observing minutely all their ceremonies. The narrative of his hardships and adventures is contained in his first book, The Oregon Trail (1849).

Parkman never entirely recovered from the severe physical strain of those sickening months. His health has never been strong, and, like Prescott, he has suffered continually from partial blindness. He has visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in his history took place. After his sojourn among the Indians he visited Europe, studied in foreign archives, and deciphered French manuscripts, so that his subject has been studied both from life and from books.

In 1851 appeared his second book, The Conspiracy of Pontiac. He also wrote a novel, Vassal Morton, in 1854.

French-American History.-The general title of Parkman's series of histories is "France and England in North America: a Series of Historical Narratives." It is the struggle of the two European powers for the possession of the American continent-a struggle fraught with stupendous consequences for this country. (See page 25.)

The successive volumes of the group are: 1. Pioneers of France in the New World (1865), in two parts-(a) “Huguenots in Florida;" (b) "Samuel de Champlain;" 2. The Jesuits in North America (1867); 3. La Salle; or, The Discovery of the Great West (1869); 4. The Old Régime in Canada (1874); 5. Count Frontenac; or, New France under Louis XIV. (1877); 6. (unpublished); 7. Montcalm and Wolfe (1884).

The time covered by these volumes is from the discovery of Florida, in 1512, to the taking of Quebec, in 1759.

The scenes of the events are the shores of the St. Lawrence, Quebec, Montreal, Lake Champlain and Ticonderoga, the chain of the great lakes, and the Mississippi River to the Far South-west.

The characters of the books are French noblemen,

Jesuit fathers, Indian braves, explorers, trappers, and half-breeds.

The style is remarkable for vividness. It is hardly credible that these histories should ever be supplanted or rewritten.

Jared Sparks (1789-1866) edited the writings of George Washington in 1834. He was the first editor of the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge. He was professor of history in Harvard from 1839 to 1849, and president of the college until 1853.

He edited in 1830 The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution.

He also wrote The Life of Gouverneur Morris (1832).

Mr. Sparks was the editor of The Library of American Biography and edited the Works of Benjamin Franklin. American history is indebted to him for his thorough and careful editing of important works.

John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881) was a graduate of Harvard, and succeeded Edward Everett as pastor of the Brattle Street Unitarian Church in Boston. He held many important public offices, and was an early antislavery advocate.

His important work was The History of New England to 1875 (4 vols., 1858-64). His style is clear, but not vivid. His manner is not sprightly nor rhetorical, but is careful and conscientious.

Richard Hildreth (1807-65) was born in Deerfield, Mass., June 22, 1807, and was graduated at Harvard in 1826. He practised law in Newburyport and Boston until 1832, when he became editor of the Boston Atlas. His earliest work was Archy Moore (1836), the first antislavery novel.

In 1855 he published Japan as it Was and Is.

His most important work, the History of the United States, in six volumes, was published from 1849 to 1856. For the ordinary reader this is much the best history of

the country. It has not so much rhetoric as Bancroft's, but its literary merit is higher. The style is clear and the arrangement orderly. Bancroft and Hildreth represent different political ideas. The former adheres in his history to the Democratic party, and exalts the importance of Jefferson in the evolution of our Government. The latter makes Hamilton his central and most imposing figure. Mr. Hildreth died at Florence, Italy, July 11, 1865.

John Foster Kirk (1824-- -) was secretary to William H. Prescott, and assisted in preparing all the historian's later works. He has published the History of Charles the Bold (1863-68), an admirable work which was warmly praised by E. A. Freeman. He is now lecturer on European history at the University of Pennsylvania.

John Fiske (1842) is the most eloquent of historical lecturers. He first became known as a student of philosophy and an interpreter of the scientific doctrine of evolution. He was recognized as the ablest representative in America of the philosophy of Herbert Spencer.

When he turned his attention to history it was to apply the evolutionary principle to the explanation of historic facts.

He has published Myths and Myth-Makers (1872), Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874), Darwinism and Other Essays (1879), Excursions of an Evolutionist (1883), The Destiny of Man (1884), American Political Ideas (1885), and The Critical Period in American History (1888). He is about to publish a comprehensive History of the American People.

John Bach McMaster (1852-- -) is publishing an excellent and very minute History of the People of the United States. It was begun in 1870. Two volumes have already appeared. Mr. McMaster, who is professor of American history in the University of Pennsylvania, has also written a good Life of Benjamin Franklin in the American Men-ofLetters series.

Edgar Allan Poe, after Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the greatest literary genius of America. His life and his writings belong to an altogether different world from that in which Emerson, Longfellow, and Lowell moved. His life was a tragedy. It was not lived in conformity with the moral law. It was a constant struggle with poverty, full of the acutest suffering, and embittered by his sensitive pride.

He was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. He was but two years old when his parents, both of whom were actors, died, within a week of each other, at Richmond, Va. The child was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy tobaccomerchant in Richmond. Poe was brought up in luxury and carefully educated. He was taken to England and put to school at Stoke-Newington, near London. On his return to America he entered the University of Virginia (1826), where he learned to gamble, but altogether neglected his studies. At the end of his first year he had contracted so many debts that he was removed from college. He quarrelled with Mr. Allan, who would no longer countenance his bad habits and reckless extravagance. Leaving Richmond, he made his way to Boston, and there, in 1827, he published his first work, Tamerlane and Other Poems.

In the following year he enlisted in the United States army under the name of Edgar A. Perry, and served for more than a year as private and as sergeant-major. On the death of Mrs. Allan he returned on a furlough to Richmond, was reconciled to his foster-father, and through his influence was admitted to West Point. He was at first successful, but he soon wearied of the discipline, neglected his studies, drifted into his former intemperate habits, and was expelled. He then went to Baltimore, where he wrote a prize-story-"A Manuscript Found in a Bottle "-which proved his first success.

On the recommendation of John P. Kennedy he was appointed editor of the Southern Literary Messenger at Richmond. He then began to write the .sombre and mysterious tales upon which his future fame was largely to rest. He was married in 1836, and in the next year re signed his post and went to New York. In that city and in Philadelphia he engaged in journalism. He edited Burton's Magazine in New York, Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia, and was connected with the Evening Mirror and Broadway Journal in New York. In every case he lost his position through intemperance or through quarrelling with the publisher. He lived at this time a wayward Bohemian life, doing all manner of literary hack-work, and recklessly staggering from bad to worse. He published in these years Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), Tales of the Arabesque and Grotesque (1839), The Gold Bug (1840), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841).

On the 28th of January, 1845, in the Evening Mirror appeared his poem of "The Raven.”

In Godey's Lady's Book he published "The Literati of New York," a series of criticisms, partly just and partly brutal, upon American writers. They awoke bitter animosities which are not yet forgotten.

Eureka, a prose-poem," of which Poe thought highly, was published in 1848.