tion was fresh and vivid. But otherwise his early style, influenced perhaps by the prevailing standards of the time, was often florid, the images formal, and the illustrations commonplace. His power of more spontaneous expression developed slowly, in part, it may be, because of his illness. He was seldom able to read more than five minutes without rest, or to listen to reading more than twenty; and the limitations of safety which his nervous condition placed upon his efforts at composition were not less cramping. Still, there is no sign of physical weakness in his manner of writing, not even the tenseness which intermittent dictation might be expected to produce. His style seems rather to reflect the increasing moral strength with which he adhered to the purpose of his youth. Losing nothing of its vividness, it becomes fluent and direct, an adequate medium for the expression of his strong narrative impulse.

But Parkman was more than a mere narrative historian, a picturesque teller of romantic tales. The boy, it may be, had conceived the obscure struggles of the wilderness as presenting matter of romantic interest only. The man soon realised that, unlike merely romantic events, they were the product of potent historical forces determining the destiny of a continent: European civilisation implacably overpowering aboriginal barbarism, the rooted liberty of the common law unconsciously supplanting the absolutism of the Bourbons. The evidence of this realisation is not to be sought in elaborate reflective passages. Parkman did not preach. He had the skill to make his narrative carry its own moral. From the superficial reader that moral may be concealed by profusion of incident. But the more thoughtful will find implicit in his pages a political philosophy not unworthy of his theme.

He was, moreover, a lover of truth for whom no pains were too great that might establish a fact. But he made no parade of his efforts. In the introduction to the Pioneers of France in the New World he describes his ideal method; and his work reached in fact a close approximation to his ideal. 'In this, and still more must it be the case in succeeding volumes, the amount of reading applied to their composition is far greater than the citations represent, much of it being of a collateral and illustrative nature. This was essential to a plan whose aim it was, while scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the skeleton with flesh. If at times it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation. Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue.

imbue himself with the He must study events

The narrator must seek to life and spirit of the time. in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.'

Not only was he ever on the watch against the temptations offered by the picturesqueness of his theme and by his own love of striking effects; his sincerity rose above this primary need of accuracy, and reached, in spite of his strong prejudices in contemporary affairs, to a high degree of historical impartiality. Dealing at large, as he did, with a subject into whose recesses many antiquarians and not a few zealots, Canadian and American, had peered, a subject embittered by a century of American conflict, and involving at almost every turn the imported prejudices of English and French, and the inherited animosities of Puritan and Catholic, it was inevitable that his work should be assailed by extremists in both camps. But these attacks have only served, in general, to reveal the thoroughness of his research and the

sincerity of his judgments. He has gained appreciation, both at home and abroad, more slowly than some of his contemporaries. But his present reputation as a writer of history is, probably, not inferior to that of any other American. Professor Bourne, of Yale, suggestively says: "In his conception of the great drama of two rival and diverse civilisations contending for the mastery of the New World, in his nearness to the action and his personal exploration of the scene, and not least in the varied charm of his story, Parkman is the Herodotus of our Western World.'

The Heights of Abraham.

Meanwhile a deep cloud fell on the English. Since the siege began, Wolfe had passed with ceaseless energy from camp to camp, animating the troops, observing everything and directing everything; but now the pale face and tall lean form were seen no more, and the rumour spread that the General was dangerously ill. He had in fact been siezed by an access of the disease that had tortured him for some time past; and fever had followed. . . . His illness, which began before the twentieth of August, had so far subsided on the twentyfifth that Knox wrote in his Diary of that day: 'His Excellency General Wolfe is on the recovery, to the inconceivable joy of the whole army.' On the twentyninth he was able to write or dictate a letter to the three brigadiers, Monckton, Townshend, and Murray: "That the public service may not suffer by the General's indisposition, he begs the brigadiers will meet and consult together for the public utility and advantage, and consider of the best method to attack the enemy.' The letter then proposes three plans, all bold to audacity. . . .

The brigadiers met in consultation, rejected the three plans proposed in the letter, and advised that an attempt should be made to gain a footing on the north shore above the town, place the army between Montcalm and his base of supply, and so force him to fight or surrender. The scheme seemed desperate, but so did all the rest; and if by chance it should succeed, the gain was far

Admiral Saunders lay with the main fleet in the Basin of Quebec. This excellent officer, whatever may have been his views as to the necessity of a speedy departure, aided Wolfe to the last with unfailing energy and zeal. It was agreed between them that while the General made the real attack, the Admiral should engage Montcalm's attention by a pretended one. As night approached, the fleet ranged itself along the Beauport shore; the boats were lowered and filled with sailors, marines, and the few troops that had been left behind; while ship signalled to ship, cannon flashed and thundered, and shot ploughed the beach, as if to clear a way for assailants to land. In the gloom of the evening the effect was imposing. Montcalm, who thought that the movements of the English above the town were only a feint, that their main force was still below it, and that their real attack would be made there, was completely deceived, and massed his troops in front of Beauport to repel the expected landing. But while in the fleet of Saunders all was uproar and ostentatious menace, the danger was ten miles away, where the squadron of Holmes lay tranquil and silent at its anchorage off Cap-Rouge.

The day had been fortunate for Wolfe. Two deserters came from the camp of Bougainville with intelligence that, at ebb-tide on the next night, he was to send down a convoy of provisions to Montcalm. The necessities of the camp at Beauport, and the difficulties of transportation by land, had before compelled the French to resort to this perilous means of conveying supplies; and their boats, drifting in darkness under the shadows of the northern shore, had commonly passed in safety. Wolfe saw at once that, if his own boats went down in advance of the convoy, he could turn the intelligence to good account.

Towards two o'clock the tide began to ebb, and a fresh wind blew down the river. Two lanterns were raised in the maintop shrouds of the Sutherland. It was the appointed signal; the boats cast off and fell down with the current, those of the light infantry leading the way. The vessels with the rest of the troops had orders to follow a little later. . .

For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The General was in one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robinson, afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard' to the officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon to illustrate

4

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave.' 'Gentlemen,' he said as his recital ended, 'I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.' None were there to tell him that the hero is greater than the poet.

As they neared their destination the tide bore them in towards the shore, and the mighty wall of rock and forest towered in darkness on their left. The dead stillness was suddenly broken by the sharp 'Qui vive!' of a French sentry, invisible in the thick gloom. France!'

answered a Highland officer of Fraser's regiment from one of the boats of the light infantry. He had served in Holland, and spoke French fluently.

A quel régiment?'

'De la Reine,' replied the Highlander. He knew that a part of that corps was with Bougainville. The sentry, expecting the convoy of provisions, was satisfied, and did not ask for the password.

Soon after, the foremost boats were passing the heights of Samos, when another sentry challenged them, and they could see him through the darkness running down to the edge of the water, within range of a pistol-shot. In answer to his questions the same officer replied, in French Provision-boats. Don't make a noise; the English will hear us.' In fact, the sloop-of-war Hunter was anchored in the stream not far off. This time, again, the sentry let them pass. In a few moments they rounded the headland above the Anse du Foulon. There was no sentry there. The strong current swept the boats of the light infantry a little below the intended landing-place. They disembarked on a narrow strand at the foot of heights as steep as a hill covered with trees can be. The twenty-four volunteers led the way, climbing with what silence they might, closely followed by a much larger body. . . .

Montcalm was amazed at what he saw. He had expected a detachment, and he found an army. Full in sight before him stretched the lines of Wolfe: the close ranks of the English infantry, a silent wall of red, and the wild array of the Highlanders, with their waving tartans, and bagpipes screaming defiance. . . .

It was towards ten o'clock when, from the high ground on the right of the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was near. The French on the ridge had formed themselves into three bodies, regulars in the centre, regulars and Canadians on right and left. Two field-pieces, which had been dragged up the heights at Anse du Foulon, fired on them with grape-shot, and the troops, rising from the ground, prepared to receive them. In a few moments more they were in motion. They came on rapidly, uttering loud shouts, and firing as soon as they were within range. Their ranks, ill ordered at the best, were further confused by a number of Canadians who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, after hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to reload. The British advanced a few rods, then halted and stood still. When the French were within forty paces the word of command rang out, and a crash of musketry answered all along the line. The volley was delivered with remarkable precision. In the battalions of the centre, which had suffered least from the enemy's bullets, the simultaneous explosion was afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a cannon-shot. Another volley followed, and then a furious clattering fire that lasted but a minute or two. When the smoke rose a miserable sight was revealed: the ground cumbered with dead and wounded, the advancing masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting, cursing, gesticulating. The order was given to charge. Then over the field rose the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan. Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced firing. The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and swift as bloodhounds. At the English right, though the attacking column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from the

on.

Another shot struck him, and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers; one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company; and a private soldier, aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so, and asked if he would have a surgeon. 'There's no need,' he answered; it's all over with me.' A moment after, one of them cried out, 'They run; see how they run!' 'Who run?' Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep. The enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere!' 'Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton,' returned the dying man; tell him to march Webb's regiment down to Charles River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge.' Then, turning on his side, he murmured, 'Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!' and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled.

Montcalm, still on horseback, was borne with the tide of fugitives towards the town. As he approached the walls a shot passed through his body. He kept his seat; two soldiers supported him, one on each side, and led his horse through the St Louis gate. On the open space within, among the excited crowd, were several women, drawn, no doubt, by eagerness to know the result of the fight. One of them recognised him, saw the streaming blood, and shrieked, ‘O mon Dieu! mon Dieu! le Marquis est tué! It's nothing, it's nothing,

replied the death-stricken man; don't be troubled for me, my good friends.' (Ce n'est rien, ce n'est rien; ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies.)

(From Montcalm and Wolfe.)

All Parkman's historical books appeared in numerous editions during his life. Since his death collected editions have been pub. lished in twelve, in thirteen, in seventeen, and in twenty volumes. The Pioneers and The Jesuits and The Ancient Régime have been translated into German, The Pioneers and The Jesuits translated (much garbled) into French. See A Life of Francis Parkman by C. H. Farnham (1901), with bibliography of Parkman and of his works; also J. F. Jameson's History of Historical Writing in America (1891) and E. G. Bourne's Essays in Historical Criticism (1901).

CHARLES H. HULL.

Herman Melville (1819-91) was born in New York city, and, irresistibly drawn to a sailor's life, shipped at eighteen as cabin-boy on a ship bound for Liverpool. He took a spell at home as a teacher, but went to sea again in 1842, this time on a South-Sea whaler. At Nukahiva in the Marquesas he and a comrade, the 'Toby' of his story, deserted the ship, owing to the captain's harsh treatment. On the island he was kept four months as the prisoner of the not unkindly cannibals of the Typee Valley, whence he was rescued by an Australian whaler, in which he took service. Returning to the United States in 1846, he published Typee, a spirited account of his residence in the Marquesas, and in 1847 Omoo, a continuation of his adventures in Oceania. Mardi (1848), in another manner, was a much less happy effort. White Jacket, or the World in a Man-of-War (1850), was in his better vein; and Moby Dick, or

the White Whale (1852), though not without flaws of style and construction, is a really great seastory, full of power and the incommunicable charm of the ocean. Melville was a most unequal writer, and many of his stories, especially his later ones, were odd, chaotic, and unworthy of his earlier reputation, though Israel Potter (1855) was commended by Hawthorne for its portraits of Franklin and Paul Jones. His poetry, such as that of the volume Battle Pieces and Aspects of War (1866, is wholly forgotten. For a time he held a post in the Custom-House, but for many years lived in seclusion, his mental faculties having given way. R. L. Stevenson's praise revived the vogue of Typee and Omoo.

Donald Grant Mitchell, who became known under the pen-name of 'Ik Marvel,' was born in Norwich, Connecticut, 12th April 1822, graduated at Yale, studied law, and was in 1853 appointed U.S. consul at Venice. He edited the Atlantic Monthly 1868-69, and from 1855 lived on his farm of Edgewood near New Haven, with which several of his books deal (Wet Days at Edgewood, &c... Best known of his works, combining humour and a graceful element of sentiment and domesticity, were his Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life (1850-51; new eds. 1889). Among the rest are a novel, Dr Johns (1866); English Lands, Letters, and Kings (2 vols. 1889–95); American Lands and Letters (1897).

Bayard Taylor (1825–78) was born of Quaker and German ancestry at Kennett Square in Chester county, Pennsylvania, and was educated at a common school, and for five years at a high school. He acquired a familiar knowledge of Latin, French, Spanish, and, later, German; and from his twelfth year he wrote essays, stories, and poems; and two years after he had become an apprentice in a printing-office he published Ximena, a volume of poems, sold by subscription. Disliking his trade, he bought himself off from his apprenticeship, arranged with the editors of several papers to write a series of letters from abroad, and with a hundred and forty dollars paid in advance for these contributions, he sailed for Liverpool on a pedestrian tour of Europe in 1844, and carried his knapsack through Scotland, England, Belgium, the Rhine countries, Austria, and Italy. His letters, for which he received in all five hundred dollars, were his sole means of support, and were in 1846 published as Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff. After his return he edited a country newspaper, then went to New York, and obtained a post on the Tribune. As its correspondent he made extensive travels in California and Mexico, recorded in El Dorado (1850), and up the Nile, and in Asia Minor, Syria, across Asia to India, China, and Japan-recorded in his Journey to Central Africa, The Land of the Saracen (1854), and A Visit to India, China, and Japan (1855). Later explorations are recorded in

Northern Travel (1858) and Travels in Greece and Russia (1859). He was a very successful lecturer on his travelling experiences, and on the outbreak of the Civil War warmly advocated the national cause. This led to his being sent in 1862-63 as secretary of legation to St Petersburg. Much of his time after 1863 was spent in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1870 he lectured on German literature at Cornell University. In 1876 he was again at work on the Tribune (of which he was a part-proprietor); in 1877 he was nominated United States ambassador in Berlin, but entering on his duties in May 1878, only lived to fulfil them till towards the end of the same year. Over and above his own books of travel, he edited a library of travels, and with Ripley a handbook of literature and fine arts; and he did much miscellaneous literary work, editing and translating from German and other tongues. His ambitions were to be remembered as a poet, and he ranks well to the front in the second rank of American poets. His early models were Byron and Shelley; Tennyson's influence is obvious in some of his work, and Goethe's is still more marked. His Oriental Poems are perhaps his most spontaneous and characteristic work; but some of his Pennsylvanian ballads also show him at his best, tender and simple rather than sonorous and rhetorical as much of his work is. His Faust is the book by which he is best known in England, and is one of the most successful of all the attempts yet made to approach an adequate English rendering of Goethe's masterpiece. His poetic works included Rhymes of Travel (1848); Book of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs (1851); Poems of the Orient (1854); Poems of Home and Travel (1855); The Poet's Journal (1862); Poems (1865); The Masque of the Gods (1872); Lars (1873), a Tennysonian narrative poem ; The Prophet, a Tragedy (1874); Home Pastorals (1875); The National Ode, which he was chosen to deliver at the Centennial Exhibition (1876); Prince Deukalion, a lyrical drama (1878), perhaps too directly modelled after Faust; and his exceptionally admirable translation of Faust (1870-71). He also wrote several novels, the best Hannah Thurston (1863) and The Story of Kennett (1866). His Life and Letters were edited by his (second) wife, daughter of an Erfurt astronomer, and Horace E. Scudder.

A Bedouin Love-Song.

From the desert I come to thee

On a stallion shod with fire: And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand,

And the midnight hears my cry:

I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

And weds ye to your juicy youth again
With a new ring, the while your rifted bark
Drops odorous tears. Your knotty fibres yield
To the light touch of her unfailing pen,
As freely as the lupin's violet cup.

Ye keep, close-locked, the memories of her stay,
As in their shells the avelonès keep
Morn's rosy flush and moonlight's pearly glow.
The wild north-west that from Alaska sweeps
To drown Point Lobos with the icy scud
And white sea-foam, may rend your boughs and leave
Their blasted antlers tossing in the gale;
Your steadfast hearts are mailed against the shock,
And on their annual tablets naught inscribe
Of such rude visitation. Ye are still
The simple children of a guiltless soil,
And in your natures show the sturdy grain
That passion cannot jar, nor force relax,
Nor aught but sweet and kindly airs compel
To gentler mood. No disappointed heart
Has sighed its bitterness beneath your shade,
No angry spirit ever came to make

Your silence its confessional; no voice,

Grown harsh in Crime's great market-place, the world,
Tainted with blasphemy your evening hush,
And aromatic air. The deer alone,-

The ambushed hunter that brings down the deer,
The fisher wandering on the misty shore
To watch sea-lions wallow in the flood,--
The shout, the sound of hoofs that chase and fly,
When swift vaqueros, dashing through the herds,
Ride down the angry bull,-perchance, the song
Some Indian heired of long-forgotten sires,-
Disturb your solemn chorus.

Stephen Collins Foster (1826-64), author of many of the most popular American songs, was born in Pittsburgh, and was for some time a merchant's clerk or shop assistant in Cincinnati. He had a natural but untrained gift for writing ditties and composing tunes, found time for systematic musical study, and in 1842 published 'Open thy lattice, love,' which was at once taken up by negro minstrels. The popularity of his next ventures encouraged him to give up business and devote himself to music and song. He lived mostly in New York and Pittsburgh, and in New York he died. He is credited with no less than a hundred and twenty-five pieces, words and airs being alike of his own composition; of these nearly a fourth are negro melodies. Among the best-known are 'The Old Folks at Home,' 'Nelly Bly,'' Uncle Ned,' 'Old Dog Tray,' 'Gentle Annie,' 'Old Kentucky Home,' 'Willie, we have missed you,' 'Camptown Races' (which Mr Gladstone used to intone with such powerful effect), 'Massa's in de cold, cold ground,' 'Poor Old Joe,' and 'Come where my Love lies dreaming.' It may safely be said that no other eleven songs by any one poet or composer are equally familiar in all English-speaking countries. How far the success of the songs depends on the taking tunes it might be hard to say: 'The Old Folks at Home,' otherwise "Way down upon the Swanee River,' is perhaps as acceptable to some when performed on a

street-piano or barrel-organ as when sung. Some of the songs are mere doggerel; others are only sentimental jingles; the best of them hardly satisfy the usual poetic standards. But if to secure worldwide popularity and to touch the heart of the people in two continents be proof of poetic power, S. C. Foster has safely passed the test. Musically, 'Come where my Love lies dreaming' is his highest effort.

Theodore Winthrop (1828-61) was the representative of a family that had been very distinguished in New England since colonial days, having produced governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut, a Harvard professor of physics, and a senator, orator, and publicist. Born at New Haven, Theodore studied at Yale, travelled in Europe and the Far West, did surveying for the railway across the Isthmus of Panamá, was admitted to the Bar (1855), and had prepared a large mass of mostly unpublished-literary materials, when, having volunteered in the Civil War, he fell in battle at Great Bethel. His novels-for which he had failed to find a publisher-were issued posthumously, and include Cecil Dreeme (1861), a (somewhat crude) romance of New York; John Brent (1861), instinct with the spirit of the Wild West; and Edwin Brothertoft (1862), a story of the Revolution. His tales were somewhat too spasmodic and unconventional in style. The Canoe and Saddle and Life in the Open Air were sketches still later published; and in the eighties his Life and Poems appeared under his sister's supervision.

Lewis Wallace, born in 1827 at Brookville, Indiana, served in the Mexican War, gained distinction in the Civil War, and was governor of Utah (1878-81) and minister to Turkey (1881), General Lew Wallace became famous in popular literature by his remarkably successful religious novel Ben Hur (1880); and this was followed by The Fair God, The Prince of India, and The Wooing of Malkatoon, his next best-known stories; as well as by a book on The Boyhood of Christ and a Life of Benjamin Harrison.

Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903) was born at Hingham in Massachusetts, the son of a ship's-captain who was lost at sea; and the boy, after an education at the public schools in New York, worked in an iron-foundry for some years, meanwhile reading widely in English literature, but especially in poetry. In 1849 he produced at small volume of poems, only to suppress it afterwards; but 1852 saw the birth of a sturdier collection. From 1853 to 1870 he served in the New York custom-house, in 1870-73 was clerk to General McClellan, and for a year city librarian; and he did much reviewing and writing for the booksellers. He wrote Lives of Washington Irving and Shelley; produced A Century After, picturesque glimpses of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania; and edited the 'Bric-à-Brac Series' and the 'Sans