I cannot help thinking that Martyn has been a little unfortunate in his biographer, the Rev. John Sargent, jun., although that writer's 'Memoir' has been so popular that I believe it has run through about a score of editions. There was a tardy apology for the tone of the book in the preface to the tenth edition--and an explanation to the effect that Martyn's religion was really by no means of a desponding character, and that few persons 'have equalled him in the enjoyment of that "peace which passeth all understanding."' If such were the case it is unfortunate that the extracts made by Mr. Sargent from Martyn's 'Journals' should have left so wide-spread an impression to the contrary--an impression which it is probably as fruitless to attempt to counteract as Mr. Sargent expected it would be. Sargent appears to have sympathized chiefly with one side of Martyn's character, namely, the gloomy and self-torturing one, and the result is that to read the 'Memoir' harrows one's feelings. Very similar remarks apply to the 'Journals and Letters,' but in the latter, at least, we have only the man himself, and are spared the somewhat complacent tone in which his mental anguish and physical sufferings are depicted by his friend and biographer. Charles Kingsley used to say of Martyn: 'My mind is in a chaos about him. Sometimes one feels inclined to take him at his own word, and believe him, as he says, a mere hypochondriac; then the next moment he seems a saint. I cannot fathom it. Of this, however, I am certain, that he was a much better man than I am.' One great lesson, however, of this learned, brave, and good man's life--crowned as it surely was with the crown of the martyr, if ever mortal's brow were so adorned--appears to me to be this: that a life of seclusion, nay, almost isolation, such as his, defeats its own object, if that object be, like Martyn's, to influence our fellow-men. 'It is miserable,' he used to say, when thinking of the vast amount of sin there was in the world, 'it is miserable living with men;' and, again, 'a dried leaf or a straw makes me feel in good company.' And herein seems to lie a great difference between Martyn, notwithstanding his learning, his piety, and his dauntless courage amidst incessant perils, and such heroic Christian missionaries as were St. Paul and Bishop Heber, who had learnt to mix more freely with their fellow-men, and to combine the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove.