est in the history of the country, and under proper rule and regulations making the collection available to the public. It is the intention of the society to publish from time to time rare and curious manuscripts, and interesting accounts of the history and traditions of Tarrytown and its vicinity. THE RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, at its meeting on the 14th of May, General Horatio Rogers in the chair, listened to a paper on the "Curiosities of Historical Portraiture" from Hon. William J. Hoppin, ex-secretary of the American legation in London. Among the many illustrations of his theme Mr. Hoppin cited instances where the artists in the past ages introduced portraits of themselves and their friends in sacred mythological or historical subjects. He afterward mentioned cases where the portrait of one man was used in making the picture of another, and when one man had actually sat for the likeness of another long since dead. He alluded to the portrait of Charles the First, by Van Dyck, lately purchased by the British Government, as a curiosity of portraiture, not only on account of its artistic merit, but of the immense price which was paid for it. He spoke of the fact that the accuracy of Van Dyck's portraits of the king was tested by a comparison with the monarch's remains exhumed in 1813, and quoted other instances where posthumous studies had been or might have been made for artistic purposes. THE MINISINK VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY held an interesting meeting on the 28th of May, the president, Rev. S. W. Mills, D.D., presiding. The paper of the evening was read by Rev. A. A. Haines of Hamburg, New Jersey, which gave at length the early history of the Wellings of Warwick, showing the ancestry of Colonel John Hathorn, the subject of the paper, who was a soldier and patriot of the Revolution, born in Delaware in 1749. He was appointed colonel of a regiment of Orange militia in 1775, and his career was one of unusual interest. THE LINNEAN SOCIETY met April 6, Vice-President Dr. J. S. Stahr occupying the chair. The donations to the museum consisted of an iron candlestick and an odd-shaped corn-sheller, both of the last century, donated by Mr. William Roeting of Elizabethtown. An edition of Pope's Dunciad, printed in 1769, was donated by Dr. S. S. Rathvon. John K. Small donated sixty-one specimens of plants to the county herbarium. The donations to the library consisted of the transactions of the American Philosophical Society and also of the Academy of Natural Sciences, current numbers of the U. S. Patent Office Gazette, odd numbers of magazines, prospectuses, etc. Mrs. A. F. Eby filed a list of corrections in Mr. Small's list as read at the January meeting, and also reported seven new plants as having been found by her in the county. It was reported that the county herbarium had been rearranged and the specimens poisoned by Mr. J. K. Small, and a vote of thanks was tendered him for his labor. After the transaction of some miscellaneous business the society adjourned to meet on Saturday, May 25, at 2.30 P.M. HISTORIC AND SOCIAL JOTTINGS It is an interesting description of Thoreau, by William Ellery Channing, that has caught Mr. Stedman's eye to perpetuate in his Literature of the Republic. "In height, he was about the average; in his build, spare, with limbs that were rather longer than usual, or of which he made a longer use. His face once seen could not be forgotten. The features were quite marked; the nose aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits of Cæsar (more like a beak, as was said); large, overhanging brows above the deepest-set blue eyes that could be seen, in certain lights, and in others gray-eyes expressive of all shades of feeling, but never weak or near-sighted; the forehead not usually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and purpose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought when silent, and giving out when open a stream of the most varied and unusual and instructive sayings. His hair was a dark brown, exceedingly abundant, fine and soft; and for several years he wore a comely beard. His whole figure had an active earnestness, as if he had no moment to waste. The clenched hand betokened purpose. In walking he made a short cut if he could, and when sitting in the shade or by the wall-side seemed merely the clearer to look forward into the next piece of activity. Even in the boat he had a wary, transitory air, his eyes on the outlook-perhaps there might be ducks, or the Blondin turtle, or an otter, or a sparrow." Channing further speaks of Thoreau as a “plain man in his features and dress, one who could not be mistaken. This kind of plainness is not out of keeping with beauty. He sometimes went so far as homeliness, which again, even if there be a prejudice against it, shines out at times beyond a vulgar sense. No person was easier misapplied by the cultivated class than Thoreau. Singular traits run through his writing. His sentences will bear study; meanings not detected at the first glance, subtle hints which the writer himself may not have foreseen, appear. It is a good English style, growing out of choice reading and familiarity with the classic writers, with the originality adding a piquant humor and unstudied felicities of diction. He was not in the least degree an imitator of any writer, old or new, and with little of his times or their opinions in his books. No matter where he might have lived or under what circumstances, he would have been a writer; he was made for this by all his tendencies of mind and temperament; a writer because a thinker and even a philosopher, a lover of wisdom." " There is so much written at this time about literature and literary work that the comments of T. W. Higginson will be read with interest: If it be said that literary people must live, and that literature is a precarious means of support, the obvious reply would be that all means of income are precarious, and literature no more so than the rest. Whatever employment one chooses, he must take the risk of failure in it. Many a lawyer has literally almost no clients; many a physician has hardly any patients: and why should a writer expect to be more secure? His possible prizes in money are not so great as the lawyer's, probably, but they are greater than those of the physician or the clergyman; and the blanks are less, on the whole, than in either of these occupations. I have known men of all these professions who were absolutely unemployed. A lawyer of unusual attainments, returning in middle life to the home of his youth, told me that for one year he had not a single client, great or small; he did not so much as draw a will or a deed. I have never known a decently equipped literary man or woman to be left thus hopelessly stranded there was always something to be earned, even at a low price. Apparently the bitterest of these complaints emanate from literary men in large cities who live face to face with the vast successes of the stock exchange, and cannot be satisfied so long as the nation does not furnish them with corresponding incomes. They do not recognize that perhaps it is poverty which has drawn out of them whatever approach to genius they have shown; and that if they gained the millions which they seem to themselves to deserve, perhaps the genius might vanish, like the song of a canary which is fed too well." The methods of literary production are an interesting study apart from their results. Many original and profound thinkers cannot work in the midst of a noise. Antiquity furnishes innumerable instances where light was considered an obstacle to the action of the mind. In Plutarch's time they showed a subterraneous place of study built by Demosthenes, where he often staid continuously for two or three months at a time. Malebranche darkened his apartment whenever he wrote. Lord Chesterfield, acting on the same principle, advised that his pupil--whose attention was diverted by every passing object— should be instructed in a darkened apartment. But then we come to Haydn, who would never sit down to compose without being in full dress, with his great diamond ring on his finger, and the finest paper lying near upon which to copy his musical compositions. When Rousseau was writing his celebrated romance, he was curiously inspired by some rose-colored knots of ribbon that tied his portfolio, and also with his elegant paper and brilliant ink; while Cumberland's liveliest comedy, The West Indian, was purposely written in an unfurnished room close in front of an Irish turf-stack, because brilliant rooms and pleasant prospects distracted his attention. For fifty years a secluded, naked apartment, with only a desk, chair, and sheet of paper was the study of Buffon. Wolf, the German metaphysician, resolved his algebraic problems in bed and in darkness. Poets, we are told, in all ages of the world, have conceived their best work in the silence of night. BOOK NOTICES AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LOCAL CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. BY GEORGE E. How ARD. Vol. I. Development of the Township, Hundred, and Shire. [Extra Volume IV. of Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Edited by Herbert B. Adams.] 8vo, pp. 526. Baltimore, Maryland. 1889. Publication Agency of the Johns Hopkins University. The motto of this excellent work, "History is past politics, and politics present history," is the key to its varied and instructive contents. The author in his opening paragraph says: "One of the most interesting and important results of the study of comparative sociology is the disclosure of the fact that the family and not the individual was the unit of ancient society. But the ancient or patriarchal family was something quite different from the modern. In the first place it was a much more extended group, embracing under the headship of the eldest valid ascendant all agnatic descendants and all persons united to it by adoption, as well as clients and other dependents. Again, the authority of the house-father was of a most despotic character, though exercised during his entire lifetime over even the married sons and their wives and children; the patriarch's arbitrary commands were originally the only forms of law. The family was the germ from which have been evolved, as in concentric circles, all the forms of political organism." The first chapter of this volume deals with the clan, which was no artificial product, with the old English town organization, showing how by an interesting but entirely natural process it was transformed into the manor, and with the growth and development of the ancient parish, and its constitutional government. In the second chapter we come to the rise of the New England town, which was a continuity in general outline with that of the mother country, and we catch the drift of its relation to the General Court-the source of authority. The township in the Middle and Southern colonies forms the third chapter, and the reader is shown how the feudal tenures of continental Europe were transplanted to the province of New York, together with the general features of the early parishes in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, of which that of Vir ginia was the most complete reproduction of the contemporary English parish, and a general model for its neighbors. The manorial institutions attained their fullest development in Maryland. The fourth chapter, which closes part I., treats of the rise of the township in the western states, and is one of the most interesting studies in the volume. Part II. and Part III. are devoted successively to the "Hundred " and the "Shire." The seventh chapter is entitled "The Rise of the County in the New England Colonies," and the evolution of the courts fills some of its best pages. In the tenth chapter we find the genesis of the commissioner system in the Northwest Territory," and a full account of the functions of the county officers. Twentythree pages are devoted to a general list of the authorities cited, which will prove invaluable to the future student, and the work is provided with a good index. THE STORY OF OHIO. By ALEXANDER BLACK. [The Story of the States. Edited by Elbridge S. Brooks.] 8vo, pp. 326. Boston D. Lothrop & Company. This bright and readable story of the rise and development of the great state of Ohio deserves unqualified praise. The field being so large, and the famous liberty-giving ordinance of 1787 has been so thoroughly engrossing to the writers of Ohio history heretofore, that the condensation of historic material into a picturesque and captivating narrative is a marvel of literary skill. Mr. Black has popularized his theme without sacrificing any part of its trustworthy character. Young people will read because the pages of his book are attractive, and when they have finished the work something will be left in their minds of permanent value. The settlement of Marietta is very pleasantly described, and the illustration of the arrival of the pioneers on page 95 is much better than the average picture in similar histories. In sketching figures of the men and women of a hundred years ago, the ordinary artist is inclined to represent them as old and ugly, whereas they were in the flush and vigor of youth at the time represented, and many of them of exceptional personal beauty. This was especially true of the first settlers on the Ohio river, many of whose portraits are treasured by their descendants. The author touches Ohio's material progress, and the later and present condition of the state, which now stands first among the states in the value of farming land, second in the number of farms of all sizes, and third in the number of dwellings, manufactories, and in the capital employed in railroads. He writes of Ohio's educational system, of her three hundred colleges and academies, of her newspapers, her literary children, her musical and artistic movements and of her many distinguished statesmen. He says: "Ohio has sent four men to the White House, two to the chief justice's chair in the Supreme Court of the United States, and three of her generals were selected by congress for special honors conferred on no other military heroes since Washington. It has long since become a national joke that Ohio 'grows presidents' as readily as she does wheat. 'Ohio understands the presidential game so well,' said Chauncey M. Depew in a recent speech, 'that she has not only arranged it herself within her borders, but she has studied the quality and the peculiarity of presidential lightning so as to put somebody wherever it is likely to strike.'" THE FISHERIES AND FISHERY INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES. By GEORGE BROWN GOODE, and a staff of associates. Section v., vol. ii. History and Methods of the Fisheries, in two volumes, with an atlas of two hundred and fifty-five plates. Square quarto, pp. 881. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 1887. This is one of the most interesting issues yet received from the commissioners of fisheries, who deserve unqualified praise for the mass of practical information condensed within its covers. It is difficult to particularize in a work of such magnitude, which contains so much that is good, but every one interested in fisheries should read the "History and Present Condition of the Fishery," by A. Howard Clark The statistics in regard to Whale Fishery" are important, and the same writer furnishes a valuable chapter on the "Black Fish and Porpoise Fisheries," and the "Pacific Walrus Fishery." Henry W. Elliot describes the "Fur Seal Industry of Alaska," "The Sea Lion Hunt," and the "Sea Otter Fishery." James G. Swan writes of the "Fur Seal Industry of Cape Flattery," Washington Territory; and A. Howard Clark discusses the "Antarctic Fur Seal and Sea Elephant Industries," and the "North Atlantic Seal Fishery." Frederick W. True treats of the turtle and terrapin fisheries; Ernest Ingersoll of the oyster, clam, scollop, and kindred industries; and Richard Rathburn of the sponge fishery and trade. The atlas is a large-sized volume in itself, and its illustrations are excellent. AMERICAN RESORTS, with notes upon their climate. By BUSHROD W. JAMES, A.M., M.D. 8vo, pp. 285. Philadelphia and London: F. A. Davis. 1889. 46 climate. It is laden with information of the most useful and valuable character. It does not aim at a scientific consideration of the manysided subject of climatology, but furnishes the knowledge which thousands desire regarding the climate in various sections of the country, and defines the route for pleasant summer trips. Of the interior of California, the protection from cold insures a warm winter-the temperature resembles that of South Italy. "The climate of mountainous regions," we are told, possesses certain characteristics, such as diminished air pressure, decreased temperature, increased electric tension, dryness and purity of air, as well as abundance of ozone and sunshine.' The description of the numerous mountain resorts is very interesting. Each has its peculiar attractions, of which the author proceeds to speak in detail. The White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Green Mountains of Massachusetts and Vermont, the Adirondacks of New York, the Catskills, the Alleghany and Blue Ridge ranges, Mauch Chunk in Pennsylvania, the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, all pass in review. Of the Yosemite valley he says: "The health-seeker can find in this valley ample opportunity for rest and recreation for a greater part of the summer, in exploring the gorges, climbing the cliffs and mountain-sides, visiting the beautiful lakes. fishing, gunning, and roaming around among the scenes of beauty that here abound." The work contains a superb map of the United States and Mexico, which is in itself worth the price of the volume. This book is intended for invalids and those who desire to preserve good health in a suitable A LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, from the earliest settlement to the present time. Compiled and edited by EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN and ELLEN MACKAY HUTCHINSON. In ten volumes. Vol. VII. Royal 8vo, pp. 582. New York: Charles L. Webster & Co. 1889. This important library of literature is now rapidly approaching completion. The seventh volume is devoted to the period from 1835 to 1860, and embraces selections from the works of many well-known authors and scholars. It opens with the poem "Old Ironsides," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the reader then turns thirty-seven pages of the varied writings, grave and gay, of this gifted American, all of which may be studied with fresh interest by his admirers. An extract from Elihu Burritt's autobiography is wisely placed upon record in this collection; a sketch of Margaret Fuller is given as an example of the literary work of William Henry Channing; a tribute to Abraham Lincoln represents Cassius M. Clay; three selections from his lectures introduce Wendell Phillips; |