All articles have been donated, and hence show better than words can express what can and will be done for the Museum and Library if a safe place for keeping be secured, and a permanent policy established.

A. A. GRAHAM,
Secretary

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF OHIO. In two volumes. Illustrated by about500 engravings, contrasting the Ohio of 1846 with 1886-88; from drawings by the author in 1846 and photographs taken in 1886, 1887 and 1888 of cities and chief towns, public buildings, historic localities, monuments, curiosities, antiquities, portraits, maps, etc. By HENRY HOWE, author of "Historical Collections of Virginia," and other works. Columbus: Henry Howe & Son, 1889.

The following communication upon this work and its author will interest everyone.

"Tacitus wrote a history of the Romans, Josephus of the Jews, Macaulay of the English; but how little, after all, do we learn from their writings about the people of whom they wrote. They have given us grand processions of kings, queens, emperors and generals, but little or nothing of the vast area of underlying life of which these crowned and bedizened puppets were the outgrowth. A lord may be created in an hour, and then may not be worth the labor expended in his creation. A king may owe his crown and kingdom to the accident of birth, or the favor of fortune; but a great people is the product of centuries of careful nursing, discipline and cultivation.

What the readers of this age want to know is how this great people lived, and for what they lived. This Henry Howe in his Historical Collections tells us with respect to the people of Ohio. He puts us face to face with the founders, builders and beautifiers of a commonwealth; with the sturdy fighters against adversity, the rugged subduers of wild men and wild beasts, the hardy pioneers, who in less than half a century converted a wilderness into a fruitful garden.

The material for the pioneer portion of his history Mr. Howe gathered when he was a young man of thirty, as he traveled from county to county on the back of "Old Pomp," a slow-going, old white horse.

It was on that now famed historic tour he saw our fathers and grandfathers, and in his genial and laughing way swapped jokes with them, thus ascertaining just what manner of folk they were, and what good stories of a local flavor they had to tell. It was at this time he met Corwin, Ewing, Wade, Giddings, and the men of their day and generation.

After completing his first grand tour of the state, and putting the things he had gathered in a book, he fell into a Rip Van Winkle sleep, and after forty years or more awoke again, stretched himself, shed a sympathetic and regretful tear for the long departed "Old Pomp," and

as a gray-haired, but still jovial and young-hearted man traveled over the old route again to see what changes had taken place while he slumbered. There were many. He tells us how many and just what they were. Columbus, which he first saw as a scattering village of a few thousand souls, had grown to be a prosperous and wealthy city. Cleveland and Cincinnati had made even greater strides toward metropolitan proportions. Toledo, Dayton, Springfield and many other towns had cast aside the dull monotony of ordinary county seats, and assumed the rush and fury of great manufacturing and commercial centers. He tells us by words and pictures how these towns appeared to him in the old time, and how they look at present. He describes other changes also. The Bebbs, Medills, Shannons, Tods and Broughs are gone; but barefooted boys struggling with pot hooks and the multiplication table when these men were prominent, have pushed forward to fill the places they had filled. He heard no words of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Hayes and Garfield in the old time; some of them indeed he met; but as almost beardless youngsters that nobody ever heard of or wanted to look at a second time. Now he finds their names on every tongue, and their fame covering the continent.

In his wanderings to and fro across the State, this genial old historian stops at Georgetown, and talks and laughs with those who knew 'Lyss Grant when he ground bark in the old tanyard, and then he takes a picture of the house in which we went to school. Going on to Lancaster he finds out whether Cump Sherman was much of a flunker when a boy, and whether he got around the girls at spelling-schools and appleparing bees by cutting in ahead of them, when they were looking to see the enemy approach from some other direction. And so in time he visits the identical neighborhood on the Muskingum where Jim Garfield taught the country lads and lassies how to read, write and cipher; and he takes pleasure even in finding the precise spot on which the old pioneer school-house stood. In short, Henry Howe has done for Ohio what Boswell did for Johnson: he has told us precisely the things we wanted to know.

But in addition to all Mr. Henry Howe has himself written, he presents in his history of Ohio a number of able articles by other men, worth more to the reader than the price of the book. Frank Henry Howe, the historian's son, gives us a General Description of Ohio; Prof. Orton writes on the Geography and Geology of the State; Prof. G. Frederick Wright, on the Glacial Man; Prof. Norton S. Townshend, History of Agriculture in Ohio; Hon. Andrew Roy, Mines and Mining Resources of Ohio; Col. Charles Whittlesey, Pioneer Engineers of Ohio; Civil Jurisdiction in Ohio, and Sources of Ohio's Strength; Prof. G. W. Knight, Educational Progress in Ohio; J. Q. Howard, Historical Men of Ohio; Prof. M. C. Read, Ohio's Work in the Sanitary Commission; Hon. Wm. M. Farrar, Ohio: The Buckeye State.

In brief, "Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio," next to the Bible and Noah Webster, should find a place under every Ohioan's roof-tree, and when - let us hope a thousand years hence - this kindhearted and youthful old historian has been gathered to his fathers, full of years and of honors, our sons and grandsons should recognize his descendants as the hereditary historians of the State, greet them cordially and reward them liberally.

Columbus, March 20, 1889.

JOHN BEATTY.

THE HISTORICAL WRITINGS OF ORASMUS H. MARSHALL relating to the early history of the West. Paper covers, uncut edges, five hundred pages, one volume. Joel Munsell Sons, Albany, N. Y., 1887. Mr. Marshall was a prominent and prosperous business man of Buffalo, New York, who, despite the exactions of a large business found much time for historical research. He was one of the chief promoters of the Buffalo Historical Society, and read before that and other bodies, many valuable papers bearing on the early history of the country. He was well acquainted with many educated Seneca Indians, and through them, and also through Canadian French, who were tinctured with Indian blood, he learned many obscure facts throwing no little light upon our early annals. The book referred to contains the following chapters, which sufficiently attest its value and evidence its usefulness:

1. A short sketch of the Indian Tribes which dwelt on the borders of the Great Lakes.

2. Champlain's expedition against the Onondagas in 1615.

3. Reply to Dr. Shea and General Clark.

4. Champlain's Astrolabe.

5. The building and the voyage of the Griffin in 1679.

6. Expedition of the Marquis De Nonville against the Senecas in 1687. LaSalle's first visit to the Niagara frontier in 1669.

7.

8. DeCeloron's Expedition to the Ohio in 1749.

9. Historical Sketches of the Niagara Frontier.

10. History of the New York Charter, 1664-74.

11. Early notices of the Copper regions. 12. Index Review.

JOURNALS OF MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS. Maps. Paper covers.
Joel Munsell Sons.

296 Pages.

Introductory notes by Franklin B. Hough. This work contains an account of excursions made by Rogers during the late war (French and Indian war 1755-60) on the "Continent of North America." The appendix contains documents and papers relating to Rogers while commander of the Post at "Michilimackinack" in 1767, and also his conduct in the Revolutionary war. The work contains many items of value to the student of history.

"THE PIONEER PRESS OF KENTUCKY," by William Henry Perrin, Louisville, Kentucky. The Filson Club Publications, No. 3.

This monograph was prepared for and read before the August meeting, 1887, of the Filson Club. The preface states the object of the monograph, or rather perhaps what called it forth.

"The 11th day of August, 1887," writes Mr. Thomas Speed, the Secretary, in the preface, "closed the first hundred years from the establishing of a printing press and the issuing of a newspaper in Kentucky. This event having been deemed worthy of commemoration by the Filson Club, one of its members, William Henry Perrin, was requested to prepare and read to the Club a sketch of the pioneer press of the State."

In the course of his narrative Mr. Perrin states that "the first newspaper west of the Alleghany mountains was established in Kentucky one hundred years ago. Its origin was mainly due to a political necessity. Kentucky then formed a county of Virginia, and the people were earnestly debating the propriety of separating from the parent State and setting up an independent government. To accomplish this a convention had been held at Danville, the Territorial Capital as it might be called. A second convention assembled in 1785, at the same place and for the same purpose, which, during its sitting, adopted the following resolution:

"That to insure unanimity in the opinion of the people respecting the propriety of separating the district of Kentucky from Virginia, and forming a separate State government, and to give publicity to the proceedings of the convention, it is deemed advisable to have a printing press."

A committee was appointed to carry into effect the resolution, but it was two years before it could be carried out. John Bradford had come to Kentucky, and becoming interested in the matter, was induced to attempt the enterprise. He proposed to establish the paper if he was guaranteed the public patronage. The offer was accepted, and at Lexington, then the most important point in this part of the west, two lots were given Mr. Bradford by the town trustees in July, 1786. This offer was accepted by the printer, and was the means of establishing the paper there in place of Danville, then the capital of the county, or district of Kentucky.

Mr. Bradford went by horseback, afoot and by canoe to Philadelphia, obtained his material and a press, which in turn came westward by much the same manner as the purchaser, and in Lexington, on the 11th day of August, 1787, the first number of the "Kentucky Gazette" was given to the Blue-grass pioneers. "It was," says Mr. Perrin, “a small, unpretentious sheet, scarcely as large as a half sheet of foolscap paper. Its contents comprised two short, original articles, one advertisement, and the following note:

"My customers will excuse this my first publication, as I am much