An abundance of illustrations is not rare enough in town histories to merit applause, but they are so seldom worth looking at that the presence of such admirable ones as we find here attracts more than passing notice.  If American art were to be judged by the generality of such illustrations, we would do well to say as little as possible about the slurs and sneers of foreign critics.  In such case silence would be the better plan.

The preface to the second volume contained the following suggestive sentences:—­

“The original plan of the work was to make the earlier portions more full than the later:  indeed, to give but a brief skeleton of recent affairs:  it being exceedingly difficult to make contemporary history satisfactory to those who have taken part in it.  We have, in a few instances, departed from this course, for reasons which will suggest themselves to the reader.”

In these sentences may be found the germ of almost the only idea in the making of this truly admirable book which deserves severe criticism, and most certainly the severest condemnation should be given to this and all similar ideas.  The notion that history should be written in a way that will be satisfactory to those engaged in it is radically wrong, unless perchance by a satisfactory way is meant a way that in point of truth, accuracy, and fulness, will suit those who have a more or less personal share in the events to be recorded.  But here it is evident that the word has not this meaning, or at least has a great deal more than this meaning.  In this connection it seems to be a euphemism for pleasant.  Certainly no one will dispute that an historian of contemporary events would find very difficult even the attempt to make his work pleasant to his contemporaries.  It is the endeavor to do this which has vitiated all the histories so far written of the late Civil War.  The same principle made Thiers’s French Revolution an almost worthless book as a history.  To come down to lesser things, the same principle underlying and pervading all American local histories has done more toward making them worthless than any other single defect.  In the name of truth and justice we ask, “Why should the writing of history be made satisfactory, pleasant, to those who aid in the making of it?” We want the truth about the near, as well as the far, past.  Let us do unto our descendants as we would that our ancestors had done by us, and tell them the truth about ourselves.

Perhaps we ought to be more lenient in the case of this history of Pittsfield, in consideration of the fact that this was a public work, and, therefore, more caution had to be exercised than we would otherwise have expected.  Of course no employee would like to displease even a single member of the corporation that employed him.  Possibly the same argument might be raised in defence of any historian, in that the public is virtually his employer.  Here, however,