will seek an asylum to which the memory of his persecutors or the slanders of his enemies cannot follow him; and will find what is most required to be felt in this country more than in any other, that to him, as to one wheel of a vast machine, to produce the motion, is assigned the task-small and insignificant no doubt of realising the brighter prospects of his country, and the higher destinies of his kind. APPENDIX A. BABOO HARRISCHANDER MOOKERJI was a gentleman of Calcutta; and the task of collecting the materials of his biography is no easy work for a young man at Bombay. To an English reader, this may sound hyperbolical; but while the facilities afforded in England to travel from one end of the country to another are manifold, in India the railway line is not completed even between Bombay and Surat, a distance of one day by the steam-passage, much less does it afford scope to travel from Bombay to Calcutta, a distance of a fortnight by sea. It was not a little despairing on this account, then, to collect together facts, even such meagre ones as have here been elaborated, for want of more individual information. Add to this, the want of a public library in Bombay, within reach of ordinary means, in which may be found all, or even the more important papers of the different parts of India, and the task would seem repelling to any individual; and the writer would have abandoned it in despair, but for a promise given to the public, of a lecture, before perceiving the difficulties of his sub ject or writing a word on it. He had no contact with Baboo Harrischander Mookerji, nor was there. to be found a single gentleman in Bombay sufficiently well acquainted with the life and incidents of the Bengalee Patriot to assist him in his work. Neither did he find it convenient to get access to any of the Calcutta papers, save an occasional sight of the Hindoo Patriot. Yet, with all these difficulties, the writer hopes to have succeeded well in collecting the materials, as fully as he could, of the life he has attempted to depict. That there are grounds for this hope, let the following letter from a talented Baboo at Calcutta, to whom the MS. was sent before passing through the press-one who, in addition to his being the fellow-citizen of Baboo Harrischander, was his friend and compeer in life, and after death has proved himself in more than one respect his worthy successor in the cause of India-fully testify : LARKIN'S LANE, 25th October 1862. DEAR SIR,-Your MS. has at last duly come to hand. ** ** In reading the chapters, copies of which you have been so good as to send, I have been really struck to find that a Native of Bombay has been able to collect so much information regarding the life and career of a Bengalee Patriot. I doubt whether some of his intimate friends know so much as has been given by you. One or two points, however, require corrections, which I take the liberty to submit, in the hope that you will receive them with the same kindness of spirit that breathes throughout your writings. As far as I have been informed, Hurrish was not born an “absolute beggar." Son of a Koolin Brahmin, he did not of course |