reasoning by analogy fails, for the public is a very large body, and will seldom take up the cudgel in defence of any single individual.  This is a question, however, which should be settled on the ground of right, not of expediency.  But even if the right be left out of account, the expedient in this case is not necessarily opposed to truth and accuracy.  This is well shown by the phenomenal success of The Memorial History of Boston, mentioned above.  It may be well just here to say a little more about this admirable work, for it is even more typical of what an ideal city history should be, than that of Pittsfield is of the ideal town history.

From the title-page we learn that The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, was edited by Justin Winsor, and issued under the business superintendence of the projector, Clarence F. Jewett, in 1880.  The nature of the book is learned from the preface, which says:  “The history is cast on a novel plan:  not so much in being a work of co-operation, but because, so far as could be, the several themes, as sections of one homogeneous whole, have been treated by those who have some particular association and, it may be, long acquaintance with the subject.  In the diversity of authors there will, of course, be variety of opinions, and it has not been thought ill-judged, considering the different points of view assumed by the various writers, that the same events should be interpreted sometimes in varying and, perhaps, opposite ways.  The chapters may thus make good the poet’s description: 

  ’Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea,’—­

and may not be the worse for each offering a reflection, according to its turn to the light, without marring the unity of the general expanse.”

Among those who contributed one or more chapters to this work were Justin Winsor (the editor), Charles Francis Adams, Jr., R.C.  Winthrop, T.W.  Higginson, Edward Everett Hale, H.E.  Scudder, F.W.  Palfrey, Phillips Brooks, Andrew P. Peabody, Henry Cabot Lodge, Josiah P. Quincy, and Edward Atkinson.  Such names as these are more than enough to insure the truth, accuracy, and historical value of the book.  Each one of them discussed one or more topics, and then their work with that of the less famous contributors was arranged chronologically, making a logically consecutive series of essays complete in themselves.  The whole was published in four elegantly printed volumes, containing, in all, twenty-five hundred and seventy-seven pages.

This is the kind of a history which is of value, not only for immediate use, but also for future reference; and this is the kind that gladdens the heart and cheers the labors of the student and the writer.  It is the lack of such histories which makes incomplete and unsatisfactory such works as the one in the hands of the government which called forth this article.  For it must not be supposed that the historical part of The Social Statistics of Cities of 1880 will be either complete in every part or wholly satisfactory.  Yet perhaps it will be complete enough to answer its end, which is to afford an opportunity for seeing why the cities and towns described have reached their present condition.  It is on the accounts of their present condition that the value of the work must chiefly rest.