SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 127 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



There is no form of literature that has been more affected by the mod- 

 ern scientific spirit than history. Readers who are familiar with the writ- 

 ings of our earlier historians, even to the time of Bancroft, have found that 

 the stories of the Discovery of America, of the Beginnings of New England, 

 and of the Revolutionary War, as told by Professor Fiske, were full of fresh- 

 ness and novelty, taking hold of one in a way not felt before. The count- 

 less details of these respective periods under Fiske's philosophic treatment 

 are found to have acquired an absorbing human interest. In tracing effects 

 to causes and showing the successive stages in the progress of events, new 

 meanings are perceived and new emotions awakened, and the period we are 

 studying becomes a part of " the solemn work of ages, which is slowly win- 

 ning for humanity a richer and more perfect life." 



While each of Fiske's histories deals with a period that can be studied 

 by itself as an epoch in human experience, the several works constitute a 

 carefully planned series, and Old Virginia and her Neighbors * falls at once 

 into its place between the Discovery of America and the Beginnings of New 

 England. The story of Old Virginia begins with Sir Walter Raleigh and 

 the Rev. Richard Hackluyt, near the close of the sixteenth century, and 

 ends in 1753 with the expedition of the "youthful George Washington to 

 warn the approaching Frenchmen from any further encroachment upon 

 English soil." On March 25, 1584, was sealed the document that empow- 

 ered Raleigh to "hold by homage remote heathen lands not actually pos- 

 sessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, which he 

 might discover within the next six years." The wealthy Raleigh, without 

 delay, sent out two ships, which reached what is now known as North Caro- 

 lina on July 4, 1584, and after a run of a hundred miles northward their 

 commanders landed at Roanoke Island. The next year Raleigh sent out a 

 hundred men to make the beginnings of a settlement at this island, which 

 Queen Elizabeth suggested should be called Virginia, in honor of herself. 

 But Raleigh's Virginia extended from Florida (held by Spain) to Canada 

 (in the hands of the French). The first charter, issued by James I in 1606, 

 limited Virginia within the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of lati- 

 tude, and from the seashore a hundred miles inland. Three years later-a 

 second charter made the hundred miles inland reach " from sea to sea." In 

 1609 New England and New Netherlands were cut off from Virginia; in 

 1632 Maryland became a separate palatinate; in 1663 Carolina, and in 1732 

 Georgia, were also detached from the original tract. 



The preliminary chapter is entitled the Sea Kings, and it closes with the 

 destruction of Spain's naval power by the catastrophe of 1588, when Eng- 

 land snatched fi*om Spain the sovereignty of the seas, and determined to 

 begin the work of settlement in America, hoping to find mines of wealth 

 like those Mexico and Peru had supplied that power; Chapter II, A Dis- 

 course on Western Planting; III, The Land of the Powhatans; IV, The 



* Old Virginia and her Neighbors. By John Fiske. In tw'O volumes. Cambridge : Houghton, 

 Mifflin & Co., The Riverside Press. 



