Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-1882), a Massachusetts lawyer, had to give up his studies on account of his eyesight, and shipped to California by way of Cape Horn. His experiences as a common seaman were narrated in Two Years Before the Mast (1840), by general consent one of the best books ever written about the sea. It has the quality of romance and an abiding charm for those who have mastered its nautical language. Dana takes his readers into the forecastle and reveals the life of the sailor in all its aspects. This admirable prose epic, picturing in accurate detail the pleasures and the brutalities of life before the mast, is as popular as ever, and seems destined to endure for all time.

Donald G. Mitchell (1822-1908), an essayist of unusual charm, developed in his earlier work a sentimental manner derived from Irving. Under the pen-name of Ik Marvel he published Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) and Dream Life (1851), both of which are made up of romantic musings over life, love, and kindred topics. A slight vein of narrative runs through these tearful volumes, which reflect the genial spirit and the persistent optimism that pervaded The Sketch Book. Dream Life was dedicated to Irving in a prefatory letter, in which Mitchell acknowledged his obligation to the greater writer, upon whose style he modelled his own. The later essays and nature studies, in which Mitchell justly took more pride, never duplicated the abiding popularity of these two masterpieces of sentimentality.

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), a Bostonian of distinguished ancestry, entered the Unitarian ministry at twenty, and for nearly seventy years was active as preacher, writer, and publicist. He is best remembered by his great

classic of American patriotism, "The Man Without a Country" (1863), which was printed in The Atlantic Monthly during the darkest period of the Civil War. Never was a story of patriotic purpose more aptly timed. So graphically did he relate the tale that most readers have accepted it as authentic history. Few even of those who know it is fiction can read it without being carried away by the intensity of its passion and pathos. We follow with increasing interest the account of Philip Nolan's angry exclamation cursing his country, the court martial, the sad and weary years of the exile at sea, and those last illuminating moments of repentance in the dying man's cabin. Every young American will be the more loyal and the more devoted to the flag and all that it stands for after having read "The Man Without a Country."

The New England Historians

30. George Bancroft (1800-1891) was born in Worcester, Mass., and educated at Harvard. After graduating he continued his studies at Göttingen, where he received his doctorate, in 1820, as one of the first American scholars to study at a German university. The task to which he devoted his life was a comprehensive History of the United States, of which the first volume appeared in 1834, while the twelfth and last volume appeared (1882) nearly fifty years later. This ponderous work is conscientious and thorough, yet it covers only the period of history to the adoption of the Constitution. In spite of his painstaking care in detail it is dull reading.

31. William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859) was born in Salem, Mass., and educated at Harvard. While a junior at college he was struck in the eye by a crust of bread thrown by a fellow student; as a result he became partially blind, and carried on his historical investigations under the most serious difficulties. He decided to devote himself to certain periods of Spanish history and to the Spanish occupation of America. Unlike Bancroft, he had a sense of literary style, and consequently produced a series of historical studies that are not only scholarly but entertaining. Ferdinand and Isabella (1837) was published after eight years of arduous labor. With equal zeal, and in spite of his physical handicap, he produced The Conquest of Mexico (1843) and The Conquest of Peru (1847). No scientific historian of later date has supplanted these histories in popular favor. His last important work was Philip the Second (1855-1858), but only three of the four projected volumes were completed.

32. John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877) came of an excellent and wealthy family of Dorchester, Mass. He was trained at Harvard and then studied in Germany. After two unsuccessful attempts at writing fiction he devoted his best talents to a serious investigation of Dutch history. After ten years of patient research in foreign archives he produced The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856), a fascinating work, full of vivacious description, and far more readable than his futile attempts at fiction. His account of the relief of Leyden is a masterpiece of narrative prose. While serving as minister to Austria he produced his second great undertaking, History of the United Netherlands (1860-1868).

His third work, The Life and Death of John of Barneveld (1874), was somewhat less successful. Although his observations and conclusions were often partisan in character, Motley is generally regarded as the greatest of American historians.

33. Francis Parkman (1823-1893) was a Bostonian and a descendant of John Cotton. After graduating from Harvard he studied law, but his health broke down and, like Prescott, he suffered from impaired vision. A western trip resulted in his writing The Oregon Trail (1849), an entertaining volume of experiences on the prairies. As a historian he made his first venture with The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), which was well received. He then undertook to treat in great detail the most romantic theme in American history-the long dramatic struggle between England and France for the control of the New World. Year after year he toiled patiently at his assumed task, and produced the seven notable works that tell the fascinating story. The first three books, Pioneers of France in the New World (1865), The Jesuits in North America (1867), and La Salle, or The Discovery of the Great West (1869), appeared within a relatively short time. These were followed at longer intervals by The Old Regime in Canada (1874), Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV (1877), Montcalm and Wolfe (1884), and finally A Half-Century of Conflict (1892). The well-chosen titles are sufficiently descriptive of the field covered by each of these works. As a whole they are the most colorful and romantic panorama of American history thus far produced by any author. They are not the work of a plodding, uninspired specialist, but present a vivid

picture of the past wrought in a style that is full of charm.

34. Other Historians.-A less notable but very popular historian was John Fiske (1842-1901), a native of Hartford and a graduate of Harvard. After writing a series of studies in the field of evolution he produced such entertaining historical sketches as Beginnings of New England (1889), Old Virginia and Her Neighbors (1897), and The Dutch and Quaker Colonies (1899). In these and similar books he covered, with great clarity and a vivacious style, the main events of colonial and revolutionary history.

Henry Adams (1838-1918) was a Bostonian, a graduate of Harvard, and the last of an eminent line of men that had carried on the New England tradition for many generations. As the son of Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams, and the great-grandson of John Adams, he could boast of an unexcelled American lineage. For seven years, while a professor at Harvard, he was also editor of The North American Review. Besides various shorter works he wrote A History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (1889-1891) in nine volumes. As a result of the lack of attention accorded to his books he became disheartened and pessimistic. He composed a remarkably intimate autobiography called The Education of Henry Adams, which was circulated privately in 1906 among a few friends, who guarded the secret of its existence. When the book was finally published, in 1918, after the author's death, it was at once received as one of the most thoughtful and suggestive volumes ever written by an American. He preached the doctrine of futility, and