I9I2.] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 67 



more refined ideas substituted for the diamond necklaces and hungry 

 relations, it pleased the half loyalist element which still remained in 

 the country, and it pleased a certain class among the patriots who 

 wanted to be able to admire England, her literature, her laws, her 

 social customs, the charming lives of her country gentry, the hedge 

 rows and green fields, and the fashion of London. They could 

 admire and love all these things, have social pleasures with distin- 

 guished Englishmen, talk about the Anglo-Saxon race, its glories 

 and conquests, and yet remain true Americans, because the Revolu- 

 tion had been a mere ministerial war, a ministerial accident, uncon- 

 nected with the rest of England and such an accident could never 

 happen again. 



We might dispose of all the subsequent histories of the Revolu- 

 tion by simply saying that they followed along in this short and easy 

 method. Even Chief Justice Marshall in his Life of Washington 

 published in 1804, though once or twice disposed to break away, trots 

 along in the same old rut. 



In 1809 quite a popular history of the Revolution appeared in 

 French, which went through twenty editions in Europe. It was 

 written by Charles Botta of Northern Italy, who had been a surgeon 

 in the French army, and was appointed by Napoleon on the commis- 

 sion to govern the Italian republic he established. It was made up, 

 the author himself tells us, from the Annual Register, other histories, 

 the parliamentary debates and pamphlets. But it is all Annual Reg- 

 ister and so dull that a modern reader has difficulty in getting through 

 a single chapter. The American translation went through ten edi- 

 tions. Adams and Jefferson, who were still alive, praised it highly. 

 The popularity of such a tedious compilation is hard to understand, 

 unless it was that our people were pleased because it was a French 

 and Italian defence of our Revolution and institutions. 



Hildreth's " History of the United States," published in 1849, 

 devoted parts of the third and fourth volumes to the Revolution. 

 It was a carefully written work, in much better style than its prede- 

 cessors, and is still pleasant to read, but was a conventional chronicle 

 within the established lines. 



It was quickly followed by two other histories, one by Lord 



