have been dangers, and the final death of one are spoken of, will see what advance must have been made when we are represented by a Livingstone in Africa, and by a Selwyn in the Eastern seas.
All the world knows what Dr. Livingstone has done and is doing in Africa. If it is objected that he is hardly a representative of the religious world,—hardly the messenger to the heathen who would have been chosen, if his mode of behaviour to the Africans had been foreseen, I reply, “then let him be the representative of the secular element of English life, which is as anxious to see the Africans not only civilised but spiritualised as the straitest sect of Protestantism can be.” Time will show whether Christianity does or does not spring up in the footsteps of this very original missionary faster than where it has been presented to barbaric nations in other forms than by sympathy and helpfulness in their objects and interests and ways of living. The Makololo constitute a pretty strong evidence already, in the eyes of most people.
But who objects to Bishop Selwyn? Who can say that he is not religious enough, or not secular enough? When consecrated to his work, he was charged to convey the blessings of Christianity wherever he could beyond the bounds of his New Zealand see. He has done this by means of enlarged views and personal qualifications which mark a great advance in missionary action. He steers his own little ship from one group of islands to another, making a wide circuit of visits every year, and passing through sea-accidents which all natives suppose to be over-ruled for him by some special grace. Wherever he lands, he climbs higher, swims faster, and walks further, than the natives can do; and thus he obviates a world of difficulties which would be raised up about his carrying the most promising youths of each settlement away with him for a time, for instruction and training. It is known that he will bring them back to spend the cold, or the hot, or any other unfavourable season, at home; and they see that he can and does put them in the way of welfare in this life as effectually as if he had nothing to say to them of another.
In him, the Church of England has sent forth, after an interval, another marked representative of its missionary function. Henry Martyn will long be remembered with a tender admiration and pitying affection, as the first scholarly and holy minister sent out by our century to bring the barbaric world into a participation in our best privileges. But wherever he is spoken of, the name of George Augustus Selwyn will follow,—a minister of the same Church, with the learning, and the holiness, and the devotedness of Henry Martyn, but with no need of compassion, or any sorrowing emotion, to be mingled with the admiration with which his career is regarded. As a family man, with his intellectual faculties equably and highly cultivated, and his moral nature as thoroughly exercised as the physical in the service of a waiting multitude, he is that fair and noble specimen of a man of our age which we are proud to send to the other side of the globe, to convey to the antique nations of barbarism the idea and the impulse of progress.
A SUBURBAN FAIR.
Our neighbourhood is particularly genteel, Grove especially so; the semi-detached villas are as much alike as two peas, and the laburnums and lilac-trees in our front gardens interchange their branches over the dwarf party-wall as affectionately as young school-girls interlace their arms. Close to us there is a field, long since devoted to ground-rents if builders would only prove agreeable; possibly, however, the “carcass” of a most desirable residence, with its exposed rafters like bleaching ribs, hard by, warns them off the ground. Be that as it may, the proprietor, evidently hard up for some return, lately let it,—for what purpose the Grove speedily knew.
My back bedroom window commands a view of the corner of the ground over the cropped lime-trees of No. 6. We had been aware for some hours of a highly feverish condition of the neighbourhood by the constant passing of what ladies call “ugly-looking fellows:” but when I began to dress for dinner I was enabled to diagnose the complaint at once, for, between the aforesaid lime-trees, a painted canvas slowly rose between the slings, and by-and-by presented the bold proportions of a giant in a blue coat, gilt buttons, and knee breeches, with an admiring spectator by way of contrast, measuring on tip-toe the proportions of his resplendent calves. “A fair, by all that’s wonderful!” I exclaimed; at the same time groaning heavily, more, I must confess, however, for my neighbours’ genteel feelings than for my own.
Before the dinner was over the thing was in full swing,—the big drum, the trombone, and the clarionet of the principal show had got into full discord; a dozen gongs were a-going, and there was a dwarf for certain, for I could hear his bell ringing out of the bed-room window of his doll’s house as plainly as though I saw it. By eight o’clock our Grove was vocal, and every head was