The Establishment of Native Schools, on Dr. Bell’s system, by the late Mr. May, is here alluded to. At the beginning of July, 1814, this benevolent and meritorious individual, while residing at Chinsurah, as a Dissenting Minister, with a very narrow income, opened a School, in his dwelling house, proposing gratuitously, to teach the Natives reading, writing, and arithmetic. On the first day 16 Boys attended. In the course of the month of August, the Scholars became too numerous to be accommodated under his lowly roof, but a spacious apartment being allotted to him in the Fort, by Mr. Forbes, the Commissioner of Chinsurah, the list of attendance at the commencement of October, had swelled to 92. In January, 1815, Mr. May, opened a Village or Branch School, at a short distance from Chinsurah, and in the following month of June, not twelve months since the commencement of his undertaking, he had established sixteen Schools, including the central one at Chinsurah, to which, 951 pupils resorted.
Mr. May encountered some slight impediments in the commencement of his labours from the prejudices of the Natives; chiefly, however,
