In Georgia, perhaps, this sturdy middle class exercised a more potent and pervading influence over social and political life than was the case in other Southern states, and its flavor and quality are reproduced to the life by Mr. Watson. As we read his record we see what was perhaps the most practical realization of the democratic ideal of society which this democracy has yet produced—a community of Anglo-Saxon blood, rugged manhood, gentle womanhood, simple habits and neighborly fraternity. Mr. Watson gives us the picture of this period with no reservation or exaggeration,—its beauties and its blots, its virtues and its vices, its development and its limitation, and throughout his work there is a rare mingling of impartial honesty and the sympathetic touch of close and intimate knowledge and association. The political agitation of the two years previous to the war in Georgia is reproduced carefully and effectively by Mr. Watson, and the Toombs and Stephens struggle set forth clearly and skilfully. The pen portraits of these great Georgians are sharply and strongly outlined, and may be regarded as of historic interest and importance. A spicy and forcible chapter is that describing a political barbecue at Bethany at which Toombs and Stephens spoke, and of which the festivities were further marked by an eye-gouging affair between two drunken patriots. We see in Mr. Watson’s narrative the various currents of Southern sentiment and their irresistible convergence into the tide of secession, and the Southern attitude is strongly justified as a logical result of the Northern breach of contract in refusing to obey the Fugitive Slave laws. “As to the right of secession,” says Mr. Watson, “no one denied it.... With Adams, Webster, and Calhoun harmonized in favor of secession, it did seem that the principle must be sound.” The second part of Mr. Watson’s book, and not the more interesting, treats of the war and a rather shadowy love affair, pitched in the key of the sentimental songs of that period, with their faded flowers, mocking-birds, and pathetic partings. The story of the war is told briefly, with no prejudice or passion, from the gallant days of hope and victory to the last sad struggle against the inevitable. There is no swagger of tone, no attempt at glamour in these war pictures, but a faithful and forcible presentation of what that time meant to the common soldier and the South. Indeed, the whole book has a historic value as a truthful study of an interesting period of Southern and national life, and with no pretense of literary art, it has a distinct charm of simple narration and vivid reminiscence. THE LAW OF THE LAND. By EMERSON HOUGH, Author of “The Mississippi Bubble,” etc. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. Price, $1.50.