And on the next page Mr. Bancroft says:  “Edwards, Reid, Kant, and Rousseau were all imbued with religiosity, and all except the last, who spoiled his doctrine by dreamy indolence, were expositors of the active powers of man.”  It is certainly an ingenious mind that finds a resemblance between Edwards and Rousseau.  What exactly is the meaning of “religiosity,” we cannot say; but if it be used as a synonyme of religion, we demur to the assertion that Rousseau was imbued with religion,—­Rousseau, who in his youth allowed an innocent girl to be ruined by accusing her of a theft which he himself had committed, and in his ripened manhood sent to a foundling hospital the children he had had by his mistress,—­whose life was despicable and whose moral creed seemed to be summed up in the doctrine that every natural impulse is to be indulged.  Rousseau was an enthusiast and a sentimentalist; he was a man of the exquisite organization of genius, and there are many passages in his writings which are colored with a half-voluptuous, half-devotional glow; but it seems to us a plain confusion of very obvious moral distinctions to represent such a man as imbued with the spirit of religion.

One of the most animated of Mr. Bancroft’s chapters is the eighth, on the course of opinion in England, in which we have glimpses of Wilkes, of Barre, of Wedderburn, of Lord North, of Burke, and an elaborate character of Fox.  This last is a happy specimen of Mr. Bancroft’s peculiar style of portrait-drawing.  The merits and defects of the subject are presented in a series of pointed and aphoristic sentences; and the likeness is gained, as in a portrait of Rembrandt, by the powerful contrast and proximity of lights and shadows.  Virtues and vices stand side by side, like the black and white squares of a chess-board.  Brilliant as the execution is, the man Charles James Fox seems to us reproduced with more distinctness and individuality in the easier, simpler, more flowing sentences of Lord Brougham.  Mr. Bancroft’s sketch has something of the coldness as well as the sharp outline of bas-relief.  And strange to say, considering Fox’s love of liberty, his love of America, and his hatred of slavery, the historian of liberty and democracy seems hardly to have done him justice.  In the summary of the contents of the chapters prefixed to the volume, he unreservedly writes down “Fox not a great man,” and such is the impression which the text leaves on the mind; but if Fox was not a great man, to whom in the sphere of government and politics can that praise be accorded?

In his Preface to this volume, Mr. Bancroft informs us that one more volume will complete the American Revolution, including the negotiations for peace in 1782; and that for this the materials are collected and arranged, and that it will be completed and published without any unnecessary delay.  This volume will bring into the field Spain, France, and Great Britain, as well as the United States, and, from the nature of the subject it presents, will undoubtedly be so treated by Mr. Bancroft as to be not inferior in interest or value to any of its predecessors.