SERAMPORE LETTERS.

AFTER the full and picturesque account, which Mr.

Wright has given in his introduction, of the events which led to the sending forth of William Carey and his associates in 1793, it may seem almost unnecessary to add any words as to the men and the district from which they came. And yet, for American readers at least, some little account of the town of Olney may not be amiss. To those accustomed only to the busy, bustling streets of some city in the Western world, Olney would scarcely seem to deserve the name of town, consisting, as it does, for the most part, of one long, broad street, which even its accomplished and ardent eulogist, Mr. Wright, admits to be somewhat deserted; but in the days when Cowper was living in Olney, and Carey cobbling away in his little shop in the neighboring hamlet of Hackleton, Olney must have been even less an attractive place than it is to-day. Its roads were, if we are to believe William Cowper, by no means desirable ways of traffic and travel, and the long bridge which spanned the marshes between Olney and

Emberton has become classic in our literature for its wearisome but needful length."

The surroundings of the town of Olney, familiar as they have become to those who love the story of William Cowper and his life, and picturesque as they may appear when in the summer-time the meadows are green with verdure and the hedge-rows bright with flowers, could scarcely have been of the most healthful character; at least, in the days of which we write. To-day Olney is a healthful and beautiful village according to the estimate of those most competent to judge, but a century ago it was noted for the number of low fevers that were prevalent among its inhabitants, and perhaps the true explanation of that general tone of despondency which marked more than one of John Newton's parishioners is to be found in the malarial character of the surroundings of the town rather than in the moral and intellectual tone of Newton's teaching, which, his enemies said, drove his people mad. Be that as it may, however, it was not a very wealthy nor a very wise community which was embraced within the confines of Olney parish in the closing years of the last century, and yet it is to this little town of Olney that we must look for the men who instituted and who moulded the great missionary movement which has spread to almost every country, and the beneficent results of which can be measured by no statistics of the census gatherer.

The researches of Mr. Wright have disclosed the fact that in 1672 John Bunyan obtained an indulgence for a meeting to be held in Joseph Kent's barn in Olney, and under this indulgence there came into being the little Christian Church which has come to be known as the Baptist Church in Olney. Of this Church Rev. John Sutcliff became pastor in November, 1775, and, ten years later, William Carey united with the same Church as a member. When Sutcliff commenced his pastorate at Olney, John Newton had been for some eleven years the curate of the parish church of Olney, and, for a somewhat shorter period, the poet, William Cowper, had been an inmate of the tall brick house facing the market-place in Olney, which, while it boasts no special architectural beauties, was then considered the finest house in town. Newton, however, left Olney in 1780, some five years before Carey united with the Baptist Church at Olney, and in 1781, Thomas Scott, the Commentator, succeeded to the curacy of Olney Church. In his charming little work, The Town of Cowper, Mr. Wright has pointed out the strange associations that existed between all of these great men, and the way in which John Newton influenced the character of each of the others. Newton, he says, was the bosom friend of Cowper, the spiritual father and friend of Scott, the adviser and warm admirer of Carey, and the kindest relations existed between him and Sutcliff during the five years they were