colors the truths of history to serve a favorite purpose. With the strict fidelity of his narrative, which is, no doubt, the primary demand in a genuine historian, but which is perhaps the least frequently fully realized, Mr. Bancroft exhibits other qualities, which greatly distinguish him from previous writers.

His subject naturally suggests the pictorial sketches which form the appropriate embellishment of historical description. The admirable skill in word-painting, which would have given Mr. Bancroft distinction as a poet, if he had not selected a different career, finds ample sphere for its exercise in the delineation of the fortunes of the colonists. The fragrant riches of the primeval forest in contrast with the elegancies of advancing civilization; the teeming abundance of animal life which rejoiced the eyes of the hardy settlers in quest of food; the bounteous luxuriance of vegetation revealing the virginal resources of the unexhausted soil; the quaint simplicity of rural life among the primitive families in the wilderness, and on the banks of delicious streams; the aboriginal poetry of Indian manners while yet uncontaminated by the vices of artificial society, present an irresistible temptation to the pencil of the artist, which Mr. Bancroft has genially followed in the numerous gorgeous episodes that afford such a grateful relief to the prevailing severity of tone in the representation of events.

But it is not merely with the eye of a poet that Mr. Bancroft has contemplated the vast panorama of American history. Trained in the schools of a profound transcendental philosophy, which looks on external events as the exponents of some vital principle, he seeks the pervading, energizing idea, which underlies and inspires the progress of American institutions. This he detects in the inborn aspiration of the human soul for freedom, its consciousness of a spiritual destiny, and its desire for the realization of universal unity. Hence, to Mr. Bancroft, the progress of history is the shadowing forth in time and space of the inherent tendencies of the soul. American history surpasses in dignity and grandeur the developments of former ages, inasmuch as it is the outbirth of a sublimer and more significant idea. In his view, "the diurnal flow of existence never rests, bearing the human race onward, through continuous change. Principles grow into life by informing the public mind, and in their maturity, gain the mastery over events: following each other as they are bidden, and ruling without a pause." The American revolution was designed to organize social

union through the establishment of personal freedom, and emancipate the nations from all authority not flowing from themselves. The battle was fought for the advancement of the principles of everlasting peace and universal brotherhood. Its fruits were to be the substitution of the natural equality of man for hereditary privilege, of a government founded on the concord of opinion for the irresponsible authority of an autocrat, and of the inauguration of a plebeian democracy by the side of empires rejoicing in a long line of haughty sovereigns.

Such is the groundwork on which the stirring events that form the subject of the present volume are traced. Continuing the description of the antecedents of the revolution, it shows how Great Britain estranged America by the series of Parliamentary assumptions which reached their climax in the passage of the Stamp Act, Feb. 27th, 1765. The narrative, though singularly condensed, is sufficiently copious for a lucid exposition of facts; the progress of British legislation is followed, step by step, and described with patient minuteness; the characters of the most eminent English statesmen then on the stage, are placed in a clear light by brief graphic sketches, as well as by the vivid portraiture of their deeds; while the connection of American independence, with the grand historical drama of continental Europe, is unfolded with that remarkable breadth and keenness of vision,—that extraordinary alertness of mental association, which detects the bearing of distant and apparently insignificant events on the question under discussion, for which, in our opinion, Mr. Bancroft is without a rival among living historians.

The first four chapters of this volume present a masterly view of the condition of Europe, including England and her dependencies, prior to the American revolution, and during the debates in Parliament on the taxation of the colonies. Not only is the political character of the age portrayed with a peculiar brilliancy of coloring, but a profound analysis is given of the development of ideas which prepared for the assertion of freedom by the colonists of America. According to Mr. Bancroft, the cause of the Protestant Reformation had gained such signal triumphs in the Seven Years' War, that the great Catholic powers were compelled to band together, in order to check the progress of change. The religious, political, military, and industrial forms of the Middle Age were undermined; the dynasties that had been consecrated by the Roman Church had yielded to the offspring of the Reformers, and Protestant

ism had so far fulfilled its political ends, as no longer to threaten the world with convulsions. But Protestantism contained within itself the seeds of a more expanded growth. It was the harbinger of new changes in the state, for the common benefit of civilized man. The dominant idea of the Reformation, was the right of private judgment. The liberty of the individual in affairs of opinion had been proclaimed by Descartes, and under the more comprehensive form of philosophical freedom, had taken deep root even among the nations which adhered to the old faith. New theories in politics, ethics and industry, sprung up on the basis of individual supremacy. The first fruit of this intellectual movement was skepticism, groping its way through the clouds of tradition; the educated mind of Europe turned its inquisitive activity in the direction of doubt. As in the days of Luther and Calvin, it pleaded the Bible against popes and prelates, it now invoked the authority of reason on every object of human thought. Proceeding in the way of skepticism, the new reform led to revolution.

Prussia, which had been the favorite disciple of Luther, and the child of the Reformation, now under the absolute rule of Frederic the Great, still extended protection to the activity of reason, as expounded in every variety of creed. It gave a shelter to Rousseau; invited D'Alembert and Voltaire as its guests; encouraged Semler in his boldness of criticism on the records of the Bible; inspired Lessing with lofty hopes for the education of the race to a universal brotherhood; and introduced the pregnant analyses of Immanuel Kant, as profound and free a spirit as any since Socrates, into the teachings of its youth.

In France, the spirit of the Middle Age was struck with death. The nobility, which numbered not much more than a hundred thousand souls, was overbalanced by the many millions of an industrious people. Its young men, trained by the study of antiquity, imbibed republican principles from the patriot writings of Greece and Rome. Authority in conflict with free opinion, only called forth licentiousness, and was laughed out of countenance by the potent audacity of ridicule. Skepticism spread its taint over the social circles of the capital; it was infused into every department of literature and science, and blended with the intellectual life of the nation. Using the weapons of polished wit and brilliant vivacity, Voltaire maintained the cause of free inquiry with a petulant contempt of restraint. With the spirit of a partisan, he searched the archives of history, and drew materials for

sarcasm against the Roman hierarchy from the annals of the race. Addressing free thinkers throughout the cultivated world, the influence of his writings pervaded Europe. In an age of skepticism, he was the prince of scoffers, reflecting the licentious brilliancy of the aristocracy, when almost every considerable house in Paris had pretensions as a school of philosophy. With no conception of the regenerating power of truth, he cherished the humanizing influence of letters. Welcoming whatever tended to soften barbarism, to refine society, and to stay the cruelties of superstition, he had no hopeful visions of the coming of popular power; he heard not the footsteps of Providence along the line of centuries, and regarded the vital changes in government, as among the accidents of a day. Nor did he comprehend the tendency of his own labors. In mocking the follies and vices of French society, he had no wish to destroy its institutions, and would have hated the thought of hastening a democratic revolution. "Thus," says Mr. Bancroft, "skepticism proceeded unconsciously in the work of destruction, invalidating the past, yet unable to construct the future. For good government is not the creation of skepticism. Her garments are red with blood, and ruins are her delight; her despair may stimulate to voluptuousness and revenge; she never kindles with the disinterested love of man."

Montesquieu possessed a mind of a different and inore organic tendency. He discovered the title-deeds of humanity beneath the rubbish of privileges, conventional charters, and statutes. Disdaining the impotence of epicureanism, his generous nature found no resting-place in doubt. He saw that society must repose on principles which do not change even in the midst of revolutions; that Christianity, which seems to aim only at the felicity of heaven, is also the foundation of human blessedness on earth. In the laws of every nation, he sought for the truth which had inspired them; and recognized the priority of justice behind the confused mass of positive rules. Full of the inquiring spirit of his time, he demanded tolerance for all opinions; and though he failed to discover the true basis of government, he gave a powerful impulse to the principles of political liberty.

The new ideas fell with quickening influence on the fruitful genius of Turgot, who came forward in the virgin purity of philosophy to the duties of active life. To him, the human race was one great whole, composed of members of one family, under a common Father, and always marching, though with slow steps, towards a

greater perfection. His personal character exhibited the finest qualities of a man. His integrity of purpose was equalled only by the extent of his information. With a peculiar loveliness of disposition, he carried a delicate and unerring taste into the pursuit of letters; a singular disinterestedness admirably tempered whatever of austerity was mingled in his make; devoting himself to the solace of human wretchedness, he preferred the performance of good to the glory of its accomplishment.

Thus while the skeptical philosopher, the erudite magistrate, the benevolent founder of the science of political economy were laboring, as they could, for human progress, a new writer sprang up from the discipleship of Calvin, from the republic of Geneva, and the abodes of poverty, through whom the ignorant poor gained a voice in the world of discussion by the press. With a discriminating criticism on the character of Rousseau. Mr. Bancroft attaches great importance to the effect of his writings on the development of popular thought. With him, truth was no more to be conveyed by the prudent reserve of academicians; nor to attract by the felicities of wit; nor to court the favor of the great by the interchange of flatteries; nor to consult the interests of special classes. Personally weak and suspicious, betrayed by poverty into shameful deeds, he possessed a deep and real feeling for humanity. In an age of skepticism, and in the agony of wanttossed from faith to faith as from country to country-he read the signs of death on the features of European civilization, but with faith in man's spiritual nature, he breathed the spirit of revolution into words of flame. Boldly interrogating all the grandeurs of the world, he aroused Europe to inquiry concerning the rights of the people. While France drove him from her soil, while the men of letters hooted at his wildness, calling him a "savage charlatan, who sought fraternal union among men by setting the poor to plunder the rich," without learning or deep philosophy, from the wars of the world in which he had suffered, from the wrongs of the down-trodden which he had shared, Rousseau derived a burning inspiration which kindled the heart of Europe. He lit up the darkness of his times with flashes of instinctive genius-proclaimed the truth, to which men had been so long blind, that the old social world was smitten with inevitable decay-and that if there is life still on earth, "it is the masses which live." "His fiery eloquence and the concerted efforts of men of letters, who fashioned anew the whole circle of

human knowledge, overwhelmed the priesthood and the throne. The ancient forms of the state and the church were still standing; bnt monarchy and the hierarchy were as insulated columns, from which the building they had once belonged to, had crumbled away; where statues, formerly worshipped, lay mutilated and overthrown, among ruins that now sheltered the viper and the destroyer. "

Crossing the channel on the north of France, we come to a wise and happy people, whose domestic character is marked by moderation, whose opinions have no tendency to extremes, and who, at the period under consideration, suggested to the speculative men on the continent, the principles of religion and government, which they rashly developed without qualification or reserve. In England, free opinion had been boldly applied to every question of faith as well as of science. The reaction of Protestant Europe against the blind adoration of the letter of the Bible, was preceded by the writings of the English free-thinkers, who, tracing Christianity to reason, and teaching that it was as old as creation. prepared the way for the German Rationalists. The materialism of France was derived from English treatises, like that of Locke on the Human Understanding. The speculative views of Voltaire were ripened in the atmosphere of England; there Montesquieu sketched his plan of a free government; and from English writings and examples Rousseau derived his idea of a social compact. Yet such was the stability of the institutions of England, that "the ideas which were preparing radical changes in the social system of other monarchies, held their course harmlessly within her borders, as winds playing capriciously round some ancient structure. whose massive buttresses tranquilly bear up its roofs and towers and pinnacles and spires."

England was an aristocratic republic. with the king as the emblem of a permanent executive. The church had no independent power. It was subordinate to the state, and in its civil capacity, merely a creature of Parliament. The articles of its creed, as well as its liturgy, were enacted by statute. The predominance of temporal power, impaired the spiritual influence of the clergy. They slumbered over the traditions of the church. "The dean and chapter, at their cathedral stalls, seemed like strangers encamped among the shrines, or lost in the groined aisles which the fervid genius of men of a different age, and a heartier faith, had fashioned; filling the choir with religious light from the blended colors of storied

windows, imitating the graceful curving of the lambent flame in the adornment of the tracery, and carving in stone every flower and leaf of the garden, to embellish the light column, whose shafts soared upwards as if to reach the sky."

The Parliament, though in form, an unmixed aristocracy, was tempered with popular franchises, that served to mitigate the intrinsic evils of the system. Strong checks were placed upon the aristocratic spirit. Every Englishman claimed a right to pass judgment on the measures of the administration. The power of public opinion, embodied in a free press, was an active and controlling element in the British government.

The literature of the country was imprinted with the prevailing character of the English mind. Neither its earlier nor its later productions were at war with the spirit of the national institutions. The philosophy of Bacon was marked by moderation as well as grandeur, following precedents and facts, rather than theories, and promoting the advancement of science by the method of observation. Newton, content in the serene retirement of a university, calmly submitted to the limits of nature in the pursuit of truth. The spirit of the age, in the various epochs of English history, was manifested in its poetry. With the dewy freshness of the morning, Chaucer described the mingled heroism and joyousness that beguiled the pious pilgrimages, or lent a charm to the hospitality of Catholic England. Spenser celebrated the glories of departing chivalry in the brilliant pictures of allegory. Shakspeare, mastering every chord that vibrates in the human soul, unfolded the panoramas of English history, and embodied in his easy numbers the fairest aspects of English manners and social life. Milton, representing the stern dignity of English republicanism in his heroic greatness of mind, was a no less determined foe to libertinism and disorder, than to the encroachments of arbitrary power. Dryden, reproduced in his verse the wayward wavering of the English court between Protestantism and the Church of Rome. Pope was the poet of aristocratic life, flattering the great with sarcasms against kings, and vindicating the order of Heaven amidst the apparent ills of the world. But none of these poets called forth a sentiment of hostility to the institutions of England.

The skepticism of modern philosophy was confined to the aristocratic classes. It had not penetrated the mass of the nation. The spirit of the people rebelled against materialism. English metaphysics was stamped with the peculiar moderation VOL. I.-20

of the national mind. While Locke laid the foundation for the gross materialism of Hartley and Priestley, the more genial Berkeley indulged in the construction of a purely ideal system, and Butler, pressing the analogies of the material creation into the service of spiritual life, established the supremacy of conscience on the authority of reason. While Hume pushed the principles of the sensuous philosophy to their ultimate consequences in a barren skepticism, Reid illustrated the reality of right by the moral powers of man; Adam Smith found a criterion of virtue in universal sympathy; and Price, following the suggestions of the Platonic Cudworth, defended the immutability of moral distinctions. Thus, the freedom of English speculation corrected its own excesses, and never sought to overthrow the fabric, which had stood before Europe for centuries as the citadel of liberty.

The blended respect for aristocracy and for popular rights was impressed upon the courts of law, pervaded the systems of education, and was interwoven with the prosperity of the large towns. Still more did it penetrate the rural life of England. "The climate not only enjoyed the softer atmosphere that belongs to the western side of masses of land, but was further modified by the proximity of every part of it to the sea. It knew neither long continuing heat nor cold; and was more friendly to daily enjoyments throughout the whole year, within door or without, than any in Europe. The island was a little world' of its own; with a 'happy band of men' for its inhabitants, in whom the hardihood of the Norman was intermixed with the gentler qualities of the Celt and the Saxon-just as nails are rubbed into steel to temper and harden the Damascus blade. They loved country life, of which the mildness of the clime increased the attractions; since every grass, and flower, and tree that had its home between the remote north and the neighborhood of the tropics would live abroad, and such only excepted as needed a hot sun to unfold their bloom, or concentrate their aroma, or ripen their fruit, would thrive in perfection; so that no region could show such a varied wood. The moisture of the sky favored a soil not naturally very rich; and so fructified the earth that it was clad in perpetual verdure. Nature had its attractions even in winter. The ancient trees were stripped indeed of their foliage; but showed more clearly their fine proportions, and the undisturbed nests of the noisy rooks among their boughs; the air was so mild that the flocks and herds still grazed on the freshly springing herbage; and the

deer found shelter enough by crouching amongst the fern; the smoothly-shaven grassy walk was soft and yielding under foot; nor was there a month in the year in which the plough was idle. The large landed proprietors dwelt often in houses which had descended to them from the times when England was gemmed all over with the most delicate and most solid structures of Gothic art. The very lanes were memorials of early days, and ran as they had been laid out before the conquest; and in mills for grinding corn, waterwheels revolved at their work just where they had been doing so for at least eight hundred years. Hospitality also had its traditions; and for untold centuries, Christmas had been the most joyous of the seasons." The system formed such a large element in English history and English life, that it was even endeared to the people, and seemed the most natural organization of society. The manners of the aristocracy implied rather than expressed the consciousness of undisputed rank. The tenantry clung to the lord of the manor as their natural protector. They loved to live in his light, and to win his sympathy by their faithful attachment. They caught refinement of their superiors, so that their cottages were carefully neat, with roses and honey-suckles clambering to their roofs. They cultivated the soil in sight of the towers of the church, near which reposed the ashes of their ancestors for almost a thousand years. Thus the local institutions of England, sharing the common character, were at once the evidence of aristocracy and the badge of liberty. The whole social and political life of England bore the stamp of a general unity.

Such was the internal condition of the mother country at the peace of 1763. Abroad, the fame of England was exalted above that of every other European nation. Triumphing over her hereditary enemies, she retained half a continent as the monument of her victories. In America, her dominions stretched from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay. For several years, the Board of Trade had looked forward to peace as the moment for making the colonies feel their power. The appointed time had come. Charles Townsend was placed in the office of First Lord of Trade by the Earl of Bute, and intrusted with the administration of the colonies. In the council of which Townsend now became a member, was Bute, prepared to give his support to the highest system of authority of Great Britain over America,-Mansfield, the illustrious jurist and determined whig, maintaining that an act of Par

liament could alone prescribe rules for the reduction of refractory colonial assemblies, -George Grenville, who made the plenary authority of the British Legislature, the first article of his political creed,-the Duke of Bedford, a convert to the new colonial system,-Halifax, thirsting for an occasion to carry into effect his opinions of British omnipotence, - Egremont, hotheaded and self-willed, using the patronage of his office for enriching his family, -to whom was now added Charles Townsend, a man bold, impetuous and eloquent, with a daring purpose of carrying difficult measures with unscrupulous speed. His primary object was a revenue from the colonies, subject to the disposal of the British ministry, under the sign manual of the king. The right of deliberation in the colonies on their votes of supply was to be no longer tolerated by the ministry. The accustomed requisitions of the King were to be superseded by an immediate taxation of the colonies by the British legislature. After various changes in the ministry, the Stamp Act at length passed both houses of Parliament in the spring of 1765.

This is the epoch, when the power of the British oligarchy, under the revolution of 1688, had reached its greatest ascendency. The ministry had succeeded in imposing a system of taxes on America for the benefit of the British exchequer. The colonists could not export the cheap products of their industry to any place but Great Britain, not even to Ireland. No foreign ship could enter a colonial harbor. Great Britain was not only the sole market for the products of America, but with some exceptions, the only storehouse for its supplies. The colonists abounded in land, adapted to the feeding of sheep, but lest they should multiply flocks, and wear their own cloth, the passage of wool, and all manufactures of wool, from one province into another, was forbidden under severe restrictions. A British sailor, in want of clothes in their harbors, could not buy a new suit of a greater value than forty shillings. printing of the Bible in British America was prohibited as a piracy. The country which was the home of the beaver might not manufacture its own hats. It abounded in iron ores of the best quality, as well as in wood and coal; but all iron mills and steel furnaces were forbidden as nuisances. To these restrictions, taxation both direct and indirect was now added.

The

Upon this gloomy night of oppression, the day-star of the American Union was about to arise. The colonists saw that if the British system of taxation should prevail, it would extinguish the flame of