File:Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern (1896) (14782127024).jpg

Identifier: worldsbestlitera03warn (find matches)
Title: Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern
Year: 1896 (1890s)
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Publisher: N.Y.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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tion of contracts. Hedevotes nearly one hundred pages to ^ The People of the States inJudgment on the Constitution,* and rightly; for it is the final act ofthe separate States, and by it their individual wills are merged inthe will of the people, which is one, though still politically dis-tributed and active within State lines. His summary of the mainprinciples of the Constitution is excellent; and he concludes with aworthy sketch of the organization of the first Congress under theConstitution, and of the inauguration of Washington as President. In this last portion of the < History,* while all of his merits as ahistorian are not conspicuous, neither are some of his chief defects.Here the tendency to philosophize, to marshal stately sentences, andto be discursive, is not so marked. The first volume of Bancrofts * History of the United States *was published in 1834, when the democratic spirit was finding its firstfull expression tjnder Jackson, and when John Marshall was finishing \
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POC ;AI1()NTAS SAVlXCi TllK LIFK OF CAITAIN JOHN SMITH GEORGE BANCROFT 1439 his mighty task of revealing to the people of the United States thestrength that lay in their organic law. As he put forth volume aftert^olume at irregular intervals for fifty years, he in a measure con-tinued this work of bringing to the exultant consciousness of thepeople the value of their possession of a continent of liberty and therealization of their responsibility. In the course of another gener-ation, portions of this may begin togrow antiquated, though the most brilliant of contemporary journal-ists quite recently placed it among the ten books indispensable toevery American; but time cannot take away Bancrofts good part inproducing influences, which, however they may vary in form andforce, will last throughout the nations life.

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