I9I2] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 65 



editions. They were necessarily histories of the revolution. His 

 ideas on that event reached every corner of the country and every 

 class of life; and the publishers tell me his *' Life of Washington " 

 still sells. Reckless in statement, indifferent to facts and research, 

 his books are full of popular heroism, religion and morality, which 

 you at first call trash and cant and then, finding it extremely en- 

 tertaining, you declare with a laugh, as you lay down the book, what 

 a clever rogue. 



It is impossible to refrain from quoting from him. He is a most 

 delightful mixture of the Scriptures, Homer, Virgil and the back 

 woods. Everything rages and storms, slashes and tears. At the 

 passage of the stamp act " the passion of the people flew up 500 

 degrees above blood heat." In battle Americans and English plunge 

 their bayonets into one another's breasts and " fall forward together 

 faint, shrieking in death and mingling their smoking blood." Here 

 is his description of Morgan at the last battle of Saratoga. 



" The face of Morgan was like the full moon in a stormy night when she 

 looks down red and fiery on the raging deep, amidst foundering wrecks and 

 cries of drowning seamen ; while his voice like thunder on the hills was heard 

 loud shouting his cavalry to the charge." 



" Far-famed Brittanica," Weems says, " was sitting alone and 

 tearful on her Western cliff, while, with downcast looks, her faith- 

 ful lion lay roaring at her feet." And we must have one more from 

 his description of the Battle of the Cowpens. 



"As when a mammoth suddenly dashes in among a thousand buffaloes, 

 feeding at large on the vast plains of Missouri ; all at once the innumerous 

 herd, with wildly rolling eyes and hideous bellowings, break forth into flight, 

 while close at their heels the roaring monster follows. Earth trembles as 

 they fly. Such was the noise in the chase of Tarleton, when the swords of 

 Washington's cavalry pursued his troops from the famous fields of the 

 Cowpens." 



It is in vain that the historians, the exhaustive investigators, the 

 learned, and the accurate rail at him or ignore him. He is inimi- 

 table. He will live forever. He captured the American people. 

 He was the first to catch their ear. He said exactly what they 

 wanted to hear. He has been read a hundred times more than all 

 the other historians and biographers of the Revolution put together. 



