the illustration of the early history of Southern Asia.  Mr. Turnour, a civil officer of the Ceylon service[2], was then administering the government of the district of Saffragam, and being resident at Ratnapoora near the foot of Adam’s Peak, he was enabled to pursue his studies under the guidance of Galle, a learned priest, through whose instrumentality he obtained from the Wihara, at Mulgiri-galla, near Tangalle (a temple founded about 130 years before the Christian era), some rare and important manuscripts, the perusal of which gave an impulse and direction to the investigations which occupied the rest of his life.

[Footnote 1:  REINAUD, Memoire sur l’ Inde, p. 3.]

[Footnote 2:  GEORGE TURNOUR was the eldest son of the Hon. George Turnour, son of the first Earl of Winterton; his mother being Emilie, niece to the Cardinal Due de Beausset.  He was born in Ceylon in 1799 and having been educated in England under the guardianship of the Right Hon. Sir Thomas Maitland, then governor of the island, he entered the Civil Service in 1818, in which he rose to the highest rank.  He was distinguished equally by his abilities and his modest display of them.  Interpreting in its largest sense the duty enjoined on him, as a public officer, of acquiring a knowledge of the native languages, he extended his studies, from the vernacular and written Singhalese to Pali, the great root and original of both, known only to the Buddhist priesthood, and imperfectly and even rarely amongst them.  No dictionaries then existed to assist in defining the meaning of Pali terms which no teacher could be found capable of rendering into English, so that Mr. Turnour was entirely dependent on his knowledge of Singhalese as a medium for translating them.  To an ordinary mind such obstructions would have proved insurmountable, aggravated as they were by discouragements arising from the assumed barrenness of the field, and the absence of all sympathy with his pursuits, on the part of those around him, who reserved their applause and encouragement till success had rendered him indifferent to either.  To this apathy of the government officers, Major Forbes, who was then the resident at Matelle, formed an honourable exception; and his narrative of Eleven Years in Ceylon shows with what ardour and success he shared the tastes and cultivated the studies to which he had been directed by the genius and example of Turnour.  So zealous and unobtrusive were the pursuits of the latter, that even his immediate connexions and relatives were unaware of the value and extent of his acquirements till apprised of their importance and profundity by the acclamation with which his discoveries and translations from the Pali were received by the savans of Europe.  Major Forbes, in a private letter, which I have been permitted to see, speaking of the difficulty of doing justice to the literary character of Turnour, and the ability, energy, and perseverance which he exhibited in his