BANCROFT'S LETTERS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12494, 22 March 1909, Page 1

BANCROFT'S LETTERS.

[ .Theiette.rs of the American historian, George Bancroft, contain many personal impressions of. famous ? men. llius, Bancroft wrote to his wife of Lincoln in 1861, "We have a President without brains." Later on it was Bancroft who pronounced the officialeulogy on Lincoln ... The' American paid two visits to Goethe, and remarks :— "I felt the vast difference between (him) and the many scholars whom I have lately seen. Goethe has tlie caso of a gentleman, speaks with liveliness and energy, but does not seem- to take any longer a lively interest in the affairs of the world." At Leghorn Bancroft met Byron, and found him delightful. "I hardly know if I ever talked with a man so frankly. He is very gay and fashionable in his way of talking, will converse of duels and horses, rows and swimming, and good principles of liberty, and, m short, is one of the pleasantost men in the world."

When Bancroft took up tho diplomatic representation of his country at Berlin, in 18.67, both Bismarck and Moltke courted his society. From Moi tko, whom he called "the • silent ono," he received a philosophic dictum.

"We fell upon the question whether men as they come near their end would like to begin the battle of life anew. 'Who,' said tbe general, 'would live his life over again?' I would not mine. The old story of the Hindoo philosopher is', true, when he said this life is a punishment for transgressions committed under an earlier form of being.' All this, he spoke deliberately and emphatically, and this man is one of the two mosthonoured men in Germany."