[40] This Nobbs is probably one of those half-witted persons who fancy they have received a call to preach nonsense—­some cobbler escaped from his stall, or tailor from his shopboard.  Kitty Quintal’s cant phrase—­’we want food for our souls,’ and praying at meals for ‘spiritual nourishment,’ smack not a little of the jargon of the inferior caste of evangelicals.  Whoever this pastoral drone may be, it is but too evident that the preservation of the innocence, simplicity, and happiness of these amiable people, is intimately connected with his speedy removal from the island.

[41] Well may Adams have sought for rules for his little society in a book, which contains the foundation of the civil and religious policy of two-thirds of the human race,—­in that wonderful book, into whose inspired pages the afflicted never seek for consolation in vain.  Millions of examples attest this truth.  ’There is no incident in Robinson Crusoe,’ observes a writer in a critical journal, ’told in language more natural and affecting, than Robert Knox’s accidental discovery of a Bible, in the midst of the Candian dominions of Ceylon.  His previous despondency from the death of his father, his only friend and companion, whose grave he had but just dug with his own hands, “being now,” as he says, “left desolate, sick, and in captivity,”—­his agitation, joy, and even terror, on meeting with a book he had for such a length of time not seen, nor hoped to see—­his anxiety lest he should fail to procure it—­and the comfort, when procured, which it afforded him in his affliction—­all are told in Buch a strain of true piety and genuine simplicity as cannot fail to interest and affect every reader of sensibility.’

[42] If there were three instruments and three boats, there must have been one for each, for the quadrant was just as good as a sextant.—­ED.

[43] The mistake is here again repeated; it would be absurd to suppose that one boat had both quadrant and sextant.

[44] It is not explained with what kind of fuel they performed this distressing operation.

[45] Here, again, is another mistake; the number must have been eleven at most, one of the boats having parted before the others reached the island.—­ED.