SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading ice notice tuck Boots of the leech as have not been swerved for review in other forms.]
Letters of Henry Hughes Dobinson. (Seeley and Co. 33. ad.)— Early in 1890 H. IL Dobinson went out to the Lower Niger on the establishment of the Church Missionary Society. He paid two short visits to England to recruit his health. A little more than seven years afterwards he died, somewhat unexpectedly, of malarial fever. He had started on a journey on March 27th, and a fortnight afterwards he passed away. All that we find others saying of him, all that we read of his own letters combine to make us feel how much was lost by his early death. There was something of the ideal Englishman about him. He was an athlete of no common excellence, captaining the cricket and football teams at his school (Repton), pure-hearted and deeply religions, without a particle of affectation, narrowness, or gloom, and full of the common-sense without which devotion and enthusiasm so often go astray. His letters are admirable, so full are they of deep feeling and shrewd observation. No attempt is made to draw a picture of life in the missionary field, but they leave a very distinct impression. H. H. Dobinson saw things and people without any veil of illusion, but did not in the least lose heart. That, we take it, is the happiest combination of gifts that missionary can have. Of his disinterestedness it is needless to speak. His whole life was a proof of it. But there is a notable instance in the proposition which he made to the Church Missionary Society to reduce his stipend so that another worker could be sent out. The Society very properly put the proposal by. The administration knew what "curtailing a little bit,—i.e., in gardening and in European stores" really meant, and would have none of it. A short time before his death he was made Archdeacon, a very wise appointment ; he accepted the duty with much more pleasure than the dignity, for which he had a genuine dislike.
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