an interview with Goethe which he had enjoyed as a boy fifty years before.  Sometimes his talk was of poetry in general and I was much struck with his frequent happy application of quotations to the little events of the drive and phases of feeling that came up as the day went on.  The sun set gloriously, “So stirbt ein Held,” said Bancroft, as he burst with feeling into the beautiful lyric of which these words are a line.  The best German poetry seemed to be at his tongue’s end and he recited it with sympathy and accuracy which called out much admiration from the cultivated German ladies with whom we were driving.  Most interesting of all was Bancroft’s evident passion for roses.  The gardeners, as we stopped, were plainly surprised at his knowledge of their varieties and the best methods of cultivation.  He was so well versed in the lore of the rose and so devoted to its cultivation one might well have thought it his horse and not his hobby.  He possessed at Newport a rose garden far famed for the number of its varieties and the perfection of the flowers, and it was an interesting sight at Washington to see Bancroft, even when nearing ninety, busy in his garden in H Street, one attendant shielding his light figure with a sun umbrella, while another held at hand, hoe, shears, and twine, the implements to train and cull.  Is there a subtle connection between roses and history?  Parkman wrote an elaborate book upon rose culture which I believe is still of authority, and John Fiske had a conservatory opening out of his library and the rose of all flowers was the one he prized.  Here is a neat turn of McMaster.  At a dinner given in his honour a big bunch of American Beauties was opposite to him as he sat.  It fell to me to make a welcoming speech.  Catching at the occasion, I suggested a connection between roses and history and referred to McMaster close behind his American Beauties as an instance in point, at the same time expressing with earnestness my strong admiration of that good writer’s work.  McMaster rose, his face glowing in response to my emphatic compliment.  His speech consisted of only one sentence, “I have one bond with the rose, I blush.”

I owe many favours to Bancroft; the greatest perhaps that he allowed me to consult to my heart’s content the papers of Samuel Adams, a priceless collection which he possessed.  For this he gave me carte blanche to use his library in Washington, though he himself was absent, a favour which he said he had never accorded to an investigator before.  It was an inspiring place for a student, the shelves burdened with treasures in manuscript as well as print.  The most interesting portrait of Bancroft presents him as a nonagenarian, against this impressive background, at work to the last.  The critics of our day minimise Bancroft and his school.  History in that time walked in garments quite too flowing, it is said, and with an overdisplay of the Horatian purple patch.  Our grandsons may feel that the history of our time