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SELECTIONS 
 
 PROM THE 
 
 / 
 
 WRITINGS OF GEORGE BANCROFT, 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 FOR HIGH SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND READING CIRCLES. 
 
 By W. W. gist 
 
 Jul 20 
 
 
 m' 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 GEO. SHERWOOD & CO. 
 
 1886. 
 

 COPTRIGHT 1886, 
 
 bt w. w. gist. 
 
 KNIGHT & LEONARD . I 
 
?^ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Our greatest historian has kindly given me permission 
 to prepare a vohime of selections that will illustrate his 
 literary style. These extracts will certainly show that 
 the facts of history may be presented in the most beauti- 
 ful rhetoric. 
 
 W. W. G. 
 
 CoE College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, May, 1886. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Selections 
 
 I. 
 11. 
 
 '■ IIL 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XL 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Biographical Sketch, 7 
 
 Tribute to the English Language, . . 15 
 
 Description of Colonial Virginia, . . 15 
 
 The Pilgrims, 17 
 
 The Reformation, 18 
 
 Luther and Calvin, 19 
 
 Roger Williams, 20 
 
 Locke and Penn, 22 
 
 William Penn, 25 
 
 The Christian Religion, 26 
 
 The Puritans, 27 
 
 Cromwell, 32 
 
 The Hudson, 36 
 
 Franklin, 40 
 
 Lexington, 44 
 
 Washington, 49 
 
 John Adams, 5^ 
 
 Abigail Adams, 62 
 
 Declaration of Independence, ... 63 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, 64 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, 68 
 
 The American Revolution, .... 74 
 
 Influence of the Reformation, ... 83 
 
 The Acadians, 86 
 
 Wesley and the Revolution, . . . .89 
 
 Suggestive Questions, 91 
 
 5 
 
GEORGE BANCROFT. 
 
 Geokge Banckoft is the Nestor of American men of 
 letters. Born October 3, 1800, he received his early 
 training at Exeter Academy and graduated at Harvard 
 in 1817. He is now eighty-six years old and his life has 
 touclied every administration except Washington's. 
 What mighty changes have been wrought in the land 
 since George Bancroft, a manly youth, stepped forth 
 from his ahna mater a full-fledged graduate ! Two gene- 
 rations have passed away and a third is now on the stage 
 of action. Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Benton had not 
 yet reached the zenith of their power. These men have 
 passed away, and another group, equally great, of whom 
 Abraham Lincoln was the central figure, became con- 
 spicuous leaders in the most thrilling period of our history, 
 and have passed away likewise. Indeed there are thou- 
 sands of voters to-day who were born during the exciting 
 events of Lincoln's administration. At the time George 
 Bancroft graduated, which, in the general acceptation of 
 the term, marked the commencement of his life's work. 
 Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Blaine, Cleveland, and 
 Generals Sherman and Sheridan had not been born. 
 Some of these have won never fading honors in events 
 that have attracted the attention of the whole world, 
 and are numbered among our heroes. At that time 
 Harvard was a very different institution from what it is 
 now ; American literature was in its infancy ; Washing- 
 ton Irving had scarcely gained a recognition on the other 
 side of the waters. 
 
 7 
 
8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 Forty-seven years ago Bancroft held a government 
 office, and secured for Nathaniel Hawthorne an appoint- 
 ment in the Boston custom house. Hawthorne M^as then 
 a literary man with some reputation, but his pen did not 
 afford him a liveHhood. His great masterpieces were 
 written during the next quarter of a century, and 
 twenty-two years have passed since the announcement of 
 his death cast a gloom over the literary world, while 
 his friend and benefactor still survives in the full vigor 
 of his intellectual powers. 
 
 Macaulay and Bancroft were born in the same year ; 
 the former has l)een dead nearly twenty-seven years ; the 
 latter] is giving finishing touches to his great history, 
 which merits a place with Macaulay's and Gibbon's. 
 
 George Bancroft's father was the Rev. Aaron Ban- 
 croft, D.D., who as a young man participated in the bat- 
 tles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, and who in later 
 years won an honorable name as a theologian and man 
 of letters, his " Life of Washington " attracting consider- 
 able attention in Europe. The son inherited many of 
 the admirable characteristics of the father. 
 
 After his graduation at Harvard, George Bancroft 
 spent five years in Europe, receiving a degree from the 
 University of Gottingen, mastering the principal modern 
 languages, giving special attention to the study of his- 
 tory, visiting the most important nations of the conti 
 nent, and above all communing with some of the greatest 
 minds of the age. It was his rare privilege to meet and 
 to enjoy the friendship of such men as Wolf, the dis- 
 tinguished classic scholar, Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
 Goethe, Cousin, Alexander von Humboldt, Chevalier 
 Bunsen, ISTiebuhr, and others scarcely less distinguished. 
 
 Returning to his native land in 1822, he spent one 
 year as tutor of Greek in Harvard, and afterward assisted 
 in establishing a preparatory school at Northampton. 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 9 
 
 One of liis pupils at the latter place was John Lothrop 
 Motley. The subject of United States history already 
 absorbed Bancroft's mind, and the next few years were 
 sj)ent in special study for his great work. 
 
 Bancroft has held a number of offices, although he has 
 not been conspicuous as a politician. In 1838 President 
 Van Buren appointed him collector at the port of Boston, 
 and he discharged the duties of the office with marked 
 ability. In 1845 he entered President Polk's cabinet as 
 Secretary of the Navy. A number of important events 
 of this administration are linked with his name. Through 
 his influence the naval academy at Annapolis was estab- 
 lished, and he introduced many needed reforms into the 
 naval service. He ordered the United States fleet to 
 assist Captain Fremont in taking possession of California, 
 and as Acting Secretary of War he issued orders for the 
 United States army to march into Texas at the com- 
 mencement of the Mexican War. In 1846 he was ap- 
 pointed minister to England, and held the position for 
 three years. While in England unusual courtesies were 
 extended to him, and every facility was granted for carry- 
 ing on historical researches, official state papers and many 
 valuable private libraries being accessible. He also 
 visited Paris for the purpose of study, and received 
 valuable assistance from Guizot and Lamartine. In 1867 
 he was appointed minister to Berlin, and I'emained abroad 
 a number of years, calling forth a special commendation 
 from President Grant for his wise diplomatic services. 
 
 Mr. Bancroft has done considerable literary work in 
 addition to writing his " History of the United States." 
 When a young man he published a volume of poems ; 
 he has contriluited a great many articles to magazines, 
 and has delivered a number of memorial addresses on 
 prominent Americans. In 1859 he prepared a paper on 
 Prescott for the New York Historical Society ; also one 
 
10 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 on Washington Irving. In 1860 lie delivered an ad- 
 dress in Cleveland at the unveiling of the statue of 
 Commodore Oliver H. Perry, and February 12, 1866, 
 he delivered before the two houses of Congress a mem- 
 orial address on President Lincoln. 
 
 Bancroft is known most widely, however, as a histo- 
 rian, and his noble history is a monument more durable 
 than granite. He brought to his task a mind philosophic 
 in character, broad in grasp, impartial in judgment, 
 believing firmly in God's superintending care, rich in 
 scholarship, and with enough of the imaginative and 
 poetical to quicken and vivify all his intellectual powers. 
 He has bestowed nearly sixty years of conscientious labor 
 on this great historical work, the first volume of whicli 
 appeared in 1834. 
 
 The historian requires peculiar talent for his work. 
 He must have such patience and energy as will enable 
 him to carry on any research that will throw light on 
 the subject he is investigating ; he must weigh all evi- 
 dence as coolly as the most unprejudiced judge ; he must 
 not assume the part of an advocate until he has examined 
 the subject from every standpoint and reached an un- 
 biased conclusion ; he must grasp the real ideas and 
 principles that underlie the events and hasten the prog- 
 ress of civilization ; he must have sufficient imagina- 
 tion to see the events as real, and to make his readers see 
 them as such ; in addition he must have a copiousness of 
 illustration and a fluency of language that will enable 
 him to present his subject in an attractive form. In 
 short, he must be a scholar, an explorer, a philosopher, 
 and a rhetorici£|n. Few, if any, have possessed all these 
 qualifications in a preeminent degree ; Bancroft certainly 
 possesses them all in no small degree. 
 
 Gibbon will doubtless ever hold an honorable place as 
 a historical writer ; and yet he attempts to account for 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 11 
 
 the rapid spread of Christianity entirely on human 
 grounds, and refuses to recognize the greatest force then 
 at work in effecting changes among the nations of the 
 world. Macaulay well says of Gibbon : " He writes like 
 a man who had received some personal injury from 
 Christianity, and wished to be revenged on it and all its 
 possessors." No such charge can be made against George 
 Bancroft. He is a firm believer in God, recognizes 
 Christianity as the most powerful factor in the progress 
 of civilization, and continually evinces his unfaltering 
 belief in God's superintending care over human affairs. 
 The opening paragraph of his address on President Lin- 
 coln may be taken as his creed on God in history. Notice 
 how clear his statement and how triumphant his faith : 
 
 " That God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as 
 any truth in physical science. On the great moving 
 power which is from the beginning hangs the world of 
 the senses and the world of thought and action. Eternal 
 wisdom marshals the great procession of the nations, 
 working in patient continuity through the ages, never 
 halting and never abrupt, encompassing all events in its 
 oversight, and ever effecting its will, though mortals 
 may slumber in apathy or oppose with madness. Kings 
 are lifted up or thrown down, nations come and go, 
 republics flourish and wither, dynasties pass away as a 
 tale that is told ; but nothing is by chance, though men, 
 in their ignorance of causes, may think so. The deeds 
 of time are governed, as well as judged, by the decrees 
 of eternity." 
 
 In a recent private letter to Dr. Buckley, of the 
 Christian Ad'vocate, Bancroft uses these words quoted in 
 that paper : 
 
 " Certainly our great united commonwealth is the 
 child of Christianity ; it may with equal truth be asserted 
 that modern civilization sprang into life with our relig- 
 
13 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 ion ; and faith in its principles is tlie life boat on which 
 humanity has at divers times escaped the most threaten- 
 ing perils." 
 
 But it is not necessary to multiply quotations illustra- 
 tive of his faith in the Deity. Throughout the whole of 
 his writings he manifests a devout, reverential state of 
 mind, and keeps constantly before the reader the idea 
 that God is the great power back of those mighty move- 
 ments that stir the nations of the world. 
 
 The philosophic east of his mind is clearly revealed 
 in all his discussions of causes and results. He firmly 
 believes that " the problems of politics cannot be solved 
 without passing behind transient forms to efficient 
 causes," and he ever seeks to find the real origin of an 
 event. He dates the American Revolution back to the 
 Reformation under Luther and Calvin, and in relating 
 the events that led to a separation from the mother 
 country, he discusses with great clearness and elaborate- 
 ness three points essential to the proper understanding 
 of the subject. In the first ]3lace, he speaks of the 
 emancipation of the mind at the Reformation, and the 
 consequent birth of the idea of freedom. In the second 
 place, he discusses the growth of this idea of freedom in 
 the nations of Europe and on this continent. In the 
 third place, he describes with wonderful fairness the 
 violent discussions that arose in Eno-land and in this 
 country when the colonists raised a protest against the 
 tyrannies of the mother country. 
 
 While the rhetoric of Bancroft is not faultless, it 
 certainly deserves a j^lace in our classic English. In the 
 discussion of grave and philosophical questions, his 
 stateliness of expression and his dignity of style chal- 
 lenge our admiration. His descriptions are very fine, 
 and suggest a mind keenly alive to the beautiful and the 
 poetical; but they do not reveal that spontaneity so 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 13 
 
 characteristic of Irving, nor that indefinable symmetry 
 so noticeable in Hawthorne. If his style is sometimes 
 declamatory, I think it is generally in a connection such 
 that the cultivated taste will pronounce it admissible. 
 
 Thoroughly versed in the historic lore of this and 
 other countries, broad in his general scholarship, remark- 
 ably free from prejudice, an uncompromising American, 
 and yet not an American in a narrow and bigoted sense, 
 careful and systematic in his methods of labor and 
 recreation, unswerving in his belief in the superintend- 
 ing providence of God, George Bancroft justly merits 
 the liigh place of honor and esteem so willingly accorded 
 to him, and his noble example should be a never failing 
 source of inspiration. 
 
 Note.— The substance of the biographical sketch of Bancroft appeared in the 
 Chautauquan for June, 1885. 
 
I 
 
 WRITINGS OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 
 
 SELECTION I. 
 
 TRIBUTE TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, 
 language of mj country, take possession of the North 
 American continent! Gladden the waste places with 
 every tone that has been rightly struck on the English 
 lyre, with every English word that has been spoken well 
 for liberty and for man ! Give an echo to the now silent 
 and solitary mountains; gush out with the fountains 
 that as yet sing their anthems all day long without re- 
 sponse; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its 
 purity, the pledges of friendship in its faithfulness ; and 
 as the morning sun drinks the dewdrops from the flow- 
 ers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to the Peaceful 
 Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early in- 
 dustry of freemen ! Utter boldly and spread widely 
 through the world the thoughts of the coming apostles 
 of the people's liberty, till the sound that cheers the 
 desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and 
 the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he 
 stands in beauty upon the mountains, shall proclaim the 
 renovating tidings of equal freedom for the race ! — Hist. 
 Vol. III., 302. 
 
 SELECTION IL 
 
 DESCEIPTION OF COLONIAL VIKGINIA. 
 
 The genial climate and transparent atmosphere de- 
 lighted those who had come from the denser air of 
 
16 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 England. Every object in nature was new and wonder- 
 ful. The loud and frequent thunderstorms were phe- 
 nomena that had been rarely witnessed in the colder 
 summers of the north ; the forests, majestic in their 
 growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration 
 for their unrivaled magnificence ; purling streams and 
 frequent rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quick- 
 ened the ever pregnant soil into an unwearied fertility ; 
 strange and delicate flowers grew familiarly in the flelds ; 
 the woods were replenished with sweet barks and odors ; 
 the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of which the 
 growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by 
 the virgin mold. Especially the birds, with their gay 
 plumage and varied melodies, inspired delight ; every 
 traveler expressed his pleasure in listening to the mock- 
 ing bird, which caroled a thousand several tunes, imitat- 
 ing and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The hum- 
 ming bird, so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in 
 its form, quick in motion, yet not fearing the presence of 
 man, haunting the flowers like the bee gathering honey, 
 rebounding from the blossoms into which it dips its bill, 
 and as soon returning " to renew its many addresses to 
 its delightful objects," was ever admired as the smallest 
 and the most beautiful of the feathered race. The rat- 
 tlesnake, with the terrors of its alarms and the power of 
 its venom; the opossum, soon to become as celebrated 
 for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican ; the 
 noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English 
 bittern ; the flying squirrel ; the myriads of pigeons, 
 darkening the air with the immensity of their flocks, 
 and, as men believed, breaking with their weight the 
 boughs of trees on which they alighted, were all honored 
 with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects 
 of the strangest tales. The concurrent relation of Indi- 
 ans justified the belief that witliin ten days' journey to- 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 
 
 17 
 
 ward the setting of the sun, there was a country where 
 gold might be washed from the sand, and where the 
 natives had learned the use of the crucible, but inquiry 
 was always baffled, and the regions of gold remained 
 for two centuries undiscovered. — Vol. I., Page 17o. 
 
 SELECTION 111. 
 
 THE PILGRIMS. 
 
 Who will venture to measure the consequence of 
 actions by the humility or the remoteness of their origin \ 
 The Power which enchains the destinies of states, over- 
 rulino- the decisions of sovereigns and the forethought of 
 statesmen, often deduces the greatest events from the 
 least considered causes. A Genoese adventurer, discover- 
 ing America, changed the commerce of the world ; an 
 obscure German, inventing the printing press, rendered 
 possible the universal diffusion of increased intelligence ; 
 an Augustine monk, denouncing the indulgences, intro- 
 duced a schism in religion, and changed the foundations 
 of European politics ; a young French refugee, skilled 
 alike in theology and civil law, in the duties of magis- 
 trates and the dialects of religious controversy, entering 
 the republic of Geneva, and conforming its ecclesiastical 
 discipline to the principles of republican simplicity, 
 established a party of which Englishmen became mem- 
 bers, and New England the asylum. The enfranchise- 
 ment of the mind from religious despotism led directly 
 to inquiries into the nature of civil government, and the 
 doctrines of popular liberty, which sheltered their in- 
 fancy in the wilderness of the newly discovered conti- 
 nent, within the short space of two centuries have 
 infused themselves into the life blood of every rising 
 state from Labrador to Chili ; have erected outposts on 
 
18 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 the Oregon and in Liberia ; and, making a proselyte of 
 enlightened France, have disturbed all the ancient govern- 
 ments of Europe, by awakening the pnblic mind to resist- 
 less action from the shores of Portugal to the palaces of 
 the czars.— Vol. /., Page 203. 
 
 SELECTION IV. 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 In Germany the Reformation sprung not from the 
 superior authority of the sovereign, but from a peasant- 
 born man of the people, and aimed at a regeneration 
 both in morals and doctrine. When Martin Luther 
 proclaimed that justification is by faith alone, supersti- 
 tion was at one blow cut up by the roots. The super- 
 natural charm which hung over the order which had, or 
 whose chief had, time out of mind, usurped the exclus- 
 ive right to absolve from sin and to interpose themselves 
 between man and God, was dissolved. Every man be- 
 came his own priest, and was directly in the hands of 
 the Almighty, with no other mediator than the Eternal 
 Wisdom, with no absolution for evil deeds but by repent- 
 ance and a new life. There could be no higher expres- 
 sion of the liberty of the individual over against his fel- 
 low men. The claim of right to the freedom of private 
 judgment is a feeble and partial statement in compari- 
 son, for it declares the individual man under God alone, 
 not the keeper of his judgment only, but independent 
 of pope, bishop, priest, and all others of his kind, the 
 keeper of his reason, affections, conscience, and charac- 
 ter, — in a word, of his whole being, now and hereafter. 
 Therefore it is that, in an age when political questions 
 were enounced in theological forms, justification by faith 
 
OF OEORGE BANCROFT. 19 
 
 alone was the inscription on the gate tlirongh which tlie 
 more advanced of the human race were to pass to free- 
 dom.— Vol. /., Page 9A0. 
 
 SELECTION V. 
 
 LUTHER AND CALVIN. 
 
 Both Lnther and Calvin brought the individual into 
 immediate relation with God ; but Calvin, under a more 
 stern and militant form of doctrine, lifted the individual 
 above pope and prelate and priest and presbj^ter, a1)0ve 
 Catholic churcli and national church and general synod, 
 above indulgences, remissions, and absolutions from fel- 
 low mortals, and brought him into tlie innnediate de- 
 pendence on God, whose eternal, irreversible choice is 
 made by Himself alone, not aHutrarily, but according to 
 His own highest wisdom and justice. Luther spared the 
 ahar, and hesitated to deny totally the real presence ; 
 Calvin, with superior dialectics, accepted, as a commemo- 
 ration and a seal, the rite which the Catholics revered as 
 a sacrifice. Luther favored magnificence in public wor- 
 ship as an aid to devotion ; Calvin, the guide of republics, 
 avoided in their churches all appeals to the senses, as a 
 peril to pure religion. Lutlier condemned the Roman 
 church for its immorality ; Calvin, for its idolatry. Luther 
 exposed the folly of superstition, ridiculed the hair shirt 
 and the scourge, the purchased indulgence, and dearly 
 bought, worthless masses for the dead ; Calvin shrunk 
 from their criminality with impatient horror. Luther 
 permitted the cross and the taper, pictures and images, 
 as things of indifference ; Calvin demanded a spiritual 
 worship in its utmost purity. Luther left the organiza- 
 tion of the church to princes and governments ; Calvin 
 reformed doctrine, ritual, and practice, and by establish- 
 
20 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 ing ruling elders in each clnircli, and an elective synod, 
 he secured to his polity a representative character, which 
 combined authority with popular rights. 
 
 Both Luther and Calvin insisted that, for each one, 
 there is and can be no other priest than himself ; and, as 
 a consequence, both agreed in the parity of the clergy. 
 Both were of one mind, that, should pious laymen choose 
 one of their number to be their minister, " the man so 
 chosen M'ould be as truly a priest as if all the bishops in 
 the world had consecrated him." — Vol. /., Page '21^. 
 
 SELECTION VL 
 
 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 At a time when Germany was desolated by the im- 
 placable wars of religion ; wdien even Holland could not 
 pacify vengeful sects ; when France was still to go through 
 the fearful struggle with l)igotry ; when England was 
 gasping under the despotism of intolerance ; almost half 
 a century before William Penn became an American pro- 
 prietary, and two years before Descartes founded modern 
 philosophy on the method of free reflection, Roger Will- 
 iams asserted the great doctrine of intellectual liberty. It 
 became his glory to found a state upon that principle, and 
 to stamp 'himself upon its rising institutions in characters 
 so deep that the impress has remained to the present day, 
 and can never be erased without the total destruction of 
 the work. The principles which he first sustained amidst 
 the Ijickerings of a colonial parish, next asserted in the 
 general court of Massachusetts, and then introduced into 
 the wilds on Narragansett Bay, he soon found occasion 
 to publish to the world, and to defend as the basis of the 
 religious freedom of mankind, so that, borrowing the 
 rhetoric employed l)y his antagonist in derision, we may 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 21 
 
 compare him to the lark, the pleasant bird of the peace- 
 ful summer, that, " ali'ecting to soar aloft, sj)rings upward 
 from the ground, takes his rise from pale to tree," and 
 at last, surmounting the highest hills, utters his clear 
 carols through the skies of morning. He was the first 
 person in modern Christendom to assert in its plenitude 
 the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of 
 opinions before the law ; and in its defense he was the 
 harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of 
 Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his toleration to a 
 few Christian sects ; the philanthropy of Williams com- 
 passed the earth. Taylor favored partial reform, com- 
 mended lenity, argued for forbearance, and entered a 
 special plea in behalf of each tolera])le sect; Williams 
 would permit persecution of no opinion, of no religion, 
 leaving heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unpro- 
 tected by the terrors of penal statutes. Taylor clung to 
 the necessity of positive regulations enforcing religion 
 and eradicating error — like the poets, who tirst declare 
 their hero to be invulnerable, and then clothe him in 
 earthly armor ; AVilliams was willing to leave Truth alone 
 in her own panoply of light, believing that if in the an- 
 cient feud between Truth and Error the employment of 
 force could be entirely abrogated. Truth would have much 
 the best of the bargain. 
 
 It is the custom of mankind to award high honors to 
 the successful inquirer into the laws of nature, to those 
 who advance the bounds of human knowledge. We praise 
 the man who first analyzed the air, or resolved water into 
 its elements, or drew the lightning from the clouds, even 
 though the discoveries may have been as much the fruits 
 of time as of genius. A moral principle has a much 
 wider and nearer influence on human happiness ; nor 
 can any discovery of truth be of more direct benefit to 
 society than that wdiich establishes a perjjetual religious 
 
22 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 peace, and spreads tranquillity through every connnunity 
 and every bosom. If Copernicus is held in perpetual 
 reverence because, on his death-bed, he published to the 
 world that the sun is the center of our system ; if the 
 name of Kepler is preserved for his sagacity in detecting 
 the laws of the planetary motion ; if the genius of New- 
 ton has been almost adored for dissecting a ray of light, 
 and weighing heavenly bodies as in a balance, — let there 
 be for the name of Roger Williams a place among those 
 who have advanced moral science, and made themselves 
 the benefactors of mankind. — Vol. /., Page 297, 
 
 SELECTION YII. 
 
 LOCKE AND PENN. 
 
 Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant ; both loved 
 freedom ; both cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke 
 kindled the torch of liberty at the tires of tradition ; 
 Penn, at the living light in the soul. Locke sought truth 
 through the senses and the outward world ; Penn looked 
 inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke 
 compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as 
 Hobbes had compared it to a slate, on which time and 
 chance might scrawl their experience ; to Penn the soul 
 was an organ which of itself instinctively breathes divine 
 harmonies, like those musical instruments which are so 
 curiously and perfectly framed that when once set in 
 motion, they of themselves give forth all the melodies 
 designed by the artist that made them. To Locke, 
 " Conscience is nothing else than our own opinion of our 
 own actions " ; to Penn, it is the image of God, and his 
 oracle in the soul. Locke, who was never a father, 
 esteemed " the duty of parents to preserve their children 
 not to be understood without rewai-d and j)unishment " ; 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 23 
 
 Penn loved liis children, with not a thought for the 
 consequences. Locke, who was never married, declares 
 marriage an affair of the senses ; Penn reverenced 
 woman as the object of inward, fervent affection, made 
 not for lust, but for love. In studying the understand- 
 ing, Locke ])egins with the sources of knowledge ; Penn, 
 with an inventory of our intellectual treasures. Locke 
 deduces government from Noah and Adam, rests it upon 
 conti'act, and announces its end to be the security of 
 property; Penn, far from going back to Adam, or even 
 to Noah, declares that '' there must l)e a people before a 
 government," and, deducing the right to institute gov- 
 ernment from man's moral nature, seeks its fundamental 
 rules in the immutable dictates " of universal reason," its 
 end in freedom and happiness. The system of Locke lends 
 itself to contending factions of the most opposite interests 
 and purposes ; the doctrine of Fox and Penn being but 
 the common creed of humanity, forbids division and 
 insures the highest moral unity. To Locke, happiness is 
 pleasure ; things are good and evil only in reference to 
 pleasure and pain ; and to " inquire after the highest 
 good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish be 
 in apples, plums, or nuts " ; Penn esteemed happiness to 
 lie in the subjection of the baser instincts to the instinct 
 of Deity in the breast, good and evil to be eternally 
 and always as unlike as truth and falsehood, and the in- 
 quiry after the highest good to involve the purpose of 
 existence. Locke says plainly that, but for rewards and 
 punishments beyond the grave, "it is certainly riglit to 
 eat and drink, and enjoy what we delight in " ; Penn, 
 like Plato and Fenelon, maintained the doctrine so terrible 
 to despots that God is to be loved for his own sake, and 
 virtue to be practiced for its intrinsic loveliness. Locke 
 derives the idea of infinity from the senses, describes it 
 as purely negative, and attributes it to notliing but space. 
 
24 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 duration, and number ; Penn derived the idea from the 
 soul, and ascribed it to truth and virtue and God. Locke 
 declares immortality a matter with which reason has 
 nothing to do, and that revealed truth must be sustained 
 by outward signs and visil)le acts of power ; Penn saw 
 truth by its owm light, and sunnnoned the soul to bear 
 witness to its own glory. Locke believed " not so many 
 men in wrong opinions as is commonly supposed, because 
 the greatest part have no opinions at all, and do not 
 know what they contend for " ; Penn likewise vindicated 
 the many, but it was because truth is the common in- 
 heritance of the race. Locke, in his love of tolerance, 
 inveighed against the methods of persecution as " popish 
 practices " ; Penn censured no sect, but condemned big- 
 otry of all sorts as inhuman. Locke, as an American 
 lawgiver, dreaded a too numerous democracy, and re- 
 served all power to wealth and the feudal proprieta- 
 ries ; Penn believed that God is in every conscience, 
 his light in every soul, and therefore he built — 
 such are his own words — "a free colony for all man- 
 kind." This is the praise of William Penn, that, in an 
 age which had seen a popular revolution shipwreck 
 popular liberty among selfish factions, which had seen 
 Hugh Peter and Henry Vane perish by the hangman's 
 cord and the axe ; in an age when Sydney nourished the 
 pride of patriotism rather than the sentiment of philan- 
 thropy, when Russell stood for the liberties of his order, 
 and not for new enfranchisements, when Harrington and 
 Shaftesbury and Locke thought government should rest 
 on property,— Penn did not despair of humanity, and, 
 though all history and experience denied the sover- 
 eignty of the people, dared to cherish the noble idea of 
 man's capacity for self-government. Conscious that 
 there was no room for its exercise in England, the pure 
 enthusiast, like Calvin and Descartes, a voluntary exile, 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 25 
 
 was come to the banks of the Delaware to institute "The 
 Holy Expekiment."" — Vol. II., Pmje 119. 
 
 SELECTION VIII. 
 
 WILLIAM PENN. 
 
 No man in England was more opposed to Roman 
 Catholic dominion ; but, like an honest lover of truth, 
 and well aware that he and George Fox could wnn more 
 converts than James II. and the pope, with all their pat- 
 ronage, he desired, in the controversy with the Roman 
 church, nothing but equality. He knew that popery was 
 in England the party of the past, from causes that lay in 
 the heart of society, incapable of restoration ; and tliere- 
 fore he ridiculed the popish panic as a scarecrow fit only 
 to frighten children. Such was the strong antipathy of 
 England to the Roman see, he foretold the sure success 
 of the English church, if it should plow with tliat 
 heifer, but equally predicted the still later result, that 
 the Catholics, in their turn, becoming champions of civil 
 freedom, would unite with its other advocates, and impair 
 and subvert the English hierarchy. Penn never gave 
 counsel at variance with popular rights. He resisted the 
 commitment of the bishops to the Tower, and on the 
 day of the birth of the Prince of Wales, pressed the king 
 exceedingly to open their prison doors. His private 
 correspondence proves that he esteemed parliament the 
 only power through which his end could be gained, and, 
 in the true spirit of liberty, he sought to infuse his prin- 
 ciples into the public mind, that so they might find their 
 place in the statute book through the convictions of his 
 countrymen. England to-day confesses his sagacity, and 
 is doing honor to his genius. He came too soon for suc- 
 cess, and he was aware of it. After more than a cen- 
 
26 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 tury, the laws whicli lie reproved began gradiially to 
 be repealed ; and the principle which he developed is 
 slowly but firmly asserting its power over the legislation 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 The political connections of William Penn have in- 
 volved him in the obloquy whicli followed the overthrow 
 of the Stuarts ; and the friends to the tests, comprising 
 nearly all the members of both political parties, into 
 which England was soon divided, have generally been 
 unfriendly to his good name. But their malice has been 
 without permanent effect. There are not wanting those 
 who believe the many to be the most competent judge of 
 the beautiful ; every Quaker believes them the best arbi- 
 ter of the just and the true. It is certain that they, and 
 they only, are the dispensers of glory. Their final award 
 is given freely, and cannot be shaken. Every charge of 
 hypocrisy, of selfishness, of vanity, of dissimulation, of 
 credulous confidence ; every form of reproach, from vir- 
 ulent abuse to cold apology ; every ill-meant word from 
 tory and Jesuit to blasphemer and infidel, — has been 
 used against Penn ; but the candor of his character has 
 always triumphed over calumny, His name was safely 
 cherished as a household word in the cottages of Wales 
 and Ireland, and among the peasantry of Germany ; and 
 not a tenant of a wigwam from the sea to the Susque- 
 hanna doubted his integrity; his fame is now wide as 
 the world ; he is one of the few who have gained abid- 
 ing glory. — Vol. II., Page 132. 
 
 SELECTION IX. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 The colonists, including their philosophy in their 
 religion, as the people up to that thne had always done, 
 were neither skeptics nor sensualists, but Christians. 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 27 
 
 The seliool that bows to tlie senses as the sole interpreter 
 of trnth had little share in colonizing our America. The 
 colonists from Maine to Carolina, the adv^enturous com- 
 panions of Smith, the proscribed Puritans that freighted 
 the lleet of Winthrop, the Quaker outlaws that fled from 
 jails, with a Newgate prisoner as their sovereign, — all 
 had faith in God and in the soul. The system which had 
 been revealed in Judea, — the system which combines 
 and perfects the symbolic wisdom of the Orient, and the 
 reflective genius of Greece, — the system, conforming to 
 reason, yet kindling enthusiasm ; always hastening re- 
 form, yet always conservative ; proclaiming absolute 
 equality among men, yet not suddenly abolishing the 
 unequal institutions of society ; guaranteeing absolute 
 freedom, yet invoking the inexorable restrictions of 
 duty ; in the highest degree theoretical, and yet in the 
 highest degree practical ; awakening the inner man to a 
 consciousness of his destiny, and yet adapted with exact 
 harmony to the outward world ; at once divine and 
 human — this system was professed in every part of our 
 widely extended country, and cradled our freedom. 
 
 Our fathers were not only Christians ; they were, 
 even in Maryland by a vast majority, elsewhere almost 
 unanimously, Protestants. Now the Protestant Refor- 
 mation, considered in its largest influence on politics, 
 was the awakening of the common people to freedom of 
 mind. — Vol. II., Page 177. 
 
 SELECTION X. 
 
 THE PURITANS. 
 
 There are some who love to enumerate the singulari- 
 ties of the early Puritans. They w^ere opposed to wigs ; 
 they could preach against veils ; they denounced long 
 
28 SELECTIONS FR03I THE WRITINGS 
 
 hair ; t'liej disliked the cross in the banner, as much as 
 the people of Paris disliked the lilies of the Bourbons. 
 They would not allow Christmas to be kept sacred ; thej 
 called neither months, nor days, nor seasons, nor churches, 
 nor inns by the names common in England ; they revived 
 Scripture names at christenings. The grave Romans 
 legislated on the costume of men, and their senate could 
 even stoop to interfere with the triumplis of the sex to 
 which civic honors are denied ; the fathers of New En- 
 gland prohibited frivolous fashions in their own dress ; 
 and their austerity, checking extravagance even in wom- 
 an, frowned on her hoods of silk and her scarfs of tiifany, 
 extended the length of her sleeve to the wrist, and 
 limited its greatest w^idth to half an ell. The Puritans 
 were formal and precise in their manners, singular in 
 the forms of their legislation, rigid in the observance of 
 their principles. Every topic of the day found a place 
 in their extemporaneous prayers, and infused a stirring 
 interest into their long and frequent sermons. The courts 
 of Massachusetts respected in practice the code of Moses ; 
 the island of Rhode Island followed for a year or two 
 Jewish precedents j in New Haven the members of the 
 constituent committee were called the seven pillars, hewn 
 out for the house of wisdom. But these are only the 
 outward forms which gave to the new sect its marked 
 exterior. If from the outside peculiarities, which so 
 easily excite the sneer of the superficial observer, we 
 look to the genius of the sect itself, Puritanism was 
 religion struggling for the people; a war against tyr- 
 anny and superstition. " Its absurdities," says one of its 
 scoffers, " were the shelter for the noble principles of lib- 
 erty." It was its office to engraft the new institutions of 
 popular energy upon the old European system of a feudal 
 aristocracy and popular servitude ; the good was perma- 
 nent ; the outward emblems, wliich were the signs of the 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 
 
 29 
 
 party, were of transient duration, like the clay and liga- 
 ments which hold the graft in its place, and are brnshed 
 away as soon as the scion is firmly united. 
 
 The principles of Puritanism proclaimed the civil 
 magistrate subordinate to the authority of religion ; and 
 its haughtiness in this respect has been compared to the 
 '" infatuated arrogance " of a Roman pontiff. In the 
 firmness with which the princi])le was asserted, the Puri- 
 tans did not yield to the Catholics ; and if the will of 
 God is the criterion of justice, both were, in one sense, 
 in the right. The question arises. Who shall be the in- 
 terpreter of that will 'i In the Roman Catholic Church 
 the office was claimed by the infallible pontiff, who, as the 
 self-constituted guardian of the oppressed, insisted on the 
 power of dethroning kings, repealing laws, and subvert- 
 ing dynasties. The principle thus asserted could not but 
 become subservient to the temporal ambition of the 
 clergy. Puritanism conceded no such power to its spir- 
 itual guides ; the church existed independent of its pas- 
 tor, who owed his office to its free choice ; the will of 
 the majority was its law ; and each one of the brethren 
 possessed equal rights with the elders. The right, exer- 
 cised by each congregation, of electing its own ministers 
 was in itself a moral revolution ; religion was now with 
 the people, not over the people. Puritanism exalted the 
 laity. Every individual who had experienced the rapt- 
 ures of devotion, every believer, who in moments of 
 ecstasy had felt the assurance of the favor of God, was 
 in liis own eyes a consecrated person, chosen to do the 
 noblest and ffodliest deeds. For him the wonderful coun- 
 sels of the Almighty had appointed a Saviour ; for him 
 the laws of nature had been suspended and controlled, 
 the heavens had opened, earth had quaked, the sun had 
 veiled his face, and Christ had died and had risen 
 again ; fur him prophets and apostles had revealed to the 
 
30 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 world the oracles and the will of God. Before heaven 
 he prostrated himself in the dust. Looking out npon 
 mankind, how could he but respect himself whom God 
 had chosen and redeemed ? He cherished hope, he pos- 
 sessed faith ; as he walked the earth his heart was in the 
 skies. Angels hovered round his path, charged to min- 
 ister to his soul ; spirits of darkness vainly leagued to- 
 gether to tempt him from his allegiance. His burning 
 piety could use no liturgy ; his penitence revealed itself 
 to no confessor. He knew no superior in holiness. He 
 could as little become the slave of a priestcraft as of a 
 despot. He was himself a judge of the orthodoxy of 
 the elders ; and if he feared the invisible powers of the 
 air, of darkness, and of hell, he feared nothing on earth. 
 Puritanism constituted not the Christian clergy, but the 
 Christian people, the interpreter of the divine will. The 
 voice of the majority was the voice of God ; and the 
 issue of Puritanism was popular sovereignty. 
 
 The effects of Puritanism display its character still 
 more distinctly. Ecclesiastical tyranny is of all kinds 
 the worst ; its fruits are cowardice, idleness, ignorance, 
 and poverty. Puritanism was a life-giving spirit ; activ- 
 ity, thrift, intelligence followed in its train ; and as for 
 courage, a coward and a Puritan never went together. 
 
 It was in self-defense that Puritanism in America 
 began those transient persecutions which shall find in 
 me no apologist, and which yet were no more than a 
 train of mists hovering of an autumn morning over the 
 channel of a fine river, that diffused freshness and fer- 
 tility wherever it wound. The people did not attempt 
 to convert others, but to protect themselves; they never 
 punished opinion as such ; they never attempted to tor- 
 ture or terrify men into orthodoxy. The history of re- 
 ligious persecution in New England is simply this : the 
 Puritans established a government in America, such as 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 31 
 
 the laws of natural justice warranted, and such as the 
 statutes and common law of England did not warrant ; 
 and that was done by men who still acknowledged a lim- 
 ited allegiance to the parent state. The Episcopalians 
 had declared themselves the enemies of the party, and 
 waged against it a war of extermination. Puritanism 
 excluded them from its asylum. Roger Williams, the 
 apostle of " soul liberty," weakened civil independence 
 by impairing its unity, and he was expelled, even though 
 Massachusetts bore good testimony to his spotless virtues. 
 Wheelwright and his friends, in their zeal for liberty of 
 speech, were charged with forgetting their duty as citi- 
 zens, and they also were exiled. The Anabaptist, who 
 could not be relied upon as an ally, was guarded as a foe. 
 The Quakers denounced the worship) of New England as 
 an abomination, and its government as treason ; and they 
 were excluded on pain of death. The fanatic for Cal- 
 vinism was a fanatic for liberty ; and in the moral war- 
 fare for freedom his creed was his support, and his most 
 faithful ally in the battle. 
 
 •x- ** * * * * * 
 
 Historians have loved to eulogize the manners and vir- 
 tues, the glory and the benefits, of chivalry. Puritanism 
 accomplished for mankind far more. If it had the secta- 
 rian crime of intolerance, chivalry had the vices of dis- 
 soluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of 
 spirit ; the Puritans from the fear of God. The kniglits 
 obeyed the law of honor ; the Puritans hearkened to the 
 voice of duty. The knights were proud of loyalty ; the 
 Puritans of liberty. The knights did homage to mon- 
 archs, in whose smile they belield honor, whose rebuke 
 was the wound of disgrace ; the Puritans, disdaining cer- 
 emony, would not bow at the name of Jesus, nor bend 
 the knee to the King of kings. Chivalry delighted in 
 outward show, favored pleasure, multiplied amusements. 
 
32 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 and degraded the human race by an exchisive respect for 
 the privileged classes ; Puritanism bridled the passions, 
 commanded the virtues of self-denial, and rescued the 
 name of man from dishonor. The former valued cour- 
 tesy ; the latter, justice. The former adorned society by 
 graceful refinements ; the latter founded national grand- 
 eur on universal education. The institutions of chivalry 
 were subverted by the gradually increasing weight and 
 knowledge and opulence of the industrious classes ; the 
 Puritans, rallying upon those classes, planted in their 
 hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty. — Vol. 
 /., Page 370. 
 
 SELECTION XL 
 
 CROMWELL. 
 
 Ceomwell was one whom even his enemies cannot 
 name without acknowledging his greatness. 
 
 The farmer of Huutingdon, accustomed only to rural 
 occupations, unnoticed till he was more than forty years 
 old, engaged in no higher plots than how to improve the 
 returns of liis land and lill his orchard with choice fruit, 
 of a sudden became the best officer in the British army, 
 and the greatest statesman of his time ; subverted the 
 English constitution, wliich had been the work of centu- 
 ries ; held in his own grasp the liberties which formed a 
 part of the nature of the English people, and cast the 
 kingdoms into a new mold. Religious peace, such as 
 England till now has never again seen, flourished under 
 his calm mediatiou ; justice found its way even among 
 the remotest Highlands of Scotland ; commerce filled the 
 English marts with prosperous activity ; his fleets rode 
 triumphant in the West Indies ; Nova Scotia submitted 
 to his orders without a struggle; the Dutch begged of 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 33 
 
 him for peace as for a boon ; Louis XIV, was humiliated ; 
 the Protestants of Piedmont breathed their prayers in 
 security. His squadron made sure of Jamaica ; he had 
 strong thoughts of Hispaniola and Cuba ; and, to use his 
 own words, resolved " to strive with the Spaniard for the 
 mastery of all those seas." The glory of the English was 
 spread throughout the world ; " Under the tropic was 
 their language spoke." 
 
 And yet his career was but an attempt to conciliate a 
 union between his power and permanent public order; 
 and the attempt was always unavailing, from the inherent 
 impossibility growing out of the origin of his power. It 
 was derived from tlie submission, not from the will of the 
 people ; it came by the sword, not from the nation, nor 
 from established national usages, Cromwell saw the 
 impracticability of a republic, and offered no excuse for 
 his usurpations but the right of the strongest to restore 
 tranquillity — the old plea of tyrants and oppressors from 
 the beginning of the world. 
 
 He had made use of the enthusiasm of liberty for his 
 advancement ; he sought to sustain himself by conciliat- 
 ing the most opposite sects. For the republicans he had 
 apologies. " The sons of Zeruiah, the lawyers and the 
 men of wealth, are too strong for us. If we speak of 
 reform, they cry out that we design to destrqy all propri- 
 ety." To the witness of the young Quaker against priest- 
 craft and war, he replied : " It is very good ; it is truth ; 
 if THOU and I were but an hour of a day together, we 
 should be nearer one to the other." From the field of 
 Dunbar he had charged the Long Parliament " to reform 
 abuses, and not to multiply poor men for the benefit of 
 the rich." Presently he appealed to the moneyed men 
 and the lawyers ; " he alone could save them from the 
 levelers, men more ready to destroy than to reform." 
 Did the sincere levelers, the true commonwealth's men, 
 3 
 
34 SELECTIONS FRO 31 THE WRITINGS 
 
 make their way into his presence, lie assured them " he 
 preferred a shepherd's crook to the office of protector ; 
 he would resign all power so soon as God should reveal 
 his definite will " ; and then he would invite them to 
 pray, " For," said he one day to the poet Waller, " I 
 must talk to these people in their own style." Did the 
 passion for political equality blaze up in the breasts of the 
 yeomanry who constituted his bravest troops, it was 
 checked by the terrors of a military execution. The 
 Scotch Presbyterians could not be cajoled ; he resolved to 
 bow their pride ; and did it in the only way in which it 
 could be done, by wielding against their bigotry the great 
 conception of the age, the doctrine of Roger Williams 
 and Descartes' freedom of conscience. 
 
 " Approbation," said he, as I believe, with sincerity of 
 conviction, "is an act of conveniency, not of necessity. 
 Does a man speak foolishly, suiier him gladly, for ye are 
 wise. Does he speak erroneously, stop such a man's 
 mouth with sound words that cannot be gainsaid. Does 
 he speak truly, rejoice in the truth." To win the royal- 
 ists, he obtained an act of amnesty, a pledge of future 
 favor to such of them as would submit. He courted the 
 nation by exciting and gratifying national pride, by able 
 negotiations, by victory and conquest. He sought to 
 enlist in his favor the religious sympathies of the people, 
 by assuming for England a guardianship over the inter- 
 ests of Protestant Christendom. 
 
 Seldom was there a less scrupulous or more gifted 
 politician than Cromwell. But he was no longer a leader 
 of a party. He had no party. A party cannot exist ex- 
 cept by the force of common principles ; it is truth, and 
 truth only, that of itself rallies men together. Crom- 
 well, the oppressor of the independents, had ceased to 
 respect principles; his object was the advancement of 
 his family ; his hold on opinion went no farther than the 
 
OF OEOROE BANCROFT. 35 
 
 dread of anarchy, and the strong desire for order. If 
 moderate and disinterested men consented to his power, 
 it was to liis power as high constable, engaged to preserve 
 tlie pul)lic peace. He could not confer on his country a 
 fixed form of government, for that recpnred a concert 
 with the national affections, which he was never able to 
 gain. He had just notions of public liberty, and he un- 
 derstood how much the English people are disposed to 
 magnify their representatives. Thrice did he attempt to 
 connect his usurpation with the forms of representative 
 government, and always without success. His first par- 
 liament, convened by special writ, and mainly composed 
 of the members of the party by w^hich he had been ad- 
 vanced, represented the movement in the English mind 
 which had been the cause of the revolution. It indulged 
 in pious ecstasies, laid claim to the special enjoyment of 
 the presence of Jesus Christ, and spent whole days in 
 exhortations and prayers. But the delirium of mysticism 
 was not incompatil)le with clear notions of policy ; and 
 amidst the hyperl)oles of Oriental diction, tliey prepared to 
 overthrow despotic power by using the power a despot 
 had conceded. The objects of this assembly were all 
 democratic : it labored to effect a most radical reform ; 
 to codify English law by reducing the huge volume of 
 the common law into a few simple English axioms ; to 
 abolish tithes, and to establish an absolute religious free- 
 dom, such as the United States now enjoy. This parlia- 
 ment has for ages been the theme of unsparing ridicule. 
 Historians, with little generosity toward a defeated party, 
 have sided against the levelers, and the misfortune of 
 failure in action has doomed them to censui-e and con- 
 tempt. Yet they only demanded what had often been 
 promised, and what, on the immutable principles of free- 
 dom, was right. They did l)ut remember the truths 
 which Cromwell had professed, and had forgotten. 
 
36 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 Fearing their influence, and finding the republicans too 
 honest to become the dupes of his ambition, he induced 
 such members of the House of Commons as were his crea- 
 tures to resign, and scattered the rest with his troops. 
 The pubhc looked on with much indiiference. This par- 
 liament from the mode of its convocation, was unpopu- 
 lar ; the royalists, the army, and the Presbyterians, alike 
 dreaded its activity. With it expired the last feel)le 
 hope of a commonwealth. The successful soldier at once 
 and openly pleading the necessity of the moment, as- 
 sumed supreme power as the highest peace ofticer in the 
 realm.— Vol. Z, Page 393. 
 
 SELECTION XII. 
 
 THE HUDSON. 
 
 Hudson went on shore in one of the boats of the na- 
 tives with an aged chief of a small tribe of the River 
 Indians. He was taken to a house well constructed of 
 oak bark, circular in shape, and arched in the roof, the 
 granary of the beans and maize of the last year's harvest ; 
 while outside enough of them lay drying to load three 
 ships. Two mats were spread out as seats for the stran- 
 gers ; food was immediately served in neat red wooden 
 bowls ; men, who were sent at once with bows and 
 arrows for game, soon returned with pigeons ; a fat dog, 
 too, was killed, and haste made to prepare a feast. 
 When Hudson refused to wait, they supposed him to be 
 afraid of their weapons ; and taking their arrows they 
 broke them in pieces and threw them into the fire. The 
 country was pleasant and fruitful, bearing wild grapes. 
 " Of all lands on which I ever set my foot," says Hud- 
 son, " this is the best for tillage." The River Indians, 
 for more than a century, preserved the memory of his 
 visit. 
 
OF OEOROE BANCROFT. 37 
 
 The " Half Moon," on the nineteenth, drew near the 
 landing of Kinderhook, where the Indians brought on 
 board skins of beaver and otter. Hudson ventured no 
 higher with the yacht ; an exploring boat ascended a 
 little al)ove Albany to where the river was but seven feet 
 deep, and the soundings grew uncertain. 
 
 So, on the twenty-third, Hudson turned his prow 
 toward Holland, leaving the friendly tribes persuaded 
 that the Dutch would revisit them the next year. As he 
 went down the river, imagination peopled the region 
 with towns. A party which, somewhere in Ulster county, 
 went to walk on the west bank, found an excellent soil, 
 with large trees of oak and walnut and chestnut. The 
 land near Newburg seemed a very pleasant site for a 
 city. On the first of October Hudson passed below the 
 mountains. On the fourth, not without more than one 
 conflict with the savages, he sailed out of " the great 
 mouth of THE GREAT KivER " wliicli bcars his name, and 
 about the season of the return of John Smith from Vir- 
 ginia to England, he steered for Europe, leaving to its 
 solitude the beautiful land which he admired beyond any 
 country in the world. 
 
 Somber forests shed a melancholy grandeur over the 
 useless magnificence of nature, and hid in their deep 
 shades the rich soil which no sun had ever warmed. No 
 axe had leveled the giant progeny of the crowded 
 groves, in which the fantastic forms of limbs, w^ithered 
 or riven by lightning, contrasted strangely with the ver- 
 dure of a younger growth of branches. The wanton 
 grape vine, fastening its leafy coils to the toj) of the 
 tallest forest tree, swung with every breeze, like the 
 loosened shrouds of a ship. Trees might everywhere be 
 seen breaking from their roots in the marshy soil, and 
 threatening to fall with the first rude gust ; while the 
 ground was strown with the remains of former woods, 
 
38 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 over which a profusion of wild flowers wasted their 
 freshness in mockery of the gloom. Reptiles sported in 
 the stagnant pools, or crawled unharmed over piles of 
 moldering logs. The spotted deer couched among the 
 thickets ; and there were none but wild animals to crop 
 the uncut herbage of the prairies. Silence reigned, 
 broken, it may have been, by the flight of land birds or 
 the flapping of water fowl, and rendered more dismal by 
 the howling of beasts of prey. The streams, not yet 
 limited to a channel, spread over sand bars, tufted with 
 copses of willow, or waded through wastes of reeds ; or 
 slowly but surely undermined the groups of sycamores 
 that grew by their side. The smaller brooks spread out 
 into sedgy swamps, that were overhung by clouds of 
 mosquitoes ; masses of decaying vegetation fed the ex- 
 halations with the seeds of pestilence, and made the 
 balmy air of the summer's evening as deadly as it seemed 
 grateful. Life and death were hideously mingled. The 
 horrors of corruption frowned on the fruitless fertility of 
 uncultivated nature. 
 
 And man, the occupant of the soil, was untamed as 
 the savage scene, in harmony with the rude nature by 
 which he was surrounded ; a vagrant over the continent, 
 in constant warfare with his fellow man ; the bark of the 
 birch his canoe ; strings of shells his ornaments, his rec- 
 ord, and his coin ; the roots of uncultivated plants among 
 his resources for food ; his knowledge in architecture 
 surpassed both in strength and durability by the skill of 
 the beaver ; bended saplings the beams of his house ; 
 the branches and rind of trees its roof ; drifts of leaves 
 his couch ; mats of bulrushes his protection against the 
 winter's cold ; his religion the adoration of nature ; his 
 morals the promptings of undisciplined instinct ; disput- 
 ing with the wolves and bears the lordship of the soil, 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 39 
 
 and dividinp; with the S(|uirrel the wild fruits with which 
 the universal woodlands abounded. 
 
 The history of a country is modified by its climate, 
 and, in many of its features, determined by its geograph- 
 ical situation. The region which Hudson had discovered 
 possessed near the sea an unrivaled harbor ; a river that 
 admits the tide far into the interior on the north ; the 
 chain of great lakes, which have their springs in the 
 heart of the continent ; within its own limits the sources 
 of rivers that flow to the gulfs of Mexico and St. Law- 
 rence, and to the bays of Chesapeake and Delaware ; of 
 which, long before Europeans anchored ott" Sandy Hook, 
 the warriors of the Five Nations availed themselves in 
 their excursions to Quebec, to the Ohio, or the Suscpie- 
 lianna. With just sufficient difficulties to irritate, and 
 not enough to dishearten. New York united richest lands 
 with the highest adaptation to foreign and domestic 
 commerce. 
 
 How changed is the scene from the wild country on 
 which Hudson gazed ! The earth glows with the colors 
 of civilization ; the meadows are enameled with choicest 
 grasses ; woodlands and cultivated fields are harmo- 
 niously blended ; the birds of spring And their delight in 
 orchards and trim gardens, variegated with selected 
 plants from every temperate zone ; while the brilliant 
 flowers of the tropic bloom from the windows of the 
 greenhouse, or mock at winter in the salon. The yeo- 
 man, living like a good neighbor near the fields he culti- 
 vates, glories in the fruitfulness of the valleys, and 
 counts with honest exultation the flocks and herds that 
 browse in safety on the hills. The thorn has given way 
 to the rosebush ; the cultivated vine clambers over rocks 
 where the brood of serpents used to nestle ; while indus- 
 try smiles at the changes she has wrought, and inhales 
 the bland air which now has health on its wings. 
 
40 SELECTIONS FR03I THE WRITINGS 
 
 And man is still in harmony with nature, which he 
 has subdued, developed, and adorned. For him the 
 rivers that flow to remotest climes mingle their waters ; 
 for him the lakes gain new outlets to the ocean ; for him 
 the arch spans the flood, and science spreads iron path- 
 ways to the recent wilderness ; for him the hills yield up 
 the shining marble and the enduring granite ; for him 
 immense rafts bring down the forests of the interior; 
 for him the marts of the city gather the produce of all 
 climes, and libraries collect the works of every language 
 and age. The passions of society are chastened into 
 purity, manners are made benevolent by reflnement, and 
 the virtue of the country is the guardian of its peace. 
 Science investigates the powers of every plant and min- 
 eral, to And medicines for disease; schools of surgery 
 rival the establishments of the Old World: the genius 
 of letters begins to unfold his powers in the warm sun- 
 shine of public favor. An active daily jjress, vigilant 
 from party interests, free even to dissoluteness, watches 
 the progress of society, and communicates every fact 
 that can interest humanity; and commerce pushes its 
 wharfs into the sea, blocks up the wide rivers with its 
 fleets, and sends its ships, the pride of naval architecture, 
 to every zone. — Vol. II., Page SS. 
 
 SELECTION XIII. 
 
 FRANKLIN. 
 
 On the deep foundations of soljriety, frugality, and 
 industry, the young journeyman built his fortunes and 
 fame ; and he soon came to have a printing office of his 
 own. Toiling early and late, with his own hands he set 
 types and worked at the press ; with his own hands would 
 trundle to the office in a wheelbarrow the reams of paper 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 41 
 
 which he was to use. His ingenuity M'as such he could 
 form letters, make types and woodcuts, and engrave 
 vignettes in copper. The assembly of Pennsylvania 
 chose him its printer. Pie planned a newspaper; and 
 when he became its proprietor and editor, he defended 
 freedom of thought and speech, and the inalienable 
 power of the people. He proposed improvements in the 
 schools of Philadelphia, invented the s^'stem of subscrip- 
 tion libraries, and laid the foundation of one that was 
 long the most considerable library in America; he sug- 
 gested the establishment of an academy, which has 
 ripened into a university ; he saw the benelit of concert 
 in the pursuit of science, and gathered a philosophical 
 society for its advancement. The intelligent and highly 
 cultivated Logan bore testimony to his merits : " Our 
 most ingenious printer has the clearest understanding, 
 with extreme modesty. He is certainly an extraordinary 
 man " ; "• of a singularly good judgment, but of equal 
 modesty"; "excellent, yet humble." "Do not imagine," 
 he adds, "that I overdo in my character of Benjamin 
 Franklin, for I am rather short i)i it." 
 
 When the students of nature began to investigate the 
 wonders of electricity, Franklin excelled all observers in 
 the simplicity and lucid exposition of his experiments, 
 and in " sagacity and power of scientific generalization." 
 It was he who first suggested the explanation of thunder 
 gusts and the northern lights on electrical principles, and 
 in the summer of 1752, going out into the fields, with no 
 instrument but a kite, no companion but his son, estab- 
 lished his theory by obtaining a line of connection with 
 a thunder cloud. Kor did he cease till he had made 
 the lightning a household pastime, taught his family to 
 catch the subtle fluid in its leaps between the earth and 
 the sky, and ascertained how it might be compelled to 
 pass harmlessly over the dwellings of men. 
 
42 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 Franklin looked quietly and deeply into the secrets of 
 nature. His clear understanding was never perverted by 
 passion, nor corrupted by the pride of theory. The son 
 of a rigid- Calvinist, the grandson of a tolerant Quaker, 
 he had from boyhood been familiar not only with theo- 
 logical subtleties, but with a catholic respect for freedom 
 of mind. Skeptical of tradition as the basis of faith, he 
 respected reason rather tlian authority ; and after a mo- 
 mentary lapse into fatalism, he gained with increasing 
 years an increasing trust in the overruling providence of 
 God. Adhering to none of all the religions in the colo- 
 nies, he yet devoutly, though without form, adhered to 
 religion. But though famous as a disputant, and having 
 a natural aptitude for metaphysics, he obeyed the ten- 
 dency of his age, and sought by observation to win an 
 insight into the mysteries of being. The best observers 
 praise his method most. He so sincerely loved truth, 
 that in his pursuit of lier she met him half-way. With- 
 out prejudice and without bias, he discerned intuitively 
 the identity of the laws of nature with those of which 
 humanity is conscious; so that his mind was like a 
 mirror, in which the universe as it reflected itself, re- 
 vealed her laws. His morality, repudiating ascetic sever- 
 ities, and the system which enjoins them, was indulgent 
 to appetites of which he abhorred the sway ; but his affec- 
 tions were of a calm intensity; in all his career, the love 
 of man held the mastery over personal interest. He 
 had not the imagination which inspires the bard or kin- 
 dles the orator ; but an exquisite propriety, parsimonious 
 of ornament, gave ease, correctness, and graceful sim- 
 plicity even to his most careless writings. In life, also, 
 his tastes were delicate. Indifferent to the pleasures of 
 the table, he relished the delights of music and harmony, 
 of which he enlarged the instruments. His blandness of 
 temper, his modesty, the benignity of his manners, made 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROET. 43 
 
 ]iini the favorite of intelligent society ; and with healthy 
 cheerfulness, he derived pleasure from books, from phi- 
 losophy, fi'om conversation, — now administering conso- 
 lation to the sorrower, now indulging in light-hearted 
 gayety. 
 
 In his intercourse, the universality of his perceptions 
 bore, perhaps, the character of humor ; but, while he 
 clearly discerned the contrast between the grandeur of 
 the universe and the feebleness of man, a serene benevo- 
 lence saved him from contempt of his race, or disgust at 
 its toils. To superficial observers he might have seemed 
 as an alien from speculative truth, limiting himself to 
 the world of the senses ; and yet, in study, and among 
 men, his mind always sought to discover and apply the 
 genei'al principles by which nature and affairs are con- 
 trolled — now deducing from the theory of caloric im- 
 provements in fireplaces and lanterns, and now advanc- 
 ing human freedom by firm inductions from the inalien- 
 able rights of man. Never professing enthusiasm, never 
 making a parade of sentiment, his practical wisdom was 
 sometimes mistaken for the offspring of selfish prudence ; 
 yet his hope was steadfast, like that hope which rests on 
 the Rock of Ages, and his conduct was as unerring as 
 though tlie light that led him was a light from heaven. 
 lie never anticipated action by theories of self-sacrificing 
 virtue; and yet, in the moments of intense activity, he, 
 from the abodes of ideal truth, l)rought down and applied 
 to the affairs of life the j)rincipies of goodness, as unos- 
 tentatiously as became the man wdio, with a kite and 
 hempen string, drew the lightning from the skies. He 
 separated himself so little from his age that he has been 
 called the representative of materialism ; and yet, when 
 he thought on religion, his mind passed beyond reliance 
 on sects to faith in God ; when he wax)te on politics, he 
 founded freedom on principles that know no change ; 
 
44 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 when he turned an observing eye on nature, lie passed 
 from the effect to the cause, from individual appearances 
 to universal laws ; when he reflected on history, liis 
 philosophic mind found gladness and repose in the clear 
 anticipation of the progress of humanity. — Vol. IL, Page 
 638. 
 
 SELECTION XIY. 
 
 LEXINGTON. 
 
 On the 10th of April, just after midnight, the mes- 
 sage from Warren reached Adams and Hancock, who at 
 once divined the object of the expedition. Revere, 
 therefore, and Dawes, joined by Samuel Prescott, "a 
 high Son of Liberty," from Concord, rode forward, call- 
 ing up the inhabitants as they passed along, till in Lin- 
 coln they fell upon a j)arty of British officers. Revere 
 and Dawes were seized and taken back to Lexington, 
 where they were released ; but Prescott leaped over a 
 low stone wall, and galloped on for Concord. 
 
 There, at al)out two in the morning, a peal from the 
 belfry of the meeting house brought together the inhalji- 
 tants of the place, young and old, with their flrelocks, 
 ready to make good the resolute words of their town 
 debates. 
 
 Among ilie most alert was William Emerson, the 
 minister, with gun in hand, his powder horn and pouch 
 of balls slung over his shoulder. By his sermons and 
 his prayers, he had so hallowed the enthusiasm of his 
 flock that they held the defense of tlieir liberties a part 
 of their covenant with God ; his j^i'esence witli arms 
 strengthened tlieir sense of duty. 
 
 From daybreak to sunrise, the summons ran from 
 house to house through Acton. Express messengers and 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 45 
 
 the call of minute men spread widely the alarm. How 
 children trembled as they were scared out of sleep by 
 the cries ! How women, with heaving breasts, bravely 
 seconded their husbands ! How the countrymen, forced 
 suddenly to arms, without guides or counselors, took 
 instant counsel of their courage ! The mighty chorus of 
 voices i-ose fi-om the scattered farm houses, and, as it 
 were, from the very ashes of the dead. Come forth, 
 champions of liberty ; now free your country ; protect 
 your sons and daughters, your wives and homesteads ; 
 rescue the houses of the God of your fathers, the fran- 
 chises handed down from your ancestoi-s. Now all is at 
 stake ; the battle is for all. * * * 
 
 At two in the morning, under the eye of the minister, 
 and 'of Hancock and Adams, Lexington common was 
 alive with the minute men ; and not with them only, but 
 with the old men also, who were exempts, except in case 
 of immediate danger to the town. The roll was called, 
 and, of militia and alarm men, about one hundred and 
 thirty answered to their names. The captain, John Par- 
 ker, ordered every one to load with powder and ball, but 
 to take care not to be the first to fire. Messengers, sent 
 to look for the British regulars, reported that there were 
 no signs of their approach. A watch w^as therefore set, 
 and the company dismissed, with orders to come together 
 at beat of drum. Some went to their own homes ; some 
 to the tavern, near the southeast corner of the common. 
 Adams and Hancock, whose proscription had already 
 been divulged, and whose seizure was believed to be 
 intended, was persuaded to retire toward Woburn. 
 
 The last stars were vanishing from night, when the 
 foremost party, led l)y Pitcairn, a major of marines, was 
 discovered advancing quickly and in silence. Alarm 
 guns were fired, and the drums beat, not a call to village 
 husbandmen only, l)ut the reveille to humanity. Less 
 
46 SELECTIONS FE03I THE WHITINGS 
 
 than seventy, perhaps less than sixty, obeyed the sum- 
 mons, and, in sight of lialf as many boys and unarmed 
 men, were paraded in two ranks a few rods north of the 
 meeting house. 
 
 How often in that buiUling had they, with renewed 
 professions of their faith, looked up to God as the stay of 
 their fathers and the protector of their privileges ! How 
 often on that village green, hard by the burial place of 
 their forefathers, had they pledged themselves to each 
 other to com])at manfully for their birthright inheritance 
 of liberty ! There they now stood side by side, under 
 the provincial banner, with arms in their hands, silent and 
 fearless, willing to fight for their privileges, scrupulous 
 not to begin civil war, and unsuspicious of immediate 
 danger. The ground on which the}" trod was the altar of 
 freedom, and they were to furnish the victims. 
 
 The British van, hearing the drum and the alarm guns, 
 halted to load ; the remaining companies came uj) ; and, 
 at half an hour before sunrise, the advance party hurried 
 forward at double-quick time, almost upon a run, closely 
 followed by the grenadiers. Pitcairn rode in front, and, 
 when within hve or six rods of the minute men, cried 
 out : " Disperse, ye villains ! ye rel)els, disperse ! lay 
 down your arms ! Why don't you lay down your arms 
 and disperse ? " The main part of the countrymen stood 
 motionless in the ranks, witnesses against aggression, too 
 few to resist, too brave to fly. At this, Pitcairn dis- 
 charged a pistol, and with a loud voice cried, " Fire ! " 
 The order was followed first by a few guns, which did no 
 execution, and by a close and deadly discharge of mus- 
 ketry. 
 
 In the disparity of numbers, Parker ordered his men 
 to disperse. Then, and not till then, did a few of them, 
 on their own impulse, return the British fire. These 
 random shots of fugitives or dying men did no harm, 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 47 
 
 excei3t that Pitcairn's liorse was perhaps grazed, and a 
 private of the tenth light infantry was touched sliglitly 
 in the leg. 
 
 Jonas Pai-ker, the strongest and best wrestler in Lex- 
 ington, had promised never to run from British troops ; 
 and he kept his vow. A wound brouglit him on his 
 knees. Having discharged his gun, he was preparing to 
 load it again, when as sound a heart as ever throbbed for 
 freedom was stilled by a bayonet, and he lay on the post 
 which he took at the morning's drum-beat. So fell Isaac 
 Muzzey, and so died the aged Robert Munroe, the same 
 who in 1758 had been an ensign at Louisburg. Jonathan 
 Harrington, Jr., was struck in front of his own house on 
 the north of the common. His wife was at the window 
 as he fell. With blood gushing from his breast, he rose 
 in her sight, tottered, fell again, then crawled on hands 
 and knees toward his dwelling ; she ran to meet him, but 
 only reached him as he expired on the threshold. Caleb 
 Harrington, who had gone into the meeting house for 
 powder, was shot as he came out. Samuel Hadley and 
 John Brown were pursued and killed after they had left 
 the green. Asahel Porter, of Woburn, who had been 
 taken prisoner by the British on the march, endeavoring 
 to escape, was shot within a few rods of the common. 
 
 Day came in all the beauty of an early spring. The 
 trees were budding; the grass growing rankly a full 
 month before its time ; the blue bird and the robin glad- 
 dening the genial season, and calling forth the beams of the 
 sun which on that morning shone with tlie warmth of 
 summer ; l)ut distress and horror gathered over the inhab- 
 itants of the peaceful town. There on the green lay in 
 death, the gray-haired and the young ; the gi-assy field 
 was red "with the innocent blood of their brethren 
 slain," crying unto God for vengeance from the ground. 
 Seven of the men of Lexington were killed, nine 
 
48 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 wounded — a quarter part of all who stood in arms on the 
 green. These are the. village heroes, who were more than 
 of noble blood, proving by their spirit that they were of 
 a race divine. They gave their lives in testimony to the 
 rights of mankind, bequeathing to their country an 
 assurance of success in the mighty struggle which they 
 began. Their names are had in grateful remembrance, 
 and the expanding millions of their countrymen renew 
 and multiply their praise from generation to generation. 
 They fulfilled their duty not from the accidental impulse 
 of the moment ; their action was the shjwly ripened fruit 
 of Providence and of time. The light that led them on 
 was coml)ined of rays from the whole history of the race ; 
 from the traditions of the Hebrews in the gray of the 
 world's morning ; from the heroes and sages of republi- 
 can Greece and Rome ; from the example of Him who 
 died on the cross for humanity; from the religious creed 
 which proclaimed the divine presence in man, and on this 
 truth, as in a life boat, floated the liberties of nations over 
 the dark flood of the middle ages ; from the customs of 
 the Germans transmitted out of their forests to the coun- 
 cils of Saxon England ; from the burning faith and 
 courage of Martin Luther ; from trust in the inevitable 
 universality of God's sovereignty as taught by Paul of 
 Tarsus and Augustine, through Calvin and the divines 
 of I^ew England ; from the avenging fierceness of the 
 Puritans, who dashed the miter on the ruins of the 
 throne ; from the bold dissent and creative self-assertion 
 of the earliest emigrants to Massachusetts ; from the 
 statesmen who made, and the philosophers who ex- 
 pounded, the revolution of England ; from the liberal 
 spirit and analyzing inquisitiveness of the eighteenth 
 century ; from the cloud of witnesses of all the ages to 
 the reality and rightfulness of human freedom. All the 
 centuries bowed themselves from the recesses of the past 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 49 
 
 to cheer in tlieir sacriiice the lowly men who jDrovecl 
 themselves worthy of their forernnners, and whose chil- 
 dren rise np and call them blessed. 
 
 Heedless of his own danger, Sanniel Adams, wath the 
 voice of a prophet, exclaimed : " Oh, what a glorious 
 morning is this ! " for he saw^ his country's independence 
 hastening on, and, like Colnmbns in the tempest, knew 
 that the storm did but bear him the more swiftly toward 
 the undiscovered world. — Vol. IV., Page 517. 
 
 SELECTION XV. 
 
 WASHINGTON. 
 
 Washington was then forty-three years of age. In 
 stature he a little exceeded six feet ; his limbs were 
 sinewy and well proportioned ; his chest broad ; his fig- 
 ure stately, blending dignity of presence with ease. His 
 robust constitution had been tried and invigorated by his 
 early life in the wilderness, the habit of occupation out 
 of doors, and rigid temperance ; so that few equaled him 
 in strength of arm, or power of endurance, or noble 
 horsemanship. His complexion was florid ; his hair dark 
 brown ; his head in its shape perfectly round. His 
 broad nostrils seemed formed to give expression and 
 escape to scornful anger. His eyebrows were rayed and 
 finely arched. His dark-blue eyes, which were deeply set, 
 had an expression of resignation, and an earnestness that 
 was almost pensiveness. His forehead was sometimes 
 marked with thought, but never with inquietude ; his 
 countenance was mild and pleasing and full of benignity. 
 
 At eleven years old left an orphan to the care of an 
 excellent but unlettered mother, he grew up without 
 learning. Of arithmetic and geometry he acquired just 
 knowledge enough to practice measuring land, but all 
 
50 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 his instructions at school tauglit him not so mnch as tiie 
 orthography or rules of grammar of his own tongue. 
 His culture was altogether his own work, and he was in 
 the strictest sense a self-made man ; yet from his early 
 life he never seemed uneducated. At sixteen, he went 
 into the wilderness as a surveyor, and for three years con- 
 tinued the pursuit, where the forests trained him, in 
 meditative solitude, to freedom and largeness of mind, 
 and nature revealed to him her obedience to serene and 
 silent laws. In his intervals from toil, he seemed always 
 to be attracted to the best men, and to be cherished by 
 them. Fairfax, his employer, an Oxford scholar, already 
 aged, became his fast friend. He read little, but with 
 close attention. Whatever he took in hand, he applied 
 himself to with care, and his papers, which have been 
 preserved, show how he almost imperceptibly gained the 
 power of writing correctly, always expressing himself 
 with clearness and directness, often with felicity of lan- 
 guage and grace. 
 
 When the frontiers on the west became disturbed, he 
 at nineteen was commissioned an adjutant-general with 
 the rank of major. At twenty-one he w^ent as the envoy 
 of Yirginia to the council of Indian chiefs on the Ohio 
 and to the French officers near Lake Erie. 
 
 Fame waited upon him from his youth, and no one of 
 his colony was so much spoken of. He conducted the 
 first military expedition from Virginia that crossed the 
 Alleghanies. Braddock selected him as an aid, and he 
 was the only man who came out of the disastrous defeat 
 near the Monongahela, with increased reputation, which 
 extended to England. The next year, when he was but 
 f our-and-twenty, " the great esteem " in which he was 
 held in Yirginia, and his " real merit," led the lieuten- 
 ant-governor of Maryland to request that he might be 
 " commissionated and appointed second in command " of 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 51 
 
 the army designed to iiiareli to the Oliio, and Shirley, 
 the commander in chief, heard the proposal " with great 
 satisfaction and pleasure," for " he knew no provincial 
 upon the continent to whom he would so readily give 
 that rank as to Washington." In 1758 he acted under 
 Forbes as a brigadier,.and but for him that general would 
 never have crossed the mountains. 
 
 Courage was so natural to him that it was hardly 
 spoken of to his praise ; no one ever at any moment of 
 his life discovered in him the least shrinking in danger, 
 and he had a hardihood of daring which escaped notice, 
 because it was so enveloped by superior calmness and 
 wisdom. 
 
 His address was most easy and agreeable ; his step 
 firm and graceful ; his air neither grave nor familiar. 
 He was as cheerful as he was spirited, frank and commu- 
 nicative in the society of his friends, fond of the fox 
 chase and the dance, often sportive in his letters, and 
 liked a hearty laugh. 
 
 " His smile," writes Chastellux, " was always the 
 smile of benevolence." This joyousness of disposition 
 remained to the last, though the vastness of his responsi- 
 bility was soon to take from him the right of displaying 
 the impulsive qualities of his nature, and the weight 
 which he was to bear up was to overlay and repress his 
 gayety and openness. 
 
 His hand was liberal ; giving quietly and without 
 observation, as though he was ashamed of nothing but 
 being discovered in doing good. He was kindly and 
 compassionate, and of lively sensibility to the sorrows of 
 others ; so that, if his country had only needed a victim 
 for its relief, he would have willingly offered himself as a 
 sacrifice. But while he was prodigal of himself, he was 
 considerate for others ; ever parsimonious of the blood of 
 his countrymen. 
 
52 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 He was prudent in the management of his private 
 affairs, purchased rich lands from the Mohawk valley to 
 the flats of the Kanawha, and improved his fortune by 
 the correctness of his judgment ; but, as a public man, 
 he knew no other aim than the good of his country, and 
 in the hour of his country's poverty he refused personal 
 emolument for his service. 
 
 His faculties were so well balanced and combined 
 that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered 
 evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind 
 resembled a well ordered commonwealth ; his passions, 
 which had the intensest vigor, owned allegiance to reason, 
 and with all the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetu- 
 ous and massive will was held in check by consummate 
 judgment. 
 
 He had in his composition a calm, which gave him in 
 moments of highest excitement, the power of self-con- 
 trol, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he 
 had most cause for disgust. Washington was offered a 
 command when there was little to bring out the unorgan- 
 ized resources of the continent but his own influence, 
 and authority was connected with the people by the most 
 frail, most attenuated, scarcely discernible threads ; yet, 
 vehement as was his nature, impassioned as was his cour- 
 age, he so restrained his ardor that he never failed con- 
 tinuously to exert the attracting power of that influence, 
 and never exerted it so sharply as to break its force. 
 
 In secrecy he was unsurpassed ; but his secrecy had 
 the character of prudent reserve, not of cunning or con- 
 cealment. His great natural power of vigilance had been 
 developed by his life in the wilderness. 
 
 His understanding was lucid, and his judgment ac- 
 curate ; so that his conduct never betrayed hurry or con- 
 fusion. No detail was too minute for his personal inquiry 
 and continued supervision ; and at the same time he com- 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 53 
 
 prehended events in their widest aspects and relations. 
 He never seemed above the object that engaged his atten- 
 tion, and he was always equal, without an effort, to the 
 solution of the highest questions, even when there ex- 
 isted no precedents to guide his decision. In the perfec- 
 tion of the reflective powers, which he used habitually, 
 he had no peer. 
 
 In this way he never drew to himself admiration for 
 the possession of any one quality in excess, never made 
 in council any one suggestion that was sublime but im- 
 practicable, never in action took to himself the praise or 
 the blame of undertakings astonishing in conception, but 
 beyond his means of execution. It was the most won- 
 derful accomplishment of this man, that, placed upon 
 the largest theater of events, at the head of the gi-eatest 
 revolution in human affairs, he never failed to observe 
 all that was possible, and at the same time to bound his 
 aspirations by that which was possible. 
 
 A slight tinge in his character, perceptible only to the 
 close observer, revealed the region from which he sprung, 
 and he might be described as the best specimen of man- 
 hood as developed in the south ; but his qualities were 
 so faultlessly proportioned, that his whole country rather 
 claimed him as its choicest representative, the most com- 
 plete expression of all its attainments and aspirations. 
 He studied his country, and conformed to it. His coun- 
 trymen felt that he was the best type of America, and 
 rejoiced in it, and were proud of it. They lived in his 
 life, and made his success and his praise their own. 
 
 Profoundly impressed with confldence in God's provi- 
 dence, and exemplary in his respect for the forms of 
 public worship, no philosopher of the eighteenth century 
 was more firm in the support of freedom of religious 
 opinion, none more remote from bigotry ; but belief in 
 God, and trust in his overruling power, formed the 
 
54 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 essence of his character. Divine wisdom not only ilhi- 
 mines the spirit, it inspires the will. Washington was a 
 man of action, and not of theory or words ; his creed 
 appears in his life, not in his professions, which bnrst 
 from him very rarely, and only at those great moments 
 of crisis in the fortnnes of his country, when earth and 
 heaven seemed actually to meet, and his emotions became 
 too intense for suppression ; but his whole being was one 
 continued act of faith in the eternal, intelligent, moral 
 order of the universe. Integrity was so completely the 
 law of his nature, that a planet would sooner have shot 
 from its sphere than he have departed from his upright- 
 ness, which was so constant that it often seemed to l)e 
 almost impersonal. " His integrity was the most pure, 
 his justice the most inflexible I have ever known," writes 
 Jefferson ; " no motives of interest or consanguinity, of 
 friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision." 
 
 They say of Giotto, that he introduced goodness into 
 the art of painting. Washington carried it with him to 
 the camp and the cabinet, and established a new criterion 
 of human greatness. The purity of his will confirmed his 
 fortitude ; and as he never faltered in his faith in virtue, 
 he stood fast by that which he knew to be just ; free 
 from illusions ; never dejected by the apprehension of 
 the difficulties and perils that went before him, and draw- 
 ing the promise of success from the justice of his cause. 
 Hence he was persevering, leaving nothing unfinished ; 
 devoid of all taint of obstinacy in his firmness ; seeking 
 and gladly receiving advice, but immovable in his de- 
 voted ness to right. 
 
 Of a "retiring modesty and habitual reserve," his 
 ambition was no more than the consciousness of his 
 power, and was subordinate to his sense of duty ; he 
 took the foremost place, for he knew, from inborn mag- 
 nanimity, that it belonged to him, and he dared not with- 
 
_ OF GEORGE BANCROFT. ^0 
 
 hold the service required of him ; so that, with all his 
 humility, he was by necessity the first, though never for 
 himself or for private ends. He loved fame, the ap- 
 proval of coming generations, the good opinion of his 
 fellow-men of his own time, and he desired to make his 
 conduct coincide with their wishes ; but not fear of cen- 
 sure, not the prospect of applause, could tempt him to 
 swerve from rectitude, and the praise which he coveted 
 was the sympathy of that moral sentiment which exists 
 in every human breast, and goes forth only to the wel- 
 come of virtue. 
 
 There have been soldiers who have achieved mightier 
 victories in the field, and made conquests more nearly 
 corresponding to the boundlessness of selfish ambition ; 
 statesmen who have been connected with more startling 
 upheavals of society. But it is the greatness of Washing- 
 ton that in public trusts he used power solely for the 
 public good ; that he was the life and moderator and 
 stay of the most momentous revolution in human affairs, 
 its moving impulse, and its restraining power. Combin- 
 ing the centripetal and the centrifugal forces in their 
 utmost strength, and in perfect relations, with creative 
 grandeur of instinct, he held ruin in check, and renewed 
 and perfected the institutions of his country. Finding 
 the colonies disconnected and dependent, he left them 
 such a united and well ordered commonwealth as no 
 visionary had believed to be possible ; so that it has 
 been truly said : " He was as fortunate as great and 
 good." 
 
 This also is the praise of Washington : that never in 
 the tide of time has any man lived who had in so great 
 a degree the almost divine faculty to command the con- 
 fidence of his fellow men and rule the wilKng. Wher- 
 ever he became known — in his family, his neighbor- 
 hood, his county, his native state, the continent, the camp, 
 
56 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 civil life, among the common people, in foreign courts, 
 throughout the civiHzed world, and even among the sav- 
 ages — he, beyond all other men, had the conhdence of 
 his kind. 
 
 Washington saw at a glance the difficulties of the 
 position to which he had been chosen. He was appointed 
 by a government which, in its form, was one of the worst 
 of all possible governments in time of peace, and was 
 sure to reveal its defects still more plainly in time of 
 war. It was inchoate and without an executive head ; 
 the several branches of administration, if to be conducted 
 at all, were to be conducted by separate, ever-changing, 
 and irresponsible committees ; and all questions of legis- 
 lation and of action ultimately decided by the one ill- 
 organized body of men Avho, in respect of granted 
 powers, were too feeble even to originate advice. They 
 were not the representatives of a union ; they alone con- 
 stituted the union, of which, as yet, there was no other 
 bond. One whole department of government, the judi- 
 cial, was entirely wanting. So was, in truth, the execu- 
 tive. The congress had no ability whatever to enforce a 
 decree of their own; they had no revenue, and no 
 authority to collect a revenue; they had none of the 
 materials of war; they did not own a cannon, nor a 
 pound of powder, nor a tent, nor a musket; they had 
 no regularly enlisted army, and had even a jealousy of 
 forming an army, and depended on the zeal of volun- 
 teers, or of men to be enlisted for less than seven 
 months. There were no experienced officers, and no 
 methods projected for obtaining them. Washington saw 
 it all. He was in the enjoyment of fame ; he wished 
 not to forfeit the esteem of his fellow men ; and his eye 
 glistened with a tear as he said in confidence to Patrick 
 Henry on occasion of his appointment : " This day will 
 be the commencement of tlie decline of my reputation." 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 57 
 
 But this consideration did not make liim waver. On 
 the sixteenth of June lie appeared in liis place in congress, 
 and after refusing all pay beyond his expenses, he spoke 
 with unfeigned modesty ; "As the congress desire it, I 
 will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every 
 power I possess in their service, and for the support of 
 the glorious cause. But I beg it may be remembered by 
 every gentleman in the room, that I this da^' declare, 
 with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to 
 the command I am honored with." 
 
 The next day, the delegates of all the colonies re- 
 solved unanimously "to maintain and assist him, and 
 adhere to him, the said George Washington, Esquire, 
 with their lives and fortunes in the same cause." 
 
 By his commission he was invested with the command 
 over all forces raised or to be raised by the United Colo- 
 nies, and with full power and authority to order the 
 army as he should think for the good and welfare of the 
 service, "in unforeseen emergencies using his best cir- 
 cumspection, and advising with his council of war"; 
 and he was instructed to take "special care that the 
 liberties of America receive no detriment," 
 
 Washington knew that he must depend for success on 
 a steady continuance of purjDose in an imperfectly united 
 continent, and on his personal influence over separate 
 and half-formed governments, with most of which he 
 was wholly unacquainted. He foresaw a long and ar- 
 duous struggle ; but a secret consciousness of his power 
 bade him not to fear ; and, whatever might be the back- 
 wardness of others, he never admitted the thought of 
 sheathing his sword or resigning his command till the 
 work of vindicating American liberty should be done. 
 To his wnfe he unbosomed his inmost mind . " I hope my 
 undertaking this service is designed to answer some 
 good purpose. I rely confidently on that Providence 
 
 I 
 
58 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 which has heretofore preserved and been honntiful to 
 me." 
 
 His acceptance changed the aspect of affairs. John 
 Adams, looking witli complacency ujjon "the modest 
 and virtnous, the amiable, generons, and brave general," 
 as the choice of Massachusetts, said : " This appointment 
 will have a great effect in cementing the union of these 
 colonies." " The general is one of the most important 
 characters of the world ; upon him depend the liberties 
 of America." All hearts turned with affection toward 
 Washington. This is he who was raised U]) to be, not 
 the head of a party, but the father of his country. — 
 Vol. IV., Page 593. 
 
 SELECTION XVI. 
 
 JOHN ADAMS. 
 
 On the ninth day of February John Adams resumed 
 his seat in congress, with Elbridge Gerry for a colleague, 
 in place of the feeble Gushing, and with instructions 
 from his constituents to establish liberty in America upon 
 a permanent basis. His nature was robust and manly ; 
 now he was in the happiest mood of mind for asserting 
 the independence of his country. He had confidence in 
 the ability of New England to drive away their enemy ; 
 in Washington, as a brave and prudent commander ; in 
 his wife, who cheered him with the fortitude of womanly 
 heroism; in the cause of his country, which seemed so 
 bound up with the welfare of mankind that Providence 
 could not suffer its defeat ; in himself, for his convictions 
 were clear, his will fixed, and his mind prepared to let 
 his little property and his life go, sooner than the rights 
 of his country. 
 
 Looking into himself, he saw weaknesses enough, but 
 
p 
 
 OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 59 
 
 neither meanness nor dishonesty nor timidity. His 
 overweening self-esteem was his chief blemisli, and, if he 
 compared himself with his great fellow workers, there 
 was some j^oint on which he was superior to any one of 
 them ; he had more learning than Washington, or any 
 other American statesman of his age ; better knowledge 
 ' of freedom as grounded in law than Samuel Adams ; 
 clearer insight into the constructive elements of govern- 
 ment than Franklin ; more power in debate than Jeffer- 
 son ; more courageous manliness than Dickinson ; more 
 force in motion than Jay ; so that, by varying and con- 
 fining his comparisons, he could easily fancy himself the 
 greatest of them all. He was capable of thinking him- 
 self the center of any circle, to which he had been no 
 more than a tangent ; his vanity was in such excess that 
 in manhood it sometimes confused his judgment, and in 
 age bewildered his memory; but the stain did not reach 
 beyond the surface ; it impaired the luster, not the hardy 
 integrity of his character. He was humane and frank, 
 generous and clement ; if he could never sit placidly 
 under the shade of a greater reputation than his own, his 
 envy, though it laid open how deeply his self-love was 
 wounded, had hardly a tinge of malignity. He did his 
 fame injustice when, later in life, he represented himself 
 as suffering from persecutions on account of his early 
 zeal for independence ; he was no weakling to whine 
 about injured feelings ; he went to his task, sturdy and 
 cheery and brave ; he was the hammer, and not the 
 anvil, and it was for others to fear his prowess and to 
 shrink under his blows. His courage was unflinching in 
 debate, and everywhere else ; he never knew what fear 
 was ; and had he gone into the army, as he once longed 
 to do, he would have taken there the virtues of temper- 
 ance, decision, and intrepidity. To his latest old age, 
 his spirit was robust, buoyant, and joyous ; he saw ten 
 
60 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 times as much pleasure as pain in the world ; and, after 
 his arm quivered and his eye grew dim, he was ready to 
 hegin life anew and iight its battle over again. 
 
 In his youth he fell among skeptics, read Boling- 
 broke's works five times through, and accustomed him- 
 self to reason freely and think boldly ; he esteemed him- 
 self a profound metaphysician, but had only skimmed the 
 speculations of others ; though at first destined to be a 
 minister, he became a rebel to Calvinism, and never had 
 any very fixed religious creed. For all that, he was a 
 stanch man of New England, and his fond partiality to 
 its people, its institutions, its social condition, and its 
 laws, followed him into congress and its committees and 
 social life, tinctured his judgment, and clinched his pre- 
 possessions; but the elements in New England that he 
 loved most were those which were eminently friendly to 
 universal culture and republican equality. A poor farm- 
 er's son, bent on making his way in the world, at twenty 
 years old beginning to earn his own bread, pinched and 
 starved as master of a " stingy " country school, he formed 
 early habits of order and frugality, and steadily advanced 
 to fortune ; but, though exact in his accounts, there was 
 nothing niggardly in his thrift, and his modest hospi- 
 tality was prompt and hearty. He loved homage, and 
 it made him blind ; to those who flattered him he gave 
 his confidence freely, and often unwisely, and while he 
 watched the general movement of affairs with compre- 
 hensive sagacity, he was never a calm observer of indi- 
 vidual men. He was of the choleric temperament, of a 
 large and compact frame ; he was singularly sensitive ; 
 could break out into uncontrollable rage, and never 
 learned to rule his own spirit ; but his anger did not so 
 much drive him to do wrong as to do right ungraciously. 
 No man was less fitted to gain his end by arts of indirec- 
 tion ; he knew not how to intrigue, was indiscreetly 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 61 
 
 talkative, and almost thought aloud ; his ways of court- 
 ing support were uncouth, so that he made few friends 
 except by his weight of character and integrity, and was 
 unapt as the leader of a party. 
 
 Hating intolerance in all its forms, an impassioned 
 lover of civil liberty, as the glory of man and the best 
 evidence and the best result of civilization, he, of all men 
 in congress, was incomparable as a dogmatist ; essentially 
 right-minded ; loving to teach with authority ; pressing 
 onward unsparingly with his argument ; impatient of 
 contradiction ; unequaled as a positive champion of the 
 right. He was the Martin Luther of the American revo- 
 lution, compelled to utter his convictions fearlessly by 
 an inborn energy which forbade his acting otherwise. 
 He was now too much in earnest, and too much engaged 
 by the greatness of his work to think of himself ; too 
 anxiously desiring aid, to disparage those who gave it. 
 In the fervor of his activity, his faults disappeared. His 
 intellect and public spirit, all the noblest parts of his 
 nature, were called into the fullest exercise, and strained 
 to the uttermost of their healthful power. Combining, 
 more than any other, farness of sight and fixedness of 
 belief with courage and power of utterance, he was 
 looked up to as the ablest debater in congress. Preserv- 
 ing some of the habits of the lawyer, he was redundant 
 in words and cumulative in argument ; but his warmth 
 and sincerity kept him from the affectations of a pedant 
 or a rhetorician. Forbearance was no longer in season ; 
 the irrepressible talent of persevering, peremptory asser- 
 tion was wanted ; the more he was hurried along by his 
 own vehement will, the better; now his country, hu- 
 manity, the age, the hour, demanded that the right should 
 be spoken out ; his high excitement had not the air of 
 passion, but appeared, as it was, the clear perception of 
 the sublimity of his task. When, in the life of a states- 
 
62 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 mail, were six months of more importance to tlie race 
 than these six months in the career of John Adams ? — ■ 
 Vol. v., Page 206. 
 
 SELECTION XVII. 
 
 ABIGAIL ADAMS. 
 
 In a few weeks tlie proclamation reached tlie colonies 
 at several ports. Men said : " While America is still on 
 her knees, the king aims a dagger at her heart." Abigail 
 Smith, the wife of John Adams, was at the time in their 
 home, near the foot of Penn Hill, charged with the sole 
 care of their little brood of children ; managing their 
 farm ; keeping house with frugality, though opening her 
 doors to the houseless, and giving with good will a part 
 of her scant portion to the poor ; seeking work for her 
 own hands, and ever occupied, now at the spinning- 
 wheel, now making amends for having never been sent 
 to school by learning French, though with the aid of 
 books alone. Since the departure of her husband for 
 congress, the arrow of death had sped near her by day, 
 and the pestilence that walks in darkness had entered 
 her humble mansion ; she herself was still weak after a 
 violent illness ; her house was a hospital in every part ; 
 and such Avas the distress of the neighborhood, she could 
 hardly find a well person to assist in looking after the 
 sick. Her youngest son had been rescued from the grave 
 by her nursing ; her ow^n mother liad been taken away, 
 and, after the austere manner of her forefathers, buried 
 without prayer. Woe followed woe, and one affliction 
 trod on the heels of another. Winter was hurrying on. 
 During the day family affairs took off her attention, but 
 her long evenings, broken by the sound of the storm on 
 the ocean or the enemy's artillery at Boston, were lone- 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 63 
 
 some and melancholy. Ever in the silent night dwelling 
 on the love and tenderness of her departed parent, she 
 needed the consolation of her hnsband's presence ; bnt 
 when, in November, she read the king's proclamation, 
 she willingly gave np her nearest friend to his perilous 
 duties, and sent him her cheering message : " This intel- 
 ligence will make a plain path for you, though a danger- 
 ous one. I could not join to-day in the petitions of our 
 worthy pastor for a reconciliation between our no longer 
 parent state, but tyrant state, and these colonies. Let us 
 separate ; they are unw^orthy to be our brethren. Let us 
 renounce them ; and instead of supplications, as for- 
 merly, for their prosperity and happiness, let us beseech 
 the Almighty to blast their counsels, and bring to naught 
 all their devices."— Vol. V., Page 8'B. 
 
 SELECTION XYIII. 
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was silently but 
 steadily prepared in the convictions of all the jjeople, 
 just as every spire of grass is impearled by the dew, and 
 reflects the morning sun. The many are more sagacious, 
 more disinterested, more courageous than the few. Lan- 
 guage was their spontaneous creation ; the science of 
 ethics, as the word implies, is deduced from the inspira- 
 tions of their conscience ; law itself, as the great jurists 
 have perceived, is necessarily molded by their inward 
 nature ; the poet embodies in words their oracles and 
 their litanies ; the philosopher draws ideal thought from 
 the storehouse of their mind ; the national heart is the 
 great reservoir of noble resolutions, and of high, endur- 
 ing designs. It w^as the common people wdiose craving 
 for the recognition of the unity of the universe, and for a 
 
64 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 perfect mediation between themselves and the Infinite, 
 bore the Christian rehgion to its triumph over every 
 worldly influence. It was the public faith that, in the 
 days of the Reformation, sought abstract truth behind 
 forms that had been abused, and outward acts that had 
 lost their significance ; and now the popular desire was 
 once more the voice of the harbinger, crying in the 
 wilderness. The people, whose spirit far outran conven- 
 tions and congresses, had grown weary of atrophied in- 
 stitutions, and longed to fathom the mystery of tlie life 
 of the public life. Instead of continuing a superstitious 
 reverence for the scepter and the throne, as the symbols 
 of order, they yearned for a nearer converse with the 
 eternal rules of right as the generative principles of social 
 peace 
 
 Reid, among Scottish metaphysicians, and Chatham, 
 the foremost of British statesmen, had discovered in 
 COMMON SENSE the Criterion of morals and truth ; the 
 common sense of the people now claimed its right to sit 
 in judgment on the greatest question ever raised in the 
 political world. All the colonies, as though they had 
 been but one individual being, felt themselves wounded 
 to the soul when they heard, and could no longer doubt, 
 that George III. was hiring foreign mercenaries to reduce 
 them to subjection. — Vol. V., Page 165. 
 
 SELECTION XIX. 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 The resolution of congress changed the old thirteen 
 British colonies into free and independent states. It 
 remained to set forth the reason for this act, and the 
 principles which the new people would own as their 
 guides. Of the committee appointed for that duty, 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 65 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, of Yirginia, had received the largest 
 number of votes, and was in that manner singled out to 
 draft the confession of faith of the rising empire. He 
 owed this distinction to respect for the colony which he 
 represented, to the consummate ability of the state paj^ers 
 which he had already written, and to that general favor 
 which follows merit, modesty, and a sweet disposition ; 
 but the quality which specially fitted him for the task 
 was the sympathetic character of his nature, by wdiich he 
 was able, with instinctive perception, to read the soul of 
 the nation, and, having collected its best tlioughts and 
 noblest feelings, to give them out in clear and bold 
 words, mixed with so little of himself that his country, 
 as it went along with him, found nothing but what it 
 recognized as its own. No man in his century had more 
 trust in the collective reason and conscience of his fellow 
 men, or better knew how to take tlieir counsel ; and in 
 return he came to be a ruler over the willing in the 
 world of opinion. Born to an independent fortune, he 
 had from his youth been an indefatigable student. "■ The 
 glow of one warm thought was worth more to him than 
 money." Of a hopeful temperament, and a tranquil, 
 philosophic cast of mind, always temperate in his mode 
 of life, and decorous in his manners, he was a perfect 
 master of his passions. He was of a delicate organiza- 
 tion, and fond of elegance ; his tastes were refined ; 
 laborious in his application to business or the pursuit of 
 knowledge, music, the most spiritual of all pleasures of 
 the senses, was his favorite recreation ; and he took a 
 never failing delight in the varied beauty of rural life, 
 building himself a home in the loveliest region of his 
 native state. He was a skillful horseman, and, with 
 elastic step, would roam the mountains on foot. The 
 range of his studies was very wide ; he was not unfa- 
 miliar with the literature of Greece and Rome ; had an 
 6 
 
Q(y SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 aptitude for mathematics and mechanics, and loved es- 
 pecially the natural sciences, scorning nothing but meta- 
 physics. British governors and officials had introduced 
 into "Williamsburg the prevalent free thinking of English- 
 men of that centurv, and Jefferson had grown up in its 
 atmosphere. He was not only a hater of priestcraft and 
 superstition and bigotry and intolerance, he was thought 
 to be indifferent to religion ; yet his instincts all inclined 
 him to trace every fact to a general law, and to put faith 
 in ideal truth ; the world of the senses did not bound his 
 aspirations, and he beHeved more than he himself was 
 aware of. He was an idealist in his liabits of thought 
 and life, as indeed is everyone who has an abiding and 
 thorough confidence in the people ; and he was kept so, 
 in spite of circumstances, by the irresistible bent of his 
 character. He had great power in mastering details, as 
 well as in searching for general principles. His profes- 
 sion was that of the law, in which he was methodical, 
 painstaking, and successful ; at the same time, he pursued 
 it as a science, and was well read in the law of nature 
 and of nations. Whatever he had to do, it was his 
 custom to prepare himself for it carefully ; and in public 
 life, when others were at fault, they often found that he 
 had already hewed out the way ; so that in council, men 
 willingly gave him the lead, which he never appeared to 
 claim, and was always able to undertake. But he rarely 
 spoke in pu])lic, and was less fit to engage in the war of 
 debate than calmly to sum up its conclusions. It was a 
 beautiful trait in his character that he was free from 
 envy ; had he kept silence, there would have been want- 
 ing to John Adams the best witness to his greatness as 
 the ablest advocate and defender of independence. A 
 common object now riveted the two statesmen together 
 in close bonds. I cannot find that at that period Jeffer- 
 son had an enemy ; by the general consent of Virginia, 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. B7 
 
 he stood first among her civilians. Just tliirty-three 
 years old, married, and happy in his family, affluent, 
 with a bright career before him, he was no rash innova- 
 tor by his character or his position. If his convictions 
 drove him to demand independence, it was only because 
 lie could no longer live with honor under the British 
 " constitution, which he still acknowledged to be better 
 than all that had preceded it." His enunciation of gen- 
 eral principles was fearless ; but he was no visionary 
 devotee of abstract theories, which, like disembodied 
 souls, escape from every embrace. The nursling of his 
 country, the offspring of his time, he set about the work 
 of a practical statesman, and his measures grew so nat- 
 urally out of previous law and the facts of the past that 
 they struck deep root, and have endured. 
 
 From the fullness of his own mind, without consult- 
 ing one single book, yet having in his mind the example 
 of the Swiss and of the United Provinces of the Nether- 
 lands, Jefferson drafted the declaration, in which, after 
 citing the pnmal principles of government, he presented 
 the complaints of the United States against England in 
 the three classes of the iniquitous use of the royal prerog- 
 ative, the usurpation of legislative power over America 
 by the king in parliament, and the measures for enforc- 
 ing the pretended acts of legislation. He submitted the 
 paper separately to Franklin and to John Adams, accept- 
 ed from each of them one or two verbal, unimportant 
 corrections, and on the 28th of June reported it to con- 
 gress, which now, on the 2d of July, immediately after 
 adopting the resolution of independence, entered upon 
 its consideration. During the remainder of that day, 
 and the next two, the language, the statements, and the 
 principles of the paper were closely scanned. — Vol. V, 
 Page 322. 
 
 i 
 
68 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 SELECTION XX. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 PART I. 
 
 That God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as 
 any truth of physical science. On the great moving 
 power which is from the beginning hangs the world of 
 the senses and the world of thought and action. Eter- 
 nal wisdom marshals the great procession of the nations, 
 working in patient continuity through the ages, never 
 halting and never abrupt, encompassing all events in its 
 oversight, and ever effecting its will, though mortals may 
 slumber in apathy or oppose with madness. 
 
 Kings are lifted up or thrown down, nations come and 
 go, republics flourish and wither, dynasties pass away 
 like a tale that is told ; but nothing is by chance, though 
 men, in their ignorance of causes, may think so. 
 
 The deeds of time are governed, as well as judged, by 
 the decrees of eternity. The caprice of fleeting existences 
 bends to the immovable omnipotence, which plants its 
 foot on all the centuries and has neither change of pur- 
 pose nor repose. Sometimes, like a messenger through 
 the thick darkness of night, it steps along its mysterious 
 ways ; but when the hour strikes for a people, or for 
 mankind, to pass into a new form of being, unseen hands 
 draw the bolts from the gates of futurity ; an all-subdu- 
 ing influence prepares the minds of men for the coming 
 revolution ; those who plan resistance find themselves in 
 conflict with the will of Providence rather than with 
 human devices; and all hearts and all understandings, 
 most of all the opinions and influences of the unwilling, 
 are wonderfully attracted and compelled to bear forward 
 the change, which becomes more an obedience to the uni- 
 versal law of nature than submission to the arbitrament 
 of man. 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 69 
 
 In the fullness of time a republic rose up in the wilder- 
 ness of America. Thousands of years had passed away 
 before this child of the ages could be born. From what- 
 ever there was of good in the systems of former centuries 
 she drew her nourishment ; the wrecks of the past were her 
 warnings. With the deepest sentiment of faith tixed in 
 her inmost nature, she disenthralled religion from bondage 
 to temporal poVer, that her worship might be worship 
 only in sj^irit and in truth. The wisdom which had 
 passed from India through Greece, with what Greece 
 had added of her own ; the jurisprudence of Rome ; the 
 media? val nnmicipalities ; the Teutonic method of repre- 
 sentation ; the political expei'ience of England ; the 
 benignant wisdom of the expositors of the law of nature 
 and of nations in France and Holland, all shed on her 
 their selectest influence. She washed the gold of politi- 
 cal wisdom from the sands wherever it was found ; she 
 cleft it from the rocks ; she gleaned it among ruins. Out 
 of all the discoveries of statesmen and sages, out of all 
 the experience of past human life, she compiled a peren- 
 nial political philosophy, the primordial principles of 
 national ethics. The wise men of Europe sought the 
 best government in a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, 
 and democracy ; America went behind these names to 
 extract from them the vital elements of social forms, and 
 blend them harmoniously in the free commonwealth, 
 which comes nearest to the illustration of the natural 
 equality of all men. She entrusted the guardianship of 
 established rights to law, the movements of reform to 
 the spirit of the people, and drew her force from the 
 happy reconciliation of both. 
 
 Republics had heretofore been limited to small can- 
 tons or cities, and their dependencies; America, doing 
 that of which the like had not been known before upon 
 the earth, or believed by kings and statesmen to be possi- 
 
 I 
 
70 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 ble, extended her republic across a continent. Under 
 her auspices the vine of hberty took deep root and tilled 
 the land ; the hills were covered with its shadow, its 
 bonghs were like the goodly cedars, and reached unto 
 both oceans. The fame of this only daughter of free- 
 dom went out into all the lands of the earth ; from her 
 the human race drew hope. 
 
 When eight j^ears old he floated down the Ohio with 
 his father on a raft, which bore the family and all their 
 possessions to the shore of Indiana ; and, child as he was, 
 lie gave help as they toiled through dense forests to the 
 interior of Spencer county. There, in the land of free 
 labor, he grew up in a log cabin, with the solemn solitude 
 for his teacher in his meditative hours. Of Asiatic liter- 
 ature he knew only the Bible ; of Greek, Latin, and 
 mediaeval no more than the translation of ^sop's Fables ; 
 of English, John Banyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The tra- 
 ditions of George Fox and William Penn passed to him 
 dimly along the lines of two centuries through his ances- 
 tors, who were Quakers. 
 
 Otherwise his education was altogether American. 
 The Declaration of Independence w^as his compendium 
 of political wisdom, the Life of Washington his constant 
 study, and something of Jefferson and Madison reached 
 him through Henry Clay, whom he honored from boy- 
 hood. For the rest, from day to day, he lived the life of 
 the American people, walked in its light, reasoned with 
 its reason, thought with its power of thought, felt the 
 beatings of its mighty heart, and so was in every way a 
 child of nature, a child of the West, a child of America. 
 
 At nineteen, feeling impulses of ambition to get on 
 in the w^orld, he engaged himself to go down the Missis- 
 sippi in a flatboat, receiving ten dollars a month for his 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 71 
 
 wages, and afterward lie made tlie trip once more. At 
 twenty-one he drove his father's cattle, as the family mi- 
 grated to Illinois, and split rails to fence in the new 
 homestead in the wild. At twenty-three he was a ca])- 
 tain of vohinteers in the Black Hawk war. He kejDt a 
 store. He learned something of surveying, but of English 
 literature added nothing to Bunyan but Shakesjjeare's 
 plays. At twenty-five he was elected to the legislature 
 of Illinois, where he served eight years. At tM^enty- 
 seven he was admitted to the bar. In 183T he chose his 
 home at Springfield, the beautiful center of the richest 
 land in the state. In 1847 he was a member of the 
 National Congress, where he voted about forty times in 
 favor of the principle of the Jefferson proviso. In 1849 
 he sought eagerly but unsuccessfully the place of com- 
 missioner of the land office, and he refused an appoint- 
 ment that would have transferred his residence to Oregon. 
 In 1854 he gave his influence to elect from Illinois to 
 the American senate a democrat who would certainly do 
 justice to Kansas. In 1858, as the rival of Douglas, he 
 went before the people of the mighty Prairie State, say- 
 ing : " This Union cannot permanently endure half slave 
 and half free ; the Union will not be dissolved, but the 
 house will cease to be divided." And now, in 1861, with 
 no experience whatever as an executive officer, while 
 states were madly flying from their orbit, and wise men 
 knew not where to find counsel, this descendant of 
 Quakers, this pupil of Bunyan, this offspring of the 
 great West was elected President of America. 
 
 He measured the difiiculty of the duty that devolved 
 upon him, and was resolved to fulfill it. As on the 
 eleventh of February, 1861, he left Springfield, which 
 for a quarter of a century had been his happy home, to 
 the crowd of his friends and neighbors, whom he was 
 never more to meet, he spoke a solemn farewell : " I 
 
72 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty has 
 devolved upon nie, greater than that which has devolved 
 upon any otlier nian since Washington. He never would 
 have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, 
 upon which he at all times relied. On the same Almighty 
 Being I place my reliance. Pray that I may receive that 
 divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but 
 with which success is certain." To the men of Indiana 
 he said : " I am but an accidental temporary instrument ; 
 it is your business to rise up and protect the Union and 
 liberty." At the capital of Ohio he said : " Without a 
 name, without a reason why I should have a name, there 
 has fallen upon me a task such as did not rest even upon 
 the Father of his Country." At various places in New 
 York, esjjecially at Albany, before the legislature, which 
 tendered him the support of the great Empire State, he 
 said : " While I hold myself the humblest of all the indi- 
 viduals who have ever been elevated to the presidency, I 
 have a more difficult task to perform than any of them. 
 I bring a true heart to the work. I must rely upon the peo- 
 ple of the whole country for support, and wnth their sus- 
 taining aid even I, humble as I am, cannot fail to carry the 
 ship of state safely through the storm." To the assembly 
 of New Jersey, at Trenton, he explained : " I shall take 
 the ground I deem most just to the North, the East, the 
 West, the South, and the whole country, in good temper, 
 certainly, with no malice to any section. I am devoted 
 to peace, but it may be necessary to put the foot down 
 firmly." In the old Independence Hall, of Philadelphia, 
 he said : " I have never had a feeling politically that did 
 not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to 
 the people of this country, but to the world in all future 
 time. If the country cannot be saved without giving 
 up that principle, I would rather l^e assassinated on the 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 73 
 
 spot tliaii siuTender it. I liave said nothing but what I 
 am willing to live and die by." 
 
 Hardly had the late President been consigned to the 
 grave when the Prime Minister of England died, full of 
 years and honors. Palmerston traced his lineage to the 
 time of the Conqueror ; Lincoln went back only to his 
 grandfather. Palmerston received his education from 
 the best scholars of Harrow, Edinburgh, and Cambridge ; 
 Lincoln's early teachers were the silent forest, the prairie, 
 the river, and the stars. Palmerston was in public life 
 for sixty years ; Lincoln for but a tenth of that time. 
 Palmerston was a skillful guide of an established aris- 
 tocracy ; Lincoln a leader, or rather a companion, of the 
 people. Palmerston was exclusively an Englishman, and 
 made his boast in the House of Commons that the inter- 
 est of England was his shibboleth ; Lincoln thought 
 always of mankind, as well as his own country, and 
 served human nature itself. Palmerston, from his nar- 
 rowness as an Englishman, did not endear his country to 
 any one court or to any one nation, but rather caused 
 general uneasiness and dislike ; Lincoln left America 
 more beloved than ever by all the people of Europe. 
 Palmerston was self-possessed and adroit in reconciling 
 the conflicting factions of the aristocracy ; Lincoln, frank 
 and ingenuous, knew how to poise himself on the ever 
 moving opinions of the masses. Palmerston was capal)le 
 of insolence toward the weak, quick to the sense of 
 honor, not heedful of right ; Lincoln rejected counsel 
 given only as a matter of policy, and was not capable of 
 being willfully unjust. 
 
 Palmerston, essentially superficial, delighted in banter, 
 and knew how to divert grave opposition by playful 
 levity ; Lincoln was a man of infinite jest on his lijDS, 
 
74 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 with saddest earnestness at his lieart. Pahnerston was a 
 fair representative of the aristocratic liberaUty of the 
 day, clioosing for his tribunal, not the conscience of hu- 
 manity, but the House of Commons; Lincoln took to 
 lieart the eternal truths of liberty, obeyed them as the 
 commands of Providence, and accepted the human race 
 as the judge of his fidelity. Pahnerston did nothing 
 that will endure ; Lincoln finished a work which all 
 time cannot overthrow. Pahnerston is a shining exam- 
 ple of the ablest of a cultivated aristocracy ; Lincoln is 
 the genuine fruit of institutions where the laboring man 
 shares and assists to form the great ideas and designs of 
 his country. Pahnerston was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey by the order of his Queen, and was attended by 
 the British aristocracy to his grave, which, after a few 
 years, will hardly be noticed by the side of the graves of 
 Fox and Chatham ; Lincoln was followed by the sorrow 
 of his country across the continent to his resting place in 
 the heart of the Mississippi valley, to be remembered 
 through all time by his countrymen, and by all the peo- 
 ple of the world. — Memorial Address. 
 
 Note.— This address was delivered before the two houses of congress, Febru- 
 ary 12, 1866. 
 
 SELECTION XXL 
 
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 
 PART I. 
 
 The eternal flow of existence never rests, bearing the 
 human race onward through continuous change. Prin- 
 ciples grow into life by informing the public mind, and 
 in their maturity gain the mastery over events ; follow- 
 ing each other as they are bidden, and ruling without a 
 pause. No sooner do the agitated waves begin to sub- 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 75 
 
 side, than, amidst the formless tossing of the billows, a 
 new messenger from the Infinite Spirit moves over the 
 waters ; and the bark which is freighted with the for- 
 tunes of mankind yields to the gentle breath as it first 
 whispers among the shrouds, even while the beholders 
 still doubt if the breeze is springing, and whence it comes, 
 and whither it will go. 
 
 The hour of revolution was at hand, promising free- 
 dom to conscience and dominion to intelligence. His- 
 tory, escaping from the dictates of authority and the jars 
 of insulated interests, enters upon new and unthought-of 
 domains of culture and equality, the happier society 
 where power s])rings freshly from ever renewed consent ; 
 the life and activity of a connected world. 
 
 For Europe, the crisis foreboded the struggles of gen- 
 erations. The strong bonds of faith and affection, which 
 once united the separate classes of its civil hierarchy, had 
 lost their vigor. In the impending chaos of states, the 
 ancient forms of society, after convulsive agonies, were 
 doomed to be broken in pieces, and the fragments to be- 
 come distinct, and seemingly lifeless, like the dust ; ready 
 to be whirled in a deadly sand storm by the tempest of 
 public rage. The voice of reform, as it passed over the 
 desolation, would inspire animation afresh ; but in the 
 classes whose power was crushed, as well as in the op- 
 pressed who knew not that they were redeemed, it might 
 also awaken wild desires, Avliich the ruins of a former 
 world could not satiate. In America, the influences of 
 time were molded by the creative force of reason, senti- 
 ment, and nature ; its political edifice rose in lovely pro- 
 portions, as if to the melodies of the lyre. Peacefully 
 and without crime, humanity was to make for itself a 
 new existence. 
 
 A few men of Anglo-Saxon descent, chiefly farmers, 
 planters, and mechanics, with their wives and children, 
 
76 SELECTIONS FR03I THE WRITINGS 
 
 liad crossed the Atlantic, in search of freedom and for- 
 tune. They brought the civilization which tlie past had 
 bequeathed to Great Britain ; they were followed by the 
 slave ship and the African ; their prosperity invited 
 emigrants from every lineage of central and western 
 Europe ; the mercantile system to which they were sub- 
 jected prevailed in the councils of all metropolitan states, 
 and extended its restrictions to every continent that 
 allured to conquest, commerce, or colonization. The 
 accomplishment of their independence would agitate the 
 globe, would assert the freedom of the oceans as com- 
 mercial highways, vindicate power in the commonwealth 
 for the united judgment of its people, and assure to them 
 the right to a self-directing vitality. 
 
 The authors of the American Revolution avowed for 
 their object the welfare of mankind, and believed that 
 they were in the service of their own and of all future 
 generations. Their faith was just; for the world of 
 mankind does not exist in fragments, nor can a country 
 have an insulated existence. All men are brothers, and 
 all are bondsmen for one another. All nations, too, are 
 brothers, and each one is responsible for that federative 
 humanity which puts the ban of exclusion on none. New 
 principles of government could not assert themselves in 
 one hemisphere without affecting the other. The very 
 idea of the progress of an individual people, in its relation 
 to universal history, springs from the acknowledged unity 
 of the race. — Vol. III.., Page 3. 
 
 From the dawn of social l)eing, there has appeared a 
 tendency toward con.imerce and intercourse between the 
 scattered inhabitants of the earth. That mankind have 
 ever earnestly desired this connection appears from their 
 willing homage to the adventurers, and to every people 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. T7 
 
 who have greatly enlarged the boundaries of the world, 
 as known to civilization. The traditions of remotest 
 antiquity celebrate the half divine wanderer who raised 
 pillars on the shores of the Atlantic ; and record, as a 
 visitant from the skies, the iirst traveler from Europe 
 to the central rivers of Asia. It is the glory of Greece 
 that, when she had gathered on her islands and among 
 her hills the scattered beams of human intelligence, her 
 numerous colonies carried the accumulated light to the 
 neighborhood of the ocean, and to the shores of the Eux- 
 ine. Her wisdom and her arms connected continents. 
 
 When civilization intrenched herself within the beau- 
 tiful promontory of Italy, and Rome led the van of 
 European reform, the same movement continued, with 
 still vaster results ; for, though the military republic 
 bounded the expansive spirit of independence by giving 
 dominion to property, and extended her own influence 
 by the sword, yet, heaping up conquests, adding island 
 to continent, crushing nationalities, offering a shrine to 
 strange gods, and citizenship to every vanquished people, 
 she extended over a larger empire the benefits of fixed 
 principles of law, and a cosmopolitan polytheism pre- 
 vailed as the religion of the world. 
 
 To have asserted clearly the unity of mankind was 
 the distinctive character of the Christian religion. No 
 more were the nations to be severed by the worship of 
 exclusive deities. The world was instructed that all 
 men are of one blood ; that for all there is but one divine 
 nature, and but one moral law ; and the renovating faith 
 taught the singleness of the race, of which it embodied 
 the aspirations, and guided the advancement. The tribes 
 of northern Europe, emerging freshly from the wild 
 nurseries of nations, opened new regions to culture, com- 
 merce, and refinement. The beams of the majestic tem- 
 ple, which antiquity had reared to its many gods, were 
 
78 SELECTIONS FR03I THE WRITINGS 
 
 already falling in ; the roving invaders, taking to their 
 hearts the regenerating creed, became its intrepid mes- 
 sengers, and bore its symbols even to Iceland and 
 Siberia. 
 
 Still nearer were the relations of the connected world 
 when an enthusiastic reformer, glowing with selfish am- 
 l)ition, and angry at the hollow forms of idolatry, rose 
 lip in the deserts of Arabia, and founded a system, whose 
 emissaries, never diverging widely from the warmer 
 zone, conducted armies from Mecca to the Ganges, where 
 its principle was at variance with the limitation of castes ; 
 and to the Ebro, where a life of the senses could mock at 
 degenerate superstitions, yet without the power to create 
 anew. How did the two systems animate all the conti- 
 nents of the Old World to combat for the sepulcher of 
 Christ, till Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia, came into 
 conflict, and intercourse with the arts, as well as the 
 arms, of the South and East, from Morocco to Ilindoo- 
 stan ! 
 
 In due time appeared the mariner from Genoa. To 
 Columbus God gave the keys that unlock the barriers of 
 the ocean, so that he tilled Christendom with his glory. 
 The voice of the world had whispered to him that the 
 world is one ; and, as he went forth toward the west, 
 plowing a wave which no European keel had entered, 
 it was his high purpose not merely to open new paths to 
 islands or to continents, but to bring together the ends of 
 the earth, and join all nations in commerce and spiritual 
 life. 
 
 While the world of mankind is accomplishing its 
 nearer connection, it is also advancing in the power of 
 its intelligence. The possession of reason is the engage- 
 ment for that progress of which history keeps the record. 
 The faculties of each individual mind are limited in their 
 development ; the reason of the whole strives for perfec- 
 
OF OEOROE BANCROFT. 79 
 
 tion ; has been restlessly forming itself from the first 
 moment of human existence, and has never met bounds 
 to its capacity for improvement. The generations of 
 men are not like the leaves on the trees, which fall, and 
 renew themselves without melioration or change ; indi- 
 viduals disappear like the foliage and the flowers ; the 
 existence of our kind is continuous, and its ages are 
 reciprocally dependent. Were it not so, there would be 
 no great truths inspiring action, no laws regulating 
 human achievements. The movement of the living 
 world would be as the ebb and flow of the ocean ; and 
 the mind would no more be touched by the visible 
 agency of Providence in human affairs. — Vol. III., 
 Page 5. 
 
 Institutions may crumljle, and governments fall, but 
 it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount 
 upward like the eagle ; the petals of the flower wither 
 that fruit may form. The desire of perfection, springing 
 always from moral power, rules even the sword, and 
 escapes unharmed from the field of carnage ; giving to 
 battles all that they can have of luster, and to warriors 
 their only glory ; surviving martyrdoms, and safe amid 
 the wreck of states. On the banks of the stream of 
 time, not a monument has been raised to a hero or a 
 nation but tells the tale, and renews the hope of im- 
 provement. Each people that has disappeared, every 
 institution that has passed away, has been but a step in 
 the ladder by which humanity ascends toward the per- 
 fecting of its nature. 
 
 And how has it always been advancing, to the just 
 judgments of the past adding the discoveries of succes- 
 sive ages ! The generations that the torch of truth along 
 the lines of time themselves become dust and ashes ; but 
 
so SELECTIONS FR03I THE WRITINGS 
 
 the liglit still increases its ever-burning flame, and is fed 
 more and more plenteouslj with consecrated oil. How 
 is progress manifest in religion, from the gross symbols 
 of the East to the sublime philosophy of Greece, from 
 the fetichism of the savage to the polytheism of Rome ; 
 from the multiplied forms of ancient superstition, and 
 the lovely representations of deities in stone, to the clear 
 conception of the unity of divine power, and the idea of 
 the presence of God in the soul ! How has mind, in its 
 inquisitive freedom, taught man to employ the elements 
 as mechanics do their tools, and already, in part at least, 
 made him the master and possessor of nature ! How has 
 knowledge not only been increased, but diffused ! How 
 has morality been constantly tending to subdue the 
 supremacy of brute force, to refine passion, to enrich lit- 
 erature with the varied forms of pure thought and deli- 
 cate feeling! How has social life been improved, and 
 every variety of toil in the rield and in the workshop 
 been ennobled by the willing industry of free men ! 
 How has humanity been growing conscious of its unity 
 and watchful of its own development, till pu1)lic opinion, 
 bursting the bonds of nationality, knows itself to be the 
 spirit of the world in its movement on the tide of thought 
 from generation to generation ! 
 
 From the intelligence that had been slowly ripening 
 in the mind of cultivated humanity sprung the American 
 Revolution, which was designed to organize social union 
 through the establishment of personal freedom, and thus 
 emancipate the nations from all authorit}'' not flowing 
 from themselves. 
 
 In the old civilization of Europe, ]iower moved from 
 a superior to inferiors and subjects ; a priesthood trans- 
 mitted a common faith, from which it would tolerate no 
 dissent ; the government esteemed itself, by compact or 
 by divine right, invested with sovereignty, dispensing 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 81 
 
 protection and demanding allegiance. But a new prin- 
 ciple, far mightier than the church and state of the middle 
 ages, was forcing itself into activity. Successions of 
 increasing culture and heroes in the world of thought had 
 conquered for mankind the idea of the freedom of the 
 individual ; the creative, but long-latent, energy that 
 resides in the collective reason, was next to be revealed. 
 From this the state was to emerge like the fabled spirit 
 of beauty and love out of the foam of the ever troubled 
 ocean. It was the office of America to substitute for 
 hereditary privilege the natural equality of man ; for 
 the irresponsible authority of a sovereign, a dependent 
 government emanating from the concord of opinion ; and 
 as she moved forward in her high career, the multitudes 
 of every clime gazed toward her example with hopes of 
 untold happiness, and all the nations of the earth sighed 
 to be renewed. 
 
 The American Revolution, of which I write the his- 
 tory, essaying to unfold the principles which organized 
 its events, and bound to keep faith with the ashes of its 
 heroes, was most radical in its character, yet achieved 
 with such benign tranquillity that even conservatism hes- 
 itated to censure. A civil war armed men of the same 
 ancestry against each other, yet for the advancement of 
 the principles of everlasting peace and universal brother- 
 hood. A new plebeian democracy took its place by the 
 side of the proudest empires. Religion was disenthralled 
 from civil institutions ; thought obtained for itself free 
 utterance by speech and by press ; industry was commis- 
 sioned to follow the bent of its own genius; the system 
 of commercial restrictions between states was reprobated 
 and shattered ; and the oceans were enfranchised for 
 every peaceful keel. International law was humanized 
 and softened ; and a new, milder, and more just mari- 
 time code was concerted and enforced. The trade in 
 6 
 
82 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 slaves was branded and restrained. The language of 
 Bacon and Milton, of Chatham and Washington, became 
 so diffused, that in every zone, and almost in every longi- 
 tude, childhood lisps the English as its mother tongue. 
 The equality of all men was declared ; personal freedom 
 secured in its complete individuality ; and common con- 
 sent recognized as the only just origin of fundamental 
 laws ; so that in thirteen separate states, with ample terri- 
 tory for creating more, the inhabitants of each formed 
 their own political institutions. By the side of the prin- 
 ciple of the freedom of the individual and the freedom 
 of the separate states, the noblest work of human intel- 
 lect was consummated in a federative union ; and that 
 union put away every motive to its destruction, by insur- 
 ing to each successive generation the right to better its 
 constitution, according to the increasing intelligence of 
 the living people. 
 
 Astonishing deeds, throughout the world, attended 
 these changes. Armies fought in the wilderness for rule 
 over the solitudes which were to be the future dwelling 
 place of millions ; navies hunted each other through 
 every sea, engaging in battle now near the region of ice- 
 bergs, now within the tropics. Inventive art was sum- 
 moned to make war more destructive, and to signalize 
 sieges by new miracles of ability and daring. Africa 
 was, in part, appropriated by rival nations of white men, 
 and in Asia an adventurous company of British traders 
 planted themselves as masters in the empire of the Great 
 Mogul. 
 
 For America, the period abounded in new forms of 
 virtue and greatness. Fidelity to principle pervaded the 
 masses. An unorganized people, of their own free will, 
 suspended commerce by universal assent. Poverty re- 
 jected bribes. Heroism, greater than that of chivalry, 
 burst into action from lowly men. Citizens, with their 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 83 
 
 families, fled from their homes and wealth in towns, 
 rather than yield to oppression. Battalions sprung np in 
 a night from spontaneous patriotism. Where eminent 
 statesmen hesitated, the instinctive action of the multi- 
 tude revealed the counsels of magnanimity. Youth and 
 genius gave up life freely for the liberties of mankind. 
 A nation without union, without magazines and arsenals, 
 without a treasury, without credit, without government, 
 fought successfully against the whole strength and wealth 
 of Great Britain. An army of veteran soldiers capitu- 
 lated to insurgent husbandmen. — Vol. III., Page 8. 
 
 SELECTION XXII. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 After the sighs and sorrows of centuries, in the dawn 
 of serener days, an Augustine monk, having also a heart 
 of flame, seized on the same great ideas ; and he and his 
 followers, with wives and children, restored them to the 
 world. At his bidding, truth leaped over the cloister 
 walls, and challenged every man to make her his guest ; 
 aroused every intelligence to acts of private judgment ; 
 changed a dependent, recipient people into a reflecting, 
 inquiring people; lifted each human being out of the 
 castes of the middle age, to endow him with individu- 
 ality,, and summoned man to stand forth as man. The 
 world heaved with the fervent conflict of opinion. The 
 people and their guides recognized the dignity of labor. 
 The oppressed peasantry took up arms for liberty. Men 
 reverenced and exercised the freedom of the soul. The 
 breath of the new spirit moved over the earth. It 
 revived Poland, animated Germany, swayed the North ; 
 and the inquisition of Spain could not silence its whispers 
 among the mountains of the peninsula. It invaded 
 
84 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 France; and, though bonfires of heretics, by way of 
 warning, were lighted at the gates of Paris, it infused 
 itself into the French mind, and led to unwonted free 
 discussions. Exile could not quench it. On the banks 
 of the Lake of Geneva, Calvin stood forth the boldest 
 reformer of his day ; not personally engaging in political 
 intrigues, yet, by promulgating great ideas, forming the 
 seed-plot of revolution ; bowing only to the Invisible ; 
 acknowledging no sacrament of ordination but the choice 
 of the laity, no patent of nobility but that of the elect of 
 God, with its seals of eternity. 
 
 Luther's was still a Catholic religion. It sought to 
 instruct all, to confirm all, to sanctify all ; and so, under 
 the shelter of princes, it gave established forms to Protes- 
 tant Germany and Sweden and Denmark and England. 
 But Calvin taught an exclusive doctrine, which, tliough 
 it addressed itself to all, rested only on the chosen. 
 Lutheranism was, therefore, not a political party ; it 
 included prince and noble and peasant. Calvinism was 
 revolutionary. "Wherever it came, it created division. 
 Its symbol, as set up on the " Institutes " of its teacher, 
 was a riaming sword. By the side of the eternal mount- 
 ains, and perennial snows, and arrowy rivers of Switz- 
 erland, it established a religion without a prelate, a 
 government without a king. Fortified by its faith in 
 fixed decrees, it kept possession of its homes among the 
 Alps. It grew powerful in France, and invigorated, 
 between the feudal nobility and the crown, the long con- 
 test, which did not end till the subjection of the nobility, 
 through the central despotism, prepared the ruin of tliat 
 despotism by promoting the equality of the commons. 
 It entered Holland, inspiring an industrious nation with 
 heroic enthusiasm ; enfranchising and uniting provinces, 
 and making burghers and weavers and artisans victors 
 of the highest orders of Spanish chivalry, the power of 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 85 
 
 the inquisition, and the pretended majesty of kings. It 
 penetrated Scotland, and, while its whirlwind bore along 
 persuasion among glens and mountains, it shrank from 
 no danger, and hesitated at no ambition ; it nerved its 
 rugged but hearty envoy to resist the flatteries of the 
 beautiful Queen Mary ; it assumed the education of her 
 only son ; it divided the nobility ; it penetrated the 
 masses, overturned the ancient ecclesiastical establish- 
 ment, planted the free parochial school, and gave a living 
 energy to the principle of liberty in a people. It infused 
 itself into England, and placed its plebeian sympathies 
 in daring resistance to the courtly hierarchy ; dissenting 
 from dissent, longing to introduce the reign of righteous- 
 ness, it invited every man to read the Bible, and made 
 itself dear to the connnon mind by teaching, as a divine 
 revelation, the unity of the race, and the natural equality 
 of man. It claimed for itself freedom of utterance, and 
 through the pulpit, in eloquence imbued with the author- 
 itative words of pro.phets and apostles, spoke to the 
 whole congregation. It sought new truth, denying the 
 sanctity of the continuity of tradition. It stood up 
 against the middle age, and its forms in church and 
 state, hating them with a fierce and unquenchable 
 hatred. 
 
 Imprisoned, maimed, oppressed at home, its indeiDend- 
 ent converts in Great Britain looked beyond the Atlantic 
 for a better world. Their energetic passion was nur- 
 tured by trust in the divine protection, their power of 
 will was safely intrenched in their own vigorous creed ; 
 and under the banner of the gosjDel, with the fervid and 
 enduring love of the myriads who in Europe adojDted the 
 stern simplicity of the disciples of Calvin, they sailed for 
 the wilderness, far away from "popery and prelacy," 
 from the traditions of the church, from hereditary power, 
 from the sovereignty of an earthly king, — from all 
 
86 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 
 
 dominion but the Bible, and "what rose from natural 
 reason and the principles of equity y—IIistor(/, Vol. III., 
 Page 99. 
 
 SELECTION XXIII. 
 
 THE ACADIANS. 
 
 The tenth of September was the day for the embark- 
 ation of a part of the exiles. They were drawn up six 
 deep ; and the young men, one hundred and sixty-one in 
 number, were ordered to march first on board the vessel. 
 They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady 
 rocks on w^hich they had reclined, their herds and their 
 garners ; but nature yearned within them and they would 
 mot be separated from their parents. Yet of what avail 
 was the frenzied desjjair of the unarmed youth ; they 
 had not one weapon ; the bayonet drove them to obey ; 
 and they marched slowly and heavily from the chapel to 
 the shore, between women and children, who kneeling 
 prayed for l)lessings on their heads, they themselves 
 weeping and praying and singing hymns. The seniors 
 went next ; the wives and children must wait till other 
 transport vessels arrive. The delay had its horrors. The 
 wretched people left behind were kept together near the 
 sea, without proper food or raiment or shelter, till other 
 ships came to take them away ; and December, with its 
 appalling cold, had struck the shivering, half -clad, broken- 
 hearted sufferers, before the last of them were removed. 
 " The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly," 
 wrote Monckton, from Fort Cumberland, near which he 
 had burned three hamlets ; " the most part of the wives 
 of the men we have prisoners are gone off with their 
 children, in hopes I would not send off their husbands 
 withont them." Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis, 
 a Inindred heads of families fled to the woods, and a 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 87 
 
 party was detached on the hunt to l)riiig' them in. " Our 
 soldiers hate them," wrote an otticer on this occasion, " and 
 if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they will." 
 Did a prisoner seek to escape, he was shot down by the 
 sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec ; more than three 
 thousand had withdrawn to Miramachi and the region 
 south of the Ristigouche ; some found rest on the banks 
 of the St. John's and its branches ; some found a lair in 
 their native forests ; some were charitably sheltered from 
 the English in the wigwams of the savages. But seven 
 thousand of these banished people were driven on board 
 ships, and scattered among the English colonies, from 
 New Hampshire to Georgia ; one thousand and twenty to 
 South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without 
 resources ; hating the poorhouse as a shelter for their 
 offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves 
 as laborers. Households, too, were separated, the colo- 
 nial newspapers containing advertisements of members 
 of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to 
 reach and relieve their parents, of mothers moaning for 
 their children. 
 
 The wanderers sighed for their native country ; but to 
 prevent their return, their villages, from Annapolis to the 
 isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were but 
 ruins. In the disti'ict of Minas, for instance, two hun- 
 dred and fifty of their houses, and more than as many 
 barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged 
 to them, consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, 
 hogs, sheep, and horses, were seized as spoils and dis- 
 posed of by the English officials. A beautiful and fertile 
 tract of country was reduced to a solitude. There was 
 none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Aca- 
 dians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the 
 hands that fed him. Thickets of forest trees choked 
 
o8 SELECTIONS FRO 31 THE WRITINGS 
 
 their orchards ; the ocean broke over their neglected 
 dikes, and desolated their meadows. 
 
 Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles wherever 
 they fled. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for 
 the spot where they were born as strong as that of the 
 captive Jews who wept by the rivers of Babylon, for 
 their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and 
 w^ent coasting from harbor to harbor; but, when they 
 had reached New England, just as they would have set 
 sail for their native fields, they were stopped by orders 
 from Nova Scotia. Those who dwelt on the St. John's 
 were torn from their new homes. When Canada surren- 
 dered, hatred with its worst venom pursued the fifteen 
 hundred who remained south of the Ristigouche. Once 
 those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented a humble 
 petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British com- 
 mander in chief in America ; and the cold-hearted peer, 
 offended that the prayer was made in French, seized 
 their five principal men, who in their own land had been 
 persons of dignity and substance, and shipped them to 
 England, with the request that they might be kept from 
 ever becoming troublesome by being consigned to service 
 as common sailors on board ships of war. No doubt ex- 
 isted of the king's approbation. The lords of trade, 
 more merciless than the savages and than the wilderness 
 in winter, wished very much that every one of the Aca- 
 dians should be driven out ; and, when it seemed that 
 the work was done, congratulated the king that " the 
 zealous endeavors of Lawrence had been crowned with 
 an entire success." "We did," said Edmund Burke, 
 " in my opinion, most inhumanly, and upon pretenses 
 that in the eye of an honest man are not worth a far- 
 thing, root out this poor, innocent, deserving people, 
 whom our utter inability to govern, or to reconcile, gave 
 us no sort of right to extirpate." I know not if the annals 
 
OF GEORGE BANCROFT. 89 
 
 of the luiman race keep the record of sorrows so wan- 
 tonly inflicted, so bitter, and so perennial, as fell npon 
 the French inhabitants of Acadia. ''We have been 
 true," they said of themselves, " to our religion and true 
 to ourselves ; yet nature appears to consider us only as the 
 objects of public vengeance." The hand of the English 
 official seemed under a spell with regard to them, and 
 was never uplifted but to curse them. — History, Vol. 
 III., Page 133. 
 
 SELECTION XXiy. 
 
 WESLEY AND THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 The pure-minded man, who in a sensual age became 
 the quickeuer of religious fervor, the preacher to the 
 poor, John Wesley, also came forward to defend the sys- 
 tem of the court with the usual arguments. lie looked 
 so steadily toward the world beyond the skies, that he 
 could not brook the interruption of devout gratitude by 
 bloody contests in this stage of being. Besides, he saw 
 that the rupture between the English and the Americans 
 w^as growing wader every day, and to him the total de- 
 fection of America was the evident prelude of a conspir- 
 acy against monarchy, of which the bare thought made 
 him shudder. " No governments under heaven," said 
 he, '' are so despotic as the republican ; no subjects are 
 governed in so arl)itrary a manner as those of a common- 
 wealth. The people never but once in all history gave 
 the sovereign power, and that was to Masaniello of 
 Naples. Our sins will never be removed, till we fear 
 God and honor the king." Wesley's mental constitution 
 was not robust enough to gaze on the future with un- 
 blenched calm. He could not foresee that the constella- 
 tion of republics, so soon to rise in the wilds of America, 
 
90 SELECTIONS FROM GEORGE BANCROFT. 
 
 would welcome the members of the society which he 
 was to fomid as the pioneers of rehgion ; that the breath 
 of Kberty would waft their messages to the masses of the 
 people ; would encourage them to collect the white and 
 the negro, slave and master, in the greenwood, for coun- 
 sel on divine love and full assurance of grace ; and 
 would carry their consolation and songs and prayers to 
 the furthest cabins in the wilderness. To the gladdest 
 of glad tidings for the political regeneration of the world, 
 Wesley listened with timid trembling, as to the fearful 
 bursting of the flood-gates of revolution, and he knew 
 not that God was doing a work which should lead the na- 
 tions of the earth to joy. — Vol. I V., Page 1^.9 J^.. 
 
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 1. Wliat other great historians have been educated at 
 Harvard i 
 
 2. Wliat distinguished poets ? 
 
 3. Wliat special advantages for study did Bancroft 
 enjoy after graduating at Harvard ? 
 
 4. What experience did he have as a teacher ? 
 
 5. What government positions has he held ? 
 
 6. What literary man did he befriend ? 
 
 7. What memorial addresses has he delivered ? 
 
 8. Does he believe firmly in the Christian religion ? 
 
 9. What evidence is there of this i 
 
 10. From what event does he think the revolution 
 sprang ? 
 
 SELECTION I. 
 
 1. Why does he use the expression Milton and 
 Hampden f 
 
 2. When was Milton born ? 
 
 3. Was it possible for him to see Shakespeare ? 
 
 4. At what college did he graduate ? 
 
 5. How many years did he spend in study as a prep- 
 aration for his work ? 
 
 6. How many years of his life were spent in political 
 strife ? 
 
 7. What relation did he sustain to Cromwell ? 
 
 8. What political pamphlets did he write % 
 
 9. How often was he married ? 
 
 10. How did he treat his daughters? 
 
 91 
 
92 SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 
 
 11. When did lie write " Paradise Lost ? " 
 
 12. What j)art did Hampden have in the English 
 revolution ? 
 
 13. Was he a champion of liberty as well as a vigor- 
 ous writer and speaker 'I 
 
 14. What do jou think of Bancroft's tribute to the 
 English language 'i 
 
 15. In what does its beauty consist ? 
 
 SELECTION 11. 
 
 1. Give an estimate of this .selection ? 
 
 2. Is it a fine description ^ 
 
 3. Point out the participles. 
 
 4. What word has its plural in a ? 
 
 5. It is derived from what language ? 
 
 6. Why do the adjectives majestic and free follow 
 forests ? 
 
 7. Is there any objection to the word relation as used 
 in last sentence 't 
 
 SELECTION III. 
 
 1. Give the pronunciation of Geneose and Genoa. 
 
 2. Who is meant by the "Augustine monk " ? 
 
 3. Who was the '' French refugee " ? 
 
 4. Give the pronunciation of Augustine, inquiries, 
 enfranchisement. 
 
 5. Give the meaning of the words indulgences, 
 schism, proselyte. 
 
 0. Are the sentences strong and elegant ? 
 
 SELECTION IV. 
 
 1. When did the Reformation commence ? 
 
 2. What caused it? 
 
 3. What rendered its growth rapid ? 
 
 4. What was the burden of Luther's preaching ? 
 
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 93 
 
 SELECTION y. 
 
 1. Give the main facts in the Hfe of Luther. 
 
 2. Give the main facts in the hfe of Calvin. 
 
 3. Which was the more radical reformer ? 
 
 4. Did Luther always believe in transubstantiation ? 
 
 5. In a literary point of view, what is the most 
 noticeable thing about this selection 'i 
 
 6. Compare it witli Johnson's parallel between Pope 
 and Dryden ; also with Pope's parallel between Homer 
 and Virgil. 
 
 7. What is meant by " parity of the clergy " ? 
 
 SELECTION VL 
 
 1. Why is the first sentence of this selection strong ? 
 
 2. How m-any subordinate clauses in it ? 
 
 3. Would the sentence be as strong if the principal 
 clause came first ? 
 
 4. Is the sense suspended until near the close ? 
 
 5. Give the main facts in the lives of the men men- 
 tioned in the selection. 
 
 6. Give the meaning of plenitude., harbinger., pre- 
 cursor. 
 
 7. Give the pronunciation of lenity and lenient. 
 
 8. Is the last sentence strong ? Why 'i 
 
 9. Is it loose or periodic ? 
 
 Note. — In a loose sentence there may be a grammatic close at one or more 
 places before the end. In a periodic sentence the sense is suspended till near 
 the end. 
 
 SELECTION VII. 
 
 1. Give main facts in life of Penn. 
 
 2. Give main facts in life of Locke. 
 
 3. How did they differ in their views of the soul ? 
 
 4. How did they differ in their views of government? 
 
 5. Is the parallel W'ell sustained ? 
 
94 SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 
 
 SELECTION VIII. 
 
 1. How does Bancroft's estimate of Penn differ from 
 Macaulay's estimate of him ? 
 
 2. Which is more nearly right ? 
 
 SELECTION IX. 
 
 1. What does Bancroft say of the religious character 
 of the early colonists? 
 
 2. Notice his noble and discriminating tribute to the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 3. Who was the " Newgate prisoner " ? 
 
 4. Point out all the participles in the selection. 
 
 SELECTION X. 
 
 1. Point out all the figures of speech in this selection. 
 
 2. Where and when did the Puritans have their 
 origin ? 
 
 3. Deiine tiffany^ superficial., scion, criterion., arro- 
 gance, infallible, subservient, laity. 
 
 4. Is the parallel between Puritanism and chivalry 
 well sustained ? 
 
 5. Give an estimate of the literary value of this selec- 
 
 tion. 
 
 SELECTION XL 
 
 1. When was Cromwell born ? 
 
 2. Where was he educated ? 
 
 3. Did he ever meet Charles I. in his boyhood ? 
 
 4. How did he gain his first military renown ? 
 
 5. Was he a blessing to the English people ? 
 
 6. What did he accomplish for the nation ? 
 
 7. When did he die ? 
 
 8. What became of his body ? 
 
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 95 
 
 SELECTION XII. 
 
 1. When did Hudson make his explorations? 
 
 2. He was a native of what country ? 
 
 3. What nation claimed the lands he discovered ? 
 
 4. Define sedgy, toanton, progeny, yeoman. 
 
 5. Is this a good description ? 
 
 SELECTION XIII. 
 
 1. Give the main facts in the life of Franklin. 
 
 2. State some interesting facts in his boyhood. 
 
 3. What part did he have in framing the Declaration 
 of Independence ? 
 
 4. Where was he during the most of the revolution- 
 ary war ? 
 
 5. What part did he take in the convention that drew 
 up the Constitution of the United States ? 
 
 6. What are some of his discoveries in science ? 
 
 7. Does Bancroft do justice to him? 
 
 SELECTION XIV. 
 
 1. How many men were killed in the battle of Lex- 
 ington ? 
 
 2. Why do we still regard it as an event of great 
 importance ? 
 
 3. Was Ealph Waldo Emerson related to William 
 Emerson ? 
 
 4. Is Longfellow's " Paul Revere " essentially correct 
 in a historical point of view ? 
 
 5. Is there any objection to the expression, the grass 
 gronrmg ranJdy f 
 
 5. Point out the longest sentence in the selection. 
 7. Is it clear ? 
 
96 SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 
 
 SELECTION XV. 
 
 1. Give tlie main facts in the early life of Washing- 
 ton. 
 
 2. Compare his boyliood with the hojhood of some 
 of our other great men. 
 
 3. Were the circnmstances surronnding his boyhood 
 calculated to develop him into a great man 'i 
 
 4. What do you think of the description given of 
 Washington's appearance ? 
 
 5. Give reasons for the various marks of punctuation 
 in the selection, 
 
 6. His dark hhie eyes, etc. Why is one relative 
 clause in this sentence separated by commas, and the 
 other not '^ 
 
 7. Braddock selected Mm as an aid. State the case 
 of aid, and give reason. 
 
 8. Point out the compound words. 
 
 9. Is there any objection to the sentence beginning 
 " Profoundly impressed with confidence in God's provi- 
 dence " ? What does the participle belong to ? 
 
 10. Mention six characteristics of Washington as 
 revealed in this selection. 
 
 11. Give pronunciation of disastrous, vehement, and 
 exemplary. 
 
 12. Give meaning of prodigal, parsimonious, emolu- 
 ifnent, attenuated. 
 
 13. What is the case of head in the last sentence of 
 the selection ? 
 
 14. Give your estimate of the literary value of the 
 selection. 
 
 SELECTION XVI. 
 
 1. When and where was Adams born ? 
 
 2. Where was he educated ? 
 
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 97 
 
 3. Name some of his descendants. 
 
 4. How was he connected with the " Boston Massa- 
 cre " ? 
 
 5. State his connection witli " Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence." 
 
 6. Where was he during the revohitionary war 'I 
 
 7. What offices of trust did he hohl ? 
 
 8. How many electoral votes did lie have when Jef- 
 ferson was first chosen ? 
 
 9. What political party did Adams belong to ? 
 
 10. When did he die?' 
 
 11. Who delivered the great oration on his life and 
 character ? 
 
 12. Who was president at that time ? 
 
 13. What do you think of this selection as a charac- 
 ter study? 
 
 14. What faults in Adams are pointed out ? 
 
 15. What virtues are praised ? 
 
 16. Has Bancroft aimed to be fair ? 
 
 17. What does he say was Adams' greatest fault ? 
 
 18. Have you any objection to the expression, " It 
 laid open how deeply his self-love was wounded " ? 
 
 19. Wliat is said of Adams' religious character ? 
 
 20. Did he ever think of entering tlie ministry ? 
 
 SELECTION XYII. 
 
 1. Notice the use of participles in the third sentence. 
 
 2. Would the sentence be as elegant if the participial 
 phrases were expanded into clauses ? 
 
 SELECTION XVIII. 
 
 1. Point out the strong points of this selection. 
 
 2. Define oracles^ litanies.^ atrophied. 
 
 7 
 
98 SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 
 
 SELECTION XIX. 
 
 1. Give main facts in the early life of Jefferson. 
 
 2. What great speech probably first animated him ? 
 
 3. How old was he when he wrote the " Declaration 
 of Independence " ? 
 
 4. Who else were on the committee to draft it? 
 
 5. Where was he during the revolutionary war? 
 
 6. What were his relations with Aaron Burr ? 
 
 7. When did he die ? 
 
 SELECTION XX. 
 
 1. Give the important facts in Lincoln's life. 
 
 2. What do you think of the parallel between Lincoln 
 and Palmerston ? 
 
 3. Does this address reveal Bancroft's faith in the 
 Deity? 
 
 SELECTION XXI. 
 
 1. Do you consider this selection philosophical ? 
 
 2. Point out the beauties of rhetoric found in it. 
 
 3. Classify the rhetorical figures in it. 
 
 SELECTION XXII. 
 
 1. What nations did the Reformation influence most ? 
 
 2. Point out the participles that have the force of an 
 adjective and verb. 
 
 3. Point out the similes and metaphors. 
 
 SELECTION XXIIL 
 
 1. Give an account of the Acadians. 
 
 2. Where can some of them be found now ? 
 
 3. Has Longfellow exaggerated the sufferings of the 
 Acadians in his " Evangeline " ? 
 
iSUOGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 99 
 
 SELECTION XXIV. 
 
 1. How many times did Wesley visit America ? 
 
 2. What was his influence as one of the pioneer 
 preachers of the land ? 
 
 3. Wliat has been his influence on the religious 
 thought of the country i 
 
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