4, May 26, 1665.

[88] C. O. 1: 18, f. 165, Willoughby to the king, June 17, 1664.

[89] Add. MSS., 12,430, f. 31, Beeston, Journal, April 8, 1665.

[90] A. C. R., 75: 43, March 23, 1665/6.

[91] P. C. R., Charles II, 5: 396, March 30, 1666.

[92] A. C. R., 75: 46; Add. MSS., 12,430, f. 31, Beeston, Journal,
February 7, 1664/5.

[93] Answer of the Company of Royal Adventurers ... to the Petition
... exhibited ... by Sir Paul Painter.

[94] C. O. 1: 19, ff. 7, 8, brief narrative of the trade and present
condition of the Royal Adventurers, 1664/5.

BOOK REVIEWS

_Below the James. A Plantation Sketch._ By WILLIAM CABELL BRUCE. The
Neale Publishing Company, New York, 1918. Pp. 157.

This book is, as its title imports, a plantation sketch dealing with
that sort of life in Virginia just after the Civil War. While it is a
mere story and hardly a dramatic one, it throws light on the Negro as
a constituent part of the southern society of that day. As a student
at Harvard before the War a southerner comes into contact with a
fellow student from Massachusetts, to whom he becomes bound by such
strong ties that the four years of bloody conflict between the
sections are not sufficient to sever this connection. Some years after
this upheaval friend thinks of friend and soon the northerner finds
himself on his way to visit the southern friend.

Coming to the South at the time when the Negroes as a new class in
their different situation were endeavoring to readjust themselves
under difficult circumstances, the observations of the traveler are of
much value to the historian. He not only saw much to admire in the
colonial seats of prominent southerners like Patrick Henry and John
Randolph, but showed an appreciation of the simple life of the
Negroes. Their new position as freemen taking a part in the
government, the role of the carpetbagger, and the undesirable
conditions of that regime play some part in the story.

As to the Negroes themselves, however, the most interesting
revelations are those dealing with the inner life of the blacks. In
the language used to impersonate the blacks the reader sees a
philosophy of life; in their mode of living appears the virtue of a
noble peasantry; and in their worship of divinity there is the
striving of a righteous people willing to labor and to wait. In this
respect the book is valuable. We have known too little of the
plantation, too little of the life of the Negro before th