Recent Historical Biography

IT is no insignificant mark of the subsidence of a too partisan view of American history that the biographer of Samuel Adams undertakes a narrative of the life of Adams’s great political antagonist, Governor Hutchinson,¹ and performs his task neither as detractor nor as apologist, but with sincere intention of weighing fairly the evidence to be had regarding his subject. The result is a sympathetic biography in so far as the writer puts himself dramatically in the place of Hutchinson ; it is also, though to less extent, a critical study of the character of the man ; but it is above all a dispassionate though not cold-blooded analysis of the elements which were brewing before the final storm of the American Revolution burst. There is, moreover, what one is not sorry to see, a certain generous judgment of a man who was a fair representative of a class that has had scant justice done it by American historical writers. The inevitable doom of the Loyalists by contemporary patriots has been the traditional temper in which they have been regarded by the descendants of those patriots, and it is, we repeat, one indication of the rise of a less prejudiced historical spirit that so fair and reasonable a book as this Life of Hutchinson should appear. It is not needed that each new generation should revise the judgments in history of its predecessor, but it is not unlikely that we are entering upon a period when the historical questions of issue between the United States and Great Britain will be subjected to a fresh examination. In this revision we shall see not so much the correction of fact as the shifting of emphasis; and just as the patriots themselves rapidly changed the contention from a point of constitutional law to one of natural rights, so we are likely to lay less stress upon a formula such as taxation without representation, and more upon those fundamental considerations of self-government and freedom of trade which were behind the growth of the colonies in consciousness of integrity.

Mr. Hosmer, for example, repeatedly calls attention, as other writers have done, to the existence not merely of an American party in Parliament, but of a cleavage in English political thought which was not geographical ; and he recognizes the fact that as the contest between the English and the French which resulted in the overthrow of New France in America was a world-contest, and had its theatre in both Europe and America, even in Asia also, so the struggle in Boston was not a mere colonial conflict, but a readjustment of constitutional limits on both sides of the water. He points out in a most interesting way how closely Hutchinson’s theoretical solution of the problem he encountered tallies with the actual adjustment of relations now existing between England and her colonies in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, though we doubt if the supremacy of Parliament is quite as inviolable as Mr. Hosmer assumes. It may be, as he says, that let “a crisis arise involving the interests of the whole, none of the colonial members would to-day question the right and duty of the English Parliament to step into the leadership, with authority, if need were, to dictate east and west, as far as the drum-beat extends, what measures should be taken and what sums should be contributed to maintain the general welfare ; ” but such a crisis is far more easily met than one which involves a contention between the policy of an imperial Parliament and the interest of some remote colony, as Australia, and signs are not wanting that the colony would in that event insist upon its own prerogative.

The figure of Hutchinson himself, as drawn by Mr. Hosmer, is one to be respected, and for whose sorry end a compassion may be felt; but though his ability is conceded, and his integrity and high character are built up in the reader’s mind by many generous touches, there remains a slight impatience at the dryly legal bent of his mind. It would certainly seem as though some of the tact which the governor evidently perceived would reduce the strain between Parliament and the colony might well have been used by himself. The rupture, however, was no doubt inevitable; it is easy to see this when we read in the light of the event, and it is one of the dramatic incidents of our history that the man who stood in Boston as the representative of the British government was a New Englander of New Englanders, and the man who, by his statesmanlike handling of the finances of the province, had made possible the success of the patriots in overthrowing the order for which he stood. Hutchinson’s whole temper was aristocratic, and the contest in which he became involved, and as outlined in this fruitful biography, is full of suggestion for the student of current problems in government. Mr. Hosmer has executed his task with fidelity and skill, and we have no hesitation in pronouncing his book one of the most satisfactory as it is one of the most interesting contributions ever made to American historical biography.

In two volumes of 800 pages ² Miss Boudinot has reared a monument befitting the memory of her granduncle, the devoted patriot and excellent man, Elias Boudinot, of Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The outbreak of the war of independence found him, entering middle life, busily practicing law. As a member of county committee and of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, organized in 1774 and 1775 to promote the common purpose of the colonies, Boudinot was of the foremost in labors for the American cause; but he was also moderate, checking the zeal of Witherspoon in his eagerness for independence, for which, however, Boudinot was equally ready when the time was ripe.

Washington, during the campaign of 1776-77 in the Jerseys, formed a high opinion of the character and influence of Boudinot, and in April, 1777, offered and urged upon him the office of commissary-general of prisoners in the army of America. His services in this capacity for more than a year were valuable to the patriot cause, and the details which the editor furnishes from the letters and notebooks of Boudinot are of fresh interest, and add something to our knowledge of the treatment and exchange of prisoners during the Revolution.

Boudinot resigned this office in 1778, to serve a year in the Continental Congress. He was again elected by the legislature of New Jersey a delegate to Congress in 1781, and reëlected in 1782. By the system of rotation then in vogue, the presidency of Congress fell to New Jersey, and Boudinot, was chosen to that office in the latter year. It became his lot, therefore, to perform special duties on the occasions which marked the close of the war ; on behalf of Congress to sign the Articles of Peace, to thank Washington for his conduct of the war, to receive the minister from the Netherlands. All these, and the ordinary duties of the presiding officer of Congress, Boudinot discharged with grace and dignity. At this time, too, after Livingston’s resignation, he had charge of the affairs of the foreign office.

To the first Congress under the Constitution Boudinot was sent as one of the Federalist members from New Jersey. He served three terms, from 1789 to 1795, and during these years he acted on several of the most important committees. From the Annals of Congress Miss Boudinot reprints his speeches, many of which discuss the graver questions of that formative time : notably, the first revenue act, the establishment of the executive departments, the national bank, the power of removal from office, the slave trade, the pay of the late army, the vindication of Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, and the regulations of commerce with Great Britain. In these efforts Boudinot is at his best. The republication of these speeches is timely at this hour. For training the citizen or the public man of to-day in the temper and spirit proper to discuss questions of current interest, many of which are not unlike those of Boudinot’s time, no better means are at hand than those offered in his speeches.

At the close of Boudinot’s career in Congress, in 1795, Washington appointed him director of the mint. Boudinot modestly accepted the office, and filled it for ten years, when he resigned, and retired, after a public service of nearly a generation, to private life. He died in 1821, aged nearly eighty-two.

Boudinot’s chief characteristics were his piety, — the expression of which, especially in his earlier years, seems to us of to-day somewhat excessive, — his sincere and self-sacrificing patriotism, a strong and abiding love for his family, his sense of what is fair and just in all questions under discussion, and his wisdom in counsel. In short, in these volumes, in which his own acts and words portray his life, we find the prototype of the American gentleman, kindly, well trained, and useful. Here was indeed one of the “ Fathers,” whose existence as models of wisdom and propriety we are at times tempted to doubt, when the passions and partisanship of that day are revealed to us. In this entire record Boudinot utters not one bitter word.

His relations with Washington and Hamilton were most happy. During the war he sometimes sent news to Washington and offered him advice, but in a most docile temper accepted the better information and actions of Washington which proved to be contrary to his suggestions. Hamilton, as a lad, attended school at Elizabethtown, and was often welcomed within the circle of Boudinot’s family. Boudinot, in 1793, calmly, clearly, and dispassionately vindicates Hamilton from the charges of official misconduct.

The pictures which the letters selected by Miss Boudinot give of the best family life of New Jersey a hundred years ago are delightful. Charming is the insight we get into the character of William Bradford, who was the son-in-law of Boudinot, and whom Washington made Attorney-General in his cabinet. Americans must lament anew the early death of Bradford.

In the main Miss Boudinot’s work has been well done. For the busy man the reprints may appear too long, but he can skip the purely formal and official parts ; and some of the trivial family incidents might have been omitted without loss. Nor does the editor, in her purpose to let letters and records tell the whole story, take the pains always to supply connecting links; thus from the average reader too much effort is required to avoid confusion. Rarely, the editor is not careful of her English. The spirit of the antiquarian sometimes prevails over the historic sense, and therefore there is lacking a discrimination as to the relative value of facts ; and again, as in the story of Arnold’s treason. Boudinot’s Reminiscences are backed up by the editor by authority which is not latest nor best. Neither John Marshall nor Washington Irving was first of all a historian. Similar criticism would apply to the account of De Grasse’s share in the siege of Yorktown.

Still, Miss Boudinot deserves warm thanks from the student of American history, from the lover of his country and of mankind, for the results of labors prompted by real patriotism and a proper family pride.

A faithful and detailed account of any prominent American family in the Eastern States, whose records go back to the time when the first English settlers were engaged in cutting down the primeval forests for the purpose of obtaining sites for homes, will always throw an interesting light on the influences which have given shape to the communities on the Atlantic coast as we know them to-day. Such an account, extending from the early colonial age to the present, will reflect in many of its most important aspects the general course of our national growth. This is notably true of the histories of those families of Virginia which are identified in a conspicuous way with the principal events in the annals of that Commonwealth.

The successive periods in the development of the social and economic system of Virginia, periods which made a deep impression upon the fortunes of its families, have been singularly unlike in their character. First we observe the conditions prevailing in the age of the earliest pioneers alone, when the axe played an equal part with the rifle in enlarging the boundaries of civilization. Then followed the age when the planters, loyal to the king and true to the traditions of their race, erected everywhere in the older parts of the colony a society marked by all of the characteristics belonging to ancient communities. This in turn was succeeded by the interval leading up to the Revolution, an interval full of those memorable agitations foreshadowing the approaching storm. Then came the war of independence, the successful issue of which tore asunder the ties of association binding the families of Virginia to the mother country. In the long period extending from the surrender of Cornwallis to the passage of the ordinance of secession, there existed a social life — conservative, peaceful, and uneventful — which rested upon the institution of slavery and the pursuit of agriculture, taking its character partly from the one and partly from the other. The late war broke upon this state of society, upheaving the whole fabric of it as in the throes of an earthquake ; and when the tumult had passed away that fabric lay in ruin. A new order has arisen, one differing as much from that prevailing before the civil war as it does from that prevailing before the Revolution.

It can perhaps be said that no other people of the same race have in so short a time, comparatively considered, gone through a greater number and variety of vicissitudes, — vicissitudes which have struck, each in its turn, a telling blow at existing conditions, and in one instance, the late war, have practically revolutionized the whole state of society.

It is impossible to read Mr. Alexander Brown’s latest work, The Cabells and their Kin,³ without being very much impressed by the shadow which these successive periods in the story of Virginia — each so distinctly marked in its character, several so full of heroic tumult — have thrown upon his pages, as he relates the history of the different generations of the Cabell family. The background to the lives of its members consists of this changing drama, which controlled the fortunes of the community at large. From this point of view the work has great historical interest and value. This is more especially true of the parts treating, on the one hand of the Cabells who lived before and during the Revolutionary contest, and on the other of the Cabells who lived before and during the late war : the former contending for the overthrow of the supremacy of nature in a wide circuit of primeval forest, laying the foundation of new communities, building up large private fortunes, and taking an active part in the storm of the Revolution ; the latter participating in those civic struggles which slavery brought about, and finally in that terrible war which these struggles precipitated.

Although the first of the American Cabells did not arrive in Virginia until 1724, more than one hundred years after the settlement of Jamestown Island, nevertheless the earliest annals of that family are associated with the rude conditions of life on the frontier. We discover in these annals evidence of every step in the resolute struggle to establish new homes in the ancient forests, and of the successful effort to erect a system of local government by the introduction of courts and vestries, at the very time that the Indians had not yet permanently retired beyond the mountains, and when strange and savage beasts still roamed the woods. Dr. William Cabell, the founder of the American branch of the family, was the first Englishman to obtain a patent to lands in the valley of the James River, lying near the foothills of the Blue Ridge. He stated, in a petition offered in court many years afterwards, that he had carried the settlements fifty miles further westward than they had been planted before. In doing so, while making his survey, he had been seized by the Indians, who resented his intrusion into their favorite hunting-grounds. From the mouth of the modern Rivanna — the stream upon which Monticello, the home of Jefferson, is situated — to the mountains there stretched a vast wilderness, which had been explored only by intrepid hunters and traders. When Dr. Cabell died, in 1774, this region, once the home of savages and wild beasts alone, had come into the possession of a large white population. Residences had been erected on the different estates, plantation edifices, stores, warehouses, churches, and court-houses built, and roads opened. The great body of the inhabitants were of the purest English blood. A large number of the planters resembled Dr. Cabell in being men of ancient descent. Dr. Cabell himself was sprung from a stock which had been established in England since the Norman Conquest, had owned valuable landed estates, had occupied noble family seats and possessed wide influence. They had endowed churches and founded chapels, on the windows of which were emblazoned their coats-ofarms. The father of Dr. Cabell was the owner not only of a large personal estate, but also of extensive property in land in the vicinity of Frome. and all of his connections were firm and loyal supporters of church and state. The son, like so many others in the same period who sought new homes in the west, abandoned all of these substantial advantages of fortune, leaving behind his native community with its firmly established society, its peaceful and orderly pursuits, to become a pioneer on the frontiers of a far distant colony, where dangers hitherto unknown confronted him, and where the first seed of civilization had to be planted. The reward for this self-denial, energy, and enterprise, however, was great; for, dying, he devised to each of his children plantations many thousand acres in area, with a full equipment of buildings, servants, slaves, and livestock.

The second era in the history of the American Cabells — of even greater interest than the first — was that in which the storm of the Revolution arose, and finally expended its force in the triumph at Yorktown. The records of the family throw important light on the sentiments of the people of Virginia throughout this memorable period. Colonel William Cabell, the son of the founder, was a member of the General Assembly as early as 1757. He was present in the House when Patrick Henry offered his famous resolutions, May 29, 1765, and we find him in 1766 declining the office of deputy escheator because it was necessary that it should be filled by a friend of the crown. From this time until the adjournment of the convention of 1788 he kept a diary, in which he noted, amid a great variety of details relating to other subjects, the course of the political events which were then stirring the minds of men. Mr. Brown has given copious extracts from this diary, which are of marked historical interest. We find that Colonel Cabell, like all of his associates, was firmly opposed to the oppressive measures of Great Britain, but nevertheless entertained the hope, until the passage of the Boston Port Bill, that the differences between the mother country and the colonies would be settled without bloodshed. “ No one can deny,” he is reported as then exclaiming, “ that the people of Virginia have been loyal subjects. They have borne their grievances with patience, and have petitioned respectfully for their removal. All their remonstrances and memorials have been treated with neglect and contempt, and now we are to be gagged. We must fight, and, for one, I care not how soon.” From this time he became an unswerving supporter of the various measures adopted for the safety of the colony. We find him from 1774 to 1776 chairman of his county committee. He was a member of the convention of 1775, and assisted in bringing in an ordinance for raising a large body of troops for immediate service. In the same year he was appointed a member of the committee of safety for Virginia at large, which called him away from home for long periods.

This committee having the selection of all military officers, its members were debarred from holding any military position. He was a member of the convention of 1776, and was one of the committee to prepare a declaration of rights and to draw up a form of government. He was also elected the first senator from the Amherst district under the new Constitution.

The spirit of the people in the stress of these trying times was reflected in the action of the county committees. These appear, without exception, to have shared the boldness and resoluteness of the committee of Cumberland, which in 1775 instructed the representatives of that county in the Assembly “ to declare for an independency, and to abjure any allegiance to his Britannick Majesty and bid him a good-night forever; ” and when war had broken out, they made every sacrifice to insure the successful consummation of the cause of the Revolution. The people bore a heavy burden of taxation without a murmur. The public charge imposed upon land and the great, bulk of the personal property was already very onerous. In addition, taxes were laid on brandy, whiskey, tobacco, plate, specie, paper money, carriage-wheels, glass windows, billiard - tables, marriage and tavern licenses. There were poll and specific taxes. Nor were they levied once in the course of twelve months ; there were taxes payable in each month of the year.

Incidental to the account of the political life at this time, Mr. Brown’s work gives much information as to prices, which were now greatly inflated. Thus in 1780 twenty head of bullocks and barren cows were valued at over seven thousand pounds sterling in Virginia currency. A pound of bacon sold for eight dollars. For attendance upon one session of the Assembly Colonel Cabell was paid ten hundred and seventy - eight pounds sterling. The expense of boarding in Staunton, where the Assembly met in 1781, amounted to fifteen hundred dollars for the interval between June 12 and June 23, a period of ten days.

The expedients adopted in local manufacture are of interest. We find Colonel Cabell, in 1776, planting the seeds of cotton, flax, and hemp with a view to obtaining the material for his own weaving ; and for the same reason he gave much attention to sheep husbandry. He also set up iron-works on one of his estates in order to promote the manufacture of iron. On several occasions, he distilled in one year as much as one hundred and fifty gallons of brandy. During the progress of the war he erected the dwelling-house known as “Union Hill,” which has been so intimately associated with the Cabell family. The timber of which it was constructed was cut, sawed, and placed in position by his own servants and slaves; the bricks were made in his own kilns ; while the greater number of the nails were manufactured by hand in his own blacksmiths’ shops. Like all the mansions of the planters of Virginia at that day, this residence had many outbuildings, such as the picking, spinning, weaving, and dyeing houses; the sewing-rooms and laundry; the dairy, the storeroom, the smoke - house, the kitchen, the poultry - houses, the coachhouse, the ice-house, the cow-houses, the stable occupied by the horses in use by the family, and the houses for the servants and slaves attached to the residence. In addition to these structures — some built of wood, some of brick or stone — in the immediate vicinity, there were, on another part of the estate, near the manager’s home, the farm stables; the barns, corn and tobacco houses, shops for shoemakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, coopers, masons, and other artisans ; the tannery, distillery, and gristmill. At this time, the only means of transporting the tobacco to market consisted of the bateaux which were used in the navigation of the Upper James River. The hogsheads were placed on board, and thus conveyed to Richmond ; the stream being in many places obstructed by falls, making the passage a dangerous one to boatman and cargo.

In the long interval between the close of the Revolution and the breaking out of the civil war the Cabell family expanded greatly in number, and in its different branches obtained marked distinction in all the departments of life. There was hardly a year in the whole course of that long period when a Cabell did not represent his division of the State in the House of Delegates, the state Senate, or the national House of Representatives. The family gave to the Commonwealth a governor and also a president of the Court of Appeals. In the persons of members of the family bearing a different name, they gave to the national government a Vice-President, and several occupants of the highest diplomatic positions abroad, while in the field of literature several of the Cabell kin have won celebrity. Spreading out as each generation came into active life, the family established itself in all that part of Virginia where it had its first seat. Offshoots bearing the same name, or sharing its blood only, passed at an early date across the barrier of mountains, and made a permanent settlement in the most beautiful regions of Kentucky, and from thence emigrated as far as Texas, and even to the country lying beyond the Rockies. That migratory instinct, coupled with the desire to improve one’s fortunes which has had so powerful an influence in bringing about the occupation of the West, is nowhere more fully recorded than in this volume by Mr. Brown; this gives the work an additional value from the light which it throws upon the movement of population from the East to the western and southwestern wilderness.

Few episodes in American history approach in picturesqueness the part borne by Lafayette in our struggle for national existence as described in the elaborate volumes of Mr. Tower.⁴ At an age that many now pass in college, and even while yet so young as to be jeeringly alluded to by Cornwallis as “ that boy,” he made himself so important a factor in the Revolution as truly to savor of romance rather than fact. Indeed, were the incidents of his career told as fiction, their improbability would go far to mar the artistic effect. It is true that much of this air of romance is due to the French view of the contest; for whatever the Revolution was to our ancestors, to the French, and particularly to Lafayette, it was never a quarrel over so many pence duty on tea, nor even over the broader right of self-taxation. To them it was the outburst of a people against enslavement ; an object-lesson of the theories — then very much in vogue — taught by Montesquieu and the Encyclopædists, rendered in this case doubly interesting because directed against an hereditary and triumphant enemy. All France, but especially the nobility, the army, and (of course) the ladies, went wild with an enthusiasm at once the embarrassment and the delight of the French government; which, hoping to use the opportunity to injure Great Britain, chose not to dampen the popular sentiment, yet found great difficulty in preventing the outburst from compromising France in her relations with that country. Indeed, the acts of Louis’s cabinet strongly suggest the tightrope performer in the skill with which the balance between open war and secret encouragement was maintained for so many months.

Under the impulse of this enthusiasm many foreigners desired to serve in the American army. The commissioners at Paris, the Congress, and Washington were besieged by “thousand of officers” of France with offers and demands. Even such veterans as Prince Ferdinand, Marshal Broglie, and the Duke de Lauzun were among those who caught the fever, and would gladly have accepted American commissions had sufficient rank been granted them. In this public excitement, it is not strange that Lafayette, of both the nobility and the army, should be infected with the prevailing ferment. He had distinctly the qualities that made the contest appeal to him strongly. But twenty-two years of age, with a temperament that he candidly spoke of as “ my own warmth,” his foible, according to his admiring friend Jefferson, was “a canine appetite for popularity and fame.” That such a man sought service in America when so many in France wished to do so is not strange, but that he should have succeeded so far beyond his own expectations, and so greatly beyond any other of his countrymen, is truly marvelous.

The path to success was not a smooth one. However eagerly fostered by our diplomats and statesmen, the French alliance and the French nation were objects of suspicion in the colonies ; for Americans had been too long imbued with hatred of that people easily to regard them as friends. When the probability of French aid was argued in connection with the Declaration of Independence, it was seriously urged in Congress that the people would never consent to the landing of French troops in the colonies. When Lafayette first arrived, one of his party wrote that “ the populace of Charleston, as well as that of all this part of the continent, detest the French;” adding, “ This is not the case in good society.” This state of mind was typical of the whole country, and the French alliance was the act of the intellectual classes of America, long regarded with suspicion by the common people. How ingrained this feeling was is shown by the outburst against the French on the failure of the attack on Newport, when Lafayette himself records that “ the people turned mad at their [the French] departure, and, wishing them all the evils in the world, did treat them as a generous one would be ashamed to treat the most inveterate enemies.’ The condition, indeed, became so critical to the alliance that the French minister considered it necessary to hire the popular but mercenary pen of Thomas Paine “ in inspiring the people with sentiments favorable to France and the alliance,” In 1779, when American affairs seemed most desperate, even Lafayette was doubtful as to what kind of a reception a French force would meet with in America.

Such was the public mood when Lafayette offered his sword to the American cause, and his success, as compared with that of his fellow French, can be easily understood when his attitude, compared with theirs, is considered. He begged, never demanded, a commission ; he did not haggle for rank or money, but fought as a volunteer, without command and without pay, wherever there was fighting to be done. While the Continental army was the laughter of the foreign officers, he said, “I am here to learn, not to teach.” When Steuben criticised the want of discipline, Lafayette claimed that “ bravery took the place with them of science.” While others were abusing America, its people, its officials, and its army, Lafayette records only love and praise, and his letters to his wife are full of admiration for all he saw. He himself indicated the cause for the unpopularity of the foreign officers, and of the opposite in his own case, in his plan for a detachment of French troops, in which he warned Vergennes not to send colonels used to the luxuries of Paris, for “ we shall need officers who know how to submit to annoyances, to live frugally, to avoid all airs, particularly a sharp and peremptory manner.”

Such conduct could not but win him his way. A few weeks after his arrival he was the close friend of Washington, who yielded his friendship so slowly; and the commander-in-chief, who had seen only embarrassment in Lafayette’s advent, soon wrote to Congress, “ It appears to me, from a consideration of his illustrious and important connections, the attachment he has manifested for our cause, and the consequences which his return in disgust might produce, that it will be advisable to gratify him in his wish for a brigade.” Nor was it only here that he won trust. He was quickly on the best terms with all of the officers, and the rank and file soon styled him familiarly and endearingly “ the Marquis.” As time went on his influence on all sides waxed, till Chastellux declared that “ private letters from him have frequently produced more effect upon some of the States than the strongest exhortations of the Congress ; ” and Marbois wrote to Vergennes: “ It is difficult to imagine, monseigneur, to what extent the prudence of M. le Marquis de Lafayette, joined to firm and decided conduct, has won the affections of the inhabitants. His presence attracts both men and supplies. No man, say the delegates [of Congress] from Virginia and Maryland, except Washington, would have obtained such universal popularity; having shown in his first campaign bravery even to rashness, he now shows consummate prudence. On his arrival in Virginia the people were aghast at his youth, but now they would regret exceedingly to see the command pass into other hands.” Even Lafayette marveled at His own success, and confessed, “I am forced myself to smile sometimes, . . , even in this country where people do not smile ns readily as we do at home.”

Of this brilliant and generous story Mr. Tower has written a most admirable account. Although, we believe, the author’s first work in American history, there is no trace of the tyro, and the book is at once scholarly and interesting. The wealth of original material included cannot fail to make it the standard authority on Lafayette’s service in America, and scarcely less so on the whole history of the French alliance. Mr. Tower is a skilled linguist, and his translations from Doniol, from the Stevens Facsimiles, and from other sources are a distinct boon, the more that most of the papers which he includes are printed in their entirety. In every respect the book shows a balance of view and an accuracy of treatment that deserve the highest recognition and praise.