Pallesrm of the Isles. By Mary H. Debenham. (Milford. 4s.
net.)—Another biography of Bishop Patteson would seem superfluous, for the story of his life has been so well told by his cousin, Miss Charlotte M. Yonge. Miss Debenham has realized this, and, as she says in her preface, Patteson of the Isles, far from being a fresh account of his life, is rather a distillation of Miss Yonge's book. Of Patteson it can truly be said, in a phrase frequently misused, that he was " greater even than the great things he did." Simply retold, in this little book, his life among the natives of Melanesia is more thrilling than many an account of deliberately sought adventure. Bishop Patteson did not spare himself. His attempt to found a diocese in those strange and savage islands, in itself a task of extreme danger, was made a hundred times more difficult by the slave-traders who frequently used the Bishop's name as a decoy. This shameful traffic was the cause of his death. The story has been told many times. He landed alone on the tiny coral island of Nukapu, one of the Santa Cruz group, unaware that the slave-traders had been there a few days before. In a native meeting-house he was treacherously killed. Five wounds were found on his body : the number of the islanders who had been kidnapped. " Poor Santa Cruz people," Miss Debenham says, " they little guessed the high and mysterious honour they were paying to the man they slew . . . for those who loved Bishop Patteson thought of One wounded with five wounds for the saving of the world."
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