MEDHURST, Walter Henry (1796-1857), one of the most distinguished Protestant missionaries to the Chinese, was born in London in 1796. His education began at St Paul’s Cathedral school. As he grew up, he learned the business of a printer; and, having become interested in missions to the heathen, he sailed in 1816 for the London Missionary Society's station at Malacca, which was likely to be a gιeu,t printing-centre. His linguistic powers soon showed themselves. He became proficient in Malay, in a knowledge of the written characters of Chinese, and in the colloquial use of more than one of its dialects. He was ordained at Malacca in 1819, and was in all missionary labours “more abundant,”—first at Penang, then at Batavia, and finally at Shanghai. To give only the names of his various works, some in English, some in Chinese, would take a considerable space. A dictionary of one of the Full Kien dialects is still valuable; and his Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionaries (Batavia, 1842) are more complete and reliable than any earlier or later works of the same kind. After the conclusion of the first English war with China he removed to Shanghai in 1843, and there he continued till 1856, laying the foundations, broad and deep, of a successful mission. His principal labour for several years, as one of a committee of delegates of whom he was facile princeps, was in the revision of existing Chinese versions of the Sacred Scriptures. The result was what should be called a new version of the Bible, marvellously correct in idiom, and faithful to the meaning of the original. The university of New York conferred upon him in 1843 the degree of 1).D. Medhurst left Shanghai in 1856, with several members of his family, to try the effect of a visit to England for his ...