Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/442

 432 Reviews of Books Mexico's punishment had been, it was deserved. Santa Anna was then " infamous and accursed ". As in the earHer volumes of this series, the typography leaves much to be desired. Jesse S. Reeves. Americana. Rcisccindriickc, Bctrachtungcn, Geschichtlichc Gesamt- ansicht. Von Karl Lamprecht. (Freiburg i. B., Hermann Heyfelder, 1906, pp. 147.) Professor Lamprecht explains that, while his journey in America at the time of the St. Louis congresses was accompanied with abundant note-taking, he had at the time no intention of writing a book of travels; but, having contributed some of his impressions to a German newspaper after his return, he found himself so much at- tacked and misunderstood by German Americans that he was drawn on into the printing of this small book. The justification of such a pro- cedure lies in the results, which in this case, it must be said, are of very unequal value in the three divisions of the book. The author takes great pains to distinguish these three sections. The first em- braces impressions of travel which are strictly contemporaneous, de- rived from a note-book in which he daily recorded only those things which he saw with his own eyes, and which accordingly he treats with somewhat the respect which we accord to an original historical source. Often these notes are interesting; but it is because they cast light on the most interesting personality among German historians, and show him broadening from week to week into a better appreciation of what he was seeing. It is not because they have any value of their own. A judicious historical scholar may feel warranted in confiding to his note-book, while his field of observation is still confined to the Americans on board his steamship, that American society lacks such and such qualities that mark the highest civilization, or that the rude designs of <he American coinage, now first inspected, are characteristic of our status; he may conclude before reaching Montreal, by observations from the window of the train proceeding via Albany and Plattsburg, that all the advantages of soil lie on the side of Canada as compared with the United States. But will he print these hastily formed conclusions in a took? Part second consists of conclusions into which information obtained from others enters more largely, and which were written down at a later and better-informed stage of the author's progress. Here are many acute observations, on such topics as American piety, the proneness to quantitative estimates, military heroes, the universities — observations which show not only keen sight, but an extremely wide range of interests and the habit of considering all things from the standpoint of the history of civilization. But the best section is the third, in which, from this particular point of view, the author attempts to estimate the significance of the main phenomena of American civiliza- tion at its present state of development. Here also we may occasionally find striking conclusions advanced with confidence upon the basis of insufficient reading. But there is something inspiring in the breadth.