With the possibility that he might not live to complete his design, Mr. Parkman passed over the period between 1700 and 1748, and for seven years devoted himself to the preparation of Montcalm and Wolfe, the longest of his works, issued in two volumes, in 1884. His popularity had been, since the publication of "Pioneers of France," constantly increasing, but "Montcalm and Wolfe" at once directed universal attention to his writings, and gave him a greater reputation than he had achieved by all the previous volumes of the series. The subject, a great one, had never before received the study and research given to it by Parkman. He visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in connection with the contest took place, examined documents in the archives and libraries of France and England, great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, etc., had access through the permission of the present Marquis de Montcalm to all the letters written by General Montcalm to members of his family in France, searched the voluminous records of the colonial history of New York and Pennsylvania, and used in the preparation of the work a large amount of unpublished material, the papers copied in France alone exceeding six thousand folio pages of manuscript. He began the work with sketches of the condition of England and France and the Colonies in the eighteenth century (1745), treated of the conflict for the West, the conflict for Acadia, the colony of Virginia under Dinwiddie, and the defeat of Washington at Fort Necessity, the death of Braddock, the removal of the Acadians, the expedition against Crown Point, Shirley and the Border War in 1755-1756, and the arrival of Montcalm, the first volume concluding with chapters on the massacre at Fort William Henry. The second volume opened with a description of the events in the years 1757-1758, sketched the character of Intendant Bigot, discussed Pitt and Newcastle, described the Siege of Louisbourg, the destruction of Gaspé by Wolfe, the death of Howe at Ticonderoga, the expedition of Bradstreet against Ticonderoga, the evacuation of Fort Duquesne, and Governor Vaudreuil's jealousy of Montcalm. More than half of the volume is devoted to the expedition against Quebec under Wolfe, the capture of the Heights of Abraham, the death of Montcalm and Wolfe, the fall of Quebec, and the description of the ruins of the town, the volume closing with chapters on the Fall of Canada and the Peace of Paris. The work was reviewed in the United States, in Canada, and in England as a masterpiece of military history and the first authentic, full, sustained, and worthy narrative of these momentous events and extraordinary men.