The rest of this “comprehensive history” is occupied with the course of events down to December 30, 1813, when the British burnt the town, leaving but two houses standing—­a dwelling-house and a blacksmith’s shop.  Here, having brought his Phoenix to ashes, our comprehensive historian brings his narrative to an abrupt end.  This is at page 304.  Then follows the “appendix,” an invariable feature of city histories, which makes of every one of them a huge anti-climax.  In this instance, one hundred and thirty-nine pages of appendix contain, according to the author, “for the purpose of preservation, a mass of papers not absolutely necessary to the elucidation of the history contained in the body of the work.  Most of them consist of original papers and letters never before published, and which are now, for the first time, placed in an accessible and permanent form.”  To compare small things with great, these documents are made just about as “accessible” as are the State papers to which Carlyle devotes so much paper and bile in his book on Oliver Cromwell.

In short, this book contains much valuable information, which is very hard to extract, and when extracted is not germane to the history of the city of Buffalo.

Some information about Buffalo’s history was found in a pamphlet on the Manufacturing Interests of the City of Buffalo, published in 1866.  In it were historical sketches, covering about twenty-five pages,—­verbose, with little meat, written in the flowery style so dear to the heart of the American editor or “Honorable” when extolling the virtues of his constituency.  Turner’s History of the Holland Purchase, published in 1849, and containing six hundred and sixty-six pages, would have been more useful, had it not been composed for the greater part of the biographies of insignificant pioneers, and had not the rest related in the main to the early history of the section.  A book promising much on the outside was Hotchkin’s History of Western New York.  An examination of the title-page, however, dampened our expectations, for there was added the rest of the title, namely, “And of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Presbyterian Church.”  The book proved indeed a delusion and a snare, for of its six hundred pages more than nine tenths pertained to church affairs,—­were part and parcel of the cahiers of the clergy.  As for the magazine articles on Buffalo, they are few and, from the historical point of view, insignificant.

Of far more interest than the histories of either Cleveland or Buffalo, though perhaps no more important, is that of their nearest common neighbor of equal rank,—­Pittsburgh.  In very many respects this is one of the most interesting cities in the Union, which is mostly due to the fact that it has such a remarkable location, and that its topography is picturesquely unique.  Here we have the strange combination of the blackest, smuttiest, dirtiest hole in the United States,—­at night, as Parton