IN the service of the London Missionary Society the Author laboured in Calcutta, Chinsurah, and Berham-pore. During the period of his residence in India, many subjects bearing on its present or former state more or less occcupied his thoughts, and among them those treated of in the following pages, relating to its social, civil, and sacred institutions, the secular and religious education of the inhabitants, their condition, and character. " On some of these topics he wrote in the Calcutta Christian Observer and the Calcutta Review. He has endeavoured to see things and to speak of them as they really are, and consequently hopes he has not done injustice to the country, or to any branch of the Church engaged there in the work of missions.