Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/140

128 Starving Time; V, Beginnings of a Commonwealth; VI, A Seminary of Sedition; VII, The Kingdom of Virginia; VIII, The Maryland Palatinate; IX, Leah and Rachel, comprise the first volume, which is illustrated by three maps—Tidewater Virginia, from a sketch by the author; Michael Lok's map, 1582, from Hackluyt's Voyages to America; and the Palatinate of Maryland, from a sketch by the author. In this volume we are brought down to the middle of the seventeenth century.

Chapter X, on The Coming of the Cavaliers, opens the second volume, and the reader's interest deepens as the history proceeds. Not the least of the charms of Professor Fiske's style are the racy comments and the fine observations interspersed throughout the story. Here is one. In speaking of the contrast between the maps of New England and Virginia, he says: "One can not find in all New England a county named from an English sovereign or prince, except Dukes for the island of Martha's Vineyard. . . . But for this one instance we should never know that such a thing as kingship had ever existed. As for the names of towns, there is in Massachusetts one Lunenburg, copied in Vermont, and on the map of New England we may find half a dozen Hanovers and Brunswicks, originals and copier. Between this showing and that of Virginia, where the sequence of royal names is full enough to preserve a rude record of the country's expansion, the contrast is surely striking. The difference between the Puritan temper and that of the Cavaliers seems to be written ineffaceably upon the map."

Now follows a spirited sketch of the Cavalier element in the composition of Old Virginia, and, while deprecating the personal and sectional prejudices of half a century ago, the author adds: "It is impossible to make any generalization concerning the origin of the white people of the South or of the North, further than to say that their ancestors came from Europe, and a large majority of them from the British Islands." And again: "It is a mistake to suppose that the contrast between Cavaliers and Roundheads was in any wise parallel with the contrast between high-born people and low-born"; and toward the close of the work we come upon the following statement that will doubtless be a surprise to many readers: "A comparative survey of Old Virginia's neighbors shows how extremely loose and inaccurate is the common habit of alluding to the old Cavalier society of England as if it were characteristic of the Southern States in general. Equally loose and ignorant is the habit of alluding to Puritanism as if it were peculiar to New England. In point of fact the Cavalier society was reproduced nowhere save on Chesapeake Bay. On the other hand, the English or Independent phase of Puritanism was by no means confined to New England colonies. Three fourths of the people of Maryland were Puritans. English Puritanism, with the closely kindred French Calvinism, swayed South Carolina; and in our concluding chapter we shall see how the Scotch or Presbyterian phase of Puritanism extended throughout the whole Appalachian region from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and has exercised in the Southwest an influence always great and often predominant."

Following the opening chapter upon the Cavaliers is Chapter XI, on Bacon's Rebellion, and like all the rest it is full of interest and instruction; XII is entitled William and Mary; XIII. Maryland's Vicissitudes; XIV, Society in the Old Dominion; XV, The Carolina Frontier; XVI, The Golden Age of Pirates; XVII. From Tidewater to the Mountains. There are three maps—Western Growth of Old Virginia, frontispiece, from a