Dubois, the prefect of police, convinced him however that it sprang from Bernadotte, a view in which the author concurs. The ostensible conductor of the conspiracy was Bernadotte's aide-de-camp, General Simon. Whether he acted on behalf of his chief, or, as he claimed, independently, was left at the time an open question and remains one still. Bonaparte, once the conspiracy was dead, lost interest; and Fouché, already in disfavor, feared to compromise himself in other directions if he brought home the plot either to Moreau, whom he suspected, or to Bernadotte. This work is the first of a series projected by the author on Conspirators and Police, and, aside from its narrower subject which it exhausts, it illustrates effectively these and kindred features of the Consular administration. Though based on research, the narrative is in popular style, and, well translated, it offers at once entertainment and instruction. H. M. BOWMAN.

I Martiri Cosentini del 1844. Documenti inediti. Per Stanislao De Chiara. (Milan, Albrighi, Segati e C., 1904, pp. xxxviii, 157.) Few episodes in the history of Italy's struggles for unity have been made. known so fully by the publication of documents, both official and unofficial, as the insurrection of Cosenza and the heroic expedition of the Bandiera brothers of 1844. This episode was comparatively unimportant. in the extent of territory affected and in the number of its victims, but in the retrospect of history it stands sublimely great in its moral influence and in the heroic patriotism of its leaders in a forlorn hope. Mazzini published extracts from the letters of the Bandiera brothers immediately after their summary execution in 1844. Guardione published a much larger collection of their letters in 1894, and Silingardi another collection in 1896. Storino in his La Sommossa Cosentina (Cosenza, 1898) gives many documents upon the insurrection of March 15, including the despatches of B. di Battifarano, intendente of Calabria Citra, drawn from the state archives of Cosenza. Bonafede in Sugli Avvenimenti de' Fratelli Bandiera (Naples, 1848) and Ricciardi and Lattari in Storia dei Fratelli Bandiera (Florence, 1863) give many important documents upon the expedition, trial, and execution of the Bandiera, and Conflenti, I Fratelli Bandiera (Cosenza, 1862), gives other important documents, including the correspondence of Donadeo, commissary of police in Cosenza. Now the documents of De Chiara, drawn from the state archives and the royal procura of Cosenza, and for the most part unpublished, may be said to complete the historian's evidence upon both the insurrection and the Bandiera expedition; on the former De Chiara gives seventy-three documents, on the latter thirty-two; they consist in great part of the correspondence of Dalia, procuratore generale of the grand criminal court of Cosenza; on the Bandiera expedition some of the documents are reports of Giovanni De Giovanni, royal judge in San Giovanni in Fiore. Dalia was a conscientious magistrate, and the moderation which characterized the fulfilment of his duties in 1844 appears clearly in his reports. They are exceptionally trustworthy and of the first importance. De Giovanni

appears in striking contrast to Dalia. His zeal against the insurgents was such that he wished to give himself the pleasure "of escorting the prisoners from San Giovanni in Fiore to Cosenza, marching with a musket on his shoulder at the head of the police" peculiar conduct this for a judge, but worthily representing Bourbon justice, which rewarded him with the decoration of cavaliere of the royal order of Francis I. His reports illustrate perfectly the spirit of the justice which emanated from Naples.

De Chiara's introduction had been previously published in the Rivista Storica del Risorgimento, III (Turin, 1900). It is of considerable interest, but is by no means a complete and definitive monograph such as it is now possible for a historian to write with these new documents at his disposal. The volume is published as number three in the fourth series of the Biblioteca Storica del Risorgimento Italiano, an important collection of monographs of which the publication had been suspended for two years, and has only now been resumed.

H. NELSON GAY.

Mr. Rollo Ogden's William Hickling Prescott, in the "American Men of Letters" series (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1904, pp. x, 239), makes no pretentions to being anything more than an appendix to Ticknor's life of the historian. Mr. Ogden has had access to the Prescott family papers, including the long series of diaries and "Literary Memorandum Books", and he prints extracts from these, from correspondence not used by Ticknor, and quotations from a wide variety of other sources relating to his subject. It is a welcome addition to the all too little material available in regard to the man who did more than almost any other in his generation to win recognition and respect for American literary effort in Europe.

G. P. W.

Seventy-five Years in Old Virginia, with some Account of the Life of the Author and some History of the People amongst whom his Lot was cast. By John Herbert Claiborne, M.A., M. D., lately Major and Surgeon of the Twelfth Virginia Infantry, etc. (New York and Washington, The Neale Publishing Company, 1904, pp. xvi, 360.) These are the reminiscences of an original secessionist of Petersburg, Virginia. The author was in a position during the latter years of the war to see and hear much that would interest the historian and a good deal of what he saw and heard has been put into his book. He is unreconstructed and therefore views everything through partizan eyes; yet he is not vindictive nor even uncharitable to the "real" soldiers whose business it was to conquer him.

The chapters dealing with Petersburg just prior to the war, "Politics of the Ante-Bellum Period", and the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, with the surrender at Appomattox, in which he had a part, are the most important. He was a member of the legislature in 1859-1860, and in describing his own share in the movement looking towards secession he says (p. 145):

But the position which I took, and which the Secessionists, one with me, assumed, seemed the only safe exit out of the difficulties which environed the State. It was reasonable and consonant with all experience to say that the time to oppose any difficulty was in its inception, and that a bold, determined front, and a readiness for the fray, was the surest road to safety. Had the people of Virginia shown their unity of purpose, instead of division and instead of tampering with compromise, occasion would never have arisen for the exercise of armed resistance.

Doctor Claiborne believes in and defends the caste system which slavery engendered, and he speaks of the ancient Southern civilization as follows:

Capital did not seek to throttle labor, labor did not strike for protection. There was no Socialist . . . the anarchist did not stand with pistol and stiletto ready to stab any representative of honest government in his way . . It is difficult for one who has witnessed the desolation of a country . . . who has seen the highest order of civilization, the structure of the bravest men and of the fairest women of all time, go down in a darkness upon which day can never again break; who has felt the steel in his own body and the iron in his own soul, to submit with meekness to it all, and to suffer in silence.

While the author is thus uncompromisingly Southern, his work has decided value to the student of Virginia history, especially on its local side, and the two speeches made in January, 1860, show well what his party, then in the minority in Virginia, decided to do.

W. E. D.

Custoza, 1866. Per Maggior Generale Alberto Pollio. (Turin, Roux e Viarengo, 1903, pp. 439.) The present volume is the first complete critical military study published in Italy upon this first phase of the Austro-Italian campaign of 1866. It is based largely upon published sources, and makes no contribution of new documents; but it is an excellent piece of work, exhaustive and profound in its examination of conditions and events, and impartial and frank in its criticisms. Pollio praises Austrian valor almost to excess and eulogizes most of the Austrian generals. Italy lost, he says, because of errors of direction, and for want of firmness or obstinacy. Her failure to scout thoroughly on June 23 was fatal. Had the Austrian positions been known, the Italian troops would have been differently placed, and large bodies of troops would not have been out of action on the twenty-fourth. Had the battle been resumed on the twenty-fifth as Victor Emmanuel with his good sense wished, a great error would not have been committed. Archduke Albert strove for a tactical success. That this became a disaster for the Italians was not his merit but their fault. Pollio charges La Marmora with gross incompetence as commander-in-chief, and Della Rocca with having completely failed to understand the situation. However, Brignone acted "as a true general of battle", and Govone, Cugia, and others distinguished themselves for intelligence as well as for bravery.

The volume in its moderation, its elevated patriotism, and its pro

found knowledge of military science does high honor to the Italian army of to-day, in which Pollio holds the grade of major-general. The last word is for the future: "Let the day of supreme test come when and how it will. We believe that then a cry will recall the memories of the past, but will obliterate their sadness the cry of victory!"

H. NELSON GAY.

A biography of a member of an old English Catholic landed family usually has a peculiar interest; for if it is well done it cannot fail to supplement Amherst's History of Catholic Emancipation. Amherst's was a labor of love, and he laid students of English religious, political, and social history under a debt for his two volumes. Still he could not cover the whole field, particularly on the social and educational sides; and much new matter has come to light since Amherst published his history in 1886. The Memoirs of Sir Edward Blount, K. C.B. (edited by Stuart J. Reid and published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London and New York, 1902, pp. vi, 308) are consequently welcome from this and other points of view. Blount was for a short time in the diplomatic service; but his working life was spent as a banker and railway director in Paris. English capital built the early French railways. They were equipped with English plant, and manned with English locomotive engineers. Blount was a director of railways so constructed and worked; and perhaps the most generally valuable chapters of his reminiscences are those which show to what a great extent the railways of France were influenced by English control and English management. Blount was British consul in Paris during the siege, and not the least interesting part of his goodhumoredly written memoirs is that which tells how he handled affairs after Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador, and the British military attaché as well as the British consul, had deemed it expedient to betake themselves out of the beleaguered city.

John Addington Symonds; a Biography. (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903, pp. xxiv, 495.) The chief criticism made upon Mr. H. F. Brown's biography of Symonds, first published in 1895, was that it was too uniformly gloomy; that while setting forth the picture which Symonds drew of himself in his diaries and letters and autobiography, it did not after all present him as he really appeared to those who knew him. This criticism, with others of less importance, Mr. Brown took into careful account when it became his duty to make revisions for a new edition, but decided that he at least could present no other portrait. He must leave the lines as already drawn, especially since those living conversations in which Symonds seemed "youthfully enthusiastic, enthusiastically youthful" were never recorded. So the second edition of the biography differs in no essential respects from the first. It appears now, however, in less expensive form, in one rather than two volumes, and has at the end, instead of the heraldic note and list of writings, an index. E. W. D.

COMMUNICATIONS

To the editors of THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW:

I would not ask for a hearing in reply to the criticism of my History of the United States for Secondary Schools, which appeared in the July number of the REVIEW, (IX, 792-794) if I did not find errors in it that do me injustice, and which I have no doubt that you will wish to correct.

(1.) My account of political development in Massachusetts Bay (pp. 65-66)" is said to be "crammed with errors", and the reviewer specifies four, represented as appearing in the following passage:

At the outset, the general body of the "freemen" of the colony could exercise their political franchise only by being present at the meetings called the "general court." They elected the twelve "assistants provided for in the charter;" the assistants elected the governor; the governor and assistants made and executed laws. But in the second year of the colony the yearly election of the governor was taken from the assistants and given to the general body of freemen; and in the third year a representative legislature was created, formed of deputies from each town.

On these statements the reviewer remarks, first, that "the charter did not provide for twelve' assistants, but for eighteen ", in which he is correct; my error is indubitable; but in the comment that follows I find my critic less accurate. He says:

"At the outset" the assistants did not elect the governor-not until after a great unconstitutional usurpation, which is ignored in the account. The representative legislature was not created in the "third year' but in the fifth; and it was not composed as stated by Mr. Larned.

Now, the facts, as they appear in the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, are these: At the first general court which assembled the whole company, held on October 19, 1630,

It was propounded if it were not the best course that the freemen should have the power of choosing assistants when there are to be chosen, and the assistants from amongst themselves to choose a governor and deputy governor, who with the assistants should have the power of making laws and choosing officers to execute the same. This was fully assented unto by the general vote of the people, and erection of hands. (Records, I, 79.)

As this action was on the occasion of the first meeting of the "general body of the freemen of the colony", only four months after their landing, and as it was the first exercise of "their political franchise", I claim strict correctness in my reference to it as being "at the outset" of the political development of the colony in Massachusetts Bay.

At a meeting of the general court held May 9, 1632 (in the second year of the colony),