s
within my power.

About a month since I placed in the hands of Baron Schilling bound copies
of the first four parts of the Testament, the Gospels; he having kindly
promised to cause them to be conveyed to London by one of the couriers
belonging to the Foreign Department, to which the Baron is attached. I
have reason to believe, however, that you have not received them yet, as
I have been informed that they remained in Petersburg some weeks after
they had been deposited in the Foreign Office; but in this respect I am
not culpable; and having no direct means of sending packets to London, I
am glad to embrace any which may come in my way, especially those not
attended with expense to the Society. In the mean time, I wish to inform
you that I am at present occupied on the last sheets of the fifth volume
of the Testament, namely, the Acts of the Apostles, in getting which
through the press I have experienced much difficulty, partly from the
illness of my compositors, and partly from the manner in which the
translation was originally executed, which has rendered much modification
highly necessary.

How I have been enabled to maintain terms of friendship and familiarity
with Mr. Lipoftsoff, and yet fulfil the part which those who employ me
expect me to fulfil, I am much at a loss to conjecture; and yet such is
really the case. It is at all times dangerous to find fault with the
style and composition of authors and translators, even when they come to
your door to ask for your advice and assistance. You may easily conceive
then, that my situation has been one of treble peril. Mr. L. is the
Censor of his own work, and against the Censor's fiat in Russia there is
no appeal; he is moreover a gentleman whom the slightest contradiction
never fails to incense to a most incredible degree; and being a strict
member of the Greek Sclavonian Church, imagines that the revealed word
and will of the Supreme are only to be found in the Sclavonian
Scriptures, from which he made his Mandchou version. Yet whenever
anything has displeased me in his translation, I have frankly told him my
opinion; and in almost every instance (and the instances have been
innumerable: for in translations of the sacred writings omissions and
additions must ever be avoided) he has suffered himself to be persuaded
to remodel what he originally concluded to be perfect, and which perhaps
he still does. So that in what has been hitherto printed of the
Testament