Page images
PDF
EPUB

calls on his time and attention, exclusive of domestic affairs. He has a profession as well as a family; her profession is that of being a wife. This one relation is the pivot on which every duty turns.

We pass rapidly over the unostentatious sketches that Mrs. Judson almost unconsciously gives of her own and her husband's labours, to direct the reader's attention to those scenes of unexampled suffering in which the Christian virtues of her character were so fully developed. She had been obliged to seek the restoration of her health in her native land. With partially recruited strength, she returned to her husband in December, 1823, just at the commencement of those differences that led us into a war with Burmah. The American Missionaries, whom the Burmese Government identified with Britons, had previously removed to Ava, where Mr. Judson and his fellow-labourers were thrown into prison. His wife describes the events of this period with a touching simplicity, and a noble firmness, worthy of that Christian heroine, Lady Rachel Russell. We follow her to "the inner room," where she retired with her four little Burmah girls, (orphans, whom she had adopted, and was educating as Christians) when her husband was dragged "to the death prison." We accompany her "to the governor of the city, who had the entire direction of the prison affairs," and from whom she obtained permission to see her husband, who "crawled to the door of the prison to meet her, for she was never allowed to enter," and then we can somewhat estimate the value of her expressions. "My prevailing opinion was, that my husband would suffer a violent death, and that I should, of course, become a slave, and languish out a miserable, though short, existence in the tyrannic hands of some unfeeling master. But the consolations of religion, in these trying circumstances, were neither few nor small. It taught me to look beyond this world, to that rest, that peaceful, happy rest, where Jesus reigns and oppression never enters."(P. 296.)

Greater trials awaited her. She had obtained permission to make a little bamboo room in the prison enclosure, and felt happy, indeed, when allowed to move her sick husband into the hovel, 66 so low that neither of them could stand upright, but a palace in comparison with the place he had left." Once more, she became a mother; of her own trials and sufferings she makes little mention, and it is hardly possible for readers who have

* We refer our readers to "Crawfurd's British Embassy to Ava" for some particulars of the sufferings endured by the American Missionaries. Crawfurd's account shews that Mrs. Judson's narrative is far from exaggerating the perils and hardships of their situation.

never seen or felt the like, to understand their intensity. Exposure to the elements is, of itself enough in a tropical climate, to wear out a European woman, and here we see a delicate young mother, traversing the streets of Ava between the jail where her husband lay, panting with fever, and the palace, where she presented her fruitless petitions for his release, or the mitigation of his sufferings. At the same time, she was nursing her own new-born babe, and taking care of her Burmah orphans. One of these little girls caught the small-pox. We cannot resist the temptation of extracting a few sentences from this part of Mrs. Judson's narrative:

66

"She," (that is Mary, the little Burmese,) "now required all the time I could spare from Mr. Judson, whose fever still continued in prison, and whose feet were so dreadfully mangled that, for several days, he was unable to move. I knew not what to do, for I could procure no assistance from the neighbours, or medicine for the sufferers, and was all day long going backwards and forwards from the house" (i. e. the bamboo hovel, already mentioned,) "to the prison, with little Maria in my arms." We next find her using her needle to inoculate her own infant, her other protegees and the jailer's children, all of whom took the disease favourably, except her own little girl. Before the child recovered, the mother was herself prostrated by the same disease, but not until the fame of her successful inoculation of the jailer's children had brought the inhabitants of the neighbourhood to her. "I inoculated them all with a needle, and told them to take care of their diet, which was all the instruction I could give them." As to herself, though she recovered from the small-pox, she says, "My watchings and fatigues, together with my miserable food and more miserable lodgings, brought on one of the diseases of the country, almost always fatal to foreigners." It was in this condition, in the middle of the rainy season, "when the mud almost buries the oxen," that she set out in a bullock cart for Ava, where she had left her medicine chest, when the prisoners had been moved to another town, Oung-pen-la. Her strength barely sufficed to bring her back to the prison, but we must give her own words: "Our dear little Maria was the greatest sufferer at this time, my illness depriving her of her usual nourishment, and neither a nurse, nor a drop of milk, could be procured in the village. By making presents to the jailers, I obtained leave for Mr. Judson to come out of the prison, and take the little emaciated creature round the village, to beg a little nourishment from those mothers who had young children. Her cries in the night were heart-rending, when it was impossible to supply

her wants. I now began to think that the very afflictions of Job had come upon me." *** "Had it not been for the consolations of religion, and an assured conviction that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I must have sunk under my accumulated sufferings."-P. 310.

The parents and their child were marvellously sustained through two years of unremitting trials, until the success of our arms in Burmah obtained their release, and Mrs. Judson could write that "no persons on earth were ever happier than we were during the fortnight we passed at the English camp." But, her "warfare was accomplished;" she had returned to her Missionary labours at Amherst, and wrote to her husband, (who had accompanied the Bristish Embassy to Ava,) "I have this day moved into the new house, and, for the first time since we were broken up at Ava, feel myself at home." She wrote thus, on the 14th September, 1826, and on the 24th of the following month she was a corpse. Fever attacked her, and her worn out frame could not rally from its exhaustion.

"She died in a

strange place and surrounded by strangers," uncheered by the presence of him to whom she had been a faithful helpmate, and leaving her little Maria to the care of strangers. When the bereaved husband returned from Ava, "he almost expected to see his love coming out to meet him as usual; but he saw only in the arms of Mrs.. Wade, a poor little puny child, who could not recognize her weeping father, and from whose infant mind had long been erased all recollections of the mother who loved her so much." Six months afterwards, the little Maria was laid beside her mother. These are melancholy details, and as they stand, in the work before us, are inexpressibly affecting. But, Why seek we the living among the dead?"

66

We have thus glanced at Mrs. Judson's life, from the conviction that, although so long published, her biography is less known than it ought to be. What is technically termed Missionary labour may be the duty of few who read this Review, but every one who has received the light of Christianity is to a certain degree responsible for those within his reach. Each one may assist in spreading that "diffused sense of right which a few who intensely feel it, shed around them."*

[ocr errors]

While reading the journal before us, we were struck by the aptness of a remark of Walter Scott, on "the Pilgrim's Progress. He says, "to express that species of inspired heroism by which women are supported in the path of duty, notwithstanding the natural feebleness and timidity of their nature,

* Isaac Taylor.

Christiana and Mercy obtained from the Interpreter a Guide, called Great-heart, by whose strength and valour their lack of both is supplied and the dangers and distresses of the way repelled and overcome." A great heart indeed had the gentle Ann Judson, one striking feature of which was self-denial; perhaps we might more properly call it the absence of selfishness; for hers seems to have been one of those rare dispositions, "the precious porcelain of human clay," in which there is scarcely any self to be denied. This happy temperament was in her ennobled by the highest religious devotion.

[ocr errors]

Selfishness, in its thousand insidious forms, is indeed the very taint of our nature, ever ready to break forth in every climate; but the position of Europeans in India peculiarly favours the development of this evil. We allude not to extreme and offensive instances, but to that quiet respectable self-pleasing that rather gains credit in the world; instances like those which the inspired writer had in view when he declared, "as long as thou doest good to thy self, men will speak well of thee.' A man may forego his own gratifications, that he may supply the wants of his parents and sisters at home. A woman may count no trouble too much for her child's benefit, nor any sacrifice too painful, if she can but remain with her husband and contribute to his comfort. To such be all honour, and happily there are few who can read these words without spontaneously reverting to living instances of such conduct within their own knowledge. But something higher seems to be required, and we venture to affirm that in India, the heart becomes narrowed and the feelings blunted. How very few of us, for instance, can look upon the heathen around as responsible and immortal, like ourselves! Even those who, in their own persons desire to live as candidates for eternity, and who take a lively interest in the temporal and spiritual well-being of others, who are of the same speech and colour with themselves, are often startled at discovering their own indifference towards the surrounding heathen. In England, a vast proportion of the details of active charity are carried out by women; not indeed without errors and abuses, but still, in a way that, on the whole, keeps the kindly sympathies healthily active. The Clergyman's daughters, who teach in the Sunday School,-the mistress of a family who visits her housemaid's sick-bed, there to administer relief and consolation, even the little girl who with her collecting card, levies sixpences for some favorite charity,-all these are

[ocr errors]

*We trust to memory for this quotation from a note to one of "Miller's Bampton Lectures," a work not easily forgotten by any who have once read it.

actively engaged in behalf of others who have no claim on them, except as fellow-beings. In England, any one whose heart awakens to a desire of usefulness, has but to hold out a hand to the objects that every day presents. Here, on the contrary, we hardly know how to exert any kindness, beyond that of giving money. Our servants are ill,—they go to their own houses; we may stop at the door as we pass, in the evening or morning, and ask how they are, but our entrance would be unwelcome, and often impossible; and, if admitted, we should find no reception for the comforts we desire to administer. If we bring refreshment for the body, our touch has polluted it; if we would speak peace to the soul, there is no common ground on which we can stand. These circumstances produce a deadening influence on the heart, and tend to extinguish its best desires.

On more than one occasion, we have adverted in this Review to our social position as sojourners in a strange land; and it appears particularly desirable at the present period to record our actual condition, for it is one of transition, and the next ten years will probably effect a greater change in the position of both foreigners and natives in India, than the last fifty have done. Before, therefore, rail-roads have brought the extremes of the empire within easy visiting distance, and the expiration of the Charter has thrown India more generally open to Europeans, we would fain store our portfolio with faithful sketches of Anglo-Indians as they are. The notice we have taken of Mrs. Judson's life, naturally leads us on this occasion to consider the position of our fellow-countrywomen in this land, and to note its peculiar advantages and disadvantages.

Rapid and frequent communication with Europe has already rubbed off so many of the old qui-hye' characteristics at the Presidency, that we must turn to the Mofussil for almost all that remains peculiarly and exclusively Indian in society. In the small and remote stations, there may still be found folk who do not own allegiance to those two most exacting of task masters, Everybody and Nobody; gentlemen who venture to wear white jackets when Everybody is perspiring in broad-cloth; and ladies, who during the hot weather, pay visits in the evening instead of the morning, though Nobody will be equally rational. Few positions in life afford better touchstones of character than the unchartered freedom' we speak of; people are then relieved from the social pressure which, in more crowded society, keeps us all more or less, in our right, or our wrong, places. There are many, especially women, who, on finding no conven

[ocr errors]

Р

« PreviousContinue »