lated notes on Venice; and "the fruit of a rather slow and tedious process of concentrating on this particular object an endless amount of reading and thought is manifest in the work now submitted with diffident satisfaction to the English-speaking public, which may here meet with the means of instituting many comparisons between our own modern practices and opinions and those previously entertained and carried out at Venice, and may more thoroughly realize to what an extent the Republic was our pilot and our instructor."

In its final form, the history fills two handsomely printed volumes of eight hundred pages each, and constitutes the most ambitious attempt yet made to present the history of Venice to English readers. The narrative, which in the edition of 1860 stopped with the death of the Doge Foscari in 1457, is now brought down to the extinction of the republic in 1797, while the account of political and social life which then occupied but two chapters now fills twenty-five.

Substantially half of the present work is new, and has profited by the new material contained in the "Calendar of Venetian State Papers," the later volumes of Romanin's "Storia Documentata," and various recent publications on Venetian antiquities. In the first volume, however, the indebtedness to recent investigations is very slight. This portion of the work has been to a considerable extent rewritten, and the form of expression has been considerably improved; but if the style is that of maturer years, the scholarship is still in all essential respects that of 1860, and by no means the best of its day. The author seems to appreciate the importance of new information on the later period of Venetian history, for he speaks of the "Calendar of State Papers" as reducing "to waste-paper the entire corpus of old-fashioned literature, produced from time to time in Italy itself and elsewhere, on the history and constitution of the Republic"; but he seems to be ignorant that the same kind of work has been going on, though less obtrusively, in the mediæval field. If the amount of really new material on the earlier period is less abundant, it is at least considerable; and the active investigations of the last forty years, especially in Germany, have thrown new light on almost every phase of the history of mediæval Italy and its relations with the other peoples of its time. Upon Mr. Hazlitt this steady accumulation of special studies and monographs seems to have had no effect, as

It is

regards either his information or his methods. There is the same easy and haphazard use of chroniclers, the same lack of critical discernment. We find the same shadowy account of the beginnings of Venice, the same vagueness as to its relations to the Eastern and Western Empires, the same absence of that sound knowledge of the general history of Italy and Europe which is essential for a satisfactory treatment of so many-sided a theme. true that Charlemagne is no longer called "the French emperor," but it is a doubtful improvement to make the Venetians the descendants of "the warlike Northmen " (p. 27). The conquests of the Lombards are still said to have been divided according to "the prevailing system of feuds " (p. 14). Michaud and Sismondi are still the chief authorities for the Crusades, and Lebeau still does duty for the Byzantine empire, which is described in the cheap and easy fashion so common before its history began to be seriously studied. We read (p. 54) of "the sterile annals of the reign of the Doge Tradenigo," although it is now known that it was his policy which freed Venice from Byzantine control. Again and again, in Volume I., one finds the survival of outgrown views and the reliance upon antiquated authorities.

In the second volume the quality of the narrative improves. It is plain that the author is no longer struggling under the weight of an old book; he has reached a fresh field, and writes with greater ease and freedom. His investigations are not thorough or exhaustive, but he gives a truer impression of modern Venice, and there is greater unity in style and treatment. Undoubtedly the most interesting chapters are the last, where, having conducted the republic through its declining days to its suppression by Napoleon, the author enters upon an extended account of Venetian life. Everything is here- canals and squares, churches and palaces, the constitution and the laws, industry and commerce, art and letters, food and drink and amusements, all that the traveller may wish to know of the life of the Venice of an older day is set forth in this gossippy compendium of Venetian lore. Very interesting it all is, but loose and ill-arranged and undigested. These chapters evidently represent the result of years of note-taking, but the mark of the scrapbook is still fresh upon them. After all, they are not history, nor since the sources from which the information is derived are usually left unnoted— are they materials for history.

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half a million) are expended for the religious, charitable, and educational advantage of the commonwealth, by maintaining the Christian religion, furnishing the means of a good education, comforting and succoring the sick, relieving the needy, cultivating the taste of the people by the refining influences of music, architecture, and beautiful worship, and thus promoting the best interests of society and contributing toward the security and permanence of our common civilization. The maintenance of "Old Trinity" and her seven chapels with a communicant list of about seven thousand and a staff of clergy numbering twentyfive; the maintenance of a system of parish schools, industrial schools, choir schools, and Sunday schools; aid regularly given to ecclesiastical and educational institutions outside of the city; the support of hospitals and infirmaries, all these indicate the uses which Trinity Church makes of her income, and faintly implies the potency of the Parish as a factor in the civic life of New York.

Trinity has been the mother of churches in New York City and elsewhere. Until recently, although without the name or the honor, she has stood in the position, done the work, and furnished the example, of the Cathedral of the Diocese of New York. After the close of the Revolutionary War and the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country, Bishops Provoost, Moore, and Hobart were Rectors of Trinity Church while serving in succession as Bishops of New York. Bishops Onderdonk and Wainwright were assistant

Duane, Harrison, Howard, Lispenard, Lodge, Ludlow, Morris, Reade, Varick, White, and Willett Streets were named after men and families who were prominent in the history of the parish.

The first volume does more than draw upon the commonly accepted authorities for a setting and background for the ecclesiastical narrative. The editor exhibits his independent character as a historian, and is able, in more than one instance, to correct errors which have been made and perpetuated in the history of the city and province. The second volume contains more that is of the nature of parochial annals than the first, and bears a closer relation to the history of the Church which was at that time in process of organization in America. But like the first, it presents many excerpts from records and from local newspapers which give us an occasional insight into the customs and manners of the people in the American metropolis as it grew into importance in the early years of the nineteenth century.

It remains to be said that the books are published in a style to delight the eye of the bibliophile and are illustrated with photogravure portraits, fac-similes of important documents, and views of the buildings which constitute Trinity Parish.

ARTHUR HOWARD NOLL.

Nor are these all the reasons Trinity has to offer for setting forth her history on such a gigantic scale. In the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary periods, covered in the first volume, her history is the history of New York, both the city and the province, so that it is impossible to tell the one without also telling the other. How closely interwoven is Trinity Parish with the early history of New York City may be seen by observing the street nomenclature of the lower part of the city. There are Church Street and a Chapel Street; a Vesey and a Barclay Street, named after Rectors of Trinity; while Bayard, Chambers, Charlton, Clarkson, Delancey, Desbrosses,

COLONIZATION IN ALL AGES.* Mr. Henry C. Morris's "History of Colonichapters, deals with ancient Colonies. Part II., in four chapters, is devoted to the middle ages. Part III., in twenty-eight chapters, relates to modern times. Six chapters are given to Portuguese and Spanish Colonies, three to Dutch, six to French, eleven (including nearly all of the second volume) to English, with a chapter on minor colonization, and one in con

clusion.

The plan, it will be seen, is an extensive one, covering the whole world and all recorded time. This is a large undertaking, and implies for its adequate execution many years' familiarity with the subject and a vast amount of

research. It relates to one of the most momentous world-movements with which history deals a movement just now in the full tide

*THE HISTORY OF COLONIZATION, from the Earliest Time to the Present Day. By Henry C. Morris. In two volumes. New York: The Macmillan Co.

of completion. To draw together the innumerable scattered threads so as to weave a whole out of what may appear utterly isolated and confused; to realize clearly that Da Gama and Columbus and Frobisher and Raleigh and Clive and Livingstone and Stanley are, after all, workers at the same gigantic task; to show in luminous outline how that task has been wrought by many hands and in many climes until amid tumult and travail we may now see it approaching full realization, this is a task for one of the greatest historians of all the ages. Perhaps no one will be able to perform it until the twentieth century too is gone, and the whole can be understood in the light of the conclusion.

Mr. Morris has gathered much valuable material relating to modern colonies and their political and economic conditions. To be sure, these conditions are undergoing continual change, and facts and figures need incessant revision in order not to be misleading at any given time. Still, it is very convenient to find in one place such matter as may be found in these two volumes. Perhaps in so small compass it would be difficult to avoid treating some things in very general terms, as, for instance, in dealing with British West Africa (II. 239, ff). One could perhaps wish that the narrative depended less on cyclopædias (as evidenced inter alia by citations in footnotes, e. g., pp. 245–54), and more on documents at first hand. The scholar of history, too, will hardly regard the historical treatment as satisfactory. The author is evidently more at home in dealing with descriptive analysis than in treating history.

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A

The bibliography is extensive, but of comparatively little value because uncritical. critical bibliography would in itself be an excellent contribution to scholarship on this most important subject. Such an undertaking would require a vast amount of labor and very delicate discrimination. But if it could be treated with the patient research and scholarly acumen which mark such a monumental work as Gross's Bibliography of Medieval Municipalities," for instance, we should in time have at hand an indispensable guide for all students. The mass of literature dealing with colonial subjects is enormous. Official reports, correspondence, and acts of legislation, are of vast bulk. There are innumerable books of travel, of very different purposes and value- many of them sadly padded. There are biographies and histories. of all sorts, some mere ephemeral partisan effu

sions, some the hasty and superficial work of newspaper correspondents, some the serious productions of competent scholars. There are the discussions of many special subjects, geographical, ethnological, economic. An enumeration of some of these, such as is found in Mr. Morris's book or in the "Statesman's Year Book," for example, is somewhat convenient. A critical compilation of all of them would be of incalculable value.

HARRY PRATT JUDSON.

MISS TARBELL'S NAPOLEON.*

Several years ago, when the tide of interest in Napoleon was running at full flood, Miss Ida M. Tarbell contributed a serial Life of Napoleon to the third and fourth volumes of "McClure's Magazine." In 1895, on its completion as a serial, it was published in book form, profusely illustrated by a series of portraits from the collection of Mr. Gardner G. Hubbard; and the handsome volume before us is the second edition of this book, "with illustrations selected from those in the first." These pictures, now as then, constitute a series of personal documents" which surpass in interest the fluent and entertaining narrative of familiar things in which they are set. Every stage of that eventful career, from Brienne to St. Helena, is suggested by these likenesses of the best-known figure in modern history.

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As to the text, it may be said that Miss Tarbell has an alert eye for the picturesque, and a trained instinct for selecting and grouping impressive scenes; and these gifts had full course in the pages of a popular magazine at the time of flood referred to. Now that it is really more than a century since Napoleon made his appearance as the man of action in Paris streets, and we are no longer suffused with the centennial enthusiasm, these

"Res gestæ regumque ducumque et tristia bella " will be as they have been before-estimated more coolly. Miss Tarbell is a bit of a heroworshipper, and takes a steadily favorable view

of all of her hero's acts and most of his motives. Her account of the "punishment" of the Duc d'Enghien and the "acquisition" of the art treasures of Italy, together with her omission of such tragedies as the shooting of the two thousand prisoners at Jaffa, suggest an attitude

*THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. With a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French. By Ida M. Tarbell. Illustrated. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co.

of mind toward Napoleon hardly assumed by any American writer since Mr. J. S. C. Abbott. In her summary, indeed, she admits his limitations and contradictions (p. 294): "He was the greatest genius of his time, perhaps of all time; yet he lacked the crown of greatness that high wisdom born of reflection and introspection which knows its own powers and limitations, and never abuses them; that fine sense of proportion which holds the rights of others in the same solemn reverence it demands for its own." This is true; but it is not shown by the story of his life as Miss Tarbell tells it.

A much more impartial estimate is the very interesting sketch of the Empress Josephine, added as new material to the present edition. Miss Tarbell sums up, fairly and kindly, the defects and amiable qualities of the Creole girl who became for a while the virtual Empress of Europe, when she says (p. 452), “ A candid survey of her life destroys the heroine, but it leaves a woman who through a stormy life kept a kindly heart toward friend and enemy and who at last attained rectitude of conduct." The book is made useful as well as entertaining by a table of the Bonaparte family, a chronological table, and a good index.

The "Sailor's

Log" of

JOSIAH RENICK SMITH.

BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.

Admiral Evans.

Rear-Admiral Evans, popularly known as "Fighting Bob," certainly has a story to tell, and he tells it in a plain, sailorlike way, in the neatly-made volume entitled "A Sailor's Log" (Appleton). The title of the book fairly indicates its quality both of style and matter. There is no attempt at fine writing, everything being set down substantially as it happened, with business-like brevity, as if the narrator were drawing up an account of himself and his professional services for the information of his official superiors. There is plenty of life and color, however, and a good deal of rough humor seasoned occasionally with expressions of the forcible sort that at one time brought down upon Fighting Bob" the publicly expressed disapproval of a section of the clergy. Certain critics of the present volume have been carping at the author for blowing his own trumpet therein somewhat loudly, and it must be owned he shows no disposition to deliberately make light of his adventures. And why should he? A parade of modesty is almost as bad as braggadocio, and Rear-Admiral Evans, a frank man if ever there was one, steers his own normal course midway between these offensive extremes. He does not boast, nor does he angle for compli

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ments with the old, old bait of self-depreciation. He tells his story as he remembers it, and if it is on the whole creditable to himself, well and good. The book is cast in autobiographical form, and it begins at the beginning, namely, with the writer's childhood in Virginia, where at six he was, as he pleasurably remembers, the proud owner of "a gun, a pony, and a negro boy" - locally indispensable chattels, all three. In the opening chapters, life in old Virginia and an early trip to the West are pleasantly sketched, followed by an account of the author's cadetship at Annapolis. The main narrative begins with the account of the author's services in the Civil War, and then follows the diversified story of cruises to the Orient, to Africa, to South America, to Behring Sea, to the Baltic, and so on.

An interesting episode tells of the Kiel celebration,

which the author attended as commander of the cruiser "New York." The volume closes with a

lively résumé of the naval operations of the SpanishAmerican war.

Mrs. Gilbert's

reminiscences of stage-life.

There are fourteen illustrations.

It is seldom that we find a more interesting and concise autobiographical sketch than "The Stage Reminiscences of Mrs. Gilbert" (Scribner). The book traces the life of a woman who has held a highly honored place in American theatrical history for over half a century; the theatre-going public needs no introduction to that sterling actress and estimable woman, Mrs. Anne Hartley Gilbert. For many years her friends have enjoyed listening to her delightful flow of reminiscence and anecdote; it has been a real sorrow to many of them that so much of interest should live only in their memories, and they have often urged the writing of such a book as the one under consideration. "But why?" she would invariably answer. "I've been so long before the public that everybody knows all about me. Besides, I am not at all interesting, just by myself. I have always said that actresses and actors, who are good for anything, give the very best of themselves to their audiences when on the stage. The private life doesn't count." But her friends' advice prevailed, and the book has been given us. From it we learn that Mrs. Gilbert was born in England-in Rochdale, Lancashire, not far from Manchester. She came to America in 1849, and always called herself a "forty-niner." In 1869 she joined the theatrical forces of Augustin Daly, with whom she was associated until his death in 1899. The account of her first days in this country, which were spent in the West, then crude and wild, are sad and even pathetic. Her first stoppingplace was Milwaukee, after a visit to a settlement on the edge of the wilderness, in which Mr. Gilbert had invested and lost all their little fortune. They were glad to accept positions in a local theatre at an extremely low salary. In 1851 they went to Chicago, travelling in winter by open wagon, and obliged to bind themselves in blankets to keep from freezing. The hardships and the forgotten dramas