English officer now in residence at the Court to
remonstrate with him, and desire him not to proceed further than Rangoon.
He was obliged to yield, and again to float down the river in his little
boat, baffled, but patient and hopeful.

A great change had come upon the bright, enthusiastic, lively young man
who had set out, with his beautiful Ann, to explore the unknown Eastern
world. Suffering of body had not altered him so much as bereavement, and
bereavement without rest in which to face and recover the shock. A
strong ascetic spirit was growing on him. Already on his first return to
Moulmein, after joining in the embassy, he had thought it right to cut
short the ordinary intercourse of society, to which his residence in the
camp had given rise, and had announced his intention in a letter to Sir
Archibald Campbell. He was much regretted, for he was a particularly
agreeable man; and it is evident, both from all testimony and from the
lively tone of his letters, that he was full of good-natured sympathy,
and, however sad at heart, was a cheerful and even merry companion.

But through these years, throughout constant care and unrelaxed activity
of mind and body, his heart was aching for the wife he had no time to
mourn; and the agony thus suppressed led to an utter loathing for all
that he thought held him back from perfect likeness to the glorified
Saint whom he loved. He took delight in the most spiritual mystical
writings he could find,--a Kempis, Madame Guyon, Fenelon, and the
like,--and endeavoured to fulfil the Gospel measure of holiness. He gave
up his whole patrimony to the American Baptist Mission Board (now
separate from England and Serampore), mortified to the very utmost his
fastidious delicacy by ministering to the most loathsome diseases; and to
crush his love of honour, he burnt a letter of thanks for his services
from the Governor-General of India, and other documents of the same kind.
He fasted severely, and having by nature a peculiar horror of the decay
and mouldering of death, he deemed it pride and self-love, and dug a
grave beside which he would sit meditating on the appearance of the body
after death. He had a bamboo hermitage on the borders of the jungle,
where he would live on rice for weeks together--only holding converse
with those who came to him for religious instruction; and once, when worn
out with his work of translation, he went far into the depths of the
wildest jungle, near a de