colonial office records, but attention may be called to another source of information. There is to-day in Halifax a collection of some 600 volumes, made by T. B. Atkins, who had charge of a commission appointed by Howe after 1868, containing material of a valuable character-old papers found in the provinces and excerpts from originals in London, Paris, and Boston, dealing with the period from 1710 to 1749, and relating to all matters touching Nova Scotian history. These papers, which are well arranged, bound, and indexed, are now being in part calendared by Professor MacMechan, of Dalhousie College.

There is another class of material which I think has not been sufficiently studied by students of the political and commercial history of the colonies in the eighteenth century, and of which I should like to say a word in closing. We are all aware of the close connection existing between the political, military, and economic aspects of our history; but I have felt sometimes that we have not laid sufficient stress upon the religious influences. Some indications noted in studying phases of the period inclined me to believe that certain phases of the conflicts which make up so important a part of the history from 1690 to 1750 may find a partial explanation in the growth of new religious sentiments and in the entrance into the field of the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. I can only hint at my suspicions here; the subject is worth keeping in mind. The great collection of church documents is that of Bishop Perry, consisting of 2 octavo volumes for Connecticut, and 5 quarto volumes, 1 each for Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Delaware. These volumes contain largely letters and reports, mostly signed, but some anonymous, from missionaries and others of the society, which was chartered in 1701 and continued the pay of its missionaries until 1785. In the same volumes are also to be found letters written from the colonies to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London. Unfortunately Bishop Perry did not print all the documents in full, and the volumes are to a considerable extent made up of extracts. This fact will send the careful student back to the collection from which Bishop Perry got his material. This collection, consisting of 18 large folio volumes of manuscripts, is that brought to America by Dr. F. B. Hawks in 1836, and at present in the possession of the registrar of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York. But the copies contained in

these volumes are not complete. In the Journal of the General Convention for 1838 is contained Dr. Hawks's own report, in which he says that he made copies from the manuscripts in Lambeth and Fulham and of those papers only that seemed to him "valuable and important." In the case of the S. P. G. Manuscripts he says: "I read the whole and caused transcripts to be made of such portions as were useful in illustrating our history." From this it is evident that Dr. Hawks's work may need to be supplemented by a further examination of the material in London if the student be convinced that such examination would be worth the while. What to Dr. Hawks or Bishop Perry (with church interests in mind) seemed "unimportant" may prove to be very important to the student with other questions before him, though, at the same time it must be added that so far as a comparison of the Hawks' papers with the originals has been made nothing of especial value has been found to be omitted. The S. P. G. papers consist of (1) 26 volumes of entry books, in which were made exact transcripts of the letters received from 1701 to 1736; (2) a series of original letters, roughly bound and rather badly classified, covering the period to 1799 and included in 23 volumes; (3) the journal of the society from the beginning, well kept and carefully indexed.

My time has not allowed me to do more than touch on certain aspects of the period from 1690 to 1750, and to call attention to certain classes of historical material that are indispensable in writing its history. The printed sources are generally known to scholars and are accessible. I have endeavored to lay especial stress upon the manuscript sources which my own experience has shown me are most useful. The period is an excellent one for the investigator, but, owing to the absence of striking incidents and critical movements, is not altogether an easy one. It is a period that must be studied and understood as a whole, for the phases of change and development. are often hidden and the forces at work often slow-moving and obscure.

VI.-STUDY OF AMERICAN COLONIAL HISTORY.

By HERBERT L. OSGOOD, Ph. D., Professor, Columbia University.

THE STUDY OF AMERICAN COLONIAL HISTORY.

By HERBERT L. OSGOOD.

Lord Acton, in his famous inaugural lecture, has selected the American Revolution as, in his opinion, one of the few historic events of which we have, in the main, a view so clear and satisfactory that they "show here and there like Pacific islands in the ocean." Whether or not that statement can be fully and truthfully made concerning the history of the Revolution, it certainly can not be made concerning the period which immediately preceded it. The seventy years lying between 1690 and 1760 is to a large extent an unknown period. Save upon the external history of the French and Indian wars, absolutely no satisfactory work of a general character has been done. Our historians come up to that period with a fairly full and comprehensive narrative, and then they become scrappy, inconclusive, and largely worthless. Bancroft's treatment of the colonial period, as a whole, is little more than a sketch, and he disposes of British administration in the eighteenth century, so far as it was not directly concerned with military affairs, in about three chapters. The last two volumes of Mr. Palfrey's work are the weakest of the five, and there are other reasons for this besides the effects produced by sickness and age. The stream of Mr. Doyle's narrative, which began with so broad and even a flow, seems to have lost itself somewhere in the desert of the middle colonies, and, we fear, will never even reach the opening of the eighteenth century. We hope he has not been diverted and delayed by efforts to prove the survival and extension of Dutch institutions and influences in America. Mr. Fiske is the only historian who at present boldly undertakes to span the gulf, and it will be interesting to see how strong and beautiful may be the structure which he will throw across it. If in the meantime we fall back upon the writings of the State historians, we shall find