"This Society, while it is national and continental in the scope of its investigations, strikes down its roots into the soil of this locality, where its founder dwelt, and where its collections are kept.
"For both these reasons we cherish our relations to Mr. Bancroft. He was born within a few rods of this spot. He is descended by the mother's side from an old Worcester County family who were conspicuous in the administration of its public affairs long before the Revolution. His father was one of the six persons who petitioned for the act of incorporation of this Society, and one of its first members. His brother by marriage, Governor Davis, was your predecessor in the President' chair.
"These reasons would be enough to induce us to value our relation. But he has filled a highly honorable and conspicuous place in public life. He is, I believe, the senior person living who has been a member of the Cabinet. He is the senior among living persons who have filled important diplomatic stations. He has represented the United States at Berlin and at St. James.
"His history is, and doubtless will be, the great standard authority upon the important period which it covers. He is the only person living whose judgment would change the place in public estimation held by any of the great statesmen of the Revolutionary times. He has had the rare good fortune among men of letters, to have proposed to himself a great task, requiring a lifetime for its accomplishment, the successful achievement of which is enough to make any life illustrious, and to have lived to complete it with powers of body and mind undiminished. It is his fate to know, while alive, the estimate in which he will be held by posterity. In his case, that knowledge can be only a source of pleasure and satisfaction.
"In this Mr. Bancroft resembles Gibbon. We all remember Gibbon's delightful account of the completion of his great work.
"In another thing, alone among great historians, Mr. Bancroft resembles Gibbon. As an artist he has accomplished that most difficult task of composing a history made up of many separate threads, which must keep on side by side, yet all be subordinate to one main and predominant stream. But his narrative never loses its constant and fascinating interest. No other historian, I believe, except Gibbon, has attempted this without becoming insufferably dull.
"Mr. Bancroft tells the story of thirteen States, separate, yet blending into one National life. It is one of the most wonderful things in our history, that the separate States having so much in common, have preserved so completely, even to the present time, their original and individual characteristics. Rhode Island, held in the hollow of the hand of Massachusetts; Connecticut, so placed that one would think it would become a province of New York; Delaware, whose chief city is but twenty-five miles from Philadelphia, yet preserve their distinctive characteristics as if they were states of the continent of Europe, whose people speak a different language. This shows how perfectly state rights and state freedom are preserved in spite of our National union, how little the power at the centre interferes with the important things that affect the character of a people. Why is it that little Delaware remains Delaware in spite of Pennsylvania, and little Rhode Island remains Rhode Island notwithstanding her neighbor Massachusetts?
What makes the meadow flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its roots, and in that freedom bold.
And so the grandeur of the forest tree
Comes, not from casting in a formal mould,
But from its own divine vitality.
"But Mr. Bancroft is more fortunate than Gibbon. Gibbon wrote of decline, of decay, of dissolution, and death; of the days, to use his own words, 'when giants were becoming pigmies.' Bancroft tells the story of birth, and growth, and youth, and life. His name is to be inseparably associated with a great and interesting period in the world's history; with what in the proud imagination of his countrymen must ever be the greatest and most interesting of all periods, when pigmy villages were becoming giant States. I am sure that it is a delight to this assembly of distinguished scholars, assembled near his birthplace, to send him, at the completion of his great work, and of his eightieth year, their cordial salutation."
I went to see Mr. Bancroft on the evening of the last Sunday in December, 1890. He was sitting in his library up stairs. He received me in his usual emphatic manner, taking both my hands and saying, "My dear friend, how glad I am to see you!" He was alone. He evidently knew me when I went in, and inquired about Worcester, as he commonly did, and expressed his amazement at its remarkable growth.