MINOR TOPICS

HON. FRANCIS AQUILA STOUT

In the death of Mr. Stout, suddenly from pneumonia, at the Thousand Islands, Alexandria Bay, New York, July 18, 1892, the American Geographical Society has lost its senior vice-president, and one of its ablest and most efficient supporters. Mr. Stout was educated as an engineer in Paris and as a barrister in New York; he was one of the founders and commissioners of the New York State Survey, and formerly president of the Nicaragua canal company; was one of the commissioners to the French Exposition in 1889, and one of the vice-presidents of the Geographical Congress at Berne in 1891. The Galignani Messenger, Paris, France, says of him: "Possessing an ample fortune he devoted himself assiduously to scientific studies, and to charitable works, and was president and director of many important charitable associations in New York. His vigorous intellect, his large experience, his varied culture, his charming manners, and his honorable character, won him a multitude of warm friends both in America and Europe, who will deeply feel his loss. Mr. Stout belonged to a historic family. His paternal grandfather owned and resided in the famous Philipse manor-house, now the city hall of Yonkers. His maternal great-grandfather, Colonel Lewis Morris, signed the Declaration of Independence, whose grandfather, Richard Morris, was founder of the manor of Morrisania. Mr. Stout's great-granduncles were General Staats Long Morris, M. P. and governor of Quebec, who married the duchess of Gordon; and Gouverneur Morris, a member of the Continental Congress, assistant minister of finance in the Revolution, one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, and minister to France in the trying period from 1791 to 1794. It was Gouverneur Morris who endeavored to save the life of Louis XVI., failing in which he loaned two hundred thousand francs to Louis Philippe, and performed many other generous acts toward the French people. Mr. Stout married the eldest daughter of General Meredith Read, great-great-granddaughter of George Read the signer of Independence, who survives him, also his widowed mother at the age of eighty-seven in full possession of her vigorous faculties, and a sister, Madame de Vaugrigneuse, widow of Baron de Vaugrigneuse, formerly French charge d'affaires at various European courts."

THE EXHIBIT OF AMERICAN HISTORY

One of the largest exhibits at the World's Fair, and one that will give great satisfaction, is that of American history, from the earliest archæological times to

to-day. It is in charge of Professor Putnam, of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology at Harvard University, and will occupy the large space of one hundred and sixty thousand feet in the building of manufactures and the liberal arts. The exhibit will include archæology, history, cartography, and a Latin-American bureau, together with various collective and isolated exhibits. The archæological exhibit will be specially interesting. Until lately, it was thought that man was of far more recent origin in America than in Europe, but some late discoveries have proved to the contrary, and the oldest traces of mankind on earth have been found in America.

The second prehistoric period will be represented by objects from shell heaps, ancient village sites, burial places, mounds, earthworks, ancient pueblos, cliff houses, caves, and the ruined cities of Mexico, Central and South America, etc. The most distinctive earthworks and mounds of the central portion of this country, to which Professor Putnam has given special study, will be represented by sets of accurate models. Various state historical societies will make valuable contributions in this line. Portions of the famous great stone structures of Central America, Mexico and South America will be shown in actual reproduction from molds, with their elaborately artistic architecture. There will also be plans, photographs and paintings, illustrating many details, together with casts and photographs of inscribed tablets. A reproduction of the great "Portal of Labna" will form an imposing entrance to one portion of the exhibit. The material collected this year by the Peabody Museum Honduras expedition, including molds of the enormous monoliths and altars of the ancient ruins of Copan, elaborately ornamented with figures in high relief and strange hieroglyphs, will be loaned.

Much will depend upon what the Latin-American countries will do in this matter; for with proper coöperation from them, we may hope for a brilliant display. The ethnological section will show the primitive modes of life, customs and arts of the Esquimaux, Indians, Aztecs, and other natives. There will be representatives of the tribes of four hundred years ago, and of every Indian tribe living to-day.

The historical section will illustrate not only our political history but our artistic, architectural, etc., development; the inventions made; changes from the early log-cabin-of which there will be a perfect fac-simile-to the palaces of today; and from the primitive furniture to that now in use. In fine, there will be a complete exhibit of the history of America, there being but one limitation, that all exhibits relating to the civil war are to be excluded-perhaps a wise action.

When we consider that the exposition is held for the purpose of commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America and to show the progress the country has made during these four centuries, it must be frankly admitted that this is the most important exhibit of all, and it is fortunate that it promises to be so complete and satisfactory.-The Times-Democrat, New Orleans.

WISCONSIN'S PRICELESS HISTORIC TREASURES

The state Historical Society of Wisconsin is the trustee of the state, and is in many respects on the same footing as the state bureaus. In the management of this society no consideration is given politics, it being absolutely free from political control. It is a great public institution in which all take pride, and which embraces a membership made up of all shades of political and religious opinion. Those who visit the library expecting to find current literature stacked upon its shelves will be disappointed. The collection is purely historical. It is a great reference collection, the finest in some respects on this continent. It contains treasures that money could not buy stored away for the information of posterityrare manuscripts, books and papers of inestimable value. From the files of Wisconsin newspapers a pretty fair history of the state might be compiled. In them are printed the tales and reminiscences of the pioneer antedating the advent of the press in the state. The old-fashioned advertisements tell the simple story of commerce in the days when men traded for value received, and when grain was bought and sold without knowledge of option trading. What people ate, drank and wore, what it cost to live and to die and be buried before the advent of railroads in the wilderness, or steamboats upon the lakes, can be found in the old territorial prints. And there is a wealth of them in these historical rooms.

In the eighty-five thousand volumes which line the shelves of the library are many rare books. The collection of seventy thousand pamphlets is almost as valuable, while the gallery of portraits and curios enchains attention. But the student of Dutch literature will find the Tank library the greatest collection of its kind on the continent. It is principally in the Dutch language, and was given the society in 1866 by Mrs. Otto Tank, now deceased, of Fort Howard, Wisconsin. The books, some five thousand, came to her by will of her father, and cost the society nothing except the freight from Amsterdam, where Mr. Van der Meulen died. Many are finely illustrated, and nearly half of them are bound in vellum and printed on paper that will hold the fadeless ink for ages. There are old editions of the classics, atlases, charts, several Bibles, historical works, early lexicons, religious prints, etc. The oldest printed book owned by the society is the sermons of Albert Magnus, issued at Cologne in 1474. Surely the art of printing was born full grown, for this rare old work, issued but nineteen years later than the first printed book in existence (dated 1455), can be studied by type founders with profit to-day, after four hundred and eighteen years of progress in the art. A medical treatise by Savonarola in 1479, and a rosary of sermons by Bernardino in 1503, The Nuremburg Chronicle, a huge six-hundred-page hogskin-bound folio, with twenty-two hundred and fifty illustrations by Wohlgemuth, printed in 1493, are also worthy the time given in seeing and describing. Possibly the Chronicle is the quaintest book in existence. It purports to be a history of the world from

the advent of man to the day of judgment, and the illustrations of what has been and is to come are simply indescribable. The prophetic and religious thought stands at a wonderfully higher level now than when the compilers of this old curiosity lived and dreamed.

Of the Lyman Draper collection of old manuscripts one might study it for years and not exhaust the subject. Very few of these have been published, but it doubtless will some day find an editor. They cover the entire history of the struggle for the northwest from the first fight (1742) with the Indians in the Virginia valley to the battles in 1813-14, when the Creeks were vanquished, and in one of which Tecumseh was sent to the happy hunting grounds.

The society is rich in autographs and letters from the famous men of America. The most notable collection is that of the signers of the declaration of independence and the constitution. There are but twenty-two complete sets of these in the world, and it is scarcely possible that another can at this late day be added. The first set was completed in 1835 by Dr. Sprague, of Albany, after twenty years of labor. It took sixty years of research to secure the sets now completed, these consisting not merely of signatures, but comprising letters or other documents inscribed by these old patriots, whose memories will live as long as the nation endures. The society is especially strong in Wisconsin documents, old merchandise accounts, books, etc. Of fur trade manuscripts alone there are about one hundred and twenty thick folios, which form quite a storehouse of information of value regarding pioneer families and early days. The society has published eleven fivehundred-page volumes of Wisconsin historical collections, and these will be added to as data accumulate.

The ethnological museum and the portrait gallery are places of absorbing interest, but the bound files of old newspapers are the centre of attraction. Dating from 1720 to this morning one may here study an unbroken series of American and foreign newspaper files. The thread of continuity has been preserved for a period covering about one hundred and seventy years. Publishers and publications have come and gone, but the records of the years and of their labors are here preserved so that some files cover every day of the time. About five thousand five hundred of these files are of papers printed outside of the state; many of them are from various foreign countries. In most cases the files date with the first issue of the papers and often end with the last, for newspapers, like men, have both a beginning and an end. The oldest American newspaper, if it can be so classed, that is shown at Madison is a religious weekly. It is a four-page leaflet in make-up, styled the Philadelphia Independent Whig. The numbers are from January to December, 1720, and bound in one thin volume. The modest editor says he wishes that others more gifted had essayed his task, but as they had failed of their duty his was clear. He was bound to reform the people, as they needed religious reformation very badly. His paper is filled with lay sermons and advertisements of religious books and tracts, in which the depth and intensity of the fires of Hades were

given occasional mention. of February 17, 1724.

Next in point of age comes the Boston Gazette, weekly, This paper was right up to time with news from Paris, its advices being only six months old and dated August 14, 1723. Its London budget left that historic town just one month later. The first copy of the old Boston Gazette was issued Monday, December 21, 1719, but the Historical society does not possess that number.

The first newspaper printed on Wisconsin soil, then a part of the territory of Michigan, was the Green Bay Intelligencer. The initial number of this semimonthly was issued December 11, 1833, and the editors were J. V. Suydam and A. V. Ellis. Navarino was the point of publication, and the Intelligencer was a very creditable four-column folio, neat typographically and well edited. The editors state that the "advancement of the interests of the country west of Lake Michigan" is their object in going into the newspaper business, and promise to issue the paper weekly "after navigation opens," if they are favored with due support. They spell it" Wiskonsin" and have no space for local pick-ups or personals, but find room for a fair amount of display advertising. There are about two thousand volumes of Wisconsin newspapers in the library, and now every publication of value in the state is received for binding.

MOSES HOPKINS, OF CALIFORNIA

Achievement may or may not be in consequence of ability, for much depends upon environment. I was struck by the recent remark of a friend: "How I would enjoy some knowledge of an unknown Roman! I have heard so much about Cæsar and the rest of his kind that I am tired of it." This brings me to the threshold of a biographical study of a man of substantial prominence in the metropolis of the Pacific seaboard. The family name of Moses Hopkins is a part of the history of this western world. His lineage is traced through an unbroken line of ancestry to England, and members of the Hopkins family exercised an important influence on the early history of New England. Among the potent agencies which were felt for years in the formative period of civilization in California-and the present is a part of that period-that of Moses Hopkins was pronounced and far-reaching. It is for the interest of the state, and of mankind, that he should be known and remembered. He was born in 1818, and in 1851 went to California with his brother, Mark Hopkins, who was one of the pioneers to that land in 1849, and they had many ventures in common. To plan and start the work, and to keep it going and finish it, are two different kinds of energy; and if Mark was fertile in conception, Moses was not less able in performance. To go forward with confidence and vigor constituted the distinguishing trait in the character of Mark Hopkins, and perhaps entered as largely into his great success as a factor in the development of the Pacific coast as any other force.-HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT'S Chronicle of the Builders.