J. BEVAN BRAITHWAITE.
J. Bevan Braithwaite : a Friend of the Nineteenth Century. By his Children. (Hodder and Stoughton. 'Ts. 6d. net.)—We may find an honourable ambiguity in the title of this book. J. Bevan Braithwaite testified through more than four-fifths of the nineteenth century to the principles of the Society of Friends, while he was not untouched by the century's influences. At the same time, he was a friend to his age, if friendship is shown by an unfaltering devotion to all that might help to elevate and purify. Zeal in welldoing came to him, we may say, by inheritance. Possibly his parents, his mother especially, had it in excess. To leave her children, together with the children of her deceased sister " living almost next door and claiming her motherly care and counsel," seems somewhat strange. These absences covered a large portion of the years 1823-29—J. Bevan Braithwaite was born in 1818—and twice both parents were absent. " All this period J. B. Braithwaite always spoke of as a sad and dreary one." It is only fair to say that the boy suffered no permanent injury; few have lived so many years, filled to the utmost with useful activities. The story of these as it is given in these pages is well worth study. J. B. Braithwaite combined with his profession as a barrister an active ministry amongst the Friends. Later in life he gave much time to work of a missionary kind. The welfare of his own Society interested him keenly, and he took a prominent part in its government. But his energies found a larger field. Of well-known organisations, the British and Foreign Bible Society was that to which his most constant services were rendered. More than once he took long journeys in its interest. Of the temper in which the biography is written we have nothing adverse to say. We venture to doubt, however, the dictum, quoted h propos of the American Civil War, "War settles nothing." Do the writers really believe that if the North had acquiesced in the pretensions of the slave- holding States, accepted the abolition of the Missouri Com- promise, and permitted the "institution" to be firmly established in the middle States and tolerated all over the Union, the negro problem would have been nearer a solution than it is now ? One illustrious Friend, John Greenleaf Whittier, did not think so.
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