The difficulties of the Bishop's arrival were increased by the absence of Lord Moira, the Governor-General, who was engaged in the Nepaulese war; and as no house had been provided for the Bishop, he had to be the guest of Mr.Seton, a member of the Council, till a house could be procured, at a high rent.
One of the first visitors was a Hindoo gentleman, who told him, "Sir William Jones was a great man and understood our books, but he attended only to our law.

Your lordship will study our religion; your people mistake our religion; it is not in our books.

The Brahminee religion and your lordship's are the same; we mean the same thing." The man seems to have been one of those of whom there are now only too many in India, who have thrown off their old superstitions only to believe in nothing, save the existence of a Supreme Being, and who fancy that all other religions can be simplified into the like.

This is the class that has, for the seventy years during which Christianity has been preached in earnest, been the alternate hope and anxiety of the missionary; intellectually renouncing their own paganism, but withheld by the prejudices of their families from giving up the heathenish customs of caste; admiring divine morality, but not perceiving the inability of man to attain the standard; and refusing to accept the mysteries in the supernatural portion of Revelation.

Such was probably Serfojee; such was the celebrated Brahmin Ram Mohun Roy, with whom Bishop Middleton had much discussion, and of whom he had at one time many hopes, a man of very remarkable powers of mind and clear practical intelligence.