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X.—NOTICES OF BOOKS. ¦
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w • Hose and}her Mission. .A. Tale of th...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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( 270 )
( 270 )
X.—Notices Of Books. ¦
X . —NOTICES OF BOOKS . ¦
W • Hose And}Her Mission. .A. Tale Of Th...
w Hose and } her Mission . . A . Tale of the West Indies . By Mrs . Henry I L ndies ynch , , " " Author Millie Howard of the , " & cc e Cotton . & c . London Tree , " : Hamilton " Wonders , Adam of , the & Co West .
Although Mrs . Lynch has in her last , and in many respects most Interesting * storybeen careful to afford amusement and instruction
, for her large circle of young readers , we should not be doing full justicewere we to omit to point out the many passages calculated
, to attract readers of mature years . A staunch abolitionist , our authoress seeks with warm argument to destroy those pernicious
theories which unhappily yet obtain , regarding the mental deficiency of the negro . The opening scenes are laid on the eve of the
emancipation , so nobly proposed and successfully accomplished by our countrymen . Never were twenty millions of British gold better
expended , and if the fruits of negro freedom have left much to be desired , let us not impute the fault to the philanthropic Christian
act , but to the evil effect of past years of mental darkness and grinding cruelty towards an oppressed and powerless race . Mrs .
Lynch occasionally halts , in pursuing the fortunes of the heroes and heroines , to linger with a touching sweetness over some leasing
trait in the character of the faithful Black , well adapted to convince p the minds of their enemies that a brighter , happier future is yet in
store for Africa's sons . _ISTow that emancipation on a larger scale , and as a probable though as yet indistinct result of the civil strife
between the rival American States , challenges discussion , it is not unnatural that our attention should be especially drawn to the
present condition of the negro population of the West Indies . There is much in the little volume before us , which helps to explain
how and why the breath of liberty has not up to this time fully influenced these people . Have we not before our eyes the apparent
hopelessness of Southern Italy * s inhabitants ? and can we not trace the cause to long years of Bourbon tyrannywhichlike the iron
rule of the "West Indian planter , reached its culminating , , point for some few months before its final overthrow ?
Apart from the sections we have briefly mentioned , in which the black labourer has found so able a championwe cannot fail to
be charmed by the many well rendered and , vividly beautiful descriptions of tropical , as well as English , scenery . Mrs . Lynch is .
never tired of discoursing on nature's wondrous eye-feast , and never tires her readers . Whether we are sitting in the open West Indian
villa , inhaling the incense from innumerable orange-groves and hearkening to the ocean ' s plash on the sandsor strolling through
verdant English meadows , jewelled with summer , flowers , and breathed over by the songsters' chantwe have equally conjured up
before us , the scene described . We feel , quite sure , as we read , that
our authoress must have spent a pleasant youth , for in . these sweet ;
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1862, page 270, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121862/page/54/
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