It was during this two-years'-visit to his native land, that Mr. Marsden laid the foundation of the Church of England mission to New Zealand. In its consequences, civil and religious, this has already proved one of the most extraordinary and most successful of those achievements, which are the glory of the churches in these later times. This was the great enterprise of his life: he is known already, and will be remembered while the church on earth endures, as the apostle of New Zealand. Not that we claim for him the exclusive honour of being the only one although we believe he was, in point of time, the first who began, about this period, to project a mission to New Zealand. The Wesleyans were early in the same field. The Rev. Samuel Leigh, a man whose history and natural character bore a marked resemblance to those of Mr. Marsden, was the pioneer of Methodism, and proved himself a worthy herald of the cross amongst the New Zealanders. A warm friendship existed between the two. On his passage homewards he was a guest at Paramatta; and no tinge of jealousy ever appears to have shaded their intercourse, each rejoicing in the triumphs of the other. Still, Mr. Marsden's position afforded him peculiar facilities, and having once undertaken it, the superintendence of the New Zealand mission became, without design on his part, the great business of his life. He had formed a high, we do not think an exaggerated, estimate of the Maori or New Zealand tribes. "They are a noble race," he writes to his friend John Terry, Esq., of Hull, "vastly superior in understanding to anything you can imagine in a savage nation." This was before the mission was begun. But he did not speak merely from hearsay: several of their chieftains and enterprising warriors had visited Australia, and they ever found a welcome at the hospitable parsonage at Paramatta. Sometimes, it is true, they were but awkward guests, as the following anecdote will show; which we present to the reader, as it has been kindly furnished to us, in the words of one of Mr. Marsden's daughters. "My father had sometimes as many as thirty New Zealanders staying at the parsonage. He possessed extraordinary influence over them. On one occasion, a young lad, the nephew of a chief, died, and his uncle immediately made preparations to sacrifice a slave to attend his spirit into the other world. Mr. M. was from home at the moment, and his family were only able to preserve the life of the young New Zealander by hiding him in one of the rooms. Mr. M. no sooner returned and reasoned with the chief, than he consented to spare his life. No further attempt was made upon it, though the uncle frequently deplored that his nephew had no attendant in the next world, and seemed afraid to return to New Zealand, lest the father of the young man should reproach him for having given up this, to them, important point."