nt in
history, supreme and superb city of all lands,--I behold thy majesty
from afar, and salute thee reverently as the consummation of all that
the best human energies can accomplish for the elevation and happiness
of our race.

"All hail! Future Great City of the World, and 'Glory to God in the
Highest and on Earth Peace, Goodwill toward Men.'"

This reminds one equally of Walt Whitman and Artemas Ward. Yet it is not
burlesque. It appears to have been written in good faith, and for this
reason the incongruity of such a grandiloquent rhapsody on such a
prosaic subject is all the more noticeable. As an example of "fine
writing" it has seldom been surpassed, and for sheer nonsense it is
unequaled in American literature.

These books on St. Louis call to mind a history of Milwaukee of a
somewhat similar nature--similar in its magnificent pretensions to the
last-described work, and in its biographical characteristics to
Edwards's Great West. The book referred to was published in Chicago, in
1881, by the Western Historical Company, A.T. Andreas, proprietor. Holy
Herodotus! To think of history becoming a thing of "companies"--on a par
with life insurance, railroads, gas-works, and cotton factories! And an
"historical company" with a proprietor, too!

But let us look into this monumental tome. (Do not think that adjective
hyperbolical, for surely monumental is not too strong a word to describe
a book which would just about balance in weight an unabridged
dictionary.) Some idea of the immensity of the undertaking can be
obtained when, as the preface says, "it is known that nearly one year's
time was consumed and an average force of twenty-five men employed in
the labor of obtaining information and preparing the manuscript for the
printer's hands. The result of this vast effort is the presentation of a
History which stands unparalleled in the experience of publishers." The
book is a quarto and contains sixteen hundred and sixty-three pages. The
letter-press is unexceptionable; each page is surrounded by a neat
border; the paper is good; the binding is excellent.

And yet the actual history of this city dates back little more than half
a century--not a lifetime. Here is history with a vengeance! The riddle,
however, is solved the instant we glance over the pages, for we find the
mass of the book made up of biographies,--biographies in front,
biographies to the right, biographies to the left, everywhere
biographies,--to the