ing establishment at Astoria. Before this Captains Lewis and Clarke (in 1804–5) had explored the Columbia to its mouth and reported on the great resources of the country. The claim that the land passed under the Louisiana Purchase-the cry, "fix the "Boundary at 54° 40′ or Fight"-the first crossing of the Rocky Mountains by two white women in the Parker & Whitman Mission Expedition in 1836-the settlement of the boundary at 49° north latitude-and the massacre of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve others by the Indians in 1847, make matter for very interesting chapters. Oregon became a Territory in 1848 and was admitted into the Union as a State in 1859.

VIRGINIA A History of the People. Ninth Edition. [281] John Esten Cooke.

By

·.· As Virginia and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were dominant in their respective sections, both must be studied in order to understand the rise and progress of the States. The Virginians, nurtured in the principles of Church and King, were yet among the foremost in the establishment of a Republic, so certainly do monarchical rules veer towards republicanism and Republics tend towards kingly rule.

The historical interest of Virginia is very great. It is the oldest permanent English settlement in America, and was founded in 1607 by Captain John Smith, and but for his vigor it must have failed utterly more than once. In this State were born the Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, and Taylor, and the celebrated Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, General Robert E. Lee, Chief Justice Marshall, and Henry Clay. West Virginia was constituted a separate State in 1863. American Men of Letters.-AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS. A [29] Series of Critical Biographies. By various Authors. Edited by Charles Dudley Warner. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1884, etc. 16mo. Half russia, top edges gilt. [In course of publication.] Index 2 col. at end of each vol.

... This Series is one of three on “American History, Statesmanship, and Litera"ture." The volumes are printed and bound in a uniform style. Each volume has a Portrait as Frontispiece. The volume on Washington Irving has no Index. The volumes at present issued (March, 1888) are shortly described below:

COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE (1789-1851).—Sixth Edition. [294] Thomas R. Lounsbury.

By

... Cooper was over thirty years of age before he wrote his first novel " Precaution." This volume gives an excellent account of the methods by which the novelist managed to fall foul of all his readers, critics, reviewers, friends, and foes. Mr. Lounsbury claims, for instance, in noticing Cooper's satirical novel "The Monikins" (1835), to be the only person of the generation that has come upon the stage of active life since Cooper's death who has read the work through. Cooper's criticisms of America and

Americans and his years of newspaper libel suits, and the plucky, if not altogether wise way in which he fought and fought to victory, make a most genial book. A large part of the matter in this volume "has never been before given to the public in any "form." Cooper's death-bed injunction that no "authorized account of his life" should be prepared has closed access to the direct and authoritative sources of information contained in family papers.

EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803-1882).-Twelfth Thousand. [296] By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

.. Dr. Holmes has reviewed Emerson's many-sided character in an ample manner. Dealing with the point of his writings, he terms them mosaics by an Author who borrowed from many quarries. He compares him to Burton and Cotton Mather, the first of whom quoted to amuse himself and his reader, and the latter “to show his learning, "of which he had a vast conceit." Dr. Holmes finds that Emerson gives 3393 references to 868 different individuals, chiefly authors.

Of these 411 are mentioned more than once.

He then gives the particulars of these last-mentioned 27, which "furnish no less "than 1061 references."

The list may be a curiosity, but certainly in the use of authorities a writer truly "noscitur a sociis."

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN (1706-1790), as a Man of Letters.—By [29] John Bach McMaster.

. A very interesting account is given of the "strange adventures" which befell Franklin's MSS., especially his Autobiography; how his "fussy" grandson, Temple

Franklin, cut up the papers—pasted a piece here, shifted this there, and transposed another somewhere else, and through dilatoriness and ignorance allowed years to pass by till the publisher Colburn refused to print more than six volumes, whilst the MS. ran to ten; and how the papers were then all bundled into a trunk and deposited in a banker's vaults, where they remained till Temple Franklin was dead. After his death they were removed to "lodgings" and lost sight of for 17 years. Then coming to light accidentally the finder tried to sell them to the British Museum, to Lord Palmerston, and many others, who never inquired as to their value, while finally the United States Government secured them for $35,000.

The alterations and "improvements" made by the grandson were very amusing. “Guzzlers of beer” became “drinkers of beer," "footed it to London" was changed to “walked to London,” “Keimer stared like a pig poisoned" was made to give way to "Keimer stared with astonishment," and so on ad nauseam. The world is to be congratulated on the recovery of the MSS., which have long since been carefully edited without the grandson's emendations.

In the department of Letters Franklin will always be best known by his popular Autobiography and the " Poor Richard” Almanack. The former of these has been republished upwards of 50 times.

IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783–1859).—Ninth Edition. By Charles [29d] Dudley Warner.

... It is a curious fact that "for several years, while Irving was at the height of his "popularity, his books had very little sale. From 1842 to 1848 they were out of "print." To this statement Mr. Warner makes the exception of some stray copies of a cheap Philadelphia edition and a Paris collection in which a volume of his works is included in a "Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors."

When G. P. Putnam issued the Edition of 1848, circumstances changed, and Irving, between July 1848, and November 1859, received on his copyright over $88,000.

OSSOLI, SARAH MARGARET FULLER (1810–1850).—Sixth Edi[29] tion. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

·.· The life of this lady must always be interesting. Her devotion to study while still a child was so great that she "knew more Latin and Greek than half the profes"sors." In 1840 she became editor of the "Dial," the organ of "Transcendentalism "in America," and her writings have been highly praised by such writers as Emerson, who communicated many of his philosophical reveries to the world through the columns of that publication. Her writings are all fragmentary and are “charged with "unintelligibility," but Mr. Higginson defends her on the ground that though she may be confused, rambling, and sometimes high-flown, she offers no paradoxes so startling as some of Emerson's and is incomparably smoother and clearer than Alcott. She married the Marquis d'Ossoli in Rome; took great interest in the Italian struggles; nursed the sick and wounded assiduously in 1849; but, with her husband and child, was drowned in a wreck off Fire Island beach, Long Island, in May, 1850, on a passage from Leghorn to New York.

The volume closes with a Bibliographical Appendix detailing her works and writings and the Publications concerning her.

POE, EDGAR ALLAN (1809-1849).—Third Edition. By George [29] E. Woodberry.

The statements of fact in the published accounts of Poe "are extraordinarily "conflicting, doubtful, and contested." The Author claims to give a vast quantity of "wholly new information or old statements so radically corrected as to become new."

The story of Poe's private and public marriage to his 14 year old wife is told " for "the first time according to the facts from original investigation;" but, after all, the merits of an author lie in his works and afford pleasanter matter for thought and reading than a morbid ransacking through the details of a writer's private life, a far too common habit in the biographies of the present day.

RIPLEY, GEORGE (1802-1880).-Fourth Edition. By Octavius [298] Brooks Frothingham.

George Ripley was a prominent leader of Transcendentalism, "a name, as "Emerson said, given nobody knows by whom, or when it was applied." The first meeting of the Transcendental Club was held at Ripley's House in September, 1836. He was the Founder of "The Dial," which was the organ of the school 1840-44; and he was also originator of "The Brook Farm Association for Education and Agriculture." Emerson described this Farm as "a perpetual picnic, a French Revolution "in small, an age of reason in a patty-pan." After three or four years' existence the Farm was transformed in 1845 into "a Fourierist phalanx" and the new Journal "The "Harbinger" was launched. In 1846 the fire which destroyed the "phalanstery" gave reason for its dissolution. Ripley wrote for a year, while the Harbinger lived, for that Journal, and in 1849 joined the staff of the New York Tribune and shortly became its literary editor, retaining that position until his death.

THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (1817-1862).—Sixth Edition. By F. [294] B. Sanborn.

·.· A well-told life of a very strange man. Though Thoreau left more than thirty volumes of MSS. behind him, only the "Week" and "Walden" appeared in his lifetime. The Week (his first work) was published in 1849 and in 1855: seven hundred of the edition of 1000 copies were returned on Thoreau's hands. He said "with glee" that he had made "an addition of seven hundred volumes to his library and all of his "own composition." He was an "eccentric." His clothes were made anyhow or no how and he affected corduroy. He never went to church, "never voted, and never "paid a tax to the State." He was never married and once lived for two years as a hermit in a frame house built by himself on the edge of Walden Pond near Concord. WEBSTER, NOAH (1758–1843).—Sixth Edition. By Horace E. [297] Scudder.

.. Noah Webster's memory comes down to us charged with three important movements: He formed himself into a "Revision Committee of one" and in 1833 revised the Authorized Version of the Bible, substituting words and phrases for such as were obsolete or below the dignity and solemnity of the subject, correcting errors in grammar and inserting "euphemisms, words, and phrases which are not very offensive to deli

cacy" suitable to be used before a promiscuous audience. Next he set out as a pioneer to correct spelling in "A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings," to which was prefixed a Preface announcing his desire to assist his yung brethren in which much time haz been spent which he did not regret and much censure incurred which his hart told him he did not dezerv. He declared himself attached to America by berth, education, and habit; and regretted that the reeder would obzerv that the orthography of the volum iz not uniform, (and adds most ingenuously,) The reezon is that many of the Essays hav been published before, in the common orthography, and it would hav been a laborious task to copy the whole for the sake of changing the spelling. Thirdly, he published (1828) his great Dictionary. Fortunately no labour seems to have been too great to be incurred on that crowning work of the Lexicographer, and by that he will be remembered, though his revised Version and reformed Spelling may be forgotten. WILLIS, NATHANIEL PARKER (1806-1867).—By Henry A. [297] Beers.

N. P. Willis had the misfortune of furnishing material for a very interesting "Life." His disputes with Captain Marryat and challenges to wipe out the insult-— his episode in the Forrest Divorce Suit-the severe beating he received from Forrest, and the subsequent litigation with the recovery of $2500 damages (reduced to $1 on a new Trial), and many more such matters, make up a very readable book; but the most interesting part is a review of his voluminous literary productions.

His style will always be matter of debate. Allibone says: "It is to be regretted "that one capable of writing so well should have disfigured many of his pages by "puerile affectations and unscholarly conceits which are outrages against the statute "law and common law of the language. An expurgated edition of some of the best "of Mr. Willis's works, or one in which the barbarous jargon complained of should be "translated into English, might be dedicated To Posterity' with a very good prospect "of reaching its destination."

Willis is the "Hyacinth, a heartless puppy," in the novel of "Ruth Hall," written by his sister Fanny Fern, the pseudonymn of Sarah Willis.

Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, believes that Willis has invented many new words, "some of which, though not yet embodied in our dictionaries, are much “used in familiar language." Many of his coinages seem unlikely to live—e. g., Stayat-home-itiveness, re-June-venescence, worth-while-ativeness, and fifty-per-centity, etc. The volume closes with a very useful Bibliography giving a list of the first Editions of his books.

American Statesmen.-AMERican StatesmeN. A Series of Politi[30] cal Biographies. By various Authors. Edited by John T. Morse, Jr. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1882, etc. Half russia, top edges gilt. [In course of publication.] Index, 2 col. at end of each vol.

... The Series is one of three on " American History, Statesmanship, and Literature." The volumes are printed and bound in a uniform style.

The volumes at present issued (March, 1888) are shortly described below: