account of the work itself or of the way in which it was done. Trained
by long experience in public business, and intimately acquainted
by long residence in Washington with the methods of diplomatic
negotiation and interpretation, he was eminently fitted to be the
colleague of Mr. Evarts as counsel for the government before the
Geneva arbitration. Here he undertakes to give an account of the
task there brought to a result so favorable to the United States.
Unluckily, he shows that he is always and only an advocate. Much that
may have been useful for his duties in that office is prominent in a
disagreeable way in his recital of the Geneva award. His language is
loose and offensive, often without meaning to be so, but oftener in
a way that shows how much he must have been galled by the lord
chief-justice of England. Whatever Sir Alexander Cockburn may have
done there, and however much he may have fallen from his high estate
as one of the arbitrators to the less dignified position of an
advocate for English claims, he will have a sweet revenge in seeing
the anger that he has excited in one of the American representatives,
now become their spokesman. Mr. Cushing falls into the blunder that
was once so common in our American state papers as to give good cause
for that happy phrase of Nicholas Biddle--"Western Orientalisms." The
tone of the book, which ought to be a simple story, is stilted and
rhetorical. The result of all the long discussions is the best praise
of our American statesmen who were its authors, but it is dwarfed and
lessened by the fulsome praise given to the foreign representatives
who brought it about. Of "bad language," in keeping with the
bad spirit of the book, the following may serve as specimens:
"Pretensiveness," "frequentation," "annexion," "capitulations"
instead of "treaties," "monogram" for "monograph," "it needs to,"
"howmuchsoever," "law-books invested with the reflection of fine
scenery," "imposed itself," "I demand of myself," and other such
phrases without number.

Once done with Sir Alexander Cockburn and the work at Geneva, Mr.
Cushing shows himself and his country to much better advantage in
discussing the "Mixed Commission" now sitting at Washington, the
Northwest Boundary, the Fisheries, and the general provisions of the
Washington treaty. He has, however, simply forestalled the ground
for some better writer on the important history which belongs to that
negotiation, and will give the re