Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Notice of Chalmer's Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the Colonies (A), from the Weekly Mirror (New York), January 25, 1845, vol. 1, no. 16, p. 256, col. 2

[page 256, column 2, continued:]

Chalmers’ Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the American Colonies. Boston: JAMES MUNROE & CO.

The name of the author of these volumes (hereafter to be indispensable to a library) is sometimes confounded with that of the Scottish writer of our own times, whose sermons are so well known among us. But George Chalmers (also a Scotchman) died in 1825, at the age of eighty-two, after having given to the world several historal [[historical]] works of acknowledged merit. He resided for about ten years in Maryland, although his sentiments were adverse to the independence of this country. After his return to England, he was elected chief clerk of the Committee of Privy Council, and this official station opened to him free access to all the State papers. The present work (a posthumous one) was deduced from those State papers, or rather, from the confidential correspondence of the governors and other officers of the Crown in the Colonies. Coming from a writer of undoubted fidelity, this history, though a partizan one, is valuable; if only because it shows us the kind of intelligence which the ministers received from their agents in America, and thus enables us to arrive at a clearer understanding of the grounds of their public acts. The work is printed in the large fair type which has become a rarity in these days, — just the reading for gentlemen who have leisure to possess themselves fully of the infinity of preparatory circumstances which led to our separation from Great Britain.