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3. Parkman

RANCIS PARKMAN (1823-93) touched Prescott and

Motley on one side by his interest in romantic themes,

and on another side touched the more recent school of American historiography by his habits of elaborate research and his use of all accessible manuscript documents as well as of secondary material; but he was first of all an artist in expression, working in the field of history with such results as he could obtain, and yet working much as he might have done had he been a romancer of a very superior conscience.

Like Prescott, Parkman had the best of Boston's inheritance except health, and against the effects of that handicap he interposed a resolute spirit which enabled him to devote to his books the few hours he could snatch from a constant state of pain. From early life he had the desire to write the history of the New England border wars. During his college vacations he visited the scenes of these conflicts, and he read always widely in the books on that subject. In 1842 illness drove him to Italy to regain his health, and he there spent some time in a Passionist monastery, believing that he thus got some insight into the motives and spiritual processes of a type of mind which played a large part in the French civilization of the New World, though so alien to the English modes of religion among explorers and colonists. When Parkman graduated at Harvard in 1844 he knew the New England Indians thoroughly. Much of the next two years was spent in visiting the historic spots on the Pennsylvania border and in the region beyond. In 1846 he made a journey to the land of the Sioux, where he spent some weeks in the camps of a native tribe, studying the Indian in the savage state. His

experiences were described in a series of letters in The Knickerbocker Magazine and republished in his first book, The California and Oregon Trail (1849), still considered one of our best descriptions of Indian life.

Now prepared for his main task, Parkman took a striking incident of Indian history and wrote on it his Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851). In this book he placed much introductory matter on the Indians, together with a comprehensive review of the history of the French settlements before 1761, when the conspiracy of Pontiac began. From this large use of preliminary materials it would seem that he had not yet determined to undertake the series of volumes in which he later treated the same period. The Pontiac was well received and it was a good book from a young author. But it lacked conciseness and was overdrawn.

For several years after its publication Parkman suffered great physical pain, and he seemed about to lose the use of his eyes and limbs. But he never gave up his ambition or ceased to collect information about the Indians. In this interval he wrote Vassall Morton (1856), a novel which did not succeed. Turning back to history he revised his entire plan and outlined his France and England in North America. The series was limited to the period before the Pontiac war. It embraced the whole story of French colonization in North America from the Huguenot colonies of the sixteenth century to the fall of Quebec. The various parts appeared as follows: The Pioneers of France in the New World (1865); The Jesuits in North America (1867); La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1869); The Old Régime in Canada (1874); Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV (1877); Montcalm and Wolfe (2 vols., 1884); and A Half Century of Conflict (2 vols., 1892). He described the series as including "the whole course of the American conflict between France and England, or in other words, the history of the American forest; for this was the light in which I regarded it. My theme fascinated me, and I was haunted with wilderness images day and night." Parkman's purposes were wholly American. He loved the vast recesses of murmuring pines, with their tragedies, adventures, and earnest striving. Prescott and Motley might paint the gorgeous scenes of royal courts

and Bancroft might interrupt his labours in writing the panegyric of democracy to play a complacent rôle as minister at Berlin, but Parkman never ceased to find his chief interest in the American forest and its denizens.

His avowed method of writing 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. Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time." Few writers have achieved their ideal of expression as well as he. What Cooper did in the realm of fiction Parkman did with even better fidelity to nature in the realm of history. He never studied in the seminar school, but he understood its lessons instinctively and made them his own without loss of the best things in the old school-vigour, harmony, and colour. "With all its manifold instructiveness," says John Fiske, "his book is a narrative as entertaining as those of Macaulay or Froude. In judicial impartiality Parkman may be compared with Gardiner, and for accuracy of learning with Stubbs." In American literature he holds a singularly enviable place. Although he may be said to have created his own particular province of history, that concerned with the French in America, and though the field has since been often invaded by admirers and imitators, he still stands supreme in his department, the truest and most delightful of all who have touched those engaging matters.

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4. Henry Adams

F the three sons of Charles Francis Adams, grandsons of John Quincy Adams, who became historians, two of them, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams (1838-1918), present a particularly interesting contrast. Both of them had the Puritan mind, so strong in their ancestry, as well as that independent Adams spirit which put the family, from John Adams to Henry, out of touch with the dominant thought of Boston. Turning to history, both of them became able critics of conventional views and won high respect from an age turning towards cosmopolitan ideals. The elder of the two, however, did not go all the way in revolt. New Englander he remained to the last. He loved Boston, although he rapped its knuckles at times, and he sought to reform its intellectual life. The younger clung to Boston for many years, giving himself to a phase of our history in which the town had a deep interest; but finally, having reached a stage of disillusionment, as he considered it, he broke local ties, turned toward the unanchored spaces of the remote past, and became a master in the realm of detached thinking.

The historical career of Henry Adams falls into two periods. One of them began with his return from London in 1868, where he had been private secretary to his father, then minister to Great Britain, and continued until 1892, when he turned his back on all he had been doing and began again what he termed his "education." The second extended from that change of purpose to his death. The editorship of The North American Review (1869-76) and an assistant-professorship in history at Harvard (1870-77) ushered in the first period. Teaching did not suit him and he resigned because he felt that his efforts were failures. His mind was too original to go through life in the

routine of college instruction. He now turned to American history, producing by much industry in fourteen years the following books: Documents Relating to New England Federalism. (1877), Life of Albert Gallatin (1879), Writings of Albert Gallatin (1879), John Randolph (1882), History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., 1889-91), and Historical Essays (1891). The best scholarship and excellent literary form characterize all these books. No better historical work has been done in this country. Yet the books were little read and the author became discouraged. He concluded that what he had been doing was without value to the world, since it was not noticed by the world. Of the two novels which he wrote during this period, the anonymous Democracy (1880) aroused much discussion by its mordant pictures of political corruption at Washington, but Esther (1884), which Adams persisted in publishing under a pseudonym and refused to allow to be advertised, fell upon a perfectly heedless world, though its discussion of current theological problems has genuine interest.

Then began the second period of his literary life. Settling down to a quiet life of study, and following his taste, he delved long and patiently in the Middle Ages. The result appeared in Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904, 1913), probably the best expression of the spirit of the Middle Ages yet published in the English language. It was followed by Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (1905), The Education of Henry Adams (1906, 1918), A Letter to American Teachers of History (1910), and Life of George Cabot (1911). Two of these books, the Mont Saint Michel and the Education, deserve to rank among the best American books that have yet been written. The first is a model of literary construction and a fine illustration of how a skilled writer may use the history of a small piece of activity as a means of interpreting a great phase of human life. Through the Education runs a note of futility, not entirely counterbalanced by the brilliant character-sketching and wise observations upon the times. But the Mont Saint Michel redeems this fault. It shows us Henry Adams at his best, and under its charm we are prepared to overlook the aloofness which limited his interests while it depressed his spirits