ASSIMILATING POWER OF THE SOUL. 285 ward and onward, and their habitual aim is to please God-even they find the hues of feeling tinging the objects of faith, much more giving color to all earthly prospects, like light falling through stained glass; and those hues often changing with variations of bodily health and outward circumstances. "The soul hath power, through God's mysterious plan, To mould anew and to assimilate The outward incidents that wait on man, And make them like his hidden, inward state. If there's a storm within, then all things round If but the soul be right, submissive, pure, It stamps whate'er takes place with peace and bliss; If fierce, revengeful, and unjust, 'tis sure From outward things to draw unhappiness." I call to mind those remarkable lines of Shelley, worthy of a place with some of the best in Shakspeare or Milton, for the extraordinary combination of delicacy and vastness in this imagination: Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, The difference between my own feelings while leaving Honolulu now, in improved health and spirits, and those with which I approached it more than a year ago, a weary, sea-tossed invalid, is greater than can be told. Depressed and anxious, I was then saying Ah! what avails all other earthly good! God be praised, from whose blessing it comes, that now heart, and hope, and brighter prospects all hanging upon that pregnant old Saxon word HEALTH, give a new face to every thing. Brightening the eye, and investing with its cheerful green even things external, it makes those frowning old craters and barren hill-sides in the vicinity of Honolulu, fairly look verdant, as I gaze on them for the last time, while our anchor is weighing, and recall the propitious providences and friends I have there found. The gentle readers who may perchance have followed me with pleasure in these wanderings through the Heart of the Pacific, will now take a retrospective glance at facts, through the telescope I hold to them in this chapter, in order that we may see what has been done, and is now doing for the improvement of the Sandwich Island kingdom, and to consider what remains to be done in order to complete the work of Christianizing and civilizing the Hawaiian race. We have spent some time at all of the nineteen missionary stations but one where there are resident missionaries, except on the island of Kauai. We have surveyed missionary and native life under various aspects, and have become somewhat acquainted with the modes and means of operation upon the native mind, and their results; and with the trials and difficulties which the missionary has to contend with. We have mingled with the people in the house and by the way, in the field and the school, at their work and their play, in the meeting for religious inquiry and STATISTICAL REVIEW OF THE MISSION. 287 at the public sanctuary. We have seen by observation what they now are, and we have heard from others what they once were. And in instituting our final comparison between the Heart of the Pacific as it was and is, or between times now and times that were, when the first missionaries landed at Kailua, we will take the state of progress found at the lapse of just one quarter of a century, as indicated by a careful survey and comparison of statistics derived on the spot. In the first place, there labored at the Sandwich Islands from 1820 to 1844, at different times, sixty-one male and sixty-seven female missionaries, who performed in all ten hundred and eighty-eight years of missionary service. By these there were expended $608,865 in their outfit, support, and missionary work. After twenty-five years from the first settling of missionaries among a race of the very lowest savages, there were to be seen erected forty permanent dwelling-houses, two printing-offices and binderies, with which were connected four printing-presses; four commodious seminary and school buildings, all which, together with large and valuable lands attached to them, were the property of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Besides these results of Christian industry and perseverance, permanent stone Meeting-houses were found erected at almost every station, by the united skill and resources of missionary and people, giving and laboring voluntarily; and about three hundred and seventyfive school-houses. The Hawaiian tongue had been mastered, we might almost say created, and reduced to writing, and one half the adult population taught to read. There had been established four hundred and three public schools, in which seventeen thousand four hundred and forty children and youth were being instructed. The entire Bible had been translated from the original tongues, and there had been printed fifty-two thousand copies of the New Testament, and twenty thousand of the Old, besides several editions of one and ten thousand copies of fragmentary portions of the Scriptures, before the entire translation was completed. Upwards of seventy other different works, large and small, had been compiled and issued from the press, and the total number of pages printed at the missionary presses up to 1844, were twenty-two million sixty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty. There had been organized twenty-five independent native churches, and there had been received to them, on examination, thirty-one thousand four hundred and nine persons, of whom there were then living in regular standing twenty-two thousand six hundred and fiftytwo, being more than one-fifth of the entire population of the Islands. Besides these educational results that can be condensed into statistics, it should be added as a part of their education as a people, that the institutions of the Sabbath and of Christian marriage had been firmly established; government had been rendered comparatively just and stable; a good written constitution and CONDENSED RESULTS OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES. 289 laws had been enacted; life and property were rendered secure; the country's industry and resources were beginning to be developed. The Hawaiian nation's independence had been acknowledged by other nations, and it was admitted into the fraternity of Christian States. The commerce of the Islands, that is, the value of its commercial exchanges, or bills negotiated there for the supply of ships, had grown from little or nothing to two hundred thousand dollars, while the yearly net revenue of the kingdom had reached to seventy thousand dollars, and the annual consumption of foreign goods was one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. For the educational force of the nation there were found employed at the lapse of the first quarter of a century, as religious teachers of the Hawaiian people, or in other missionary service among them, six unmarried and forty married missionaries, having families to the number of one hundred and twenty children. There were five hundred and forty-eight native schoolteachers, themselves first taught by the missionary educators. There were four boarding-schools or seminaries, having two hundred and seventy-six pupils. There were two families formerly in the service of the Mission changed to that of the government, but devoted to the improvement of the Hawaiian race. What then remained to be done before the Sandwich Islands could cease to be missionary ground, and what still remains, in order to complete the education of the Hawaiians, is, more thoroughly to instruct and Chris |