present straits, and in their courageous effort to extricate themselves instead of looking to the Government of the country to intervene with exceptional legislation upon their behalf. We have too, we confess, another speculative interest in the matter. We have all along been of opinion that canals were well suited to carry on a great part of the trade of this country more economically, and in many ways better, than the railways. That they would have been most useful as a means of competing with railways, and so inducing these great corporations to do their duty by their customers, the public, seems to have been the opinion of various Commissions and Committees which inquired into the matter from time to time. That they failed of this most beneficial function, and that the State has had to resort to the regulation of railways when competition between canals and railways might have done is due to the fact that the railways had, as we have pointed out, made that competition almost impossible by purchasing important links of the canal system. For a time Parliament was too little alive to the results which would follow this appropriation of portions of the water-way of this country by railway companies; and when at last it wakened to the important truth and refused to sanction any more of these baneful amalgamations, the railway companies found a means, without parliamentary sanction, of carrying out their most baneful policy. There is a good illustration of this in connection with the history of the Bridgewater Canal, which is now to become the property of the Ship Canal Company. But we have some hope that if this most powerful rival to the railway companies in the midland counties of England once gets upon its legs'-if we may use such a mixed metaphor with reference to a canal-that, together with the power which exists under the Regulation of Railways Act, 1873, to propose through tolls and rates over neighbouring canals, we may still see a strong, effective, and useful competition etablished which will be a very great benefit to the public of this country. Canals were a comparative failure when their traffic had to be conducted by horse haulage; we believe that they have a great future before them in conjunction with the use of steam as a means of ship propulsion. That this new project will give a change not only to the Ship Canal, but to the canals that communicate with it through the Rochdale Canal at Manchester to be tried under these new conditions, we believe; and that now they will not be found wanting is, we think, almost certain. In all these aspects we feel considerable interest in the prospects of the Ship Canal, and look forward to the future with confidence.

The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat. By their Son, JOHN
S. MOFFAT. With Portraits, Maps, and Illustrations.
T. Fisher Unwin.

If there still exist among us any of those sceptical, puny, stunted human beings who sneer at missionaries, or at best speak of them with patronage and pity, it would be well that they should read this book. Here they will find the impress of manhood of the very highest caste stamped on every page. Here they will meet with courage the most unfaltering, and faith the most constant, associated with nothing narrow or weak or mawkish. A grand simplicity and heroic unconsciousness reign from first to last. We know not which most to admire the premature wisdom and patience of the stripling at the outset of his missionary career, or the mellowed sagacity and gracious breadth of the grey-haired veteran who came home for well-won rest and retirement, and only began a new life-work of quiet and healthful comprehensiveness and unity with an influence that increased from day to day. The leading facts of Robert Moffat's life have long been familiar; here we have the outline fitly and lovingly filled up. We look upon the completed picture with added conviction of the enduring greatness of the subject. When we think of the warnings that have been given by biographers-Carlyle among the rest not to scan the lives of great men too closely, not to approach too near them, lest the illusion should be lost, we congratulate ourselves the more on the solidity and lastingness of the elements that made up the character of Robert Moffat. There is no skeleton in the closet here; no dark place in which it is unhealthy or unprofitable to tread. If a character is a completely fashioned will,' then we may say that our missionary's character was well-nigh perfect. His unique position, his patriarchal age, his large experience, his wide influence, with men in all the churches, and even with travellers and men of science and adventure, exposed him, especially in his last days, to the fierce light' of criticism from journals not given to dwell with enthusiasm, or even complacency, on religious or missionary work; but they, too, had to acknowledge the presence of a master, and to admit that a simple missionary might indeed be a hero.

Water does not rise above its own level. For the result there

must be an adequate cause. Moffat was a man of rare powers;

but he was great because they were consecrated, and were thus concentrated on adequate objects. His choice once made, he never wavered; and at last everything seemed to aid him. With him the path of duty was the way to glory,' and the glory came unsought. The child of poor but hard-working and pious parents in Scotland, he owed much to them in their shrewd sense, caution, industry, frugality, and ability to turn their hands to anything. He learned to be a gardener; but before he had emerged from boyhood he impressed people with a gravity and thoughtfulness beyond his years, and was offered positions of trust and responsibility. When only sixteen he left his father's house for a situation in Cheshire, and speedily attracted the regard and sympathy of his employers, Mr. and Mrs. Leigh, of High-Leigh, who were eager to aid him in his studies. In spite of the good example at home, and the prayers and earnest advices of his parents, he acknowledges that he was still unconverted; and, though he was of too refined a nature, and too intellectual in his tastes to have found pleasure in coarse society, or the sins most favoured in it, he had as yet remained untouched by the truths of the gospel.. But Methodism in England-very active at that time where his lot was laid-attracted him, and after great struggles he became a changed man. He now longed to do something for Christ, and at length resolved to be a missionary. On announcing his decision he did not meet with pæans of praise even from those who knew him best. The very opposite, indeed. He lost the favour of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh, who would not put up with Methodism' in their servants, and had to leave; and even his good father, the moment he heard of his intention, tried to warn and to restrain him. He thus made a good beginning. He had thus early to endure hardness. It has been said that if you wish to spoil a man for a great work, begin to praise him early. Moffat was not in the least discouraged; he simply held on his own path with resolute and quiet ardor. He next found employment with a Mr. Smith, of Dukinfield Nursery a Scotchman of covenanting descent-and it was a happy thing for him that his new master and mistress could appreciate his spirit and enter into his plans. So likewise did their daughter Mary, some months Moffat's senior. had been carefully and religiously brought up, schooled at the Moravian Seminary at Fairfield, whose traditions are so full of missionary romance. Here she spent some happy years, and had engaged in home-mission work. She was strongly drawn to Moffat, as he to her; and both earnestly

She

devoted themselves to work among the heathen. This was a result which Mr. and Mrs. Smith had hardly looked for, much as they esteemed Moffat; and from the first both said that, old and frail as they now were, they could never consent to her going to a far heathen country. Moffat had lost no time in arranging for such training as was needful, and was ready to forego a part of his wages that he might have one clear day a week for study; and this is the letter—as remarkable for correctness as for the spirit of caution and prudence that it breathes, when we remember it was written by a Scottish peasant -- which his father sent to him on that subject:

We are not without our apprehensions that you may not have made a very profitable change. You say that the wages are fifteen shillings per week, but as you are only to work five days, you will have but twelve or thirteen shillings a week. But you have left us to conjecture how you are to employ yourself on the sixth day. But if my opinion be rightly founded, I presume that you mean to endeavour to fit yourself for another line of life; but I would have you duly to consider the importance of such an undertaking, and to weigh well what our Saviour says to the builder in the Scriptures, and to first sit down and count the cost, and to see whether you have sufficient to finish or not; and to consider what was said to David, that the Lord said that he did well that he had it in his heart to build an house unto the Lord. And we think that you might both live usefully to your neighbours and profitably to yourself without engaging in a line of that kind; neither do we think that your health would altogether agree with such an undertaking, as I verily believe that you will find a close application to study as hard an undertaking as anything you have hitherto engaged in. You mention having had the offer of a good situation. which in my opinion was rather flattering, especially for one of your age. But as you were to be bound to a certain mode of worship, we think you did well in refusing it.

As the biographer well says, Robert Moffat did not become a great missionary by virtue of his collegiate opportunities. He valued learning highly; but he had no chance to become a great scholar. It is doubtful, indeed, whether he would have done the heaviest portion of his work any better if he had enjoyed the privilege of a complete university career. He had a knack of seizing what was essential to him, and a gift for forgetting what was useless or secondary. His studies, in face of the greatest difficulties, completed, he was accepted by the London Missionary Society; and would have been designated for the South Pacific with the venerated Williams, had it not been for his youth - he was only twenty years of age. We read in the memoir as follows:

During the discussions in the Missionary Committee as to how the present band of men was to be distributed, it had been first proposed that Williams and Moffat should both go to Polynesia; but this was over

On these

ruled at the suggestion of Dr. Waugh, who deemed that 'thae twa lads were ower young to gang thegither; so they were separated. small links (remarks the biographer) hang our lives.

It is odd to think how little the members of the Committee knew as yet of 'thae twa lads wha were ower young to gang thegither.' Moffat was not long in South Africa till he gave good proof that years are not the only gauge of wisdom and self-reliance and tact in management. His first difficulty arose not from the wickedness of the heathen, but from the caprice of the Governor, who would fain have proved the lion in the path, refusing, on account of disturbances, to allow the party to proceed beyond the limits of the Cape Colony. Moffat, with his usual quiet assurance, simply set himself to improve the time by learning Dutch, that he might the more efficiently do his work when he did reach Namaqualand, and the memoir gives some good proofs that he profited by the delay. At last the Governor, either wearying of importunity or learning more of Moffat, gave his consent; and the story of Moffat's life henceforth is better known in its main features than are some of the incidents in its opening. Suffice it here that for more than a year in Namaqualand, and for more than five-and-forty in Bechwanaland, it was one of ceaseless labour and difficulty and danger, fearlessly faced. He was builder, blacksmith, carpenter, thatcher, ditcher-for he dug canal after canal to bring water to his garden and fieldgardener, and dairyman by turns and everything to which he set his hand he did well-even down to darning and sewing, for which he was thankful that his mother had taught him in the long winter evenings when he was a boy; and often in African solitudės he recalled her words when he had got impatient of the teaching, and had told her he meant to be a man. 'Laddie, laddie,' she had said seriously, with a shrewd shake of the head, 'ye dinna ken whar your lot may be cast.' Only in one thing did Moffat acknowledge impatience, if not impotence-that was in cooking and housekeeping. Far asunder as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Robert Moffat were in thought and sympathy, they were alike in having tried housework, and in wishing that the dishes once well cleaned would remain so for ever. So deeply did Moffat feel this that, in his three years of bachelor probation, he was fain for weeks to exist on milk and dried flesh. Great refinements of diet were with him waste of time, so urgent were his calls to building, to teaching, to translating, and to preparations for frequent long journeyings. He had, both in Namaqualand and Kuruman, really to begin from the be