Memoirs of Bishop McDougall and of his Wife. By C.
T. Bunyon. (Longmans, Green, and Co.)—The life of the first Bishop of Labuan and of Sarawak, and of his wife, is well and, in the main, impartially described by Mrs. McDougall's brother, in this volume, which will be of considerable interest to the friends of the late Bishop, and also to those who have followed the fortunes of Sarawak; for the book forms a contribution of some value towards the romantic history of that State, in many stirring events of which the Bishop played no unimportant part. We have pre- sented to us a man of bodily vigour and force of character, a medical missionary, who cured the bodies if he did not cure the souls of the heathen. His adventurous spirit found full scope in Sarawak, and on one notable occasion the non-episcopal side of his character was revealed in a letter which he wrote to the Times describing a fight with pirates, in which he had taken part with great ardour, and apparently keen enjoyment of the well-deserved vengeance which he had a hand in inflicting. His brother-in-law gives a full account of the storm of criticism roused by this indiscreetly candid letter ; doubtless he gave needless offence to Christians of tender consciences, who would probably not have objected to the Bishop fighting under the circumstances in which he was placed, if in the account that he afterwards gave of the fight he had expressed any sorrow for the blood he had been forced to shed, or revealed some of the spirit that refused to call down fire from heaven on his enemies. Mrs. McDougall's was a gentler, more religious spirit, though she was not less brave than her husband when danger or trouble crossed their path, as often happened. She it was who more than any- thing else first impelled him to become a missionary. Her letters are bright and vivid, and tell more about the actual working of the Borneo Mission than any other parts of the volume; but we hear little about any of the natives individually, or about the effect of Christian teaching and influence upon them, and a good deal about church-building and organisation. We know that work in a new country must in the main be preparatory, laborious, and in a sense uninteresting; but we look for some human personal element even in such preliminary work amongst non-Christian peoples, whereas after closing this book we feel that we have learned many things about Bishop McDougall, but hardly anything about any of the people among whom he lived. Mr. Btmyon refers to Bishop McDougall's rich store of anecdotes, with which he entertained his friends in his later years in this country ; but, judging from the instances he quotes, and from those we have heard before, the Bishop's stories were mainly comic, without much humour or pathos, and dealt more in animals and sporting subjects than in human beings. By-the-way, we are told that in these anecdotes the Bishop was "very accurate and truthful in his statements." Perhaps he was, but we believe that was hardly the impression he made on the minds of his hearers generally, who enjoyed his stories none the less for their apparent elements of exaggeration, their spice of bold picturesqueness.
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