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JAMES THOMASON

can never be sufficiently thankful; that we have lost him is sorrow to us, but joy to him. Happy indeed is their case to whom death is the cause of joy ! You have had a mother and a father who were infinitely more happy in their deaths than they ever could be in their lives. ... You have a mother's example before you, a brighter one you will look for in vain ... Be your mother's daughter in all the graces of the Christian character ... You have read Cowper's lines on seeing his mother's picture, and remember those beautiful verses: —


"But higher far my proud pretensions rise, The son of parents passed into the skies."

He assumes the guardianship of her in the gentlest terms, begs her to look to him as if he were her father, and assures her of a welcome to his home in India as soon as she shall be old enough to come. Three years later he writes at some length regarding her cabin in the coming voyage, enjoining her to make the cabin, what he ever found it to be, a place of delightful retirement — for she will have much to reflect upon regarding her entrance into society in a strange land. The considerate thoughtfulness of his advice, as conveyed to her in several letters, is indeed noteworthy, as emanating from one who was intensely pre-occupied by work in an alien language amidst an eastern people.

By 1829 he had, as a young man of the highest promise, gained extraordinary distinction in some of the most arduous paths of learning. The Bengal Presidency was not then, as now, divided into several Lieutenant-Governorships — but the whole of the vast