Connecticut western news., 1891-01-21

at GOttlngen were ElcnnOrn ana bIumen- bach, and the venerable historian Heeren, whose principal works he subsequently translated. At Berlin he enjoyed the per sonal acquaintance of Schliermacher, Will. helm von Humboldt, Savigny, Lappenberg and other eminent scholars and statesmen. At Jena he met Goethe. Later he went to Rome, where he became acquainted with Byron. Returning to the United States in 1929 he was for year Greek tutor in Har- yard college, and published a thin volume of poems (l923), which have long been out of print.
 As an earnest that he had not quite aban. doned his early dedication to the pulpit he obtained a license to preach, and delivered several sermons, which were highly com mended; but his educational and historical impulses proved the stronger, and he has never since reminded the world that he was once entitled to the prefix 'reverend." In 1894 he published translation of his friend Heeren's Reflections on the Pol itics of Ancient Greece" and in the inter- vals of leisure left him from his profes- sional duties he found time to translate and publish two other of Heeren's works the "History of the States of Antiquity and the History of the Political System of Europe and Its Colonies"
 His Great History.
 This occupation was avowedly intended as a preliminary exercise to the great work of his life-the writing of history of the Anglo-American colonies, now the United States of America. For this work he laid broad and deep foudation before putting pen to paper. His first political appearance was as the town orator at Northampton on the Fourth of July, 1926. the semi-centennial of American Inde- pendence, and, by singular coincidence, the day of the death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, of whose great achieve ments he was the destined historian. In this oration Bancroft announced the polit- ical principles of which he has been an un- wavering adherent-namely,, Democracy" in it's widest sense, as based upon univer- sal suffrage MT. Bancroft thenceforth became prominent in Massachusetts as politician.
 About 1880 he withdrew from the Round Hill academy to devote himself to his pro- jected history, the first volume of which was written at Northampton and was pub lished in handsome octave form at Boston in 1884. It met a long felt want and was received with a nearly unanimous chorus of applause on both sides of the ocean. Edward Everett praised is in The North American Review.
 /, In Politics.
 Mir. Bancroft was at once installed by common consent in the post of the recog- nized national historian, and his admitted eminence in this vocation served for nearly half a century to deter competitors from undertaking the same task. MT. Bancroft removed in 1885 to Springfield, Mass, where he completed the second volume of his history Q837). He took a prominent part in the agitated state poli- tics of those years, and was rewarded by President Van Buren in January, 1888, with the important post of collector of the port of Boston
 Here he was enabled to do good servic, to brother author and Democrat by ap. pointing Nathaniel Hawthorne to post in the Boston custom house. The third volume of his work (to 1740 appeared in 1S4O, completing the period of the coloniza. tion of the United States. Its publication afforded occasion to review the three vol umes as whole, and the verdict was, in general, fayora ble. Having now co::irleted 8 distinct t:erioa of his work. Ar. Ban for the future, thought it right, since he had but one life to live, to devote several years to national politics and to his own political career. There was an intermis- sion of twelve years between the third and fourth volumes of his history.
 Secretary of the Navy.
 On the accession of Harrison to the pres idency in March, 1s41, MT. Bancroft had to yield up his post as collector. The next three years were chiefly devoted to politics, MT. Bancroft having been in 1s44 the lead- CT of a forlorn hope as Democratic candi- date for the governorship of Massachu- setts. His sacrifices, however, were not in vain, for on the accession of MT. James K. Polk to the presidency in March, 1845, he appointed MT. Bancroft secretary of the navy. His tenure of that office was sig nalized by the foundation, in 1S45, of the naval academy at Annapolis, and by the dispatch to California of naval force, which subsequently took possession of that region for the United States. During one month in 1846 he was acting secretary of war, and in that capacity issued to Gen. Taylor the order to advance to the Rio Grande, step which was the precursor of the Mexican war
 In the latter part of ls46 MT. Brancroft was transferred to the more congenial post of minister to Great Britain, and resided at the Court of St. James until the access sion of President Taylor in 1849. His chief