Creole Families of New Orleans. By Grace King. (Mac- millan.
30s. net.)—Miss King's local knowledge and enthusiasm have enabled her to collect much interesting information about the leading French families of New Orleans, which was founded by Bienville in 1720 and which, though it remained a French possession for less than half a century, long preserved its French character. She recalls the painful story of the cession of Louisiana to Spain after the Seven Years' War, and the vain protest of the French colonists against being handed over like so many slaves ; the Spaniards, tactless as ever, executed some of the leading citizens and thus alienated their new subjects at the outset. When Napoleon took back Louisiana and sold it to the United States, the shrewder people of New Orleans rejoiced, foreseeing that their city would profit by the opening of free trade with the interior. There were social differences• between the aristocratic French society and the rougher
American immigrants, and there was sharp competition between the French and American land speculators. In the chapter on Bernard de Marigny, head of one of the oldest and wealthiest French families, we are shown how the easy-going seigneur was ruined because he could not adapt himself to the new con- ditions. The book is illustrated with sketches of old French houses and some of the eighteenth-century furniture that has survived.
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