“I am sometimes a little dispirited, when I reflect that, for two or three years past, I have been drilling at A, B, C, and grammar. But I consider again that the gift of tongues is not granted in these times; that some one must acquire this language by dint of application; must translate the Scriptures, and must preach the Gospel to the people in their own tongue, or how can they be saved? My views of the missionary object are, indeed, different from what they were, when I was first set on fire by Buchanan’s ‘Star in the East,’ six years ago. But it does not always happen that a closer acquaintance with an object diminishes our attachment and preference. We sometimes discover beauties, as well as deformities, which were overlooked on a superficial view; when some attractions lose their force, others more permanent are exerted; and when the glitter in which novelty invested the object has passed away, more substantial excellencies have room to disclose their influence; and so it has been with me, I hope, in regard to the work of missions.” The following extract from the _Calcutta Review_ of December, 1850, will show how completely he mastered this difficult language: “Let our readers dwell for a moment upon the difficulty, in their own powerful Saxon tongue, of discoursing upon free will, predestination, and many other such subjects, and then endeavor to realize to themselves how infinitely more difficult the attempt must be in a language of monosyllabic formation and structure; its very polysyllables being the roughest possible mosaic of monosyllables, and the genius and construction of the tongue such, that even the simple language of the Gospels—the sentences of which are in general so remarkably plain and free from complication—is beyond its flexibility, the simplest sentences in the Gospels of Mark or John having to be chopped up and decomposed, in order to adapt them to this peculiar language. Let our readers imagine, if they can, the wonderful command requisite of so awkward an instrument, in order to be enabled to answer an Oo Yan—‘How are sin and eternal misery reconcilable with the character of an infinitely holy, wise, and powerful God?’ or to meet the subtleties of a Moung Shwa-gnong, arguing on his fundamental doctrine, that divine wisdom, not concentrated in any existing spirit, or embodied in any form, but diffused throughout the universe, and partaken in different degrees by various intelligences, and in a very high degree by the Buddhs, is the true and only God. Yet so completely was Judson master of this very difficult tongue, and of the modes of thought of its people, that he could, by his replies and arguments, impart to an Oo Yan intense satisfaction, and a joy which exhibited itself by the ebullitions natural to a susceptible temperament; and, in the end, could force a subtle Moung Shwa-gnong to yield to the