Careful research had enabled Mr. Bancroft to throw new light on several points connected with the settlement and early history of his country. As his dates approach nearer to the present time, the sources of new information open on him in abundance. The MS, additions to our knowledge of the times treated of in these volumes are considerable; but they are spread pretty fairly over the entire narrative--lending a new light to the events and adding a new trait to the characters--rather than thrown into masses. The effect produced is more that of greater roundness and completion than of absolute change in old historical verdicts. We quote one out of innumerable instances of these minute but characteristic additions. The historian is speaking of the Duke of Newcastle,--whose ignorant government of the colonies was one of the chief sources of their discontent:-- "For nearly four-and-twenty years he remained minister for British America; yet to the last, the statesman, who was deeply versed in the statistics of elections, knew little of the continent of which he was the guardian. He addressed letters, it used to be confidently said, to 'the island of New England,' and could not tell but that Jamaica was in the Mediterranean. Heaps of colonial memorials and letters remained unread in his office; and a paper was almost sure of neglect unless some agent remained with him to see it opened. His frivolous nature could never glow with affection, or grasp a great idea, or analyze complex relations. After long research, I cannot find that he ever once attended seriously to an American question, or had a clear conception of one American measure." Walpole had told us that Newcastle did not know where Jamaica was:--the amusing address "Island of New England" Mr. Bancroft finds referred to in a manuscript letter of J. Q. Adams. It serves to suggest that what is usually thought to be a joke of Walpole's was probably the literal truth:--the man who is sufficiently innocent of geography to make New England an island, would have no difficulty in confounding the East and West Indies. In this volume we first meet with the great character who is to be the hero of the Revolution now looming before the reader. Mr. Bancroft treats us to no full-length portrait of George Washington:--instead of a picture he presents us with the man. Washington comes before us at twenty-one,--in the chamber of Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia; from whom he is accepting a perilous but most important mission--to cross the forests, rivers, and mountains which separate Williamsburg and Lake Erie, in the depths of a severe winter, and there endeavor to detach the Delaware Indians from the French alliance. All the elements of Washington's greatness--his courage, hardihood, military prescience, and merciful disposition--are stamped indelibly on this the first act of his public life:--