Address to Subscribers, by the Editor and late Proprietor of the Journal 

 of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 



As my personal interest in the Journal of the Asiatic Society 

 ceases from this date, I feel that a few words are due from me in ex- 

 planation of the change that has taken place in the ownership of the 

 property. I need hardly recapitulate the history of this periodical, 

 which founded by the late Capt. Herbert and Mr. James Prinsep, under 

 the title of Gleanings of Science, became the property of the latter dis- 

 tinguished man, and on his succeeding Professor Wilson as Secretary 

 to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, was liberally subscribed to by the 

 Society, and allowed to be known by the name it now bears. The 

 Journal, however, still continued the property of Mr. Prinsep : it was 

 published at his risk and charges, and in the earlier days of its existence 

 hardly repaid its public-spirited proprietor, the money he expended 

 in its publication. He soon, however, created for it, chiefly by the 

 brilliant discoveries made by himself in the Archaiology of India, an 

 European reputation. He was indefatigable in the pursuit of this new 

 subject, and as decypherer of the Lat character ; as reader of the un- 

 known language of the Indo-Bactrian coins ; as the able guide to the 

 investigations of others, not less than as ably an investigator himself, he 

 took place in the world of literature as Editor of this Journal, with a 

 Raoul-Rochette, a Lassen, or a Grotefend. His labours caused his 

 death : his mind tasked to the carrying on of heavy official duties as 

 Assay-master to a mint, which was then that of nearly all British India, 

 as well as burthened with a multitude of miscellaneous self-imposed 

 occupations, gave way wholly. After months passed in a state border- 

 ing upon unconsciousness, he passed away in the prime of life, and the 



