The Life of Arthur Tappan. With Preface by the Rev. Newman Hall, LL.D. Sampson Low and Co.
Mr. Tappan was a New York merchant, of a type which the laudator temporis acti would tell us was once not uncommon, but is now rarely to be met with either in America or England. This we are loth to believe. There are still, thank God, not a few upright, God-fearing, noble-hearted men, who will do and dare whatever righteousness and religion may demand. Mr. Tappan was eminently one who 'feared God and eschewed evil,' whose business was as much a religion to him as church-worship. His one simple maxim was to do right at any cost. He is said to have been the first man in America 'to make use of money in large sums for benevolent objects.' Certainly he was generous, to the verge of prudence; and when reverses came upon him he did not begin retrenchment with the things of God. His high-toned morality did not always square with the morals of Wall-street, and often involved him in perplexing and ludicrous entanglements; but nothing could shake his determination to do right. Several business friends wished to help him in his pecuniary difficulties, but urged upon him as a tacit condition the desirableness of lessening his anti-slavery denunciations. His short and decisive answer was, 'I will be hung first.' He was the prime mover and leader of many things, greatest and best, in the religious life of America. He was president of the Anti-Slavery Society, and one of the founders of the Bible Society, the Tract Society, Oberlin College, and the American Education Society—to all of which he gave large pecuniary and laborious personal assistance. He was a kind of American John Thornton in his religious philanthropy. He fought many a fierce and fearless battle, especially in the anti-slavery cause—when to be its advocate was to imperil life. He was mobbed, and had a price set upon his head. A more beautiful, single-hearted, noble life of integrity, industry, fearlessness, and generosity has rarely been lived. His closing days at Newhaven have an interesting setting of New England Puritanism, and were quiet, devout, and beautiful. In a higher sense than mere amassing of money he was a 'successful merchant.' Our merchants will do well to read this interesting memoir, and to learn anew from it the old lesson that 'the fear of the Lord is, indeed, the beginning of wisdom.'
Journeys in North China, Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia; with some Account of Corea. By the Rev. Alexander Williamson, B.A., Agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. With Illustrations and 2 Maps. Two vols. Smith, Elder and Co.
Mr. Williamson has contributed to the literature of travel and of science another of those thorough, sober, and instructive books which have been one of the incidental results of Christian Missions. To the ordinary advantages over casual visitors, which long residence and familiar intimacy gives to a missionary, and to the conscientiousness which his religious position and character impose upon him, Mr. Williamson, as a highly-educated medical man, adds a higher degree of scientific knowledge than many of his brethren possess, which qualifies him to speak of the configuration, products, and possibilities of the country in a way that will impart valuable knowledge. Mr. Williamson first visited China as a missionary in connection with the London Missionary Society. His health failed after two or three years' residence, and he returned to England. On the re-establishment of his health he returned to China, about seven years ago, as an agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. These volumes are, virtually, the journal-records of eight extensive journeys through various parts of North China, which he has made in the prosecution of his evangelistic labours. It need scarcely be remarked that a man so occupied, the very business of whose life is to travel from place to place, and to cultivate familiar intercourse with the people, has opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge, to which no mere casual traveller, or resident merchant, or professional man can pretend. Accordingly, Mr. Williamson's volumes are full of minute, thorough, and novel information of all kinds concerning the country and the people; they are utilitarian enough for a blue book, while they have the general interest of a book of travels in countries of which we are almost entirely ignorant. We do not, in fact, remember two volumes the information of which is so valuable, and the interest of which is so great, at this particular juncture especially, when our peaceful relations with China are again in peril. Our Government, as well as the general public, may gather from them more accurate and extensive information respecting the sources and character of Chinese feeling towards us, than from any other source whatever—not excepting even the valuable and intelligent information furnished by our diplomatic agents. Mr. Williamson has been among the people as distinguished from officials, and he speaks confidently concerning the peacefulness and friendliness of their disposition towards Protestant missionaries. He travelled unarmed, and encountered no violence or rudeness, nothing more than the occasional attempts at extortion with which travellers are not unfamiliar in London and New York. They are grossly ignorant, and in some places look upon Europeans as a different species of beings. 'In some places they calls us "devils," not in impertinence, but in genuine ignorance of our origin and character; so much so, that they often use this term with complimentary prefixes, as e.g., their practice of calling a friend of ours Kwhe tze ta jen, "His Excellency the Devil." Moreover, they often use this term in our courts of justice. In other places they look upon us as a race of fierce men not quite up to the mark in mental powers. Many a time have foreigners been provoked by Chinamen coming up to them, patting them on the shoulder, and caressing them just as we would a huge Newfoundland dog, or a semi-tamed lion. Nor is this all. They appear in many districts to look upon us as a species of fools. Often have I observed Chinamen address myself and others just as mendacious nursery-maids address children, as if we were incapable of seeing through their barefaced lies and shallow deceit.' The Imperial claim is as preposterous as ever—as shown by the refusal to receive Prince Alfred—and is a serious obstacle in national intercourse. Lord Elgin attempted effectually to destroy this by a march on Peking, which was baffled by the flight of the Emperor to Tartary. The Chinese people sadly lack truth, uprightness, and honour, the fear of God. The opium trade, which has been our great disgrace, and which has, it is feared, extended beyond all legislative or diplomatic control, is the deadly curse of the country. 'There are literally millions,' says Mr. Williamson, 'to whom opium is more valuable than life. The only hope is the creation of a public opinion against it among those who abstain from the poison, and among the young; so that the generation of opium smokers may, in due course, die out. The reformation has already commenced, and only needs to be fostered and systematized.'
The Roman Catholics are much disliked by the Chinese, chiefly because of the outrages committed by the French soldiers during the late war—the fatal blunder into which our neighbours always fall in their dealings with weaker nations, or in their attempts to colonize: wherever they go, they invariably succeed in getting themselves well hated. Another cause of dislike to the Roman Catholics is the assumptions of the priests, and their arbitrary claims to property. 'There is no hostility on the part of the people towards Protestant missionaries.' And Mr. Williamson thinks that 'were the matter of inland residence made a provision in treaty engagements, there would be little or no difficulty in carrying it out.' The hostility of the mandarins during the last year or two, the Tien-tsin massacres, and other indications of dislike in the governing classes, are attributed by Mr. Williamson to 'the ultra-liberal policy of our Government, and especially to that outburst of hostile criticism in the spring of 1869, on the part of our officials and leading politicians and writers at home, all of which was duly communicated to the Chinese authorities, leading them to believe either that we were sure of our strength, or had lost all interest in our countrymen in China.' Mr. Williamson lays great stress on a demand being made for 'inland residence under proper sanction;' and he argues this from the perfect success of the experiment, so far as it has been made. 'Protestant missionaries, British, German, and American, have been labouring unmolested for some years, in many of their inland cities.' The Chinese opponents of missionaries are not the people, but corrupt officials, who oppose everything foreign and everything calculated to enlighten or improve the moral tone of the people. Mr. Williamson's reply to such diplomats and writers as denounce the missionaries in China, or sneer at them, is not only conclusive, it is perfectly crushing. Five powerful foreign legations have for several years resided in Pekin, viz., the British, American, French, Russian, and Prussian. They had very able men and very great facilities. Not long ago, the head of the British Legation thought fit to taunt the missionaries, by urging them to begin by converting the higher classes, adding that 'China would be raised through them, not in spite of them.' Mr. Williamson pertinently asks, what with all their ability and opportunities they have done, and unhesitatingly answers, nothing! All the European books, lesson books, and books of science especially, which it is no part of the missionary's function to produce, have been compiled or translated by them. 'Dr. Hobson has given them works on Physiology; on the Principles and Practice of Surgery; on the Practice of Medicine and Materia Medica; on the Diseases of Children; on the Elements of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. Mr. Wylie has given them the whole of Euclid; De Morgan's Algebra, in thirteen books; Loomis' Analytical Geometry and Differential and Integral Calculus, in eighteen books, and also the first part of Newton's Principia which is now in process of completion. Mr. Edkins has translated Whewell's Mechanics, and given them many other contributions on science and Western literature. Mr. Muirhead has produced a work on English history, and another on universal geography. Dr. Bridgman has published a finely illustrated work on the United States of America. Dr. W. P. Martin has translated Wheaton's International Law, and just published an elaborately illustrated work in three large volumes, on Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. Other missionaries have given them works on Electro-telegraphy, Botany, and elementary treatises on almost every subject of Western science.' Would it not be as well for some of these diplomatic gentlemen to employ their abundant leisure in emulating, rather than in sneering at the earnest philanthropy of these hard-working missionaries. Until they can show something like such a list of contributions to Chinese enlightenment, shame should keep them silent, even if they are incapable of generous appreciation.
These matters, however, are only touched in the introductory part of Mr. Williamson's book, which is an intelligent traveller's account of China and the Chinese. It is full of matter for quotation; but for this we have no space. At one of the temples in Manchuria, Mr. Williamson saw an instrument, which was the famous praying machine. 'Prayers are pasted both on the inside and outside of the barrels, which being turned round, their prayers are presented, as they suppose, to their god.' Some curious church music was aided by 'two trumpets, each of which was about twelve feet long, with a mouth two feet in diameter; they were mounted on small wheel-carriages, like guns, and the players reclined upon the ground when playing.' This was in the famous Temple of Do-la-nor. At one place the landlord, having no clock, fastened a huge fat cock under Mr. Williamson's bed, lest he should oversleep himself. We will add only, that the book is written in a plain, business-like style, that it is full of valuable facts, that, in appendices, Mr. Edkins and others have contributed valuable papers, and that, in our judgment, it is one of the most sterling and instructive, as it is one of the most modest books of travels that has appeared for years.
Westward by Rail: the New Route to the East. By W. F. Rae. Longmans, Green and Co.
The temptations to fulsome eulogy or to exaggerated caricature are, to a writer of a book of American travels, so great and are so rarely resisted, that Mr. Rae, as a signal exception, deserves the very highest praise. His feeling to America and Americans is evidently of the kindest, and yet he has had such a wholesome fear of fulsome praise, that he has put himself under almost undue restraint—the greys predominate in his colouring. He has everywhere manifestly endeavoured to see things as they are and to describe them as he saw them; the result is a sober, judicious, intelligent book, that vouches for its own trustworthiness. Mr. Rae describes only the route across the American continent from New York to San Francisco by the Great Pacific Railway. He tells us that the basis of his book is two series of letters which appeared in the Daily News, revised and recast. He writes in an easy, accustomed style, as men write whose pen is the weapon with which they fight the battle of life. He has imagination enough and descriptive power enough to redeem his narrative from the dryness of a log, and he has sufficiently large and varied knowledge of the world to qualify him to form wise, practical, and genial estimates of things. Much in American life is novel and experimental, and demands in its judge no small power of constructive imagination. Much in American feeling is provincial, wayward, and almost morbidly sensitive, and needs great candour for the appreciation of its fresh, generous, and noble elements. The Americans are rapidly outgrowing some of the follies of their youth; there are still in the practical administration of politics and social economies many things—worse than follies—that belie the noble principles of their constitution, and that the warmest friends of America cannot but look upon with anxiety. The extent of administrative corruption, the unscrupulousness of party politics, not only as towards each other but as towards other nations—such passionate, undignified, and manifestly venal messages as the one just sent to Congress by President Grant for instance, with the political interpretations of which it is susceptible—render it a question of great solicitude whether these are the moral weaknesses of childhood, which experience and discipline will cure, so as to develope a nation high and courteous in political as in social and personal honour, or whether its political maturity will manifest the faithlessness and unscrupulousness which so sadly stain the escutcheons of some European nations, and which necessitate a constant and suspicious vigilance; we strongly hope in the higher developement, but the centenary of the nation's birth is near at hand, and we are longing to see a high-minded government and policy such as we do not see yet.
Mr. Rae describes with smartness, the railways and cars and travelling ways of America as they have often been described. He especially commends to our own greater railway companies the luxury of Pullman's sleeping cars, and we heartily endorse the recommendation. It is no small luxury to be able to go to bed while traveling at the rate of thirty miles an hour in America—of from forty to fifty here—those who cannot sleep may at any rate enjoy a sprawl with disencumbered limbs. We would also add a recommendation of the check system with luggage; what should prevent our companies giving passengers a check, to which a corresponding number is affixed to the piece of luggage, so that the latter might be delivered to the porter or a servant presenting the check? The comfort of being delivered from all anxiety about luggage is a great luxury of American travel. Mr. Rae describes Chicago 'the Garden City,' 'the Queen of the West,' 'the Queen of the Lakes,' as it is proudly called. Forty years ago it was a log fort, to-day 300,000 well-to-do people, many of them as wealthy merchants as any in the States, occupy in palatial residences one of their most imposing cities. Mr. Rae's account of the Mormons is not very eulogistic, and is we suspect much nearer the truth than most of the superficial accounts, the result of an hour's conversation, note-book in hand, that have reached us. Brigham Young's peculiar institution does not commend itself even on utilitarian grounds: the intolerance, jealousy and violence of the Mormon city, restrained only by the adjacent United States' camp, must make it an unenviable residence: while even the vaunted industry of the residents is seriously qualified in Mr. Rae's estimate of what has been done in relation to the condition of the place. We commend Mr. Rae's careful study of Mormondom to all who have been fascinated by the glamour of writers like Mr. Dixon. Mr. Rae has much to say concerning California, the enterprise of the people and their great future; but he gives special emphasis to their ultra-provincialism, and what surprises us more, implies a slighting estimate of their hospitality. Of their literature he speaks in glowing terms—indeed he seems to think the provincial press of the States superior to the New York press. Mr. Rae's book is restricted to the route which he travelled, and to matters connected with it; it is therefore limited in its range. He has also a slight tendency to preach, but, as a whole, his book may be very highly commended as an honest and successful attempt to represent Brother Jonathan as he really is.
A Voyage round the World. By the Marquis de Beauvoir. In Two vols. John Murray, Albemarle-street. 1870.