We do not recollect to have seen any notice of this work, which has now been before the public some eighteen months. There may be reasons for this inattention, which have no reference to the merits of the letters. Such a form of literature is not popular. Letters present no story: they have no connected narrative; they certainly have no pretensions of that kind, any more than a conversational remark has to be a set speech. Both have their appropriate place and value. These letters do not profess to give a history of anything; they are merely commentaries on the Revolution. As such, they have much value. We do not speak of their literary execution that has no part in the estimate we put upon them. Letters of this kind, to be truly valuable, must have all the marks of unpremeditated expression. There must be an assurance on the face of them that they were off-hand, written currente calamo. Such characteristics belong to these letters.

We are apt to think that history is all we want of our Revolution. This is a mistaken thought. We want history, as it is generally understood, but not that alone. The histories we have thus far had of our Revolution have been large outlines, which have left much to be filled up. They compass sea and land, and necessarily limit themselves to prominent political and military events; otherwise their bulk would be enormous. Then, if history has her province, we must look beyond her, or outside of her, for other information connected with her main incidents which that province excludes. It is considered that Scott's historical novels fill up many a hiatus in the British histories. His details as much belong to the scene as their more prominent events. And yet, they could not have been introduced into those histories. Historians confine themselves mostly to cabinets and fields. The court and the camp give them sufficient occupa

tion. They step from year to year, as if there were no foot-prints but those which they leave behind. They write, as it were, from balloons, whence they discern only the largest objects. All the rest is dim or lost to view.

What history does not perform, is attempted by other ways. We have alluded to historical novels. They do much, especially in such hands as Walter Scott's. In other hands they have done more harm than good. There are doubtless many minds, even at this late day, which have never corrected the misapprehensions left on them by Miss Porter's Wallace and Thaddeus of Warsaw. But the best of historical novels have too much imagination about them. They lack reality. The fiction spreads a varnish over the whole work, and we know not whether it be an imitation or the true mahogany which wears such a glaze. Letters, actually written during the times they refer to, are without these objections. They bring up the arrearages of history more satisfactorily than any other form of literature. There is no invention about them. We have no doubt concerning them, provided we are assured that they are genuine. Once satisfied of this fact, we read them as we would listen to a conversation. There is no question of ve racity as to statements. The statements they contain may be wrong, but, if they are given as the impressions of the moment, nothing more is required.

History is read with a constant distrust of its accuracy. What is unquestioned to-day, may be questioned to-morrow. A fact settled this year, becomes unsettled the next. Even the determinations of one century are often reversed the next. This is unavoidable: no one complains of it, any more than one complains of the imperfection of man's senses, and the limits of his powers. Doubts hang over the details of every battle, until a generation arises that cares not which way they are settled. And well may this be. A street-fight be

tween two persons, with half a dozen spectators, has never yet been described by two of those spectators alike. They did not see alike, they did not feel alike, and therefore they do not describe alike. How much less may a battle be described by two persons alike. The eye that pretends to have seen distinctly even that which passed within the sphere of its vision, will hardly be believed; and when it pretends to have seen that which smoke, distance, and interposing obstacles necessarily obscured, or shut out of sight, it will not, of course, be believed at all. Letters of the kind before us profess no more than to relate events, and sketch characters as they appeared at the moment of writing. There will be indistinctness, there may be error. This we expect, and therefore find no fault with it. When Mr. Izard gives the first rumors of the battle of Bunkerhill, as they were heard in London, we are pleased somewhat in proportion to the blunders into which those rumors lead him. The slowness with which tidings reached Great Britain in those days, when there was no steam,-when there were no packets,-when the Atlantic had been abridged by none of the modern facilities which have reduced it to a broad ferry, shows itself throughout this correspondence. We are not surprised that the first impression should have been, that Quebec had been taken by Montgomery. All these evidences of the state of the times give the letters a peculiar zest. We seem to be taken back to those times. History brings the past down to the days of the historian. Such letters as these take the reader back to the days of the writer. Besides, there is the assurance that they were not written for the public. We do not mean the assurance of the writer: we might not believe that; the letters themselves prove that they were written for no public use. This diminishes the responsibility under which they were written, while it gives them a freedom of expression which no other compositions can have. We would not undervalue the labors of those who visit the archives of Europe. They doubtless all return, bringing their sheaves with them. There is now collected in this country, in the appropriate state societies, a vast deal of raw material, which, after much

hatcheling and carding, will be usefully worked up into the web of history. The collections,, of course, embrace much surplus matter. The selectors at the foreign archives are something like the mineralogist at the quarry, who carries home to his laboratory a great deal of refuse stone in connexion with his specimens. He has not the time there to make the separation, nor is he certain that he can make it judiciously. The question is not, whether these collections are valuable, but whether they be, as is too often thought, the only collections that are so. If a portion of the means and time which have been applied to this archive-hunting had been applied to searches after private correspondence, carried on contemporaneously with prominent events—after private letters which were written in the heat of the moment, in the presence of those who were buckling on the armor, or putting it off-the search had not probably been without much fruit. We have the official accounts of the fall of the few men at Lexington, whose blood, shed just at the dawn of the day, so appropriately bedewed the dawn of the Revolution; and of the running fight from Concord which ensued, and in which, as it were by intuition, was shown how an unorganized and hastily raised force, a sudden gathering from the farm-houses, the anvil, the work-bench, &c.,-could be best and efficiently used. These accounts are gratifying, and belong to the page of history, and can never be effaced from it. But there may be other accounts of the same day, which, though not properly belonging to that page, may well be placed on other pages. The gleanings of Ruth have even a higher interest than the reapings of Boaz. There may have been members of families within the whirl of that day's vortex, who wrote letters while their heads were yet giddy with the scene. Many a warm record of this kind may have been made of the vicissitudes of the morning, the mid-day, and the evening, of this memorable first day of the Revolution. Such records, even if they were hastily made, and having nothing of an historical character, would be highly valued. We well know how the militia assembled, and blocked up the high-way where the

British troops would pass, not moving aside until a volley from the troops opened a way through them. We would likewise be pleased to hear how some of them left their homes on this perilous duty; jumped out of their warm beds, and tore themselves away from the still warmer embraces of those who must not venture forth; and how they returned, if they did return. One or two such instances would represent the whole. The artist, who has exhibited one of these family groups just as the middle-aged and the manly youth are going forth, grey hairs, womanhood and infancy behind, has done in one way what these letters would do in an other. Such letters have been found and published, and we wish that more could be found and published.

Who has not frequently been led to draw a comparison between Marshall's Life of Washington, and the letters of that great man, which have been published by Mr. Sparks. Judge Marshall was a distinguished jurist,--the most distinguished we have had; but he was not a great historian or biographer. Even if he had the appropriate talent, (which no one questions,) he had not the necessary time for success in that character. His mind was broad, but it had its limits. He failed where failure was unavoidable; and the failure attaches no discredit to his eminent reputation. His judicial duties were an ample burden. To write the Life of Washington was a burden, perhaps, equally ample. If he had laid down the one, he could have taken up the other. Both, neither he nor any other man could hope to carry at the same time. It was natural to look to Judge Marshall for this work, which was to be a national work; and had he put aside all other tasks, and bent his strong intellect to this task alone, we know not whether he would not have done wisely. The Life of Washington might, perhaps, have been written, without writing a history of this country during his age. Judge Marshall judged other wise. He determined that a Life of Washington must embrace a history of the Colonies, of the Revolution, of the formation of our present government, and of the first administration under it. This determination was, perhaps, unavoidable. We can hardly see how he could have contracted his base. It was,

therefore, a magnificent undertaking, and one to which even Judge Marshall might have worthily devoted exclusive attention. It was not an undertaking that could be accomplished "between terms." No history has been written which outlived its author, and which deserved to outlive him, that was not the paramount labor of years. Judge Marshall's history is a huge pile, and has an air of grandeur. But the logs were everywhere rolled up whole : the saw-mill: and the carpenter's tools having had little to do with the struc

ture.

If Judge Marshall had declined the task assigned to him, and undertaken to edit the Letters of Washington, the task had, no doubt, been compatible with his leisure, and an earlier day had given to the public a harvest of information which Mr. Sparks subsequently gathered up as an humble follower, after it was supposed the sickle had done its work.

These

These letters, after all, form the best Life of Washington. They give him in his own words. It is true, that when a man speaks of himself, he is not always the best witness in the case. Still, the letters he writes are his own language, and contain his own sentiments. Like all other witnesses on the stand, we form our own judgment of his credibility. In the present instance, no doubts disturb us. Letters of Washington exhibit him in a strong light, from the time he began his public career until he was about closing it at Mount Vernon, and they leave scarcely any thing to be wished for that the notes of Mr. Sparks have not supplied. It is a complete portraiture of services that have no parallel. It is not a full-length; but there has seldom been a full-length where some of it might not well have been spared. Too much legs and too much drapery have deformed many a picture. We desire to see Washington from the surveyor to the grave; from the time he crossed the Alleghany to the time he crossed that bourne whence no traveller returns. More than that is not necessary, or is not in keeping. These letters at once place him on that high level, below which he never sunk for one moment during his after life.

Some have expressed a wish that these letters had been compressed, or abbreviated in some way, by Mr. Sparks.

From this we infer that such wished the letters shorter, or the volumes fewer, and were indifferent about the process by which the diminution was effected. Fortunately, Mr. Sparks thought differently; that is, he thought as most people of sense and taste would have thought in the like case. He felt it his duty to present transcripts of Gen. Washington; not a refaciamento of his editor. Extracts from them would have been like preserving his war-coat and breeches in the shape of patchwork, or his war-sword in the shape of a pruning-hook or a set of knives and forks. We wanted Washington, the whole of Washington, and nothing but Washington.

We would not lead to any comparison between these Letters of Washington and those which are before us. They are not like each other in any respect, excepting in form. Washington almost always wrote as a public man. He had hardly any private character in this respect from the beginning. If Mr. Sparks found many private letters, he has not published them; and we feel sure he would have done so, had he found them. Washington seemed always booted and spurred. If he ever were in slippers, few had then a sight of him. Mr. Izard, throughout his volume, was in private life. His appointment as one of the Commissioners to France is noticed towards the close, but he had not then begun his duties as such. His letters have, therefore, none of the formal character of an official correspondence. This, however, takes nothing from their interest. On the contrary, the want of such a character gives them a peculiar zest. He wrote as an intelligent, acute observer, to intimate friends, and with none of those restraints which limit the freedom of thought and language. He probably wrote, as to manner, much as he would have spoken, had he been face to face with the persons he addressed. The value of this influence upon his letters cannot fail to be appreciated. He was, at first, on the continent; afterwards in England, in and about London; and then in France. In each of these positions he watched the growth of the disturbances among the colonies, and expresses unreservedly his feelings and opinions respecting them; while his correspondents, in

France, England, Scotland, and even in the Indies, are equally frank on the same subject. This is precisely the information we are most curious to obtain. We have had enough of documentary opinions, of the language of courts, of the reports of ministers and generals. We desire to hear the talk of the streets, the scandal of the parlors, the rumors of the hour.

These letters show how gradually the operation between the two countries took place. They show, by evidence, incomparably more weighty than any official papers, that the colonies were truly willing" to suffer while evils were sufferable;" that the daughter reluctantly separated herself from the mother; that it was with unaffected regret the familiar and endearing term "Home,"-familiarized and endeared by the use of more than a century and a half,-was given up for that of "foreign land." There is no doubt, such is the force of habit, that even the bonds of dependence, and even when they have been made irksome, are severed with feelings that partake as much of pain as of pleasure. It was with sorrow as well as with anger the breach was made.

These letters, also, show that some of these bonds of dependence were not broken without many fears of severe privation. Great Britain, probably, in the first place, more to benefit the parent land than to increase the dependence of her colonies, had made all those colonies consumers as far as possible, and producers as little as possible. They were permitted to produce their daily bread. She could not forbid man to till the ground, or the earth to bring forth her increase. But she laid her interdict upon raiment. She did not prohibit the domestic loom, which was found in every New-England cottage; the shuttle there was plied, and supplied the frugal family with homespun clothes. It was factories and manufactories she would not tolerate. Hence, all those who did not spin and weave for themselves, that is, all the cities, all the South, and much of the middle colonies, were clothed by the mother country. They looked to her for covering from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. This was a state of dependence that had more and stronger bonds to it than at first strike the view.

Mr. Izard frequently alludes to the embarrassment he felt respecting these sumptuary matters. They did not affect, in his mind, the question as to the rights or wrongs of the colonies; their birth-right was at stake, and he did not think it should be forfeited for a mess, or a dress. Still, it was natural for him, in a private correspondence, to state his apprehensions that a rupture would strip his negroes, if not his family. Britain made the negro's blankets, his coarse woollens, and his coarse cottons. She therefore clothed the servile, as well as those who fared sumptuously. These circumstances show the sacrifices the colonies had to make. John Hancock counted his houses and his merchandise as nothing, when these sacrifices were to be made. Others were as patriotic and as ready.

These letters, likewise, help us to solve the historical problem, whether wisdom or folly governed the rulers of Great Britain at the period of our Revolution. Mr. Izard had occasional intercourse with all the distinguished statesmen of that country, at that time. He knew, personally, Lord Chatham, Lord Shelburne, Mr. Burke, &c., and had interviews with Lord George Germaine, Lord North, &c. He well knew their opinions on the great questions of the day, and was frequently consulted by them on the affairs of the colonies. This knowledge and intercourse gave Mr. Izard means of observation that render his remarks highly interesting. He saw the waverings and the obstinacy of the men in power. They paused after the flight from Concord; they rushed on again after the fight on Bunker's Hill. The sword appeared to turn the scale.

The result of the Revolution, undoubtedly, convicted the rulers of Great Britain of having acted unwisely. It does not follow, however, that they were blind when they might have seen. Miscalculations and misapprehensions are inevitably incident to the management of the affairs of nations. The question is, whether any other set of men would probably have acted differently under the same circumstances. The opposition of Lord Chatham, and other antagonists of the dominant party, cannot be considered as evidence that he and they would have done so. Lord Chatham was the most energetic and

uncompromising of statesmen. Had he been in the place of Lord North, it is more than probable, it is almost certain, that he would have been equally unyielding towards the colonies. He might have been, and he probably would have been, more prudent or efficient in his measures of enforcement; but we have little reason for supposing that any ministers of the crown would have failed to claim all the power over the colonies that Lord North claimed. Lord Chatham, while minister, had a more pleasurable task in hand than that of contending with the colonies of Great Britain about their rights. The wrongs of the British Empire were to be vindicated, and he joined the transAtlantic colonies in the vindication. They were led to cement themselves with the mother country by the strongest of all cements, the cement of shedblood. They bled together against France in the Canadas and on the Ohio. The colonies shared in the chagrin at defeats on the Canadian frontier; they took the triumph of Louisburg to themselves; and they had some grounds for belief that the shame of Braddock's defeat would have been avoided, had the young councils they furnished been followed. Lord Chatham well knew the influences of this union in the field, and may have subsequently charged his successors, with some degree of plausibility, with having sown the tares of distrust and alienation among his good seed of confidence and fellowship. It was no doubt fortunate for the colonies that Lord Chatham was not in place when the experiment, as to the taxing-power held by Parliament over the colonies, came to be made. His habitual forecast, energy, and fulness of preparation for all emergencies, would have given the incipient blows a decisive character. It is hardly probable that he would have attempted to extend the Stamp-Act across the Atlantic. It was truly a penny-wise and pound-foolish measure. Once determined, however, he would have stamped in the measure with a strong arm. The impression would have been deep and lasting. Lord Chatham, as a minister, would probably have postponed the Revolution, either by not provoking it, or by being prepared to suppress it, in case of such a provocation. There were causes for disagreement which no folly