort has come.

And now, my dear friend, as you will have received my

letter from Anaijom, think what you can do, as for our Board of Missions, for the benefit of all the "News."

"They shall come from the east, and from the west; from the north, and from the south; and shall sit down in the kingdom of GOD."

I hope to bring the subject before the Australasian Synod; and draw resources if possible from all the dioceses....

If you could have seen the joy and greeting when we took the lads back in the second voyage from which I returned (God be thanked) on the 8th of June last! It was evident at once that I was free of the islands, and could walk where I pleased, or row about in the little two-oared boat of the Undine, with that intuitive feeling of security, which is never felt, I believe, without good reason; and which is the greatest comfort to a cautious old married man like myself. It would take a whole volume to tell you how the mind comes to repose entire confidence in some "savages," and to feel no such confidence in others; and in the meantime, for want of better information, I must leave you to the lucubrations of Robertson, who moralized about savage nature, sitting in an easy-chair at Glasgow or Edinburgh, with about as much truth as might be expected under the circumstances.

You will be amused to hear of my growing friendliness with the London Mission. Think of Stoughton 2 and me as reconciled at length. Not that I take part in their religious system, but I cannot deny to their agents the acknowledgment of faithful service, nor withhold from them the right hand of friendship. But I am most drawn to them by their native teachers, men, who even in the infancy of their Faith, have left home and friends, to live amongst men of another speech, and in the lowest depths of barbarism, as the pioneers of the Gospel to prepare a

way by which the English missionary may enter and take possession. Forty martyrs, men, women, and children, from Samoa and Rarotonga, have lost their lives by disease and violence, in the New Hebrides, and in the New Caledonian group; every one of whom was as worthy of the name as the martyr of Erromango, or the French bishop who died at Ysabel. My feelings are so strong and so full of affection towards these faithful men, with whom the affinity of the New Zealand tongue enables me to communicate freely, that I lose no opportunity of showing them kindness. In the last voyage, an unusual opportunity was afforded me.

While we were lying at Anaiteum waiting for H.M.S. Fly, the chiefs of the island came to me with an earnest request that I would go to the neighbouring island of Tanna to fetch some of their people, who had gone over in a trading vessel and had not returned. They had begun to be uneasy about them, and any report of the death of one of them would, by native custom, have led to the strangling of his wife. They offered many pigs as payment for the service. I told them that I valued their missionary (Mr. Geddie from Nova Scotia) more than their pigs; and that his word would probably prevail. Mr. Geddie made the application and volunteered to go with me in person. We had a pleasant night voyage down the trade wind, guided by the light of the blazing volcano of Tanna, and at dawn of day ran into the now familiar harbour of Port Resolution. Here my breakfast-party was that feast of "tongues, "which I have described to Dr. Hawtrey, as the chief ethnographer at Eton. We soon found our Anaiteum friends, who had been long waiting for an opportunity to return and crowded on board.

But a new need of our assistance had occurred, which we had not foreseen. Two of the native teachers, whom I had seen in the last voyage, had died, and another was in a critical state of sickness with fever and ague. The poor survivor's face brightened up with thankfulness, when he came on board with Mr. Geddie to be removed to Anaiteum. His wife and child and the widow of one of the deceased teachers, with fifteen Anaiteums formed the addition to our party, with whom we were to beat back, as well as we could, against the tradewind to Anaiteum. Our party was distributed thus:--

I fear that we transgressed such navigation laws as are left, by carrying more passengers than we are allowed for our size; but there was no help for it. It cost us forty-eight hours of hard beating to get back to Anaiteum where we found the Fly at anchor.

Mr. Geddie was dubbed a chief of the first rank, and invited to live and die (that is be naturalized) on the island. I received neither thanks nor pigs; though I have no doubt they felt the one and would have given the other.....

All our short voyages (such as the one from which I am now returning round the Frith of the Thames, to assist a new missionary, Mr. Lanfear, in conducting his adult baptisms) are performed without any extra cost, as our own scholars form the crew under the direction of Champion, whom I impose upon them, with rather more necessity than appeared to us in the case of the cads who presided formerly, uniting "otium cum dignitate"over the lower boats. My present party is--

STARBOARD WATCH.

The Bishop.

N. Hector, Appleyard Scholar.

E. Hammond, Associate Printer.

H.M.S. HAVANNAH.

PORT WATCH.

Champion.

J. Wilson, Maria Blackett Scholar.

S. Taiwhanga, Maori Carpenter.

STEWARD.

Simeon Mataku, Maori Scholar.

You would enjoy thoroughly this quiet sailing, with a pleasant anchorage at some native village every night, and a willing congregation and docile catechumens at all times. Now and then we get a good blow to make a variety, as we did last Tuesday, when we lost a boat, which was towing astern, in a sudden squall. But the balance is decidedly in favour of enjoyment, in this, as in all other parts of the New Zealand ministries. I am the more free to enjoy these blessings, as I did not seek them.

It was impossible to make another voyage to the islands this year; Captain Erskine, however, in H.M.S. Havannah, penetrated as far north as the Solomon Islands, and brought back to the Bishop's College four boys, one from the Solomon Islands, two from Erromango, and one from Fate.

The Synod met on October 1, and sat for a month. They published a report of their proceedings, of which Mr. Keble said that it would be "one of the most remarkable documents of our times." It was a period of much tension. The Mother Church had but recently suffered the grievous wrong done to her by the "Gorham Judgment," and men's minds were much unsettled: in the colonies the validity of Letters Patent had come under such suspicion that no bishop liked to put them to the test: free constitutions were being given to our colonies, under which no religious body had the pre-eminence, and each had to trust to its own strength,--the Sects to the wealth and personal influence and weight of the individuals that composed them, the Church to her divine and inherent strength.

The bishops were in fact driven to act on the advice which Mr. Gladstone had given in the preceding year to all Colonial Churches, that in view of the rapid removal of the seeming support of the civil power they should "organize themselves on that basis of voluntary consensual compact which was the basis on which the Church of Christ rested from the first."

Before the bishop left New Zealand to attend the Synod in Australia he had received--without surprise but with entire sympathy--an address signed by the Governor, the Chief Justice, the Attorney-General, and all the most thoughtful of the laity, praying that the Church might be constituted in some way that would secure to her the power to manage her own affairs, and that in any such constitution the laity might have their full weight. The matter will be dealt with in subsequent pages, when the history of the Synodal action of New Zealand is traced: it is mentioned here as an event that must find its proper place chronologically.

Doubts as to the limits of the Queen's supremacy led the assembled bishops to refrain from exercising the powers of an ecclesiastical Synod on the present occasion, but they affirmed the necessity of provincial and diocesan Synods, of the subdivision of dioceses and the election of bishops without interference on the part of the secular power, of the laity being represented in each Synod, and consulting and deciding with the clergy on all questions affecting the temporalities of the Church. They disclaimed all wish to exercise the arbitrary power possessed by bishops to suspend and revoke at their discretion the licences of clergymen, and affirmed that in all of ecclesiastical offences bishops should be tried by the Bishops of the Province, and priests or deacons by the Synod of the Diocese: neither did they fall into the vulgar error, so dominant in England, which assumes that only the clergy are liable to spiritual discipline, for they provided for spiritual admonition, and, this failing,

for the exclusion from Holy Communion, and, in the last resort, for the excommunication of persons living in notorious sin.

The bishops put forth, for the comfort of the faithful, a declaration of the Catholic doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, which was signed by five of their body, the sixth, the Bishop of Melbourne, stating his views in a separate paper. They declined to appear to countenance the education given by general or local boards, believing that the religious instruction given in the schools under their superintendence was "defective, erroneous, or indefinite," and they constituted an Australasian Board of Missions charged--(1) with the conversion and civilization of the Australian Blacks; and (2) with the conversion and civilization of the Heathen races in all the islands of the Western Pacific.

It was understood that this latter work would be undertaken jointly by the Australian and New Zealand Churches; and in 1851 a Branch of the Australasian Board of Missions was formed at Auckland. Of the former there were five dioceses, while in New Zealand Bishop Selwyn was the sole representative of the episcopate. The Bishop of Newcastle, who had been Bishop Selwyn's comrade in the Lady Margaret boat at Cambridge, undertook to share with him the first voyage, which was made in 1851, but after that time the whole work of the mission was left to Bishop Selwyn, until Mr. Patteson joined him in 1855. The Australasian dioceses contributed money from time to time, and on this occasion they furnished a ship of nearly 100 tons, the Border Maid, the Undine being too small for the number of students who, it was hoped, would now be gathered from the islands.

The Synod ended, the bishop returned to Auckland in the brig Emma, 3 and thence sailed southward; and on

January 3, 1851, there is the following entry in his log:--"Anchored in Port Cooper, 4 6 1/2 P.M. Charis to Theo [Greek];" and on the following day, "Went on shore at 8; breakfast with Mr. Godley. Synod with four clergymen. Pleasant and useful conference. Much spirit of unanimity and concord in the body. At 1 walked to the new road to visit the road parties of natives, and to invite them to service. Visited settlers from house to house. Contented and pleased with the country."

"UNDINE" SCHOONER, AT SEA,

April 15th, 1851.

MY DEAR LADY POWIS,

...I am just returning from a voyage of 4,000 miles to Stewart's Island, Otakou, Canterbury, Chatham Islands, Wellington, Nelson and New Plymouth, and am now within 100 miles of home, after an absence of four months. Our house, like yours, has been one of sorrow, for our dear little daughter, born in September 1850, has been taken from us. I had only known her for twelve days, and those full of business, so that I can scarcely call her features to mind; and "when I shall meet her in the courts of heaven, I shall not know her." We had hoped that she would have been the companion of her mother, and comfort her for the separation from her sons; but her lot is cast in a better state by Him in whom is the whole disposal: and we can rejoice in thinking of her as one of the spotless Innocents who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. The loss is less to me than to her mother: for I cannot and must not look to children as a source of personal and domestic enjoyment: but may hope to rejoice, if it be God's will, in reports of their well doing under the care of the other parents and friends with whom they are so abundantly supplied.

How much I should like to see you all once more! but the work increases upon me. New Caledonia and the Islands are opening and the good people of Sydney with the greatest kindness have bought me a larger vessel to supersede the dear little Undine which has now carried me 24,000 miles, a space equal to the whole circumference of the globe. If it were not for these calls of duty, I think that I should have been tempted to visit England at the end of my ten years of service, to seek for comfort and refreshment from the fountain head: for there is but one real privation in colonial life, the being cut off from intercourse with so much that is great and good and holy in the mother country. Perhaps even in this respect I have less to complain of than others of my order, as I have the society of friends, whose cultivated minds and high tone of principle supply as much moral and intellectual converse as I have any right to expect....

Lord Powis, I do not doubt, is much disturbed by the present prospects of the Church in England. Every letter and every newspaper brings new cause of anxiety and sorrow. May we all remain stedfast in allegiance and love to our own Holy Mother; and if we are ever forced to change our present position, at least let us never seek for refuge in the most corrupt Church and the most corrupt State upon earth. Better ten Privy Councils to adjudicate upon doctrine than that monstrous coalition of triple crowns and cardinal hats and French bayonets, which is now the state of Rome. We are not without our share of the characteristic trial of the day, the attempt of the State to coerce conscience; but my little vessel rides quietly over the waves with New Caledonia and the dark Islands of the Pacific under my lee. I will never leave the Church of England, happen what may, but I may be forced to serve her and her Lord in some other portion of this field: a little more, and Lord Grey would have made me a Missionary Bishop with "my path upon the mountain wave, my home upon the deep." But I pray God that we may do nothing rashly: but dwell rather upon our many grounds of thankfulness than upon the few causes of discontent....

"UNDINE" SCHOONER, AT ANCHOR, LYTTELTON, alias PORT COOPER.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Here I am among the Canterbury pilgrims; and a very good set of colonists they are, as far as I can judge. But a great mistake has been made in sending out too many at once, and in allowing any consideration to prevent their instant occupation of land. They are not allowed, I find, to choose till two months after their arrival, by which time the prime of the summer will have passed away, and many will have become demoralized by idleness and desultory habits forced upon them, rather than chosen by themselves. These are all the old mistakes, which I hoped you would have avoided after so much experience and so many warnings. I repeat again and again the same advice: send out your parochial staff ready organized--clergyman, landowners, labourers, not turned adrift upon an interminable plain: far less cooped up in a Dutch oven at Lyttelton; but to go at once to a parish known and chosen by themselves, and to a church and school already built; so that not one single day's delay may occur in resuming those good habits in their new country which they have learned in England, and continued under their own chaplain on board their ship.

I find neither church, nor school, nor parsonage in existence. Money enough has been spent, but all in civil engineering. Last Sunday I administered the Holy Communion in a crowded loft over a store. I do not care for these things if they are unavoidable; but where it has

been part of the whole plan from the first to put religion in its right place, I do object to spacious and costly offices, long lines of wharves, roads, piers, &c., and not one sixpence of expenditure in any form for the glory of God, or for the comfort of the clergy. Mr. Godley is doing all that he can to remedy the defect; and I shall of course make the best of the matter.

I have written to you on the subject of the bishopric. The simplest course would be for Dr. ---- to go to Sydney to be consecrated. After the resolution passed at our meeting at Sydney, I cannot advise his returning to England for that purpose. The more Catholic course will be to obtain consecration within his own province.

There are many very excellent people, to all appearance, with whom I have made acquaintance, and I hope to see more of them on my return from the Auckland Islands, to which I am now sailing, to see the "Antarctic Prince of Whales," 5 who is now almost alone in his glory; but still with a sufficient number of English and New Zealanders to require a visit. I wish also to take the opportunity of seeing my numerous god-children in Stewart's Island and Foveaux Straits, before I resign them to the charge of the new bishop.

"This time I shall not have an escort, which will oblige me to be a little more cautious; but the larger vessel will afford greater protection, as the Undine is so low on the water that it would be impossible to keep out boarders. You must not expect speedy results in this work, for even

the soft Tahitians stood a siege of sixteen years, and the New Zealanders the same time, before they yielded to the Gospel. Among these 'mingled peoples' we must expect even slower progress: but I am full of hope that they also will at last be numbered among the heathen for whom the prayers of Christ have been heard and granted."

"After dinner the Bishop placed his brother of Newcastle in his chair (John Frere's oaken chair in Hall), and the clergy presented to him an address of welcome. The bishop acknowledged it very nicely, and alluded to his friendship with G. A. N. Z. Then our bishop spoke of the joy of meeting on this day, when the love and friendship of apostles are commemorated with two fellow-collegians at St. John's, the Judge and Bishop Tyrrell. He touched very nicely on the witness which such feelings gave of the brotherhood of such societies, and expressed his hope 'that this seedling from their own St. John's, would grow up in strength of love and purity.' Then he alluded to the day, only six years ago, when he and the judge stood on the same spot, then only a wild heath, and Mr. Whytehead's legacy of 600l. was all that he had with which to begin the work; and now, when he looked around and saw this College of St. John, supporting itself in great measure by its own labour, and the recognized centre of the Missions of the Pacific, ready to receive students of divers nations and languages, he could not but feel encouraged to go onwards."

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, N.Z.,

Nov. 7th, 1851.

It was early in the morning of the 7th of October that we heard that the Border Maid had anchored off Kohimarama in the night, and the bishop was on shore and gone to Taurarua, where Mrs. Selwyn and Johnnie were then staying.

After morning service in chapel, a party were seen coming up from the vessel, and soon a long file of black boys became visible, and thirteen were counted as they came nearer.

Mr. Abraham went to meet them, and soon returned with the joyful news that two of our old friends, who had gone away with the bishop in July, Tom and Meste, had returned; and also three of the set he had here the year before--little Thol, the sick boy from Lifu, grown into a big, fat boy; Siapo, the chief's son from Mare, and another.

Many of our Maori boys had gone to meet them, and there were many greetings and much shaking of hands between old friends, and with the strangers. Thol was at home directly in this house, and came to see nurse, and inquired for Johnnie; and Tom and Meste wanted to come in and see Mrs. Selwyn and me.

When Tom was asked about Bob, his little brother, he said, "Bob no come;" but he brought up another little boy from Erromango, whom he introduced as "all the same, Bob!" and seemed very proud of; and in fact little Umao is a ditto of our last pet, little Bob, in many ways, with his merry face and white teeth.

Then we learnt something of the story of the voyage from Mr. Nihill and Nelson Hector, and, by dint of pumping, from the bishop afterwards. I will give you the sketch of it as well as I can.

I described to you the hold, fitted up as a schoolroom by day, when the hammocks were taken down, and left in a good airy place. Here they kept school regularly all the

voyage--the bishop, Mr. Nihill, and Nelson being the teachers; the hours of school and work alternating as they do here.

Anaiteum was their first point, and there the bishop found Mr. Geddie still persevering in his work, though with reduced means and impaired health; with a slowly increasing Christian population around him, and a promising set of scholars, one of whom the bishop has brought to the college at his request, to learn printing. Captain Paddon was also there, going on with his sandal-wood trade on the conciliatory and pacific plan which he finds answers so much better than the contrary; in witness whereof the guns which he brought with him in the first instance, lie rusting in the sand. And there also is the iron house, the only remains of the Roman Catholic Mission in the island, which the bishop visited on first landing there in 1848, filled with a large body of clergy, and all means and appliances for defence against the natives, and for their conversion; but which he found deserted in 1851--the whole body gone, like the shifting-scene in a phantasmagoria--no one knows why.

Futuna was the next place they reached, and both the bishops went on shore there. The people were friendly, and they returned with two nice-looking boys, whom the Bishop of Newcastle selected for their amiable countenances and gentle manners; but nevertheless an instance occurred with them which showed how independent the cruelty of their national customs is of individual character. Irai, the younger of the two was very ill on board, and Sadua, the elder, his relation, or brother, as he calls himself, wanted to throw him overboard, because he said he was unhappy himself and made others unhappy; his life was "no good."

Tanna was their next point, and here they found the little Erromango boy, Umao, taking care of a sick Englishman who had been put ashore by his companions--covered with wounds--in such a dreadful state that they feared contagion in the ship. He seems to have been kindly treated at Erromango, and to have been brought to Tanna for the hot baths, this little boy still accompanying him, and tending him most carefully, though the man was always scolding, and often striking him. The bishop

offered to take the man to Sydney, and the little boy came with him, and then was the bishop's "earning" to bring him home. They say little Bob's delight was great when Umao came on board--he was of his tribe--in a state of nature, but in five minutes Bob had dressed him, and they went running about together hand in hand, all over the vessel.

But this did not last long, for when they came to Erromango, Tom and Bob were to be landed there. The bishop was very careful about landing here, knowing the feeling there was against the island, in consequence of Williams's death here. He used to say to Tom that they would fight him if he went to Erromango; but Tom was always earnest in his denial, and his assurance "No fight; no fight."

The land they first made was Dillon's Bay, the scene of Williams's massacre. Tom did not know the place, and said the people spoke another language; so they went on to his own shore, and some of his own people came out to the vessel; but still, Mr. Nihill says, they were very doubtful whether they had come to the right place, they took so little notice of Tom, though they knew him, and he seemed so bewildered; he went on speaking to them in English, "How you do?" "Very good me come home." They were very dirty, too, and ill-favoured, as Meste thought, when he went down and told Mr. Nihill, "Plenty yam Salems on deck; much dirty."

At last the bishop took the boys on shore, and sent for the chief to give Tom up in due form. He was long coming, and they saw no women about, which made him cautious. He did not land until the chiefs came down, and then he sent them off to the ship while he accompanied Tom and Bob to their home, two miles inland. Tom was very happy then, and ran off to find yams and cook them. His house was an arbour of large dimensions, having about 30 feet depth from the front. The bishop remained outside with his companions, and partook of their food. He knelt down with Tom and Bob and said prayers with them, and then bade them tell their friends what they

were doing, and what it meant. But though not offensive in their manners, they were not attractive in any way, and took more notice of Bob's cat than anything else. Tom and Bob came down to the beach when he left them, and cried when he parted from them; Tom saying, however, several times, "Me say no fight!" as if appealing to the veracity of his statements.

The stories he tells of the fighting that prevails between the different tribes in the island are very unfavourable to obtaining a hearing even, still less for any religious impressions.

They next went to Mare (Nengone is the native name), and found the Samoan teachers still there, and with increasing congregations and schools; and to the bishop's great joy he found that Siapo had been stedfast, and had kept close to them and improved in reading and writing, and in all ways.

He was on shore here for two days, and much pleased with the progress made. A large native chapel is built, and well filled with Christian worshippers. He joined in the services--preached in Samoan--and visited the schools; and earnestly wished he could leave some permanent minister, in answer to their urgent entreaties, as he thinks this island now ready for the formation of a mission station. As it was, he could only bring away five of the youths for training here this year; two of them being old friends. Another young chief desired to come very much, but his father would not let him, and he sat by the Bishop crying bitterly; he has his name down, however, and says he shall call for him next time.

The Isle of Pines is now entirely taken possession of by the R. C. Mission, and they did not land there.

At Lifu he was immediately greeted as "Kame Thol." "Thol's father" and Thol was sent for, being inland. He came directly, quite prepared to return to school, and bringing a relation with him, whom he begged might come too. The first night he said the Lord's Prayer in English, and several other things which the bishop had taught him. From what they could learn, there were no Christians on the island.

They reached Malicolo on the 25th of August, and were well received, though the natives did not even know the

words "missionary" and "tobacco," which seem to be the first English words known in these seas. The bishop and his party walked about the island and made special acquaintance with a very pleasing elderly man and his son, a very fine, intelligent youth, whom the bishop much wished to bring away. They found a well of good water on a hill near the shore, and next morning the bishop returned with a party to replenish their water casks. He had two boats, some of the sailors, two English and some Maori boys, and Siapo. One English lad and one sailor stayed in the boat, and the bishop went up the hill with the rest to the spring. His quick eye, however, saw that all was not as he left it the preceding evening. Strangers were there, and there seemed a questioning and disputing among them and the friendly natives, who still seemed as friendly as ever. One of the strangers followed them making faces, when the bishop turned and fixed his eye upon him and motioned him to begone: he slunk back, but still followed. He was always most particular in keeping his party together on shore; and this day an Italian sailor who was always making short cuts, was nearly separated from them, but was called back in time. They had filled their casks, and were walking down the hill again, when the bishop saw a man above them throw something which fell near them, and immediately a yell was heard from below. He desired his party not to run, nor to show any fear, but to walk on with their water casks as if regardless of all around them.

The accounts vary as to the number of the natives gathered together: the Maori youth says there were very many--the English lad agrees with him. The bishop thinks there might be 200 in all, and only a few of them were evil disposed. Certain it is there were quite enough to have surrounded and murdered him and his little band had that been their intent. As it was they did no violence, for though they threw stones and let arrows fly, none of them hit; and they are too sure marksmen to miss their aim if taken.

When they came within sight of the boats, they saw that one had pushed off towards the vessel, while the other was surrounded with natives, who were brandishing their clubs about Nelson Hector, and making all sorts of bragging

and threatening gestures; in short, as the bishop said, "hectoring Hector," while he sat unmoved, a worthy disciple of the bishop, only quietly resisting their attempts to take the oars from him.

The bishop and his train of water-bearers made their way steadily onward to the water's edge. He said, "Go on," and they walked on into the water, lifting their casks higher and higher as they advanced, till, seeing Siapo marching on with his, lifting it above his head, and the waves dashing into it, he called on him to empty it, as the water was spoiled; but even then he was very unwilling to lighten his burden. As they approached the boat the natives around it made off, and in a few minutes more they were on their way to the Border Maid, with only one cask missing. One of the sailors had let it fall, and it rolled down the hill, and the bishop would not let him go back for it.

As they went, they could plainly see the two parties on shore, the friendly natives and the adverse ones disputing still; and after they reached the vessel, they saw a party of their friends bringing the missing cask after them. They had no sooner received these on board than they were followed by the mischief-makers, but they kept them from entering the vessel.

I have given you the details of this adventure, because it seems to illustrate several points in the nature of the difficulties of this enterprise, and the peculiar fitness of the bishop to cope with them. His quick-sighted reading of countenance, and apprehension of gestures; his habits of order and forethought, besides his calmness and courage, humanly speaking, contribute to his safety, and enable him to walk unscathed where others would be in danger. If you read the account of Williams's death, you will see that he and his party acted in every respect differently from the bishop in this similar adventure at Malicolo: they separated one from another; they ran when alarmed; they threw stones and fired when attacked.

I think some of his friends at home think him rash: they would not if they heard the details. Though he is bold and fearless, his thought for every one, and preparation for every contingency, and his judicious selection of persons for different trusts, is wonderful. For instance, no

one perhaps but Nelson Hector would have kept his post with the boat as he did. By dint of great pumping we drew from him the story: how he and the sailor waited till he saw the natives coming down with menacing gestures. He then ordered the sailor to put off towards the vessel, to be free to come back to the bishop's aid if his boat should be taken: he stayed himself where he was placed. They came up, got into his boat, felt him all over, and bullied and threatened him in all ways; and he passively suffered them to do anything but take the oars. Sometimes he thought they were going to dash the club at his head, but more often that it was bravado; and so he kept them in play till the bishop returned; and no doubt their safety was in a great measure owing to his nerve not failing them.

After this island they tried to proceed towards Lydia, but the weather and the state of the rigging was against it, and reluctantly they turned homewards; dropped the Bishop of Newcastle at Newcastle; touched at Sydney, and reached home on the 7th of October.

I must not omit, however, that they called for Tom at Bunkhill, on Erromango, though they did not land again: they went near shore in a boat, and he soon appeared. Meste called to him and told him his story; "Me go back college--you come college." So Tom swam off; his clothes, he said, "sit down at home;" and he wanted to fetch them and little Bob; but being afraid they might lose him too, they did not let him go, but Meste dressed him in some of his gear. So poor little Bob is left. Tom assured us that he and Bob said their prayer together every night, and other people laughed, he said. He is just as amiable and happy as he was, but is not bright in learning. Meste gets on well, and can read English in the first reading-book, and write pretty well; but he is often sad about not getting home, and sometimes says he will not come again. His moral sense of truth and honesty is very keen; but he is very anxious to get a bottle of poison from the surgery, to poison his enemies when he goes home; and, on Hector's expressing horror at the idea, he said, "Why? They no white men!"

The Mare boys are the most advanced; they can read their own language, and have more idea of the distinctive

doctrines of Christianity. Siapo is thought by his teachers to be really anxious for religious instruction, and to be a Christian. To read the Bible seems his great object in coming here. He is very national, and will not allow anything to be better here than in his own country. To learn and go back is one great object with him; and another, to have an English clergyman on the island. He tells Hector they are tired of the Samoan teachers; they can do no more than they have done. The wild note of savage life appears much more in them (the boys from Mare) than in Meste. One of them hit an English boy by accident--throwing a spear--and they all set off and hid themselves, and were not found till next day: it was the custom, Siapo said, and they could not make him ashamed of it. They take to wearing clothes, after a little trouble, very readily, and learn to make them; but they resist the cutting of their hair stoutly. However, the bishop carried his point, and the shearing of the three Mare boys filled a tub, he said. The first taming process, he says, is to put on a shirt, or blue Jersey; then to cut their hair, beginning with the least boy, and so on; every one who is shorn being in his turn on the side of shearing--like the old story of the fox.

MORPETH, N. S. WALES,

Sept. 23rd, 1851.

The main danger to which we have been exposed has arisen from the character of the natives of the islands, and their deep-rooted desire of revenge for previous injury. They are very treacherous, or rather, I would say, when they have, from any cause, decided to attack and kill they effect their object by pretending to and showing in their manner the greatest cordiality and goodwill, until the moment of attack. The captain of a sandal-wood trader, whom we met at the first island which we visited, told me that on visiting one of the islands to which we were going, some years ago, he had so numerous a crew that he thought himself quite secure, and that the natives would not dare to attack them. He therefore allowed as many as liked

to come on the deck; many came and appeared in great good humour, most pleased and friendly: when in one moment, without the slightest warning, seventeen of his crew were laid dead on the ship's deck. Their revenge, or retaliation, is with them a principle or point of honour, and as they can draw no distinction between one white man and another, however different they may be in calling or even in country, when they have received any injury from a ship or boat, they will always retaliate, if they can, upon the next white men who come to their island, and it is of course quite impossible to know what ship or boat may have visited an island some few days or weeks before you visit it, or how they may have treated the natives.

The greatest danger to which we were exposed arose from the evil design and attempt of the natives in Sandwich Harbour, at the Island of Malicolo. Only one ship is known to have visited this harbour before the Fly man-of-war, and the natives did not know one word of English or of the language of the other islands. Numbers collected on the shore as we entered the harbour about noon, and as we wanted to replenish our water, we at once communicated with them--went in our boat close to the shore, persuaded two to swim to us, took them as guides to the place where fresh water could be obtained, gave them some little presents, and dismissed them. The place shown by them as the best for obtaining water proved so inconvenient that the Bishop of New Zealand and myself rowed in the evening all along the shores of the harbour to find, if possible, a more convenient stream or pool. We found one more accessible and returned after an absence of two hours to the ship. Whenever we left the ship, we always gave directions to the chief mate to allow a few of the natives to come on board, at a time, if they came in their canoes, and wished to see the ship, and seemed quiet and friendly. On our return, the mate told us that they had allowed one or two small parties to come on board, but that afterwards so many came and some looked so questionable, armed with their clubs and spears, that he had thought it prudent to refuse permission to them to come on deck. The Bishop of New Zealand still thought it important to procure some water, and we arranged that we should not both go in the boats, as we had usually done, but that he should go in the

boats to the place we had selected as the best for obtaining water (which was retired, and near the settlement of a nice old man, with whom we had made friends the previous evening) while I remained in charge of the ship. At dawn the boats went with casks to fetch the water, and I was left in the ship with the mate and one sailor, and two or three of the native boys from the other islands. The natives had probably observed, the evening before, how many sailors were in the ship, and perhaps had been annoyed that they had not all been allowed to come on board--when therefore they saw the boats go away with so many hands in them, they would know how few must be left in the ship and feel assured that if some ten or twelve of them could get on board, under pretence of merely seeing the ship, they could watch their opportunity, overpower the few in charge, take possession of the ship, and then have also the whole party in the boats at their mercy. Within an hour after the boats had left the ship, two or three canoes came off to the ship, filled with huge men, most of them were armed with their clubs, and bows, and spears. In the first canoe the chief man was such a ferocious looking ruffian, with a formidable club, that I at once determined he should not come on board. When, therefore, the canoe came close to the ship, and they asked by signs whether they might come on board, I refused to allow them, but made them understand by pointing to the sun, and tracing its course in the heavens, that they might come on board about noon, when it was over our heads. By this time I knew the boats would be returned: and then if we only admitted a few on board at a time, making them leave their arms in their canoes, there would probably be no great risk. They seemed much disappointed, and in order to keep them in good humour, I talked to them, asked their names for different things and wrote down the words in a book. I then got them to tell me their names, and in order to carry on this amusement and pass the time, I pointed to an old man in the canoe and made signs that he might come and sit on the side of the bulwarks, and tell me the names of things which I wanted to know. The old man came and seated himself beside me, and as I wrote down the first word he gave me, I saw him looking most, anxiously all over the ship: and as I wrote down the

second word, I detected him making signs to the ferocious chief, with a look which seemed to say distinctly, "It's all right, only one or two left in the ship: let us get quietly on deck and the ship is ours and the white men in our power." I immediately sent the old man back to the canoe, and made them understand that no one could come on deck till the sun was over our heads. Five or six other canoes had by this time come off to the ship, and there must have been at least fifty of these huge men in them, many armed, and some five or six looking as if they could do anything. For more than two hours they kept close to the ship, asking again and again to come on deck, which I again and again refused. Every now and then, one more forward than the rest would take hold of the ship and plant his foot on a slight projection, so that one good spring would bring him on deck. No sooner had he planted his foot and looked up, than he saw me just over him, directing him very calmly but decidedly to get back into his canoe. All this time the native boys from the other islands, who were on board, were in the greatest terror. One came to me with a countenance of livid paleness and said, "Those,--very bad men,--they want kill you and me,--they no come on ship, you no let them come." Another, the biggest of the boys, a stout strong fellow, came to me with a countenance so ludicrous from the excess of terror depicted on it, that I could not help laughing. Well! after two hours, the men in the canoes consulted together, evidently came to the conclusion that it was no use to try any longer, and began to move off. My work was then done, and the chief mate came up to me and said, "I am rejoiced, my lord, that those fellows are gone: we have been in great danger: if your calm firmness had not disconcerted them, and three or four had once got on the deck, the ship would not have been now in our possession."

Next came the most anxious hour that I have ever passed in my whole life. When the canoes had moved off a little way, they stopped, and every eye was directed towards the two boats of the ship, which were lying off the shore, where the water was being fetched from a pool about a quarter of a mile inland, up a rocky wooded bank. The men in the canoes consulted together, then changed

their places, filling the two largest canoes with those who were evidently the greatest fighters, and these two canoes paddled towards the boats. While I was called upon to act and protect the ship, I was perfectly calm, and though I was conscious of the danger of my position, felt no fear. Now I was full of alarm. As the two canoes went slowly towards the boats, I could see other natives running along the shore in the same direction. With the telescope, I could see one man in each of the boats and about one hundred natives on the shore. The danger was, lest the two canoes should reach the boats and overpower the two men before the Bishop of New Zealand came down with his body of men from the water pool--in which case the natives would be in possession of the boats--deprive the bishop and his party of all means of reaching the ship, and destroy them at their leisure. The canoes neared the boats, I called to the mate and asked, "Can we render any assistance?" "None, my lord." I pointed to a third small boat still on the ship; "That would sink if put into the water, and we have only one oar to it." I paced the deck a few seconds, and then asked again, "If anything should happen on shore, and the natives taste blood there, have we any means of self-defence in the ship?" The answer was "None." This information did not disconcert me: I felt it a duty to inquire whether anything could be done; and if anything could have been suggested, should at once have set about it. But the thought that something fatal might happen on shore brought with it a sickening feeling of reckless disregard as to what might happen to myself. I therefore paced the deck and rendered the only aid I could render--that of fervent prayer to Almighty God, asking in our Saviour's Name that He would guard and protect and restore to us in safety my dear friend and his companions. I saw soon the canoes reach the boats: I saw two of the natives in one of the boats: I heard a noise and the shout from shore--I could not trust my eyes, when I thought I saw the boats move from the shore, rowed by our own men--I gave the telescope to the mate and eagerly asked whether he could see the men in the boats and the bishop with them. He looked and answered "Yes--they are all there--and his lordship steers the first boat." You can imagine my thankfulness...."

TO THE COUNTESS OF POWIS.

SCHOONER, "BORDER MAID,"

Sept. 18th, 1851.

MY DEAR LADY POWIS,

As I am now approaching Sydney, on my return from a Missionary voyage to the islands with the Bishop of Newcastle, I am encouraged by the hope of a speedy mail to prepare a letter to you, in acknowledgment of one received shortly before I left home, dated 30th July, 1850. I fear that the box, which I should value so much, containing the engraving of my late dear friend and patron, has been mislaid. I have never yet seen it, and my only hope now is that, as we live in one small house with Mr. and Mrs. Abraham and several of our native scholars all crowded together, the box, as it sometimes happens, may have been laid under others during my absence, and so have remained unseen and unopened. In fact, since 5th September, 1850, I have scarcely been two months at home. It will give me a melancholy pleasure to see the likeness of my kind friend hanging in my study by the side of my excellent father-in-law, Sir John Richardson. I often say that in my present state of separation, probably for life, from all my relations and friends, I have an advantage over those who remain in England, for when the course of actual conversation is once interrupted, the greater part of the "bitterness of death is past," and the mind, divested of the hope of further intercourse on earth looks forward the more easily to a reunion at the last day, and to an eternal communion in heaven.

In September last, two days before my departure for Sydney, it pleased God to bless us with a little daughter, whom I found on my return, blooming with all the health

and cheerfulness in which children born in New Zealand rival their English relations. For about ten days I was allowed to love this new treasure, and looked forward to the comfort that she would be to my dear wife when her second son should have followed his brother to England. I then went away again on my summer voyage of four months and had reached Wellington on my return home when I learned that our dear little Margaret had been cut off after a day's illness. It has been a grievous blow to my dear Sarah, as the child was about six months old, and at that age, as you do not require to be told, had twined her little cords of love about her mother's heart. To me these losses had not so much of grief as of a softening and humbling chastisement, teaching me to pray that in the midst of cares and works, all tending to roughen, if not harden, the surface of the heart, the spirit of my little babe may be given to me that I may be converted and become like her.

In the midst of the sorrow comes also abundant consolation. You may have heard, I dare say, of the kindness of the people of Sydney and Newcastle in subscribing 1,200l. for a new vessel for me. We have just made our first voyage in the Border Maid a name which will gratify your national feeling, especially as the vessel was built at Aberdeen. She is a schooner of nearly one hundred tons, that is full four times the size of the Undine. A singular providence has reunited me with my old college friend, Bishop Tyrrell, who was No. 7 in the St. John's boat when I was captain. We were in the same year at St. John's and constantly together. He succeeded me in my college rooms in the new court, which were afterwards occupied by Lord Powis, and after him, I think, by Robert Clive.

Our voyage of three months has been most pleasant though not so expeditious as others in the Undine. We are bringing back with us, as usual, a party of native scholars, thirteen in number, from six different islands and speaking six different languages. Among the rest is my dear little boy Thol from Lifu, who was with us last year and returned in such a doubtful state of health that I scarcely expected to find him alive. He is again in good health, and most happy to return with me to keep his second term at the college.

SCHOONER "BORDER MAID," AT SEA,

Sept. 17th, 1851.

MY DEAR MR. HAWKINS,

I think that I cannot acknowledge the Society's Jubilee letter from a more appropriate place than the bosom of the wide sea, over which, in its length and breadth, it has pleased God that the work of His Church should be extended. The vessel on board of which I write will also attest the blessing granted to the Society's labours, for it is the gift of the dioceses of Sydney and Newcastle, where the good seed has been sown and nurtured, under Divine protection, mainly by your efforts. It has pleased God in a remarkable manner to verify the words which I wrote in an early letter--that those who thought that our venerable Society was doing little for the conversion of the heathen, might well consider whether there could be any surer way of spreading the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth than by building up the colonial churches as Missionary centres. The movement at Sydney last year, of which I am now enjoying the fruits in company with my dear brother of Newcastle, is a signal proof of the diffusion and fructifying character of your work. Your contributions to Australia and New Zealand have awakened a zeal and established a precedent, by which the gospel has now been carried over a range of 4000 miles, to islands of which even the names are almost unknown in London. We have with us in the mission vessel thirteen youths

from six different islands, besides two of our own New Zealanders, who are going with us to St. John's (now recognised as the central Missionary College) for such instruction as we hope will qualify them, in due time, to return as teachers to their own countrymen. Our little flock is as follows:--5. Nengone or Mare. 2. Lifu--Loyalty Islands. 2. Futuna. 2. Erromango. 1. Anaiteum--New Hebrides. 1. Solomon Islands. 2. New Zealanders. 15 speaking 7 languages. This is the choicest offering which I can make on the occasion of your jubilee; for there is no treasure dearer to my own heart than these youths; not for themselves only, but for the inchoate and potential good which faith and hope represent as now concentrated in them, and to be propagated by them hereafter. Silver and gold we have none, for what we have we receive from you and your kindred Society (would that it were still more united); but we offer to you these treasures of our mission field, as proofs that your efforts have not been unblessed, and that your prayers do not return to you void. You may affirm, with perfect truth, that in our college-- mainly promoted and encouraged by your support--you are educating the children of the most distant races of the earth. There is no inhabited spot so near to the actual antipodes of Greenwich, as the Chatham Islands, from which we have six youths, now under education at the college. And it is mainly owing to the efforts of the society, under God's blessing, that I have been enabled, during the last nine months, to visit, with ease and comfort, inhabited countries stretching over thirty-three degrees of latitude, or one eleventh part of the circumference of the globe. The range of our native scholars is over thirty-four degrees of latitude, from the Solomon Islands in 10 deg. S. lat., to the Chatham Islands in 44 S. These distances may serve as a lively type of the length and breadth of the love of Christ; for surely it is not the work of the Church itself, much less of societies or individuals, but His free love and His all-sufficient sacrifice, which is bringing these things to pass. How gladly then shall we join in your special prayers and thanksgivings: ascribing all glory to Him, to Whom it is due; and counting all past successes only as proofs of His presence with His Church always, even to the ends of the earth.

On my return to Auckland I shall hope to find your second letter (promised in the circular of 7 Nov.), with instructions as to the mode in which it is wished that the Jubilee should be observed.

Trusting to the blessing of the Almighty that your year of Jubilee will be one in which many slaves of Satan will be set free,

I remain,

Your grateful and faithful friend,

G. A. NEW ZEALAND.

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AUCKLAND,

Oct. 8th, 1851.

MY DEAR AND INEXHAUSTIBLE FRIEND,

On my return yesterday from the "News," the mass of matter which they suggest must be my excuse for at once proceeding to business, when I would much rather linger within the playground of affection.

1. Ship Money.--I fear that I have been guilty of the offence of Charles I.--of levying this tax without sufficient authority--misled unintentionally by your letter...

It is a great satisfaction to me to find from you that I may appropriate the ship fund to any purpose connected with the mission, because I shall now feel able to carry out some other plans necessarily resulting from the use of the vessel, but not actually naval...

Lest you should be afraid of being reduced to a mere "dealer in marine stores," I will do my best to supply you with matters of higher interest "ad salutem animarum pertinentibus."

2. Touching my Diocese.--You say that questions have been raised about my neglecting my own diocese. Pray inform all complainants that my diocese extends from the Auck-

land Islands to the Carolines; i.e. from 50 south latitude,

to 34 north latitude; upwards of 80 degrees of latitude by 20 of longitude: and that having a diocese so like a rolling pin, I must needs be a "rolling stone;" though I am well aware that such stones, whether heaved by Sisyphus, or borne by torrents, "gather no moss." But it is not for me to question the wisdom of an appointment, of which it is my simple duty to endeavour, so far as God may give me grace, to discharge the duties. At present, as I have not visited much more than 30 of the given 80 degrees of latitude, it seems to be premature to accuse me of extending majores nido pennas.

If it should be said that the definition of the Colony of New Zealand, which has been copied into all the Patents and Public Documents of New Zealand, by which it is made to extend to 34 deg. north latitude, is a clerical error,--I rest upon a surer ground in the parting charge of the dear archbishop now gone to his rest, who, with the bishops forming the Board for Colonial Bishoprics, consigned to me, in 1841, the oversight over the progress of religion in "the Coasts and Islands of the Pacific"--a charge which neither his successor, nor any other Church authority has revoked; and which it is therefore my duty to attempt at least to fulfil. For seven years, during the troubles of New Zealand, I neglected altogether this part of my diocese, and now bitterly rue the consequences of this delay; as fields then untrodden by the foot of missionary, are now overrun with Papists and others; and I have to retreat rejected and baffled from places which were freely open to me on my first voyage in the Dido. Considering that, within the last twelve months, I have visited every English settlement in New Zealand (except Whanganui) of 150 inhabitants, from Stewart's Island to the Bay of Islands, including the Chatham Islands, distant 400 miles from the main, two visits to Lyttelton, two to Wellington; and that the larger settlements have been visited every year, upon the average at least once, since I arrived, instead of the triennial obli-

gation imposed by the Canons; and that I have visited on foot twice every mission station; and am now preparing at the end of my ninth year to visit them a third time, in the course of a walk of about 1000 miles, but unhappily not one which can be done, in Captain Barclay's style, in 1000 hours--considering, I say, all these things, I think that objectors had much better hold their tongues, and not "compel" me to seem to "boast," when I would much rather dwell in silence upon my own infinite shortcomings.

3. Touching your confidential "kernel" of esoteric advice, I shall not forget your caution; but you hold, and have often expressed an opinion, that the Colonial Church must re-act upon the Mother; and to say the truth, the agony of parting with such men as Manning, caused, as it seems, by the delay of our Church in asserting her own principles and carrying them into practice, does make one almost desperate, and in bitterness of heart one may often steep too much nasturtium, if not gall even, in friendly correspondence. But believe me that I have always felt that I have much greater aid, both in men and money, than I could possibly have expected; that I am deeply grateful for these blessings; and that if I ever speak of "enterprizes of great pith and moment turned aside by the interference of relations," it is only because I am convinced that the Church can never secure the respect or confidence of her most thoughtful sons so long as such things are done...

I cannot for very shame go to Scripture to rebuke such interference with a clergyman's sense of duty, but having seen our soldiers and sailors in their wearisome and profitless warfare in this country, I feel disposed to make a low bow to every military and naval man because they do so cheerfully for the Horse Guards and the Admiralty what einateres yaloo te [Greek] will not allow clergymen to do for the Church, and so being ashamed, as I say, to go to Scripture, I fall back upon Euripides, Phoenissae, 1000:--

aishron yar ei men Thesfaton eleutheroi
kouk eis anaykin daimonon afiymenoi, K.T.L. [Greek]

and then I confess that a little drimu menos protiptei [Greek] through the nostrils, when I think of the whole Pacific, or rather the whole world overrun by the disciplined forces of the Jesuits, who have practically restricted the Catholic

duty of obedience to the followers of Loyola, as the virtue of temperance was once confined to the house of Rechab. But you must tell me when I do more harm than good by this sputtering, and in all cases acquit me of censoriousness or malevolence. I only wish to see our Church acting, I would not say as other churches act, but as every organised body must act with a view to success. Give us the discipline of the Church of Rome, and its principles of obedience, and we shall hear no more of "Papal aggression." What is the answer to the plain questions, Why are Papal countries aggressive in nothing but religion? and Protestant countries aggressive in everything but in religion? Even Thucydides will supply an answer, where he shows why the aggressive policy of the Athenians always failed by the turbulent and unorganised character of its democracy.

Do not suppose that we vaunt our own perfections in speaking plainly. Our own Colonial churches, witness the "domestic comfort" declaration of the clergy of Adelaide and Tasmania--the Land Question in New Zealand--will all wither and die with the parent stock unless we can all agree to uphold and act upon higher principles than the secular system which fills the four volumes of Burn's Ecclesiastical Law, the root of the Gorham Question and of all evil--the fact that a clergyman has a legal status beyond the control of his own order and of the Church; by which, whether bishop or priest, he ceases to be a soldier of a marching regiment, and becomes one of the Household Brigade, which could not bear to serve in Canada.

4. And lastly, I invoke your aid for pressing the point of the Wellington Bishopric, which would do more to enable me to grow "moss" than anything else that you could do for me. Wellington and Auckland have nearly equal claims; if anything, Wellington has the priority. Press the point with all the vis Coleridgiana.

"The first ten years of the bishop's life and work in New Zealand can be but imperfectly understood unless some account is given by those who were eye-witnesses of the struggles he underwent in the founding and carrying on of St. John's College.

"At the Waimate, indeed, as soon as he had returned from his long visitation through the country in January, 1843, he began to organise his collegiate system. But though he encountered many difficulties, and though the removal of his chaplain, Mr. Whytehead, by death, was like the loss of his right hand, the work there was comparatively easy. In the old Mission Station he found houses enough for all his staff, and he soon turned desolate-looking and ruinous sheds and outhouses into infant and native boys' schools, hospital, printing-office, &c.

"There was already on this ground a house for English boys and their master, and a room in it large enough to be used as a college hall. There was a good deal of pasture land, which only needed care to be made profitable; and within three minutes' walk there was the old mission chapel, in which daily prayers and Sunday services could be held. When we visited our dear friends, in October, 1844, we were surprised and delighted with the progress made. There were fifty native boys, from three to fifteen boarders, under the charge of one of the C.M.S. missionary's sons, and a native girls' school, under the care of Mrs. Dudley. The bishop had found in a loft a number of spinning wheels, sent out years before by the Society, and had had them put in order; and here the

little brown-faced maidens sat and spun every afternoon, and sang merrily over their work. The whole place was a scene of busy, cheerful life.

"Far different was the state of things when the bishop shortly after had to leave the north just as every effort of his was beginning to prosper. The immediate cause of the removal was the unwillingness of the C.M.S. Committee in England to grant a lease of the land and buildings to the bishop; but the war which broke out four months later would probably have compelled him to leave the Waimate.

"Some months previously the Bishop, the Chief Justice, and the Attorney-General had chosen a site for the future college on high ground, about five miles from Auckland by land and three by water, and running down to a navigable creek.

"The Tamaki land was considered very good, and some settlers were already on farms in the neighbourhood. But there was hardly a tree and not one house on the estate, and the greater part of the land turned out to be stiff and clayey, and very difficult to work. The party of students and Maori and English boys were put into tents and into a large barn beside the creek till better accommodation could be provided. As soon as they were settled, under the care of Rev. W. C. Cotton, the bishop's chaplain, the bishop had to start off again on a long visitation tour, and on his return, in March, 1845, when he was hoping to give his whole time for a while to the oversight of the college buildings, the war in the north broke out, and he had to go up to the Bay and to the Waimate, and on his return thence to sail with wife and child to the south, and to remain in charge of the Mission Station at Otaki for three months. Mr. Hadfield's dangerous illness and the need of some one who could speak Maori, and who could mediate with authority between the English and natives, rendered this necessary. He was back again in July, superintending, planting, encouraging, going with parties of the boys, native and English, to neighbouring islands in the little Flying Fish to buy timber, always taking the heaviest share of the work, whatever it was, and selecting the roughest accommodation for himself. Difficulties and cares were pressing heavily on him. His trusted friend, Mr. Hadfield, was lying, as was supposed, in his last illness at Wellington.

Mr. Mason, of the C.M.S., had been drowned the year before, when swimming a stream near Wanganui, so that in all that large and disturbed district he had only one clergyman, Rev. E. Taylor, in charge, and one deacon, whom he had trained and ordained in the winter. And during his few months' stay in Auckland he and his wife were tenderly nursing Mrs. Dudley, who died in their house on September 19th, 1845. He had hoped to place her and her husband about that time on a station thirty miles from Auckland, and to see her in charge of a large native girl's school, for which work she was eminently fitted. But this was not all. The destruction of Kororareka brought many destitute families to Auckland, who had young sons growing up, with no means of paying for their education. Several of these made earnest application to Mr. Cotton in the bishop's absence to receive their boys, and the chaplain, knowing his master's large heart, agreed. So on the bishop's return he found eight or nine lads, who must be taught and boarded and lodged as foundation scholars. Some men would have refused the responsibility, for he had no regular provision for the support of the institution, save a grant of 300l. for the maintenance of students from the S.P.G. For the rest he was dependent on the sympathy and support of friends in England and on his and his chaplain's private means. The colony was in a state of great depression; labour scarce; wages high. But the very difficulties seemed to brace him to the conflict. The Pauline Rules were drawn up and printed, and the struggles began. Looking back now at those years of toil, I can but wonder at his faith and patience.

"By May, 1846, on the bishop's return after five months' weary travel through every part of his diocese, he and his family removed to St. John's College, and the work fairly began. It looked bare and bleak enough. A grey scoria building, which formed two houses, with eight rooms in each. In one of these the bishop lived; in the other was the English boys' school. The native party was still at Purewa, and on the opposite side of the road were three cottages for the college servants. The meals were taken in a scoria kitchen, and cooked in an outhouse. By the end of the year a little hospital was built, and things began to look more bright. Then comes the time of the

fever, which attacked from twenty to thirty of the college party, and stopped all work for two months, save the constant nursing of the sick, which the bishop took share in night and day. His own party were just recovering when the sad news arrived of the death of Rev. Mr. Bolland, of fever, at New Plymouth. It was needful for the bishop to go off at once to the south to make arrangements for supplying his place. This could only be done by removing Mr. Govett from Otaki to succeed his friend and to send down Mr. Samuel Williams, the son of old Archdeacon Williams, to take his place among the native people. This was a great loss to the college, as Mr, Williams, who had been born in the country, was invaluable as master of the native school; for he had not only idiomatic knowledge of the Maori language, but acquaintance with the ways of thinking of the people, and an affectionate interest in them, and besides, was a man of business. At the end of 1847 Mr. Cotton also had to fulfil his promise to his father and family of returning for a while to England; and so the machines had to be worked by young and often inefficient hands during the bishop's long absences. Many anxious thoughts about the college work and workers weighed him down in his long lonely voyages and land journeys. And no sooner did he arrive home, after months of separation from his family, than he plunged into work at St. John's, teaching, auditing accounts, &c., as if he had no other claims on his time. And amid many discouragements the work grew. By the end of 1847 the beautiful chapel was consecrated, and daily service begun; and the hospital was open again for only uninfectious cases; and primary native and English schools, all at work. About that time the college servants--cook, butler, and butcher, all for various reasons--determined to leave; one man and his wife to return to Tasmania; another to go on a farm; and after much thought and counsel with his friends the bishop decided to have the work done by the college party, instead of paying exorbitant wages to persons who had no interest in the success of his undertaking. He had seen young officers on board Her Majesty's ships standing daily by while the rations were served out, and keeping strict account of everything, and he tried to infuse a like sense of responsibility into the

minds of his young men that they should do the 'serving of tables' faithfully and cheerfully. Unhappily this was a very unpopular step, and met with little sympathy and approval within or outside the college, though it was only asking the students to do for Christ's sake what every settler in the bush had to do for his own. It was then that he preached a grand sermon at the Tamaki, which his friends used to call 'the sublimation of Carnifex.'

"I well remember listening to a talk of his to a student one morning on the consequences of faithfulness or unfaithfulness in the discharge of his duties as house steward. How it seemed probably a small thing to him to entrust some Maori boy with the keys to give out flour or rice, and yet a little waste each day might in a few months amount to a sum of money which would have enabled the bishop to bring some native child to be taught and trained. Perhaps the young man at the time only received the talk as a 'lecture,' but judging by his faithfulness in an office of trust in after years, the seed bore fruit. The bishop was delighted to get hold of a little book of directions, printed by Colonel Gold, of the 65th Regiment, for the use of his men. After an appeal to the elder men, the drummer-boys were exhorted to step smartly forward for the honour of the 65th. With one of his happy playful turns, he used to call this book the Golden Rules.

"How his eyes used to kindle and his whole face light up with a smile as he read this, for this was the spirit which he desired to infuse into all his workers. And they did respond in a way; but most of them were young and inexperienced, and the college system was little understood, even by older men, whose sons were reaping the benefit of the bishop's self-denying exertions in the cause of education. The notion of English and natives working side by side on equal terms and with common privileges was unpopular, and so was the industrial system, though it alone enabled the larger number of youths of both races to get a sound education.

"For it must be remembered that during all these first years, from 1842 to 1851 or '52, there were no English schools in any of the settlements save day schools, for the poor settlers' sons learned early enough to saddle and ride a horse, and to drive a bullock-waggon, but were

liable to grow up in the ordinary sense uneducated. Nor were the catechists of the C.M.S. able to provide a liberal education for their many sons. Most of these were brought up at St. John's. It was not till 1848 that Mr. Maunsell, stirred by the sight of the college work, began a native boarding school at Waikato Heads. This was followed up by similar schools up the Waikato, and in the south, which were aided by government grants.

"There was, too, afloat a latent dread of Puseyism, and if that subsided, then all that was new was the 'bishop's way.' That some did, however, from the first appreciate the bishop's work may be seen by the endowments given to the college: (1) by a lawyer in Auckland; (2) by a C.M.S. clergyman, in memory of his only son, who had been at St. John's College, Waimate, and tenderly nursed in his last illness by the bishop and Mrs. Selwyn; (3) by a gentleman in Auckland, in memory of his wife.

"The arrival of a large body of military settlers in the provinces at the end of 1847 and in 1848 increased the college work greatly. The government imported several bodies of pensioners, with their families, from England, and planted them in four villages within six to eight miles of St. John's College, without making provision in the way of chaplains, or a salary for such. A good number of the men were Roman Catholics, but the others had to be looked after. A wooden church for Howick was all prepared by the College Corporation at St. John's, and the college carts took the framework over, and at the bishop's expense the building was put up; and before the end of 1848 he had pretty little wooden churches open for the use of the pensioners at Panmuir, three miles; Otahuhu, five, and Onehunga, six miles from the college; and all served every Sunday by deacons resident at St. John's. In all weathers the bishop and his young clergy went a-foot through mud and mire to their different posts, he always taking the hardest part of the work and the largest number of services. One by one they dropped in between seven and eight in the evening, and after High tea, the whole party used to gather into the chapel for what was always called the Unity Service.

"It was a happy ending to a day certainly not of rest. After 1848 we were used to see dark-faced Melanesian

youths among the crowded ranks of English and Maori boys of all ages. The bishop's letters have shown how, on his visit to the Chatham Islands and to the whaling stations, his heart was sad when he saw boys and girls growing up nominally Christian, but in entire ignorance, and so lapsing into heathen ways; and how he longed to crowd his little vessel to overflowing with these stray lambs. He was very happy and hopeful when a native girls' school was built and opened on ground near to Auckland, given in part by the government.

"This institution was under the care of the Rev. G. A. Kissling, of the C.M.S., and his wife; and his face would beam with satisfaction at the prospect of suitable wives being trained there for his native teachers. Several marriages did take place, the old tribal feeling being overcome after some difficulty; the faithful Rota Waitoa, who had risen step by step from being a bare-footed lad in a blanket, with a pack on his back, up to a well-dressed house-steward and a schoolmaster, to the diaconate, and after some years to the priesthood, chose an excellent helpmate from St. Stephen's. The weddings were always held at the college, and the young couples generally settled down there in the bishop's house, which had wonderful powers of expansion.

"Then came the 'Annus Mirabilis,' as our dear friend used to call 1850, when Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Abraham came out to work at the college. Mr. Lloyd learned Maori readily, and won the boys' hearts. The college worked on under difficulties, but successfully, until 1853, when it was necessary to disperse the school for a time: before it could be reassembled, the clergyman at S. Paul's, Auckland, died, and Mr. Lloyd took his place. The native side of the work was never resumed at S. John's, for industrial schools on the same principles were now at work in several parts of the islands where boys could be fed and taught at half the expense.

"It was grand and thankworthy to walk through the fields which he had sown, amid trees which he had planted, towards a church which he had built, and filled with scholars whom he had reared, whose mouths he had fed, whose bodies he had clothed, whose minds he had taught, that they might do the same for others after them, by the

labour of his own head and hands, and all through a vast amount of opposition and lack of sympathy."

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND,

August 11th, 1851.

"I may suppose you to be pretty well acquainted with the locality of the college from the bishop's letters which have been published. When new comers arrive at Auckland and ask for the bishop's palace, I own it is very amusing to watch their faces as I point to a dingy scoria building, with four windows in front, and the same at the back, at which may be seen, however, some right cheerful-looking Maori faces, and sundry English figures; for this small house of eight rooms is cramfull of married men and women, and boys of several ages. I say it is very amusing to watch the faces of the persons inquiring--and I can pretty well tell now the animus of the visitor by his expression of countenance on seeing the palace. One man's eye brightens up as he says: 'Well, this is more like the exterior appendages of an apostolic bishop;' another says (but not to me): 'It is a beggarly hole;' and so on. But it is a curious fact that the people who in England railed at bishops for their luxurious mode of living are here rather offended at ours for his utter disregard of personal comfort and show, though he is as soigne and particular as any one about the church's ornaments, or, indeed, his own house, such as it is. I mean that he combines simplicity and neatness, and shows as much taste in the order and arrangements of his humble and straitened cabin or study as any captain of a man-of-war, or member of the Roxburgh Club.

"Would you like to spend a day with us while the bishop is here? (which is seldom enough); well, then, you would come to morning service at seven, and see issuing from three different buildings lines of mixed English and Maori lads streaming to the pretty little wooden chapel. There are settlers in our neighbourhood that say they like to

come to our chapel, 'for it is more like England than anything in the country.' In fact, it is almost the only ecclesiastical-looking building, I believe, in the country, and Mr. Waile's painted glass at the east end gives it a 'home look' of antiquity and sacred association very different from the generality of buildings here.

"The bishop reads the service half in Maori, half in English; an English scholar reads the First Lesson; a Maori scholar reads the Second Lesson. At nine o'clock school begins. The bishop only takes Scripture classes, and has them in chapel. First comes a class of Maori lads and men, who are separated into the baptized and the confirmed; one set usually come one day; the other another day. The teaching is very graphic and lively. The Maori mind cannot take in anything abstract; everything is taught by illustration.

"I don't know that I can better describe his mode of teaching the young, or of warning the elder, than by telling you of a visit I paid with him to the chief in the neighbourhood, who will not become a Christian because he has two wives, and he must give up one. 'Are you not thinking of becoming one of us?' says the bishop. 'Yes, perhaps,' said the chief. There the conversation dropped; but I saw the bishop hold up two fingers, and then bend down one. The chief nodded assent. At the time I did not understand it, and I said to the bishop afterwards, 'What was that symbolical communication you held with him, which he seemed to take in so readily?' and then he told me that the chief had two wives and must put down one.

"I have learnt the character of many of the boys by watching the questions he puts to them. I heard him single out one boy in rather a marked way (when reading of Samuel) to ask him what sort of men Eli's sons were. The boy hung down his head and gave no answer. The others looked hard at him. I found he was the rather unworthy son of a worthy father.

"The great value of his teaching, however, is his wonderful perception of the capacity of the pupil, and his thought-building, if I may so call it. He lays the foundation of his teaching so admirably. It is like building stone upon stone. You never see a huge dome or cupola of iron on a

weak wooden framework. The point he wants to instil does not come out till the end of the lesson, and perhaps the actual thing to be brought out does not occupy five minutes of the lesson--all the rest of the hour he has been gradually building up to that point. The Maoris delight in it. 'It is so Lightlike,' they say--so clear, that is.

"After an hour or so with these natives, you would see some of the Melanesians come in. They have only been with us a few months, and yet they have managed to pick up words and ideas that make us very hopeful of being able to make them native teachers for their own people some day....

"It was rather trying to one's nerves, however gratifying to one's mind, to hear the following illustration or explanation come out. The bishop was trying to teach them that bad words and lying were wrong. He could not make out whether or no he had made himself clear, when the biggest boy left no doubt on our minds by retailing some words which they had learned on board ship:--'Does God love boys,' said the bishop, 'who do something, and say they have not done it?' 'No; gammon no good,' was the quaint reply. And indeed their keen moral sense in matters of truth and honesty is very exemplary. I use the word advisedly. They are positively an example to both English and Maori boys in matters of this kind.

"When these have spent an hour with the bishop, in come some English scholars, of twenty or thereabouts, and with them the principle of teaching is the same, though the matter is higher. Words and passages in the Greek Testament, teaching and illustrating the Love of God, or the Power of God, Redemption, Sanctification, &c. These are most carefully analysed, and the principles of language worked out at the same time that a vast deal of collateral instruction is given by catechising. I mean the bishop always works on the Socratic plan of extracting the knowledge of the pupil, and making him teach himself. He does not play at 'perch-fishing in Virginia Water,' as George the 4th did; that is to say, he does not put in the perch one minute, and pull it out the next; but he stocks his fish-pond, and lets it

reproduce, and then goes a-fishing; or he gives them the flour and expects a loaf of bread.

"Another hour or two is occupied with the highest class--the candidates for Holy Orders---and a like process carried on.

"The bishop is specially a man whose knowledge is self-wrought and applied. 'Cave hominem unius libri' is fully exemplified in him. He knows the Bible thoroughly, and the only other book he seems to know well is Pearson on the Creed. With these two he seems to master every subject.

"But let us go on with our day. A dinner in hall at two o'clock is of the simplest, yet most substantial kind, and is attended by the whole college. The bishop by this means is able to offer chance hospitality without pressing hard on his limited resources.

"If business permits, after dinner we may start off round the college to see the working departments. There is not one of these which he is not well able to superintend. If he had not been a good bishop he might have made a capital farmer, or a good carpenter, or a weaver, or a printer,--all of these works are going on with our English and native lads, and I need hardly say that he still more understands seamanship and navigation. He is, in fact, a first-rate officer. I was asking a common sailor the other day about the different vessels that leave this port, and their captains, and who he had sailed with; and then I said, 'Who would you prefer sailing under out of this port?' He immediately said, 'Well, I had as leave go with the bishop as any man,' evidently looking at him merely on the sailor side of his character.

"It was a glorious sight the day the new mission ship (the Border Maid) first left her moorings near the college. All the boys were on board, and Champion, her captain, was piloting her up to Auckland, the bishop at the helm. 'Luff, my lord.' 'Luff it is.' With him it is no playing at seamanship, but downwright hard work. He knows where every store is, and every rope; he keeps his watches regularly, indeed, much more regularly than any captain of a ship, who never keeps watch on deck except in bad weather. He takes the sights, teaches the oldest sailor and the youngest boy. Every person and every-

thing comes under his eye and care. And then his sermons on board ship, under the open eye of heaven, are so grand and sublime. Only fancy how this told the other day. There was a man-of-war in harbour which had been to the Northern Islands in his company last year, and he went on Sunday before he went off the other day, and held divine service on board. He took with him our four Melanesian boys, and the Gospel for the day was the 14th chapter of St. Luke (2nd Sunday after Trinity). You could see by the rapt attention of the sailors how they took in every word he said about those that were picked up in by-lanes of the city. Doubtless their thoughts flew to Rotherhithe and Wapping; and he contrasted the advantages of their orderly and disciplined life on board ship with their careless life on shore; and then he spoke of the hedges and highways of the ocean, and pointed to the black boys who had come to us originally from on board a man-of-war; and he told them how good a training for the Christian life we had found the order of a ship had been to these boys; how the regular habits on board this vessel had prepared the minds of these boys for subjection to a higher discipline and training for immortality.

"The sailors seemed to be thankful to know that they had in their way, by example, been of service in the good cause. They were so extremely fond of these black boys, and when they were sick or sorry, they used to take such care of them.

"I have never seen the bishop's mode of dealing with the Melanesians in their own islands, but I fancy the way he wins their hearts at first is by his innate humour, combined with thorough fearlessness, and above all, of course, a constraining love of souls for whom Christ died. They seem to know instinctively, like dogs and children, that he loves them, and means their good. At one savage place he was eyed suspiciously at first; but he brought forward one of his own little boys he was bringing back to one of the islands, and pointing to the lantern jaws of a little native of the island, and then pulling out the fat cheeks of our little fellow, he made them understand that he would do the same for any of their children they would let him take. When they saw him poking his fingers

into the hollows of one's cheeks, and pulling out the fat of the other, they danced and shouted with joy at the fun, and would have let him carry off dozens.

"I will give one specimen of his sermon to the Maoris, and one to our English fellow-countrymen on the Californian money-mania, and end my tale. The Maoris are, I am sorry to say, falling back, many of them, to heathenish practices. This was very much the case in one tribe; so the bishop preached on Saul, and without pointing or explaining the application to them, it was very striking to see how they caught it all, and fitted the cap. The warrior Saul brought into immediate contact with Divine truth, admired for his prowess in arms, having Samuel for his guide and adviser, rebelling against him and God, gradually leaving the service of the true God, betaking himself to sorceries and witches. It was just what they are and do; and they saw its application exactly. Parable and history supply all his religious teaching, and fables and proverbs all his moral.

"What a description is this of the soul which is cut off from Christ! A ship driven from its anchor, by which it held to the rock, tossed by the raging waves, and unable to bear up into the wind, with devils howling for joy amid the storm, 'Let her drive!' It is a true account of all who have lost their hold of Christ. 'Let her drive!' To them neither sun nor stars appear; no small tempest lies upon them. 'Who will deny that the manifold changes of the world were never more manifest than at the present time. All human powers alike are proved to be unstable as water. A torrent of unruly wills is sweeping away everything before it, and when it has done its work of destruction it is itself overwhelmed by the next wave that follows it. And in the midst of this wild and frenzied fever of the world, as if in mockery of human madness, Satan opens out his last remaining lure. When all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them have been seen to be worthless, he points to the rivers which flow with golden sands. Now in the last ages of the world he reveals his hidden treasures as fuel for the fire he has himself kindled upon earth. Lest nations should be too poor to war, he first inflames their passions, and then supplies them with the means. And then he who has roused the storm looks

on with his own cry of joy at the sight of the vessel hastening to destruction. 'Let her drive!' he seems to say with bitter scorn; 'gold is no longer needed for the thrones and the crowns of kings; cast it into the midst for the multitude to quarrel for.'

"You may well imagine the feelings called forth by this stirring appeal. I hope many have been warned against going to California and Bathurst for gold. Some that did go write back to their friends, and remember this sermon now it is too late.

"But apart from its intrinsic worth, I thought it was so characteristic of our bishop's nautical tastes and habits."