History

This volume is made up, as the title indicates, of eight papers, now revised and partly rewritten, to each of which are added notes supplying a page or two of comment or explanation. The papers treat respectively of the Green as a public square, a political and civic forum, a religious and ecclesiastical arena, a parade ground, a seat of judicial tribunals, an educatioual campus, a market-place, and a cemetery. In a style abounding in facetiae not unworthy of Dickens, the author reviews the succession of events which have transpired in connection with the Green, with their changing scenic accompaniments of stocks, whipping-post, jail, tombstones, school-house, meeting-house, state-house; setting in prominent relief the more humorous or otherwise impressive incidents, and neglecting no occasion for satirical thrusts at contemporary folly, keenly relished by the reader, without doubt, but certain — as in all such cases — to be contemptuously slighted by those who alone might profit by them. His comparison of the “Blue laws” of Connecticut with those of the other colonies evidently affords as much satisfaction to himself as instruction to the most of his readers, justifying his declaration that the New Haven Colony can very complacently allow its laws to be called “blue in contrast with the black and crimson legislation of its contemporaries.”