Twenty-nine Years in the West Indies and Centra Africa. By
the Rev. Hope Mastert,on Waddell. (Nelson and Sons.)—The author of this work, which professes to be "a review of missionary work and adven- ture," is a gentleman belonging to the United Secession Church of Scotland, who has laboured as a missionary for many years in the coun- tries which he now undertakes to describe. He begins his book by apologizing for "whatever literary deficiencies" it may exhibit, by urging that he has "spent the most of his life in teaching the A B C of religion and literature to the children of Ethiopia, and chiefly in that peculiar dialect called Negro-English ; " and certainly it is impossible to read oven to the end of his preface without acknowledging that this apology is by no means uncalled for. His narrative, however, is written in a less ambitious, and, therefore, a less objectionable style. That part of it which relates to the West Indies is mainly occupied with a record of his missionary labours, and of various difficulties with ministers of other persuasions ; but when he comes to speak of the west coast of Africa, he gives us a good deal of interesting information respecting the manners and customs of its inhabitants. Mr. Waddell's book is, how- ever, much too long. Missionary records are excellent things in their way; but 680 pages of them, closely printed, are rather more than we knew how conveniently to dispose of.
We have also received a considerable number of reprints, periodicals, and minor works, which do not appear to call for individual notice. They are the second edition of the Memoir of Joshua Watson, one of the founders of the National Society, edited by Archdeacon Churton (J. H. and J. Parker) ; the thirteenth and fourteenth volumes of the author's edition of De Quincey's 1Vorks (A. and C. Black); the twelfth volume of the cheap High-Church serial, The Penny Post (T. H. and J. Parker); part of the Sessional Papers of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1862-3 (J. H. and J. Parker) ; The Prayer that Teaches to Pray, by the Rev. Marcus Dods, A.M. (Hamilton, Adams, and Co.), a well-written and intelligent exposition of the Lord's Prayer ; a collection of short stories, none of them original, entitled Tales of Life in Earnest, by Miss Crompton (Darton and Hodge); a badly printed and illustrated book of old fairy tales, called The Child's Story-Book (Gordon : Edinburgh); a useful Pocket French and English Dictionary, by Leon Contanseen (Longmans); and the following pamphlets :—Daniel's Vision of the Four Beasts (Tresidder), illustrated by six wonderful engravings, the con- templation of which may possibly be a source of gratification to their designer ; a digest and summary of the evidence taken by the select committee appointed to inquire into the operation of the present scale of sugar duties (Dawson and Sons), by J. Russell, who dissents from the conclusions embodied in the committee's report ; Count Egmont, as depicted in Painting, Poetry, and Histwy, by H. Schiitze Wilson, author of "The Voyage of the Lady," &c. (Smith, Elder, and Co.), a highly laudatory notice of M. Gallait's celebrated pictures.; a plea for working men's clubs, by the Rev. H. Solly, entitled, Working Men ; a Glance at some of their Wants (Bell and Daldy) ; Indian Cotton Supply (Smith, Elder, and Co.), by A. C. Brice, Managing Director of the E. I. Cotton Agency, who enumerates a formidable list of " requirements " which must be granted to India before she can make us independent of America in the matter of cotton ; Four Centuries of Modern Europe, by T. B. Bishop (Freeman), a Key to two chronological charts, by the same author ; Poems, by T. W. James (Jewell), a very small collection of rather small verses, which scarcely deserve the dignified name given to them by their author ; and a lecture on the Revolution in America, by Professor Cairnes (Dublin : Hodges, Smith, and Co.), which has already been published in a volume of lectures delivered before the Dublin Young Men's Christian Association during the year 1862.
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