We all felt much out of the world in Madagascar. To the great world which we had left, the trade, the government, and the people of the island, are linked by very slender ties. The Malagasy know very little of foreign lands: few understand the English language and the condition and affairs of England. Those who have been to England have not felt free to tell what they saw: in former days it would have been dangerous to tell it: for to depreciate Madagascar by showing the superiority of other countries was neither more nor less than high treason. Knowledge is increasing among them; the pictures and sketches of the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Graphic_, are teaching them many things: and the monthly periodical, _Tény Soa_, issued by the Mission, systematically describes many others. Perhaps it is well that, where they are so far behind the great world, the knowledge of that world should not be brought to bear upon them too fast or too far. The mass to be lifted is broad and heavy: power may well be applied to it by degrees and steadily: it is rising now and will be lifted more rapidly in due time. Meanwhile the vis inertiæ around them exercises a most depressing influence on the English community. Its tendency is to weary out the efforts of the enterprising, to damp the spirits of the cheerful, and to produce languor in the earnest. We could not but notice this immediately when we arrived. There was a stillness in the air which was in strong contrast to the active life which we had just quitted. There seemed a want of cohesion, of the active co-operation, which we naturally looked for. The diligent were working earnestly, but alone. The stillness had doubtless been intensified by the fact that the mission were waiting for those final rearrangements, which had been in preparation for some time, but the details of which had yet to be shaped out in consultation with ourselves. We also felt the influence of the quiet. The quick, electric life of London, in politics, in scientific discussion and religious thought was gone. We had only one mail a month, which at its best brought us a limited supply of news. Even this mail was irregular. The postmaster at Bourbon through whose hands the bulk of it passes, occasionally detained the mail till next time; or suddenly began charging us sixteen shillings postage on some newspaper; or was guilty of other vagaries inscrutable by an ordinary mind. We received a few periodicals, and there reached us indistinct echoes of parliamentary discussions, of startling addresses by Huxley or Tyndall; of the Indian famine, and of the revival commencing in Scotland. The mail which should have brought us intelligence of the great break-up of the Liberal Party and the election of the new House of Commons, never came at all, till its successor reached us.