assistance of a cumbrous machine. That any man, laboring under such a disability, should yet persevere in pursuing the rocky road of the historian seems almost unbelievable; yet that is just what Prescott did.

Let us tell the story of that accident. It was while he was at Harvard, in his junior year. One day after dinner, in the Commons Hall, some of the boys started a rude frolic. Prescott took no part in it, but just as he was leaving, a great commotion behind him caused him to turn quickly, and a hard piece of bread, thrown undoubtedly at random, struck him squarely and with great force in the left eye. He fell unconscious, and never saw out of that eye again. Worse than that, his other eye soon grew inflamed, and became almost useless to him, besides causing him, from time to time, the most acute suffering. But in spite of all this, he persisted in his determination to be a historian.

After careful thought, he chose for his theme that period of Spanish history dominated by Ferdinand and Isabella, and went to work. Documents were collected, an assistant read to him for hours at a time, notes were taken, and the history painfully pushed forward. The result was a picturesque narrative which was at once successful both in Europe and America; and, thus encouraged, Prescott selected another romantic theme, the conquest of Mexico, for his next work. Following this came the history of the conquest of Peru, and finally a history of the reign of Philip II, upon which he was at work, when a paralytic stroke ended his career.

Prescott was fortunate not only in his choice of subjects, but in the possession of a picturesque and fascinating style, which has given his histories a remarkable vogue. Fault has been found with him on the ground of historical inaccuracy, but such criticism is, for the most part, unjustified. His thoroughness, his judgment, and his critical faculty stand unimpeached, and place him very near the head of American historians.

Prescott's successor, in more than one sense, was John Lothrop Motley. A Bostonian and Harvard man, well-trained, after one or two unsuccessful ventures in fiction, he turned his attention to history, and in 1856 completed his "Rise of the Dutch Republic," for which he could not find a publisher. He finally issued it at his own expense, with no little inward trembling, but it was at once successful and seventeen thousand copies of it were sold in England alone during the first year. It received unstinted praise, and Motley at once proceeded with his "History of the United Netherlands." The opening of the Civil War, however, recalled his attention to his native land, he was drawn into politics, and did not complete his history until 1868. Six years later appeared his "John of Barneveld"; but his health was giving way and the end came in 1877.

In brilliancy, dramatic instinct and power of picturesque narration, Motley was Prescott's equal, if not his superior. The glow and fervor of his narrative have never been surpassed; his characters live and breathe; he was thoroughly in sympathy with his subject and found a personal pleasure in exalting his heroes and unmasking his villains. But there was his weakness; for often, instead of the impartial historian, he became a partisan of this cause or that, and painted his heroes whiter and his villains blacker than they really were. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it—because of the individual and intensely earnest personal point of view—his histories are as absorbing and fascinating as any in the world.

The last of this noteworthy group of historians, Francis Parkman, is also, in many respects, the greatest. He combined the virtues of all of them, and added for himself methods of research which have never been surpassed. Through it all, too, he battled against a persistent ill-health, which unfitted him for work for months on end, and, even at the best, would permit his reading or writing only a few minutes at a time.

Like the others, Parkman was born in Boston, and, as a boy, was so delicate that he was allowed to run wild in the country, acquiring a love of nature which is apparent in all his books. In search of health, he journeyed westward from St. Louis, in 1846, living with Indians and trappers and gaining a minute knowledge of their ways. The results of this journey were embodied in a modest little volume called "The Oregon Trail," which remains the classic source of information concerning the far West at that period.

Upon his return to the East, he settled down in earnest to the task which he had set himself—a history, in every phase, of the struggle between France and England for the possession of the North American continent. Years were spent in the collection of material—and in 1865 appeared his "Pioneers of France in the New World," followed at periods of a few years by the other books completing the series, which ends with the story of Montcalm and Wolfe.

The series is a masterpiece of interpretative history. Every phase of the struggle for the continent is described in minute detail and with the intimate touch of perfect knowledge; every actor in the great drama is presented with incomparable vividness, and its scenes are painted with a color and atmosphere worthy of Prescott or Motley, and with absolute accuracy. His work satisfies at once the student and the lover of literature, standing almost unique in this regard. His flexible and charming style is a constant joy; his power of analysis and presentment a constant wonder; and throughout his work there is a freshness of feeling, an air of the open, at once delightful and stimulating. He said the last word concerning the period which his histories cover, and has lent to it a fascination and absorbing interest which no historian has surpassed. The boy or girl who has not read Parkman's histories has missed one of the greatest treats which literature has to offer.

Other historians there are who have done good service to American letters and whose work is outranked only by the men we have already mentioned—John Bach McMaster, whose "History of the People of the United States" is still uncompleted; James Ford Rhodes, who has portrayed the Civil War period with admirable exhaustiveness and accuracy; Justin Winsor, Woodrow Wilson, William M. Sloane, and John Fiske. John Fiske's work, which deals wholly with the different periods of American history, is especially suited to young people because of its simplicity and directness, and because, while accurate, it is not overburdened with detail.

We have said that, during the Colonial period of American history, most of the New England divines devoted a certain amount of attention to the composition of creaking verse. More than that, they composed histories, biographies and numberless works of a theological character, which probably constitute the dullest mass of reading ever produced upon this earth. The Revolution stopped this flood—if anything so dry can be called a flood—and when the Revolution ended, public thought was for many years occupied with the formation of the new nation. But in the second quarter of the nineteenth century there arose in New England a group of writers who are known as Transcendentalists, and who produced one of the most important sections of American literature.

Transcendentalism is a long word, and it is rather difficult to define, but, to put it as briefly as possible, it was a protest against narrowness in intellectual life, a movement for broader culture and for a freer spiritual life. It took a tremendous grip on New England, beginning about 1830, and kept it for nearly forty years; for New England has always been more or less provincial—provincialism being the habit of measuring everything by one inadequate