efficiency can be obtained to speak.

OF WESTERN INDIA.

THE United Service Institution owes its birth to a suggestion of Sir William Mansfield. He called together, in Poona, a meeting of the chief civil and military officers, last July, to which he expounded his views; and a provisional committee was appointed, consisting of the Collector of Poona, the Quartermaster General of the Army, the Commandant of Artillery, the Military Secretary to Government, the Advocate General, the Rev. F. Gell, Dr. Giraud; and Lieutenant Thompson, of H. M.'s 56th Regt., as Secretary.

There had previously existed for many years, in Poona, a library, which, it appears, had been first established by the Venerable Mr. Robinson, afterwards Archdeacon of Madras, and now Master of the Temple. This had long been in rather a decayed condition. It was held by shareholders, who, on the motion of one of them (the Rev. F. Gell), consented to make over the library and property to the new Institution, on certain conditions. This liberal offer was gladly accepted, and at the next general meeting, the United Service Institution for Western India was fairly started on the basis thus provided by the old library.

Steps were immediately taken, and are still in progress, to throw open the committee to representatives from every corps in the army, and from the civil services, covenanted and uncovenanted. But, while the internal affairs of the Institution were being gradually adjusted, it was felt expedient to inaugurate it by a short course of Lectures. The first was delivered by the Lord Bishop of the Diocese, on the right use of such an Institution as was then opened; the second by the Rev. Dr. Murray Mitchell, of the Free Church of Scotland's Mission in Poona, on "The Lebanon and its Inhabitants"; and the third, by the Rev. Francis Gell, on The Hill-Forts of the Dec

Encouraging audiences, including some of every rank of society, attended each lecture; and it seems that people are ready to hear, if only gentlemen of

the tone of conversation, which, in an Indian station, is too apt at all times to sink into mere dinner-table gossip.

Donations of books, curiosities (both of art and nature), arms, models, and maps, have been already received; and the nucleus of a museum formed. Valuable standard works are being added to the library; which will in a short time, it is hoped, be second, in this Presidency, only to that of the Bombay Asiatic Society.

We are enabled to present our readers with the first and third lectures of the preliminary course in this issue of the Miscellany; that on the Lebanon we hope to receive for insertion in our next.

INTELLECTUAL IMPROVEMENT. BEING THE INAUGURATORY ADDRESS, BY HIS LORDSHIP THE BISHOP OF BOMBAY, AT THE OPENING OF THE UNITED SERVICE INSTITUTION OF WESTERN INDIA, POONA.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

You

I CONFESS it was not without misgiving that I consented, at the request with which the committee honoured me, to address you on this occasion. will understand, I am sure, the feeling of responsibility which comes over the mind in essaying to deliver the first of a series of lectures such as are contemplated by this United Service Institution. I fear that I shall reach neither your wishes nor my own. I can only say, that the principle upon which I have ventured to occupy this place is my best apology,-it is simply this, that in all efforts of this kind we ought each of us to do what we can to forward the common end, not over solicitous to accomplish much, nor dispirited by a consciousness that much is beyond our power; but content if only we make some little contribution to materials, the aggregate of which, we trust, will be of service to the community in which our lot is cast.

Now, if the question be asked, what we propose to ourselves as the aim of our Institution, I presume that the answer might be rightly, though briefly, given in two words-Intellectual Improvement. Our books, maps, models, mu