the West, are not only the field of the vast colonization of our century; they are the scene where actors almost forgotten played their part, and where the passion of the play was often deepened into tragedy, long before that struggle of British and French forces on this continent, in which our own colonial annals begin to emerge into the broader light of history.

We need not recite Mr. Parkman's claims to be the explorer of that field. A comparison of this with the "Jesuits in Canada,” will show the same qualities of faithful investigation, clear and vivid description, interesting narrative, and a quick, keen appreciation of the human interest of the story. And besides, this volume shows to still better advantage the writer's personal familiarity with the scenes and populations with which he deals. No picture of savage life is comparable to his for the definite, positive lines in which it is drawn. The romantic halo that once transfigured the brutish and rude existence of the Indian tribes has been fading with all our better knowledge of them. Pitilessly Mr. Parkman brushes away what might be left of it in the field of that distant and early adventure; yet with a keen sense of what was pitiful and tragic in it, as well as what was purely barbarous and grotesque. Nothing can excel in oddity the scenes which the old French explorers have left so fully detailed of their contact with the savage tribes; and they become the more piquant, by the personal and local touches which the historian is able to add from the note-book of his own experience.

The volume, in its general drift and outline, is the biography of La Salle, the ambitious, able, dauntless, tireless, ill-fated explorer of the Mississippi. Mr. Parkman has studied his life afresh, from all the documentary sources within reach, especially from family papers gathered and preserved in Paris; and has succeeded in filling out, with great vigor and life, the sketch which Mr. Sparks had given — interesting, but cold and feeble in comparison-in his "American Biography." In particular, the jealous bad faith, if not positive treachery, which betrayed the heroic explorer to his destruction, is shown with great distinctness; and its shadow is made to fall, in a damaging way, upon the Jesuit party, of whom he was the open foe. The book is apparently quite impartial and fair, whether in telling of the Catholic missionaries who lived and died faithful in their toilsome, hopeless service; or the hardy and heroic fidelity of Tonty; or of the garrulous, vain, jealous, and mendacious Father Hennepin, whose well-known

* See vol. i. of the Second Series.

narrative shows to ill advantage in the light of sober history. We are promised, in a coming volume, the story of "the stormy career of Frontenac," royal governor of Canada, and La Salle's constant friend. No one but Mr. Parkman can have known so well the breadth and wealth of the field he has made his own: a field in which he has created an interest, that will look with eager expectation for each coming instalment of his work.

THE Messrs. Roberts, in their "Handy-Volume Series," have published a book of remarkable interest, whose title we give below.* The author is a man of education and the highest social connections, cousin of the Rev. Richard Chenevix Trench,— who held the difficult, responsible, and hazardous post of Agent of estates in Ireland, during and after the famine of 1846-7. His story of the conspiracies, crimes, sufferings, and imprisonments among the tenantry, diversified with several touching little romances of private life, has the interest and freshness of novelty, after all that has been said and written on that unhappy matter. The narrative is very direct and personal, full of names, incidents, and dates, given apparently with absolute frankness. It is a plainer story of the writer's daring, skill, prudence, and success, under most difficult circumstances, than most men could give or would care to give; but its personal quality is quite essential in the account it would give of the land and people. Nothing can excite warmer interest and commendation, than the way in which hopeless poverty and desperate crime are checked by the unfailing panacea of emigration, and the skill with which this panacea is administered. But it raises the question, too, how far it is right or safe to thrust so much raw material of barbarism upon a foreign country; and it suggests, more vividly than any thing we have seen, an explanation of what is most dangerous in the “Fenian exhibitions of the last few years. One should read it beside Maguire's "Irish in America."

"THE Seven Curses of London"* are neglected children; professional thieves; professional beggars; fallen women; drunkenness ; betting gamblers; the waste of charity. Mr. Greenwood, who began his investigations, two or three years ago, by his experience of one

*Realities of Irish Life. By W. STEWART TRENCH. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

†The Seven Curses of London. By JAMES GREENWOOD, the Casual." Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co.

"Amateur

night in the capacity of a beggar seeking shelter, deals with them in succession, with a gravity of temper, and sense of religious duty, as far as possible from the sensational or merely sentimental way that has been too common. Some of his facts are new, and some of them very pungent and startling,—as when he surprises us with an estimate that 100,000 children wander unclaimed in the streets of London; and tells us something of the jealously guarded mysteries of "baby farming." In most of the lamentable topics he deals with, he could not add much to the information, or the impression, long familiar. But his direct testimony as to several points—particularly as to the mischief of betting among the class most tempted to it, and as to some forms of drunkenness and low amusements among the London poor - is very instructive. The book is less able and impressive, on the whole, than one might have expected. It is as if the writer's mind were oppressed by the gigantic and hopeless proportions of the misery he describes ; while it is by dint of conscience and Christian conviction that he persists in a struggle all the more heroic that it does but stem without beating back the boundaries of evil. And the reader, who has not the stress of the struggle to warm him, is oppressed still more.

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The Writings of Madame Swetchine. Edited by Count Le Falloux. Translated by H. W. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers. nn. 255. (In all points a beautiful little volume. For its quality, see "Chcian Examiner," for November, 1866.)

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NOTE. In the fourth Article of the September number, it should have been stat that the Catholic Church in America, at the present day, is far from being made up so largely of Irish as at the time when the volume under review was written.