Moore: The Norfhzucsi under Three Flags. 139

To a casual reader, the first portion or about nine chapters of the hook would appear to treat of the social conditions and development of the colony at the Bay. Then the growth of town government is handled politically, and the clearly aristocratic functions of the towns are recognized and well worked out. Samuel Stone said wisely of the Congregational meeting, "it was a speaking Aristocracy in the face of a silent Democracy." But this interpretation would not satisfy our author. He makes an arbitrary division after Chapter IX., assigning X.-XI. to a theocracy and XII. -XVII. to a republic. This arbitrary distinction is not made out. The Congregational ministers were file-leaders in their citizenship, whether, like Jonathan Mayhew in the Revolution, they stirred Massa- chusetts to its depths, or, like John Cotton in the persecution of Anne Hutchinson, they toppled on the surface. These were the men and the functions, name them theocratic or republican, as we may. The best chapters are XII. and XIIL, describing the autonomy and growth of the towns. Here the legal training of the writer tells in his work. The book contains much interesting matter, generally presented in agreeable form, excepting the burdensome citations. It is not history ; it is smart speaking to a thesis, imperfectly conceived and not deliber- ately thought out. It is significant that it closes with a flippant reference to Rev. Joseph Cook as a prophet ( ! !) to be recognized concerning the decadence of New England. „, -n ,,, ^ William B. Weeden. The Nortlnvcst under Three Flags, 163 5- 1796. By Charles Moore. (New York and London : Harper and Brothers. 1900. Pp. xxiv, 402.) The Northwest of a century ago offers to the historian a subject of engaging interest that is marked by all the classical unities — place, time, and action. While it is connected with Canada on the one hand, and with the thirteen colonies and states on the other, it still furnishes a dis- tinct centre of unity in itself, and can be treated in a continuous narra- tive. We do not know why the year 1635 should be chosen for the beginning, for it was in 1634 that Nicolet pushed through the waters of Lake Huron and the Strait of Mackinaw and discovered Lake Michigan and the region beyond ; but 1 796, the date of the surrender of the North- western posts by Great Britain to the United States, and the passage of the whole Northwest under the third flag, is the proper place to halt, un- less, indeed, the history is to be brought down to the present time. There are, to be sure, early rumors of a still earlier venture into the Northwest than Nicolet' s, but they are uncertain, and in no sense mark the begin- ning of Northwestern history, and so may properly be dispatched inci- dentally, as has been done by the author of the present work. Mr. Moore has seized the idea of the historical unity of the North- west, and has aimed to produce a narrative account of it that shall be