Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  
  • 3
  •  
  • 4
  •  
  • 5
  •  
  • 6
  •  
  • 7
  •  
  • 8
  •  
  • 9
  •  
  • 10
  •  
  • 11
  •  
  • 12
  •  
  • 13
  •  
  • 14
  •  
  • 15
  •  
  • 16
  •  
  • 17
  •  
  • 18
  •  
  • 19
  •  

EDITORIALANA

EDITORIALANA.

AVERY'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

The second volume of A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES AND ITS

PEOPLE, From the Earliest Records to the Present Time, by Elroy Mc-

Kendree Avery, published by the Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland,

Ohio, has been issued by the publishers. The purpose and general plan

of this work, which when completed will comprise fifteen volumes, was

set forth in the QUARTERLY for April 1905. The second volume fully

meets the ambitious and alluring promise of the first volume. The vol-

ume before us embraces the period of American Colonies from 1600 to

1660. The various initial settlements are suscinctly portrayed under the

titles, among others, of Champlain and New France; Virginia Under the

Charter and the Old Dominion; Settlement of Maryland; Massachusetts

Bay; The New Netherland; The New Sweden; Connecticut Plantations;

with background and settings such as The Growth of Separatism in Eng-

land; Annexation and Confederation, Puritan and Heretic. Mr. Avery

in this volume gives the reader not only in continued and logical sequence

the events of the period in question with the pen of a master, but with-

out adding heaviness or prolixity to his results, gives the philosophy and

background to the incidents themselves. The author has, as we have be-

fore intimated, the eye of an artist, the sentiment of a poet and the

thought of a philosopher. These elements are charmingly used as set-

tings and interweaving threads to his historical scenes. Mr. Avery might

be justly styled "an artist historian," although in his pages accuracy

and truth are never sacrificed for word effects. In no work we have

ever read of a similar character has there been such a remarkable com-

bination of the historical imagination and strict adherence to truth. Mr.

Avery marshals the cold and literal facts in the warm colors of a word

painter.

There are no events in the history of civilization so fraught with

tremendous reality and fascinating romance as the story of the initial

settlements in America by the varied assortment of races of the Old

World. The French, Spaniard, Dutch, Swede and the singularly con-

trasted elements of the Anglo Saxon, as evidenced in the Cavaliers of

Virginia and Maryland, the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of

Massachusetts. The contrasting and conflicting aims and accomplish-

ments of these various colonists are admirably followed and skillfully

(271)