On the other hand, the book falls far short of giving a complete history of the institution of slavery. In the first place, the book is too much of a commercial account. The slaves are mentioned as representing both persons and property, but this treatise lacks proportion in that it deals primarily with the slaves as property in the cold-blooded fashion that the southerners usually bartered them away. Very little is said about the blacks themselves, seemingly to give more space to the history of the whites, who profited by their labor, just as one would in writing a history of the New England fisheries say very little about the species figuring in the industry, but more about the life of the people participating in it. It is evident that although a southerner, Mr. Phillips has lived so far from the Negroes that he knows less about them than those who have periodically come into contact with them but on certain occasions have given the blacks serious study. This is evidenced by Mr. Phillips' own statement when he says in his preface, that "a generation of freedom has wrought less transformation in the bulk of the blacks than might casually be supposed." This failure to understand what the Negroes have thought and felt and done, in other words, the failure to fathom the Negro mind, constitutes a defect of the work. Another neglected aspect of the book is the failure of the author to treat adequately the anti-slavery movement. It was not necessary for him to give an extensive treatment of abolition but it is impossible to set forth exactly what the institution was without giving sufficient space to this attitude of a militant minority toward it. It was certainly proper for the author to say more about the northerners and southerners who arrayed themselves in opposition to the institution. In his chapter on the economic views of slavery this aspect was mentioned but not properly amplified. Some references to it elsewhere, of course, appear in parts of the book but, considering the importance of this phase of the history of slavery in America, one can say it has been decidedly neglected. The author, as he says in his preface, avoided "polemic writings, for their fuel went so much to heat that their light upon the living conditions is faint." It was not necessary also to avoid the controversy in which these writers participated. No one will gainsay the fact that persons who engage in controversy cannot be depended upon to tell the truth, but if the slavery dispute largely influenced the history of the country, it should have adequate treatment in a history of this kind. * * * * * _John H. B. Latrobe and His Times._ By JOHN E. SEMMES. The Norman, Remington Company, Baltimore, Maryland. Pp. 595. Price $6.00.