Historic Towns of the Western States. Edited by Lyman P.
PowelL (G. P. Putnam's Sons. 15s.)—The word "historic" naturally has a significance somewhat different from that which it bears on this side of the Atlantic. Chicago, Cincinnati, Minne- apolis, Kansas City, and Denver are not historic in the same sense as are London and Paris, Bruges, Ghent, Aix-la-Chapelle, Seville, Rome, and Athens. But the editor, in his very instructive introduction, justifies the use of the term. Some of these towns have an interesting past; others have a history in the same way that the first great man of a family may be described as an "ancestor." The plan followed in this volume—one, we may remind our readers, of a series—is to commit the treatment of each subject to a writer specially interested in it. That could hardly have been avoided. E. A. Freeman could probably have written as good a book about Ghent as any Flemish scholar, and Grote or Thirlwall could have treated Athens more satisfactorily than any Athenian-born author. But such towns as Madison, Mackinac, and Omaha have to be described by citizens of their own. In con- sequence, the local colour becomes a little too much pronounced. We offer, however, this criticism with ;diffidence ; of the general interest and value of the volume we have no doubt.
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