“The director now informed me that, if I had no objection to go to India, I should be appointed to go out to Madras as an assistant to Dr. Bell, one of the directors of the asylum for the instruction of orphans; an establishment which is immediately under the auspices of the East India Company, and which does them honour {Footnote: _Vide_ a small pamphlet, printed for Cadell and Davies, entitled, “An Experiment in Education, made at the Male Asylum of Madras, by the Rev. Dr. A. Bell.”}. “The salary which was offered me was munificent beyond my utmost expectations; and the account of the institution, which was put into my hands, charmed me. I speedily settled all my concerns with the lecturer, who was in great astonishment that this appointment had not fallen upon him. To console him for the last time, I showed him a passage in Dr. Bell’s pamphlet, in which it is said that the doctor prefers to all others, for teaching at his school, youths who have no fixed habits as tutors, and who will implicitly follow his directions. I was at this time but nineteen: my master was somewhat appeased by this view of the affair, and we parted, as I wished, upon civil terms; though I could not feel much regret at leaving him. I had no pleasure in living with one who would not let me become attached to him; for, having early met with two excellent friends and masters, the agreeable feelings of gratitude and affection were in a manner necessary to my happiness. “Before I left England, I received new proofs of Mr. R----‘s goodness: he wrote to me to say that, as I was going to a distant country, to which a small annuity of ten guineas a year could not easily be remitted, he had determined to lay out a sum equal to the value of the annuity he had promised me, in a manner which he hoped would be advantageous: he further said, that as the vein of the mine with which I had made him acquainted turned out better than he expected, he had added the value of fifty guineas more than my annuity; and that if I would go to Mr. Ramsden’s, mathematical instrument maker, in Piccadilly, I should receive all he had ordered to be ready for me. At Mr. Ramsden’s I found ready to be packed up for me two small globes, siphons, prisms, an air-gun and an air-pump, a speaking trumpet, a small apparatus for showing the gases, and an apparatus for freezing water. Mr. Ramsden informed me that these were not all the things Mr. R---- had bespoken; that he had ordered a small balloon, and a portable telegraph, in form of an umbrella, which would be sent home, as he expected, in the course of the next week. Mr. Ramsden also had directions to furnish me with a set of mathematical instruments of his own making. ‘But,’ added he with a smile, ‘you will be lucky if you get them soon enough out of my hands.’ In fact, I believe I called a hundred times in the course of a fortnight upon Ramsden, and it was only the day before the fleet sailed that they were finished and delivered to me.