Popular revolutions such as this have often been followed by a period of great literary fruitfulness, particularly in history. So it proved in Holland, in France, in Italy. But in America nothing of the sort occurred. The twenty-five years after Yorktown, barren in literature of every kind, are exceptionally devoid of historical writers who deal with large subjects in a large way. There were, of course, narratives of the war by participants and panegyrists. Such were David Ramsay’s “History of the American Revolution” (1789), Mrs. Mercy Warren’s “Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution” (1805), and the “History of the American Revolution” which appeared in 1819 under the name of Paul Allen. But none of these works shows largeness of view, and none is distinguished by literary qualities. They serve a good purpose, however, in reflecting the feeling of the Revolution. This is particularly true of Mrs. Warren’s book. She was a sister of James Otis, whose argument against the writs of assistance in 1761 marks the beginning of the Revolutionary agitation, and the wife of General Joseph Warren, who fell on Bunker Hill; and her intimacy with these and other New England patriots lends a certain representative value to her forgotten discursiveness. A similar value attaches also to the more readable, but not less bitter “Life of James Otis, containing Notices of Contemporary Characters and Events,” written by William Tudor; likewise, though in a less degree, to several other early biographies of Revolutionary worthies, among which the most weighty is the “Life of George Washington,” in five volumes (1804-1807), based upon his original papers and compiled by his fellow-Virginian John Marshall, afterwards famous as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. For students of American history, this is a useful book, such as a man of Marshall’s ability could not fail to produce when dealing with subjects with which he was thoroughly familiar and in which he was deeply interested. But it is hastily written, far too long, and, save for its partisanship, altogether colourless. Nevertheless, it occupies a relatively high rank among its coevals, for, taken all in all, American writers on national history in the years 1780-1820 are few and weak.