and with the concurrence of our Queen, a Bishop of our nation has been consecrated at Lambeth, to bear the precious seed to the distant island of his adoption. To him is to be committed the training of the future heir to the throne. For the Bishop's coming the public reception of the young prince into the Church has been postponed; whilst to mark our gracious Queen's interest in the movement, SHE, even in this day of her sorrow, has consented to be sponsor to the royal youth, and sends out sponsorial gifts befitting England's Queen, as pledges of the reality of her interest in the religious act in which, though absent, she is to partake. May it please God greatly to bless and prosper this new undertaking of our Sovereign and her nation's church. In venturing on it we are but paying the debt which in virtue of our own Christianity and our own national prosperity we owe to less favoured tribes of men. It is surely specially appropriate that such gifts as these, the high gifts of the doctrine and perfect organization of the Church of Christ, which have built up her own liberties and greatness, should be imparted by the Ocean Queen to her sister islands. Our relation, too, to New Zealand adds greatly to the interest of this undertaking. From the New Zealand church, our own Bishop Patteson-clarum et venerabile nomen-is making his way of blessing northward through the Melanesian group. Southward, on his way of benediction, may the Bishop of Honolulu speed, until the two advancing currents of the living waters of the living Gospel of our Lord knit in one long grasp the hands of the two Island-Prelates; and they kneel together on the shore of some jointly-conquered island, to exclaim in grateful adoration, THIS HATH GOD DONE! S. OXON. CUDDESDON PALACE: AUTHOR'S PREFACE ΤΟ THE FIRST EDITION. WHEN a native of Tahiti was shown a map of the WH world, he convicted the geographer of jealousy and untruth in having made Tahiti so small, and other parts of the earth so disproportionately large. I have to apologise to a world in which there is already a greater number of writers than readers, for adding one more volume to the printed burthen it sustains; a book, too, about a very small and very distant nation. I feel that in taking this responsibility I have the public nausea audiendi against me. Those, however, who are still left with time enough to go through a new book, will perhaps find something to interest them in the history, or, as I may venture to call it, the biography of a nation, so circumscribed that the story from its pre-historic period to the present time embraces scarcely more than eighty years; and relating to an island group so far removed from us in space, that it affects our vision only like some bright a particular star.' It is even hoped that something useful may be learned from such a recital, in which we have before us the life of a community, its efforts, its errors, its failures, its escapes, its repentances; its vivacious childhood, its noon-day struggles, and-must we add? -its instructed but premature decay. If such examples afford no lesson, we are compelled to arrive at Coleridge's melancholy conclusion, that experience is like the stern-lights of a vessel, which only illumine the track that it passed. A book of this kind must necessarily be to a considerable extent a compilation. I have, consequently, made the fullest use of what writings exist on the subject of the Sandwich Islands, either in a separate form or included in volumes of voyages. The industrious and well-arranged history of Mr. James Jackson Jarves. (Honolulu, 1847) has been of the greatest service to me in transactions previous to that date. A little circumspection is, of course, required in accepting the views of an American citizen on points wherein other nations are concerned; and as a corrective, I had before me Mr. A. Simpson's pamphlet entitled, 'Progress of Events,' which deals with a very important period of Hawaiian history, the cession of the islands to this country, through Lord George Paulet, in 1843; Mr. Simpson, who took a leading part in that transaction, being very much opposed to the Americans, the missionaries, and, as far as I can judge, to everybody, |