ation of our national
soil, appeared at the era of the Revolution, preferring English
institutions to our own, and predicting that her government will outlast
our own. Discussions raised upon the present aspect of affairs in either
country will not settle the issue thus opened. A real knowledge of our
own institutions and a reasonable confidence in their permanence are
to be found only in an intelligent and very intimate acquaintance with
their growth and development. In our histories are to be found the
materials of our prophecies.

We welcome, therefore, with infinite satisfaction, the two admirable
volumes whose titles we have set down. For reasons which will appear
before we conclude our remarks upon them, we find it convenient to unite
their titles and to write about them together; but for distinctness of
subject and marked individuality in the mode of treatment, no two books
can stand more widely apart. Abilities and culture and aptitudes of the
very highest order have been brought to the composition of each of
them. An exhaustive use of abundant materials, and a most conscientious
fidelity in digesting them into high-toned philosophical narrations, are
marked features of both the volumes, and we will not venture upon the
ungracious office of instituting comparisons, in these respects, between
their authors. We must make a slight report of the story of each of
them, and of the method and spirit in which it is told, and then
confront them for mutual cross-examination.

Our historians have learned to write their books with full as much
reference to their being read abroad as at home. The problem with which
they first have to deal, therefore, is, how to make the men and the
incidents and the cardinal points of our annals look as large to
foreigners as they do to us. Many of our town-histories are written in
the tone and style of Mr. Poole's "Little Pedlington,"--the epithet
_Little_ being suppressed in the title, but obtruded on every page. The
intensity and emphasis of our historic strain appear to foreigners to be
disproportionate to the subject-matter of the story. Mr. Punch always
represents a Yankee as larger than his garments. His trousers never
cover his ankles; his cuffs stop far short of his wrists; his long neck
extends beyond the reach of even his capacious collar; and the bone in
him lacks amplitude of muscle. But Mr. Punch, with all his wisdom, does
not fully understand the composition of a Yankee, as t