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From The Quarterly Review.
LIFE OF BISHOP PATTESON.*

monly of real interest, for every man does his best to make his own portrait a likeness. And for this reason also it may be that, in so many cases, the personal memoirs of men of religious celebrity are flat, stale, and unprofitable to a degree, because they are, beyond all others, unreal and got up. Sometimes, with a good deal of excuse, feelings of natural piety, and sometimes, with no excuse at all, the supposed interests of sect or clique, withhold altogether from view the faults, errors, or inequalities, through some or all of which it was that the man was indeed a man, a being of mixed character, to be remembered usefully for warning, and for caution, as well as for imitation, or for pious unreasoning wonder. In the case especially of missionaries we fear that there is a special danger of this want of reality and truth. For here the begging bore is continually in the mind of the writer; and probably there is, on the whole, no description of running story which is told with so much unconscious or half-conscious falsification as theirs. For, were the whole truth to be given, what would be the effect on the collection

THIS is a large, but not a bulky, biography. For the word bulk insinuates the idea of size in excess of pith and meaning. But if there be a class of human lives deserving a copious record, to that class unquestionably belongs the life of Bishop Patteson. Indeed, the only complaint we have to make with reference to the first aspect of the work is, that it conveys the idea of a biography properly so called, whereas by far the greater part, probably four-fifths of the whole, presents to us the bishop's life in the bishop's own most living words; and the work might perhaps be more accurately entitled "The Letters and Life of Bishop Patteson." If we are to find a fault with the distinguished authoress, it is not that she observes, as might have been anticipated, a graceful modesty with respect to the munificence with which it is known that she devoted to holy purposes the fruits of her mental power, but that she might with advantage have been more copious on some heads of information respecting either the bishop himself or the scene of his labours, which she pre-after this or that sermon, or on the subsupposes rather than supplies.

scription list after this or that meeting, Biographies, like painted portraits, where the Rev. Blank Blank appeared range over an immense scale of value: specially as a deputation on the part of the highest stand at a very elevated point "the parent society"? Of these, and of indeed, and the lowest, in which this age all falsifications, studious or careless, the has been beyond all others fertile, de- transparent man, whose biography we scend far below zero. Human nature is are commending to notice, had a perfect in itself a thing so wonderful, so greatly horror. More than this; he had a horparamount among all the objects offered ror of the pretentious and theatrical, nay to our knowledge, that there are few of the merely public, exhibition even of pieces or specimens of it which do not the truth. His pastoral work with the deserve and reward observation. But Melanesian islanders was too intensely then they must be true, and must breathe spiritual in its detail to bear presentation the breath of life; they must give us, not periodically to the common eye, without the mere clothes, or grave-clothes, of the a reflected influence of self-consciousness man, but the man himself. For this rea- on the principal agent, which would have son it is that autobiographies (unless marred its delicacy, its purity, its simwhen a distinguished man is unfortunately plicity. A passage of the volumes casts tempted, as appears to have been the upon this subject a casual ray of light, case with Lord Brougham, to write his which reveals much of the inner nature own life from old newspapers) are com- of the man. His friend and coadjutor, Mr. Codrington, says:

Life of John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands. By Charlotte Mary Youge. In two volumes. London, 1874.

It is characteristic of Bishop Patteson that I never heard him say a word, that I remem

ber, of religion to one of the sick. On such | But to the beloved members of his famthings he would not, unless he was obliged, ily he was able to make an effusion of speak except with the patient alone. - Vol. ii. p. 320.

And again, in September, 1868: —

himself, in constant letters by every mail,
which, for its warmth and its complete-
ness, as to all except the absolutely in-
ward sphere of his religious life, has,
perhaps, never been excelled, and to
are indebted for a record
which we
worthy, in our judgment, of the Apostolic
office; and of the Christian religion, even
in the bloom and glow of its prime. But
as to all he wrote to them, he was most
jealous lest it should be unveiled.

I can't write brotherly letters, if they are to be treated as public property. I would not trust my own brother to make extracts from my letters.

No one in England can be a judge of the mischief that the letters occasion printed contrary to my wish by friends. — Vol. ii. p. 175.

The bishop then began a custom of preaching to his black scholars alone after the midday service, dismissing his five or six white companions after prayers, because he felt he could speak more freely, and go more straight to the hearts of his converts and catechumens, if he had no other audience. - Vol. ii. p. 322. To some this may sound little less than shocking. He ought, it would perhaps be said, in the spirit of modern religionism, to have "let his light shine" more fully "before men," and to have sought the edification not only of the coloured islander but of the literary European bystander. Such was not Patteson's conception of his very arduous work. It "I like," he writes at Easter, 1869, had at once to open the minds, to mould "to tell you what I think, and I know the ideas, and to enter into the inmost you will keep it to yourselves." Thus it souls of beings just extricated from a is that we come to have before us the singularly inartificial and childlike barbarism; in the case of the sick, to deliver them over, or prepare for so delivering them, into the unveiled presence of the Eternal. This was ever for him an absolutely absorbing task; and no particle of himself, no jot or tittle of energies which he knew to be when undivided still insufficient, would he suffer to be diverted by any side issue, or regard to thing or person other than the human soul he was endeavouring to rear to its maturity.

How, it may well be asked, how, under such circumstances, can we attain to any full, real, inward knowledge of this great missionary bishop, and of his work? The answer is that, with that wonderful multiplying force which is the gift of affectionate natures, while he carried his heart to the zone of the South Pacific, he left it also in England. The singular warmth of his domestic affections stands, as to certain points, in a touching strife with his devotion to his duty. He does not encourage, he even refuses, the visit of his sisters after their father's death, lest they should at once suffer hardship and draw him off from his daily, hourly, prosecution of his work (vol. ii. p. 18).

fervent outpourings of a singularly reflective and introspective, as well as active, mind, like flowers caught in their freshness, and perfectly preserved in colour and in form.

No mere review can do justice to this book, but we hope to supply what may incite some readers to obtain for themselves an acquaintance with its contents.

The name he bore, John Coleridge Patteson, indicated the combination in his blood of two honoured families, second to none in the contributions they have made to the intellectual and moral wealth of the nation.

He was born on the 1st of April, 1827; and he was incomparably happy in his parents, both of whom so stamped themselves upon his mind and heart that, down to the very last, when they had been long called to their rest, he is ever reverting to them. His mother appears to have been as excellent in the rearing of her children, as his father was distinguished among the sages of the law. But Judge Patteson, a lawyer unsurpassed in his day (which was a great day), was also no common Churchman ; in feeling and opinion a thorough and

We will not dwell on the incidents of his childhood, beyond observing that he was (i. 7) deeply and warmly affectionate, but not free from occasional outbreaks of will and temper, the fiery material of future activity and energy under holy discipline. But his religious history is without cis, shock, or start: there seems to have been from the first a central principle of life, which gradually brought under its sway every part and faculty of the man. "Consideration for others, kindness, and sweetness of nature, were always his leading characteristics: " and when a foundation is thus broadly laid in a radical unselfishness there is little to fear for the final result.

loyal child of the Church of England; in which was the exception, only roused his knowledge far from a mean theologian, 'energies (i. 46). At Oxford, where he and one whose direct guiding influence is entered with deep interest into the reliconstantly acknowledged by his son dur- gious movement of the day, he obtained, ing his lifetime, and longed for after his in 1849, a classical second-class, and death. subsequently a Fellowship of Merton. His examination for his degree was followed by a tour in Germany and Italy, which served to develop alike his strong love of art, and his remarkable turn for languages. He was in due time presented to the pope but what a contrast between the two episcopal careers! In 1852, he studied Hebrew at Dresden; and he made himself a thorough German scholar. In questions connected with the administration and government of his college, he was a decided reformer (i. 135). His mind had undergone rapid development, and he had largely surveyed the religious dissensions of the day, when he was ordained in 1853, and took the curacy of Alfington. In this village, where a church with a parsonage and school had been built by his distinguished uncle, Sir John Coleridge, he had already served an apprenticeship while he was preparing for holy orders. His course here was a short one, but he prosecuted it as the work of his life and the sweet smile and musical voice, which were afterwards to win their way in the far islands of the south, powerfully helped to open his access to the hearts of the people of Alfington. Nearly all the items of the varied experience of daily life, at all times, he took most kindly. But general society he never loved: small talk, he declares, he could not manufacture; and morning callers were the plague of his life.

He went through the normal course of an Eton and Oxford education. At twelve years old his powers of self-reproach were already active: and it is to be observed that throughout life, when blaming himself, he never attenuates the blame, or shifts any portion of responsibility upon others. He was profoundly impressed by a farewell sermon which Bishop Selwyn preached in October, 1841, at Windsor, where the bishop had acted as curate; and when calling on his mother to bid farewell, that eminent prelate and missionary said, with a kind of prophetic anticipation, "Lady Patteson, will you give me Coley?" (i. 29). The youth also told her it was his greatest wish to go with the bishop. Meantime the whole tone of his life seems to have Ordained on the 14th of September, been thoroughly healthy. In the prime 1853, he joined, on the 19th of August, article of Eton school-work, his verses, 1854, in welcoming the bishop of New he was like Bishop Selwyn-highly dis- Zealand, who came to visit England tinguished he was among the select for after twelve years of work, during which the Newcastle Scholarship in 1844: he he had founded his church, organized its spoke remarkably well in the debating government, and planned his system of society; and at cricket he attained to the missionary aggression on the five groups highest honours of the Eleven. Even in of islands which he combined under the these early days, he combined the widest collective name of Melanesia: the Solopopularity with an uncompromising ad- mon Islands in the north-west, the herence to what was right (i. 40). Suc- Banks and Santa Cruz clusters in the cess did not beget conceit: and failure, midst, and the New Hebrides and Loy