The Book of the Lifeboat. Edited and Arranged by J.
C. Dibdin and John Ayling. (Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier.)—This handsome volume, well printed and well illustrated, is not un- worthy of the great subject to which it is devoted. It gives us a history of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and of the efforts which have been made to interest English people in its work ; and it adds a number of thrilling narratives of journeys made under peculiar circumstances to give help to the distressed and to rescue the shipwrecked. Photographs of places and per- sons, and pictures of lifeboats in rest and in action, furnish some appropriate illustrations. We recognise the necessity of making a selection in a volume of this kind,—the materials must be abundant to excess. Nevertheless, it is disappointing not to have a word about the stations which have the perilous work of the Goodwin Sands to do. We find the notice distributed thus :— Yorkshire, six ; Suffolk, three; Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Devonshire, Hampshire, two each ; Cornwall, Essex, Northumberland, and Lancashire, one each ; but no mention of any Kent or Sussex station. Yet, if we had to pick out the best known of all lifeboats, we should say the Ramsgate ' and the ' Deal.' What is thus missing may be found, together with other interesting matter, in Stories of the Lifeboat, by Frank Mundell (Sunday School Union). Mr. Mundell very properly devotes a chapter to the Goodwin Sands. Is there any authority, by the way, for the story that the Abbot of Canterbury diverted the money that should have been spent on the sea-wall that protected the land now submerged, to the building of Tenterden steeple? This leads to the story of how the Ramsgate lifeboat saved the erew and passengers (a hundred in number) of the emigrant ship Fusilier.' Another chapter relates the rescue of a part of the crew of the Indian Chief' by the Ramsgate men. There was something peculiarly heroic in this. The lifeboat had to lie-to all night in a bitter cold,—it was January 6th, 1881. In the end, eleven men were saved. Happily, this gallant deed found a worthy mates sacer in Mr. Clark Russell. Just ten years after, the Ramsgate men saved the crew of the Crocodile.' In chap. xi. the Deal men had their turn. They rescued on one journey a French and a Swedish crew. On another, the saving of the crew of the • Benvenue 'by the Sand- gate boat is told, and in yet another a gallant deed of the Broad- stairs men. We are glad to see justice done to the gallant "Men of Kent."
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