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Updated: June 26, 2025
Hall introduced me to various people, some of whom were of note, for instance, Sir Emerson Tennent, a man of the world, of some parliamentary distinction, wearing a star; Mr. Samuel Lover, a most good-natured, pleasant Irishman, with a shining and twinkling visage; Miss Jewsbury, whom I found very conversable. She is known in literature, but not to me.
Persons, however, have fallen into trances, as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many others, and learned some things which they could not tell in our human words. Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite secret for which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery.
As Sir Emmerson Tennent says `The fervid earnestness of Christianity, even in its most degenerate form, the fanatical enthusiasm of Islam, the proud exclusiveness of Brahma, and even the zealous warmth of other northern faiths, are all emotions utterly unknown and foreign to the followers of Buddhism in Ceylon.
All oriental narrative is tinctured with exaggeration, but Sir James Emerson Tennent, so long officially connected with the island, and personally familiar with the ruins of Anuradhapura, says no one who visits the place to-day can doubt that Ceylon, in the zenith of its prosperity, contained ten times its present population; and as he wrote this in 1859, when the aggregate was about one million, he wished to signify that the number of inhabitants, at the period to which he referred, was probably ten millions.
Sir Emerson Tennent, after describing the charming first view of the place when he landed here, says: "Galle is by far the most venerable emporium of foreign trade now existing in the universe; it was the resort of merchant ships at the earliest dawn of commerce.
In his valuable work on Ceylon, Sir J. Emerson Tennent gives some interesting details about the consecration of trees to different demons to insure their safety, and of the ceremonies performed by the kattadias or devil-priests. It appears that whenever the assistance of a devil-dancer is required in extreme cases of sickness, various formalities are observed after the following fashion.
The vicinity can boast a few colonial temples the quaint old Dutch church at Tarrytown, dear to the readers of Irving; the Tennent Church on the battle-ground of Monmouth, New Jersey, with its blood-stains of wounded British soldiers; and a charmingly plain little Friends' meeting-house, no bigger than a small parlor, near Squan, New Jersey, being the most strikingly attractive.
The dissimilitude of Sumatra and Java, separated by only a narrow channel, occurs to us, as well as that of Madagascar, but narrowly divided from the neighboring continent. So able a writer on physical geography as Sir J. E. Tennent believes that Ceylon is not a dismembered portion of India, but a distinct formation, perhaps part of a continent which has long since disappeared.
In one of the lakes of Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent heard soft musical sounds, like the first faint notes of the aeolian harp or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a wet finger. This curious harmony is supposed to be produced by a species of testaceous mollusk. A similar intonation is heard at times along the Florida coast.
When he first heard Tennent, regarding him as the greatest as well as the best of men, he made up his mind to study theology with him; but just before the commencement at which he was to take his degree, the elder Edwards preached at New Haven. Struck by the power of the great theologian, he at once resolved to make him his spiritual father.
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