generally careful to express as counsel given by them to their own brother, not as their decision pronounced to a church over which they claimed any authority. In 1734, they wrote a letter to the Presbytery at Londonderry, touching a brotherly and Christian agreement and communion between Congregationalists and Presbyterians. In 1735, they occupied themselves in securing the parishes against the admission of unqualified candidates for the ministry. As the Revolution came on and passed, the records of the Association show the temper of its members, and the character of their part in the martyrdoms of the time. In 1806, the Association initiated the measures which resulted in the formation of the Evangelical Missionary Society. In 1814,-after an existence of nearly a century,-in consequence of the separation between the Liberal and Orthodox Congregational churches, on the 18th of October it dissolved. Dr. Ripley, of Concord, was at that time the moderator of this body. It seems, that it divided, five against five, on the question of the admission of Rev. Timothy Hilliard as a member; and that on this, or some similar division, the dissolution followed.

Meanwhile, as early as Aug. 10, 1762, the western part of this old Marlborough Association had been set off from it, and had formed another body, wholly in Worcester County. This seems to have been an ecclesiastical body named "The Worcester Association," which, in its turn, dissolved in the year 1791, on the occasion of the refusal, on the part of a majority of its members, to recognize, and fraternize with, the young minister of the Second Church in Worcester, a reputed Arminian. This was Aaron Bancroft, afterwards a distinguished preacher and author, whose interest in American history has been inherited by his son. The liberal members of that body formed an Association under the name of the Worcester Association, which has continued to this day,having joined itself in 1820 to the Lancaster Association. The fortunes of each of these bodies are recorded in Dr. Allen's volume.

Their union in 1820 made "The Worcester Association of Ministers," under the constitution by which that body is

known to-day. In nearly half a century, this society of ministers has found numerous works for the good of the church, which, in their Association, they could set forward. At the same time, in the regular and diligent meetings, it has furnished, as we might almost say, instruction to its younger members; it has furnished stimulus and courage to all; and, in the real advance of the practical objects of Christianity, has shown how much may be done by the simplest arrangement which brings good men together in sympathy. The improvement of our Sunday-school text-books; the establishment of the "Sunday-school Gazette;" the custom, now general, of an annual re-union of the Sunday schools of a county; the yearly meetings of the Unitarians in convention; the establishment of the County Temperance Society, and of the County Institution for Savings, the first, it is said, in the country,― are so many different results of the foresight and activity displayed in these meetings. Of all these enterprises, and of many more, the first steps are found in their records.

The impression which attendance on hundreds of meetings of this body has given us, has been the most happy contrast to the vulgar notion given in frequent satire of assemblies of clergymen. The eagerness with which the Association almost always entered on its work, the frank and kind discussion of the essay or sermon read, the practical care for the religious interests of the community, have made the meetings a training school of the first value to the younger members, while they renewed the youth of the older. The reputation of this Association is, that its discussions are not held by a few of its leaders only, and that its spirit is hopeful and determined, not sceptical and despondent; that it looks forward rather than backward, and really believes that the Church to which God gave infinite duties received at the same time infinite power from his hands.

Dr. Allen does not satisfy himself by giving the history of these associations as organizations. At the close of each history, he gives a biographical sketch of every member who has been connected with them. The diligence with which

this work has been done, and the accuracy thus secured, make a very valuable addition to our scanty store of biographical memoranda of the last century, and provide for the next century memoranda in completeness, for which the students of genealogy and history will then bless the author. The picture given of the simple, unambitious life of the country minister of a hundred years ago is as instructive as it is pathetic. Not many high and not many mighty are called on this modest calendar. So far as wealth goes, these are indeed the humble annals of the poor. Nay, for learning, it is impossible to make much boast for those men who fill the first half-century of this History. Dr. Allen's careful lists of their publications does but show that their power was at home, and not abroad; in the word they spoke from the pulpit, and not in that which they scattered broadcast by the press. None the less for all this did they do their work, and do it well. The History and the biographies show that these were abreast of their times, or that they led their times. They knew how to suffer, and, when their day came, did suffer as bravely as any of the Nonconformists or other exiles from whom they were born. In any moment of protest, they were ready with their protest; nor, indeed, has there been. any hour, from the earliest date in this History to the latest, when, in any forward movement of the Church or of society, these men have been found laggards.

It is to be observed, indeed, that all the commonplace remarks which speak of an established clergy or priesthood as a class of men attached to the institutions of the past, and opposed to human progress and to the natural advance of society, are remarks originating in hierarchical countries, where the appointment or the maintenance of the clergy is not directly in the hands of the people. Given, on the other hand, the conditions of congregational order,-which is to say, given the conditions of a pure democracy, and no such love of worn-out institutions is found in the great body of the clergy. They become again, what the ministry of Christ was in the beginning, leaders in every effort for improvement in civil order. In Massachusetts, for instance, it was the clergy

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of Boston who took sides with the younger medical men, and, in face of immense popular clamor and of all scientific conservatism, introduced the new practice of inoculation. When the Revolution came, the rights of men and the hopes of the new commonwealths had no supporters more earnest than the great body of the clergy of the State. The great temperance reform found itself given, almost by common consent, into their hands, and those of the physicians of the time. And of the last twenty years, the great revolution not yet over has a thousand times made record of the same principle. In congregational order there is no fear that the great body of the ministry will lag, in the development of ideas of reform, behind the people.

We are certainly profoundly grateful to Dr. Allen for the unwearied effort which he has given to the illustration of so many passages of biography and history which bear directly on the great study of the progress of society under the conditions which surround us here. There is no nobler illustration of the wide and unending influence of the faithful Christian minister, than he has given in the work of his own life, work of which he lives to see everywhere the fruit and the blessing. Students of biography and of history will join us in thanking him for the pains by which he has now lighted up the career of his predecessors and his associates. His History will not only have a local interest in the towns of whose churches and ministers it preserves the faithful record, but will be made welcome among the materials for the history of New England.

ART V.-DRAPER'S HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. History of the American Civil War. By JOHN WILLIAM Draper, M.D., LL.D. Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1867. It is impossible to read this first instalment of Dr. Draper's History of our recent Civil War, without a blended feeling of cordial admiration for the intellectual vigor and range

of acquisition its author concentrates on his subject, and of amazement and pain that he so often weakens the weight of impression his book ought to make, by his fanatical wor ship of a single physical agency, and his passion for crude, fanciful, and hap-hazard generalization. This is the first extended attempt to apply to the elucidation of the problem of American history the theories and conclusions of modern science; to go behind the momentary phenomena of parties and platforms and policies and institutions, and consider the vast material forces which have been at work, largely modifying, and often absolutely determining, their peculiar shapes. It handles a subject deeply interesting to us, as conscious actors in the great drama of national life, now working out through the ideas and passions of the various communities which constitute our nation; and shares much of the same charm for the American reader which geology assumed when the old method of illustrating from European formations was abandoned, and we were permitted to see the enormous agencies at work, slowly building up the vast areas on which we dwell and act, heaving up our own Alleghanies, laying down the limestone slabs of our own New Yorks, Ohios, and Iowas, silting up our Mississippi and Missouri Valleys, rearing on high our Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevadas, and channelling out our rivers and bays. Spite of the impersonality of science, and its asserted indifference to nationalities, there is yet a fascination to conceited human nature in seeing what heat and cold, and regions of rain and of drought, and alluvial valleys and sterile deserts, can do when they take hold of "live Yankees," and not of Esquimaux, Egyptians, Tartars, and such riff-raff, that will secure for Dr. Draper hosts of readers, who would care little for his theories as applied to other peoples. It is therefore a peculiarly useful work to bring the questions here raised before the American mind in the precise shape in which we have them in this volume for just as the individual, full of the rampant sense of youth, health, and courage, finds it hard to believe in his own subjection to conditions outside of himself, and has to be taught by colds and fevers and rheumatism that even he