"I have never," says Mr Nicholson, "seen an English woman in the colony, at all raised above the very poorest, who did not complain bitterly of the inconvenience she endured when living on a farm; and I really know nothing more affecting than the sight of the often elegant-minded and well-educated sheep-farmer's wife struggling with the drudgery of her situation, and repining fruitlessly at the deceptive accounts which had induced her husband to seek his fortune in South Africa." Here we, perhaps, have a clue to one cause of the jaundiced view the ex-settler takes of things at the Cape. The impossibility of obtaining the requisite domestic servants drove Mrs Nicholson from the sheep-farm in Graaf Reinet to the more agreeable residence of Cape Town, at a distance of eight hundred miles; and thenceforward her husband divided his time, as best he could, between domestic and farming duties. This seems an uncomfortable state of things. The want of the master's eye must have been sadly felt at the farm during his visits to Cape Town, and he must have lost much time and some patience in weary eight-hundred-mile journeys, performed, for the most part, on horseback. The Kaffir war is, of course, a prominent subject in the three books before us. We find least of it in that of Lieutenant Barnard, whose narrative is chiefly of things at sea, and most in Mrs Ward's volumes, which consist principally of details of that unsatisfactory contest. Mrs Ward and Mr Nicholson concur in attributing to Whig mal-administration, and to the unwise treaties of Sir Andries Stockenstrom, the numerous disasters that of late years have afflicted the Cape, and the bloody and inglorious struggle that has cost this country upwards of three millions sterling. Here, again, is to be traced the hand and mischief-making tongue of the pseudo-philanthropists. By those tender-hearted gentry was the original impulse given to the series of changes which have done so much towards the ruin of a prosperous colony. First came a scream about the ill-treated Hottentots. These were certainly often ill-used by their Dutch masters, but that was surely no reason for emancipating them, by one summary ordinance, from every species of restraint. This, however, was the course adopted; and forthwith the Hottentot, by nature one of the most indolent of animals, spurned work, and took to idleness and dram-drinking. Since that fatal day, the race has degenerated and dwindled, and no doubt it will ultimately become extinct. Having thus, greatly to the detriment and inconvenience of the colonists, procured the Hottentots liberty, or rather license, the sympathisers extended their charitable exertions to Kaffirland. What pretext existed for this new crusade does not exactly appear, but its result was even more mischievous than their interference with the Hottentots. The Kaffirs were told of grievances they previously never had dreamed of, they