GEORGE BANCROFT 1800-1891 George Bancroft was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1800, and was graduated from Harvard at the age of seventeen. With his graduation, however, his education was only begun. During the next five years he travelled extensively in Europe, and studied zealously at the Universities of Göttingen, Berlin, and Heidelberg, and at Paris, meeting many eminent scholars of the time whose friendship he enjoyed through life. His studies were chiefly devoted to the languages and to history. On his return he taught for a year in Harvard College, and later he held an appointment in a seminary in Massachusetts. About this time he had some thought of entering public life, and was elected to the legislature, but at the age of thirty-five he decided to devote his life to writing a history of his country. The first volume of his history appeared in 1834. Four years later Bancroft was appointed Collector for the Port of Boston, but nothing was permitted to interfere seriously with the great work he had undertaken. In 1844 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, and in 1845 became Secretary of the Navy under President Polk. As a member of Polk's Cabinet he established the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The following year he was appointed Minister to Great Britain, remaining abroad three years. These duties interrupted only temporarily the progress of his great history. The third volume appeared in 1840; twelve years later Bancroft completed the fourth and fifth volumes. The remaining volumes appeared in steady succession at intervals of from two to four years down to 1874, when the tenth and last was published. The work, which had thus taken no less than forty years to complete, covered the history of the colonial and revolutionary periods only. In the preparation of this great work Bancroft ransacked every great public library in the country, besides examining newspaper files, documents, and local and family records innumerable. His high public position gave him ready access to numerous archives, both public and private, that would have been sealed to an investigator less known and respected. During his later years Bancroft wrote a History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States" in two volumes, which may be regarded as a continuation of his greater work. He died at Washington in 1891. Bancroft's literary style, while lacking the brilliancy of Prescott's or Motley's, and the perfection of form of Parkman's, possesses none the less high merit of its own. It is clear and forcible, thoroughly dignified and convincing. That his works have not achieved a wider popularity is due more to their voluminousness than to any defect in the style of their composition. The essay on The Last Moments of Eminent Men" shows Bancroft in one of his best moods. He wrote very little except on historical subjects; in fact it was his sole aim to write a worthy history of his country, and his later years were spent in revising what he had already written rather than in attempting new work. Bancroft's one great work is his " History," a lofty and enduring monument. THE LAST MOMENTS OF EMINENT MEN IFE," says Sir William Temple, "is like wine; he "L who would drink it pure must not drain it to the dregs." "I do not wish," Byron would say, "to live to become old." The expression of the ancient poet, "that to die young is a boon of Heaven to its favorites," was repeatedly quoted by him with approbation. The certainty of a speedy release he would call the only relief against burdens which could not be borne were they not of very limited duration. But the general sentiment of mankind declares length of days to be desirable. After an active and successful career the repose of decline is serene and cheerful. By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy. The hour of evening is not necessarily overcast; and the aged man, exchanging the pursuits of ambition for the quiet of observation, the strife of public discussion for the diffuse but instructive language of experience, passes to the grave amid grateful recollections and the tranquil enjoyment of satisfied desires. The happy, it is agreed by all, are afraid to contemplate their end; the unhappy, it has been said, look forward to it as a release from suffering. "I think of death often," said a distinguished but dissatisfied man; "and I view it as a refuge. There is something calm and soothing to me in the thought; and the only time that I feel repugnance to it is on a fine day, in solitude, in a beautiful country, when all nature seems rejoicing in light and life.” This is the language of self-delusion. Numerous as may be the causes for disgust with life, its close is never contemplated with carelessness. Religion may elevate the soul to a sublime reliance on a future existence; nothing else can do it. The love of honor may brave danger; the passion of melancholy may indulge an aversion to continued being; philosophy may take its last rest with composure; the sense of shame may conduct to fortitude; yet they who would disregard the grave must turn their thoughts from the consideration of its terrors. It is an impulse of nature to strive to preserve our being; and the longing cannot be eradicated. The mind may shun the contemplation of horrors; it may fortify itself by refusing to observe the nearness or the extent of the impending evil; but the instinct of life is stubborn; and he who looks directly at its termination and professes indifference is a hypocrite or is selfdeceived. He that calls boldly upon Death is sure to be dismayed on finding him near. The oldest are never so old, but they desire life for one day longer; the child looks to its parents as if to discern a glimpse of hope; even the infant, as it exhales its breath, springs from its pillow to meet its mother as if there were help where there is love. There is a story told of one of the favorite marshals of Napoleon, who, in a battle in the south of Germany, was struck by a cannon-ball, and so severely wounded that there was no possibility of a respite. Summoning the surgeon, he ordered his wounds to be dressed; and, when aid was declared to be unavailing, the dying officer clamorously demanded that Napoleon should be sent for, as one who had power to stop the effusion of blood, and awe nature itself into submission. Life expired amid maledictions and threats heaped upon the innocent surgeon. This foolish frenzy may have appeared like blasphemy; it was but the uncontrolled outbreak of the instinct of self-preservation, in a rough and undisciplined mind. Even in men of strong religious convictions the end is not always met with serenity; and the preacher and philosopher sometimes express an apprehension which cannot be pacified. The celebrated British moralist, Samuel Johnson, was the instructor of his age; his works are full of the austere lessons of reflecting wisdom. It might have been supposed that religion would have reconciled him to the decree of Providence; that philosophy would have taught him to acquiesce in a necessary issue; that science would have inspired him with confidence in the skill of his medical attendants. And yet it was not so. A sullen gloom overclouded his faculties; he could not sum mon resolution to tranquillize his emotions; and, in the absence of his attendants, he gashed himself with ghastly and debilitating wounds, as if the blind lacerations of his misguided arm could prolong the moments of an existence which the best physicians of London declared to be numbered. "Is there anything on earth I can do for you?" said Taylor to Wolcott, known as Peter Pindar, as he lay on his death-bed. "Give me back my youth," were the last words of the satirical buffoon. If Johnson could hope for relief from self-inflicted wounds, if the poet could prefer to his friend the useless prayer for a restoration of youth, we may readily believe what historians relate to us of the end of Louis XI of France, a monarch who was not destitute of eminent qualities as well as repulsive vices; possessing courage, a knowledge of men and of business, an indomitable will, a disposition favorable to the administration of justice among his subjects; viewing impunity in wrong as exclusively a royal prerogative. Remorse, fear, a consciousness of being detected, disgust with life and horror of deaththese were the sentiments which troubled the sick-couch of the absolute king. The first of his line who bore the epithet of " the most Christian," he was so abandoned to egotism that he allowed the veins of children to be opened, and greedily drank their blood; believing, with physicians of that day, that it would renovate his youth, or at least check the decay of nature. The cruelty was useless. At last, feeling the approach of death to be certain, he sent for an anchorite from Calabria, since revered as St. Francis de Paula; and, when the hermit arrived, the monarch of France entreated him to spare his life. He threw himself at the feet of the man who was believed to derive healing virtues from the sanctity of his character; he begged the intercession of his prayers; he wept, he supplicated, he hoped that the voice of a Calabrian monk would reverse the order of nature, and successfully plead for his respite. We find the love of life still more strongly acknowledged by an English poet, who, after describing our being as the dream. of a shadow," a weak-built isthmus between two eternities, so frail that it can sustain neither wind nor wave," yet avows his preference of a few days', nay, of a few hours' longer residence upon earth, to all the fame which poetry can achieve. |