8. GEORGE BANCROFT,

1800-1891.

GEORGE BANCROFT, an eminent historian, was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 3, 1800. His father, who was a Congregational clergyman, gave close attention to his son's education, placing him in the academy at Exeter, where he was prepared for college. So brilliant was the young historian that he graduated with the second honors of his class at Harvard in 1817, though he was not yet seventeen years of age. In the following year he went to Europe, and continued his studies at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin; and, having made the tour of Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and England, he returned to America in 1822, when he was immediately made tutor of Greek at Harvard. He continued in this position for a year, and then, with his friend Dr. J. G. Cogswell, established the Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts. The duties of his position as a teacher, however, were not congenial to him, and, though the school met with a fair degree of success, Bancroft soon abandoned the work and turned his attention to politics, becoming an active member of the Democratic party.

His first political reward was his appointment by President Van Buren as collector of the port of Boston in 1838, which position he held until 1841. In 1845, President Polk placed him in his cabinet as Secretary of the Navy, the duties of which position he discharged with eminent ability. In the following year he was sent as minister to England, where he remained until 1849,

when he returned to the United States. He then took up his residence in the city of New York, where he devoted himself to the writing of his great work, The History of the United States, the first volume of which had been issued in 1834. Bancroft was, during the administration of President Grant, minister-plenipotentiary to Germany.

This author began his literary career in 1823 by the publication of a volume of poems, which was followed. the next year by a translation of Heeren's Reflections on the Politics of Ancient Greece. But his principal work is his History of the United States, in ten volumes—a book which is recognized as the standard record of the origin and growth of our country.

CRITICISM BY DUYCKINCK.

THE specialty of Mr. Bancroft's History is its prompt recognition and philosophical development of the elements of liberty existing in the country from the settlement of the first colonists to the matured era of independence. He traces this spirit in the natural conditions of the land, in men, and in events. History, in his view, is no accident or chance concurrence of incidents, but an organic growth, which the actors control, and to which they are subservient. The nation became free, he maintains, from the necessity of the human constitution, and because it deliberately willed to be free. . . The history of America is the history of liberty. The author never relaxes his grasp of this central law.

manly vigor and epic grandeur of his story.

Hence the

With the leading idea Mr. Bancroft associates the Lost minute attention to details. His page is crowded with facts brought forward with the air of realities of the time. He does not disdain to cite in his text the

very words of the old actors as they were uttered in the ballad, the sermon, the speech, or the newspaper of the day. This gives verisimilitude to his story. It is a history of the people as well as of the state.

THE HUDSON RIVER.

NOTE. The following vivid description contrasts the picture of the Hudson River when first discovered by Henry Hudson in 1609 with the present condition of things along the banks of that beautiful stream.

SOMBRE forests shed a melancholy grandeur over the useless magnificence of Nature, and hid, in their deep shades, the rich soil which the sun had never warmed. No axe had leveled the giant progeny of the crowded groves, in which the fantastic forms of withered limbs, 5 that had been blasted and riven by lightning, contrasted strangely with the verdant freshness of a younger growth of branches.

The wanton grapevine, seeming by its own power to have sprung from the earth, and to have fastened its 10 leafy coils on the top of the tallest forest tree, swung in the air with every breeze like the loosened shrouds of a ship. Trees might everywhere be seen breaking from their root in the marshy soil and threatening to fall with the first rude gust; while the ground was strewn 15 with the ruins of former forests, over which a profusion

ANALYSIS.-1. Point out the figure in this line.

2. Why useless magnificence?

4. What is the meaning of giant progeny? What figure?

6. that had been blasted. What does the clause modify? 9. What figure in the line? What are the modifiers of seeming? by its own power. What does the phrase modify?

.1-13. What figure in these lines? Parse like and ship. 14. in the marshy soil. What does the phrase modify? 15. What is the office of while?

of wild flowers wasted their freshness in mockery of the gloom.

Reptiles sported in the stagnant pools or crawled unharmed over piles of mouldering trees. The spotted 20 deer crouched among the thickets, but not to hide, for there was no pursuer; and there were none but wild animals to crop the uncut herbage of the productive prairies. Silence reigned--broken, it may have been, by the flight of land-birds or the flapping of water-25 fowl, and rendered more dismal by the howl of beasts of prey.

The streams, not yet limited to a channel, spread over sandbars tufted with copses of willow, or waded through wastes of reeds, or slowly but surely undermined the 30 groups of sycamores that grew by their side. The smaller brooks spread out their sedgy swamps, that were overhung by clouds of mosquitoes; masses of decaying vegetation fed the exhalations with the seeds. of pestilence, and made the balmy air of the summer's 35 evening as deadly as it seemed grateful. Vegetable life and death were mingled hideously together. The horrors of corruption frowned on the fruitless fertility of uncultivated Nature.

And man, the occupant of the soil, was wild as the 10 savage scene, in harmony with the rude Nature by

ANALYSIS.-22. Parse there and but. What are the modifers of

none?

24-27. What are the modifiers of silence?

25. Parse flapping.

28 Name the modifiers of limited.

29 Name the modifiers of sand-bars.

32. Dispose of out.

33. Point out the figure in this line.

36. Parse deadly and grateful.

40, 41. Name the modifiers of man. Supply the ellipsis. 41. Give the case of scene. What figure in this line?

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 record, and his coin; the roots of the forest among his 15 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 forestleaves his couch; mats of bulrushes his protection 50 against the winter's cold; his religion the adoration of Nature; his morals the promptings of undisciplined instinct; disputing with the wolves and bears the lordship of the soil, and dividing with the squirrel the wild fruits with which the universal woodlands abounded.

55.

How changed is the scene from that on which Hudson gazed! The earth glows with the colors of civilization; the banks of the streams are enameled with richest grasses; woodlands and cultivated fields are harmoniously blended; the birds of spring find their delight 60 in orchards and trim gardens, variegated with choicest plants from every temperate zone; while the brilliant. flowers of the tropics bloom from the windows of the green-house and the saloon.

The yeoman, living like a good neighbor near the 65 fields he cultivates, glories in the fruitfulness of the val

ANALYSIS.—42, 43. Supply the ellipsis. in constant warfare, etc. What does the phrase modify?

43. the bark, etc. What is the subject of the clause?

43-55. Supply the ellipses in these clauses.

56. What figure in the line?

57. Give the meaning of glows. Specify the colors of civilization.

58. enameled. How enameled?

61. trim gardens. Give a synonym for trim.

64. What is the meaning of saloon as here used?

65. Point out the figure in the line.

66. What figure in the line?