plausible volubility of Gates, things might have taken on a different shape. As it was, he did the only thing that could, reasonably, have been undertaken. He fell back before the hostile forces, breaking up bridges, felling trees, and obstructing roads; thus impeding its advance, and getting it daily involved in ever-increasing difficulties, from desertions, sickness, impatience, and lack of supplies. Meantime, he kept his own troops comparatively fresh for work, gave some chance for increased supplies and reinforcement, and, above all, gained time. There was strength for the invaded, and weakness for the invaders, in every hour's delay before the shock of battle came. Thus Schuyler fell back to the island at the mouth of the Mohawk, and held his troops there. Meantime, there were great searchings of heart in Congress (for, in truth, a session of Congress was, even in those days, not without dangers to the country), and the New England intriguers, seconded by the selfish and unscrupulous Gates, were in the ascendant.

Having patiently waited for the depletion of the enemy's advance, and the gathering of strength to his own army, Schuyler was ready, toward the end of August, to move against Burgoyne, when, on the 19th of that month, General Gates arrived in camp, and assumed the chief command. He came just in time to seize the results for which Schuyler's patient wisdom had made ready. No man of ordinary ability and common-sense could help crushing Burgoyne, if he carried out the plans already laid. And yet, had not Arnold outrun the subaltern whom Gates sent to call him back, it is hardly to be doubted that the battle of Bemis Heights would have resulted in an American defeat, and that Burgoyne "could have marched into Albany at the autumnal equinox, a victor." Gates gathered the laurels; the real honors belonged to Schuyler.

Schuyler's noble nature comes out, in strong contrast to his rival's selfish meanness, in his dignified acceptance of his displacement by Congress, in his patriotic continuance in office, and in unwearied labors after the most stinging insult, in his magnanimous conduct to Gates after the surrender, in the generous hospitality with which he received the captive generals. "In that house," wrote Burgoyne, "I remained during my whole stay in Albany, with a table of more than twenty covers for me and my friends, and every other demonstration of hospitality." It was the same spirit, that of a Bayard or a Sidney, which, twenty-two years before, had brought tears to the eyes of the Baron Dieskau, as it did now to those of the British commander-in-chief, when he exclaimed, "Indeed this is doing too

much for a man who has ravaged their lands and burned their dwellings." God be thanked for such bright characters in history!

Dr. Lossing has told in full the story of the intrigue to ruin Schuyler. It was part and parcel of the plot against Washington; and of both, the animating spirit and the true originator was Horatio Gates. The New England cabal and the Conway cabal alike held him as the pivot on which they turned.

The part which the New England delegates played in the plot against Schuyler is most discreditable. One New England State, Connecticut, may remember, with just pride, how sturdy and incorruptible Jonathan Trumbull, who was too true and honest a man not to recognize real ability and worth, and not to honor it when he did recognize it, stood by the abused patriot all through. It is mortifying to find Mr. Bancroft writing here in the interests of historic untruth, and repeating stale invective, which has not now even the poor possibility of misunderstanding to excuse it. Dr. Lossing disposes of Mr. Bancroft's platitudes kindly but fully, corrects his extraordinary mistakes, supplies his disingenuous lacunae, and closes his strictures with these well-deserved words: "I do not hesitate to say that in the course of my reading I have never seen, in the same number of pages, so many positive errors as appear in Mr. Bancroft's brief review of the career of General Schuyler in the campaign of 1777, up to the time when he was superseded by General Gates."

Philip Schuyler stands out on the canvas of American history a character of rare attractiveness, and one which it would be well for the young men of our generation to become familiar with. The contact would by no means be barren of results. We trust Dr. Lossing's interesting volumes may serve this purpose. They can serve no better one.

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One stricture on them we must make before we close. When their author shall examine, with as much care as he has done other portions of our annals, the attempts to introduce into this country a colonial episcopate, we are well assured that he will blot many a phrase and many a statement in his present volumes. If he will through the details of the long-continued exertions, and the fruitless applications of American colonial Churchmen for the episcopate, he will find that they sought no State officers with civil powers and bishops' courts, with lordly revenues and pomp, but simply shepherds of the flock which was scattered abroad in these western wilds. And if, on the other hand, he will look over such publications as "Minutes of the Convention of Delegates" (printed in 1843, in an incautious moment of antiquarian zeal), he will see how per

sistently, in the face of every avowal and every offer, the changes were rung on "appropriations of land and money," on "prelatic pomp and splendor," on "the tyranny of bishops' courts," and things of the like nature. Dr. Lossing's candor as a judge would, we are certain, after such examination, reverse some conclusions which he holds just now; and his eminent fairness as an historian would lead him to declare such reversal to the large audience to which he speaks.

E have seen how the first preachers of Christianity in Scot

Wland appeared there as ambassadors commissioned by the

Catholic Christian Church, claiming to have received through it, from Christ, a special spiritual authority and power to convey in His name mysterious spiritual privileges, and to dispense mysterious spiritual grace. We have seen that this Church became a national establishment by the act of the civil rulers recognizing this authority as bestowed on it from above, and giving it free scope and abundant means for the exercise of its power over all the souls within the realm. We have seen how Rome was regarded as possessed, in a special and preeminent degree, of this mystical power and Divine commission, and how the Church, therefore, tended constantly to assume more and more a position of subordination and conformity to Rome. We have seen how this lofty spiritual attitude of the Church enabled it to do a Church's work with respect to every person, of whatever rank, in every portion of the land. Every one recognized the right of his bishop and his priest to speak to him, confessed that a peculiar power from Christ accompanied their acts and words, and felt that to disregard their warnings and reject their ministrations was to incur a sentence of condemnation from their

Lord. We have seen how this spiritual power held its own until it was encountered by a deeply-ingrained conviction that it was employed no longer for, but against, the truth and holiness which Christ had established it to maintain; and how, when it had once lost, in this way, its hold as a spiritual power over the conscience, all the power of the State was unable to preserve its supremacy and efficiency as an establishment. We have seen, too, how the system inaugurated under the auspices of John Knox, as a substitute for the ancient hierarchy, though established by the law, and preaching a doctrine accepted by the people, proved unable to hold its own and do its work from the want of any conviction in the people that its ministers had a peculiar authority to speak and act for God, which each man needed to have exerted on his behalf. We have seen how Andrew Melville, by teaching that Presbyterianism was the genuine form of government established by the authority of Christ and His Apostles in the Church, and that, therefore, to depart from that form, and to separate from the Church where it existed, was a separation from Christ's kingdom, and a rebellion against His sovereignty, succeeded in arousing an intense devotion to that system of government, and to the ministers as governors, though without the former reverence and value for their spiritual function as authorized dispensers of Divine grace, apart from their personal gifts and effectiveness as preachers. We have seen how a peculiar combination of passions, prejudices, and interests contributed to give the champions of Presbyterian government success in their resistance to the endeavor of the sovereigns to impose, often by unworthy means and for unworthy ends, a system of Church government by bishops, who were to be rather convenient instruments and supple agents for the political purposes of the king, than free and spiritual pastors of the flock. We have seen how this fatally close alliance between Church and State involved the ruin of the monarchy and the subversion of the Church; and how the religious system, which had acquired for itself the allegiance of the most fervent of the people, claimed, by right of conquest, as well as right Divine, the position of the legal national establishment in place of that which it overthrew. We have now to see how it acquitted itself in that position, and whether it proved itself capable of holding the position and doing the work of a national Church, in conveying the teaching and spirit of Christ Jesus by the agency of its ministers through the land.

We have said that Presbyterianism conquered for itself the position of a legal establishment; and it began to exercise its power as a conqueror. The civil power under the kings had lent the arm of

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