one of the tracts, which a woman picked up, and came running with it to our Effendi, asking if it belonged to him. He said that it did not. Upon which she told bim that she was afraid there was witchcraft in it. But he assured her it would do her no harm, and desired her to take it to the old Effendi, and beg of him to read it for her which she promised to do. About an hour after this, we came up to a boy who was travelling on the road, at whom I inquired, if there were any Effendis in the village where he lived? He said there were two, an old one and a young one. I then offered him one of our tracts, which I begged he would carry to them. The boy seemed struck with terror when I held it out to him, and for some time could not be prevailed on to take it. However, a Tartar Chief who had travelled with us the greatest part of our journey, and whose mind seems to be a good deal influenced by the conversations he has heard concerning the Christian and Mohammedan religions, came up to us and advised the boy to take the tract, and give it to the oldest Effendi, and beg of him to read and consider it. After riding this day not less than 70 versts, we returned to Karass about nine in the evening.

We cannot tell, what effects this journey may have upon the minds of the people; but there is a great stir among them at present about religion. Shellive the Effendi who travelled with us, is certainly much influenced in favour of Christianity, as are several other Effendis in the country around us. The prejudices of the people in general on account of our religion are much abated. It is seldom that any of them reproach us, or any of the people whom we have ransomed, on account of our being Christians.

I have printed another tract, of which you will receive a copy along with this. It contains the substance of our Shorter Catechism, and is much esteemed by the Effendis. Shellive calls it an invaluable treasure.

We hear that the Russians have taken Derbent from the Persians. The plague is raging dreadfully in Mosdok, and several other places.

LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

One of the missions of this society in SOUTH AFRICA (viz. that stationed at Klaar Water) appears by the last account from that quarter to be in a flourishing state. The

number composing the settlement is stated to be 784, of whom 80 can read. There is among them, it is said, "a great desire to hear the word of life; and numbers are brought to a saving knowledge of divine things." The mission at Bak river, under the Rev. Mr. Kicherer does not seem to enjoy the same degree of prosperity. A long dronght had occasioned a dispersion of the settlers, and the depredations of the neighbouring Boschemen placed both the lives and the property of those who remained in imminent danger. The school however still contained 31 children and 11 adults, and the whole number in the settlement was 103.

A missionary, Mr. Creighton, has been sent to the newly captured colony of BUENOS AYRES, containing a population of 70,000 souls.

A free school is about to be opened by this society for the instruction of children of Jewish descent, both male and females, at No. 5, Raven Row, Artillery Lane, Spitalfields. Grown up females of the same race, who wish for instruction, may have it at the same place from ladies, who attend daily to superintend the girls school.

IRELAND.

We formerly mentioned that a society had been formed under the title of "The Hibernian Society," for the purpose of diffusing religious knowledge in ireland. The committee appointed to conduct its concerus, have lately published a report, in which, after taking it upon them in a way which we can by no means approve, to fix the precise number of ministers in the provinces of Connaught and Munster (two in the former and seven in the latter) who "are known to preach the Gospel," proceed to state many circumstances, which, if correct, are highly important, and ought to call forth the warmest exertions of the friends of religion and humanity, in order to rescue our fellow-subjects in Ireland from their present state of barbarism and moral degradation. In the South, the said to be 20 to one; scarcely any of the proportion of Papists and Protestants is former, and few even of the latter, possess a copy of the Holy Scriptures. Schoolmasters are much wanted in every part of Ireland; and such is the solicitude mani fested by the Roman Catholic poor for the instruction of their children, that it is believed they would be willing to send them even to Protestant schools, and to permit them to read the Bible as a school book.

The committee state that they have been forming a plan for instituting schools in every parish in Ireland, in which no religious tract or catechism is to be introduced, but the Scriptures only. This is a great and good work; but we trust it will be superseded by the provident care of the government, which, we understand, is now directing its attention, too long withheld, to this momentous object.

GREAT BRITAIN.

CONVOCATION OF THE CLERGY.

On the 16th instant, the two Houses of Convocation for the province of Canterbury assembled, according to antient custom, at the Chapter House of St. Paul's Cathedral. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Bristol, Exeter, and Norwich, were the only Members of the Higher House who attended, those of the Lower House were more numerous.

From the Chapter House, the two bodies went in procession to the Cathedral. A Sermon in the Latin language was there preached to them by the very Reverend the Dean of Gloucester, Dr. Luxmore.

On their return to the Chapter House, the two Houses separated.

The Lower House were required by the Archbishop to choose their Prolocutor, who, being shortly afterwards presented, addressed their Lordships in Latin, as did one of the Members accompanying him, to

whom the Archbishop replied in the same language.

After some forms, the Assembly adjourned sine die, as has been customary since the reign of Queen Anne.

PENITENTIARY,

An address has recently been circulated, sigued by about twenty respectable merchants and others in London, containing proposals for a new institution to be called 66 THE LONDON FEMALE PENITENTIARY, the object of which shall be to afford an asylum to unfortunate females who shall have deviated from the paths of virtue, and are anxious to be restored by means of Christian instruction, moral discipline, and the formation of industrious habits, to a respectable station in society." All who are acquainted with the extensive prevalence, and the fatal effects of the evil which it is intended to remedy, must feel a lively interest in the formation and progress of such an institution. The Magdalen cha rity however excellent, both in its design and in its effects, is obviously inadequate to meet more than a very small proportion of the enormous mischief in question; and it must therefore be admitted that one or more additional institutions of the same kind are loudly called for. We only hope that they will be formed with a due regard to the extreme delicacy of the case, and with the same prudence and circumspection which have distinguished the manage ment of their prototype.

CONTINENTAL INTELLIGENCE. EVERY mail which arrives from the Continent, brings intelligence of the farther progress of the French arms. Magde burgh, and Hameln, though both capable of standing a long siege, have opened their gates to the assailants, after a few days of feeble resistance. The division of the Prussian army under General Blucher, having endured extraordinary privations and fatigue in their endeavours to elude the pursuit of the enemy, and effect a junction with the king in Poland, were intercepted by a superior force, and forced to abandon their purpose. The General on this directed the march of his corps to Lubeck, which he gained with great difficulty. Here he was attacked by the

French, who, though opposed with great gallantry, forced their way into the town. The engagement was continued for some time in the streets; but the Prussians at length gave way; and a capitulation was entered into, by which they surrendered themselves prisoners of war. Lubeck was given up to the pillage of the French soldiery, and many of the peaceable inhabitants were killed, although they had taken no part in the war, and although they would have gladly resisted, bad they been able, the entrance of the Prussians into their town. The French state the number of Prussians who surrendered on this occa sion to have been about 20,000 men; and the whole number taken from the commencement of the campaign about 140,000.

The faith of Bonaparte had been solemnly pledged by his diplomatic agents to the people of Hamburgh and Bremen, that they should experience no molestation whatever; and in this assurance, they were so strangely infatuated as to place confidence. No sooner however had the fall of Hameln, and the surrender of Blucher, left the French troops at liberty for this minor service, than they marched into these towns, and into Cuxhaven, and immediately put all the English property which was found there in a state of sequestration, and every Englishman in a state of arrest. About twenty-four hours before the French made their appearance at Hamburgh, suspicions began to be entertained of their intention, and such good use it is said was made of the interval, that not one English ship was taken, and that the amount of the English property in the warehouses on shore fell greatly short of Bonaparte's expectations.

Hanover and Hesse are in the possession of the French. The sovereign of the latter country, it is declared, "will pay for his phrenzied conduct by the loss of his dominions ;" the existence of his house being "incompatible with the safety of France." The timid policy of this Prince in affecting to remain neutral when Prussia was attacked, and his extreme folly in hoping for immunity if that power should be conquered, prepared his fate, and seem almost to have deserved it.

The same kind of fatuity seems now to direct the councils of Austria. Her neutrality will serve to render the triumph of Bonaparte in his present contest with Prussia and Russia less dubious; and that triumph can hardly fail to prove in the end as disastrous to Austria as if she had taken an active part in the war. By doing so she might have contributed to deliver Europe from the iron yoke of France; whereas now, though her overthrow may be somewhat retarded, it will probably become only the more certain.

The fate of Prussia furnishes a striking lesson to all the governments of the universe. Actuated by a weak and wicked ambition, her policy during the last fourteen years seems to have aimed but at one object, the extension of her territory; and in the pursuit of this object she has not scrupled to employ the most dishonourable means. Faithless to her engagements, and insensible to every generous impulse, she remained for years the tranquil spectator of the misery and devastation of the surrounding world; and sought only how she

might profit by the spol of her wretched neighbours. While engaged in this course of base and selfish policy, she deemed no sacrifice of dignity or good faith, which she was called to offer at the shrine of France, too great. At length the very power which by these sacrifices she had assisted to aggrandize, and from whose alliance she had looked for increasing wealth and security, deeming it no longer necessary to temporise, required her to part with some of those acquisitions by which she had been deluded into an acquiescence in its schemes of plunder. With a presumption only equalled by her former pusillanimity she challenges to the field the numerous and warlike armies of France; and without waiting for the promised support of Russia, she stakes her existence on the issue of a single battle.

Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. The day of retribution is now arrived. Her unprincipled partition of Poland, the treacherous desertion of her alliances, her profligate spoliations in Germany, her selfishness and her perfidy receive their merited punishment at Anerstadt; and with unexampled rapidity she is brought down from her eminence, and laid in the dust her armies are annihilated, her Generals are either slain or taken prisoners, her extensive territory is converted into a foreign province, and her king be. comes a fugitive in the very land, whose monarch she had iniquitously dethroned, and whose dominion she had rapaciously usurped.

It is impossible to forget in contemplating the fall of Prussia, that her capital was for a time the very focus of that antichristian conspiracy which aimed to extinguish the light of evangelical truth. And were we as well acquainted with the state of private corruption among the Prussians as we are with the crimes of their government, we should perhaps be able to discover still more clearly the grounds of those providential inflictions which have blotted them out as a nation from the map of Europe.

We are aware that we may be referred to the astonishing success of the French as disproving those views of providential interposition which the forego ng remarks are calculated to convey. But let the psalmist teach us the true answer to this objection. He also had seen the prosperity of the wicked; (Psalm 1xxiii.) and was per

* One of her complaints against France was, that that power had proposed to restore Hanover to Great Britain !

plexed by the circumstance. But when he went into the sanctuary of God, then understood he their end. "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment!" In ancient times the Babylonians and Assyrians were employed, as the French now are, to "smite the people in wrath," ," "to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets;" but when they had performed their appointed work, they were in their turn "swept with the besom of destruction." "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed ye that are judges of the earth: serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling."

It appears by the last accounts from the Continent, that a Russian force had advanced into Poland, and was joined by the small remnant of the Prussian army which had escaped across the Vistula. On the approach of the French to Warsaw, the allies prudently retreated without risking an engagement. It seems to be Bonaparte's object to restore the kingdom of Poland. His views however with respect to that country have as yet been imperfectly developed. In the mean time the King of Prussia has refused to agree to an armistice proposed by Bonaparte.

The disagreement between Russia and Turkey, it is said, has been amicably adjusted, and apprehensions are no longer entertained of a rapture between those two countries. Some of the Turkish provinces appear to be in great disorder, the insurgents in many places setting the power of the Porte at detiance.

At a meeting of the French senate on the 2d inst. it was decreed that 80,000 conscripts should be raised in 1807, and that these conscripts should all be taken from among the natives of France born between the 1st of January and the 31st of December 1787. Not one of them therefore will exceed twenty years of age. This circumstance points us to one great cause of the superiority of Bonaparte's armies. They are composed entirely of young men, and they move therefore with a celerity which no other troops cañ rival, and which in the last and present war has greatly outrun the calculations of all their military opponents. The object of this fresh conscription is declared to be to secure to Europe a general and durable peace. “It is from the bosom of the Continent which England wished to set in flames that a terrible war shall bereafter be made upon her. It is

only in applying to England, upon all the European shores, the principles she has applied upon every sea, that the Emperor wishes to bring her back to the ancient principles of the rights of civilized nations. It is by banishing the vessels of England from every shore to which his Majesty may extend his victorious arms, and his avenging justice, that he will punish the English ministry for their culpable refusal to give to the world, that peace for which the world sighs." To justify this inculpation of England, a variety of documents respecting the latenegotiation carried on with this country has been presented to the senate. These exhibited a very curious specimen of the chicanery of French diplomacy; but at the same time they seemed to countenance to a certain degree the charge which had been brought against our government. The exposure of the whole of the correspondence, however, which has since taken place in the British parliament, has satisfactorily explained this point, and has proved that the documents laid before the French senate must have been purposely garbled, in order to delude the people of France into an opinion, that the continuance of the war is to be ascribed, not to the ambition and pride of Bonaparte, but to the unreasonableness and obstinacy of Great Britain; and the complete control which Bonaparte possesses over the press, renders the practice of such gross deceit easy. Bonaparte has recently made known to us the terms on which he will now condescend to make peace." The French army," he says, "will not quit either Poland or Berlin, until the Porte shall have been in the full extent of its independence, nor until Wallachia and Moldavia shall have been de clared to belong in complete sovereignty to the Porte; and until the possessions and colonies, both Spanish and Dutch and French, shall have been given up, and a general peace made.”

In order to carry into full effect the principles on which the French government has announced its intention of conducting the war with England, an imperial decree has been issued from Berlin, in which, after accusing England of the most gross and systematic violation of the laws of nations, and the rights both of neutrality and of war; accusations we need hardly say, which have no just foundation; Bonaparte expresses his determination to employ against England the principles of her own maritime code, and he therefore decrees that the British islands are in a state of