"If the Almighty stamped on the brow of the earliest murderer-the indelible and visible mark of his guilt-he has also established laws by which every succeeding criminal is not less irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime; for every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes its several particles may migrate, will still retain, adhering to it through every combination, some movement derived from that very muscular effort, by which the crime itself was perpetrated."

We now take leave of the volume, which in some parts displays originality, while in others it is curious, and, in not a few, eloquent both in thought and expression. We have no idea, however, that it will be popular, or particularly instructive, and could have wished to have seen a more satisfactory production by such an eminent man, as the author confessedly is.

ART. IX-A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands; with Remarks upon the Natural History of the Islands, origin, languages, traditions, and usages of the Inhabitants. By JOHN WILLIAMS, of the London Missionary Society. London: J. Snow, 1837. By every one that feels a deep interest in the Christian missions that have emanated from the people of England, which is as much as to say by all who are truly religious in the British empire, and in Christendom, the volume before us will be welcomed with no ordinary degree of satisfaction and delight. In the history of modern missions, there have been none whose triumphs are more glorious than those, which, owing their existence and support to the people of this country, have planted the standard of the cross in many of the South Sea Islands; while of the heralds of the gospel in these regions, none have been more eminent and successful than Mr. John Williams, of the London Missionary Society, the author of the present work. Indeed, whether the period at which he commenced his labours in the South Seas, or their duration, or the magnitude and variety of the undertakings and conquests of which he was the primary and most active instrument, be taken into account, his name must be for ever identified with the conversion of the savage islanders in question; nor, do we believe that we overstep the sober propriety of language, when we add, that he ought to be called the great Apostle to the South Seas

It is not alone as a Missionary that Mr. Williams figures in this volume. This, to be sure, ought to be, and is the principal capacity in which he here appears. But, we think that he has set an example, which, it would be good for the cause he has so ardently espoused and constantly supported, were it uniformly observed and followed by his brother labourers in the same field, whether as respects their daily ministrations among the heathen, or the publica

tion of what they have done and witnessed. We allude not merely to the lively sketches of scenery and manners which he evidently takes pleasure to observe, even when not immediately connected with the great concerns of his mission, but the taste, the knowledge, and the earnestness which he displays as a geographer, a philologist, a naturalist, an adventurer, a merchant, and a mechanic. In all of these capacities he is no mean proficient; regarding each of them he presents to his readers valuable information and hints; but, above all, he shows how efficacious these branches may be rendered towards the conversion of the heathen-the exaltation and refinement of their mental and moral natures. We shall have no difficulty, even when confining ourselves to a comparatively small portion of this thick octavo, in letting its author be seen to advantage in all of these departments, and of persuading our readers that the work is one of uncommon merits in a variety of views.

One thing we could have wished, for the sake of a more extensive circulation of the work-it is this, that Mr. Williams had employed much more seldom, those exclamations and reflections which very many devout and cultivated minds, we are persuaded, will look upon as bearing the stamp of cant, and of such a habitual use of the most peculiar and solemn portions of scriptural phraseology, as savour of easy utterance and a sort of conventional idiom. When a common place occurrence has to be explained, or a common-place idea has to be expressed, surely it tends to weaken the effect of the most impressive passages in the Bible, to have them for ever trippingly on the tongue, thus bringing them down from the lofty and sacred judgment seat of eternal justice and mercy. It is perfectly true that the author's career has been one that constantly led him to mark the dealings of Providence towards him with more than ordinary closeness and wonder; but it is not less true, that he who orally describes his hair-breadth escapes and marvellous experiencesmuch more he who commits his emotions to a book, where their ardour and intensity of gratitude cannot be witnessed excepting through the medium of literary truth and skill, should be wary lest he spoil the effect of the whole by a neglect of proportions and occasions-by wasting the whole vocabulary of his ecstasies on comparatively unimpressive passages of every-day life, and leaving himself destitute of more exalted images and appeals for great and strange vicissitudes, where they would shine and glow like apples of gold in a net-work of silver. To our minds, at least, the effect of many of our author's paragraphs or sentences of the sort spoken of, has been that of weakening the force or pathos of the preceding plain narrative of facts. Far be it from us to insinuate that he is not sincere in every such instance, or that he has not thousands of times felt that no human language, not even that of revelation, could do justice to his thoughts. Many years of his life would give the

lie to any such uncharitable construction. But we must at the same time tell him, that he has allowed himself to deal so often in what many would call the cant of Calvinistic sectarianism, as to operate considerably to the disparagement of his volume, especially among those very persons in the higher walks of life, whose countenance and patronage in behalf of the Missionary cause he is so anxious to enlist and secure. Still we are not of the number that will allow a sectarian peculiarity of manner or style to blind us to the many apparent and eminent grounds for praise, and of congratulation to the Missionary cause, which the volume holds out, and now proceed to the pleasing part of our duty.

Mr. Williams informs us that he has travelled a hundred thousand miles, and spent eighteen years in endeavouring to promote the spread of the gospel-that he has gathered a mass of materials from which he could have composed many volumes, and that indeed his chief difficulty has been to select, compress, and arrange them, so as to give a continuous narrative where fidelity and brevity should unite. It is but fair that he should be heard for himself on this point, and but just that we add, that he has succeeded in doing justice to his endeavours regarding it.

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It would have been comparatively easy to have filled the volume with general statements, instead of descending to minute particulars; but mere outlines and sketches could convey a very inadequate impression of the state of Society, and the progress of Christianity among the people for whose welfare he has laboured. He has therefore endeavoured, as exactly as possible, to describe the scenes hs has witnessed as they appeared to himself, and to give upon the pages of his narrative 'a cast' of the images and impressions which exist in his mind. With this view, he has preserved the dialogues in which much of his knowledge was obtained, and has not spoken for the natives, but allowed them to speak for themselves. In doing this, he has carefully avoided the use of terms and phrases which are current among nations more advanced in the scale of intelligence and civilization, and the employment of which might lead the reader to form a higher estimate of the state of society in the South Sea Islands than facts would warrant; and he has been equally careful to convey native ideas in the phraseology and under the figurative garb in which they were expressed. This he has been enabled to do, not only from an intimate knowledge of the habits of thought and modes of communication with which they are familiar, but more especially from the circumstance of his having kept a minute record of most interviews and events which the following pages describe. In a word, the Author has endeavoured to take his reader with him to each of the islands he has visited; to make him familiar with their chiefs and people; to show him what a Missionary life is, and to awaken in his mind emotions similar to those which successively filled his own.'

It was in 1817 that Mr. Williams joined the mission in which he has been such an excellent labourer, at the Island of Raiatea, the largest and most central of the Society Islands, which is about 100

miles from Tahiti, being the immediate scene of his exertions. The groups which are the principal subjects of the volume before us, are the Hervey and the Samoa, or Navigator's Islands, about which very little was known till visited by the author, and some of which never before was beheld by an European. It is only, however, respecting one of the former group, by name Rarotonga, that we present any considerable variety of the information which is before us, selecting that island because it is the most important of the Hervey group, and because it is associated with, or the scene of a sufficient variety of the author's enterprises and successes, to show him to the best advantage.

Rarotonga escaped the untiring researches of Captain Cook, and was discovered by Mr. Williams in 1823. It is described by the latter as being situated lat. 21 degrees 20 minutes S., 16 degrees W. long. It is fertile in soil, splendid as to scenery-its circuit is about thirty miles, and its population 6,000 or 7,000. Like many of the South Sea Islands, it is surrounded by a coral reef, but has several good boat harbours. It will soon be seen by our readers that this island is one which is calculated to interest the mind in an unusual degree, whether considered in its savage, its transition state towards civilization, or its future prospects. But previously to proceeding with our author to Rarotonga, or any of those accounts or discussions belonging to the immediate and most important objects of his mission, we must let him be heard in part upon two subjects just now referred to.

First, when speaking of the Samoa group of islands, which was discovered by the French circumnavigator, Bougainville, in 1678, Mr. Williams declares, that the names given by him, are so confused and incorrrect, that it is utterly impossible to know the islands which he intended to designate. The same he affirms of the account given by the unfortunate La Perouse, who visited them in 1788; whereas, he adds, that in this respect as well as in every other, Cook's superiority is displayed; for that you may follow the directions of this prince of navigators with as much confidence as you travel the high roads of England. Mr. Williams seems to entertain a just sense of Captain's Cook's contributions, not only to science, but intimates that though not appointed directly to pave the way to the spread of the Gospel in the Pacific, that yet his voyages have operated essentially and eminently towards this glorious triumph of light and religion. On the other hand, of Kotzebue, he asserts that he has failed to correct one error, or to supply a single deficiency of his French predecessors, and that his "New Voyage round the World," so far as it relates to Tahiti," is one tissue of falsehoods, containing accounts of persons who never existed, and lengthened histories of events which never occurred." Kotzebue, like very many other travelled gentlemen, was no friend to the Mis

sionaries; and every one may readily conceive how easy it is to give a misrepresentation of the most earnest and pious labours of the best of these self-denying philanthropists. The day, indeed, is not long gone by, when men of taste, knowledge, and erudition, would have been ashamed to utter even a negative approval of the most apostolical modern teachers of the Gospel among the heathen; and even as it is, the errors, the ignorance, the misguided zeal, or the incompetence of some who, it cannot be denied (neither could it rationally have been expected,) have disgraced the ranks of those most illustrious champions, to which Mr. William belongs, are to many who call themselves Christians, far more acceptable themes of remark, than the blameless, the effective, and chivalric deeds of the heroes of the Cross. But in spite of the hostile and the lukewarm, the thing disliked has come to pass-it is now in full vigour, its promise threatens to put to shame impugners and sticklers; and what was a few years ago asseverated loudly, has now to be uttered in whispers, probably more frequently with the wish than the expectation that the prognostication stand the test of time and experience.

The other point to which we have alluded, concerns the formation of the islands in the Paficic, of which our author must be allowed to have had extraordinary opportunities of forming an opinion. In *some of them, he says, there are strong evidences of volcanic eruptions; others present but slight symptoms of such phenomena, "the rocks being crystallized carbonate of lime, very much in appearance like the arogonite of the Giant's Causeway," which are supposed to have been coral; while a third class is the low coralline islands, which, in most cases, rise but a few feet above the sea. After noticing the theories which have been put forth respecting the formation of what are called coral islands, he proceeds to test these theories by certain facts to which he can speak, concluding with this opinion, that coral growth is extremely slow, and declaring that in all his travels and investigations he has perceived no animal agency at work adequate to the formation of a reef or island of any extent, within a period of many thousand years. He also states that it is an error to suppose, that all coral insects work until they reach the surface of the water.

Again, as to the substance of which coral is composed, which some say is the exuviaæ of insects-others that it is a secretion from them-and others again, among whom is Dr. Buckland, that it is the gelatinous bodies of polypes which are furnished with the power of secreting carbonate of lime, with which they form a basis of attachment and cell of retreat: Mr. Williams is of opinion

"That as there is carbonate of lime in salt water; that as corals are carbonate of lime; and that they are found to exist principally in warm climates, where, by the process of evaporation, there is an abundance of material supplied for these insects to build with; instead of secreting the