HISTORY OF NEW YORK DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, AND OF THE LEADING EVENTS IN THE OTHER COLONIES AT THAT PERIOD. BY THOMAS JONES, Justice of the Supreme Court of the Province. Edited by EDWARD FLOYD DE LANCEY. With notes, contemporary documents, maps and portraits. 2 vols., 8vo, pp. 748 and 713. Printed for the NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

These volumes are edited and printed with precision and elegance in the highest style of the typographical art. The advertisement prefacing the first volume supplies the reason for the elaborate study and expense which have attended their preparation and publication.

They contain as illustrations in the first volume a fine steel portrait of the author and his wife by Burt from portraits by Arnold; Ratzer's map of the City of New York in 1746 and Sauthier's map of the Provinces of New York and New Jersey, etc., of 1777; in the second volume, steel engraved views of The Fort Neck House, the author's seat, and an interior view of its hall, the First map of the United States as acknowledged by the Peace of 1783, and a map of the de Lancey Bowery Farm in New York as it was at the time of the revolution.

This history of New York is printed at the expense of the "John D. Jones Fund of the New York Historical Society," from the manuscript of Judge Thomas Jones, who was one of the family of the liberal giver of the fund, and a collateral relative of the painstaking and accomplished editor of these volumes. No labor has been spared to throw every possible gleam of light upon the text, and every known source of information has been thoroughly searched for illustrative details. The manuscript, entirely in the handwriting of Mr. Jones, bears internal evidence of having been written soon after the close of the revolution. It passed into the hands of the Right Rev. William Heathcote de Lancey, late Bishop of Western New York, in 1835, and from him to his son, the present editor. Its publication is announced to have been delayed from feelings of delicacy until the death of the last of the persons mentioned in the narrative." "The text," the editor adds," has been given with merely the correction of a few redundancies, colloquialisms and such obvious errors of the pen as occur in all unprinted writings." It is greatly to be deplored that an exact textual reproduction of the original, verbatim et literatim, has not been strictly adhered to. So much is said that challenges criticism and demands sub

stantiation, that it is unfortunate the reader is not left to judge for himself of the nature of the redundancies of which the editor gives notice, and the value of the " expressions" he has modified. The text and context of the dropped or altered phraseology may perhaps not materially affect the statements themselves, but precisely given they may aid in the formation of a just appreciation of the nature of their author and the animus which prompted them.

The history is a tory history of the war, and is edited in a spirit of defence of those who adhered to the Crown during the revolutionary author give an account of his family. He was struggle. An introduction and memoir of the a grandson of Thomas Jones of Fort Neck, Long Island, the first of his race in America, of Welsh extraction, and native of Strabane, in the county of Tyrone and province of Ulster, in Ireland. He is said to have been a Protestant gentleman, and to have taken part in the wars which finally overthrew the Stuarts, but strangely enough fought on the side of the Catholic dynasty. Emigrating to America, he married in Rhode Island a daughter of Thomas. Townsend of Oyster Bay, through whom he acquired a small tract of land at that place, to which he later added largely by purchase. The estate took the name of Fort Neck from an Indian fortification which stood upon it. Here Major Jones lived and died in the "the Brick House," the first building of that material at the east end of Long Island, which he erected in 1696. His eldest son, David Jones, was a lawyer of note, Judge of Queens county, member of the Assembly of New York from Queens,. Speaker of the same body from 1745 to 1758, when he was appointed Fourth Justice of the Supreme Court of New York by Lieut. Governor de Lancey, a post which he held until 1773, when he resigned. He died at Fort Neck in 1775. By his wife Anna Willet he had six children. Of this issue, Thomas Jones, the author of the present history, was the third child and eldest son. Born in 1731, he was graduated from Yale College in 1746 at the age of fifteen. He began the practice of the law in New York city, and in 1769 was appointed to the office of Recorder of the city, which he held until 1773, when, on the resignation of his father, Judge David Jones, already mentioned, he was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile he had married a daughter of Lieut. Governor de Lancey. As Supreme Court Judge he held the last court for the King for Westchester county at White Plains in April, 1776, and during the session rendered his loyalty to the Crown conspicuous by discharging from cus

tody several persons arrested by the patriot committee for disloyalty to the cause of the country; an act which he says in his story was the cause of his name being included in the Act of Attainder, and the consequent confiscation of his

estate.

Refusing to obey a summons of the New York Provincial Congress, he was arrested at his house at Fort Neck in the month of June following, but discharged on his parole. Again arrested just prior to the battle of Long Island, he was sent to Connecticut to await the result of that contest, but again liberated on written parole in the month of December following. Under this parole he resided at Fort Neck until November, 1779, when he was seized by a party of patriots from Fairfield, and carried off as a hostage for General Gold Selleck Silliman (a college classmate), who had been abducted in a similar manner from his house in Fairfield by a party of Tory refugees. Mr. Jones was held in captivity for six months, and then exchanged for General Silliman. In 1781 he sailed for England, which he reached in safety with his family, and resided first at Bath and later at Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, a little village on the River Lea, where he died in 1792,

The first volume opens with the year 1752, "when Great Britain was at peace with all the world," and New York was in its happiest state, a period which the editor terms the "Golden Age of New York," and closes with an account of Arnold's plot and treason in 1780 and the Southern campaign. In the eighteen chapters, which comprehend the period, history, politics and social gossip are treated of by turns and together in a narrative style of extreme clearness and simplicity, at times full of verve and constantly enlivened by anecdote. The quarrels of the religious denominations, the rule of de Lancey and the wicked opposition of the Presbyterian triumvirate, Smith, Livingston and Scott, to Trinity Church, and the arrest of Alexander McDougal for libel, make up the first and not the least curious chapter of the book, and leave no doubt as to the opinions of the author. In every line he shows his hatred of dissenters of every hue and of opposition generally, whether in Church or State, New York was then governed by de Lancey, and about every post of honor or station in the gift of the Crown was held by this family and its immediate connections. Later in this history of the war the patriot leaders and the British officials, military and civil, fall under the same bitter resentmentthe one for daring to rebel, the other for their failure in repressing the rebellion. The patriots, in his jaundiced vision, were all self-interested and insincere, the British corrupt, venal and inefficient. Nor is his animosity satisfied with general criticism and impugnment of motives, but he never omits an occasion to steep the barb of

malice in personal detraction and abuse, and disgraces himself while he degrades his narrarative by scurrilous charges, sometimes covert, sometimes open, upon the character of individuals whom we have been taught to honor, and the reputation of families who are now, as they were then, the best representatives of American civilization.

The second volume opens with an account of affairs in New York in 1780, in April of which year Gen. Robertson issued his proclamation, assuming the government; its historic part begins with a chapter on the responsibilities of the two sides for acts of war in the revolution, in which he holds the balance with even hand between the British and the Americans, and demonstrates that "the burning of towns in times of war in all civilized nations is a usual practice." Following this are ten chapters devoted to biographies, or they may be more properly termed personalities. These give sketches of Schuyler; Lord Stirling; George Clinton; Generals Woodhull, Sullivan and Colonel James Holmes; Cololonel John Butler, Isaac Sears, John Lamb; Washington; Charles Lee and Arnold; Donald Campbell; Francis Lewis; Sir William Johnson; Colonel John Harris Cruger and Mrs. Cruger.

We are unwilling to comment upon the nature of these sketches, or notice the personal slanders which they originate or repeat. We are surprised that the Publication Committee of the New York Historical Society should have consented to give them currency under the warrant of their authority.

Of the zeal, conscientiousness and ability with which the vast editorial labors bestowed upon this history have been performed, mention has already been made. This, more than the original material even, makes it a history of New York, a partisan history certainly, but a history in its comprehensiveness. In apparent complete sympathy with the author, except on rare occasions, the editor has fortified every position taken, every statement made in the text as far as it was possible to fortify them. That the book will not be allowed to pass unchallenged is certain. It opens a controversy, in which there will be blows to take as well as blows to give, but from which, we venture to predict, the virtue and honor of the whig element of old New York will come out bright and clear as the noonday

iniscences of secession, war and reconstruction as a duty. He was a personal man, and his views of men and events as thoroughly personal as himself. He had none of that higher faculty which enables the true historian, even in scenes in which he participated, to step out from the circle of his self-consciousness and review the revolving events from an independent standpoint. Perhaps it was in appreciation of this that he gives the name of Personal Experiences to a volume which covers a field of critical observation larger than that which came under his own eye.

A slight sketch of him by a brother, Confederate officer in a recent number of the Southern Historical Society Papers, alluding to his military career, says, "that it was exceptionally successful, and that he was never involved in disaster, or identified with any defeat during the four years of his varied and active service. And of his personal characteristics the same well-informed gentleman says that "his absolute self-reliance amounted to a total irreverence for any man's opinion," a trait which no one will doubt who will peruse these volumes.

It is difficult in a brief notice to give even an idea of the merits and faults of this peculiar volume. Interesting in narrative, graphic in description, striking in its analysis of character, sometimes philosophical, constantly metaphysical, it is unsatisfactory and incomplete. The naturally simple style is obscured by a pretentious manner of illustration, in which history and literature are ransacked for imagery. On one single page, which we open at hazard, we find in close proximity President Grant and Dame Fortune, Malvolio, Sir Toby and Haroun Al Raschid, the Duke of Wellington, Othello, Desdemona, Iago, Phalaris, Agrimentum, Monsieur Fourton and the "harridan of radicalism," whose name is not given. It is amazing to think that a graduate of Yale could be guilty of such wretched taste.

In the conduct of the war General Taylor found but little to be satisfied with even on the Confederate side. Even of Gen. Lee, whom he considers as "towering above all on both sides, as the pyramid of Ghizeh above the desert," he considers that "his tactical manouvres on the field were inferior to the strategy." Surely history will record that if the Confederates were the superiors on the field they claim to be, they did not take advantage of their successes. Jack son alone, with his restlessness and consequent indomitable activity, seems to have been a soldier wholly to the taste of his equally restless follower.

In a phrase worthy of Tacitus in its meaning conciseness, Gen. Taylor says of him, that he "could set no limit to his ability, because he was always superior to occasion."

The description of Jackson's vast all-absorbing

ambition is not only the strongest passage in the book, but it aptly applies to Secession itself, which was as measureless in its ambition and as fanatical in its faith in final triumph. Of Jefferson Davis, who was his brother-inlaw, he says but little. His only mention is to pay a tribute to his amiability, and to relate a visit to him while in confinement at Fortress Monroe.

We wish we could stop here. Of the politics of the book, we have not a word to say. They were what might be expected of one who to his death would not submit to the conditions of reconstruction, which would have restored to him his citizenship and his confiscated estate. But we trust there are few of his companions who are capable of the abuse, better suitable to a Thersites than a true soldier, which he lavishes upon the Generals and officials of the Union he sought to overthrow.

Nor yet do we care to characterize the contemptuous opinion he expresses of the state in which he found Northern society at the close of the war. It is not to be denied that, as usual in all great civil contests, and particularly in those which are accompanied by a depreciation of the currency, society changes its phases, and new people, men and women, come to the surface; but to say that "society disappeared' at the North is simply ridiculous.

Nor is it true, as General Taylor says, that, "as in the middle ages, to escape pollution, honorable men and refined women (and there are many such in the North) fled to sanctuary and the desert, or, like early Christians in the catacombs, met secretly and in fear. The masses sank into a condition that would disgrace Australian natives, and lost all power of discrimination."

Where were these hiding places for the honorable men and refined women, the "dear friends' of General Taylor, with whom he says he spent the most of his time for three years after the war? New York in the winters, Newport in the summers, were his habitual haunts, and he was the constant guest of the very society he abuses. We regret the book; we regret that he did not live to repent of and retract it.

General Taylor was a great favorite in society and possessed rare conversational powers. His position as private Secretary to his father when President of the United States brought him, while yet in early manhood, into personal contact with the leading men of both political parties, and established relations which he continued unbroken through all the vicissitudes of his career.

Abroad he was received in the highest circles with marked distinction, and no American of our day had freer access to the titled society of England than he. He died in New York in the prime of life, having just passed his fifty-third year.

AMERICAN AUTHORS-WASHINGTON

IRVING, BY DAVID J. HILL. With portrait on steel. 16mo, pp. 234. SHELDON & Co. New York, 1879.

This series of personal literary and anecdotal biographies of leading American authors in all walks, happily begins with a sketch of Irving, certainly the best known and the most popular of them all. They are intended to combine pleasant reading with instructive example, and without critical analysis or disquisition, to give an easy running account of the personal traits and literary successes of their subjects; in a word, to fill a place halfway between the slender sketches of biographical dictionaries or literary cyclopædias and the compendious "lives and letters" which belong to library shelves.

The work is pleasantly handled in a chronological order, and will certainly realize the author's wish to stimulate the reader to know more of Irving. Those who knew him will turn with interest to the last chapter on the man and the writer." It is difficult to portray a nature so charming in its simplicity and modesty, its tenderness, its playfulness and reserve as that of Irving. His appearance in literature was a surprise. Jeffrey was amazed to find that an American could write English on the model of the most elegant and polished of native authors. Alexander H. Everett called him the Morning Star of our heavenly host. Mr. Hill finds his source of power to be in his sensibility to outward impressions and his faculty of form. He was a thorough artist, perfect in description. Yet Mr. Hill denies him the creative faculty. But what characters are more original than his Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane, and the doughty Paladins of New Amsterdam. They stand out from the canvass of literature as imperishable as the creations of Shakespeare or of Dickens. Mr. Hill thoroughly vindicates the nationality of Irving's works, while claiming for him a cosmopolitan nature. True enough, all mankind were kin to his large generous heart. He is properly styled the Father of American letters.

MEMORIAL

POLAR COLONIZATION -
TO CONGRESS AND ACTION of ScientiFIC AND

COMMERCIAL ASSOCIATIONS. 8vo, pp. 143. This memoir to the Forty-fifth Congress was prepared by Henry W. Howgate, U. Š. A., in the hope of convincing it of the wisdom of supporting a plan for the establishment of a temporary Arctic colony in the interest of scientific discovery. An outline map of the North Polar regions of the western hemisphere, showing the location of the proposed colony on Lady Franklin Bay, prefaces the memorial. This is laid down at the mouth of Lady Franklin Channel,

on the northern shore of Hall Basin. At Hall

Basin is the confluence of the waters of Kennedy Channel and Peterman Fiord from the south with Lady Franklin Sound and Robeson Channel from the north. It lies a little south of the eighty-second parallel of north latitude, and between longitudes 64° and 66o, on what is called Grant Land, the northern borders of which are washed by the Polar Sea.

The expedition of Captain Hall in the Polaris in 1871, and of Captain Nares in the Alert and Discovery in 1875, demonstrated that steam vessels can reach the entrance to Robeson's Channel in latitude 81° north with comparative ease, and that the serious difficulties to be overcome in reaching the Pole are to be encountered above that point. The inference naturally follows that the most economical and promising plan of operation is to establish a settlement at this point as a point of departure for future expeditions, which can avail of every temporary advantage that the seasons may offer, and accumulate observations of climatic and atmospheric changes of priceless value to the outgoing navigator. The lookout of the Polaris reported open water in sight from the upper end of Robeson's Channel, just beyond an intervening pack of ice. In 1875 and 1876 Captain Nares here found solid ice, impenetrable to vessels and impassable by sledges. This indicates that there are variations in the ice movement. which can only certainly be taken advantage of by a colony on the spot. Hall's experience was that each year of residence better acclimated him and better fitted him for the work of exploration. A colony of fifty resolute men is proposed, thoroughly equipped, with whom annual communication should be maintained. The memorial includes a detail of the necessaries required for such an expedition, and indicates the route to be taken; that by Smith's Sound being recommended.

A bill in accord with the plan of Captain Howgate was submitted to the House in January, 1877, and reported on favorably by the Committee on Naval Affairs. In the summer of the same year a preliminary expedition was fitted out by private subscription, and the Florence sailed from New London, under the command of Captain George G. Tyson, who had served with Hall on the Polaris, on the 19th July. His instructions directed him to procure a colony of ten families of Esquimaux, a train of twenty-five dogs, with two sledges, and a supply of fur and skin clothing, sufficient to supply fifty persons for three years. The plan included the capture of enough whales on the voyage to provide a profitable return cargo. The Florence was to meet with the vessel sent out with the members and outfit of the colony of Disco in August, 1878, transfer to it his acquisitions of Esquimaux dogs, etc., and return

to New London. Mr. O. T. Sherman accompanied it as Meteorologist and Mr. J. Kumlein as Naturalist, both with precise instructions.

An appendix to the memoir gives Captain Howgate's plan for the exploration, a paper read before the American Geographical Society, January 31, 1878, an occasion illustrated by the presence of the Earl of Dufferin and Mr. William Cullen Bryant. To this are added resolutions and approval of the purposes of the expedition from all parts of the United States, scientific and mercantile societies, high naval officers, and letters from the Arctic explorers, Julius Payer of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Dr. John Rae of London, J. Wall Wilson of the second Grinnell expedition and the Geographical Society of France.

To an American, Captain Hall, is due the original conception of Arctic exploration by the aid of the natives from a fixed point of settlement, and it seems as though the crowning success is reserved to the successful prosecution of the plan he devised.

Photographic views of Discovery Bay, the seat of the proposed colony, in summer and winter, illustrate the memoir.

MONEY AND CURRENCY. A paper read before the Philosophical Society of Evanston, Illinois, by CHARLES RandolPH, December 9, 1878. 8vo, pp. 35. KNIGHT & LEONARD, printers. Chicago, 1878.

In all arguments the first necessity is an agreement upon the precise meaning of the terms employed. In no class of reasoning is there to be found greater confusion on this subject than in that affecting the character and uses of money. A paper like this, therefore, intended to define the distinctions between true money and its paper representatives, is always valuable, and peculiarly appropriate now, when the present equality of value between the precious metals and the legal-tender notes of the Government and those of the National banks may tempt the belief that such equality will be uninterruptedly maintained. So long as our exports not only pay for our imports, but provide exchange enough to pay the interest upon our bonds of whatever character, national or of corporations, held abroad, it is not possible that such equality of value can be disturbed, but this is by no means certain to be the case, and depends on circumstances which there is no power in the United States to control, and should they change the question as to how much paper currency can be floated on a par with coin must be met.

Aristotle is reported to have said of money, that "it exists not by nature, but by law;" and, from his day until our own, law has decreed that

the precious metals coined, and they alone, are money-and the ultimate solvent of all contracts, whether in the form of government or individual obligations of currency or credit.

Mr. Charles Randolph is well known as long the clear-headed, accomplished Secretary of the National Board of Trade, and his views are important, from the fact that they address themselves to the very class of Western people among whom false ideas of the nature of money most prevail. In our reviews of this class of contemporary literature we have repeatedly expressed regret at the unqualified denunciation of the greenback. The Western country look upon the government note as the best form of paper currency, and the National Bank note as a species of favoritism to a privileged class, who are by it enabled to make double interest on their capital. This question need not now be argued. The one important object to be attained is a retirement of sufficient paper from the circulating medium, and the restoration of gold and silver to the daily uses of the people. When we shall have three hundred millions of dollars in gold and silver passing from hand to hand in daily transactions, and the paper issues, whether of government or banks, reduced to the same amount, our ciculating medium will be on a sound basis, and the gold reserve in the country sufficient to meet any sudden extraordinary demand for export, and the annual production of coin in the country keep pace with the increased necessities for money.

We notice one partial error in Mr. Randolph's statement. He says that Congress at the instance of Mr. Chase made the notes of the Government legal tenders because of the depreciation. This is not precisely the fact. Mr. Chase had them made legal tenders because certain bank officers in New York, angry because their own pet bank schemes had not been accepted by him, "threw them over the counter," as the phrase is, i. ., declined to receive them. As the Secretary had no coin at command, he had no other resource. Notwithstanding his later expression of opinion, it is idle to suppose that the Government could have carried on its enormous transactions with a class of paper that the banks could refuse. What could have been done with their unanimous consent is another question. It could not then have been obtained.

Mr. Randolph concludes, Ist, that a convertible paper circulation is a necessity; 2d, that the paper currency issued under any other authority than that of the Uhited States will not be tolerated; 3d, that the forms of paper currency in circulation are satisfactory. The only unsettled question is, whether the legal-tender quality shall be maintained. Decidedly not; when the volume of paper currency is sufficiently reduced and sufficient coin be floating in the circulating medium, the legal-tender quality should