stand it." Edward's task was to give Bracton's treatise on the Laws and Constitution of England firm standing ground and full development. How he did it Mr. Jenks has admirably shown, in language clear to every intelligent reader.

Mary Taylor Blauvelt's "The Development of Cabinet Government in England" (Macmillan, $1.50) is a monograph on one of the most important and characteristic of English institutions, from its gradual development out of the Privy Council to the accession of Queen Victoria, closing with that curious episode, "The Bed Chamber Question of 1834," though as cabinet government was the result not of legislation but of development, the author does not feel that the final stage was then reached or has yet been. Indeed the growing tendency to bureaucracy in all governments would suggest that it was capable of greater developments than can be yet foreseen. Like so many English institutions, a cabinet owes its origin to no law, but to custom. Indeed it is still unrecognized by the law at all. The Prime Minister as such has no legal existence. Yet it is to this agency, which grew as and because it was needed, that a harmony and symmetry of governmental action has been secured in England that has been the admiration and unattained goal of parliamentarians everywhere.

Among the World's Epoch Makers the ruling family of Florence, during the palmy days of the Italian Renascence deserve a place and Oliphant Smeaton has treated them as fully as the limits of this series permits in "The Medici" (Scribners, $1.25), with due use of Symonds and Roscoe, but with evidence everywhere of independent study and individual judgment, especially in tracing the continuity of aim in the efforts for art and culture of this remarkable family. Their story is a remarkable mingling of noble devotion and moral obliquity. They were, says Mr. Smeaton, "a strange mixture of the grand and of the grovelling, of the mean and the magnanimous. As humanists no praise is too high for their deserts, as politicians no condemnation is too deep to denounce their perfidy." This antithetical mixture, as Symonds has shown, is strangely characteristic of many among the most conspicuous leaders of the Italian Renascence.

Professor Morfill, of Oxford, has written, chiefly from Russian sources, a very convenient and judicious "History of Russia from the Birth of Peter the Great to Nicholas II." (Pott, $1.75.) As the sources of the volume are to a large extent with difficulty accessible, they have not hitherto been exploited for English readers, and, modest as is the scope of the book, it will be found often to open new perspectives or cast light in dark places. Particularly welcome is the attention that has been given to the social and literary development of Russia, and to the spread of the Russian dominion in Asia. Twelve maps and plans accompany the volume, but leave much to be desired in their mechanical execution.

Two volumes of "The Story of the Nations," which we find together on our table, illustrate the divergent scope of this entertaining series: the first is Wil liam Miller's "Mediaeval Rome from Hildebrand to Clement VIII.," the second Owen Edwards's "Wales." (Putnam, $1.35 each.) The former is frankly a work of what the French call, with no illmeaning, "vulgarization." It intends to bring within convenient compass, and within the reach of all, what is more noteworthy and of most general interest in the great works of Gregorovius and von Reumont, when studied in connection with

the pertinent chapters of Gibbon, Hallam and Milman, Ranke, Roscoe and Stephens, with occasional reference to the documents gathered by the indefatigable zeal of Muratori, the whole composite impres-. sion being enlivened and vivified by personal observation. The work fulfils excellently the modest purpose of its author. Mr. Edwards's study, on the other hand, is to some extent path-breaking. It is, he tells us, the first attempt at writing a continuous popular history of Wales, and deals naturally, for the greater part, with the national aspirations which perished with Owen Glendower. The early chapters of his book tell of the rise and fall of a princely caste, crushed by the Plantagenets, dispossessed by the Lancastrians, Anglicized by the Tudors. The second part describes the rise to dominance of what had been the subject class, inheritors of imperfectly apprehended traditions, and feeble imitators of a decaying literature, but to whom growing wealth has given unquestioned dominance. The illustrations here are much superior to those in the other volume.

Stories of American Life.

The title of Bret Hart's last volume before his recent unexpected death was happily conceived. "Openings in the Old Trail" (Houghton, Mifflin, $1.25) suggests side excursions from the same vein of romantic genius that characterized the long series of his stories since "The Luck of Roaring Camp" delighted and surprised the readers of both continents and many nations. Seven of the nine tales do not rise above the commonplace of Harte's work, though they all bear the stamp of his unique genius. But two of them, "A Mercury of the Foot Hills" and "Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff," are distinctly noteworthy. The former is a snake story, uncannily horrible in its suggestion of the reptilian in human character, all the more uncanny, perhaps, because it is a suggestion left to germinate in the imagination and undeveloped by the author. The second is one of the most jovial pieces of humor that the year has brought us. To be thoroughly enjoyed it should be read aloud, but he must have rare selfcontrol indeed who can read Colonel Starbottle's speech without growing inarticulate from merriment.

It is a foregone conclusion that a novel by William D. Howells will be a study of character restrained in realism, meagre in incident, delicate in psychological perception, somewhat robustly nonchalant in its style and even in its grammar. These conditions are all fulfilled in "The Kentons" (Harper, $1.50), which introduces us to the leading family in a small Ohio city-the Judge a veteran of the Civil War, living much in the past and gradually yielding to the seldom-abused authority of his wife, who yields in her turn, after the American manner, the sceptre of authority to her children, who wield it variously, Ellen with an introspective hyperconscientiousness, Lottie with a perfection of selfishness that would be incredible if it were not common, and Boyne with a whimsicality that is quite farcical. In this last character, a boy of fifteen, Mr. Howells has let his humor run riot, and has depicted for us a sort of juvenile Don Quixote of the twentieth century, crazed by the reading of historical romance of the prevailing fashion. Mr. Howells's wit is somewhat elephantine, and we turn gladly from these chapters to those that paint with a steady hand, though not always a delicate pencil, the psychic de

velopment of Ellen from unworthy attachment to true love, and the rounding out of Lottie's fund of masculine experience, most of which, as usual, is gathered on an ocean voyage and in the leisure of a European summer. A word ought to be said of the freedom which Mr. Howells permits himself in the use of slang outside of dialogue. "Distress that caused his mother to take a reef in her impatience" (p. 310), or "He had already got on to many of Boyne's curves" (p. 241), will illustrate what we mean, and what we certainly do not like. On page 237 we read "They behaved very amiable," which suggests that Mr. Howells, like a certain French king, counts himself supra grammaticam. Aş yet he is only the dean of American letters.

Mr. Harrison Robertson has given us in "The Opponents" (Scribners, $1.50) another of his bright and refreshing stories of Kentucky society, full of energy and the joyousness of life in that most favored region of the blue-grass. What Mr. Fox does for the Kentucky mountaineer Mr. Robertson does for the agricultural region and the cities, but though this story opens in Louisville with a tragedy compressed into nine poignant pages, it leaves it, not to return, for the genial opendoored hospitality of the county-side, and political struggles whose virtues and faults are alike of the youth of democracy rather than of its waning maturity. The women of the book are throughout admirable, even the one black sheep among them is not morbid, and they belong unmistakably to their latitude-Kentuckians and Virginians all. They might conceivably be Tennesseeans too; they could hardly have come from north of the Ohio, or from the Carolinas.

James Huneker, well-known as a musical editor and critic, gives us in "Melomaniacs" (Scribners, $1.50) a group of sketches in which he speaks, more frankly than he might do in direct criticism, of the vagaries alike of the real lovers of music, the devotees of the art, its dilettants, and those who talk its cant with zeal but without discrimination. He is seldom wholly serious, often obviously whimsical, often shrewdly sarcastic or ironic, but it is clear that he knows very thoroughly that of which he is speaking, and that he has a reverence for the art that he seems to mock. The best of the sketches is perhaps "The Piper of Dreams," but we have found delight also in "The Quest of the Illusive," and in the Wagnerian group of sketches toward the close. Indeed it is hard to go amiss, though for a thorough enjoyment of the book the reader must have wide musical knowledge and a keen sense of the ridiculous.

"Naughty Nan" (The Century Co., $1.50) has "go," but that seems to us about all that it has. It is made up very largely of the cut and thrust of conversation which has need to be very bright, brighter than Mr. John Luther Long has made it, if it is to carry us, without weariness, through a full-grown novel. The heroine is a whimsical and rather headstrong girl, to save whom from a swarm of wooers Jock is summoned by an anxious aunt, in order that Nan might marry the clergyman to whom she fancied herself engaged. Jock saves her from them all, and after some, not too serious, tribulations, marries her himself. Possibly they lived happy ever after. The age of such miracles is not past. But the reader will have his doubts, if indeed this frothy diet does not pall upon him before he

reach the end.

(FOR NEW BOOKS OF THE WEEK, SEE P. I.)

21

N erecting the monument to the Count de Rochambeau, that is to be unveiled on the twenty-fourth of this month, the United States has discharged a long standing debt of gratitude to the distinguished soldier to whose military abilities and cordial co-operation with the American Commander-in-chief the successful issue of our struggle for independence was largely due.

The monument is a reproduction of the one erected by the people of France in Vendome, near which is the ancestral home of "Rochambeau," where the count was born and where [she is buried. The original was designed by Paul Hamar, himself a native of Vendome, who, though laboring under the disadvantage of being both deaf and dumb, has achieved a work of art that challenges the admiration of all who have seen it. On a massive pedestal the artist has placed the statue of Rochambeau. In his left hand he holds a plan of the fortifications of Yorktown, while his right points to the works which are soon to be carried by the assaults of the allied army.

On the front of the base of the monument is the figure of France, just stepping from a boat, on American soil, bearing in one hand the flags of the two countries, while with the other she extends her sword to protect the American eagle.

Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur Rochambeau was born on July 1, 1725. Being a younger son, he was educated in his youth for the Church. At the age of fifteen he entered the Jesuit College at Blois, under the patronage of the Bishop of Blois, an old friend of his parents, who called him his "little grand-vicar," and planned for him an eminent ecclesiastical career. Just as he was about to take the tonsure, however, an incident occurred that changed the whole course of his life, 1. and transferred him from the service of the Church to that of his country. His elder brother died, and it fell to the lot of the bishop who had trained his ward for the peaceful pursuits of the priesthood to break the news that was to remove him to a different sphere of life. "I was deeply grieved," says Rochambeau, in his "Memoirs"; "but the good bishop frankly told me that I must forget all he had taught me, that I had become the heir of the family, and that I must now serve my country with the same zeal with which I would have served the Church."

Soon after he was placed at the Academy of Paris and there began his military education. The War of the Austrian Succession broke out about this time, and in the latter part' of 1741 he was appointed a cornet in the cavalry regiment of St. Simon, and set out in the hope of joining it before it crossed the Rhine. In this he was disappointed-the regiment had made a forced march to the front; but he fell in with his colonel, the Marquis de St. Simon, who had also missed it, and they journeyed together until they overtook it at Nuremberg. The marquis had served with his father, and invited him to become a member of his military family and to share the tent of his brother d'Archiac. "The marquis," says Rochambeau, "was not rich, and his household was poorly furnished. He seldom ate at home, but d'Archiac and myself. were compelled to do so, and we should have starved to death but for the bacon and potatoes that were our principal food. This simple diet prepared our constitutions for the hardships and privations we were destined to undergo."

His first experience in military discipline was not a pleasant one. He had been detached from his regiment for the time. being, and the marquis had forbidden him to serve as a volunteer. But the enemy making their appearance the French troops went out to meet them, and when he saw his comrade d'Archiac going out with his fellow soldiers, the young cornet ignored his orders and went with him. It turned out to be but a skirmish, but on his return the marquis saw him, and immediately placed him under arrest. This taught him a lesson he never forgot. From that time during his more than fifty years of service, he was never again guilty of disobedience of orders.

There could have been no better school for the young officer than this war, for its campaigns were conducted by such masters of the art as Marshal Saxe and Frederick the Great. Rochambeau served under Saxe.

He was promoted captain in 1744 and went through a campaign with his regiment in Germany, after which he was offered a place on the staff of the Count de Clermont. At Namur, in 1746, he was ordered to reconnoitre the defences of the town. Climbing a hill that seemed almost inaccessible, he found a weak spot in the works guarded only by two senti

nels, who, unconscious of danger, had seated themselves, and were quietly smoking their pipes. He immediately returned to the count, reported what he had seen, asked for a detacument of troops, led them up the hill, surprised the sentinels, and captured the town. For this Marshal Saxe complimented him in his despatches to the King.

In 1747, when only twenty-two years old, he was made colonel of the Infantry regiment of La Marche, and in command of it distinguished himself at Laufeldt, where, under the eyes of Louis XV., he carried the village at the point of the bayonet, after three desperate charges, in which he was twice wounded.

Peace was declared in 1748, and in 1749 Rochambeau was married to Mademoiselle Telle d'Acosta, and took up his residence in Paris. But he soon tired of Parisian society. Neither the court nor the salons of the nobility had any attractions for a man who was neither courtier nor cavalier. His father died about this time, and Rochambeau was appointed his successor as Governor of

Vendome, and retired to his ancestral home, where he found ample leisure for the pursuit of his military studies.

The Seven Years' War opened in 1756, and Rochambeau immediately took the field. At the siege of Port Mahon he was active in pushing offensive operations, and when an assault was ordered, he led his men into the fosses and under a heavy fire captured Fort St. Philip. For this he received the cross of St. Louis and was made a brigadier-general. He served throughout all the subsequent compaigns of this war. He was at Creveldt, at Minden, and at Klostercamp, where the French army narrowly escaped destruction by a night attack made by the Hereditary Prince, and was only saved by the heroic self-sacrifice of Captain d'Assas, a young officer of the regiment of Auvergne, who commanded the French outpost. While going his rounds he was captured by the enemy's advanceguard, who threatened him with instant death if he gave an alarm. His answer was to cry a loud: "A moi Auvergne! les ennemis!" That cry was his last, but it had notified the French camp of the enemy's presence. Rocha mbea u promptly put himself at the head of his

the general to command it. The Count de Rochambeau was chosen, not because of influence exerted in his favor, but solely upon the ground of his eminent fitness. The Minister of War, the Prince de Montbarey, whose duty it was to advise the King on the subject, was no friend of Rochambeau. In earlier days they had been rivals for promotion, to the disappointment of Montbarey, and more recently in a quarrel between the Prince and Marshal de Broglie, Rochambeau had sided with the Marshal. Montbarey, however, did not allow his personal resentment to affect his judgment. He says, in his memoirs:

"I had little love for the Count de Rochambeau, but this did not prevent me from rendering him justice, and from speaking of him as an intelligent and capable general officer, and one of those most suitable to command the troops destined for America. This sense of justice was my motive for the proposition I made to the King in his favor."

Rochambeau had attained the rank of Major-General, and was now a veteran of thirty-eight years' service, with a record

full of successful achievement in the profession to which he had devoted all his energies. Marshal Belleisle, the Nestor of the French generals, pronounced him "the model soldier of the French Army," and the gay and gallant Duc de Lauzun, who loved to practice war but not to study it, said of him: "He never spoke but of war. In the field, in your chamber, on your table, on your snuffbox if you only drew it from your pocket, Rochambeau was always ready to execute

a manoeuvre." The ministry at first proposed to send only 6,000 men to America; but, at

Rochambeau's

earnest solicitation, the number was increased to 10,000. These were soon collected, but it was found impossible to transports for that number, owing to

the blockade of the French ports by the British fleet, and on May 2, 1780, Rochambeau left the harbor of Brest with about 5,500 troops embarked on 36 transports, and convoyed by a French squadron under the command of Admiral de Ternay.

After a tedious voyage of seventy days the French fleet reached Newport, R. I., where the troops were at once landed, and preparations made to fortify the harbor against the anticipated attack of the British under Admiral Arbuthnol, then at New York.

well disciplined Auvergne brigade, and held the Hanoverians at bay until reinforcements came up and the enemy was repulsed. The Auvergne brigade lost 800 men in killed and wounded, and Rochambeau was among the wounded. For its splendid conduct on this occasion the King bestowed upon it the name of "Royal Auvergne," a name which it maintained as long as the monarchy lasted.

In 1761 Rochambeau was at the siege of Cassel, and at the battle of Fillinghausen. In 1762 he contributed to the victory won by Marshal de Broglie, at Corbach, over Prince Ferdinand; and the same year at Radern, with his Auvergne brigade and the troops of M. de Stainville, he defeated the Count de Fersen in an engagement in which de Fersen was killed and his army dispersed. Peace was declared in 1763, not to be broken until 1778, when the treaty of alliance between France and the United States was followed by a declaration of war against her by Great Britain.

When Louis XVI. determined in 1780 to send a French army to America, the first consideration was the selection of

Rochambeau at once notified General Washington of his arrival in a letter in which he said:

"I arrive with the deepest feelings of submission, zeal and veneration for your person and for the distinguished talents which you display in supporting an ever memorable war." In this letter he enclosed not only his general orders but his secret instructions, declaring: "I am unwilling to have any secrets from my general."

In his reply Washington expressed his gratitude to the King of France for his dimely assistance, and added: "Among the obligations we are under to your Prince, I esteem it one of the first that he has made choice, for the command of his troops, of a gentleman whose high reputation and happy union of social qualities and military abilities promise me every public advantage and private satisfaction."

To show how well this promise was fulfilled I quote now from a letter of Washington's, written Feb. 1, 1784, after the

Revolutionary War had closed, informing the count of his resignation as Commander-in-chief of the American Army.

"The tranquil walks of domestic life are now beginning to unfold themselves, and promise a rich harvest of pleasing contemplation, in which, my dear count, you will make one of my most pleasing themes, as I shall recollect with pleasure that we have been cotemporaries and fellow laborers in the cause of liberty, and that we have lived together, as brothers should do, in harmonious friendship."

Immediately on the receipt of the news of the arrival of the French, Washington had sent Lafayette to inform their commanders of the condition of affairs and to concert with them an immediate attack on New York. Rochambeau and de Ternay did not think it advisable to undertake such an enterprise until they had a naval superiority, and Rochambeau wrote Washington to that effect, at the same time expressing his perfect willingness to obey his orders, and requesting a conference in which all matters might be settled to the satisfaction of the Commander-in-chief. In reply Washington stated that he agreed that "it would be best to defer the commencement of the enterprise until we get a superiority at sea," and that he was looking forward with great pleasure to a meeting with the French commanders, but could not then leave his army, threatened as it was by Lord Clinton. It was not until Sept. 20 that a conference could be held, and then Washington met Rochambeau and de Ternay at Hartford, Conn., where it was agreed to act upon the defensive until the arrival of further assistance. Rochambeau reported the result to the French ministry in a letter which he sent by his son, the Viscount de Rochambeau, in which he said: "The result of our deliberations is to ask you for money, ships and troops. The first is our most pressing need." On the viscount's arrival the ministry at once sent money for the immediate necessities of the French army, but they directed the viscount to remain and await their decision as to the other matters. It was not until May 6, 1781, that he returned to

Newport, and then he brought word that the King refused to send the reinforcements requested. It was a bitter disappointment to the count, but he bore it with perfect loyalty, and wrote the ministry: "My son has returned to me alone. Be the result what it may, the King must be served in his own way, and I shall commence this second campaign with all the zeal and devotion which I have for him, by employing to the best of my ability the very small means he has placed under my control."

The Viscount brought the news that the Count de Grasse had sailed for the West Indies with a large fleet, and that he was authorized to employ it, at his discretion, in the waters of the American continent during the summer months.

This was now the only hope of assistance, and Rochambeau at once wrote Washington, proposing a conference for the purpose of inducing de Grasse to come to this country, and of concerting a plan of operations in case of his arrival. The conference was held at Weathersfield, Conn., and it was agreed that the French army should leave Newport and join Washington on the Hudson, where the combined army should await future developments. Washington wrote the French minister at Philadelphia, requesting him to use his influence with de Grasse, and Rochambeau wrote the Admiral himself, urging the importance of his coming.

Early in August despatches were received from de Grasse stating that he would leave the West Indies on the thirteenth of that month for Chesapeake Bay, and requesting that the allied army would be ready to co-operate with him at the moment of his arrival, as his stay must be necessarily short. Washington and Rochambeau at once determined to meet him there. Lafayette was already in Virginia with his little army of 2,500 men, confronting Lord Cornwallis, who had taken a position at Yorktown.

The allied army was immediately put in motion for the South, and Washington, by a skilful veiling of its movements, having induced Sir Henry Clinton to believe that an attack