generally known, into the praise of things only partially praisable, only slightly important.” And at a later time (1852) Henry Hallam wrote: “I do not go along with all your strictures on English statesmen and on England, either in substance, or, still more, in tone.... Faults there were, but I do not think that all were on one side. At all events, a more moderate tone would carry more weight. An historian has the high office of holding the scales.” In the midst of public affairs and political duties, the great labour of the “History” progressed. A second volume appeared in 1837, and a third in 1840. These volumes covered the colonial period down to 1748. Their conspicuous success contributed to Bancroft’s appointment, in 1846, as Minister to England; and there, as subsequently in Germany, his official position, added to his established reputation, opened to him unusual stores of historical material. He writes from England to Prescott, his “brother antiquary”: “I am getting superb materials, and had as lief a hundred should treat the same subject as not. If they do it with more heart than I, don’t you see that as a good citizen of the Republic I must applaud and rejoice in being outdone?” Under the circumstances, the democratic humility of the man is perhaps slightly overdone; although the unusual riches laid under contribution might well have offered a temptation to pride, for both public and private collections of great value were placed absolutely at his disposal. An unrivalled collection of historical manuscripts (now in the Lenox Library, New York City) bears testimony to his thoroughness and his wisdom in the use of extraordinary advantages. But Bancroft, once established in London, soon found his literary labours pushed into the background. He confesses in 1849: “Here in London, to write is impossible.... Mr. Macaulay says, one man can do but one thing well at a time.... I am of his opinion, now in my approaching old age.” The eighteen years of private life at home that followed the ministry to England (1846-49) were much more productive. Between 1849 and 1867 six more volumes (iv. to ix.) of the “History” were brought out, a volume of “Literary and Historical Miscellanies” (1855), and the official eulogy pronounced upon Abraham Lincoln in the House of Representatives (1866). A passage from the “Miscellanies” on the conception of history displays Bancroft’s style in his more oratorical vein: