Sir Samuel Baker has been, we find, greatly shocked by
the malignity of the critics who have commented on his discursive and irrelevant letter concerning the negro of Central Africa, and is now so convinced of the wickedness of the anti-Eyre party, that he has forwarded a contribution to the Eyre Defence Fund, with warm expressions of sympathy for Mr. Eyre's position, and a strong intimation that he holds the prayer in the Litany against "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness" to be indirectly a, prayer for Mr. Eyre and for the confusion of his enemies. This week, no doubt, there is excuse for Sir S. Baker's frantic zeal. He wrote a very rigmarole letter to the Times of Wednesday week, which everybody has been regretting from so pleasant a writer, and now he writhes under the general chorus of laughter directed against him for solving every question, however far from his proper field of view, by reference to Central Africa.' Indeed, one can scarcely help being reminded of the Cambridge man who had got up the binomial theorem for his examination, and knew nothing else, and when asked to solve a problem in optics, wrote down, "Before we can do this, we must first prove the binomial theorem,"—and proved Only that poor man had the excuse of being examine 1. Sir SWaker volunteers hi; equally naïf reply as to the negro of the West Indies,—" Before we can understand him, we must first study the negro of Central Africa."
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