George Washington : Patriot, Soldier, Statesman. By James A. Harrison.
(G. P. Putnam's Sons. 5s.)—Professor Harrison has, doubtless, a sufficient reason for the way in which he has allotted the space at his disposal. To most readers the Washing- ton who was Commander-in-Chief of the American forces, and the President of the States for two terms of office, is the Washington whom they know and of whom they desire to hear. The rest of his life goes for little ; but it occupies the greater part of this volume. There is no continuous narrative of the war, and the eight years of the Presidency occupy five-and-twenty pages only. There is this to be said for the arrangement, that we get to know the man in "his habit as he lived." It may be said, indeed, that we are shown one who was a hero to his valet-de-chanibre. Still, this is hardly what we expect in a series devoted to the portrayal of the "Heroes of the Nations." A more serious objection is to the style. The historian has his duty of self-effacement as well as the biographer. The biographer must not intrude his own personality ; the historian must not intrude his style. This is what Professor Harrison is perpetually doing. Here is a passage from the story of the Braddock disaster :—" The yell came from 900 throats, multiplied to 9,000 or perhaps 90,000 by the sinister reverberations of the midsummer wildwood, whose gruesome recesses acted as sounding boards, and shot forth a hundred variations of the harsh and thunderous nymph Echo, whose silent realm had been invaded. It seemed, indeed, as if the wrath of the great god Pan himself had been roused to fury, and all the powers of the raging underworld of myth and fancy had suddenly been lot loose, to swarm upward in invisible wrath and might in defence of their forest children."
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