r,ri:MAii. 



of any important paper where accuracy and 

 promptness were equally requisite. His char- 

 acter was remarkable for its symmetry. Jn 

 him no faculty was dwarfed or unbalanced, l.ut 

 all the powers of Ins mind existed and acted to- 

 gether in entire harmony. He was not great in 

 .my one particular, yet the nice polish, and 

 culture, and evenness everywhere apparent, 

 nil-no served to point him out in the community 

 as no common man. In him were seen an ardent 

 imagination and high poetic fancy existing in 

 connection with all the attributes of a pre- 

 eminently calm, clear, judicial mind. His life 

 was beyond reproach. His deep and unaffected 

 1'ii-ty jrave color and glow to every action and 

 modified every thought His death was very 

 sudden. He had sought the climate of the West 

 Indies in the autumn of 1865, in the hope of im- 

 proving his health, and obtaining relief from, a 

 troublesome throat affection. His general health 

 had somewhat improved, but his throat was still 

 seriously affected. He had been busy, however, 

 in promoting an Episcopal mission in Ilayti. 

 He had turned his face homeward, was on his 

 way from Miragodne to Port an Prince, when 

 he was suddenly seized with a profound pa- 

 ralysis, and died in a moment. "It was," says 

 one of his friends, " less like death than like a 

 translation." 



BURMAH, a country in Farther India. In 

 consequence of a war with England, which ter- 

 minated in 1826, the provinces of Aracan, Y6, 

 Tavoy, Mergui, and part of Martaban, were an- 

 nexed to British India, to which, in 1853, Pegu 

 and its provinces were added. In 1862 the 

 Burmese provinces annexed to India, together 

 embracing 90,070 English square miles, and 

 1,897,897 inhabitants, were erected into the 

 province of British Burmah. The part which 

 remained independent and now constitutes the 

 kingdom of Burmah, contains about 190,000 

 English square miles, with 4,000,000 inhab- 

 itants.* It is composed of the kingdoms of 

 Tiurmah and Pong, with portions of the coun- 

 tries inhabited by the Khyen, and the Shan 

 countries and the Kubo valley (Munipoor) re- 

 annexed to it by treaty with the British in 

 1834. The government is hereditary and des- 

 potic ; the sovereign is assisted by a council of 

 the nobility, over whom he has a kind of feudal 

 jurisdiction, and the titles of the latter are not 

 hereditary. The religion of the mass of the in- 

 habitants is Boodhism. The Khyens and other 

 wild tribes have a special idolatry of their own. 

 In 1866 Burmah was again the scene of a revo- 

 lution (the fourth since 1836), of which the 

 Kev. Mr. Kincaid, who was for many years a 

 prominent Baptist missionary in that country, 



* "C. RHter(Erdkunde con J'n, vol. Iv.) rave to Bnrmah 

 4,000,000 Inhabitants. Capt. Yule < A Narrative to the Court 

 of Ava in 1865,' London, 195$) regarded this figure as too 

 high, and he estimated the population of Burinah 1'roperfrom 

 '.'-I in ii-th latitude to the frontier of the British possessions at 

 iio more than 1,200,000, and that of the whole Burmese em- 

 pire in the widest sens* of the word, at no more than 8,600,- 

 000. More recently Dr. ('. Williams ('Journal of the Asiatic 

 Sofiety <<f Bengal,' 1864, No. 4) n^ain estimates the popula- 

 tion at 4,000,000." Geogr. Jahrbucli for 1360, n. 07. 



gives the following aooonnt : " On the 2d of 

 August, in the afternoon, two sons of the King 

 of Burmah, the Mcngoon prince, twenty- t!i roe 

 years old, and his brother, seventeen years old, 

 with some forty chosen men, rushed to the 

 palace of their uncle, who was heir apparent, 

 and murdered him, and then two half-brothers 

 and several of the principal ministers of state, 

 and, no doubt, every distinguished man sus- 

 pected of stern, unyielding attachment to the 

 king. Two of the king's most trusted ministers 

 the Pabay Mengee, and Loung Shay Mengee 

 appears to have been among the first who 

 were cut down by the assassins. They were 

 highly respected by all foreigners as well as by 

 the natives. They were comparatively young 

 men, and during the past fifteen years had risen 

 etep by step to the highest rank of the nobility. 

 Two or three half-brothers of the rebel princes 

 made their escape, and one, the Thongzai prince, 

 had reached the Shan states, east of the capital. 

 Several governors of distant provinces were as- 

 sassinated, and so soon after the explosion in 

 the capital that there can hardly be any doubt 

 of a carefully laid and promptly executed plan 

 for overthrowing the king's government. The 

 king himself appears to have been left helpless 

 in the palace. Very likely the men still around 

 the king were in the secret, but, with consum- 

 mate hypocrisy, pretending the greatest alarm 

 and anxiety. The king has some thirty or 

 thirty-five sons, and as many daughters, the 

 larger number under twelve years old. All, or 

 nearly all, the sons will perish by the hands of 

 assassins. Political necessity is the excuse for 

 such barbarous proceedings. The two young 

 princes, who seem to be the leaders in this 

 'reign of terror,' are only the tools of a few 

 ambitious men, and probably behind them, a 

 few still more ambitious women ; and among 

 these women, the mother of the two young 

 princes is no doubt the prime mover in this 

 revolution. The two young princes, with a 

 body of men, after the execution of all persons 

 supposed to be in their way, took a steamer and 

 went down the river. Stopping at all the prin- 

 cipal towns, they took the governor and chief 

 men away, replacing them by creatures of their 

 own. It seems they halted at Mcnthla, a 

 large town and capital of a large district border- 

 ing on British Burmah. Here they took up 

 their quarters, but dispatched the steamer with 

 letters to Colonel Phayre, the chief commis- 

 sioner of British Burmah. All or nearly all 

 the foreigners left the capital for Rangoon, in 

 British Burmah, and among them the English 

 resident at the court of Ava." One of Messrs. 

 Todd. Findlay, & Co.'s steamers with a large 

 flat in tow, was at the city, and the foreigners 

 succeeded in making, their escape. Possibly 

 they might have remained in safety, but it was 

 hazardous when all government was broken up. 

 The latest accounts received from Burmah (up 

 to November, 1866) state that the revolution 

 had been suppressed. British Burmah is the 

 seat of flourishing Baptist missions (on which 



