On The Rack

An essay on "Two Forgotten New England Reformers" by Bertha-Monica Stearns is perhaps the most important and generally appealing part of this issue of the Quarterly. In the persons of Mrs. Mary Gove Nichols and Dr. T. L. Nichols, Miss Stearns has found a more attractive aspect of the reforming intellectuals in 19th century America, an aspect which books like Gilbert Seldes' "The Stammering Century" have tended to cover up. The lives of these two New Englanders, veering sometimes towards faddisms, nevertheless possessed a consistent and admirable idealism and rose above the sordid dementia of most of the contemporary nostrums and reforms. From such studies as this one learns how much in the so-called "lunatic fringes" of New England, and wider human areas, is worthy of admiration instead of contempt.

Professor Peabody contributes an eye-witness's account of the little-known episode of the warship "Worcester," which carried free supplies from American sympathizers to the Parisians, during the siege of 1870. Under the heading, "Religion, Finance and Democracy in Massachusetts," Mr. J. C. Miller discusses the economic and political causes and consequences of the Great Awakening; R. S. Longley relates the history of mobs and mob-rule in Revolutionary and Pro-Revolutionary times.

Among the book reviews is an exacting and revealing criticism by Professor Matthiessen of V. F. Calverton's "Liberation of American Literature"; and Percy Boynton's just and friendly estimate of Mr. de Vote's "Mark Twain's America." Professor Morison also reviews two books, on Dartmouth College, and on Roger Williams.

"Memoranda and Documents" contains a story of Hawthorne's which has not been reprinted before.