like everything else, is and should be, progressive, expansive, and comprehensive. It is the non-admission of those facts that has divorced the Church from the hearts of the people in these days. It should attract and embrace modern thought, and work it into its system, instead of repelling it. At the same time it should gladly renounce all that has become effete and untenable in its own teachings. The Dean of Cape Town goes some little way in these directions. He is deservedly popular, an earnest worker who has his work well at heart. His social qualities, liberal views, and general urbanity of manner are additional graces, and still further endear him to his flock. He preaches at the CathedralSt. George's Cathedral.

The Church of England has seven or eight bishops in Africa. Bishop Colenso, at Maritzburg, had some warm admirers, and was a prominent colonial figure. His views on native affairs had, however, alienated from him a large section of the Natalians.

To illustrate the vague ideas the ecclesiastical authorities at home, no less than all other authorities possessed-at no very remote date, and doubtless still possess―of African topography, it may be well to retail an authentic anecdote bearing upon the subject. The people of Graham's Town sent home for a clergyman to be appointed to a church which in these early times they had some difficulty in erecting.

The answer sent back by the bishop to whom they applied was as follows:-that he thought the Vicar of Port Elizabeth might well ride over in the afternoon and preach at Graham's Town in the evening. Speaking from memory and belief, the distance is about one hundred miles. On a par with this is the tale told at the expense of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, who, upon receiving despatches from Griqualand West (Diamond Fields) to inform him that an insurrection which had been brewing there for some time had actually broken out, sent back word that he was glad to hear all was so quiet on the fields. This, of course, must be taken cum grano salis, nothing more than a little flash of diamondiferous humour.

But to return. In Durban, no less than in Maritzburg, there are churches enough and for all. Archdeacon Lloyd's church is

THE JESUITS AT WORK.

41

the fashionable resort. St. Cyprian's, the Ritualistic establishment, finds great favour in the eyes of St. Helena women and European female domestics. As yet, fashion in South Africa—such as it is -though it casts many sheep's glances in the direction of Ritualism, has not had the pluck to declare for it in the open manner it has in this country.

Every religious community is represented in Africa-even the smallest coteries, such as the Swedenborgians; hence what good though flippant Churchmen style "schism shops" abound. Apropos of schism shops the Episcopal Church in South Africa is divided into two sections; as all who bear in mind the Colenso controversy will doubtless remember.

In conclusion, I must draw attention to a most important subject that is to say, the inroads which Roman Catholicism is making in Africa as elsewhere.

That church is excessively active and energetic. If we do not wish to see it in the ascendant there, no less than here, we must go to work in a somewhat different manner to that which at present characterizes the action of the Protestant churches. The splendid organization and subordination of Roman Catholicism, combined with its real acts of Christian charity, which cannot but appeal to the masses, is making it a great power in England and her colonies.

CHAPTER VI.

BLOTS ON A FAIR ESCUTCHEON.

"I MEASURE THE INTEGRITY OF MEN BY THEIR CONDUCT."

"In like manner we should learn to be just to individuals. Who can say in such circumstances I should have done otherwise? Did he but reflect by what slow gradations, often by how many strange occurrences, we are led astray, with how much reluctance, how much agony, how many efforts to escape, how many self-accusations, how many sighs, how many tears-who, did he but reflect for a moment would have the heart to throw a stone."-Samuel Rogers.

HAVING said so much about the religion of South Africa, I will proceed to enumerate what I consider to be the besetting sins of its inhabitants.

Shakespeare's Cassio was not far out when he anathematised drink as "a devil". It is the curse of South Africa, no less than it was of Othello's lieutenant. If you ask me who is responsible for this I would answer, primarily Nature.

"All is the fault of that indecent Sun,

Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay
But will keep, baking, burning, broiling on
That howsoever people fast and pray,
The flesh is frail and so the soul's undone,
Happy the nations of the moral North,
Where all is Virtue."

I take exception to the last line of this quotation, for I think that the newly arrived British immigrant has as much to do with making South African colonists intemperate as any other cause.

Again, I feel a certain amount of diffidence in writing upon the subject of colonial intemperance, when I remember the strong indictment on that score that could be brought against all classes in this country.

People "tipple" abominably in Africa, but so they do here.

THE ABUSE OF THE JUICE OF THE GRAPE.

43

Witness the habits of a large majority of the young men (and I fear I cannot exempt the old) of this City of London of ours. Take all our leading markets and exchanges. The Stock Exchange and Mincing Lane give the cue to the rest. Is not the institution known as the "social glass" doing an incalculable amount of harm? The multiplication of Bodegas, and Spiers and Pond's buffets at railway stations has much to do with this evil. Out of the City, the jeunesse dorée of modern England seem to find their Mecca, their heaven, in hanging over the bars at the Criterion, St. James's Restaurant, Grand Hotel, or elsewhere, and in uttering not sweet, but coarse nothings to maidens, quite as sophisticated as the spirits which they dispense. However, I need not say more on this subject. The vice of drunken ness, sufficiently pronounced here, is certainly even further accentuated in Africa. Circumstances, which I shall endeavour to explain, have produced this result. I have let Byron speak for me about the climate. Wine and brandy are among the staples of the country, and in consequence are very cheap; quite taking the place of malt liquor, of which there are only a very few successful manufacturers. I mean successful as to the quality of the beer they brew, the greater portion brought into the market being execrable stuff.

There are no public-houses in the colonies. The restaurants are divided into two distinct classes-namely, the canteens, patronised by the sailors, cabmen, coloured people, and working classes generally; and the hotels-miserable places enough, for the most part, and far behind the times. They are fairly respectable, although I understand that some of them entertain a select company of habitués under the rose until the small hours of the morning.

A man can frequent an hotel without attracting the attention or being subjected to the stigma that would attach to him were he constantly seen entering a public-house.

I look upon the absence of public-houses, therefore, as being an incentive to rather than a remedy for intemperance. I said just now that the responsibility of South African intemperance was as much due to Englishmen as to any influence. This is so.

In the first place, the colonies, as I have already inferred, are pestered with

"A set of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretagnes and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o'ercloyed country vomits forth"

to pollute her colonies. These are the men who have made the Diamond Fields the pandemonium that by all accounts it is. Drinking, robbing, swearing, and cursing are not unknown there any more than they are elsewhere.

These are the men who are for ever bragging about their home. When here, they probably took no pains to conceal their contempt for it. They unfortunately manage to gain a certain influence over those Englishmen who have left their country either to better their pockets or their health, or merely, may be, for travel, observation, sport, or pleasure. It is a French physician who says that home sickness, in its most advanced type, amounts to a disease, and he is quite right. It is the business of the ne'er-do-weel to stimulate this disease in those colonists of the better class whom I have just now described. They know that this will predispose them to fall readily into the slough of intemperance, ever the most prominent characteristic of the adventurers and unfortunates in question. It will be readily understood why they desire to render all with whom they come in contact as depraved as themselves. Every new pervert swells their exchequer, for they take good care to make those whom they are debasing pay for the lessons in vice which they receive from them. As to the colonists, of course, all this reacts upon them, and induces them to be more intemperate than they would otherwise be, though I am bound to admit that they are naturally too much inclined that way. In discussing this question of "action and reaction," it is very difficult, as I have already observed, to know exactly how to distribute the blame.

Colonists, old and young, rich and poor, are too much inclined to patronise alcohol, the young men of the lower middle classesby which I mean the petty traders and shopkeepers-being especially addicted to this habit. Among the reasons which conduce to this unfortunate result none perhaps form so important a part as the looseness, carelessness, and indifference of the colonists.