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596 Revieius of Books It is no doubt true that many of us, having traced events to their causes, rest content with that achievement alone. Things done have too much the effect of finality. One concedes Professor Macy's general con- tention, but he is not convincing when he tries to point out just how the Whigs could have kept their party alive, drawn to their support both the anti-slavery men of the North and the conservative men of the South, and so saved the Union without war. It was the blunders and sins of men, and no mere harsh decree of fate, that cost us so many precious lives. But it was not the blunders and sins of the Whig party alone. We were expiating the follies and crimes of centuries, not those of a decade merely. These had brought about such a state of things, such a binding together of dissimilar civilizations, such antagonisms between sections, such bitterness of feeling, that one looking back no farther than the year 1850 can say with reason that division and war were then clearly inevitable, whether President Taylor lived or died, whether Clay's com- promise measiires passed or not. In the great Greek tragedies, Fate con- trols ; but Fate, being interpreted, means ancient sin. Professor Macy's later chapters are notable for the consideration he gives to Stephen A. Douglas. It is too common, now that Lincoln's fame is grown to its full proportions, to dwarf his contemporaries that his stature may seem the greater. A reaction is sure to come. It will not, of course, deprive Lincoln of the first place in the history of his times, but Douglas will certainly have his revenge for the unwise belittling of his career which has been the fashion. To exclude him from the well known "American Statesmen " series, while places were found for Charles Francis Adams and Thaddeus Stevens, was altogether unjust. From the death of Clay until Lincoln was nominated, Douglas's was quite the most important figure on the stage ; and the man who thus dominated a nota- ble epoch was not altogether unworthy of the place he then held in the public eye. I should add that Mr. Hopkins escapes an error into which both Professor Macy and Professor Gordy have fallen. He spells Breckinridge correctly. ^VILLI.•^M Garrott Brown. Tlic Writings of James Monroe. Edited by St. isl.us Murray Hamilton. Vol. IV., 1803-1806. (New York: G. P. Put- nam's Sons. I goo. Pp. xviii, 509.) The conclusion of Mr. Hamilton's fourth volume brings him to the end of the year 1806. Now of the letters of Monroe preserved in the Department of State, which are the chief staple of Mr. Hamilton's col- lection, somewhat less than four-ninths precede that date and somewhat more than five-ninths are subsequent to it. There is here some ground for apprehension. If continued upon the same scale the collection will amount to nine or ten volumes. We believe that only six were origi- nally promised. Nine or ten such volumes represent a mass of material.