1SS4.] Town and City Histories. 309
first reason why American histories are the task of its preparation was immense, so meagre and dull. They are not and more time must have been spent pictures from life. The fact is, that the in merely collecting authorities than historian might as well try to write a has been bestowed altogether on more valuable and interesting history from pretentious histories. Where Mr. Mac- the materials which our older cities Master found all these authorities is possess, as a painter might try to paint a puzzle, for even such libraries as those the battle of Cr^cy from the details in Boston and Cambridge have not all given by Froissart. To be sure we the materials for such an undertaking, have all seen such pictures, but who Yet even he leaves many points has more than admired them? untouched, or cursorily disposed of. The absence of contemporaneous Among the subjects referred to, of which literature has been the greatest mis- we would like to learn more, may be fortune of all history. Every student mentioned : the township system of knows how great and deplorable are the West, the development of Amer- the breaks constantly met with in trac- ican municipal institutions, and, above ing the thread of past events. Shall all, the origin and rise of the various we, then, let the students of posterity centres of population and business remain in the dark on such questions which we call cities, as these : why Providence became the The history of a nation should be second city of New England ; why she compiled in the same way that the left Newport so badly in the race for French people of the ancien regime prosperity ; why Buffalo and Cincinnati compiled their lists of grievances to be went up, while Black Rock and North presented to the king. In the early Bend went down ; why Chicago became States-generals the deputies of all the the largest manufacturing city on the orders received from the electors man- continent ; why New England kept the dates of instructions containing an town-meeting, and the West preferred enumeration of the public grievances the township and the county ; and why of which they were to demand redress, a thousand and one other important From the multitude of these cahiers things happened. To be sure we have (or codices), the three estates, that is, had Bancroft, and Sparks, and Hildreth, the clergy, the nobility, and the third but these and their brethren have told estate (the people), compiled each a us as little about the history of the single cahier to serve as the exponent people as Lingard, Hume, Hallam, and of its grievances and its demands, all the rest of them told England. When this complex process had been Within a very few years historians have completed and the three residual begun to see this defect, and such men cahiers had been given to the king, the as Green, Lodge, and MacMaster have States-general, the only representative undertaken to give us histories of the body of France, was dissolved, people, the first and last taking the lead Thus it should be with our national on their respective sides of the Atlantic, history. Already the clergy have pre- MacMaster's work is excellent as far sented their cahiers in the shape of as it goes. His first volume is deep church histories and theological essays and scholarly, and does credit to innumerable. The nobles, that is, American literature. It is clear that the statesmen and politicians, have
�� �
