hearted, who is self-pictured in the unaffected pages from his letters and diaries. From these his brother has compiled such record as could now be given of the "little trip," as he called it, which was to have put him in training for future explorations beyond what is now the more or less beaten track of twelve hundred miles or so, between Durban and the Zambesi Falls. As far as the accounts of the expedition are concerned, the main interest lies in the impression they give us of the ordinary toils, difficulties, and annoyances, and occasional dangers of travel through the territories of the South African tribes who have been obliged to tolerate our presence, and allow us a right of way. We get a good deal of insight into the manners and customs and general character of the people, both natives and settlers, on whose good will and service the traveller has to rely. In every case of hindrance and threatened mischief, Mr. Oates displays all the best qualities of a plucky Englishman, and by patience, tact, and fair play, makes his way through difficulties that were often disheartening enough. Unhappily, there were various vexatious delays, and there were irresistible temptations to crowd too much into one journey, and to linger in the new fields of interest which opened out to the traveller as he went; and when he arrived, at last, at the goal of his long expedition-the Zambesi Falls-the unhealthy season had set in, and he fell a victim to the fatal malaria-a sadly premature ending of a career that had opened with so much bright promise. He was but thirty-five years of age when he died.

From the brief memoir of Mr. Frank Oates which his brother has prefixed to the volume, we get a clear and strong impression of his character. "There was something singularly winning about him," wrote a friend, upon his death; "that peculiar combination of courage and gentleness, which is one of the finest traits of character." "His name," the Dean of Christ-Church wrote, "must be added to the list of those devoted and enterprising Englishmen, who 'scorn delights and live laborious days,' who, by their frank love of truth and justice have made our name respected from one hemisphere to another." That our name is, among the tribes we undertake to civilise and govern, always respected for those particular qualities we may indeed, with some shame, confess to be doubtful. And we can only say that if among our explorers, settlers, and governors, there were more men of the stamp of Frank Oates, we should have better reason to pride ourselves on our national repute. There are few readers of the pages which show so clearly what he was, and make us think regretfully of what he might have accomplished, who will not, with Dean Liddell, "grieve to think that so much manly spirit has so soon been quenched."

We have not room for any mo re detailed account of Mr. Oates's journey and its fruits. His letters and diaries are simple, unstudied memoranda of his daily experiences, which would no doubt have been largely supplemented by his own recollections if he had prepared his work for the press. What we especially miss is any adequate account of his natural history observations. Indeed, this main object of his journey

occupies but a small proportion of his pages, and the copious detailed catalogue of the scientific results of the expedition, in a rich collection of birds, insects, and botanical specimens, comes upon us almost as a surprise at the end. The hundred pages of Appendix, in which this is contained, is the part of the book which will have the most permanent value. Dr. George Rolleston has done the Ethnology, Mr. Bowdler Sharpe the Ornithology, Professor Westwood the Entomology, and Professor Oliver the Botany. The birds and insects are especially commended as being excellent representative collections; and the reader cannot help regretting that such a diligent collector and accurate observer had not enriched his journals with more systematic accounts of this part of his work. The book is illustrated with numerous wood engravings, and some copies, in chromo-lithography, of water-colour drawings done on the spot. These latter give an idea of the kind of scenery which the traveller in those regions makes acquaintance with,— not often, it would seem, very striking, or even interesting, and not seldom dull and ugly. Mr. Oates had been on his way for eight months before he came to the spot where he could at last "fancy that South Africa may have much fine scenery."

MR.

FOREIGN CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS.

R. SIME'S account of the life and writings of Schiller* forms one of the most acceptable and satisfactory of the volumes yet published in the series of Foreign Classics.' The successive periods of the poet's literary activity are clearly characterised, and there is a sufficient description of his chief works to give the English reader a very good idea of their quality. The chapters that treat of the plays which the young student of German generally makes his first acquaintance with as an exercise in translation and parsing, may be strongly recommended as an antidote to the dry grammatical treatment to which they must be subjected; and the whole forms an excellent introduction to the study of Schiller, the use of which will certainly not be limited to those "English readers," for whose benefit the series is primarily intended. In describing the Prose works, Mr. Sime makes the very safe remark that "they are generally acknowledged to have sterling merits," and that the author's endeavours "to make ordinary readers feel the charm of history attended by considerable success." He does, however, subsequently criticise and discriminate; and when he comes to the prose writings which are of the most permanent value-the essays and letters in philosophy and literary criticism—he gives a careful and instructive estimate of them. The little book shows throughout what good work a biographer and critic, who really knows his subject, can do, even when "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd," within the limits of a hand-book.

," were

Schiller. By JAMES SIME, M.A., Author of 'Lessing: his, Life and Writings.' Edinburgh and London: Blackwood. 1882.

Jean de la Fontaine and the French fabulists who were before and after him furnish matter for, at any rate, a very entertaining volume, and Mr. Collins has told as much as the ordinary reader is likely o care to know about works which, after all, cannot be said to fill a very distinguished place among the Foreign Classics. The opening chapters contain much curious and amusing information about the earlier forms of some well-known fables, and the sources from which La Fontaine got his subjects. Those who desire a fuller and more accurate knowledge of the whole matter will go to the writers whose literary labours have relieved Mr. Collins from the trouble of making much serious research on his account.

WE

SOME NEW BOOKS FOR SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

E can cordially recommend to those who are in want of Sunday lessons for young children three little books recently published by the Sunday School Association. Mr. Bartram has followed up his Stories from the Book of Genesis (noticed in the Modern Review last year) by a not less successful attempt to apply the same “rational " method of treatment to the traditions of the life of Moses, without too much disturbing the impressions of the naif freshness and picturesqueness of the original stories. The little book will be, like its predecessor, of real service to those who are unable any longer to "teach the Bible" to their children or scholars on the old lines, and yet who wish them to feel the charm of its early pages, and to enter afterwards into the varied meaning and interest of the national history to which they are the introduction.

The short and very simple and practical sermons by three experienced Sunday-school teachers are excellent specimens of what such addresses to children, especially the younger ones, should be. They are directly concerned with the experiences and ideas of the average Sunday scholar, and if other young people hear or read them at home, they must not be too critical when they happen not quite to meet their own case.

Mr. Vizard has taken a number of the more frequent and striking similes and metaphors occurring in the Bible, and made a study of each of them, bringing together into one view the different truths suggested by the figure as originally used, and taking it as the text of a religious or moral lesson of present application. The idea is a good one, and is well carried out; and any intelligent teacher ought to be able to use the book as the author intends it to be used, not as a mere series of chapters to be read in class, but as notes of lessons to be given according to the teacher's own method and experience, in his own language and with his own illustrations.

*La Fontaine and other French Fabulists. COLLINS, M.A. Blackwood. 1882.

By the Rev. W. LUCAS

+ Stories from the Life of Moses. By RICHARD BARTRAM.--Short Sermons to Children. By THREE COUSINS.-Sacred Similes; being Notes for Teachers of Bible Classes and Others. By P. E. VIZARD. London: Sunday School Association, 37, Norfolk Street, Strand. 1882.

THE MODERN REVIEW.

JULY, 1882.

TH

THE BOOK OF WISDOM.*

HE books of the Apocrypha have suffered a curious neglect in modern times. The Protestant reformers are not really to blame for this. True, they followed the authority of the more critical of the Fathers in excluding them from the same dignity with those monuments of Israelite literature of which the originals exist in Hebrew or Chaldee; but the Church of England, for instance, never entirely banished the Apocrypha from her lectionary, and the now forgotten, though still statutory, Homilies, are actually full of citations from the books, on an equal level with the Hebrew Testament. The Book of Wisdom was to Cranmer, as it is still to the Roman Catholic Church, "the infallible and undeceivable Word of God." The Articles of the English Church are, however, more guarded in their language, and simply declare that "the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them

* Zopía Zaλwμwv: The Book of Wisdom, the Greek Text, the Latin Vulgate, and the Authorised English Version: with an Introduction, Critical Apparatus, and a Commentary. By WILLIAM J. DEANE, M.A. Cxford, at the Clarendon Press. 1881. Quarto.

to establish any doctrine." It is impossible not to connect the revulsion which changed this qualified acceptance into an unfriendly suspicion, with the decree of the Council of Trent which ordered the Apocryphal books to be received by the faithful under pain of anathema. From that day among decided Protestants the Apocrypha has been ignored; except in the High Church schools, it has hardly been read, never certainly studied. In the present century the British and Foreign Bible Society resolved to discontinue its publication, since the object of the Society was limited to the dissemination of the inspired word. The decision called forth a weighty and earnest protest from the present Bishop of Lincoln; but the controversy which followed had no effect, unless in arousing public interest in the condemned books. Uncultivated people still look upon them as something dangerous, and the present writer can remember, as a boy, the spurious books of the New Testament-more harmless, if possible, because making less claim upon one's confidence-being rigidly kept away from him as likely to affect his nascent Protestantism.

It is remarkable that even in so scholarly an edition as that which lies before us there is a continual apologetic tone with reference to, perhaps, the least exceptionable of the Apocryphal books. Mr. Deane holds that "the absence of sufficient proof of canonicity, and not any internal marks of error or inferiority, is the chief ground for assigning to " the Book of Wisdom "a lower place than the other writings of the Old Testament."+ In this ambiguous middle position he is concerned to show "its perfect accordance with the word of God," and to defend it resolutely from any suspicion of foreign taint, as from Platonism; at the same time, he is much perplexed by the appearance of prophecy in it, and no less so by the circumstance that it is treated, as he thinks, by writers in the *Articles of Religion, vi. + Prolegomena, p. 39.