THE MARTYRED MISSIONARY OF NEW GUINEA.
James Chalmers : his Autobiography and Letters. By Richard -Lovett. (R.T.S. '75. 6d.)—This book is too long ; other- wise it may be said to be very nearly a model work of the kind. Mr. Lovett is exceedingly enthusiastic, it is true, about 'his hero,—that sturdy Argyllshire Scotsman who lived so strenuous, and in its way successful, a life that in all proba- bility he did not regard the final clubbing to death as a tragedy. But Chalmers was clearly worth "enthusing" about. After seeing him, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of him in letters which are here given:—" Chalmers and Brown are pioneer missionaries, splendid men, with no humbug, plenty of courage and the love of adventure; Brown the man who fought a battle with cannibals at New Britain, and was so quarrelled over by Exeter Hall ; Chalmers a friend of Mrs. Hannah Swan's Chalmers a big, stout, wildish-looking man, iron-grey, with big bold black eyes, and a deep straight furrow down each cheek ; teat. forty to forty-five I have a cultua for Tamate ; he is a man nobody
can see and not love He has plenty, of faults like the rest
of us but he's as big as a church." From the moment that .ChOlmers steps on the scene, at College and preparing for his future work in connection with the London Missionary Society, his -leading characteristics—enthusiasm, vigour, assertiveness— show themselves. His portrait, given as the frontispiece to this book, suggests a Scotch Adam Bede,and such, indeed, he was. A.bso- '1uUf4Y devoid of fear, he was "in.perils oft" long before the tragedy of ...1901_brought the beneficent life of "Tamate"—as he was familiarly named-L--to a close at the age of sixty. Even his first voyagethat which brought him from England to the South Seas and to -his first home in Rarotonga—very nearly ended in &Oster and death. But although he had "misfortunes great and sma'" he' had 'also the Scotch "heart abune them a'," and although his biographer judiciously and skilfully allows him to °Ptak for himself- in letters,- journals, and other fragments of autobiography, in none of these is there a sign of distatisfaction with his lot. Chalmers was indeed happy in himself, if not in his surroundings, and in the truly devout women who shared ;us work and life in succession. Altogether, no brighter or mon, skilf,u1 narrative of missionary life—from the subjective as well as fivin the objective point of view—has ever been published than this.
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