His main work was always his stories for children. Five of these belong to the Langham period--“The Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet,” “The Settlers in Canada,” “The Mission,” “The Children of the New Forest,” and “The Little Savage.” There may be some doubt whether the first ought to come under this heading. Marryat did not consider it a child’s story himself; but if it is not _that_ one has some difficulty in deciding what it was. The materials were, Mrs. Ross Church says, supplied by a young Frenchman, named Lasalles, who turned up at Langham, and astonished the neighbourhood by lassoing cattle and doing other barbarous feats. The matter supplied by this amusing adventurer was “licked into shape” by Marryat. This account of the origin of the book is certainly borne out by its contents. It is a somewhat rambling story of adventure among the Red Men, starting from an improbability, and ending somewhat abruptly. No small part of it consists of an account of the early Mormons, and has sadly the air of padding. On the whole, it has much more the look of a collection of notes for a tale of adventure than anything else, and has always been one of the least read, if not entirely the least read, of the books which bear Marryat’s name. Of “The Mission” its author gave an exact account in a letter to his friend Mrs. S----: “It is composed of scenes and descriptions of Africa in a journey to the Northward from the Cape of Good Hope--full of lions, rhinoceroses, and all manner of adventures, interspersed with a little common sense here and there, and interwoven with the history of the settlement of the Cape up to 1828--written for young people of course, and, therefore trifling, but amusing.” “The Mission,” although this promising sketch of it is strictly correct, has not been much more popular than “Monsieur Violet,” and the reason is obvious enough. It is not so much a story as a series of unconnected, or very loosely connected, incidents; and moreover, it contains what any right-minded boy could only regard as a cruel “sell.” The hero starts forth to clear up the fate of a relative--a lady who has been wrecked on the Caffre coast many years before. It is not known for certain whether she was drowned or died on shore, and a fear has always existed that she survived as a prisoner among the natives, and had grown up to be the wife of some Caffre chief, and bear him young barbarians in his kraal--a fate which it is believed did actually befall the daughters of an English officer, who were wrecked on that coast on their way back from India. He goes on, hears of a renowned chief, whose mother was an Englishwoman, finds him, and then discovers that it was another shipwrecked lady, who had the happiness to produce a half-bred hero in that distant region. His own relative has certainly perished. Now this is cruel. It was not worth while to go so far to learn so little, and the feeling of disappointment caused is too acute. Marryat made a fatal mistake when he overlooked the possibilities of the situation. For the rest, it is a pity he did, because the background of the story is particularly good. Marryat seems to have obtained a very clear idea of the Cape, which he must have visited during his service in the South Atlantic. His hunting adventures, his Zulu warriors, his Dutch Boers, and Hottentot boys are distinctly good. There is even a touch of something grandiose in the references to the invaders from the North, who were then pressing down on Caffraria. They weigh in an imposing fashion on the fortunes of the adventurers in “The Mission.” It is somewhat unfair to look at it all now, when these materials have again been made popular. But good as it is of its kind, the book has a feeble, aimless look, simply from want of satisfactory ending.