d be sacrificed to fanciful
strangeness. Mr. Hildreth has judiciously refrained from
attempting any thing of the kind: but perhaps he has pushed
the mere chronological arrangement to an excess, and given
undue prominence to the discoveries and settlement of North
America by foreigners, in proportion to the scale of his
work. In the execution, Mr. Hildreth has carefully read and
as carefully digested his various authorities, and presented
the results of his studies succinctly, closely, and
comprehensively. In many cases the compendious style is apt
to fall into a vague generality, or the pith of the matter
is liable to be missed; but such is not the case with Mr.
Hildreth's. He states all that he sees, though he would see
more if he possessed a loftier and imaginative mind. We know
not his profession, but there is something lawyerlike in his
work. One subject seems the same to him as another: it is
not so much that he wants variety of power; as that he does
not seem to feel the variety in nature. His book is as much
a digest as a history. The parts in which Mr. Hildreth
succeeds best are those that relate to the social and
religious opinions and practices of the colonists. In fact,
it is as a social history that it possesses character and
value. The author's quiet unimpassioned style presents the
strange peculiarities that obtained among the New England
colonists till within little more than a generation of the
Revolutionary war, and some traces of which still remain."

* * * * *

"THE MEMORIAL, _written by friends of the late Mrs. Osgood_," to which
we have heretofore referred in these pages, is the most beautiful book
published in America during the season, and as an original literary
miscellany it surpasses any volume that ever appeared in the English
language. The _Albion_ says of it:

"Seldom has a more graceful compliment been paid to the
memory of departed worth, than is exhibited in this handsome
volume, which is edited by Mrs. Mary E. Hewitt. It
originated at a chance meeting of a literary coterie, soon
after the death of the gifted and amiable woman in whose
honor it has been put together. When the conversation turned
upon the many claims which she possessed on the affections
and the esteem of those present, it wa