The Quickening of Caliban. By J. Compton Rickett. (Cassell and
Co.)—This "Modern Story of Evolution," as the author describes it, is a really remarkable study of life. Christina Ruefold, daughter of an English missionary and a half-caste wife, goes to England after her father's death Her experiences there are described with a shrewdness and a point which it would be difficult to praise too highly. But Christina Ruefold is not the subject of the evolution which Mr. Rickett describes. This is one Forest Bokrie," who is brought over to England to form the attraction of a show, and in whom Christina takes a strong interest. The savage (for the purpose of exhibition he is described as a man-ape) has really no inconsiderable veneer of civilisation. He has been taught in a mission-school, he can even talk English fluently. But a savage he is. First a Professor takes him in hand as an interesting study in anthropology, and Forest Bokrie goes to Cambridge. But the wild nature shows itself, and the Professor, whose interest is only scientific, gives up his task in disgust. How the evolution is really brought about is told in the succeeding pages ; these are profoundly interesting. The gracious figure of Christina herself, with her self-devotion and enthusiasm, is presented to us with striking force. She dis- appears from our view, into the depths of the African forest, bent on doing for her mother's race something of what she had done for the Caliban whom she had rescued from the corruptions of civilisation. We follow her in thought with an aspiration that, we fear, is vain. If there were such a woman, what might she not do !
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