In the death of Edward Gaylord Bourne at New Haven on February 24, America lost one of her most brilliant and scholarly historians. Born in 1860, he was graduated from Yale in 1883, and received its degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1892. He was an instructor in that institution from 1886 to 1888. Going to Adelbert College, Western Reserve University, he was promoted to a professorship in 1890 and in 1895 was called to Yale as professor of history. He had most liberal and accurate scholarship but his genius expressed itself in his rare power and keenness in historical criticism. The editor of the American Historical Review says of him that ' ' it is not too much to say that he was the chief master in America of that specific portion of the historian's art and in this specialty the profession has suffered in his death an irreparable loss."
We have from his pen many most valuable contributions to the pages of the American Historical Review.. In 1885 he published a History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837, in 1901 a volume of Essays in Historical Criticism, in 1904 a valuable volume on Spain in America, and more recently edited largely or wholly The Philippine Islands, Voyages of Champlain and the volume on Columbus of the Original Narratives of Early American History.
It was in his teaching of historical criticism that he had occasion to look into the account, then credited, of the acquisition of Oregon. His historical acumen soon detected fictitious elements and he pursued his investigations, the results of which were embodied in "The Whitman Legend," the leading paper of his volume on historical criticism.
Many will remember his delightful paper read at the Congress of History held in connection with the Lewis and Clark Exposition. All who met him felt the charm of a most genial and kindly personality.
It is always most gratifying to all Oregonians to have an Oregon achievement celebrated through the nation at large. Frederick V. Holman's monograph on Dr. John McLoughlin
