IN MEMORY OF THE LATE MRS. W. H. COLLINS. T is no small loss to a Society and to a Mission when a faithful labourer is removed after twenty-three years' service; and when that faithful worker's plans and hopes and prayers and tears belong to that Mission on earth no longer. The Church Missionary Society records with deep regret the departure of such a missionary; and the China Mission mourns the loss of such a friend and fellow-labourer.

Mrs. Collins, who was taken to her eternal rest after many days of severe suffering, on Sept. 8th, well merits loving and honourable mention in our pages. She had served her Master with earnestness and self-denial in the Church at home, before the call came to work in the foreign mission-field; and the poor Irish in St. Giles's, Bloomsbury, as well as the Chinese women and girls of Shanghai and Peking, know how zealous and loving she was in her efforts for their spiritual enlightenment. Mrs. Collins had the great blessing of godly parents, willing to give up their dear daughter for Him whose love once felt must ever claim and keep the first place, and absolute surrender. Mrs. Collins's father responded to the request to spare his daughter in words worthy of being recorded: "We are continually praying," he said, "Thy kingdom come; and if in answer to that prayer the Lord calls upon us to give up our loved ones to His work, can we refuse?"

Mrs. Collins, after her marriage with the Society's now veteran missionary, the Rev. W. H. Collins, reached Shanghai in the spring of 1858, and made rapid progress in acquiring the difficult Chinese language. The climate, however, seriously affected her health early in her career; and after battling with disease for more than two years, during which time she took temporary charge of the Shanghai boys' school, she was compelled to return to England. In 1863 we find her once more in China, and she went with her husband to join Mr. Burdon in the newly-opened Mission at Peking, having the honour of being the second English lady who had ever resided in that great capital, and after only six months' residence she commenced a girls' school-the first ever attempted in Peking.

Mrs. Collins was dearly loved both by her English and American fellowworkers, and also very especially by the Native Chinese women, whom she delighted to assemble, however poor and degraded they might be. When, with a heavy heart, she and her husband prepared to leave Pekingdangerous illness necessitating a change for the worn-out worker, and the subdivision of the Northern Diocese having led to the transference of the C.M.S. Peking Mission to the S.P.G.-the farewell was one of no ordinary pathos. The poor Chinese women "all wept sore, sorrowing for the fear -now too sadly realized-that they would see her face no more."

We must not fail to notice Mrs. Collins's literary ability. Besides her frequent contributions to missionary periodicals, her little book, China and its People: a Book for Young Readers," deserves to be even better known than it is to all who wish to understand Chinese manners and customs, and to know something of China's need of the Gospel.

The prayers of the readers of this short notice are asked for the sorrowing husband and children; and also for the work in which our departed sister spent, and was literally spent for her Master's glory. "She that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing her sheaves with her."

A. E. M.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

A GRAMMAR OF THE CREE LANGUAGE, AS SPOKEN BY THE CREE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA. By the Right Rev. J. HORDEN, D.D., Bishop of Moosonee. London: S.P.C.K. 1881.

M

OST of the American languages, owing to their being polysynthetic, look so imposing with their sesquipedalian compounds, as Professor Max Müller calls them, that the latter are quite sufficient to discourage any one but him who must master them, from any attempt at serious study. There comes the additional difficulty, that in those long words there seems to be no vestige of relationship with any of the languages of the Old World; and consequently the demands on the exertion of the memory must needs be enormous. And yet all these serious difficulties have been most successfully overcome by men burning with the love of God, and with charity to their fellowcreatures; men who have left the comforts of our homes and our mild climate, to spend their lives labouring in the vast and dreary solitudes of British North America. One of these men is the Right Rev. author of the little work under consideration.

Bishop Horden has, in this little, neatly-printed work of 238 pp., laid down the results of his own experience in the study of the Cree language, and he has done this in such a thorough, and lucid, and attractive manner, that no student of language will be able to lay the book aside without having been first irresistibly drawn on by the peculiar, conversational, and thoroughly practical style of its diction.

There existed, before this little book, the very learned and really excellent grammar of J. Howse, F.R.G.S., who was for a long time in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. That grammar was published in London in 1844. We have it before us, and can only say that it is a master-work of its kind. But for the purposes of practical utility, for the purposes, above all, of the young missionary, or the trader, who is naturally anxious to master the Cree language as quickly as possible, the book by Bishop Horden is undoubtedly the right thing to make use of.

An excellent syllabic system for writing the Cree language, and for the astonishingly rapid acquirement of reading it, was laid down by the Rev. W. Mason, formerly of York Factory, who was originally connected with the Wesleyans, but was ordained in 1854, by Bishop Anderson, when York was handed over to the C.M.S. That system has been adopted for many of the smaller handbooks for the Natives, and it has proved a remarkable success. In the present little volume, however, as in Howse's grammar, we have everything in our familiar English type. The pronunciation is very simply and clearly stated on two pages, and then the author at once introduces us medias in res, developing in such an easy, graceful style the very peculiar structure of Indian speech, exemplifying the different grouping of ideas, and the different arrangement of the terms expressing them, that to the student who means business difficulties that are difficulties indeed will vanish one after the other.

And so we are step by step introduced to a system complete in the mechanism of all its parts, and fully adequate to the end desired. Words that seem all confusion gradually assume their proper forms. The verb will be seen to be by far the most important factor in the formation of those majestic words. Round it, before and behind, all the other ideas will cluster; they will be glued on, so to speak: whence these languages are aptly said to

belong to the agglutinative stage. That which with us Europeans would be a whole sentence is accumulated with them into one long compound word; agent, action, object, with adverbial expressions, are combined into a single word, thus e. g. "Itushowatao” means, "he so commands him;" "Kichetishuwao," he sends him off;" "Kimotaskāwuk," "they rob people's lands." The Right Rev. author is undoubtedly right, when he says, "I shall be mistaken if the few following pages should not be considered one of the most valuable portions of the book; meaning his parsing illustrations, and the three papers at the end, containing (1) "An Indian's account of the condition of his people when in a state of heathenism;" (2) "Portion of an Indian's Prayer;" (3) "An Indian's adventure."

The first of these three papers having been given out by the good Bishop at several meetings, and most graphically illustrating the peculiar structure of this Indian language, we here add it with an interlinear translation :An Indian's Account of the Condition of his People when in a State of Heathenism. Naspich ne ke muchepimatisin waskuch numa kākwan ne kiskāletān piko formerly not anything I

Very I was

the devil as long as I

bad

lived

all the Indians I

know it

only

Muchemuneto ishpish ka pimatiseyan; misewa ililewuk ne ke wapumowuk moshuk saw them always a muchepimatisitchik, ā notenittochik, a keshkwapachik, a mukoshachik, they being wicked when they fight with each other when they get drunk when they feast ă mitāwitchik, ā kosapatutik, a kelaskitchik; muskumão wewa, when they conjure when they pretend to prophesy when they lie he takes from him by force his wife nutopowuk, naspich saketowuk, utawawuk, kisewāhāö they ask for liquor much they like it they buy it they rob (other) people's lands he angers them weche ililewa, naspich tapwā ke muchepimatisewuk. his fellow-Indians, they were wicked

very truly

kimotaskawuk,

A. L. BECKER.

THE EARLY CALIPHATE. (THE REDE LECTURE, 1881, DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.) By SIR WILLIAM MUIR, K.C.S.I., LL.D.

We have to thank Sir William Muir for a very handy and valuable conspectus, in brief compass, of a most important period of Mohammedan annals. Sir William complains with much justice of the slight attention paid in England to Arabic literature. In point of fact, with all our modern pretentiousness, we are not far advanced beyond the labours of Sir William's illustrious predecessor-if we may so term him-Simon Ockley, who dated his Saracenic History from Cambridge Castle, where the most illustrious Orientalist of his day, in sore straits for want of books, finished his labours in the common gaol. As he pathetically exclaimed, it was a happiness not to be expected in his time that 500l. would be judiciously laid out in the East for the purchase of books for the public library in Cambridge. Now, under happier auspices, we have a thoroughly competent Orientalist, capable of discriminating between truth and fiction, furnishing a Cambridge audience with what is only too limited an outline of authentic history. English students must therefore still perforce recur to Ockley and Gibbon for details of what is throughout a story replete with romantic incidents of the most attractive kind. While the Rede Lecturer has full sympathy with his subject, and betrays throughout an anxious desire to do justice to the grand qualities distinguishing the early caliphs, he is not so unduly biassed against Christianity and in favour of Mohammedanism as to be blind to the hopeless sterility of the creed of Islam. His remarks upon this point are most pertinent and judicious. He exposes with much sagacity the idle endeavour which finds favour in some quarters of concocting

а

rationalized and regenerate" Islam of the future. As he justly observes, "all this has been tried already, and has miserably failed." With intimate acquaintance with the subject, he pronounces that a "rationalistic Islam would be Islam no longer." This is the opinion of the most competent judges, whose perceptions of truth are not blinded by fancies and theories which have absolutely no foundation beyond the crotchets of those who entertain them. We must refer our readers to Sir William's masterly exposition for the review of how Islam, without any original intention of the kind, "stepped beyond the limits of Arabia and its border lands," which he attributes to "circumstance rather than design." In this we may discover evidence that in the counsels of an overruling Providence this fearful scourge was sent forth to be the scourge of that bastard Christianity which was little more than Paganism in disguise. In comparison with the degrading superstitions which had encrusted and disfigured the fair form of primitive Christianity, Islam might almost be described as a pure and ennobling creed, although destitute of the vital truth which in the midst of innumerable perversions, sustained the Christian Church, and has enabled it to emerge superior in the long run. "Liberty and progress" were and are incompatible with Islam; they are the prerogatives of Christianity, not of any false or obsolete religion. We earnestly recommend this Rede Lecture to general attention.

K.

A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF GENERAL CHARLES A. BROWNE. ACCOMPANIED BY PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF CHRISTIAN LIFE IN INDIA HALF A CENTURY AGO. By A GENERAL OFFICER. Dublin: G. Herbert. 1881.

General Browne was for five months Honorary Secretary of the Church Missionary Society in 1865-6, when his sudden death removed him from a work in which his services promised to be most valuable. But in India he had laboured in the Society's cause for thirty years, as a member of the Madras Corresponding Committee, and on more than one occasion as its Acting Secretary. And this while he held the high and responsible post of Military Secretary to the Madras Government. The sketch of his life now before us is from the pen of an old companion-in-arms, who does not publish his name, but whose identity is not very thickly veiled. To the biographical sketch, which is itself both interesting and profitable, are prefixed the author's own reminiscences of Indian life, which are still more interesting and ought to be equally profitable. Those Christian Indian officers of fifty years ago were "mighty men of valour" indeed, valiant not only in the service of king and country, but valiant for the truth in a degree now rarely seen. There is more profession of religion in our day, and more respect for it; but is real religion as deep and as strong as it was? Readers of these reminiscences will think this a question worth considering.

LIFE OF GANGA BAI. By MRS. J. S. S. ROBERTSON. Edinburgh: Seton and Mackenzie, 1880.

This touching little memoir should be read by all friends of the C.M.S. Ganga Bai was one of the girls brought up by Mrs. Robertson, wife of the venerable missionary who was so long the senior member of the Society's staff in Bombay. She became the wife of the excellent Rev. Ruttonji Nowroji, the C.M.S. Native missionary at Aurungabad, and died two or three years ago. We heartily thank Mrs. Robertson for so bright an account of

her.