CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT BOOKS.
Three Martyrs of the Nineteenth Century. By the Author of
Chranicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family." (S.P.C.K.)—The "three martyrs" are Livingstone, Gordon, and Patteson. No stories have ever stirred the hearts of Englishmen more than the stories of these three, and it is well that they should be told by a pen whioh is instinct with sympathy as well as made skilfal by practice. Such telling we have in this volume. Here is a flue passage about Gordon :—" He was simply awake in a world of dreamers ; the walls of the cells of self which imprison us were broken ; be saw the wrongs and sufferings of other men, of weaker races, as an angel from another world might see them, not dimly or vaguely, but with tho widest, keenest, most acute vision. He never grew used to the bad air and the narrow horizons, or blunted to the sights of misery and wail of helplessness, as if these were things meant to be, that must be. It never occurred to him to pass by on the other side. At the sight of the dragons, not only did his courage rise to fight the battles for the wronged, but his sight grew clearer to see how to fight them. For in all campaigns the victories are not won by heroic courage only, but by surveying the ground, and measuring the forces, and seizing the strong points and the weak points, and keeping the brain quiet while the heart is most stirred." As to Bishop Patteson, it is interesting to know that Bishop Selwyn, his successor, has been welcomed at Nukapu, the island where he was killed, and that with the islanders' help a memorial cross has been erected ou the shore. We may hope that of this martyrdom, at least, we shall soon see the fall fruit in the suppression of the infamous slave-trade of the South Pacific.
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