846 Reviews of Books Maryland (Baltimore, W. J. C. Dulany Co., pp. 245) which has many excellences. It is very brief; the narrative text is of but 180 pages, and many of these are occupied with pictures (the portraits not well executed) . The narrative is well written, conspicuously free from all false notes of ex- aggerated American or Maryland patriotism, fair and sensible. It is com- posed, too, with remarkable intelligence as to what matters are worth in- cluding in a text-book, and what are the best traits in the character and career of the colony and state. It is not the conventional school-book. The list of books for reading might well be extended and annotated. The present constitution of Maryland, a very long document, is printed in an appendix. This is now not unusual in text-books of state history ; but it may be questioned whether children get any good from the full details of most parts of these now verbose instruments, and whether it would not be a better plan to give the full text of the most important provisions, and summaries of the rest. School History of Mississippi, for use in Public and Private Schools, by Franklin L. Riley, Ph.D., Professor of History, University of Mis- sissippi, Secretary of the Mississippi Historical Society. (Richmond, Va. : B. F. Johnson Publishing Co., 1900, pp. 348 and appendix.) Professor Riley's book is intended for a secondary school text-book. The author has been very successful in sketching the varied episodes of Mississippi's history in clear and strong outlines. The narrative is not overburdened with details. The literary style is simple and unadorned. The illustrations are fair and the maps very good. Some of them are copies of originals which are contemporary with the facts which they are used to illustrate. Prominent in the early history of Mississippi is the question of its southern boundary, which was not extended to the Gulf until 1810-1812. The territorial period (i 802-181 7) culminated in separation from the set- tlements on the Tombigbee and statehood for the western half. The period from 1817 to 1850 is the most peculiar and diversified. The Indian titles were extinguished ; the northern counties were organized ; the southern counties lost their political preponderance ; and jealous sec- tionalism prevailed until it was swallowed up in the pride which the state justly felt in the career of its gallant First Regiment under Colonel Jef- ferson Davis in the Mexican war. This was also the period of the demo- cratized constitution (1832) ; of banks, "flush times " and repudiation ; and of the limitation of the interstate slave traffic. The question of se- cession occupied the whole of the decade before the war. It is only in the treatment of the very last period, "A Decade of Progress ( 1890-1900)," that Professor Riley is disappointing. A stranger would not suspect from his statements how critical one of the innovations in the new constitution was nor why Senator George needed to make a brilliant defence of the state in Congress. Why does the author not state plainly that the Mississippians were dissatisfied with uni- versal manhood suffrage and give a fair and candid account of their rea-
