since the Roman days, and thus written so as to make
us rebellious in spirit in finding the work incomplete. Death came too
soon to give our indefatigable author time to complete his voluminous
history. Read Prescott as a matter of American pride, and because he
has dealt more capably with the era with which he treats than any other
historian.

The United States has supplied her own historians, not needing to go
abroad for either history or historian. George Bancroft, with a
private library larger by almost half than the ten thousand-volume
library Edward Gibbon used in writing "The Decline and Fall of the
Roman empire;" George Bancroft, whose literary life was dedicated to
one task, and that the writing the life of his country prior to the
Constitution; George Bancroft, publicist as well as student of history,
and who in such relation represented his Government with distinction at
the courts of Germany and England,--George Bancroft has written a
history of the United States which will no more become archaic than
Macaulay or Grote. While one may now and then hear from the lips of
the so-called "younger school of American historians" a criticism of
George Bancroft, their carping is ungracious and gratuitous. Theirs
has not been the art to equal him, nor will be. A literary life
devoted to the mastery of one era of a nation's history is a worthy
sight, good for the eyes, and arguing sanity of method and profundity
of investigation. Whoever has read Bancroft can testify to his
readableness, to his comprehensive knowledge, to his philosophical
grasp, to his ability to make dead deeds vividly visible, and to his
gift of interesting the reader in events and their philosophy. He has
written a great history of the United States before the Constitution,
so that no author has felt called on or equipped to reduplicate his
task in the same detail and manner.

Where George Bancroft left off, Schouler has begun. More dramatic than
Bancroft, and in consequence more compelling in interest, the history
marches at a double-quick, like a charging regiment. His pictures of
John Quincy Adams, Calhoun, Clay, Webster, Sumner, Douglas, Lincoln,
and a host beside, vitalize those men. We live with that giant brood.
I have found Schouler invigoratingly helpful. He affords knowledge and
inspiration; a man is behind his pages; we feel him and acknowledge him.

One change has come over the spirit of history to which all must bear
joyf