The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the Discussions relating thereto. By Caleb Cushing. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Mr. Cushing has given another proof of the great capacity of some men to do very clever work, but to fail utterly in giving an adequate account of the work itself or of the way in which it was done. Trained by long experience in public business, and intimately acquainted by long residence in Washington with the methods of diplomatic negotiation and interpretation, he was eminently fitted to be the colleague of Mr. Evarts as counsel for the government before the Geneva arbitration. Here he undertakes to give an account of the task there brought to a result so favorable to the United States. Unluckily, he shows that he is always and only an advocate. Much that may have been useful for his duties in that office is prominent in a disagreeable way in his recital of the Geneva award. His language is loose and offensive, often without meaning to be so, but oftener in a way that shows how much he must have been galled by the lord chief-justice of England. Whatever Sir Alexander Cockburn may have done there, and however much he may have fallen from his high estate as one of the arbitrators to the less dignified position of an advocate for English claims, he will have a sweet revenge in seeing the anger that he has excited in one of the American representatives, now become their spokesman. Mr. Cushing falls into the blunder that was once so common in our American state papers as to give good cause for that happy phrase of Nicholas Biddle—"Western Orientalisms." The tone of the book, which ought to be a simple story, is stilted and rhetorical. The result of all the long discussions is the best praise of our American statesmen who were its authors, but it is dwarfed and lessened by the fulsome praise given to the foreign representatives who brought it about. Of "bad language," in keeping with the bad spirit of the book, the following may serve as specimens: "Pretensiveness," "frequentation," "annexion," "capitulations" instead of "treaties," "monogram" for "monograph," "it needs to," "howmuchsoever," "law-books invested with the reflection of fine scenery," "imposed itself," "I demand of myself," and other such phrases without number.
Once done with Sir Alexander Cockburn and the work at Geneva, Mr. Cushing shows himself and his country to much better advantage in discussing the "Mixed Commission" now sitting at Washington, the Northwest Boundary, the Fisheries, and the general provisions of the Washington treaty. He has, however, simply forestalled the ground for some better writer on the important history which belongs to that negotiation, and will give the reading and reflecting public, both abroad and at home, a very unfavorable impression of the great task in which he played so important a part, and of the qualities of mind and temper he must have brought to it, since at this late day he finds no better impetus to the work of writing its history than unexplained anger at one of the members of the board before which Mr. Cushing argued the cause of his country, and helped to win it.
Books Received.
The Drawing-Room Stage: A Series of Original Dramas, Comedies, Farces, and Entertainments for Amateur Theatricals and School Exhibitions. By George M. Baker. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
Five Years in an English University. By Charles Astor Bristed, late Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Third edition. Revised by the Author. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.
Memoirs of Madame Desbordes-Valmore. By the late C.A. Sainte-Beuve. With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Livingstone and his African Explorations: together with a Full Account of the Young, Stanley and Dawson Search Expeditions. New York: Adams, Victor & Co.
The Mother's Register: Current Notes of the Health of Children. From the French of Professor J.B. Fonssagrines. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.