Page:The Life of George Washington, Volume 1.djvu/21

Rh much to be regretted that he has not prosecuted his very valuable work according to his original design. So far as it has been executed, it contains internal evidence of the means he possesses for its completion: means unattainable by any inhabitant of the United States. The author has made free use of the materials he has furnished, as well as of those collected by Mr. Belknap, Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Minot, Mr. Smith, and the historian of South Carolina and Georgia. He has also made large extracts from the two chapters written by Mr. Robertson and published since his decease. Had that gentleman lived to finish the work he began, an elegant and valuable history of our country would have been in possession of the public, and the author of the following sheets would have deemed it unnecessary to have introduced the Life of General Washington with any narrative of events preceding the time when that great man appeared on the theatre of action. But we have received from Mr. Robertson only an account of the settlements of the two eldest colonies, and therefore the necessity of prefixing to this work some essay, though a crude one, towards a general history of the English settlements on this continent, still remained.

If Mr. Chalmer or any other person, shall