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48 mother being a suitable help-mate, a veritable Dorcas in good works. He had to spend a short time in the College of Fort William studying the Oriental languages, and then was attached to the judicial branch of the administration. In 1825, his mother's health failed and his father accompanied her on a sea-voyage towards England. Mrs. Thomason died at sea, leaving the widower to proceed home alone. There is extant a touching letter from the father to the son on this bereavement. Soon afterwards James also fell ill in India, and proceeded to England on leave. He travelled in the North of England and in Scotland as far as Edinburgh in company with his sister Eliza (afterwards Mrs. Hutchinson). During this journey he wrote several letters to his little sister Frances, (afterwards Mrs. Montgomery) then at Balham in Surrey. These letters indicate a lightness of spirit, and an exhilarating playfulness of which the outer world hardly deemed him capable. Then he joined his father at Cheltenham, and there became engaged to Miss Grant with whom he had been long acquainted, and who was about proceeding to join her family in India. After sojourning in England his father married again and returned to Calcutta. Meanwhile the son also had returned to Calcutta and met his father and stepmother on their landing. They proceeded up country, that is, on to the interior of Bengal, as James was about to be married to Maynard Eliza, above mentioned, one of the daughters of Mr. William Grant of the Covenanted Civil Service, stationed at Maldah. This