As to the newly revised edition of Osterwald’s Bible, published at Lausanne, it is impossible not to condemn in it both the deviations from the original, and the employment, in what are called the improvements, of a great deal of paraphrastic language. In speaking of that edition of the Bible, I think it right, however, to bear my humble testimony to the general character of the authors of this revision; and to state my conviction of the facility with which your Committee may have been betrayed into something of undue confidence in them. The gentlemen engaged in that revision, were some of them amongst the persons in the highest general estimation for talents and piety: of Professor Levade, the president of the Lausanne Bible Society, I may say that a more faithful friend to the general distribution of the Scriptures cannot be found. I have myself taken the liberty of strongly expressing my dissent from him upon various subjects connected with the society in general, and the Lausanne edition in particular. But I must be allowed to say to his honour, that, independent of the labour and cost he has sacrificed on this edition of the Bible, he has for a series of years sustained the burden of the Cantonal Bible Society on his almost unassisted shoulders, and continues to exhaust the strength of his declining age in giving efficiency to the operations of this Institution. The next Bible Society of importance which I visited was that of Basle. I was there soon brought into communication with the Committee on the subject of their temporary estrangement from your Society on the ground of the late resolution as to the Apocryphal Books. I endeavoured to explain to the Committee the probable result of the resolutions to which they had come of refusing to be even the agents of those Societies which had resolved in no way to assist in the circulation of the Apocrypha. When they found that the decision of the London Committee was the result, not of prejudice, but of conscience, they at once gave up their own resolutions, and acquiesced in the proposal which was made to them. They passed a resolution expressive of their kind sympathy towards the British and Foreign Bible Society; and they undertook still to serve it as agents; although, at the same time, they could not, according to their judgment of the question, consent personally, and for themselves, to circulate Bibles without the Apocryphal Books. I cannot easily convey to you the high opinion which I formed of the Committee of the Bible Society of Basle, and of its venerable President, the Antistes. The interest which they feel, and the labour which they devote to the distribution of the Scriptures is what I have never seen exceeded in any other place, and I can have no doubt, that whatever commission you are pleased to entrust to them, will be judiciously and faithfully executed.