treatment of the Hispanisms (he uses the inharmonious term "hispanicisms") of the letter, which have been mentioned by other critics of Vespucci. These he has carefully collected and classified. He divides them into three classes: first, words reported by others as Hispanisms, but which are really old Italian or dialectical forms; second, undoubted or probable Hispanisms; and third, less certain instances in which it is impossible to say whether the word belongs to the one language or the other. Most students will accept his statement that the letter shows no Portuguese influence, since the so-called Portuguese forms may be resolved into Spanish or Italian. The whole introduction is well worthy a careful study with constant reference to the original and the translation. Professor Northup has performed a service which it is hoped will prove an incitement to other scholars, for there is still much work necessary to be done on the earliest sources of American history.
Less than two decades ago the family, as a social institution with a vitally significant history, was almost a terra incognita save to special students in the fields of anthropology and sociology. Within the last fifteen years, however, excellent historical and social studies of marriage and the family institution have appeared in English, of which the most scholarly is unquestionably Professor Howard's History of Matrimonial Institutions, published in 1904. Dr. Powell's book on English Domestic Relations marks a new era, in which intensive studies of family ideals and practices in certain fruitful periods will increasingly be made.
The author declares the subject of his investigation to be
that of domestic relations in England, including both the contract of marriage (its making and breaking) and the subsequent life of the family. The period involved extends from the first appearance of the subject in English writing up to its first great crisis, a height of clear thinking and vigorous expression on which Milton and Cromwell stand alone.
With painstaking care Dr. Powell has examined a long array of legal and controversial works, dealing with questions of spousals, marriage, and divorce. Some of these writings have been referred to, more or less? briefly, by previous gleaners in this field; others, as the author assures us, "have been examined for the first time in connection with the subject of marriage". In the opening chapters of Dr. Powell's book the development of the heated controversies waged by Anglicans and Dis-
