412 The Romance of Western History. [September, 



BOOK NOTICE. 



The Romance of Western History, etc. By James Hall, Esq — 

 Applegate & Co., Cincinnati. 



We always did love to look upon, and handle a beautiful book ; 

 such is the one before us. We have read it — it is " cleverly written," 

 as Johnncy Bull would say, and as are all the productions coming 

 from the author of the '-Legends of the West," '-Tales of the 

 Bride," etc. We love a book that reads "right along," not as 

 thou"-h the author felt that he must write a book, or he should never 

 be anvbody, but as though he could not help writing it. His soul 

 is full of the subject and it flows out as naturally and gracefully as 

 water from a living fountain. Such is the one on our table — it is 

 just such a Romance as is ever welcome to our fire sides — a Romance 

 not fiction, but " stranger than fiction." On first reading the title 

 we thought the subject a little hackneyed, and had we been there to 

 have advised, such a work would never have been attempted at our 

 suggestion ; but after reading it, we were glad that we were not con- 

 sulted in the case. 



While the sketches of these earlier pioneers up the St. Lawrance, 

 and in birchen canoes through the great Lakes and down the great 

 father of waters, are fresh, and even new, the last fourteen Chap- 

 ters, embracing the history of the Pioneers from the Eastern side of 

 the Alleghanies — the Scotch Irish, and Kentuckians, and their early 

 literature and, to this day, their marked characteristics — the cause of 

 perpetual and perpetuated animosity between the so-called Border 

 men and the Indians ; are exceedingly rich in the philosophy of 

 history. Some of these chapters are very suggestive, and go to 

 show that the subject of early Western life is not exhausted — nay, 

 it may be that we have but skirted the field, and honor is due that 

 man who can by one additional leaf Supplement the annals of our 

 only age of My the. Poetry and Romance. 



It never before occurred to us that these border-rovers and real 

 pioneers were a j^^^'^'^^^^'^' I'aee, did not amalgamate with those 

 who followed close upon their track, and since we are all bound 

 for that Great Ocean whose waters lave the shore that marks the 

 limits of our empire westward — and since like locusts, " that go 

 forth in bands," we are determined to fell everything in our march ; 



