The characters go through their evolutions like well-drilled courtiers. So stately are they as to appear scarce human. Homely and familiar traits are almost completely suppressed. The founders of America, as we see them looming in the pages of Bancroft, are not men but incarnate ideas. They are the embodiment of principles and virtues. Winthrop is enlightened conservatism, Vane is generous impetuosity, Roger Williams is liberty of conscience. Strive how we will to bring these men nearer, to make them tangible, the effort is not wholly successful. These figures of the past, like the characters of a morality-play, persist in remaining personified ideas. As a reaction against ‘classical’ history comes history of the gossiping school. ‘Thanks to you,’ said Brunetière, welcoming Masson to the French Academy, ‘we now know the exact number of Napoleon’s shirts.’ Bancroft was not interested in the spindles and shoe-buckles of the Puritans. Many people are, but they must find elsewhere the gratification they seek. Whoever wishes at any time absolutely to escape anecdotage, homely detail, and piquant gossip, has it always in his power to do so; he can read Bancroft’s three volumes on the Colonial period and dwell among abstractions. Even if not at this stage of his career the most human of writers, Bancroft is a comforting historian to return to, after having dwelt for a while with those who instruct us how low and mercenary in motive, how impervious to liberal ideas, were the men who planted English civilization in America. Historical iconoclasts all, they are frightfully convincing. Some of their arguments lose a degree of force as it dawns on the reader that Seventeenth-century men are being judged by Nineteenth-century standards. When Bancroft wrote, the habit of abusing the ancestors had not become deep-seated. Turning from the Colonial period, the historian takes up the period of the American Revolution. Seven volumes are required for telling the story. The logical arrangement is by ‘epochs.’ They are four in number: ‘Overthrow of the European Colonial system,’ ‘How Great Britain estranged America,’ ‘America declares itself independent,’ ‘The Independence of America is acknowledged.’[17] General histories must treat of many things, the doings of authorized and representative assemblies and the doings of the mob, skirmishes, battles by land and sea, diplomatic intrigues, party combinations, political and military plots, the characters of the actors in the historic drama, and the setting of the stage on which they played. While doing all parts of his task with workmanlike skill, a historian will be found to excel in this thing or in that. Bancroft’s accounts of military operations are always clear, energetic, and often extremely readable. He could not, like Irving, ‘render you a fearful battle in music,’ but he never made the mistake of supposing that he could. He had not the graphical power of Parkman, but he had enough for his purposes.