Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/623

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Minor Notices 613 he turned to their statesmen. Ludlow was named, some years later, on a new commission for a similar purpose, created by direct order of the Lord Protector (p. 154), and also made a master in chancery. As late as 1664 he was living in Dublin, then being a man of seventy-four (p. 156). Mr. Taylor does not overrate Ludlow's contribution to the law of Connecticut. He framed the first colonial code, and did it so well that, after two centuries, most of his titles were still preserved in force, wholly in substance, and largely in form (p. 102). Only a skilled lawyer and wise jurist could have accomplished this work, and that Ludlow is the acknowledged author of the code of 1650 gives strong ground for the inference that his was the pen that gave legal shape and precision to the political ideas which, under the lead of Thomas Hooker, were put into the Constitution of 1639. Philip Vickers Fithian : Journal and Letters, 1767-17 74, Student at Princeton College 1770-72, Tutor at Nomini Hall in Virginia 1773-74. Edited for the Princeton Historical Association by J. Rogers Williams. (Princeton, University Library, pp. 344.) The new historical society at Princeton could hardly find a more interesting human document than this for its first publication. Through Mr. Williams's kindness, the readers of this Review were given a taste of the quality of Fithian' s diary in a previous volume (V. 290-319). The whole twelve-months' journal is now printed in full, and very handsomely, though we think it a blemish that the habit of the manuscript in using dashes instead of periods is followed. Most of the volume before us is made up of this diary, with its vivid, gossipy and entertaining picture of life on a great Virginian plantation just before the Revolution. Prefixed to this, how- ever, are several letters of college days, written either by Fithian or to him. They reveal to us a thoroughly good, but lively and pleasant boy, an earnest student, a good son, a youth having in him the making of the devoted patriot he afterwards showed himself They give many pleas- ant glimpses of college life, for which unfortunately no journal of Fith- ian's is extant. At the end are printed ten letters written from Virginia, of which the most interesting is a long letter of advice addressed to Fithian's classmate John Peck, who was to succeed him as tutor to the children of Councillor Carter. The letter marked as addressed to Pela- tiah Webster can hardly have been written to the publicist, a man of forty-nine. There are several really beautiful pictures in the book — the noble old avenue of poplars at Nomini Hall, the Longstreet House at Princeton, Yeocomico Church, the Tayloe house. Mount Airy, and the portrait of Councillor Carter by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Thanks are due to Mr. Williams and the new society for bringing forward so good a doc- ument. In the fifteenth volume of the Collections of the State Historical So- ciety of Wisconsin (Madison, pp. 491) the first place in point of inter-