many annoyances as well as pleasures.  The little work under notice contains many valuable hints and suggestions, while its notes of all camp requisites and receipts are exceedingly valuable.  Some of the author’s quaint aphorisms on camp economy, camp neatness and cleanliness, and on the signs and portents of the weather, will tend to keep the reader in good humor.  It would require years of experience for new beginners to acquire the information which a half hour’s study of this book will easily impart.  To all such, then, it is invaluable.

The first volume of Mr. McMaster’s entertaining work on the History of the People of the United States[7] appeared just three years ago this summer, and the lively interest which it then aroused gave promise of the cordial welcome that would be generally extended to future volumes of the same work.  The first volume closed with the year 1790.  The second volume, which has recently been published, continues the easy and entertaining narrative down to 1803.  Within its seven chapters there is a vast fund of valuable information in regard to life and society as they existed under the early administrations.  These chapters cover the experimental years of the Republic under the Constitution,—­the years which, so susceptible of popular treatment, are so particularly engaging to students of American history.  At so formative a period in the national development, when there was open contest between Congress and the States, when the group of undoubted aristocrats gathered around Hamilton were in direct opposition to the extreme republicanism of the circle which acknowledged Jefferson as its chief, the dominance of English or French influence was an element of great moment to the future of the nation.  Mr. McMaster has most admirably handled this phase of his subject.

The account of town and country life as they were at the beginning of the present century, and of the growth of those social usages which we have come almost to regard as instinctive, is very entertaining and instructive.  Barring certain blemishes and a few inaccuracies, which ought to be excusable in a work of such character, Mr. McMaster’s two volumes form a very valuable and welcome contribution to our national literature.  It was a felicitous thought which prompted him to enter this peculiar field, and to gather up the important facts which writers on political history have generally avoided.  So thoroughly and so admirably has Mr. McMaster worked this field that we doubt whether any other writer, coming after him, will be tempted to invade the same territory.  The work thus far ends with the negotiations which led to the Louisiana purchase, and we are led to expect three more instalments before it shall be completed.

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