Mason: Chapte^^s from Illinois History 825 authors, as a rule, appear to be much more interested in the remote his- tory of the states in which the towns they write about are situated than in the history of the towns themselves, and it is this lack of local coloring, so to speak, that causes the present volume to suffer by a comparison with its predecessors. Not that the South is lacking in towns of historic inter- est, for in no other part of the United States would a proper study of urban beginnings yield more fruitful results. The trouble seems to lie mainly in the absence of a trained corps of investigators. Comparatively little, for example, is said by any of these writers about city charters, municipal activity, statistics of wealth and population, or, indeed, any- thing else that is likely to prove either of interest or value to the student of local institutions. Perhaps the best chapters are those represented by Mr. Yates Snow- den's "Charleston," the late Mr. William Wirt Henry's "Richmond," President Lyon G. Tyler's " Williamsburg," Mr. Peter J. Hamilton's "Mobile," Professor George Petrie's " Montgomery," Judge Joshua W. Caldwell's " Knoxville," and Mr. Lucien V. Rule's "Louisville." It is noteworthy that in the article on New Orleans nothing whatever is said about such topics as Lafitte, the Civil War, or reconstruction. The book is generously illustrated. It contains a good index, and is comparatively free from typographical errors. And in spite of the imperfections indi- cated above, those who may perchance read the volume will not only get a better knowledge of the romance of the Old South and the promise of the New, but they will also find scattered throughout its pages many im- portant references to original sources. B. J. Ramage. Cliaptcrs from Illinois History. By Edward G. Mason. (Chicago : Herbert S. Stone and Co. 1901. Pp. 322.) The ambition of the late Edward G. Mason, for some time president of the Chicago Historical Society, to write a scholarly and exhaustive history of the state of Illinois found realization only in five "chapters " now brought out by a Chicago firm as a posthumous work. Probably only the first of these five fragments, that entitled "The Land of the Illinois," is in its final and accepted form ; yet no doubt a large part of the remaining detached essays would have found a place in the completed work. They bear the titles: "Illinois in the Eighteenth Century," " Illinois in the Revolution," "The March of the Spaniards across Illi- nois " and " The Chicago Massacre " (of 1812). The first was printed by the Fergus Company of Chicago, in 1881, and the third in the Mag- azine of American History for May, 1886. The others have never ap- peared in print. The " Land of the Illinois " begins with what the author regards as the earliest written reference to the Illinois Indians, "a nation where there is a quantity of buffalo," as marked on the map of New France made by Champlain in 1632. From this starting-point, the narrative VOL. VI.— 54.
