William Pitt. Life (Ency. Brit., 8th Ed.), George III.

Appendix,

Oct. 1840

Ranke on the Popes, Whoever will read these articles, generally more interesting than a novel, keeping before him any common outline School History of England, for the purpose of keeping right in dates, reigns and principal events, and personages, will master English History in the most charming way, and will have such striking pictures of those events stamped upon his mind, that he can never forget them. Of course, the formal work quoted at the head of this memorandum should also be read at the proper place, after reading the review on Sir James McIntosh's History of the Revolution.

I earnestly recommend this course to my children. To it should be added "Green's History of the Eng

lish people," and "Molesworth's History of England from 1830 to 1874." (Instead of Molesworth, there is now a more entertaining book-McCarthy's History of Our Own Times.)

For American history, Hildreth's is the most complete, as to the time covered by it. After reading Hildreth, Bancroft's more elaborate work, as recently condensed in six volumes, should be read. Bancroft has taken infinite pains to be accurate, and has altered, added and corrected every successive edition. But his work only comes to the close of the Revolutionary war. (1882. It now embraces the History of the Constitution).

For general history, I still adhere to Tytler; though he must be dull to a young person, and read as a task. However, I know of no other original work comparable to his. There is a pictorial "History of the World," in one large, thick volume, which is very full and complete.

Dr. Russell's Ancient and Modern Europe is very readable and useful.

Of course, no person can claim to be intelligent without reading the great standard works on history which adorn English literature; such as Hume, Robertson and Gibbon. Clarendon and Burnet are complete as to the seventeenth century, Grote, Ferguson, Merivale on Greece and Rome, and Froude on Elizabeth, and Allison on the French Revolution, among English writers, and Prescott, Motley and Irving among Americans; with good translations of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus and Cæsar among the Greeks and Romans; and of Father Paul, Davilo, Sully, Voltaire and Thiers among the Italians

and French. Of course, this enumeration is very incomplete, and does not include many masterpieces which any one laying any claim to scholarship should read and master.

(NOTE.-A good consecutive History of England, elegant and entertaining, will be found by reading successively, 1st, Hume; 2d, Macaulay; 3d, Stanhope (Anne), Mahon (1713-1783), McKnight and McCarthy).

CARLYLE'S "FRENCH REVOLUTION."

Carlyle's "French Revolution," is wrongly entitled, "The French Revolution," a "History," it should have been entitled, "The French Revolution," a "Poem"; not because it is a fiction, or a romance in the sense of fiction, but because its whole frame and cast and filling-in are poetical and nothing else. All it wants is the common poetical garb of verse to make it a complete poem in form as well as substance. Look at that incomparable vision described in the fourth chapter of book IV, entitled "The Procession of the States-General." Is there anything more poetic in Homer or Virgil ?

LELAND ON THE GYPSIES.

September 12, 1878.

I have just read Leland's "English Gypsies and Their Language," and his article in the Edinburgh Review on the same subject. He is about to publish a vocabulary. His conclusions are, that the Gypsies

were originally pariahs of the Natt and Dom tribes in the West of India, who were encouraged to emigrate to Persia to furnish amusements to the people, and who, being expelled thence for their thieving propensities, moved westward through Armenia, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece and Hungary, to Western Europe. Here they first appeared in the Hanse Towns A. D. 1417. Their language shows traces of the countries through which they passed, though its groundwork is "Hindustani," or an old cognate dialect coming from the "Sanskrit." Many words are pure "Sanskrit," and they still retain many customs, notions, proverbs and sayings that betray "Sanskrit" or "Hindu" origin. The names "Rom" and "Romany," by which they call themselves, Mr. L. thinks, are derived from " Dom," Dommany," being a mere corruption of pronunciation, common among them. They call Europeans Gorgios," which may be a corruption of "Georgi "; the first Christians, perhaps, whom they met in their progress westward. And is not their custom of eating the flesh of animals, which have died a natural death, derived from the institutes of Buddhism, by which the killing of animals is forbidden. Driven to great straits for food, may they not have compromised with a principle inherited from of old and deemed it advisable to eat the flesh which had not been killed, but had died from natural causes? Subsequent intercourse with other nations, it is true, may have caused them to forget the original institute, and to eat meat however killed; but the remaining custom of eating the flesh of animals, dying a natural death, may be indicative of experiences through which they had passed.

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STOWE.

The first settlement in Stowe, Vt., was made by Oliver Luce, April 16, 1794, a mile north of the village, on the west side of the road leading to Morrisville, a little south of the fork made by the road that leads to Morrisville and that which continues northerly.

Oliver Luce was born in Martha's Vineyard, July 5, 1765, and died at Stowe, December 2, 1852. His monument was erected by the town over his grave in the old burying ground. His wife, Susannah, lies buried by his side. She was born at Plainfield, N. H., March 29, 1764, and died August 9, 1826. Their son was the first child born in Stowe. Joseph Fuller, now (1875) 82 years old, residing at Stowe Hollow, informs me that he came to Stowe 1809, twelve years of age. At that time there were only three houses in the village, viz.: a log house at the corner, opposite Squire Butler's, a frame house opposite the hotel, and one further down near the Methodist Church. Four farm lots, of one hundred acres each, originally centered 1 point about thirty feet west of the 32 1 and 2 belonged to Dr. Thomas B. Downer; 3, to William Utley; 4, to Nathaniel Russell. Dr. D.'s monument states that he was born at Coventry, Conn., in 1773, and died at Stowe, 1851. His lots embraced the Butler cottage and Sunset Rock, which was called Dr. Downer's ledge. He practised physic at Stowe to the close of his life. When Fuller first came to the place (1809) the grist mill was owned by Asa Raymond, who built it. His tombstone states that he was born at Middlebury, Mass., in 1772, and died in

at a common hotel, thus:

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