Augustus Short, First Bishop of Adelaide. By Fred, T. Whitington.
(Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.)—Colonial Bishops appear to be becoming a favourite subject with biographers ; this is the second that has come into our hands within the past few weeks. There is no doubt that Dr. Augustus Short, who was born in 1802, was appointed first Bishop of Adelaide in 1847, and after presiding over his diocese for thirty-four years, returned to England to die at Eastbourne in 1883, deserved this modestly and judiciously executed biography, by one of his chaplains. He was a worthy man in all relations of his life, and his success in Adelaide, in spite of the difficulties which necessarily environed his position, affords gratifying evidence that a well-bred English clergyman (in the academic sense of the word well-bred '), although transplanted to a Colony at middle-life, is sure to do credit to his Church and to his country. Mr. Whitington is more the historiographer of Dr. Short's diocese than the biographer of Dr. Short himself—as the bishop himself, indeed, wished —and he demonstrates the hard work that such a man must go through in almost literally building up a new See. Dr. Short had his troubles with Nonconformists, and in the way of ecclesiastical organisation; but he had a heart and a head above them all. This is a well-proportioned biography, and contains many facts interesting to other than clerical or colonial readers. The chapter on "The Church and the Aborigines "is exceptionally valuable.
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