America's historians have for the most part, like the wise men of old, come from the East; and as a result our history has been written from the point of view of the Atlantic coast. Parkman has described the French occupation of the Northwest, and H. H. Bancroft has preserved the materials for a history of the far Southwest and the Pacific Slope. But the American occupation of the Mississippi basin has not found its historian. General United General United States history should be built upon the fact that the centre of gravity of the nation has passed across the mountains into this great region. To give to our history the new proportions which this fact makes necessary, must be the work of the younger generation of students. It is a fertile field. The conflicts of the pioneers with the Indians give opportunity for romantic treatment almost unsurpassed. Economic history finds here a rich harvest. In this rise of a new industrial world, the economic conditions of not only the older states of our own country, but even of Europe, have received important modifications. Το this valley, also, have come migrations from

*THE WINNING OF THE WEST. By Theodore Roosevelt, author of "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman." In two volumes. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

the Old World such as can be compared only with the great Wandering of the Peoples-the Völkerwanderung-of the Middle Ages. A new composite nationality is being produced, a distinct American people, speaking the English tongue, but not English. To the student of politics, the West is also a fruitful field. Here we have the almost unique spectacle of heterogeneous peoples, in a new land, forming self-governed communities, peacefully as regards each other, drafting constitutions and growing into states of a federal union. Such are some of the features that make the West so promising a region for study. Nor must it be understood that this is an unbroken field. Besides collections of original authorities, many states have found their local historians, the earlier ones largely annalists, without insight or scientific method, but some of the later ones writing with a right perspective and knowledge of the significance of their facts. But American history needs a connected and unified account of the progress of civilization across the continent. Aside from the scientific importance of such a work, it would contribute to awakening a real national self-consciousness and patriotism.

To this work an important contribution has just been made by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt in his "Winning of the West." In his two ample volumes he traces this advance from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi up to the close of the Revolutionary war. His materials are chiefly found in the archives of the federal government, many of them never published, and in manuscript collections, largely from Tennessee and Kentucky. The Canadian archives and the Virginia State Papers have also been consulted. While he makes use of the local historians, he is wisely critical of their dependence on tradition, a fault which has marred much of the work hitherto done in Western history. It is to be regretted that the author has apparently not had access to the very important collections of Dr. Lyman C. Draper, of Wisconsin, whose accumulations are probably superior to those of Mr. Durrett, of Louisville, upon which he lays particular stress. But if the material above mentioned has been carefully used, and this is a point upon which only a specialist can speak with authority, we have in these volumes the first

really satisfactory history of the field they cover. It is certainly a wonderful story, most entertainingly told. In breadth of view, capacity for studying local history in the light of world history, and in knowledge of the critical use of material, the author has a decided advantage over most of his predecessors. He sees that this Western advance is one stage in the great movement that began with the Germanic wanderings-namely, the spread of the English-speaking peoples. His generalizations are bold, frequently novel, and not seldom open to criticism. Briefly stated, his main thesis seems to be this: The dominant element in the settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee was composed of Scotch-Irish pioneers, the large majority of whom came from Pennsylvania, following the trend of the valleys. These settlers found themselves in a country lying between two great Indian confederacies, the Algonquin and the Appalachian tribes, but permanently occupied by neither. Thus the Americans were able to push westward between them. The victory of the backwoodsmen over the northwestern Indians in Lord Dunmore's war rendered possible the settlement of Kentucky, and the Kentuckians, under the leadership of George Rogers Clark, conquered the Illinois country in the Revolution, and thus enabled us to hold the Northwest. But the Northwest was only settled under the protection of the regular army, and was organized by the Ordinance of 1787, which fixed beforehand the character of the settlement. The Southwest and the West, on the other hand, were won by these backwoodsmen and their descendants, fighting as individuals or groups of individuals, "hewing out their own fortunes in advance of any governmental action."

"Our territory lying beyond the Alleghanies, north and south, was first won for us by the southwesterners, fighting for their own land. They warred and settled from the high hill-valleys of the French Broad and the Upper Cumberland to the half-tropical basin of the Rio Grande, and to where the Golden Gate lets through the long-heaving waters of the Pacific. The story of how this was done forms a compact and continuous whole. The fathers followed Boon or fought at King's Mountain; the sons marched south with Jackson to overcome the Creeks, and beat back the British; the grandsons died at the Alamo, or charged to victory at San Jacinto. They were doing their share of a work that began with the conquest of Britain, that entered on its second and wider period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, that culminated in the marvellous growth of the United States. The winning of the West and Southwest is a stage in the conquest of a continent.”

While thus the author holds that this con

quest was the work of a whole people, he does not fail to take advantage of the picturesque careers of the leaders in this advance. "Above the throng of wood-choppers, game hunters, and Indian fighters, loom the sinewy figures of Daniel Boon and George Rogers Clark." A whole procession of heroic men pass before us, Sevier, Shelby, Robertson, Simon Kenton, the Indian Logan, and a host of lesser worthies whose adventures read like a romance,— and yet not so like a romance as in the works of some other writers who depend more upon traditions, in which these men have suffered a kind of apotheosis. A wide variety of societies is described. There is an excellent account of the Indians, to whose influence upon our history he justly attaches great importance. The French of the Northwest are discussed in chapters excellent so far as they go; but the subject deserves a fuller treatment. Upon the life of the backwoodsmen he dwells with appreciation. He describes their forted village, in which reappear the old Germanic "tun," their popular meetings, "folk-moots," and their representative assemblies, "witenagemots," meeting like the Transylvania legislature, "without the walls of the fort, on a level plain of white clover under a grand old elm," and drawing up constitutions like those Articles of the Wautauga Association, which is the "first written constitution ever adopted west of the mountains, or by a community composed of American-born freemen." These facts carry the mind back to the warrior-legislatures in the Germanic forests, and forward to those constitutional conventions now at work in our newly-made states in the Far West; and they make us proud of our English heritage.

The

The stirring history of the founding and growth of the Wautauga commonwealth and the Cumberland settlements, which were the germs of Tennessee, and of the rise and struggles of the Kentucky settlements, are well told. author gives an account of Lord Dunmore's war, showing how the Westerners were drawn into the current of the Revolution by civil war on the borders, and Indian outbreaks incited by the British. He points out the two-fold character of the Revolution, as, on the part of the Americans, a struggle for independence in the East, and in the West a war for the right of entry into the fertile and vacant regions beyond the Alleghanies. The story of the expedition of George Rogers Clark is given at some length, with the aid of the Haldimand manuscripts, which have but recently become avail

able. He does not mention the British and Indian attack upon St. Louis, although it would support his view of the importance attaching to the military possession of the region at the close of the war. The battle of King's Mountain is discriminatingly treated; and the fate of the Moravian Indians is related, with the extenuating features set down.

But little space is left for criticism, and that must be chiefly concerning some of the author's generalizations upon the Northwest. In his assertion that our chartered rights to the West were really of slight importance as compared with actual occupation and conquest such as that of George Rogers Clark, Mr. Roosevelt is doubtless correct; but when he goes on to insist that but for this conquest we should probably never have had any Northwest to settle, he jumps at a conclusion. The careful student of the treaty negotiations of 1782-3 cannot fail to see that, although Congress instructed her representatives to urge our claims to this territory primarily upon our chartered rights, and, as a secondary resort, upon our military possession, yet what really gained the land for us was the willingness of Lord Shelburne to adopt Franklin's suggestion of a liberal peace as a means of reconciliation. Clark's expedition played no part in the negotiations, and before Parliament Lord Shelburne defended his cession on the ground that the fur trade of the Northwest did not pay for holding it. The author follows Mr. John Jay in minimizing the value of Franklin's work and exalting that of Jay. In this he is in error; the note on page 90 of the second volume being particularly misleading, and full of misapprehension. It is beyond doubt that so far as concerns the grounds on which our boundaries were conceded, Jay followed the policy previously adopted by Franklin. Nor can we agree with the author that the mapmakers are wrong in including the Northwest within our bounds by the treaty of 1783. It is true that our legal possession did not become actual possession until Jay's treaty had secured the fulfilment of the terms of the first treaty; but this is quite another matter. Moreover, Mr. Roosevelt is inconsistent with his own view of this matter in the various parts of his work. He unduly emphasizes the importance of the Southwestern as compared with Northwestern pioneers. He asserts that the trials of the settlers about Marietta "are not to be mentioned beside those endured by the early settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky, and where

as these latter themselves subdued and drove out their foes, the former took but an insignificant part in the contest by which the possession of their land was secured"; and he adds that "The Southwest developed its civilization on its own lines, for good and for ill; the Northwest was settled under the national Ordinance of 1787, which absolutely determined its destiny, and thereby, in the end, also determined the destiny of the whole nation." Now Mr. Roosevelt must be aware that these Marietta settlers were veterans who had fought the battles of their country under Washington in the East, with a courage and endurance as great as that of those who had been fighting at the same time beyond the mountains. But for the success of them and their comrades we should not merely have had no West, but no country. And it was these same veterans, ragged and penniless in the camp at Newburg at the close of the war, that drew up the first plan for a new state beyond the Ohio, a plan that contained every important feature of the Ordinance of 1787. They formed the Ohio Company, and to the efforts of their agent was largely due the passage of the Ordinance in its final form. Surely, it is only fair to say that these men took a most significant part in the contest by which their land was secured, and that they too developed their civilization on their own lines.

It is the merit of Mr. Roosevelt's book that he has given us a vivid portraiture of the backwoodsman's advance, that he treats impartially and sensibly the relations of the pioneers and the Indians whom they dispossessed, that he has applied a scientific method of criticism to the material already existing, and that he writes in the light of the widest significance of the events which he describes.

FREDERICK J. TURNER.

SOME CHARMING CORRESPONDENCE.*

It is curious how little readers, as a general thing, think about the make-up of the books they read. If a man rides in a carriage he is concerned about whether it is comfortable or no, and whether its springs are or are not easy. If he sits in a chair, he thinks whether its cushions are soft, or whether its back has an agreeable slant. If he drinks out of a cup, he has his opinion of its handle, of its shape,

* THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY,

D.C.L., author of "The History of the United Netherlands, Edited by George William Curtis. With Portrait. In two volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers.

etc.

and of its weight and thickness. He prefers the easy-springed carriage, the well-stuffed chair, the light and well-shaped cup. But a book, that medium of his highest pleasure, may be awkward, burdensome, and ill-made, and he thinks little of it. The author may have done his part well, and the publisher may have done his part ill; but the reader rarely thinks that the effect produced is partly the result of the work of both author and publisher that the author's thought and style may be marred by the publisher's setting, just as the brilliance of a beautiful diamond may be obscured by an unskilful jeweller.

Many of our books of to-day are atrocious, and make almost as unpleasant reading as a newspaper; but nothing of that kind can be said of the volumes containing the correspondence of John Lothrop Motley. Here are two sumptuous old-style royal octavos, with creamy, heavy paper, good, large type, broad margins, and a binding that opens well, and, if need be, will lie open. They are models of their kind; but whether their kind is the best, must admit of question. Such large volumes seem rather to belong to the past of book-making than to the present. Books must become cheap, and the cost is against the royal octavos; but besides that, they are cumbersome and unhandy. Let us have, for the books of to-day, good, compact, convenient, well-made twelvemos and sixteenmos; cheap, but not too cheap to be printed on good paper from clear type, with a carefully-proportioned page, and substantially and neatly bound; cheap, but not too cheap to afford a good royalty to the author, be he an American or a foreigner.

The Letters of John Lothrop Motley make a book for the leisurely hour. They are not to be taken up between the newspaper and the day's work; but for the vacant day, or the long, quiet evening, how delightful! We get from them all the charm of the easy, familiar companionship of a gentleman of refinement. and culture a man used to all the surroundings of wealth, yet never concerned about money or luxury, content with his modest share of this world's goods, and devoted to all the best things of life-to gentlemanlike conduct, to broad and honest views of public affairs, to books, to men, to art. It is very evident that his great histories were not written with any thought of the money they might bring,- indeed, with no expectation of money; and that when they did become remunerative that feature of them had little thought from him.

One does not read far before he gets the idea that John Lothrop Motley was from earliest youth to latest manhood essentially a gentleman. This is seen in every letter, and does not need the further and irrefutable evidence that breathes from the gentle and lofty countenance in the portrait that precedes the first volume.

It is a beautiful face, and one that could not conceal mean or ignoble thoughts. It is the countenance of a man who would be likely to deserve better of his country than, politically, she gave. Probably no one doubts now that he ably and faithfully represented the best interests of his country, both at the court of Austria and at that of Great Britain, and that his statesmanship was as well calculated to reflect honor upon the American character as his histories upon American literature. O democracy, what sins are committed in thy name! and how sure it is that in history at least those sins will find thee out! The names of Seward and Grant would stand to-day more unblemished if the resignation of Mr. Motley from the Vienna mission had not been made necessary, and if his recall from the English mission had not been signed. It is dangerous for even those having the highest temporary authority to trifle with the rights of men who hold an unquestionable and enduring place in public esteem. The nation has always been pleased when such scholars as Everett, Adams, Irving, Motley, Bancroft and Lowell have been called to represent it abroad. What a pity we cannot now find one such name on our diplomatic list!

If there are any persons left who perhaps still have a lingering recollection that the "McCracken letter" called Mr. Motley "unAmerican," they will find much refreshing reading in this volume. It would be hard to find anywhere more beautiful, inspiring, and eloquent patriotism than breathes out in many of his private letters. At the breaking out of the war he was on fire with the patriotic feeling he could write of little else.

:

"Now that we have overthrown that party, and now that we are struggling to maintain our national existence, and with it, liberty, law, and civilization, against the insurrection which that overthrow has excited, we are treated to the cold shoulder of the mother country, quite as decidedly as if she had never had an opinion or a sentiment on the subject of slavery, and as if the greatest war of principle which has been waged in this generation at least was of no more interest to her, except as it bore on the cotton question, than the wretched squabbles of Mexico or South America."

In the midst of a gossipy letter from Boston

"As for my true friend Murray [John Murray, the publisher], I am ashamed not to have written him a line; but tell him, with my best regards to him and Mrs. M., that I have scarcely written to anyone but you. If you see him, tell him what I think of our politics. It will distress his bigoted Tory heart to think that the great Republic has not really gone to pieces; but he must make up his mind to it, and so must Sir John Ramsden. The only bubble that will surely burst is the secession bubble."

In a letter to his wife and daughters, written after visiting the camps near Washington, he speaks of a regiment and of names that were afterward heard of.

"Of these, the crack one is Gordon's regiment the Massachusetts Second. Lawrence Motley is one of the first lieutenants in this corps, and you would be as pleased as I was to see what a handsome, soldierly fellow he is. And there is no boy's-play before his regiment, for it is the favorite one. All the officers are of the jeunesse doree of Boston-Wilder Dwight, young Quincy, Harry Russell, Bob Shaw, Harry Higginson, of Dresden memory, and others whose names would be familiar to you, are there, and their souls are in their work. No one doubts that the cause is a noble and a holy one; and it is certainly my deliberate opinion that there was never a war more justifiable and more inevitable in history.

"We went to the camp to see the parade. To my unsophisticated eye there was little difference between these young volunteers and regular soldiers. But of course, my opinion is of little worth in such matters. I had a good deal of talk with Colonel Gordon. He is about thirty I should think. He graduated first in his class at West Point-served through the Mexican war, and is, I should think, an excellent soldier. He is very handsome, very calm and gentle in manner, with a determined eye. You will watch, after this, with especial interest, the career of the Massachusetts Second."

Whether he had an outspoken opinion about slavery or no is made manifest in a multitude of significant passages; but one will do to quote:

"When I say that nothing is known about America, I am wrong. Everybody knows that slavery exists there, for everybody in Germany has read Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I am glad of it, because I believe the only way the curse is ever to be taken from the nation is by creating such an atmosphere all round the Slave States that a slaveholder may not be able to thrust his nose outside his own door without scenting that the rankness of his offence is tainting every wind of heaven."

The letters are full of allusions to interesting people of all sorts, literary people, men in high positions in the political and social world, and royalties and nobilities. We are surprised to see what warm and unaffected friendships he had among the really great of both Europe and America. Letters to him from such men as Holmes and Lowell appear in the book in

glimpses; as, for instance, this:

"The Bismarcks are as kind as ever-nothing can be more frank or cordial than their manners. I am there all day long. It is one of those houses where everyone does what one likes. The show apartments where they receive formal company are on the front of the house. Their living-rooms, however, are a salon and diningroom at the back, opening upon the garden. Here there are young and old, grandparents and children and dogs all at once, eating, drinking, smoking, piano-playing, and pistol-firing (in the garden), all going on at the same time. It is one of those establishments where every earthly thing that can be eaten or drunk is offered you, porter, soda water, small beer, champagne, burgundy or claret are about all the time, and everybody is smoking the best Havana cigars every minute."

His own modesty is very delightfully shown in one sentence about Madame de Bismarck. It occurs in a letter to his wife.

"She is so amiable, gentle, and agreeable in every way that I feel as if we had been ten years acquainted. She and her mother have both assured me over and over again that Bismarck was nearly out of his wits with delight when he saw my card. I should certainly not say such a thing to anybody but you; but you and I are not so overburdened with self-esteem but that we may afford to tell each other the truth in such matters, and it really gives me pleasure to know that a man of whom I think so highly has such a warm and sincere friendship for me."

In a letter to Dr. Holmes he gives a graphic picture of Brussels where he read and studied so long, and of the way in which its streets had become to him filled and pervaded with the great spirits of the past:

"I do not know whether you ever were in Brussels. It is a striking, picturesque town, built up a steep promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy, the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be more exquisite in its way than the Grande Place, in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied buildings, bedizzened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hôtel de Ville on one side, with its impossible spire, rising some three hundred and seventy feet into the air, and embroidered on the top with the delicacy of needlework, sugarwork, spiderwork, or what you will. I haunt this place because it is my scene, my theatre. Here were enacted so many deep tragedies, so many stately dramas, and even so many farces, which have been so familiar to me so long, that I have got to imagine myself invested with a kind of property in the place, and look at it as if it were merely the theatre with the coulisses, machinery, drapery, etc., for representing scenes which have long since vanished, and

which no more enter the minds of men and women who are actually moving across its pavements than if they had occurred in the moon. When I say that I know no soul in Brussels I am perhaps wrong. With the present generation I am not familiar. En revanche the