Henceforward Dr. Palfrey has to follow out each thread of his story by itself, as by-and-by he will have to gather them into one cord.  He traces the developments of months and years in the original settlements, and pursues them as they lead him to new territory in the Northeast and the Southwest, into Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.  Another episode on the opening of the Civil War at home, which invited a large return of the exiles, and a record of the original confederacy of the New England Colonies, bring us to the present close of his labors.  May they be speedily continued! and may we enjoy the reality, as we now do the promise of them!

We turn now to Mr. Arnold’s book.  The field which it traverses is narrower as regards space, but its spirit is large and generous, and its subject-matter is of the loftiest significance.  If the writer does not indulge us with many disquisitions, it is not from lack of ability.  Wherever, as in his moralizings upon King Philip’s War, and in his incidental comments upon the peculiarities and temper of his prominent men, he allows us to meet his own mind, he is uniformly wise and interesting.  He stands by Rhode Island as does Dr. Palfrey by Massachusetts; and seeing that for a far longer period than the two books run on together the two Colonies were at strife, we are glad to have before us both the ways in which the story may be told.  There are various sharp judgments on Massachusetts men and principles in the Rhode Island book.  The argument is in good hands on either side.

Mr. Arnold begins with the first occupation of Rhode Island by white men, and conducts his narrative to the close of the century.  His research has been faithful.  His style is chaste, forcible, and often picturesque.  He has seen the world widely, and he knows human nature.  He understands very well what a place of honor and what a well-proved assurance of safety distinctive Rhode Island principles have attained.  The issue, having been found so triumphant, has dignified to the historian the early, humble, and bewildering steps and processes through which it was reached.  The narrative on his pages is the most distracting one ever written in the annals of civilized men.  Every conceivable element of strife, discord, agitation, alarm, dissension, and bitterness is to be found in it,—­redeemed only by a prevailing integrity, right-mindedness, and right-heartedness in all the leading spirits.  Each man in each of the towns composing the original elements of the Colony was a whole “democratie” in himself, and generally a “fierce” one.  Disputed boundaries with both the other Colonies, and an especial and continuous feud with Massachusetts,—­unruly spirits, bent upon working out all manner of impracticable theories,—­the oddest and most original, as well as the most obstinate and indomitable dreamers and enthusiasts, furnished some daily nutriment to dissension with their neighbors or among themselves.  Men of mark, like Roger Williams, Samuel Gorton, Governor