most complimentary language. The follow ing will serve as a sample: "The mention of Dr. Von Holst, however, reminds me that I may as well say at the outset of this at tempt to estimate Calhoun and his work, that I shall be able to add little or nothing to the admirable account of the great states man's career which the scholarly professor has contributed to the well-known Ameri can Statesmen series." How, in justness to his subject, he could fail to add a qualify ing clause — a single note of dissent, — I can't well see. He speaks of Mr. Calhoun as a "fanatic" and refers to his leadership as be ing both " fanatical and doctrinaire." In a sentence, which I will now quote, he is harsher still, applying the term " sinister " to his repu tation : " It was his position as vice-president, half in and half out of the political arena, that furnished both opportunity and incentive for the development of his meta physical views on the nature of constitutional government, and for that analysis of the problem presented by slavery which is now his chief claim to a sinister reputation." And then on another page, we find Mr. Cal houn's constitutional theory described as a "shadowy maze." In his pages, we find : "Calhoun, as secretary of state under Tyler, is more a demon helmsman, somehow trans lated from the 'Ancient Mariner' to the Constitutional History of the United States, than the successor of Jefferson and Madison." With one other parting quotation, I will close: "Yes; John Caldwell Calhoun, in the seventeen years that elapsed between his de bate with Webster on the Force Bill and his death, wrought his country and his section infinite woe, but he did it blindly; he did it, intending all the while to effect only peace and reconciliation. He failed; but so did Webster and Clay fail, and so will any man fail who does not distinguish right from wrong." Mr. Von Holst over again! I wish the reader to bear in mind some of these quotations and appellations. I shall quote from some other writers before I have fin
ished and then, I will ask the reader to look upon this picture and then upon that. Terms and expressions equally extreme, uncompli mentary, and uncalled for, as those referred to above as found in Mr. Trent's article, are interlarded all through Mr. Von Holst's book. I am told that Professor Trent is a Virginian and an alumnus of the University of Virginia. So much the worst for that. There may be some excuse for Von Holst. He is a for eigner, ignorant of our institutions, and out of sympathy and touch with our ideas and people. But for Mr. Trent, a Southerner and a Virginian! Dr. John A. Broadus, in his interesting biography of Dr. James P. Boyce, in com menting on the "Life of William Gilmore Simms" by Professor Trent says: " It is an interesting book, but the author seems curi ously incapable of understanding the Caro lina people of that day." Adopting Dr. Broadus's charitable expression, we would say that Professor Trent seems curiously in capable of understanding the great Carolina statesman of the Old Regime. It is a relief, and it is a contrast too, to turn from the pages of such critics as Von Holst and his imitators to the glowing tribute paid to Cal houn by Senator Hoar, the veteran states man from Massachusetts, in his splendid oration delivered in Charleston, South Caro lina, in December last. Among other beauti ful things he said : " Mr. Winthrop compared the death of Calhoun to the blotting out of the constellation of the Southern Cross from the sky. Mr. Calhoun was educated at Yale College, in New England, where President Dwight predicted his future greatness in his boyhood. It is one of the pleasant traditions of my own family that he was a constant and favorite guest in the house of my grand mother, in my mother's childhood, and formed a friendship with her family which he never forgot." One of the mistakes that Mr. Calhoun made was that he did not mix enough with the people. I do not mean to intimate that
