As the country has grown older and more populous, and works in all departments of thought have multiplied, it becomes necessary to draw more strictly the line between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power.  Political history, in and of itself, scarcely falls within the limits of this sketch, and yet it cannot be altogether dismissed, for the historian’s art, at its highest, demands imagination, narrative skill, and a sense of unity and proportion in the selection and arrangement of his facts, all of which are literary qualities.  It is significant that many of our best historians have begun authorship in the domain of imaginative literature:  Bancroft with an early volume of poems; Motley with his historical romances, Merry Mount and Morton’s Hope; and Parkman with a novel, Vassall Morton.  The oldest of that modern group of writers that have given America an honorable position in the historical literature of the world was William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859).  Prescott chose for his theme the history of the Spanish conquests in the New World, a subject full of romantic incident and susceptible of that glowing and perhaps slightly overgorgeous coloring which he laid on with a liberal hand.  His completed histories, in their order, are the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, 1837; the Conquest of Mexico, 1843—­a topic which Irving had relinquished to him; and the Conquest of Peru, 1847.  Prescott was fortunate in being born to leisure and fortune, but he had difficulties of another kind to overcome.  He was nearly blind, and had to teach himself Spanish and look up authorities through the help of others, and to write with a noctograph or by amanuenses.

George Bancroft (1800-91) issued the first volume of his great History of the United States in 1834, and exactly half a century later the final volume of the work, bringing the subject down to 1789.  Bancroft had studied at Goettingen, and imbibed from the German historian Heeren the scientific method of historical study.  He had access to original sources, in the nature of collections and state papers in the governmental archives of Europe, of which no American had hitherto been able to avail himself.  His history, in thoroughness of treatment, leaves nothing to be desired, and has become the standard authority on the subject.  As a literary performance merely, it is somewhat wanting in flavor, Bancroft’s manner being heavy and stiff when compared with Motley’s or Parkman’s.  The historian’s services to his country have been publicly recognized by his successive appointments as secretary of the navy, minister to England, and minister to Germany.