remarkable chapters on the Massachusetts Pilgrims, the Pennsylvania Quakers, and the North American Indians, were written; and their full purport, their profound significance, can only be appreciated by readers whose minds possess at least the seeds of sympathy and cognateness with this sublime philosophy. The chapter on the Quakers is a pregnant psychological treatise. Sparkling all over with the electric lights of a rich humanitary philosophy, it invests the theologic visions of Fox and Barclay with a radiance and beauty which have been ill-preserved in the formal and lifeless organic systems of their successors. The parallel run by the historian between William Penn and John Locke is one of the most characteristic productions of his peculiar genius. Original, subtle, suggestive, crowded with matter and frugal of words, it brings out the distinctive features of the spiritual and mechanical schools in the persons of two of their 'representative men,' with a breadth and reality which is seldom found in philosophical portraitures. Mr. Bancroft was the son of an eminent Unitarian clergyman in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was born about the beginning of the present century, and is consequently a little more than fifty years of age. He graduated at Harvard University, with distinguished honors, before he had completed his fifteenth year. Soon after he sailed for Europe, and continued his studies at the German Universities, returning to his own country just before the attainment of his majority. Devoting himself for several years to literary and educational pursuits, he acquired a brilliant reputation as a poet, critic, and essayist; and at a subsequent period, entering the career of politics, he has signalized himself by his attachment to democratic ideas, and the eloquence and force with which on all occasions he has sustained the principles with the prevalence of which he identifies the progress of humanity. * * * * * From the Athenæum.