writings previously printed either in journals and reviews or in commemorative publications. Of most general interest are sketches of Giusti, Leopardi, Vittorio Emanuele II., Cesare De Langier, d'Ayala, and Eurico Mayer, autobiographical reminiscences of the writer's youth, and studies upon Italian popular poetry and music in the nineteenth century, and upon the evolution in "Risorgimento" history of the political ideals, unity and confederation.

HARRY NELSON GAY.

The Founder of Mormonism. A psychological study of Joseph Smith, Jr. By I. Woodbridge Riley, with an introductory preface by Professor George Trumbull Ladd. (New York, Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1902, pp. xx, 446.) This book is a valuable addition to the literature of Mormonism. It is an exhaustive study of the personality and the history of its founder. As its title implies, it is distinctly a psychological study, but in making this the author has traced the family history for generations preceding that of Smith and has considered each detail of his life and work. As a result we have an able argument in favor of Smith as the genuine author of the Book of Mormon and the leading power in Mormonism.

It is an interesting and forceful argument against the theories that charge Smith with forgery, claiming that his ignorance made his authorship of the book impossible. Mr. Riley does not deny Smith's ignorance, but claims that the abnormal activities of his mind give psychological proof of the possibility of such authorship. His neuropathic antecedents, his peculiar mentality, the unnatural religious environment of his early life, are all made accountable for the abnormal personality which was shown as "prophet, seer, revelator, faith-healer, exorcist and occultist."

The book is not only of peculiar value to the students of psychology, but it is written with a freshness and a clearness that appeal to the average reader. The story of Smith's early life and environment is perhaps the strongest part of the book. In a full appendix are given the contents of the Book of Mormon and an account of the Spaulding-Rigdon theory of this book, also a complete bibliography of over two hundred works. WILLIAM F. SLOCUM.

The Government of Maine. By William MacDonald, LL.D. [Handbooks of American Government.] (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1902, pp. 1x, 263.) The plan for a series of books upon the governments of the different states of the Union is an excellent one. State government has been too little considered in arranging courses of study for the schools. The Government of Maine, by Professor Mac Donald, is one of three books which have already appeared in this series, and is in every way commendable. For the writing of this volume the author was well prepared while occupying the chair of history at Bowdoin College.

His book contains ten chapters and four appendixes. The first two chapters deal with the physical geography and historical outline of Maine

from the time of the earliest explorations and settlement up to the present. The remaining eight chapters are devoted to the analysis of the constitution, and an exposition of the central and local government. Of especial interest is Appendix B, which contains excerpts from selected historical documents, the early charters referring to Maine while a part of Massachusetts, the articles of separation, and the acts admitting Maine into the Union, together with the full text of the constitution. For convenient reference to the general reader nothing better could be arranged than Appendix C, which gives the state government in outline. This appendix may also serve students as a tabulated form for review of the whole book. Particularly interesting is Professor Mac Donald's treatment of local government. The people of the state ought to know minutely the workings of county and town organization and of the party machinery employed, while the student of politics everywhere needs just such an exposition of the peculiarities of each of the New England states in order to compare and contrast the very different systems of the western and southern portions of our country. GEORGE EMORY FELLOWS.

NOTES AND NEWS

We have to chronicle the death of Dr. J. L. M. Curry, which occurred at Asheville, North Carolina, in the middle of February. Born in Georgia, in 1822; for three terms a member of the Alabama legislature, and throughout the Civil War a member of the Confederate Congress; after the close of the war successively president of Howard College, Alabama, and professor in Richmond College; later identified with the Peabody Fund for Southern Education, the Slater Educational Fund, and the Southern Education Board; minister to Spain under President Cleveland and our special representative at the coronation of King Alfonso; he was long active in the educational and public service of his country. With all his other activities he was a prolific writer, and in this and other ways he was interested in historical studies. His books include Southern States of the American Union, considered in their relations to the Constitution of the United States (1894), Brief Sketch of George Peabody and a History of the Peabody Education Fund, and Constitutional Government in Spain. At his death he was president of the Southern History Association.

Mr. Silas Farmer, maker and publisher of maps and books in regard to Michigan and other parts of the northwest, died at Detroit, December 28. One of his best-known works was the History of Detroit and Michigan, in two volumes.

The Reverend John Earle, long professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, died January 31, in the beginning of his eightieth year. Students of English history will recall especially his edition of the Saxon Chronicle (1864), and his Handbook to the Land Charters and other Saxonic Docu

ments.

Reverend W. R. W. Stephens, antiquarian, ecclesiastical historian, and Dean of Winchester, died at the end of December, of typhoid fever. He will probably be remembered especially by his biographies, chiefly the Life of Dean Hook and the Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman. But he did much important work besides. In the early seventies he wrote a book on the life and times of St. John Chrysostom, and later he edited Chrysostom's works; in 1886 he produced Hildebrand and his Times, in Dr. Creighton's "Epochs of Church History"; and in these last years he planned, and with Reverend W. Hunt was editing, a History of the English Church in seven volumes, one of which also he wrote himself, that upon the Norman and Angevin times.

The death is announced of Professor Carl A. Cornelius, of Munich, author of numerous historical works. Students of the Reformation will [The department of Notes and News is under the management of Earle W. Dow.]

remember his recent contributions upon the work of Calvin at Geneva, in continuation of the investigations of Kampschulte.

The death of M. Gaston Paris, which occurred early in March, will be widely and deeply regretted. It takes away one of the world's leaders in the study of the Middle Ages. He was a scholar in philology, but in no narrow sense. His minutest studies had a large perspective; generous human interest and appreciative insight into medieval life characterized what he wrote. Unfortunately the Littérature Française au Moyen Âge, with much else, he had to leave unfinished.

The Revue des Questions Historiques, founded in 1866 by the Marquis of Beaucourt and directed by him until his death last autumn, will continue to appear as formerly, with the same programme and under the same editorial committee. For director the choice has fallen upon M. Paul Allard, who is well known by his writings upon the early Christian period.

The address delivered at Philadelphia by Captain Mahan, as president of the American Historical Association, forms the leading article of the Atlantic Monthly for March: "The Writing of History."

Part I. of the seventh volume of Helmolt's History of the World has appeared in the English translation of that work. This is the volume. that deals with western Europe to 1800 (Dodd, Mead, and Co.).

There is to be another new Temple series, "The Temple Autobiographies," edited by W. MacDonald. Among the first numbers will be Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography, newly translated by Miss A. MacDonell, and Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (Dent).

The latest volume of the Hakluyt Society (Series II., Vol. IX.) is devoted to Pedro Texeira. It contains his Travels, his Kings of Harmuz, and extracts from his Kings of Persia, translated and annotated by W. F. Sinclair, and with notes and introduction by Donald Ferguson. Society has also two more volumes in the press.

The

Dr. Franz Steffens, of the University of Freiburg, is making an important contribution to the means for the study of Latin paleography, by his Lateinische.Paläographie (Freiburg, Switzerland, B. Veith). One hundred photographic reproductions, with transcription and explanations on the page opposite each example, will be published in three parts: 1-35, to Charles the Great; 36-70, to the beginning of the thirteenth century; 71-100, to the eighteenth century; the first part is to be out about Easter. An introduction will set forth the development of Latin writing. This work is offered to subscribers at the remarkably low price of fourteen marks the part.

In an article in Minerva for January 15 M. A. Sorel treats of "Histoire et Mémoires," with reference to three questions: What are the different types of memoirs? How ought memoirs to be published? How ought they to be utilized?

The National Society for the Scientific Study of Education, in preparation for its meeting at Cincinnati in February, issued Part I. of its Second Yearbook. Its contents-consisting of programmes for discussion, and criticisms of Miss Salmon's paper in the First Yearbook-bear upon the general subject, "The Course of Study in History in the Common School" (University of Chicago Press).

Among late discussions that concern historical theory we note especially"Ich und Welt in der Geschichte," by K. Breysig, in "Schmoller's Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung" (XXVI., 2); and, on the same subject, the inaugural address of the new rector of the University of Berlin, O. Gierke: Das Wesen der menschlichen Verbände.

A new and largely remodeled edition of Meyer's Grosses Konversations-Lexikon has begun to appear, at Leipzig (Bibliographisches Institut).

ANCIENT HISTORY.

Explorations in Bible Lands during the Nineteenth Century is the subject of an important volume just published by Messrs. A. J. Holman and Co. It is written by a number of specialists. Professor Hilprecht acts as editor and contributes the leading article: "The Resurrection of Assyria and Babylonia."

Among the recent books is a comprehensive survey of the rise of Greek philosophy, its culmination in stoicism, and the influence of stoicism upon Christianity: Greek and Roman Stoicism and Some of its Disciples, by C. H. S. Davis (Boston, H. B. Turner and Co.).

The Cambridge University Press has lately brought out a work of first importance for the history of Rome: Roman Private Law in the Times of Cicero and the Antonines; 2 vols., by H. J. Roby, sold in this country by Macmillan and Co.

Stories in Stone from the Roman Forum, by Isabel Lovell (Macmillan, 1902) is an attractive little volume profusely supplied with good illustrations, telling in simple form of Roman life and customs and of some important facts in the history of the city.

The character and aims of Augustus, and the problem with which he had to deal in the Roman world, form the subject of a recent work by E. S. Shuckburgh: Augustus. Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire (B. C. 63– A. D. 14) (London, Unwin). In the same field, Messrs. Putnam have added to the "Heroes of the Nations" a volume on Augustus: Augustus Cæsar and the Organization of the Empire of Rome, by J. B. Firth.

The fiftieth anniversary of the entrance of M. George Perrot into the École Normale Supérieure was made by his students and friends the occasion of publishing a volume of studies relating to classical archeology and ancient history and literature: Mélanges Perrot, Recueil de Mémoires concernant l'Archéologie Classiques, la Littérature et l'Histoire Anciennes. More than a score of the articles are of an historical order (Paris, Fontemoing).