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GIFFORD, some five-and-twenty years ago, declared that all the fools of the country had taken to write plays; and it would appear that all the dull Englishmen of our day have taken to write pamphlets on the slave-trade.  The London Times is very severe upon a book just issued by Mr. W. Gore Ouseley, who was several years British Charge d’Affaires at Rio, as such conducted a voluminous correspondence on the subject with the government of Brazil, and might have been expected to have there learned something on the slave-trade worth telling.  According to his reviewer he appears, however, to be one of that class of persons described by Sterne, who, traveling from Dan to Beersheba, found all to be barren; and no amount of observation can in any human being supply defective reasoning faculties.  So, says the Times, he has little or nothing to say about the Brazilian slave-trade that has not been better said a thousand times before; and when he does venture on a special statement of his own, it topples down the whole superstructure of his argument.

A work of rather more interest is “Seven Years’ Service on the Slave Coast of Africa”, by Sir Henry Huntley, who, when a lieutenant in the navy in 1831, was ordered to the scene of his observations.  Shortly after his arrival, he was appointed to the independent command of a small vessel, in which he visited stations, looked out for slavers, chased them when he saw them, and captured them when he could.  A few years subsequently he was nominated Governor of the settlements on the Gambia.  His two volumes contain his adventures during the whole or nearly the whole of his seven years’ service upon the station; the last closing abruptly in the middle of preparations for a congress of black kings.  The public is already familiar with many of the topics, from the occasional narratives of voyages and adventures along the coast.  Visits to the commandants of the so-called castles; a description of the European and native mode of life at the settlements; accounts of the slave-stations, the slave-dealers, the slaves, and the slave-trade, together with sketches of more legitimate commerce, and occasional trips to the islands lying off the coast, for change of air and fresh supplies, are frequent features.  Sir Henry Huntley’s duties sometimes brought him in contact with native chiefs, and continually with slavers, in the search, the capture, and the pursuit.  During the latter part of his career, the office of Governor gave great variety and largeness to his subjects; consisting of public business, palavers with native potentates, and matters connected with home policy.  In point of literary character this work very nearly resembles the author’s “Peregrine Scramble.”  Indeed, the “Seven Years’ Service” is a sort of continuation of that book, without the form of fiction.

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