Bishop Heber, poet and chief missionary to the East, second lord bishop of Calcutta, 1783-1826;

Front matter

PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY

Bishop Heber, poet and chiej missionary to the East

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Preface

Two generations have passed away since the death of Reginald Heber in the bath at Trichinopoly. His widow promptly pubHshed, in two quarto volumes, a Memoir of his Life. In these the most lovable and the most laborious of all English gentlemen and missionaries lies buried. His verse, and especially his, as yet, matchless missionary hymn, have kept his name in remembrance.

The time has come to record the part which he took in the revival of the Church of England at the beginning of the century, and what he accomplished, or set in motion, for the development of the early missionary enterprise, especially in the south of India. For years he stood almost alone among the students of Oxford, the squires of England, and the clergy of the Church, in the personal support and public advocacy of the four great Missionary and Bible Societies of his youth, and in catholic co-operation with Nonconformists. A patriot in the most stirring period of our national history, he was of no party in the Church. A theologian of ripe scholarship and evangelic zeal, he resented alike the extremes of the so-called Calvinists, and the pelagianism of the Arminians of his day. He was for Christ ; he loved and he did much to elevate the great Reformed Church which he loyally served ; he worked with all good men, or wished them well in the one divinely commanded cause. His short episcopate, while he was still a viii young man, was the rich and fruitful outcome of such zeal, such wisdom, and such charity.

While striving to put Reginald Heber's public life in its right perspective and setting in England, and especially in India, 1 have attempted to reveal the man who so charmed his contemporaries, both men and women. I thank his nephew, the present Rector of Hodnet, the Rev. Richard Hugh Cholmondeley, for most courteous assistance. I gratefully acknowledge the help of the present Rector of Malpas, the Rev. and the Hon. W. Trevor Kenyon, especially in permitting me to publish, for the first time, Heber's letters and verses to Charlotte Dod, Edge Hall, Cheshire. Reginald Heber's relation to her, as to Maria Leycester, afterwards Mrs. Augustus Hare, forms another chapter in the history of literary and spiritual friendships, like William Cowper's not long before.

The illustrations have been reproduced chiefly from the original wood engravings cut from Heber's own sketches. The Portrait is an intaglio from an early proof of the copperplate engraving of the oil painting in All Souls College, Oxford, by Phillips, R.A. The pictures of the old Cathedral of St. John and of the Mausoleum of Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta, are from platinotypes by Professor Thomson, M.A., of the Duff College, Calcutta. The Rock of Trichinopoly is from a recent photograph. The Map of India in Bishop Heber's time has been reproduced from the original copperplate of J. Walker's work.

Serami'ore House, Merchiston,

Edinburgh, 26//^ September 1895.

CHAPTER I Heber's Place in Missionary Biography PAGE

History of Christian Missions still to be written . . . i

August Neander ....... I

Biographies the materials of history ..... 2

Reginald Heber's unique position ..... 2

The Seven Chief Missionaries to India .... 3

The three American pioneers ..... 4

Bishops Caldwell and Valpy French .... 4

Bishop Berkeley, the missionary philosopher • . • 5

CHAPTER n Malpas and Oxford 1783-180S

Heber, Cotton, and the men of Cheshire .... 6

Malpas and Ilaybcrg ...... 7

Richard Heber, M. P., and his books .... 8

Reginald Heber's gracious boyhood ..... 9

Contrasted with Carey and Martyn ..... 10

His schools, reading, and drawing ..... 12

At Oxford : Brasenose and All Souls in 1800 ... 16

His Latin poem '9

His rah-s/hic and Walter Scott ..... 20

Early friendship with Charlotte Dod and verses . • .22

His father's death ....... 25

His missionary enthusiasm ...... 27

a 2

X

CHAPTER in

The Grand Tour in the Years of Austerlitz ani

^Reginald Heber the idol of Oxford University Lands with Thornton at Gothenburg' Survey of Norway and Sweden Petersburg and the league against Buonaparte Austerlitz .....

Moscow and the death of William Pitt The Scottish Mission in the Caucasus History of the Cossaks. Sebastopol .

The tomb of Howard

Hungary, Vienna, Central Europe, and Berlin Jena ......

The General Election of 1806 Welcome home to Hodnet .

CHAPTER IV

Hodnet parish and Hawkstone Park

Introduced to Wilberforce— " The Slave Trade is no more

Influence of the Clapham Sect

First experiences as Rector of Hodnet

Of no Church party, but broadly evangelical

Married in 1 809 .....

Builds the new rectory ....

Preaches for the Bible Society

On worldly amusements ....

Death of his young brother and daughter. His prayers Maria Leycester, afterwards Mrs. Augustus Hare . Preacher at Lincoln's Inn ....

Birthday verses and letters to Charlotte Dod

■ 36 39 42 43 44 45 47 48 49

1805-1806

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

Palestine as an Oratorio by Crotch . . . . .70

Mrs. Fry and her work in Newgate . . . . .72

Present fruit of Heber's labours in Hodnet . . . ■ 7^

CHAPTER V

Heber constrained to write hymns for his congregation . . 79

His ideal of hymnody ...... 80

Missionary collection in every church in England . . .81

Heber writes " From Greenland's icy mountains " . . .82

H. H. Milman's, Scott's, and .Southey's contributions . . 85

Heber's fifty-seven hymns ...... 90

His place in English hymnology . . . . .91

His MS. hymn-book with music ..... 92

Works and Life of Jeremy Taylor .... 92

Heber, Jeremy Taylor, and Milton contrasted . . '93

Heber's Quarterly Review articles . . . . .96

His Poems and Translations dedicated to his brother . . 97

Heber on John Wesley ...... 99

On Hymns and Lord Byron ...... loi

Hawarden Castle — A Song of the Bow .... 103

Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone and Mrs. Gladstone on Heber . 104

CHAPTER VI

Chief Missionary of the Church of England to the East 1823-1826

Palestine, a missionary poem ..... 105

Heber's appeals for the Bible Society .... 106

His proposal for union of the Church's two Missionary Societies . 108 His appeals for the Church Missionary Society . . .ill

His Bampton Lectures on the Comforter . . . .114

Wynn offers him the Bishopric of Calcutta . . . .116

Heber's mother and his wife's family oppose . . .119

Appointment approved by the King and accepted . . .120

PAGE

Letters and verses to Charlotte Dod ..... 121

Heber analyses his motives ...... 124

Quotes the farewell of Philoctetes . . . . .127

Last sermons in Hodnet and Malpas .... 128

Maria Leycester's searchings of heart .... 129

Consecration in Lambeth Palace . . . . -133

, ' ^ Heber declares himself chief missionary in the East . . . 135

CHAPTER VII India and the Voyage in 1823

Lord Amherst Governor-General at the same time . . . 137

George Canning and the great Administrators then in India . 138

Church of England non-missionary till Heber's arrival . -139 The voyage and its occupations ..... I42

First impressions of Bengal . . . . . .147

Arrival at Calcutta ....... 148

The old Cathedral of St. John . . . . .150

Prayer on beginning his episcopate . . . . .151

CHAPTER VIII

King William's missionary charter of 1698 . . . .152

Job Charnock, founder of Calcutta, and his tomb . . -153

Middleton the first Bishop of Calcutta .... 154

Heber makes Corrie Archdeacon and praises Thomason . 156 Titaghur and Serampore ; Carey and Marshman . • 157

Suttee and its prevention ...... 160

The cholera morbus ....... 162

Ordination of Christian David ..... 162

Calcutta and life there 163 Bell's educational system and Mrs. Wilson's schools • l66

Lord Amherst and his family ..... 169

The peasantry of Bengal . . • • .170

Rarrackpore Park . . ■ • 176

The swinging orgie . . . • 179

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER IX To Dacca and the Himalayas 1824

PAGE

Heber's primary charge in Calcutta ..... 182

His answer to Abbe Dubois . . . . . .183

Departure on his visitation of the diocese .... 187

Mr. Gladstone's Latin translation of Heber's " Verses to His Wife " 188 Mr. Stow's last hours . . . . . . igo

Missionary prospects at Dacca . . . . .194

Heber's " Evening Walk in Bengal " .... 196

His mission to the hill tribes of Rajmahal .... 198

Description of the Bahar uplands ..... 201

On the conversion of the natives ..... 202

At Monghyr, Patna, and Dinapoor ..... 204

Native Christian marriage and divorce .... 208

In Lucknow and before the King of Oudh .... 210

III sickness and prospect of death . . . . .212

" Communication " for his wife in case of death . . . 214

CHAPTER X Ai.MORA TO Bombay 1824-1825

Results of the Goorkha war .

On the way to Almora

.Shooting tigers ....

The Himalayan peaks and the Chinese frontier

First Christian service in Almora

Political unrest among the people

Kumaon and its beauty

Meerut and the Christian Sepoy

Delhi. Reception by the Emperor Akbar Shah

The hall of audience described

Agra and the Taj Mahal

Fatehpoor Sikri ....

Through the Central India and Rajpootana States

Malcolm, Ochterlony, Todd, and Gerard

XIV

PAGE

Banswara and the Bheels. Kaira ..... 239 Condition of the people of India ..... 250 Letter to the Serampore missionaries .... 255

Last letter to Maria Leycester ..... 258

CHAPTER XI Bombay and Ceylon 1825

Bombay contrasted with Calcutta ..... 260

Elephanta and its cave temple .... 262

Salsette and the Kanheri excavations .... 265

Karle cave and Kailas ...... 268

Mountstiiart Elphinstone and Bombay society . . . 270

Heber's visitation in Bombay ..... 273

Ceylon and its missions ...... 275

Point de Galle ....... 276

Reception at Colombo ...... 277

The cinnamon gardens and peelers ..... 278

Catholic letter to the clergy ...... 281

Proposals to improve the Dutch system .... 285

Visit to Kandy ....... 287

Heber's description of Ceylon to his mother . . . 289

Return to Calcutta ....... 291

CHAPTER XII Madras 1825

Missionary activity in Calcutta ..... 292

Lord Combermere and the siege of Bhurtpoor . . 294

Heber on the re-ordination of Lutherans .... 295

Abdool Massee'h's ordination ..... 297

Heber's conversation ...... 299

Dutch Chinsurah becomes British ..... 300

The Armenians and Heber ...... 301

Marriage in the British Army ..... 302

Heber and Joshua Marshman ..... 303

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

Dr. Bell's Male Asylum 306

Bishop's visitation at St. George's ..... 307

Sir Thomas Munro ....... 3°^

Heber " almost worn out " ...... 309

At Pondicherry and Cuddalor . . . . • 3'3

Among the Siva pagodas . • ■ • ■ • 3'5

On caste and the Nestorians . ..... 316

The tomb of Schwartz ...... 320

At Tanjor : the Maharaja Serfojee ..... 321

CHAPTER XIII Trichinopoly— The Rock and the Bath 1S26

The Rock of Trichinopoly . . . . . .326

Heber Memorial School now S. P.O. College . . . 327

On Schwartz ....... 329

Heber's last letter— A plea for the Christians . - -331

His last sermon and confirmation services .... 332

His favourite hymn ....... 335

Death in the bath ....... 337

Burial in St. John's Church, Trichinopoly Fort . . -338

Sir Thomas Munro and Sir C. E. Grey on Heber . . .34°

Maria Leycester's letter ...... 342

The Heber window in St. Oswald's, Malpas . . .343

Eulogy by Bishop Stubbs ...... 344

Fifty-six missionary bishops now in Heber's diocese . . 346

Bishop Butler on Foreign Missions ..... 348

The converts now " a mighty multitude " .... 349

Southey's verses on Reginald Heber .... 350

CHAPTER XIV Bibliography ....... 352

Appendix

The Heber Family ...... 357

INDEX 361

ILLUSTRATIONS

Bishop Ilcber at Forty ....

Frontispiece

Heber's Rector)', Hodnet ....

On the Left Bank of the Hoogli

The Bishop of Calcutta's Attendants

.St. John's, Calcutta— Heber's Cathedral

To fcue 1 50

Mausoleum of Job Charnock, Calcutta, 1692

Shiva Pagodas and Ghaut beside Heber's House, Titaghur

Bengali Peasantry .....

Thibetan Ghyals in Barrackpore Park

•75

Barrackpore Park — Governor-General's Country Seat

The Swinging Orgie ....

Map of India in 1824 ....

Toface

i8S

Panchway Boat .....

Bengali Fruit-Boat ......

Augustus Cleveland's Monument at Bhagulpoor

On the Ganges in Bahar ....

The Ekka Conveyance, Monghyr . . . .

Granary built at Patna after the Great Famine of 1777

On the Ganges above Dinapoor . . . .

Gothic Gateway at Ghazipoor . . . .

Kumaon Sikh, with Attendant . . . .

The Great Mosque, Fatehpoor Sikri

Palace of the Maharawal of Banswara

Bheel Inclosure, Tambresra . . . . .

Jain Temple in Kaira . . . . .

Climbing the Himalayas . . . . .

Vepery Church, Madras . . . . .

The Rock of Trichinopoly . ' .

To face

I

How awful now, when night and silence brood

O'er Earth's repose and Ocean's solitude,

To trace the dim and devious paths that guide

Along Kanheri's ' steep and craggy side.

Where, girt with gloom, inhabited by fear,

The mountain homes of India's gods appear !

Range above range they rise, each hollow cave

Darkling as death, and voiceless as the grave ;

Save that the waving weeds in each recess

With rustling music mock its loneliness ;

And beasts of blood disturb, with stealthy tread,

The chambers of the breathless and the dead.

All else of life, of worship, past away,

The ghastly idols fall not, nor decay ;

Retain the lip of scorn, the rugged frown.

And grasp the blunted sword and useless crown ;

Their altars desecrate, their names untold,

The hands that formed, the hearts that feared — how cold !

Now all are cold — the votary as his god — And by the shrine he feared, the courts he trod,

' The rock-cut temples of Salsette, near Bombay.

xvlii

II 'Tis past — the mingled dream, — though slow and grey

On mead and mountain break the dawning day ;

Long time the winds that breathe, the rays that bless :

They come, they come. Night's fitful visions fly

Like autumn leaves, and fade from Fancy's eye ;

So shall the God of might and mercy dart

His day-beams through the caverns of the heart ;

Strike the weak idol from its ancient throne.

And vindicate the temple for His own.

Nor will He long delay. A purer light

Than Mithra cast shall claim a holier rite ;

A mightier voice than Mithra's priests could pour

Resistless soon shall sound along the shore ;

Its strength of thunder vanquished fiends shall own.

And idols tremble through their limbs of stone.

Vain now the lofty light, the marble gleam.

Of the keen shaft that rose by Gunga's stream !

When round its base the hostile lightnings glowed.

And mortal insult mocked a god's abode,

What power, destroyer,' seized with taming trance

Low in the dust, its rocky sculptures rent.

Thine own memorial proves thee impotent ;

Thy votaries mourn thy cold unheeding sleep.

Chide where they praised, and where they worshipped weep.

1 Siva. This column was dedicated to him at Benares ; and a tradition prevailed among his worshippers that as soon as it should fall one universal religion would extend over India, and Brama be no more worshipped, ll was lately thrown down in a quarrel between the Hindoos and Musalmans. See Hfbers Journal.

JOHN RUSKIN ON INDIA'S CONVERSION xix

III

Yes— he shall fall, though once his throne was set Where the high heaven and crested mountains met ; Though distant shone with many an azure gem The glacier glory of his diadem ;

Though sheets of sulphurous cloud and wreathed storm Cast veil of terror round his shadowy form. All, all are vain ! It comes, the hallowed day, Whose dawn shall rend that robe of fear away ; Then shall the torturing spells that midnight knew Far in the cloven dells of Mount Meru ; Then shall the moan of frenzied hymns that sighed Down the dark vale where Gunga's waters glide, Then shall the idol chariot's thunder cease Before the steps of them that publish peace.

Already are they heard — how fair, how fleet, Along the mountains flash their bounding feet ! Disease and Death before their presence fly ; Truth calls, and gladdened India hears the cry, Deserts the darkened path her fathers trod. And seeks redemption from the Incarnate God.

John Ruskin.

From his Newdigate prize poem (1839) Salselle and Ekfhanla, privately printed in 1850, and reprinted in 1879.

CHAPTER I

heber's place in missionary biography

A HISTORY of the Missions from Cliristendom to the non- Christian majority of mankind has yet to be attempted. Neander stands alone among Church historians in working out his aim " to exhibit the history of the Church of Christ as a hving witness of the divine power of Christianity." These words he wrote in 1825, and in 1842 he dedicated the second edition of his first volume to F. von Schelling, because the great thinker testified of " that which constitutes the goal and central point of all history, and, so far as it comes within the province of science, prepared the way for that new Christian age of the world whose dawn already greets us from afar." Meander's Flaiiting of Christianity, his Tertiillian, his Julian, his Chrysostom, his St. Bernard, his Memorials of Christian Life in the Dark Ages, his General History of the Christian Religion and Church, and indeed his Life of Jesus Christ underlying the whole, give a history of Christianity as an aggressive missionary system and fact to the Reformation. Up to that period we may be content with the works of the Jew who, becoming a new creature in Jesus Christ at the age of sixteen, changed his name from David Mendel to August Neander. We look for a successor of the same spirit and aim, and the same learning and scientific method, to do similar justice to missionary Christianity since the English and German Reformers prepared the Bible message in the tongues of the common people, and geographical discovery

L and colonisation first began to put the Christian nations, Reformed, Greek, and Latin, in trust for the dark races.

Meanwhile, the present writer, having spent more than twenty years of his life in India, and nearly other twenty in the daily management and study of Missions there and in other continents and islands, has sought to provide materials for the future history of the Church in India. His general and most imperfect sketch of The Conversion of India, he proposes, should life be given, to re-write from such new materials as the close of the nineteenth century may supply. The dictum of Thomas Carlyle, that the history of what man has accomplished in this world is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here, is more true of pioneer missionaries — he himself has eulogised King and Saint Olaf ^ of Norway — than of any other class of heroes, for they directly obey a divine call, and are strong in the Lord's promises which accompany the call. So Froude has more recently taught that " the object of history is to discover and make visible illustrious men, and pay them ungrudging honour." Of his precursor and cousin, our Lord Himself said, " He was the lamp that burneth and shineth, and ye were willing to rejoice for a season in his light " — " yet he that is but little in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

Reginald Heber completes the group of the Seven Chief Missionaries to India and the East, whose lives, extending from 1746 to 1878 — a period of 132 years — the present biographer has now written. Heber stands alone as the one English gentleman — rector and squire, poet and scholar- — who gave himself in early life to the missionary enterprise when the Church of England was reproached by its own son, Southey, for that hostility which Henry Martyn was even then beginning to convert into devotion to the cause. What Heber, representing Oxford, as Martyn inspired Cambridge, did "to elevate the Church of England," to use Mr. Gladstone's happy phrase, in the first twenty years of the century, by his gracious character, broad charity, deep spirituality, parish work, cultured preaching, genial learning, missionary enthusiasm, and sacred

^ Lcctiin-s 0)1 Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History, delivered in 1840. Ste Lecture I. " Tiie Hero as Divinity," and Lecture IV. "The Hero as I'riost. "

HEBER'S PLACE IN MISSIONARY BIOGRAPHY 3 gift of song, he crowned in the last three by his statesman-like administration of the vastest of all Episcopal dioceses, and by his martyr-like death.

The Seven British Founders of the Church in India orn.

Landed in India.

le .

—

Charles Grant

Presbyterian nnd then

Anglican Layman

William Carey

Baptist

November 1 1

June 9

Henry Martyn

Anglican and Martyr

February 18

October 16

Reginald Heuer

Anglican and Martyr

October 10

John Wilson

7'

Presbyterian

February 15

December I

Alexander Duff

Presbyterian

May 27

February 12

Stephen Hislop

Presbyterian and Martyr

September 8

.September 4

First in the libra ioro is the Scottisli Highlander who was born in the hour when his father was fighting for Prince Charles on the dark field of CuUoden. Charles Grant links on to the British list the name of the Prussian apostle, Christian Friedrich Schwartz (i 726-1 798), who, when they met at Madras in 1773, kindled in the Company's young civil servant the missionary fire. As we have recorded elsewhere, it was this servant of the East India Company, at the most degenerate period of its marvellous history, who wrote what is still the noblest treatise in the English language on the conversion of the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain ; who helped Carey to Serampore; who sent out Martyn and the evangelical chaplains through Charles Simeon ; who founded old Haileybury College; who was active in instituting the Church Mission-

' Good Words for September iSgr, with copy of Rncburn's portrait.

ary and Bible Societies ; who fought for the freedom of the slave, inspiring Wilberforce and the Clapham men ; who sent out Daniel Wilson as Bishop of Calcutta, and who did all this and more as chairman and member of the Court of Directors and Member of Parliament for Inverness-shire. Charles Grant's papers have yet to see the light.

To the list there is at least one name that should be added besides those of the three American pioneers — Adoniram Judson, the Congregationalist who became Baptist, the apostle of Burma; John Scudder (1793-1855), Dutch Reformed, the apostle of Ceylon and Madras ; and John Forman, the Presbyterian apostle of Lahore and the Punjab (died 1894). That name is Robert Caldwell, Congregationalist, student of the University of Glasgow, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel's missionary in Tinnevelli, of which he was the first bishop. Of him we still await an adequate biography. Of Dr. Valpy French, the first Bishop of Lahore, a worthy record is to appear. Along with all these there should be recorded the names of the great teachers and secretaries who, often painfully but always loyally, held the ropes while the pit of heathenism was being opened to the light of the evangel, Thomas Chalmers and John Inglis,i Andrew Fuller - and John Love,^ William Brown * and Henry Venn.^

We cannot pass to Reginald Heber without recalling the great and good Irish bishop whom he resembled, the missionary philosopher, George Berkeley. Just a hundred years before Heber was consecrated Bishop of Calcutta, Berkeley, according to Dean Swift, first conceived the Proposal which he published in 1725, for the better supplying of churches in our foreign plantations, and for converting the savage Americans to Christianity, by a college to be erected in

1 Minister of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, and father of the late Lord President of the Court of Session. See Life of Duff, p. 37.

2 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, by J. W. Morris (1816).

2 Letters (Glasgow, 1848), Sermons, with Addresses to the People of Otaheite and a serious Call respecting a Mission to the river Indus (Edinburgh, 1846).

Secretary of Scottish Missionary Society, Author of History of Missions, in 3 vols., 3rd edition, 1854.

The Missionary Secretariat of Henry Venn, B.D., Prebendary of St. Paul's, by the Rev. WiUiam Knight, M.A., 1880.

HEBER'S PLACE IN MISSIONARY BIOGRAPHY 5 the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda. At forty-four years of age this modern successor of Patrick and Columba sailed for Rhode Island, intending to purchase land at the rising emporium of Newport as an investment for his missionary college. Betrayed by Sir Robert Walpole, the philosophic philanthropist never reached the Bermudas, but made over to Yale College at New Haven his lands and his library. His vision of America, its white settlers and enslaved negroes, civilised by his university, has been realised through the same divine forces which he would have wielded, so that colonisation by the Reformed Churches and Universities has become the most powerful and extensively successful of all the secondary methods of Christian Missions. The Proposal'^ thus to create a Fifth Empire in the West remains none the less a historical fact that it forms one of the most exquisite chapters in the romance of history, so far as that is concerned with the beginnings of things which have had mighty results.

In the English Church, after a dreary century, and in the spiritual expansion of the English-speaking peoples, the first successors of Bishop Berkeley were Henry Martyn and Bishop Heber.

1 The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne. See vol. iii., pages 213-231. Also the Life and Lellcrs in which Professor Campbell Frascr does justice to Berkeley as a missionary.

CHAPTER II MALPAS AND OXFORD 1 783. 1 80s

The county palatine of Cheshire was the scene of the birth and the boyhood of the two missionary bishops, Reginald Heber and George Cotton. The greatest of the Metropolitans of India, these bishops, not of one Church only but of all good men, suddenly laid down their life, from perils of waters, in the mid-time of their days, while busied in ministering to the Asiatic and the British Christians of their diocese. Camden describes Cheshire, with which the neighbouring Salop must be joined, as cxiinia nobilitatis altrix, and Drayton sings of it as " chief of men," those " mightiest men of bone in her full bosom bred," referring to the long roll of heroes who served their country well all through the times of the Plantagenets and the Stuarts. Of these, not the least were the men who won and then civilised our Empire of India — Clive and Combermere, Sydney Cotton and Edwardes, Reginald Heber and George Cotton, to say nothing of Richard Baxter and Matthew Henry.

Malpas parish, in which Heber was born, looks from the outer edge of the basin of the winding Dee across to Wrexham,^ in Wales, where he wrote his missionary hymn. Stretching south from the city of Chester, the picturesque high land or spur of the Peckforton hills sweeps down into the rich pastures

' Dean Hovvson, in his charming quarto on The River Dee, its Aspects and History (1875), gives a picture of Wre.\ham Church.

of Shropshire, where, as Rector of Hodnet, Heber spent more than fifteen years of his busy life before leaving for Calcutta. Malpas, commanding the Roman camp at Chester and the marciies of ^Vales, represents the bad step {mains passus) or difficulty of the pass at that northern point. The Romans crowned the height — upwards of four hundred feet — with a fortress, succeeded by the castle of the first Norman earl, of which the present church formed the chapel, a wall enclosing the whole. Roman " villa " and Norman castle are now represented by the circular mound on the north side of the church. From its ancient tower the keen eye may take in the beautiful English scene, from the ships in the Mersey to the domed Wrekin, and west to the vale of Llangollen.

Here, in 1770, there came as Rector, Reginald Heber, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, O-xford. Hayber, or Hayberg, from which the name is taken, is a hill in the Craven division of Yorkshire, on the family estate of Marton.^ The elder brother - purchased for the young clergyman the living of Chelsea, and died, leaving a widow. As his heir male, the clergyman succeeded him in the old Vernon estate, Hodnet,^ Shropshire, and soon exchanged the Chelsea living for that of the higher co-rectory of Malpas — within riding distance of Hodnet. Tradition still tells how he was wont to drive in a coach and four across the then comparatively roadless country from Malpas to hold service at Hodnet, where the old hall and the adjoining rectory were low and unhealthy. In Geneva gown and bands, as was customary, in the wig of the period, and with a gold-headed staff, the future Bishop's father was a

1 Whitaker states, in The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, in the County of Yoric (3rd cd. , 1878), that upon the ruins of tlie Marions arose the family of Heber, or more properly, as it is vulgarly pronounced, Hayber ; so called, undoubtedly, from a place in the neighbourhood named Ilaybcr or Hayberg — the hill surrounded by a haia or foss and paling such as enclosed the ancient forests. In i5oi it was granted by Lancelot Marton to Thomas Heber, Esq., ancestor of Richard and Reginald. Thomas Heber added to it, and died very wealthy in 1548. The volume contains a fine picture of West Marton Hall, residence of the Heber family, embosomed in wood. " No house has been connected with greater virtues or equal talents," writes Dr. T. D, Whitaker.