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THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK.

MR. CARLYLE has somewhere said that there is no topic so thoroughly interesting to mankind as the study of man, and no remark of his is more true to facts. There is a perennial interest in biography, and the eagerness with which the general reader of current news seeks for every item of information regarding those who have made themselves eminent, — in many eases, for facts regarding those who have made themselves infamous, proves that Mr. Carlyle was

even,

correct.

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History is but an enlargement of biography, and it is only correctly written by those who can combine and arrange the details of the biographies of the actors in it in such a way as to impress the reader properly with the relation that they bear to each other.

Interest in any subject grows with knowledge of it, but the mind, especially of the young, requires to be tempted to enter upon even the most entertaining fields of study. The author of this little volume has on other occasions made efforts to lead the young who might favor him with their attention to turn to historical reading. His method has been simply to lay before them the facts that he deemed important for them to be acquainted with, not in childish language, but in as clear and entertaining a narrative form as he could command.

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The present volume is another attempt in the same direction, and it is committed to its readers with a hope that it may entice them to look into some of the more complete books of the same sort. If it should lead any one to make himself familiar with the fascinating works of Mr. Parkman only, the writer would feel amply compensated for the pleasant labor of putting these studies in early American history into their present form.

Probably our own national history in its beginnings has been as arid and little interesting to the young as any, and yet it is full of episodes adapted to arouse the dullest reader. The sketches here presented form in chronological order a series taking the reader from the discovery of the Continent almost to the time of the Revolutionary War.

CAMBRIDGE, September, 1884.

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NCE upon a time there lived in England a young

lady whose name was Anne Dorset. She was of an aristocratic family, beautiful, and of engaging manners. It was long before the times of the Earl of Dorset, or I should have believed that she belonged to his proud family. It was during the reign of that great king, Edward the Third, at a time when the people were stirred by romantic thoughts and deeds. You remember that the celebrated Black Prince was son of this King Edward, and that he was a chivalric warrior who went to France with his father's soldiers and fought at the battles of Cressy and Poitiers, and wrought those deeds of valor that have

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