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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Essays, by James Ford Rhodes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Historical Essays
+
+Author: James Ford Rhodes
+
+Release Date: April 18, 2008 [EBook #25099]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL ESSAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, David Wilson and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL ESSAYS
+
+
+BY
+JAMES FORD RHODES, LL.D., D.Litt.
+
+Author of the _History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850
+to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877_
+
+
+New York
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+1909
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+Copyright, 1909,
+By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1909.
+
+Norwood Press
+J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In offering to the public this volume of Essays, all but two of which
+have been read at various places on different occasions, I am aware that
+there is some repetition in ideas and illustrations, but, as the dates
+of their delivery and previous publication are indicated, I am letting
+them stand substantially as they were written and delivered.
+
+I am indebted to my son, Daniel P. Rhodes, for a literary revision of
+these Essays; and I have to thank the editors of the _Atlantic Monthly_,
+of _Scribner's Magazine_, and of the _Century Magazine_ for leave to
+reprint the articles which have already appeared in their periodicals.
+
+  Boston, November, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+      I. History                                                       1
+           President's Inaugural Address, American Historical
+           Association, Boston, December 27, 1899; printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1900.
+
+     II. Concerning the Writing of History                            25
+           Address delivered at the Meeting of the American
+           Historical Association in Detroit, December, 1900.
+
+    III. The Profession of Historian                                  47
+           Lecture read before the History Club of Harvard
+           University, April 27, 1908, and at Yale, Columbia, and
+           Western Reserve Universities.
+
+     IV. Newspapers as Historical Sources                             81
+           A Paper read before the American Historical Association
+           in Washington on December 29, 1908; printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of May, 1909.
+
+      V. Speech prepared for the Commencement Dinner at Harvard
+         University, June 26, 1901. (Not delivered)                   99
+
+     VI. Edward Gibbon                                               105
+           Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and
+           printed in _Scribner's Magazine_ of June, 1909.
+
+    VII. Samuel Rawson Gardiner                                      141
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the March Meeting of 1902, and printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of May, 1902.
+
+   VIII. William E. H. Lecky                                         151
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the November Meeting of 1903.
+
+     IX. Sir Spencer Walpole                                         159
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the November Meeting of 1907.
+
+      X. John Richard Green                                          169
+           Address at a Gathering of Historians on June 5, 1909, to
+           mark the Placing of a Tablet in the Inner Quadrangle of
+           Jesus College, Oxford, to the Memory of John Richard
+           Green.
+
+     XI. Edward L. Pierce                                            175
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the October Meeting of 1897.
+
+    XII. Jacob D. Cox                                                183
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the October Meeting of 1900.
+
+   XIII. Edward Gaylord Bourne                                       189
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the March Meeting of 1908.
+
+    XIV. The Presidential Office                                     201
+           An Essay printed in _Scribner's Magazine_ of February,
+           1903.
+
+     XV. A Review of President Hayes's Administration                243
+           Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Graduate
+           School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, on
+           October 8, 1908; printed in the _Century Magazine_ for
+           October, 1909.
+
+    XVI. Edwin Lawrence Godkin                                       265
+           Lecture read at Harvard University, April 13, 1908;
+           printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1908.
+
+   XVII. Who Burned Columbia?                                        299
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the November Meeting of 1901, and printed in the
+           _American Historical Review_ of April, 1902.
+
+  XVIII. A New Estimate of Cromwell                                  315
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the January Meeting of 1898, and printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of June, 1898.
+
+  Index                                                              325
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+President's Inaugural Address, American Historical Association, Boston,
+December 27, 1899; printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL ESSAYS
+
+
+HISTORY[1]
+
+
+My theme is history. It is an old subject, which has been discoursed
+about since Herodotus, and I should be vain indeed if I flattered myself
+that I could say aught new concerning the methods of writing it, when
+this has for so long a period engaged the minds of so many gifted men.
+Yet to a sympathetic audience, to people who love history, there is
+always the chance that a fresh treatment may present the commonplaces in
+some different combination, and augment for the moment an interest which
+is perennial.
+
+Holding a brief for history as do I your representative, let me at once
+concede that it is not the highest form of intellectual endeavor; let us
+at once agree that it were better that all the histories ever written
+were burned than for the world to lose Homer and Shakespeare. Yet as it
+is generally true that an advocate rarely admits anything without
+qualification, I should not be loyal to my client did I not urge that
+Shakespeare was historian as well as poet. We all prefer his Antony and
+Cleopatra and Julius Cæsar to the Lives in North's Plutarch which
+furnished him his materials. The history is in substance as true as
+Plutarch, the dramatic force greater; the language is better than that
+of Sir Thomas North, who himself did a remarkable piece of work when he
+gave his country a classic by Englishing a French version of the
+stories of the Greek. It is true as Macaulay wrote, the historical plays
+of Shakespeare have superseded history. When we think of Henry V, it is
+of Prince Hal, the boon companion of Falstaff, who spent his youth in
+brawl and riot, and then became a sober and duty-loving king; and our
+idea of Richard III. is a deceitful, dissembling, cruel wretch who knew
+no touch of pity, a bloody tyrant who knew no law of God or man.
+
+The Achilles of Homer was a very living personage to Alexander. How
+happy he was, said the great general, when he visited Troy, "in having
+while he lived so faithful a friend, and when he was dead so famous a
+poet to proclaim his actions"! In our century, as more in consonance
+with society under the régime of contract, when force has largely given,
+pay to craft, we feel in greater sympathy with Ulysses; "The one person
+I would like to have met and talked with," Froude used to say, "was
+Ulysses. How interesting it would be to have his opinion on universal
+suffrage, and on a House of Parliament where Thersites is listened to as
+patiently as the king of men!"
+
+We may also concede that, in the realm of intellectual endeavor, the
+natural and physical sciences should have the precedence of history. The
+present is more important than the past, and those sciences which
+contribute to our comfort, place within the reach of the laborer and
+mechanic as common necessaries what would have been the highest luxury
+to the Roman emperor or to the king of the Middle Ages, contribute to
+health and the preservation of life, and by the development of railroads
+make possible such a gathering as this,--these sciences, we cheerfully
+admit, outrank our modest enterprise, which, in the words of Herodotus,
+is "to preserve from decay the remembrance of what men have done." It
+may be true, as a geologist once said, in extolling his study at the
+expense of the humanities, "Rocks do not lie, although men do;" yet, on
+the other hand, the historic sense, which during our century has
+diffused itself widely, has invaded the domain of physical science. If
+you are unfortunate enough to be ill, and consult a doctor, he
+expatiates on the history of your disease. It was once my duty to attend
+the Commencement exercises of a technical school, when one of the
+graduates had a thesis on bridges. As he began by telling how they were
+built in Julius Cæsar's time, and tracing at some length the development
+of the art during the period of the material prosperity of the Roman
+Empire, he had little time and space left to consider their construction
+at the present day. One of the most brilliant surgeons I ever knew, the
+originator of a number of important surgical methods, who, being
+physician as well, was remarkable in his expedients for saving life when
+called to counsel in grave and apparently hopeless cases, desired to
+write a book embodying his discoveries and devices, but said that the
+feeling was strong within him that he must begin his work with an
+account of medicine in Egypt, and trace its development down to our own
+time. As he was a busy man in his profession, he lacked the leisure to
+make the preliminary historical study, and his book was never written.
+Men of affairs, who, taking "the present time by the top," are looked
+upon as devoted to the physical and mechanical sciences, continually pay
+tribute to our art. President Garfield, on his deathbed, asked one of
+his most trusted Cabinet advisers, in words that become pathetic as one
+thinks of the opportunities destroyed by the assassin's bullet, "Shall I
+live in history?" A clever politician, who knew more of ward meetings,
+caucuses, and the machinery of conventions than he did of history
+books, and who was earnest for the renomination of President Arthur in
+1884, said to me, in the way of clinching his argument, "That
+administration will live in history." So it was, according to Amyot, in
+the olden time. "Whensoever," he wrote, "the right sage and virtuous
+Emperor of Rome, Alexander Severus, was to consult of any matter of
+great importance, whether it concerned war or government, he always
+called such to counsel as were reported to be well seen in histories."
+"What," demanded Cicero of Atticus, "will history say of me six hundred
+years hence?"
+
+Proper concessions being made to poetry and the physical sciences, our
+place in the field remains secure. Moreover, we live in a fortunate age;
+for was there ever so propitious a time for writing history as in the
+last forty years? There has been a general acquisition of the historic
+sense. The methods of teaching history have so improved that they may be
+called scientific. Even as the chemist and physicist, we talk of
+practice in the laboratory. Most biologists will accept Haeckel's
+designation of "the last forty years as the age of Darwin," for the
+theory of evolution is firmly established. The publication of the Origin
+of Species, in 1859, converted it from a poet's dream and philosopher's
+speculation to a well-demonstrated scientific theory. Evolution,
+heredity, environment, have become household words, and their
+application to history has influenced every one who has had to trace the
+development of a people, the growth of an institution, or the
+establishment of a cause. Other scientific theories and methods have
+affected physical science as potently, but none has entered so vitally
+into the study of man. What hitherto the eye of genius alone could
+perceive may become the common property of every one who cares to read a
+dozen books. But with all of our advantages, do we write better history
+than was written before the year 1859, which we may call the line of
+demarcation between the old and the new? If the English, German, and
+American historical scholars should vote as to who were the two best
+historians, I have little doubt that Thucydides and Tacitus would have a
+pretty large majority. If they were asked to name a third choice, it
+would undoubtedly lie between Herodotus and Gibbon. At the meeting of
+this association in Cleveland, when methods of historical teaching were
+under discussion, Herodotus and Thucydides, but no others, were
+mentioned as proper object lessons. What are the merits of Herodotus?
+Accuracy in details, as we understand it, was certainly not one of them.
+Neither does he sift critically his facts, but intimates that he will
+not make a positive decision in the case of conflicting testimony. "For
+myself," he wrote, "my duty is to report all that is said, but I am not
+obliged to believe it all alike,--a remark which may be understood to
+apply to my whole history." He had none of the wholesome skepticism
+which we deem necessary in the weighing of historical evidence; on the
+contrary, he is frequently accused of credulity. Nevertheless, Percy
+Gardner calls his narrative nobler than that of Thucydides, and Mahaffy
+terms it an "incomparable history." "The truth is," wrote Macaulay in
+his diary, when he was forty-nine years old, "I admire no historians
+much except Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus." Sir M. E. Grant Duff
+devoted his presidential address of 1895, before the Royal Historical
+Society, wholly to Herodotus, ending with the conclusion, "The fame of
+Herodotus, which has a little waned, will surely wax again." Whereupon
+the London Times devoted a leader to the subject. "We are concerned," it
+said, "to hear, on authority so eminent, that one of the most delightful
+writers of antiquity has a little waned of late in favor with the
+world. If this indeed be the case, so much the worse for the world....
+When Homer and Dante and Shakespeare are neglected, then will Herodotus
+cease to be read."
+
+There we have the secret of his hold upon the minds of men. He knows how
+to tell a story, said Professor Hart, in the discussion previously
+referred to, in Cleveland. He has "an epic unity of plan," writes
+Professor Jebb. Herodotus has furnished delight to all generations,
+while Polybius, more accurate and painstaking, a learned historian and a
+practical statesman, gathers dust on the shelf or is read as a penance.
+Nevertheless, it may be demonstrated from the historical literature of
+England of our century that literary style and great power of narration
+alone will not give a man a niche in the temple of history. Herodotus
+showed diligence and honesty, without which his other qualities would
+have failed to secure him the place he holds in the estimation of
+historical scholars.
+
+From Herodotus we naturally turn to Thucydides, who in the beginning
+charms historical students by his impression of the seriousness and
+dignity of his business. History, he writes, will be "found profitable
+by those who desire an exact knowledge of the past as a key to the
+future, which in all human probability will repeat or resemble the past.
+My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which
+is heard and forgotten." Diligence, accuracy, love of truth, and
+impartiality are merits commonly ascribed to Thucydides, and the
+internal evidence of the history bears out fully the general opinion.
+But, in my judgment, there is a tendency to rate, in the comparative
+estimates, the Athenian too high, for the possession of these qualities;
+for certainly some modern writers have possessed all of these merits in
+an eminent degree. When Jowett wrote in the preface to his translation,
+Thucydides "stands absolutely alone among the historians, not only of
+Hellas, but of the world, in his impartiality and love of truth," he was
+unaware that a son of his own university was writing the history of a
+momentous period of his own country, in a manner to impugn the
+correctness of that statement. When the Jowett Thucydides appeared,
+Samuel R. Gardiner had published eight volumes of his history, though he
+had not reached the great Civil War, and his reputation, which has since
+grown with a cumulative force, was not fully established; but I have now
+no hesitation in saying that the internal evidence demonstrates that in
+impartiality and love of truth Gardiner is the peer of Thucydides. From
+the point of view of external evidence, the case is even stronger for
+Gardiner; he submits to a harder test. That he has been able to treat so
+stormy, so controverted, and so well known a period as the seventeenth
+century in England, with hardly a question of his impartiality, is a
+wonderful tribute. In fact, in an excellent review of his work I have
+seen him criticised for being too impartial. On the other hand, Grote
+thinks that he has found Thucydides in error,--in the long dialogue
+between the Athenian representatives and the Melians. "This dialogue,"
+Grote writes, "can hardly represent what actually passed, except as to a
+few general points which the historian has followed out into deductions
+and illustrations, thus dramatizing the given situation in a powerful
+and characteristic manner." Those very words might characterize
+Shakespeare's account of the assassination of Julius Cæsar, and his
+reproduction of the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony. Compare the
+relation in Plutarch with the third act of the tragedy, and see how, in
+his amplification of the story, Shakespeare has remained true to the
+essential facts of the time. Plutarch gives no account of the speeches
+of Brutus and Mark Antony, confining himself, to an allusion to the
+one, and a reference to the other; but Appian of Alexandria, in his
+history, has reported them. The speeches in Appian lack the force which
+they have in Shakespeare, nor do they seemingly fit into the situation
+as well. I have adverted to this criticism of Grote, not that I love
+Thucydides less, but that I love Shakespeare more. For my part, the
+historian's candid acknowledgment in the beginning has convinced me of
+the essential--not the literal--truth of his accounts of speeches and
+dialogues. "As to the speeches," wrote the Athenian, "which were made
+either before or during the war, it was hard for me, and for others who
+reported them to me, to recollect the exact words. I have therefore put
+into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion,
+expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them; while at the
+same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general
+purport of what was actually said." That is the very essence of candor.
+But be the historian as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, he shall not
+escape calumny. Mahaffy declares that, "although all modern historians
+quote Thucydides with more confidence than they would quote the
+Gospels," the Athenian has exaggerated; he is one-sided, partial,
+misleading, dry, and surly. Other critics agree with Mahaffy that he has
+been unjust to Cleon, and has screened Nicias from blame that was his
+due for defective generalship.
+
+We approach Tacitus with respect. We rise from reading his Annals, his
+History, and his Germany with reverence. We know that we have been in
+the society of a gentleman who had a high standard of morality and
+honor. We feel that our guide was a serious student, a solid thinker,
+and a man of the world; that he expressed his opinions and delivered his
+judgments with a remarkable freedom from prejudice. He draws us to him
+with sympathy. He sounds the same mournful note which we detect in
+Thucydides. Tacitus deplores the folly and dissoluteness of the rulers
+of his nation; he bewails the misfortunes of his country. The merits we
+ascribe to Thucydides, diligence, accuracy, love of truth, impartiality,
+are his. The desire to quote from Tacitus is irresistible. "The more I
+meditate," he writes, "on the events of ancient and modern times, the
+more I am struck with the capricious uncertainty which mocks the
+calculations of men in all their transactions." Again: "Possibly there
+is in all things a kind of cycle, and there may be moral revolutions
+just as there are changes of seasons." "Commonplaces!" sneer the
+scientific historians. True enough, but they might not have been
+commonplaces if Tacitus had not uttered them, and his works had not been
+read and re-read until they have become a common possession of
+historical students. From a thinker who deemed the time "out of joint,"
+as Tacitus obviously did, and who, had he not possessed great strength
+of mind and character, might have lapsed into a gloomy pessimism, what
+noble words are these: "This I regard as history's highest function: to
+let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation
+of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds." The modesty of the
+Roman is fascinating. "Much of what I have related," he says, "and shall
+have to relate, may perhaps, I am aware, seem petty trifles to
+record.... My labors are circumscribed and unproductive of renown to the
+author." How agreeable to place in contrast with this the prophecy of
+his friend, the younger Pliny, in a letter to the historian: "I
+augur--nor does my augury deceive me--that your histories will be
+immortal: hence all the more do I desire to find a place in them."
+
+To my mind, one of the most charming things in historical literature is
+the praise which one great historian bestows upon another. Gibbon
+speaks of "the discerning eye" and "masterly pencil of Tacitus,--the
+first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study
+of facts," "whose writings will instruct the last generations of
+mankind." He has produced an immortal work, "every sentence of which is
+pregnant with the deepest observations and most lively images." I
+mention Gibbon, for it is more than a strong probability that in
+diligence, accuracy, and love of truth he is the equal of Tacitus. A
+common edition of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire is that with notes by Dean Milman, Guizot, and Dr. Smith.
+Niebuhr, Villemain, and Sir James Mackintosh are each drawn upon for
+criticism. Did ever such a fierce light beat upon a history? With what
+keen relish do the annotators pounce upon mistakes or inaccuracies, and
+in that portion of the work which ends with the fall of the Western
+Empire how few do they find! Would Tacitus stand the supreme test
+better? There is, so far as I know, only one case in which we may
+compare his Annals with an original record. On bronze tablets found at
+Lyons in the sixteenth century is engraved the same speech made by the
+Emperor Claudius to the Senate that Tacitus reports. "Tacitus and the
+tablets," writes Professor Jebb, "disagree hopelessly in language and in
+nearly all the detail, but agree in the general line of argument."
+Gibbon's work has richly deserved its life of more than one hundred
+years, a period which I believe no other modern history has endured.
+Niebuhr, in a course of lectures at Bonn, in 1829, said that Gibbon's
+"work will never be excelled." At the Gibbon Centenary Commemoration in
+London, in 1894, many distinguished men, among whom the Church had a
+distinct representation, gathered together to pay honor to him who, in
+the words of Frederic Harrison, had written "the most perfect book that
+English prose (outside its fiction) possesses." Mommsen, prevented by
+age and work from being present, sent his tribute. No one, he said,
+would in the future be able to read the history of the Roman Empire
+unless he read Edward Gibbon. The Times, in a leader devoted to the
+subject, apparently expressed the general voice: "'Back to Gibbon' is
+already, both here and among the scholars of Germany and France, the
+watchword of the younger historians."
+
+I have now set forth certain general propositions which, with time for
+adducing the evidence in detail, might, I think, be established: that,
+in the consensus of learned people, Thucydides and Tacitus stand at the
+head of historians; and that it is not alone their accuracy, love of
+truth, and impartiality which entitle them to this preëminence since
+Gibbon and Gardiner among the moderns possess equally the same
+qualities. What is it, then, that makes these men supreme? In venturing
+a solution of this question, I confine myself necessarily to the English
+translations of the Greek and Latin authors. We have thus a common
+denominator of language, and need not take into account the unrivaled
+precision and terseness of the Greek and the force and clearness of the
+Latin. It seems to me that one special merit of Thucydides and Tacitus
+is their compressed narrative,--that they have related so many events
+and put so much meaning in so few words. Our manner of writing history
+is really curious. The histories which cover long periods of time are
+brief; those which have to do with but a few years are long. The works
+of Thucydides and Tacitus are not like our compendiums of history, which
+merely touch on great affairs, since want of space precludes any
+elaboration. Tacitus treats of a comparatively short epoch, Thucydides
+of a much shorter one: both histories are brief. Thucydides and Macaulay
+are examples of extremes. The Athenian tells the story of twenty-four
+years in one volume; the Englishman takes nearly five volumes of equal
+size for his account of seventeen years. But it is safe to say that
+Thucydides tells us as much that is worth knowing as Macaulay. One is
+concise, the other is not. It is impossible to paraphrase the fine parts
+of Thucydides, but Macaulay lends himself readily to such an exercise.
+The thought of the Athenian is so close that he has got rid of all
+redundancies of expression: hence the effort to reproduce his ideas in
+other words fails. The account of the plague in Athens has been studied
+and imitated, and every imitation falls short of the original not only
+in vividness but in brevity. It is the triumph of art that in this and
+in other splendid portions we wish more had been told. As the French
+say, "the secret of wearying is to say all," and this the Athenian
+thoroughly understood. Between our compendiums, which tell too little,
+and our long general histories, which tell too much, are Thucydides and
+Tacitus.
+
+Again, it is a common opinion that our condensed histories lack life and
+movement. This is due in part to their being written generally from a
+study of second-hand--not original--materials. Those of the Athenian and
+the Roman are mainly the original.
+
+I do not think, however, that we may infer that we have a much greater
+mass of materials, and thereby excuse our modern prolixity. In written
+documents, of course, we exceed the ancients, for we have been flooded
+with these by the art of printing. Yet any one who has investigated any
+period knows how the same facts are told over and over again, in
+different ways, by various writers; and if one can get beyond the mass
+of verbiage and down to the really significant original material, what a
+simplification of ideas there is, what a lightening of the load! I own
+that this process of reduction is painful, and thereby our work is made
+more difficult than that of the ancients. A historian will adapt himself
+naturally to the age in which he lives, and Thucydides made use of the
+matter that was at his hand. "Of the events of the war," he wrote, "I
+have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to
+any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw
+myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and
+particular inquiry. The task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses
+of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they
+remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the other."
+His materials, then, were what he saw and heard. His books and his
+manuscripts were living men. Our distinguished military historian, John
+C. Ropes, whose untimely death we deplore, might have written his
+history from the same sort of materials; for he was contemporary with
+our Civil War, and followed the daily events with intense interest. A
+brother of his was killed at Gettysburg, and he had many friends in the
+army. He paid at least one memorable visit to Meade's headquarters in
+the field, and at the end of the war had a mass of memories and
+impressions of the great conflict. He never ceased his inquiries; he
+never lost a chance to get a particular account from those who took part
+in battles or campaigns; and before he began his Story of the Civil War,
+he too could have said, "I made the most careful and particular inquiry"
+of generals and officers on both sides, and of men in civil office privy
+to the great transactions. His knowledge drawn from living lips was
+marvelous, and his conversation, when he poured this knowledge forth,
+often took the form of a flowing narrative in an animated style. While
+there are not, so far as I remember, any direct references in his two
+volumes to these memories, or to memoranda of conversations which he
+had with living actors after the close of the war drama, and while his
+main authority is the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
+Armies,--which, no one appreciated better than he, were unique
+historical materials,--nevertheless this personal knowledge trained his
+judgment and gave color to his narrative.
+
+It is pretty clear that Thucydides spent a large part of a life of about
+threescore years and ten in gathering materials and writing his history.
+The mass of facts which he set down or stored away in his memory must
+have been enormous. He was a man of business, and had a home in Thrace
+as well as in Athens, traveling probably at fairly frequent intervals
+between the two places; but the main portion of the first forty years of
+his life was undoubtedly spent in Athens, where, during those glorious
+years of peace and the process of beautifying the city, he received the
+best education a man could get. To walk about the city and view the
+buildings and statues was both directly and insensibly a refining
+influence. As Thucydides himself, in the funeral oration of Pericles,
+said of the works which the Athenian saw around him, "the daily delight
+of them banishes gloom." There was the opportunity to talk with as good
+conversers as the world has ever known; and he undoubtedly saw much of
+the men who were making history. There was the great theater and the
+sublime poetry. In a word, the life of Thucydides was adapted to the
+gathering of a mass of historical materials of the best sort; and his
+daily walk, his reading, his intense thought, gave him an intellectual
+grasp of the facts he has so ably handled. Of course he was a genius,
+and he wrote in an effective literary style; but seemingly his natural
+parts and acquired talents are directed to this: a digestion of his
+materials, and a compression of his narrative without taking the vigor
+out of his story in a manner I believe to be without parallel. He
+devoted a life to writing a volume. His years after the peace was
+broken, his career as a general, his banishment and enforced residence
+in Thrace, his visit to the countries of the Peloponnesian allies with
+whom Athens was at war,--all these gave him a signal opportunity to
+gather materials, and to assimilate them in the gathering. We may fancy
+him looking at an alleged fact on all sides, and turning it over and
+over in his mind; we know that he must have meditated long on ideas,
+opinions, and events; and the result is a brief, pithy narrative.
+Tradition hath it that Demosthenes copied out this history eight times,
+or even learned it by heart. Chatham, urging the removal of the forces
+from Boston, had reason to refer to the history of Greece, and, that he
+might impress it upon the lords that he knew whereof he spoke, declared,
+"I have read Thucydides."
+
+Of Tacitus likewise is conciseness a well-known merit. Living in an age
+of books and libraries, he drew more from the written word than did
+Thucydides; and his method of working, therefore, resembled more our
+own. These are common expressions of his: "It is related by most of the
+writers of those times;" I adopt the account "in which the authors are
+agreed;" this account "agrees with those of the other writers." Relating
+a case of recklessness of vice in Messalina, he acknowledges that it
+will appear fabulous, and asserts his truthfulness thus: "But I would
+not dress up my narrative with fictions, to give it an air of marvel,
+rather than relate what has been stated to me or written by my seniors."
+He also speaks of the authority of tradition, and tells what he
+remembers "to have heard from aged men." He will not paraphrase the
+eloquence of Seneca after he had his veins opened, because the very
+words of the philosopher had been published; but when, a little later,
+Flavius the tribune came to die, the historian gives this report of his
+defiance of Nero. "I hated you," the tribune said to the emperor; "nor
+had you a soldier more true to you while you deserved to be loved. I
+began to hate you from the time you showed yourself the impious murderer
+of your mother and your wife, a charioteer, a stage-player, an
+incendiary." "I have given the very words," Tacitus adds, "because they
+were not, like those of Seneca, published, though the rough and vigorous
+sentiments of a soldier ought to be no less known." Everywhere we see in
+Tacitus, as in Thucydides, a dislike of superfluous detail, a closeness
+of thought, a compression of language. He was likewise a man of affairs,
+but his life work was his historical writings, which, had we all of
+them, would fill probably four moderate-sized octavo volumes.
+
+To sum up, then: Thucydides and Tacitus are superior to the historians
+who have written in our century, because, by long reflection and
+studious method, they have better digested their materials and
+compressed their narrative. Unity in narration has been adhered to more
+rigidly. They stick closer to their subject. They are not allured into
+the fascinating bypaths of narration, which are so tempting to men who
+have accumulated a mass of facts, incidents, and opinions. One reason
+why Macaulay is so prolix is because he could not resist the temptation
+to treat events which had a picturesque side and which were suited to
+his literary style; so that, as John Morley says, "in many portions of
+his too elaborated history of William III. he describes a large number
+of events about which, I think, no sensible man can in the least care
+either how they happened, or whether indeed they happened at all or
+not." If I am right in my supposition that Thucydides and Tacitus had a
+mass of materials, they showed reserve and discretion in throwing a
+large part of them away, as not being necessary or important to the
+posterity for which they were writing. This could only be the result of
+a careful comparison of their materials, and of long meditation on their
+relative value. I suspect that they cared little whether a set daily
+task was accomplished or not; for if you propose to write only one large
+volume or four moderate-sized volumes in a lifetime, art is not too long
+nor is life too short.
+
+Another superiority of the classical historians, as I reckon, arose from
+the fact that they wrote what was practically contemporaneous history.
+Herodotus was born 484 B.C., and the most important and accurate part of
+his history is the account of the Persian invasion which took place four
+years later. The case of Thucydides is more remarkable. Born in
+471 B.C., he relates the events which happened between 435 and 411, when
+he was between the ages of thirty-six and sixty. Tacitus, born in
+52 A.D., covered with his Annals and History the years between 14 and
+96. "Herodotus and Thucydides belong to an age in which the historian
+draws from life and for life," writes Professor Jebb. It is manifestly
+easier to describe a life you know than one you must imagine, which is
+what you must do if you aim to relate events which took place before
+your own and your father's time. In many treatises which have been
+written demanding an extraordinary equipment for the historian, it is
+generally insisted that he shall have a fine constructive imagination;
+for how can he re-create his historic period unless he live in it? In
+the same treatises it is asserted that contemporary history cannot be
+written correctly, for impartiality in the treatment of events near at
+hand is impossible. Therefore the canon requires the quality of a great
+poet, and denies that there may be had the merit of a judge in a country
+where there are no great poets, but where candid judges abound. Does
+not the common rating of Thucydides and Tacitus refute the dictum that
+history within the memory of men living cannot be written truthfully and
+fairly? Given, then, the judicial mind, how much easier to write it! The
+rare quality of a poet's imagination is no longer necessary, for your
+boyhood recollections, your youthful experiences, your successes and
+failures of manhood, the grandfather's tales, the parent's
+recollections, the conversation in society,--all these put you in vital
+touch with the life you seek to describe. These not only give color and
+freshness to the vivifying of the facts you must find in the record, but
+they are in a way materials themselves, not strictly authentic, but of
+the kind that direct you in search and verification. Not only is no
+extraordinary ability required to write contemporary history, but the
+labor of the historian is lightened, and Dryasdust is no longer his sole
+guide. The funeral oration of Pericles is pretty nearly what was
+actually spoken, or else it is the substance of the speech written out
+in the historian's own words. Its intensity of feeling and the fitting
+of it so well into the situation indicate it to be a living
+contemporaneous document, and at the same time it has that universal
+application which we note in so many speeches of Shakespeare. A few
+years after our Civil War, a lawyer in a city of the middle West, who
+had been selected to deliver the Memorial Day oration, came to a friend
+of his in despair because he could write nothing but the commonplaces
+about those who had died for the Union and for the freedom of a race
+which had been uttered many times before, and he asked for advice. "Take
+the funeral oration of Pericles for a model," was the reply. "Use his
+words where they will fit, and dress up the rest to suit our day." The
+orator was surprised to find how much of the oration could be used
+bodily, and how much, with adaptation, was germane to his subject. But
+slight alterations are necessary to make the opening sentence this:
+"Most of those who have spoken here have commended the law-giver who
+added this oration to our other customs; it seemed to them a worthy
+thing that such an honor should be given to the dead who have fallen on
+the field of battle." In many places you may let the speech run on with
+hardly a change. "In the face of death [these men] resolved to rely upon
+themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist
+and suffer rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from
+the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast; and
+while for a moment they were in the hands of fortune, at the height, not
+of terror, but of glory, they passed away. Such was the end of these
+men; they were worthy of their country."
+
+Consider for a moment, as the work of a contemporary, the book which
+continues the account of the Sicilian expedition, and ends with the
+disaster at Syracuse. "In the describing and reporting whereof,"
+Plutarch writes, "Thucydides hath gone beyond himself, both for variety
+and liveliness of narration, as also in choice and excellent words."
+"There is no prose composition in the world," wrote Macaulay, "which I
+place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides.... I was delighted to
+find in Gray's letters, the other day, this query to Wharton: 'The
+retreat from Syracuse,--is it or is it not the finest thing you ever
+read in your life?'" In the Annals of Tacitus we have an account of part
+of the reign of Emperor Nero, which is intense in its interest as the
+picture of a state of society that would be incredible, did we not know
+that our guide was a truthful man. One rises from a perusal of this with
+the trite expression, "Truth is stranger than fiction;" and one need
+only compare the account of Tacitus with the romance of Quo Vadis to be
+convinced that true history is more interesting than a novel. One of
+the most vivid impressions I ever had came immediately after reading the
+story of Nero and Agrippina in Tacitus, from a view of the statue of
+Agrippina in the National Museum at Naples.[2]
+
+It will be worth our while now to sum up what I think may be established
+with sufficient time and care. Natural ability being presupposed, the
+qualities necessary for a historian are diligence, accuracy, love of
+truth, impartiality, the thorough digestion of his materials by careful
+selection and long meditating, and the compression of his narrative into
+the smallest compass consistent with the life of his story. He must also
+have a power of expression suitable for his purpose. All these
+qualities, we have seen, were possessed by Thucydides and Tacitus; and
+we have seen furthermore that, by bringing to bear these endowments and
+acquirements upon contemporary history, their success has been greater
+than it would have been had they treated a more distant period. Applying
+these considerations to the writing of history in America, it would seem
+that all we have to gain in method, in order that when the genius
+appears he shall rival the great Greek and the great Roman, is thorough
+assimilation of materials and rigorous conciseness in relation. I admit
+that the two things we lack are difficult to get as our own. In the
+collection of materials, in criticism and detailed analysis, in the
+study of cause and effect, in applying the principle of growth, of
+evolution, we certainly surpass the ancients. But if we live in the age
+of Darwin, we also live in an age of newspapers and magazines, when, as
+Lowell said, not only great events, but a vast "number of trivial
+incidents, are now recorded, and this dust of time gets in our eyes";
+when distractions are manifold; when the desire "to see one's name in
+print" and make books takes possession of us all. If one has something
+like an original idea or a fresh combination of truisms, one obtains
+easily a hearing. The hearing once had, something of a success being
+made, the writer is urged by magazine editors and by publishers for
+more. The good side of this is apparent. It is certainly a wholesome
+indication that a demand exists for many serious books, but the evil is
+that one is pressed to publish his thoughts before he has them fully
+matured. The periods of fruitful meditation out of which emerged the
+works of Thucydides and Tacitus seem not to be a natural incident of our
+time. To change slightly the meaning of Lowell, "the bustle of our lives
+keeps breaking the thread of that attention which is the material of
+memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of
+thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am
+struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and
+Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is
+said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The
+Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was
+adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short
+cut to the goal make us averse to the patient and elaborate method of
+the ancients. In manner of expression, however, we have improved. The
+Fourth of July spread-eagle oration, not uncommon even in New England in
+former days, would now be listened to hardly anywhere without merriment.
+In a Lowell Institute lecture in 1855 Lowell said, "In modern times, the
+desire for startling expression is so strong that people hardly think a
+thought is good for anything unless it goes off with a _pop_, like a
+ginger-beer cork." No one would thus characterize our present writing.
+Between reserve in expression and reserve in thought there must be
+interaction. We may hope, therefore, that the trend in the one will
+become the trend in the other, and that we may look for as great
+historians in the future as in the past. The Thucydides or Tacitus of
+the future will write his history from the original materials, knowing
+that there only will he find the living spirit; but he will have the
+helps of the modern world. He will have at his hand monographs of
+students whom the professors of history in our colleges are teaching
+with diligence and wisdom, and he will accept these aids with
+thankfulness in his laborious search. He will have grasped the
+generalizations and methods of physical science, but he must know to the
+bottom his Thucydides and Tacitus. He will recognize in Homer and
+Shakespeare the great historians of human nature, and he will ever
+attempt, although feeling that failure is certain, to wrest from them
+their secret of narration, to acquire their art of portrayal of
+character. He must be a man of the world, but equally well a man of the
+academy. If, like Thucydides and Tacitus, the American historian chooses
+the history of his own country as his field, he may infuse his
+patriotism into his narrative. He will speak of the broad acres and
+their products, the splendid industrial development due to the capacity
+and energy of the captains of industry; but he will like to dwell on the
+universities and colleges, on the great numbers seeking a higher
+education, on the morality of the people, their purity of life, their
+domestic happiness. He will never be weary of referring to Washington
+and Lincoln, feeling that a country with such exemplars is indeed one to
+awaken envy, and he will not forget the brave souls who followed where
+they led. I like to think of the Memorial Day orator, speaking thirty
+years ago with his mind full of the Civil War and our Revolution, giving
+utterance to these noble words of Pericles: "I would have you day by
+day fix your eyes upon the greatness of your country, until you become
+filled with love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of
+her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew
+their duty and had the courage to do it; who in the hour of conflict had
+the fear of dishonor always present to them; and who, if ever they
+failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to
+their country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest
+offering which they could present at her feast. They received each one
+for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all
+sepulchers. For the whole earth is the sepulcher of illustrious men; not
+only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own
+country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of
+them, graven not on stone, but in the hearts of men."
+
+
+    [1] President's Inaugural Address, American Historical Association,
+        Boston, December 27, 1899; printed in the Atlantic Monthly of
+        February, 1900.
+
+    [2] Since this essay was first printed I have seen the authenticity
+        of this portrait statue questioned.
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE WRITING OF HISTORY
+
+Address delivered at the Meeting of the American Historical Association
+in Detroit, December, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE WRITING OF HISTORY
+
+
+Called on at the last moment, owing to the illness of Mr. Eggleston, to
+take the place of one whose absence can never be fully compensated, I
+present to you a paper on the writing of history. It is in a way a
+continuance of my inaugural address before this association one year
+ago, and despite the continuity of the thought I have endeavored to
+treat the same subject from a different point of view. While going over
+the same ground and drawing my lessons from the same historians, it is
+new matter so far as I have had the honor to present it to the American
+Historical Association.
+
+A historian, to make a mark, must show some originality somewhere in his
+work. The originality may be in a method of investigation; it may be in
+the use of some hitherto inaccessible or unprinted material; it may be
+in the employment of some sources of information open to everybody, but
+not before used, or it may be in a fresh combination of well-known and
+well-elaborated facts. It is this last-named feature that leads Mr.
+Winsor to say, in speaking of the different views that may be honestly
+maintained from working over the same material, "The study of history is
+perennial." I think I can make my meaning clearer as to the originality
+one should try to infuse into historical work by drawing an illustration
+from the advice of a literary man as to the art of writing. Charles
+Dudley Warner once said to me, "Every one who writes should have
+something to add to the world's stock of knowledge or literary
+expression. If he falls unconsciously into imitation or quotation, he
+takes away from his originality. No matter if some great writer has
+expressed the thought in better language than you can use, if you take
+his words you detract from your own originality. Express your thought
+feebly in your own way rather than with strength by borrowing the words
+of another."
+
+This same principle in the art of authorship may be applied to the art
+of writing history. "Follow your own star," said Emerson, "and it will
+lead you to that which none other can attain. Imitation is suicide. You
+must take yourself for better or worse as your own portion." Any one who
+is bent upon writing history, may be sure that there is in him some
+originality, that he can add something to the knowledge of some period.
+Let him give himself to meditation, to searching out what epoch and what
+kind of treatment of that epoch is best adapted to his powers and to his
+training. I mean not only the collegiate training, but the sort of
+training one gets consciously or unconsciously from the very
+circumstances of one's life. In the persistence of thinking, his subject
+will flash upon him. Parkman, said Lowell, showed genius in the choice
+of his subject. The recent biography of Parkman emphasizes the idea
+which we get from his works--that only a man who lived in the virgin
+forests of this country and loved them, and who had traveled in the far
+West as a pioneer, with Indians for companions, could have done that
+work. Parkman's experience cannot be had by any one again, and he
+brought to bear the wealth of it in that fifty years' occupation of his.
+Critics of exact knowledge--such as Justin Winsor, for instance--find
+limitations in Parkman's books that may impair the permanence of his
+fame, but I suspect that his is the only work in American history that
+cannot and will not be written over again. The reason of it is that he
+had a unique life which has permeated his narrative, giving it the stamp
+of originality. No man whose training had been gained wholly in the best
+schools of Germany, France, or England could have written those books. A
+training racy of the soil was needed. "A practical knowledge," wrote
+Niebuhr, "must support historical jurisprudence, and if any one has got
+that he can easily master all scholastic speculations." A man's
+knowledge of everyday life in some way fits him for a certain field of
+historical study--in that field lies success. In seeking a period, no
+American need confine himself to his own country. "European history for
+Americans," said Motley, "has to be almost entirely rewritten."
+
+I shall touch upon only two of the headings of historical originality
+which I have mentioned. The first that I shall speak of is the
+employment of some sources of information open to everybody, but not
+before used. A significant case of this in American history is the use
+which Doctor von Holst made of newspaper material. _Niles's Register_, a
+lot of newspaper cuttings, as well as speeches and state papers in a
+compact form, had, of course, been referred to by many writers who dealt
+with the period they covered, but in the part of his history covering
+the ten years from 1850 to 1860 von Holst made an extensive and varied
+employment of newspapers by studying the newspaper files themselves. As
+the aim of history is truth, and as newspapers fail sadly in accuracy,
+it is not surprising that many historical students believe that the
+examination of newspapers for any given period will not pay for the
+labor and drudgery involved; but the fact that a trained German
+historical scholar and teacher at a German university should have found
+some truth in our newspaper files when he came to write the history of
+our own country, gives to their use for that period the seal of
+scientific approval. Doctor von Holst used this material with pertinence
+and effect; his touch was nice. I used to wonder at his knowledge of the
+newspaper world, of the men who made and wrote our journals, until he
+told me that when he first came to this country one of his methods in
+gaining a knowledge of English was to read the advertisements in the
+newspapers. Reflection will show one what a picture of the life of a
+people this must be, in addition to the news columns.
+
+No one, of course, will go to newspapers for facts if he can find those
+facts in better-attested documents. The haste with which the daily
+records of the world's doings are made up precludes sifting and
+revision. Yet in the decade between 1850 and 1860 you will find facts in
+the newspapers which are nowhere else set down. Public men of commanding
+position were fond of writing letters to the journals with a view to
+influencing public sentiment. These letters in the newspapers are as
+valuable historical material as if they were carefully collected,
+edited, and published in the form of books. Speeches were made which
+must be read, and which will be found nowhere but in the journals. The
+immortal debates of Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 were never put into a
+book until 1860, existing previously only in newspaper print. Newspapers
+are sometimes important in fixing a date and in establishing the
+whereabouts of a man. If, for example, a writer draws a fruitful
+inference from the alleged fact that President Lincoln went to see Edwin
+Booth play Hamlet in Washington in February, 1863, and if one finds by a
+consultation of the newspaper theatrical advertisements that Edwin Booth
+did not visit Washington during that month, the significance of the
+inference is destroyed. Lincoln paid General Scott a memorable visit at
+West Point in June, 1862. You may, if I remember correctly, search the
+books in vain to get at the exact date of this visit; but turn to the
+newspaper files and you find that the President left Washington at such
+an hour on such a day, arrived at Jersey City at a stated time, and made
+the transfer to the other railroad which took him to the station
+opposite West Point. The time of his leaving West Point and the hour of
+his return to Washington are also given.
+
+The value of newspapers as an indication of public sentiment is
+sometimes questioned, but it can hardly be doubted that the average man
+will read the newspaper with the sentiments of which he agrees. "I
+inquired about newspaper opinion," said Joseph Chamberlain in the House
+of Commons last May. "I knew no other way of getting at popular
+opinion." During the years between 1854 and 1860 the daily journals were
+a pretty good reflection of public sentiment in the United States.
+Wherever, for instance, you found the _New York Weekly Tribune_ largely
+read, Republican majorities were sure to be had when election day came.
+For fact and for opinion, if you knew the contributors, statements and
+editorials by them were entitled to as much weight as similar public
+expressions in any other form. You get to know Greeley and you learn to
+recognize his style. Now, an editorial from him is proper historical
+material, taking into account always the circumstances under which he
+wrote. The same may be said of Dana and of Hildreth, both editorial
+writers for the _Tribune_, and of the Washington despatches of J. S.
+Pike. It is interesting to compare the public letters of Greeley to the
+_Tribune_ from Washington in 1856 with his private letters written at
+the same time to Dana. There are no misstatements in the public letters,
+but there is a suppression of the truth. The explanations in the private
+correspondence are clearer, and you need them to know fully how affairs
+looked in Washington to Greeley at the time; but this fact by no means
+detracts from the value of the public letters as historical material. I
+have found newspapers of greater value both for fact and opinion during
+the decade of 1850 to 1860 than for the period of the Civil War. A
+comparison of the newspaper accounts of battles with the history of them
+which may be drawn from the correspondence and reports in the Official
+Records of the War of the Rebellion will show how inaccurate and
+misleading was the war correspondence of the daily journals. It could
+not well be otherwise. The correspondent was obliged in haste to write
+the story of a battle of which he saw but a small section, and instead
+of telling the little part which he knew actually, he had to give to a
+public greedy for news a complete survey of the whole battlefield. This
+story was too often colored by his liking or aversion for the generals
+in command. A study of the confidential historical material of the Civil
+War, apart from the military operations, in comparison with the
+journalistic accounts, gives one a higher idea of the accuracy and
+shrewdness of the newspaper correspondents. Few important things were
+brewing at Washington of which they did not get an inkling. But I always
+like to think of two signal exceptions. Nothing ever leaked out in
+regard to the famous "Thoughts for the President's consideration," which
+Seward submitted to Lincoln in March, 1861, and only very incorrect
+guesses of the President's first emancipation proclamation, brought
+before his Cabinet in July, 1862, got into newspaper print.
+
+Beware of hasty, strained, and imperfect generalizations. A historian
+should always remember that he is a sort of trustee for his readers. No
+matter how copious may be his notes, he cannot fully explain his
+processes or the reason of his confidence in one witness and not in
+another, his belief in one honest man against a half dozen untrustworthy
+men, without such prolixity as to make a general history unreadable.
+Now, in this position as trustee he is bound to assert nothing for which
+he has not evidence, as much as an executor of a will or the trustee for
+widows and orphans is obligated to render a correct account of the
+moneys in his possession. For this reason Grote has said, "An historian
+is bound to produce the materials upon which he builds, be they never so
+fantastic, absurd, or incredible." Hence the necessity for footnotes.
+While mere illustrative and interesting footnotes are perhaps to be
+avoided, on account of their redundancy, those which give authority for
+the statements in the text can never be in excess. Many good histories
+have undoubtedly been published where the authors have not printed their
+footnotes; but they must have had, nevertheless, precise records for
+their authorities. The advantage and necessity of printing the notes is
+that you furnish your critic an opportunity of finding you out if you
+have mistaken or strained your authorities. Bancroft's example is
+peculiar. In his earlier volumes he used footnotes, but in volume vii he
+changed his plan and omitted notes, whether of reference or explanation.
+Nor do you find them in either of his carefully revised editions. "This
+is done," Bancroft wrote in the preface to his seventh volume, "not from
+an unwillingness to subject every statement of fact, even in its
+minutest details, to the severest scrutiny; but from the variety and the
+multitude of the papers which have been used and which could not be
+intelligently cited without a disproportionate commentary." Again,
+Blaine's "Twenty Years of Congress," a work which, properly weighed, is
+not without historical value, is only to be read with great care on
+account of his hasty and inaccurate generalizations. There are evidences
+of good, honest labor in those two volumes, much of which must have been
+done by himself. There is an aim at truth and impartiality, but many of
+his general statements will seem, to any one who has gone over the
+original material, to rest on a slight basis. If Blaine had felt the
+necessity of giving authorities in a footnote for every statement about
+which there might have been a question, he certainly would have written
+an entirely different sort of a book.
+
+My other head is the originality which comes from a fresh combination of
+known historical facts.
+
+I do not now call to mind any more notable chapter which illustrates
+this than the chapter of Curtius, "The years of peace." One is perhaps
+better adapted for the keen enjoyment of it if he does not know the
+original material, for his suspicion that some of the inferences are
+strained and unwarranted might become a certainty. But accepting it as a
+mature and honest elaboration by one of the greatest historians of
+Greece of our day, it is a sample of the vivifying of dry bones and of a
+dovetailing of facts and ideas that makes a narrative to charm and
+instruct. You feel that the spirit of that age we all like to think and
+dream about is there, and if you have been so fortunate as to visit the
+Athens of to-day, that chapter, so great is the author's constructive
+imagination, carries you back and makes you for the moment live in the
+Athens of Pericles, of Sophocles, of Phidias and Herodotus.
+
+With the abundance of materials for modern history, and, for that
+reason, our tendency to diffuseness, nothing is so important as a
+thorough acquaintance with the best classic models, such as Herodotus,
+Thucydides, and Tacitus. In Herodotus you have an example of an
+interesting story with the unity of the narrative well sustained in
+spite of certain unnecessary digressions. His book is obviously a life
+work and the work of a man who had an extensive knowledge gained by
+reading, social intercourse, and travel, and who brought his knowledge
+to bear upon his chosen task. That the history is interesting all admit,
+but in different periods of criticism stress is sometimes laid on the
+untrustworthy character of the narrative, with the result that there has
+been danger of striking Herodotus from the list of historical models;
+but such is the merit of his work that the Herodotus cult again revives,
+and, I take it, is now at its height. I received, six years ago, while
+in Egypt, a vivid impression of him whom we used to style the Father of
+History. Spending one day at the great Pyramids, when, after I had
+satisfied my first curiosity, after I had filled my eyes and mind with
+the novelty of the spectacle, I found nothing so gratifying to the
+historic sense as to gaze on those most wonderful monuments of human
+industry, constructed certainly 5000 years ago, and to read at the same
+time the account that Herodotus gave of his visit there about 2350 years
+before the date of my own. That same night I read in a modern and garish
+Cairo hotel the current number of the _London Times_. In it was an
+account of an annual meeting of the Royal Historical Society and a
+report of a formal and carefully prepared address of its president,
+whose subject was "Herodotus," whose aim was to point out the value of
+the Greek writer as a model to modern historians. The _Times_, for the
+moment laying aside its habitual attack on the then Liberal government,
+devoted its main leader to Herodotus--to his merits and the lessons he
+conveyed to the European writers. The article was a remarkable blending
+of scholarship and good sense, and I ended the day with the reflection
+of what a space in the world's history Herodotus filled, himself
+describing the work of twenty-six hundred years before his own time and
+being dilated on in 1894 by one of the most modern of nineteenth-century
+newspapers.
+
+It is generally agreed, I think, that Thucydides is first in order of
+time of philosophic historians, but it does not seem to me that we have
+most to learn from him in the philosophic quality. The tracing of cause
+and effect, the orderly sequence of events, is certainly better
+developed by moderns than it has been by ancients. The influence of
+Darwin and the support and proof which he gives to the doctrine of
+evolution furnish a training of thought which was impossible to the
+ancients; but Thucydides has digested his material and compressed his
+narrative without taking the life out of his story in a manner to make
+us despair, and this does not, I take it, come from paucity of
+materials. A test which I began to make as a study in style has helped
+me in estimating the solidity of a writer. Washington Irving formed his
+style by reading attentively from time to time a page of Addison and
+then, closing the book, endeavored to write out the same ideas in his
+own words. In this way his style became assimilated to that of the great
+English essayist. I have tried the same mode with several writers. I
+found that the plan succeeded with Macaulay and with Lecky. I tried it
+again and again with Shakespeare and Hawthorne, but if I succeeded in
+writing out the paragraph I found that it was because I memorized their
+very words. To write out their ideas in my own language I found
+impossible. I have had the same result with Thucydides in trying to do
+this with his description of the plague in Athens. Now, I reason from
+this in the case of Shakespeare and Thucydides that their thought was so
+concise they themselves got rid of all redundancies; hence to effect the
+reproduction of their ideas in any but their own language is practically
+impossible.
+
+It is related of Macaulay somewhere in his "Life and Letters," that in a
+moment of despair, when he instituted a comparison between his
+manuscript and the work of Thucydides, he thought of throwing his into
+the fire. I suspect that Macaulay had not the knack of discarding
+material on which he had spent time and effort, seeing how easily such
+events glowed under his graphic pen. This is one reason why he is prolix
+in the last three volumes. The first two, which begin with the famous
+introductory chapter and continue the story through the revolution of
+1688 to the accession of William and Mary, seem to me models of
+historical composition so far as arrangement, orderly method, and
+liveliness of narration go. Another defect of Macaulay is that, while he
+was an omnivorous reader and had a prodigious memory, he was not given
+to long-continued and profound reflection. He read and rehearsed his
+reading in memory, but he did not give himself to "deep, abstract
+meditation" and did not surrender himself to "the fruitful leisures of
+the spirit." Take this instance of Macaulay's account of a journey: "The
+express train reached Hollyhead about 7 in the evening. I read between
+London and Bangor the lives of the emperors from Maximin to Carinus,
+inclusive, in the Augustine history, and was greatly amused and
+interested." On board the steamer: "I put on my greatcoat and sat on
+deck during the whole voyage. As I could not read, I used an excellent
+substitute for reading. I went through 'Paradise Lost' in my head. I
+could still repeat half of it, and that the best half. I really never
+enjoyed it so much." In Dublin: "The rain was so heavy that I was forced
+to come back in a covered car. While in this detestable vehicle I looked
+rapidly through the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan and thought
+that Trajan made a most creditable figure." It may be that Macaulay did
+not always digest his knowledge well. Yet in reading his "Life and
+Letters" you know that you are in company with a man who read many
+books and you give faith to Thackeray's remark, "Macaulay reads twenty
+books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of
+description." It is a matter of regret that the progress of historical
+criticism and the scientific teaching of history have had the tendency
+to drive Macaulay out of the fashion with students, and I know not
+whether the good we used to get out of him thirty-five years ago can now
+be got from other sources. For I seem to miss something that we
+historical students had a generation ago--and that is enthusiasm for the
+subject. The enthusiasm that we had then had--the desire to compass all
+knowledge, the wish to gather the fruits of learning and lay them
+devoutly at the feet of our chosen muse--this enthusiasm we owed to
+Macaulay and to Buckle. Quite properly, no one reads Buckle now, and I
+cannot gainsay what John Morley said of Macaulay: "Macaulay seeks truth,
+not as she should be sought, devoutly, tentatively, with the air of one
+touching the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by the hair of
+the head and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous triumph, a
+prisoner of war and not a goddess." It is, nevertheless, true that
+Macaulay and Buckle imparted a new interest to history.
+
+I have spoken of the impression we get of Macaulay through reading his
+"Life and Letters." Of Carlyle, in reading the remarkable biography of
+him, we get the notion of a great thinker as well as a great reader. He
+was not as keen and diligent in the pursuit of material as Macaulay. He
+did not like to work in libraries; he wanted every book he used in his
+own study--padded as it was against the noises which drove him wild. H.
+Morse Stephens relates that Carlyle would not use a collection of
+documents relating to the French Revolution in the British Museum for
+the reason that the museum authorities would not have a private room
+reserved for him where he might study. Rather than work in a room with
+other people, he neglected this valuable material. But Carlyle has
+certainly digested and used his material well. His "French Revolution"
+seems to approach the historical works of the classics in there being so
+much in a little space. "With the gift of song," Lowell said, "Carlyle
+would have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer;" and he also
+wrote, Carlyle's historical compositions are no more history than the
+historical plays of Shakespeare.
+
+The contention between the scientific historians and those who hold to
+the old models is interesting and profitable. One may enjoy the
+controversy and derive benefit from it without taking sides. I suspect
+that there is truth in the view of both. We may be sure that the
+long-continued study and approval by scholars of many ages of the works
+of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus implies historical merit on their
+part in addition to literary art. It is, however, interesting to note
+the profound difference between President Woolsey's opinion of
+Thucydides and that of some of his late German critics. Woolsey said, "I
+have such confidence in the absolute truthfulness of Thucydides that
+were he really chargeable with folly, as Grote alleges [in the affair of
+Amphipolis], I believe he would have avowed it." On the other hand, a
+German critic, cited by Holm, says that Thucydides is a poet who invents
+facts partly in order to teach people how things ought to be done and
+partly because he liked to depict certain scenes of horror. He says
+further, a narrative of certain occurrences is so full of
+impossibilities that it must be pure invention on the part of the
+historian. Another German maintains that Thucydides has indulged in "a
+fanciful and half-romantic picture of events." But Holm, whom the
+scientific historians claim as one of their own, says, "Thucydides
+still remains a trustworthy historical authority;" and, "On the whole,
+therefore, the old view that he is a truthful writer is not in the least
+shaken." Again Holm writes: "Attempts have been made to convict
+Thucydides of serious inaccuracies, but without success. On the other
+hand, the writer of this work [that is, the scientific historian, Holm]
+is able to state that he has followed him topographically for the
+greater part of the sixth and seventh books--and consequently for nearly
+one fourth of the whole history--and has found that the more carefully
+his words are weighed and the more accurately the ground is studied the
+clearer both the text and events become, and this is certainly high
+praise." Holm and Percy Gardner, both of whom have the modern method and
+have studied diligently the historical evidence from coins and
+inscriptions, placed great reliance on Herodotus, who, as well as
+Thucydides and Tacitus, is taken by scholars as a model of historical
+composition.
+
+The sifting of time settles the reputations of historians. Of the
+English of the eighteenth century only one historian has come down to us
+as worthy of serious study. Time is wasted in reading Hume and Robertson
+as models, and no one goes to them for facts. But thirty years ago no
+course of historical reading was complete without Hume. In this century
+the sifting process still goes on. One loses little by not reading
+Alison's "History of Europe." But he was much in vogue in the '50's.
+_Harper's Magazine_ published a part of his history as a serial. His
+rounded periods and bombastic utterances were quoted with delight by
+those who thought that history was not history unless it was bombastic.
+Emerson says somewhere, "Avoid adjectives; let your nouns do the work."
+There was hardly a sentence in Alison which did not traverse this rule.
+One of his admirers told me that the great merit of his style was his
+choiceness and aptness in his use of adjectives. It is a style which now
+provokes merriment, and even had Alison been learned and impartial, and
+had he possessed a good method, his style for the present taste would
+have killed his book. Gibbon is sometimes called pompous, but place him
+by the side of Alison and what one may have previously called
+pompousness one now calls dignity.
+
+Two of the literary historians of our century survive--Carlyle and
+Macaulay. They may be read with care. We may do as Cassius said Brutus
+did to him, observe all their faults, set them in a note-book, learn and
+con them by rote; nevertheless we shall get good from them. Oscar
+Browning said--I am quoting H. Morse Stephens again--of Carlyle's
+description of the flight of the king to Varennes, that in every one of
+his details where a writer could go wrong, Carlyle had gone wrong; but
+added that, although all the details were wrong, Carlyle's account is
+essentially accurate. No defense, I think, can be made of Carlyle's
+statement that Marat was a "blear-eyed dog leach," nor of those
+statements from which you get the distinct impression that the
+complexion of Robespierre was green; nevertheless, every one who studies
+the French Revolution reads Carlyle, and he is read because the reading
+is profitable. The battle descriptions in Carlyle's "Frederick the
+Great" are well worth reading. How refreshing they are after technical
+descriptions! Carlyle said once, "Battles since Homer's time, when they
+were nothing but fighting mobs, have ceased to be worth reading about,"
+but he made the modern battle interesting.
+
+Macaulay is an honest partisan. You learn very soon how to take him, and
+when distrust begins one has correctives in Gardiner and Ranke. Froude
+is much more dangerous. His splendid narrative style does not compensate
+for his inaccuracies. Langlois makes an apt quotation from Froude. "We
+saw," says Froude, of the city of Adelaide, in Australia, "below us in a
+basin, with the river winding through it, a city of 150,000 inhabitants,
+none of whom has ever known or ever will know one moment's anxiety as to
+the recurring regularity of three meals a day." Now for the facts.
+Langlois says: "Adelaide is built on an eminence; no river runs through
+it. When Froude visited it the population did not exceed 75,000, and it
+was suffering from a famine at the time." Froude was curious in his
+inaccuracies. He furnished the data which convict him of error. He
+quoted inaccurately the Simancas manuscripts and deposited correct
+copies in the British Museum. Carlyle and Macaulay are honest partisans
+and you know how to take them, but for constitutional inaccuracy such as
+Froude's no allowance can be made.
+
+Perhaps it may be said of Green that he combines the merits of the
+scientific and literary historian. He has written an honest and artistic
+piece of work. But he is not infallible. I have been told on good
+authority that in his reference to the Thirty Years' War he has hardly
+stated a single fact correctly, yet the general impression you get from
+his account is correct. Saintsbury writes that Green has "out-Macaulayed
+Macaulay in reckless abuse" of Dryden. Stubbs and Gardiner are
+preëminently the scientific historians of England. Of Stubbs, from
+actual knowledge, I regret that I cannot speak, but the reputation he
+has among historical experts is positive proof of his great value. Of
+Gardiner I can speak with knowledge. Any one who desires to write
+history will do well to read every line Gardiner has written--not the
+text alone, but also the notes. It is an admirable study in method which
+will bear important fruit. But because Gibbon, Gardiner, and Stubbs
+should be one's chief reliance, it does not follow that one may neglect
+Macaulay, Carlyle, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Herodotus. Gardiner himself
+has learned much from Macaulay and Carlyle. All of them may be
+criticised on one point or another, but they all have lessons for us.
+
+We shall all agree that the aim of history is to get at the truth and
+express it as clearly as possible. The differences crop out when we
+begin to elaborate our meaning. "This I regard as the historian's
+highest function," writes Tacitus, "to let no worthy action be
+uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror
+to evil words and deeds;" while Langlois and the majority of the
+scholars of Oxford are of the opinion that the formation and expression
+of ethical judgments, the approval or condemnation of Julius Cæsar or of
+Cæsar Borgia is not a thing within the historian's province. Let the
+controversy go on! It is well worth one's while to read the
+presentations of the subject from the different points of view. But
+infallibility will nowhere be found. Mommsen and Curtius in their
+detailed investigations received applause from those who adhered rigidly
+to the scientific view of history, but when they addressed the public in
+their endeavor, it is said, to produce an effect upon it, they relaxed
+their scientific rigor; hence such a chapter as Curtius's "The years of
+peace," and in another place his transmuting a conjecture of Grote into
+an assertion; hence Mommsen's effusive panegyric of Cæsar. If Mommsen
+did depart from the scientific rules, I suspect that it came from no
+desire of a popular success, but rather from the enthusiasm of much
+learning. The examples of Curtius and Mommsen show probably that such a
+departure from strict impartiality is inherent in the writing of general
+history, and it comes, I take it, naturally and unconsciously. Holm is a
+scientific historian, but on the Persian Invasion he writes: "I have
+followed Herodotus in many passages which are unauthenticated and
+probably even untrue, because he reproduces the popular traditions of
+the Greeks." And again: "History in the main ought only to be a record
+of facts, but now and then the historian may be allowed to display a
+certain interest in his subject." These expressions traverse the canons
+of scientific history as much as the sayings of the ancient
+historiographers themselves. But because men have warm sympathies that
+cause them to color their narratives, shall no more general histories be
+written? Shall history be confined to the printing of original documents
+and to the publication of learned monographs in which the discussion of
+authorities is mixed up with the relation of events? The proper mental
+attitude of the general historian is to take no thought of popularity.
+The remark of Macaulay that he would make his history take the place of
+the last novel on my lady's table is not scientific. The audience which
+the general historian should have in mind is that of historical
+experts--men who are devoting their lives to the study of history. Words
+of approval from them are worth more than any popular recognition, for
+theirs is the enduring praise. Their criticism should be respected;
+there should be unceasing effort to avoid giving them cause for
+fault-finding. No labor should be despised which shall enable one to
+present things just as they are. Our endeavor should be to think
+straight and see clear. An incident should not be related on
+insufficient evidence because it is interesting, but an affair well
+attested should not be discarded because it happens to have a human
+interest. I feel quite sure that the cardinal aim of Gardiner was to be
+accurate and to proportion his story well. In this he has succeeded; but
+it is no drawback that he has made his volumes interesting. Jacob D.
+Cox, who added to other accomplishments that of being learned in the
+law, and who looked upon Gardiner with such reverence that he called him
+the Chief Justice, said there was no reason why he should read novels,
+as he found Gardiner's history more interesting than any romance. The
+scientific historians have not revolutionized historical methods, but
+they have added much. The process of accretion has been going on since,
+at any rate, the time of Herodotus, and the canons for weighing evidence
+and the synthesis of materials are better understood now than ever
+before, for they have been reduced from many models. I feel sure that
+there has been a growth in candor. Compare the critical note to a later
+edition which Macaulay wrote in 1857, maintaining the truth of his
+charge against William Penn, with the manly way in which Gardiner owns
+up when an error or insufficient evidence for a statement is pointed
+out. It is the ethics of the profession to be forward in correcting
+errors. The difference between the old and the new lies in the desire to
+have men think you are infallible and the desire to be accurate.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSION OF HISTORIAN
+
+Lecture read before the History Club of Harvard University, April 27,
+1908, and at Yale, Columbia, and Western Reserve Universities.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSION OF HISTORIAN
+
+
+I am assuming that among my audience there are some students who aspire
+to become historians. To these especially my discourse is addressed.
+
+It is not to be expected that I should speak positively and in detail on
+matters of education. Nevertheless, a man of sixty who has devoted the
+better part of his life to reading, observation, and reflection must
+have gained, if only through a perception of his own deficiencies, some
+ideas that should be useful to those who have, life's experience before
+them. Hence, if a Freshman should say to me, I wish to be a historian,
+tell me what preliminary studies you would advise, I should welcome the
+opportunity. From the nature of the case, the history courses will be
+sought and studied in their logical order and my advice will have to do
+only with collateral branches of learning.
+
+In the first place, I esteem a knowledge of Latin and French of the
+highest importance. By a knowledge of French, I mean that you should be
+able to read it substantially as well as you read English, so that when
+you have recourse to a dictionary it will be a French dictionary and not
+one of the French-English kind. The historical and other literature that
+is thus opened up to you enables you to live in another world, with a
+point of view impossible to one who reads for pleasure only in his own
+tongue. To take two instances: Molière is a complement to Shakespeare,
+and the man who knows his Molière as he does his Shakespeare has made a
+propitious beginning in that study of human character which must be
+understood if he desires to write a history that shall gain readers. "I
+have known and loved Molière," said Goethe, "from my youth and have
+learned from him during my whole life. I never fail to read some of his
+plays every year, that I may keep up a constant intercourse with what is
+excellent. It is not merely the perfectly artistic treatment which
+delights me; but particularly the amiable nature, the highly formed mind
+of the poet. There is in him a grace and a feeling for the decorous, and
+a tone of good society, which his innate beautiful nature could only
+attain by daily intercourse with the most eminent men of his age."[3]
+
+My other instance is Balzac. In reading him for pleasure, as you read
+Dickens and Thackeray, you are absorbing an exact and fruitful knowledge
+of French society of the Restoration and of Louis Philippe. Moreover you
+are still pursuing your study of human character under one of the acute
+critics of the nineteenth century. Balzac has always seemed to me
+peculiarly French, his characters belong essentially to Paris or to the
+provinces. I associate Eugénie Grandet with Saumur in the Touraine and
+César Birotteau with the Rue St. Honoré in Paris; and all his other men
+and women move naturally in the great city or in the provinces which he
+has given them for their home. A devoted admirer however tells me that
+in his opinion Balzac has created universal types; the counterpart of
+some of his men may be seen in the business and social world of Boston,
+and the peculiarly sharp and dishonest transaction which brought César
+Birotteau to financial ruin was here exactly reproduced.
+
+The French language and literature seem to possess the merits which ours
+lack; and the writer of history cannot afford to miss the lessons he
+will receive by a constant reading of the best French prose.
+
+I do not ask the Freshman who is going to be a historian to realize
+Macaulay's ideal of a scholar, to "read Plato with his feet on the
+fender,"[4] but he should at least acquire a pretty thorough knowledge
+of classical Latin, so that he can read Latin, let me say, as many of us
+read German, that is with the use of a lexicon and the occasional
+translation of a sentence or a paragraph into English to arrive at its
+exact meaning. Of this, I can speak from the point of view of one who is
+deficient. The reading of Latin has been for me a grinding labor and I
+would have liked to read with pleasure in the original, the History and
+Annals of Tacitus, Cæsar's Gallic and Civil wars and Cicero's Orations
+and Private Letters even to the point of following Macaulay's advice,
+"Soak your mind with Cicero."[4] These would have given me, I fancy, a
+more vivid impression of two periods of Roman history than I now
+possess. Ferrero, who is imparting a fresh interest to the last period
+of the Roman republic, owes a part of his success, I think, to his
+thorough digestion and effective use of Cicero's letters, which have the
+faculty of making one acquainted with Cicero just as if he were a modern
+man. During a sojourn on the shores of Lake Geneva, I read two volumes
+of Voltaire's private correspondence, and later, while passing the
+winter in Rome, the four volumes of Cicero's letters in French. I could
+not help thinking that in the republic of letters one was not in time at
+a far greater distance from Cicero than from Voltaire. While the
+impression of nearness may have come from reading both series of letters
+in French, or because, to use John Morley's words, "two of the most
+perfect masters of the art of letter writing were Cicero and
+Voltaire,"[5] there is a decided flavor of the nineteenth century in
+Cicero's words to a good liver whom he is going to visit. "You must not
+reckon," he wrote, "on my eating your hors d'oeuvre. I have given them
+up entirely. The time has gone by when I can abuse my stomach with your
+olives and your Lucanian sausages."[6]
+
+To repeat then, if the student, who is going to be a historian, uses his
+acquisitive years in obtaining a thorough knowledge of French and Latin,
+he will afterwards be spared useless regrets. He will naturally add
+German for the purpose of general culture and, if languages come easy,
+perhaps Greek. "Who is not acquainted with another language," said
+Goethe, "knows not his own." A thorough knowledge of Latin and French is
+a long stride towards an efficient mastery of English. In the matter of
+diction, the English writer is rarely in doubt as to words of
+Anglo-Saxon origin, for these are deep-rooted in his childhood and his
+choice is generally instinctive. The difficulties most persistently
+besetting him concern words that come from the Latin or the French; and
+here he must use reason or the dictionary or both. The author who has a
+thorough knowledge of Latin and French will argue with himself as to the
+correct diction, will follow Emerson's advice, "Know words
+etymologically; pull them apart; see how they are made; and use them
+only where they fit."[7] As it is in action through life, so it is in
+writing; the conclusions arrived at by reason are apt to be more
+valuable than those which we accept on authority. The reasoned literary
+style is more virile than that based on the dictionary. A judgment
+arrived at by argument sticks in the memory, while it is necessary for
+the user of the dictionary constantly to invoke authority, so that the
+writer who reasons out the meaning of words may constantly accelerate
+his pace, for the doubt and decision of yesterday is to-day a solid
+acquirement, ingrained in his mental being. I have lately been reading a
+good deal of Gibbon and I cannot imagine his having had frequent
+recourse to a dictionary. I do not remember even an allusion either in
+his autobiographies or in his private letters to any such aid.
+Undoubtedly his thorough knowledge of Latin and French, his vast reading
+of Latin, French, and English books, enabled him to dispense with the
+thumbing of a dictionary and there was probably a reasoning process at
+the back of every important word. It is difficult, if not impossible, to
+improve on Gibbon by the substitution of one word for another.
+
+A rather large reading of Sainte-Beuve gives me the same impression.
+Indeed his literary fecundity, the necessity of having the Causerie
+ready for each Monday's issue of the _Constitutionnel_ or the
+_Moniteur_, precluded a study of words while composing, and his rapid
+and correct writing was undoubtedly due to the training obtained by the
+process of reasoning. Charles Sumner seems to be an exception to my
+general rule. Although presumably he knew Latin well, he was a slave to
+dictionaries. He generally had five at his elbow (Johnson, Webster,
+Worcester, Walker, and Pickering) and when in doubt as to the use of a
+word he consulted all five and let the matter be decided on the American
+democratic principle of majority rule.[8] Perhaps this is one cause of
+the stilted and artificial character of Sumner's speeches which, unlike
+Daniel Webster's, are not to be thought of as literature. One does not
+associate dictionaries with Webster. Thus had I written the sentence
+without thinking of a not infrequent confusion between Noah and Daniel
+Webster, and this confusion reminded me of a story which John Fiske
+used to tell with gusto and which some of you may not have heard. An
+English gentleman remarked to an American: "What a giant intellect that
+Webster of yours had! To think of so great an orator and statesman
+writing that dictionary! But I felt sure that one who towered so much
+above his fellows would come to a bad end and I was not a bit surprised
+to learn that he had been hanged for the murder of Dr. Parkman."
+
+To return to my theme: One does not associate dictionaries with Daniel
+Webster. He was given to preparing his speeches in the solitudes of
+nature, and his first Bunker Hill oration, delivered in 1825, was mainly
+composed while wading in a trout stream and desultorily fishing for
+trout.[9] Joe Jefferson, who loved fishing as well as Webster, used to
+say, "The trout is a gentleman and must be treated as such." Webster's
+companion might have believed that some such thought as this was passing
+through the mind of the great Daniel as, standing middle deep in the
+stream, he uttered these sonorous words: "Venerable men! You have come
+down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened
+out your lives that you might behold this joyous day." I think Daniel
+Webster for the most part reasoned out his choice of words; he left the
+dictionary work to others. After delivery, he threw down the manuscript
+of his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson and said to a student in his law
+office, "There, Tom, please to take that discourse and weed out the
+Latin words."[10]
+
+When doubtful as to the use of words, I should have been helped by a
+better knowledge of Latin and enabled very often to write with a surer
+touch. Though compelled to resort frequently to the dictionary, I early
+learned to pay little attention to the definition but to regard with
+care the illustrative meaning in the citations from standard authors.
+When I began writing I used the Imperial Dictionary, an improvement over
+Webster in this respect. Soon the Century Dictionary began to appear,
+and best of all the New English Dictionary on historical principles
+edited by Murray and Bradley and published by the Clarendon Press at
+Oxford. A study of the mass of quotations in these two dictionaries
+undoubtedly does much to atone for the lack of linguistic knowledge; and
+the tracing of the history of words, as it is done in the Oxford
+dictionary, makes any inquiry as to the meaning of a word fascinating
+work for the historian. Amongst the multiplicity of aids for the student
+and the writer no single one is so serviceable as this product of labor
+and self-sacrifice, fostered by the Clarendon Press, to whom, all
+writers in the English language owe a debt of gratitude.
+
+Macaulay had a large fund of knowledge on which he might base his
+reasoning, and his indefatigable mind welcomed any outside assistance.
+He knew Greek and Latin thoroughly and a number of other languages, but
+it is related of him that he so thumbed his copy of Johnson's Dictionary
+that he was continually sending it to the binder. In return for his
+mastery of the languages, the dictionaries are fond of quoting Macaulay.
+If I may depend upon a rough mental computation, no prose writer of the
+nineteenth century is so frequently cited. "He never wrote an obscure
+sentence in his life," said John Morley;[11] and this is partly due to
+his exact use of words. There is never any doubt about his meaning.
+Macaulay began the use of Latin words at an early age. When four and a
+half years old he was asked if he had got over the toothache, to which
+question came this reply, "The agony is abated."
+
+Mathematics beyond arithmetic are of no use to the historian and may be
+entirely discarded. I do not ignore John Stuart Mill's able plea for
+them, some words of which are worth quoting. "Mathematical studies," he
+said, "are of immense benefit to the student's education by habituating
+him to precision. It is one of the peculiar excellences of mathematical
+discipline that the mathematician is never satisfied with an _à peu
+près_. He requires the _exact_ truth.... The practice of mathematical
+reasoning gives wariness of the mind; it accustoms us to demand a sure
+footing."[12] Mill, however, is no guide except for exceptionally gifted
+youth. He began to learn Greek when he was three years old, and by the
+time he had reached the age of twelve had read a good part of Latin and
+Greek literature and knew elementary geometry and algebra thoroughly.
+
+The three English historians who have most influenced thought from 1776
+to 1900 are those whom John Morley called "great born men of
+letters"[13]--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle; and two of these despised
+mathematics. "As soon as I understood the principles," wrote Gibbon in
+his "Autobiography," "I relinquished forever the pursuit of the
+Mathematics; nor can I lament that I desisted before my mind was
+hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the
+finer feelings of moral evidence, which must however determine the
+actions and opinions of our lives."[14] Macaulay, while a student at
+Cambridge, wrote to his mother: "Oh, for words to express my abomination
+of mathematics ... 'Discipline' of the mind! Say rather starvation,
+confinement, torture, annihilation!... I feel myself becoming a
+personification of Algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking
+table of logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or
+at least going.... Farewell then Homer and Sophocles and Cicero."[15] I
+must in fairness state that in after life Macaulay regretted his lack of
+knowledge of mathematics and physics, but his career and Gibbon's
+demonstrate that mathematics need have no place on the list of the
+historian's studies. Carlyle, however, showed mathematical ability which
+attracted the attention of Legendre and deemed himself sufficiently
+qualified to apply, when he was thirty-nine years old, for the
+professorship of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. He did not
+succeed in obtaining the post but, had he done so, he "would have made,"
+so Froude his biographer thinks, "the school of Astronomy at Edinburgh
+famous throughout Europe."[16] When fifty-two, Carlyle said that "the
+man who had mastered the first forty-seven propositions of Euclid stood
+nearer to God than he had done before."[17] I may cap this with some
+words of Emerson, who in much of his thought resembled Carlyle: "What
+hours of melancholy my mathematical works cost! It was long before I
+learned that there is something wrong with a man's brain who loves
+them."[18]
+
+Mathematics are of course the basis of many studies, trades, and
+professions and are sometimes of benefit as a recreation for men of
+affairs. Devotion to Euclid undoubtedly added to Lincoln's strength, but
+the necessary range of knowledge for the historian is so vast that he
+cannot spend his evenings and restless nights in the solution of
+mathematical problems. In short, mathematics are of no more use to him
+than is Greek to the civil or mechanical engineer.
+
+In the category with mathematics must be placed a detailed study of any
+of the physical or natural sciences. I think that a student during his
+college course should have a year's work in a chemical laboratory or
+else, if his taste inclines him to botany, geology, or zoölogy, a year's
+training of his observing powers in some one of these studies. For he
+ought to get, while at an impressible age, a superficial knowledge of
+the methods of scientific men, as a basis for his future reading. We all
+know that science is moving the world and to keep abreast with the
+movement is a necessity for every educated man. Happily, there are
+scientific men who popularize their knowledge. John Fiske, Huxley, and
+Tyndall presented to us the theories and demonstrations of science in a
+literary style that makes learning attractive. Huxley and Tyndall were
+workers in laboratories and gave us the results of their patient and
+long-continued experiments. It is too much to expect that every
+generation will produce men of the remarkable power of expression of
+Huxley and John Fiske, but there will always be clear writers who will
+delight in instructing the general public in language easily understood.
+In an address which I delivered eight or nine years ago before the
+American Historical Association, I cheerfully conceded that, in the
+realm of intellectual endeavor, the natural and physical sciences should
+have the precedence of history. The question with us now is not which is
+the nobler pursuit, but how is the greatest economy of time to be
+compassed for the historian. My advice is in the line of concentration.
+Failure in life arises frequently from intellectual scattering; hence I
+like to see the historical student getting his physical and natural
+science at second-hand.
+
+The religious and political revolutions of the last four hundred years
+have weakened authority; but in intellectual development I believe that
+in general an important advantage lies in accepting the dicta of
+specialists. In this respect our scientific men may teach us a lesson.
+One not infrequently meets a naturalist or a physician, who possesses
+an excellent knowledge of history, acquired by reading the works of
+general historians who have told an interesting story. He would laugh at
+the idea that he must verify the notes of his author and read the
+original documents, for he has confidence that the interpretation is
+accurate and truthful. This is all that I ask of the would-be historian.
+For the sake of going to the bottom of things in his own special study,
+let him take his physical and natural science on trust and he may well
+begin to do this during his college course. As a manner of doing this,
+there occur to me three interesting biographies, the Life of Darwin, the
+Life of Huxley, and the Life of Pasteur, which give the important part
+of the story of scientific development during the last half of the
+nineteenth century. Now I believe that a thorough mastery of these three
+books will be worth more to the historical student than any driblets of
+science that he may pick up in an unsystematic college course.
+
+With this elimination of undesirable studies--undesirable because of
+lack of time--there remains ample time for those studies which are
+necessary for the equipment of a historian; to wit, languages,
+histories, English, French, and Latin literature, and as much of
+economics as his experienced teachers advise. Let him also study the
+fine arts as well as he can in America, fitting himself for an
+appreciation of the great works of architecture, sculpture, and painting
+in Europe which he will recognize as landmarks of history in their
+potent influence on the civilization of mankind. Let us suppose that our
+hypothetical student has marked out on these lines his college course of
+four years, and his graduate course of three. At the age of twenty-five
+he will then have received an excellent college education. The
+university with its learned and hard-working teachers, its wealth, its
+varied and wholesome traditions has done for him the utmost possible.
+Henceforward his education must depend upon himself and, unless he has
+an insatiable love of reading, he had better abandon the idea of
+becoming a historian; for books, pamphlets, old newspapers, and
+manuscripts are the stock of his profession and to them he must show a
+single-minded devotion. He must love his library as Pasteur did his
+laboratory and must fill with delight most of the hours of the day in
+reading or writing. To this necessity there is no alternative. Whether
+it be in general preparation or in the detailed study of a special
+period, there is no end to the material which may be read with
+advantage. The young man of twenty-five can do no better than to devote
+five years of his life to general preparation. And what enjoyment he has
+before him! He may draw upon a large mass of histories and biographies,
+of books of correspondence, of poems, plays, and novels; it is then for
+him to select with discrimination, choosing the most valuable, as they
+afford him facts, augment his knowledge of human nature, and teach him
+method and expression. "A good book," said Milton, "is the precious life
+blood of a master spirit," and every good book which wins our student's
+interest and which he reads carefully will help him directly or
+indirectly in his career. And there are some books which he will wish to
+master, as if he were to be subjected to an examination on them. As to
+these he will be guided by strong inclination and possibly with a view
+to the subject of his magnum opus; but if these considerations be absent
+and if the work has not been done in the university, I cannot too
+strongly recommend the mastery of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" and
+Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire." Gibbon merits close study because his is
+undoubtedly the greatest history of modern times and because it is, in
+the words of Carlyle, a splendid bridge from the old world to the new.
+He should be read in the edition of Bury, whose scholarly introduction
+gives a careful and just estimate of Gibbon and whose notes show the
+results of the latest researches. This edition does not include Guizot's
+and Milman's notes, which seem to an old-fashioned reader of Gibbon like
+myself worthy of attention, especially those on the famous Fifteenth and
+Sixteenth Chapters. Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire" is a fitting complement
+to Gibbon, and the intellectual possession of the two is an education in
+itself which will be useful in the study of any period of history that
+may be chosen.
+
+The student who reads Gibbon will doubtless be influenced by his many
+tributes to Tacitus and will master the Roman historian. I shall let
+Macaulay furnish the warrant for a close study of Thucydides. "This
+day," Macaulay said, when in his thirty-fifth year, "I finished
+Thucydides after reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration.
+He is the greatest historian that ever lived." Again during the same
+year he wrote: "What are all the Roman historians to the great Athenian?
+I do assure you there is no prose composition in the world, not even the
+oration on the Crown, which I place so high as the seventh book of
+Thucydides. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of human art. I was delighted to
+find in Gray's letters the other day this query to Wharton: 'The retreat
+from Syracuse--is or is it not the finest thing you ever read in your
+life?' ... Most people read all the Greek they ever read before they are
+five and twenty. They never find time for such studies afterwards until
+they are in the decline of life; and then their knowledge of the
+language is in great measure lost, and cannot easily be recovered.
+Accordingly, almost all the ideas that people have of Greek literature
+are ideas formed while they were still very young. A young man,
+whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides.
+I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him
+with a mind accustomed to historical researches and to political affairs
+and I am astonished at my own former blindness and at his
+greatness."[19]
+
+I have borrowed John Morley's words, speaking of Gibbon, Macaulay, and
+Carlyle as "three great born men of letters." Our student cannot
+therefore afford to miss a knowledge of Macaulay's History, but the
+Essays, except perhaps three or four of the latest ones, need not be
+read. In a preface to the authorized edition of the Essays, Macaulay
+wrote that he was "sensible of their defects," deemed them "imperfect
+pieces," and did not think that they were "worthy of a permanent place
+in English literature." For instance, his essay on Milton contained
+scarcely a paragraph which his matured judgment approved. Macaulay's
+peculiar faults are emphasized in his Essays and much of the harsh
+criticism which he has received comes from the glaring defects of these
+earlier productions. His history, however, is a great book, shows
+extensive research, a sane method and an excellent power of narration;
+and when he is a partisan, he is so honest and transparent that the
+effect of his partiality is neither enduring nor mischievous.
+
+I must say further to the student: read either Carlyle's "French
+Revolution" or his "Frederick the Great," I care not which, although it
+is well worth one's while to read both. If your friends who maintain
+that history is a science convince you that the "French Revolution" is
+not history, as perhaps they may, read it as a narrative poem. Truly
+Carlyle spoke rather like a poet than a historian when he wrote to his
+wife (in his forty-first year): "A hundred pages more and this cursed
+book is flung out of me. I mean to write with force of fire till that
+consummation; above all with the speed of fire.... It all stands pretty
+fair in my head, nor do I mean to investigate much more about it, but to
+splash down what I know in large masses of colors, that it may look like
+a smoke-and-flame conflagration in the distance, which it is."[20] It
+was Carlyle's custom to work all of the morning and take a solitary walk
+in Hyde Park in the afternoon, when looking upon the gay scene, the
+display of wealth and fashion, "seeing," as he said, "all the carriages
+dash hither and thither and so many human bipeds cheerily hurrying
+along," he said to himself: "There you go, brothers, in your gilt
+carriages and prosperities, better or worse, and make an extreme bother
+and confusion, the devil very largely in it.... Not one of you could do
+what I am doing, and it concerns you too, if you did but know it."[21]
+When the book was done he wrote to his brother, "It is a wild, savage
+book, itself a kind of French Revolution."[22] From its somewhat obscure
+style it requires a slow perusal and careful study, but this serves all
+the more to fix it in the memory causing it to remain an abiding
+influence.
+
+There are eight volumes of "Frederick the Great," containing, according
+to Barrett Wendell's computation, over one million words; and this
+eighteenth-century tale, with its large number of great and little
+characters, its "mass of living facts" impressed Wendell chiefly with
+its unity. "Whatever else Carlyle was," he wrote, "the unity of this
+enormous book proves him, when he chose to be, a Titanic artist."[23]
+Only those who have striven for unity in a narrative can appreciate the
+tribute contained in these words. It was a struggle, too, for Carlyle.
+Fifty-six years old when he conceived the idea of Frederick, his
+nervousness and irritability were a constant torment to himself and his
+devoted wife. Many entries in his journal tell of his "dismal continual
+wrestle with Friedrich,"[24] perhaps the most characteristic of which is
+this: "My Frederick looks as if it would never take shape in me; in fact
+the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the eighteenth
+century, with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties,
+and _inanity_ now fallen _putrid_, rotting inevitably towards
+annihilation; to destroy and extinguish all that, having got to know it,
+and to know that it must be rejected for evermore; after which the
+perennial portion, pretty much Friedrich and Voltaire so far as I can
+see, may remain conspicuous and capable of being delineated."[25]
+
+The student, who has become acquainted with the works of Gibbon,
+Macaulay, and Carlyle, will wish to know something of the men themselves
+and this curiosity may be easily and delightfully gratified. The
+autobiographies of Gibbon, the Life of Macaulay by Sir George Trevelyan,
+the History of Carlyle's Life by Froude, present the personality of
+these historians in a vivid manner. Gibbon has himself told of all his
+own faults and Froude has omitted none of Carlyle's, so that these two
+books are useful aids in a study of human nature, in which respect they
+are real adjuncts of Boswell's Johnson. Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay
+had an insatiable love of reading; in their solitary hours they were
+seldom without books in their hands. Valuable instruction may be derived
+from a study of their lives from their suggestions of books, helpful in
+the development of a historian. They knew how to employ their odd
+moments, and Gibbon and Macaulay were adepts in the art of desultory
+reading. Sainte-Beuve makes a plea for desultory reading in instancing
+Tocqueville's lack of it, so that he failed to illustrate and animate
+his pages with its fruits, the result being, in the long run, great
+monotony.[26] As a relief to the tired brain, without a complete loss of
+time, the reading at hazard, even browsing in a library, has its place
+in the equipment of a historian. One of the most striking examples of
+self-education in literature is Carlyle's seven years, from the age of
+thirty-two to thirty-nine, passed at Craigenputtock where his native
+inclination was enforced by his physical surroundings. Craigenputtock,
+wrote Froude, is "the dreariest spot in all the British dominions. The
+nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, 700 feet
+above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden produce to the
+hardiest vegetables. The house is gaunt and hungry-looking."[27] The
+place realized Tennyson's words, "O, the dreary, dreary moorland." Here
+Carlyle read books, gave himself over to silent meditation, and wrote
+for his bread, although a man who possessed an adequate income could not
+have been more independent in thought than he was, or more averse to
+writing to the order of editors of reviews and magazines. With no
+outside distractions, books were his companions as well as his friends.
+As you read Froude's intimate biography, it comes upon you, as you
+consider Carlyle's life in London, what a tremendous intellectual stride
+he had made while living in this dreary solitude of Craigenputtock. It
+was there that he continued his development under the intellectual
+influence of Goethe, wrote "Sartor Resartus" and conceived the idea of
+writing the story of the French Revolution. Those seven years, as you
+trace their influence during the rest of his life, will ever be a
+tribute to the concentrated, bookish labors of bookish men.
+
+It is often said that some practical experience in life is necessary for
+the training of a historian; that only thus can he arrive at a knowledge
+of human nature and become a judge of character; that, while the theory
+is occasionally advanced that history is a series of movements which may
+be described without taking individuals into account, as a matter of
+fact, one cannot go far on this hypothesis without running up against
+the truth that movements have motors and the motors are men. Hence we
+are to believe the dictum that the historian needs that knowledge of men
+which is to be obtained only by practical dealings with them. It is true
+that Gibbon's service in the Hampshire militia and his membership in the
+House of Commons were of benefit to the historian of the Roman Empire.
+Grote's business life, Macaulay's administrative work in India, and the
+parliamentary experience of both were undoubtedly of value to their work
+as historians, but there are excellent historians who have never had any
+such training. Carlyle is an example, and Samuel R. Gardiner is another.
+Curiously enough, Gardiner, who was a pure product of the university and
+the library, has expressed sounder judgments on many of the prominent
+men of the seventeenth century than Macaulay. I am not aware that there
+is in historical literature any other such striking contrast as this,
+for it is difficult to draw the line closely between the historian and
+the man of affairs, but Gardiner's example is strengthened in other
+historians' lives sufficiently to warrant the statement that the
+historian need not be a man of the world. Books are written by men and
+treat of the thoughts and actions of men and a good study may be made of
+human character without going beyond the walls of a library.
+
+Drawing upon my individual experience again I feel that the two authors
+who have helped me most in this study of human character are
+Shakespeare and Homer. I do not mean that in the modern world we meet
+Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth, and Shylock, but when we perceive "the native hue
+of resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," when we come
+in contact with the treachery of a seeming friend, with unholy ambition
+and insensate greed, we are better able to interpret them on the page of
+history from having grasped the lessons of Shakespeare to mankind. A
+constant reading of Shakespeare will show us unchanging passions and
+feelings; and we need not make literal contrasts, as did the British
+matron who remarked of "Antony and Cleopatra" that it was "so unlike the
+home life of our beloved queen." Bernard Shaw, who has said much in
+detraction of Shakespeare, writes in one of his admiring moods, "that
+the imaginary scenes and people he has created become more real to us
+than our actual life--at least until our knowledge and grip of actual
+life begins to deepen and glow beyond the common. When I was twenty,"
+Shaw continues, "I knew everybody in Shakespeare from Hamlet to
+Abhorson, much more intimately than I knew my living contemporaries; and
+to this day, if the name of Pistol or Polonius catches my eye in a
+newspaper, I turn to the passage with curiosity."[28]
+
+Homer's character of Ulysses is a link between the ancient and the
+modern world. One feels that Ulysses would be at home in the twentieth
+century and would adapt himself to the conditions of modern political
+life. Perhaps, indeed, he would have preferred to his militant age our
+industrial one where prizes are often won by craft and persuasive
+eloquence rather than by strength of arm. The story of Ulysses is a
+signal lesson in the study of human character, and receives a luminous
+commentary in Shakespeare's adaptation of it. The advice which Ulysses
+gives to Achilles[29] is a piece of worldly wisdom and may well be acted
+on by those who desire advancement in life and are little scrupulous in
+regard to means. The first part of Goethe's "Faust" is another book
+which has profoundly affected my view of life. I read it first when
+seventeen years old and have continually re-read it; and, while I fail
+to comprehend it wholly, and, although it does not give me the same kind
+of knowledge of human character that I derive from Shakespeare's plays,
+I carry away from it abiding impressions from the contact that it
+affords with one of the greatest of human minds.
+
+All this counsel of mine, as to the reading of the embryo historian is,
+of course, merely supplementary, and does not pretend to be exhaustive.
+I am assuming that during his undergraduate and graduate course the
+student has been advised to read, either wholly or in part, most of the
+English, German, and French scientific historians of the past fifty
+years, and that he has become acquainted in a greater or less degree
+with all the eminent American historians. My own experience has been
+that a thorough knowledge of one book of an author is better than a
+superficial acquaintance with all of his works. The only book of Francis
+Parkman's which I have read is his "Montcalm and Wolfe," parts of which
+I have gone over again and again. One chapter, pervaded with the scenery
+of the place, I have read on Lake George, three others more than once at
+Quebec, and I feel that I know Parkman's method as well as if I had
+skimmed all his volumes. But I believe I was careful in my selection,
+for in his own estimation, and in that of the general public, "Montcalm
+and Wolfe" is his best work. So with Motley, I have read nothing but
+the "Dutch Republic," but that I have read through twice carefully. I
+will not say that it is the most accurate of his works, but it is
+probably the most interesting and shows his graphic and dashing style at
+its best. An admirer of Stubbs told me that his "Lectures and Addresses
+on Mediæval and Modern History" would give me a good idea of his
+scholarship and literary manner and that I need not tackle his magnum
+opus. But those lectures gave me a taste for more and, undeterred by the
+remark of still another admirer that nobody ever read his
+"Constitutional History" through, I did read one volume with interest
+and profit, and I hope at some future time to read the other two. On the
+other hand, I have read everything that Samuel R. Gardiner has written
+except "What Gunpowder Plot Was." Readers differ. There are fast readers
+who have the faculty of getting just what they want out of a book in a
+brief time and they retain the thing which they have sought. Assuredly I
+envy men that power. For myself, I have never found any royal road to
+learning, have been a slow reader, and needed a re-reading, sometimes
+more than one, to acquire any degree of mastery of a book. Macaulay used
+to read his favorite Greek and Latin classics over and over again and
+presumably always with care, but modern books he turned off with
+extraordinary speed. Of Buckle's large volume of the "History of
+Civilization" Macaulay wrote in his journal: "I read Buckle's book all
+day, and got to the end, skipping, of course. A man of talent and of a
+good deal of reading, but paradoxical and incoherent."[30] John Fiske, I
+believe, was a slow reader, but he had such a remarkable power of
+concentration that what he read once was his own. Of this I can give a
+notable instance. At a meeting in Boston a number of years ago of the
+Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, Colonel William R.
+Livermore read a learned and interesting paper on Napoleon's Campaigns
+in Northern Italy, and a few men, among whom were Fiske and John C.
+Ropes, remained after supper to discuss the paper. The discussion went
+well into details and was technical. Fiske had as much to say as any one
+and met the military critics on their own ground, holding his own in
+this interchange of expert opinions. As we returned to Cambridge
+together, I expressed my surprise at his wide technical knowledge. "It
+is all due to one book," he said. "A few summers ago I had occasion to
+read Sir Edward Hamley's 'Operations of War' and for some reason or
+other everything in it seemed to sink into my mind and to be there
+retained, ready for use, as was the case to-night with his references to
+the Northern Italian campaigns."
+
+Outside of ordinary historical reading, a book occurs to me which is
+well worth a historian's mastery. I am assuming that our hypothetical
+student has read Goethe's "Faust," "Werther," and "Wilhelm Meister," and
+desires to know something of the personality of this great writer. He
+should, therefore, read Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe," in
+which he will find a body of profitable literary criticism, given out in
+a familiar way by the most celebrated man then living. The talks began
+when he was seventy-three and continued until near his death, ten years
+later; they reveal his maturity of judgment. Greek, Roman, German,
+English, French, Spanish, and Italian authors are taken up from time to
+time and discussed with clearness and appreciation, running sometimes to
+enthusiasm. As a guide to the best reading extant up to 1832 I know
+nothing better. Eckermann is inferior as a biographer to Boswell, and
+his book is neither so interesting nor amusing; but Goethe was far
+greater than Johnson, and his talk is cosmopolitan and broad, while
+Johnson's is apt to be insular and narrow. "One should not study
+contemporaries and competitors," Goethe said, "but the great men of
+antiquity, whose works have for centuries received equal homage and
+consideration.... Let us study Molière, let us study Shakespeare, but
+above all things, the old Greeks and always the Greeks."[31] Here is an
+opinion I like to dwell upon: "He who will work aright must never rail,
+must not trouble himself at all about what is ill done, but only to do
+well himself. For the great point is, not to pull down, but to build up
+and in this humanity finds pure joy."[32] It is well worth our while to
+listen to a man so great as to be free from envy and jealousy, but this
+was a lesson Carlyle could not learn from his revered master. It is
+undoubtedly his broad mind in connection with his wide knowledge which
+induced Sainte-Beuve to write that Goethe is "the greatest of modern
+critics and of critics of all time."[33]
+
+All of the conversations did not run upon literature and writers.
+Although Goethe never visited either Paris or London, and resided for a
+good part of his life in the little city of Weimar, he kept abreast of
+the world's progress through books, newspapers, and conversations with
+visiting strangers. No statesman or man of business could have had a
+wider outlook than Goethe, when on February 21, 1827, he thus spoke: "I
+should wish to see England in possession of a canal through the Isthmus
+of Suez.... And it may be foreseen that the United States, with its
+decided predilection to the West will, in thirty or forty years, have
+occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains.
+It may furthermore be foreseen that along the whole coast of the Pacific
+Ocean where nature has already formed the most capacious and secure
+harbors, important commercial towns will gradually arise, for the
+furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the East Indies and
+the United States. In such a case, it would not only be desirable, but
+almost necessary, that a more rapid communication should be maintained
+between the eastern and western shores of North America, both by
+merchant ships and men-of-war than has hitherto been possible with the
+tedious, disagreeable, and expensive voyage around Cape Horn.... It is
+absolutely indispensable for the United States to effect a passage from
+the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, and I am certain that they will
+do it. Would that I might live to see it!"[34]
+
+"Eckermann's book," wrote Sainte-Beuve, "is the best biography of
+Goethe; that of Lewes, for the facts; that of Eckermann, for the
+portrait from the inside and the physiognomy. The soul of a great man
+breathes in it."[35]
+
+I have had frequent occasion to speak of Sainte-Beuve and I cannot
+recommend our student too strongly to read from time to time some of his
+critical essays. His best work is contained in the fifteen volumes of
+"Causeries du Lundi" and in the thirteen volumes of "Nouveaux Lundis"
+which were articles written for the daily newspapers, the
+_Constitutionnel_, the _Moniteur_, and the _Temps_, when, between the
+ages of forty-five and sixty-five, he was at the maturity of his powers.
+Considering the very high quality of the work, the quantity is enormous,
+and makes us call to mind the remark of Goethe that "genius and
+fecundity are very closely allied." Excluding Goethe, we may safely, I
+think, call Sainte-Beuve the greatest of modern critics, and there is
+enough of resemblance between historical and literary criticism to
+warrant a study by the historian of these remarkable essays. "The root
+of everything in his criticism," wrote Matthew Arnold, "is his
+single-hearted devotion to truth. What he called 'fictions' in
+literature, in politics, in religion, were not allowed to influence
+him." And Sainte-Beuve himself has said, "I am accustomed incessantly to
+call my judgments in question anew and to recast my opinions the moment
+I suspect them to be without validity."[36] The writer who conforms to
+such a high standard is an excellent guide for the historian and no one
+who has made a study of these Causeries can help feeling their spirit of
+candor and being inspired to the attempt to realize so high an ideal.
+
+Sainte-Beuve's essays deal almost entirely with French literature and
+history, which were the subjects he knew best. It is very desirable for
+us Anglo-Saxons to broaden our minds and soften our prejudices by
+excursions outside of our own literature and history, and with Goethe
+for our guide in Germany, we can do no better than to accept
+Sainte-Beuve for France. Brunetière wrote that the four literary men of
+France in the nineteenth century who had exercised the most profound
+influence were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Auguste Comte.[37]
+I have already recommended Balzac, who portrays the life of the
+nineteenth century; and Sainte-Beuve, in developing the thought of the
+same period, gives us a history of French literature and society.
+Moreover, his volumes are valuable to one who is studying human
+character by the means of books. "Sainte-Beuve had," wrote Henry James,
+"two passions which are commonly assumed to exclude each other, the
+passion for scholarship and the passion for life. He valued life and
+literature equally for the light they threw on each other; to his mind,
+one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart."[38]
+
+Supposing the student to have devoted five years to this general
+preparation and to have arrived at the age of thirty, which Motley, in
+similar advice to an aspiring historian, fixed as the earliest age at
+which one should devote himself to his special work, he is ready to
+choose a period and write a history, if indeed his period has not
+already suggested itself during his years of general preparation. At all
+events it is doubtless that his own predilection will fix his country
+and epoch and the only counsel I have to offer is to select an
+interesting period. As to this, opinions will differ; but I would say
+for example that the attractive parts of German history are the
+Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, the epoch of Frederick the Great,
+and the unification of Germany which we have witnessed in our own day.
+The French Revolution is to me the most striking period in modern
+annals, whilst the history of the Directory is dull, relieved only by
+the exploits of Napoleon; but when Napoleon becomes the chief officer of
+state, interest revives and we follow with unflagging attention the
+story of this master of men, for which there is a superabundance of
+material, in striking contrast with the little that is known about his
+Titanic predecessors, Alexander and Cæsar, in the accounts of whose
+careers conjecture must so frequently come to the aid of facts to
+construct a continuous story. The Restoration and the reign of Louis
+Philippe would for me be dull periods were they not illumined by the
+novels of Balzac; but from the Revolution of 1848 to the fall of the
+Second Empire and the Commune, a wonderful drama was enacted. In our own
+history the Revolutionary War, the framing of the Constitution, and
+Washington's administrations seem to me replete with interest which is
+somewhat lacking for the period between Washington and the slavery
+conflict. "As to special history," wrote Motley to the aspiring
+historian, "I should be inclined rather to direct your attention to
+that of the last three and a half centuries."[39] Discussing the subject
+before the advanced historical students of Harvard a number of years
+ago, I gave an extension to Motley's counsel by saying that ancient
+history had better be left to the Germans. I was fresh from reading
+Holm's History of Greece and was impressed with his vast learning,
+elaboration of detail, and exhaustive treatment of every subject which
+seemed to me to require a steady application and patience, hardly
+consonant with the American character. But within the past five years
+Ferrero, an Italian, has demonstrated that others besides Germans are
+equal to the work by writing an interesting history of Rome, which
+intelligent men and scholars discuss in the same breath with Mommsen's.
+Courageously adopting the title "Grandeur and Decadence of Rome" which
+suggests that of Montesquieu, Ferrero has gleaned the well-reaped field
+from the appearance of Julius Cæsar to the reign of Augustus[40] in a
+manner to attract the attention of the reading public in Italy, France,
+England, and the United States. There is no reason why an American
+should not have done the same. "All history is public property," wrote
+Motley in the letter previously referred to. "All history may be
+rewritten and it is impossible that with exhaustive research and deep
+reflection you should not be able to produce something new and valuable
+on almost any subject."[41]
+
+After the student has chosen his period I have little advice to offer
+him beyond what I have previously given in two formal addresses before
+the American Historical Association, but a few additional words may be
+useful. You will evolve your own method by practice and by comparison
+with the methods of other historians. "Follow your own star." If you
+feel impelled to praise or blame as do the older historians, if it is
+forced upon you that your subject demands such treatment, proceed
+fearlessly, so that you do nothing for effect, so that you do not
+sacrifice the least particle of truth for a telling statement. If,
+however, you fall naturally into the rigorously judicial method of
+Gardiner you may feel your position sure. It is well, as the scientific
+historians warn you, to be suspicious of interesting things, but, on the
+other hand, every interesting incident is not necessarily untrue. If you
+have made a conscientious search for historical material and use it with
+scrupulous honesty, have no fear that you will transgress any reasonable
+canon of historical writing.
+
+An obvious question to be put to a historian is, What plan do you follow
+in making notes of your reading? Langlois, an experienced teacher and
+tried scholar, in his introduction to the "Study of History," condemns
+the natural impulse to set them down in notebooks in the order in which
+one's authorities are studied, and says, "Every one admits nowadays that
+it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of
+paper,"[42] arranging them by a systematic classification of subjects.
+This is a case in point where writers will, I think, learn best from
+their own experience. I have made my notes mainly in notebooks on the
+plan which Langlois condemns, but by colored pencil-marks of emphasis
+and summary, I keep before me the prominent facts which I wish to
+combine; and I have found this, on the whole, better than the card
+system. For I have aimed to study my authorities in a logical
+succession. First I go over the period in some general history, if one
+is to be had; then I read very carefully my original authorities in the
+order of their estimated importance, making copious excerpts.
+Afterwards I skim my second-hand materials. Now I maintain that it is
+logical and natural to have the extracts before me in the order of my
+study. When unusually careful and critical treatment has been required,
+I have drawn off my memoranda from the notebooks to cards, classifying
+them according to subjects. Such a method enables me to digest
+thoroughly my materials, but in the main I find that a frequent
+re-perusal of my notes answers fully as well and is an economy of time.
+
+Carlyle, in answer to an inquiry regarding his own procedure, has gone
+to the heart of the matter. "I go into the business," he said, "with all
+the intelligence, patience, silence, and other gifts and virtues that I
+have ... and on the whole try to keep the whole matter simmering in the
+_living_ mind and memory rather than laid up in paper bundles or
+otherwise laid up in the inert way. For this certainly turns out to be a
+truth; only what you at last _have living_ in your own memory and heart
+is worth putting down to be printed; this alone has much chance to get
+into the living heart and memory of other men. And here indeed, I
+believe, is the essence of all the rules I have ever been able to devise
+for myself. I have tried various schemes of arrangement and artificial
+helps to remembrance," but the gist of the matter is, "to keep the thing
+you are elaborating as much as possible actually _in_ your own living
+mind; in order that this same mind, as much awake as possible, may have
+a chance to make something of it!"[43]
+
+The objection may be made to my discourse that I have considered our
+student as possessing the purse of Fortunatus and have lost sight of
+Herbert Spencer's doctrine that a very important part of education is to
+fit a man to acquire the means of living. I may reply that there are a
+number of Harvard students who will not have to work for their bread
+and whose parents would be glad to have them follow the course that I
+have recommended. It is not too much to hope, therefore, that among
+these there are, to use Huxley's words, "glorious sports of nature" who
+will not be "corrupted by luxury" but will become industrious
+historians. To others who are not so fortunately situated, I cannot
+recommend the profession of historian as a means of gaining a
+livelihood. Bancroft and Parkman, who had a good deal of popularity,
+spent more money in the collection and copying of documents than they
+ever received as income from their histories. A young friend of mine, at
+the outset of his career and with his living in part to be earned, went
+for advice to Carl Schurz, who was very fond of him. "What is your aim?"
+asked Mr. Schurz. "I purpose being a historian," was the reply. "Aha!"
+laughed Schurz, "you are adopting an aristocratic profession, one which
+requires a rent-roll." Every aspiring historian has, I suppose, dreamed
+of that check of £20,000, which Macaulay received as royalty on his
+history for its sale during the year 1856,[44] but no such dream has
+since been realized.
+
+Teaching and writing are allied pursuits. And the teacher helps the
+writer, especially in history, through the necessary elaboration and
+digestion of materials. Much excellent history is given to the world by
+college professors. Law and medicine are too exacting professions with
+too large a literature of their own to leave any leisure for historical
+investigation. If one has the opportunity to get a good start, or, in
+the talk of the day, the right sort of a "pull," I can recommend
+business as a means of gaining a competence which shall enable one to
+devote one's whole time to a favorite pursuit. Grote was a banker until
+he reached the age of forty-nine when he retired from the banking house
+and began the composition of the first volume of his history. Henry C.
+Lea was in the active publishing business until he was fifty-five, and
+as I have already frequently referred to my own personal experience, I
+may add that I was immersed in business between the ages of twenty-two
+and thirty-seven. After three years of general and special preparation I
+began my writing at forty. The business man has many free evenings and
+many journeys by rail, as well as a summer vacation, when devotion to a
+line of study may constitute a valuable recreation. Much may be done in
+odd hours in the way of preparation for historical work, and a business
+life is an excellent school for the study of human character.
+
+
+    [3] Conversations of Goethe, Eng. trans., 230.
+
+    [4] Trevelyan, I, 86.
+
+    [5] Life of Gladstone, II, 181.
+
+    [6] III, 51.
+
+    [7] Talks with Emerson, 23.
+
+    [8] My Vol. II, 142, n. 2.
+
+    [9] Curtis, I, 250.
+
+   [10] _Ibid._, I, 252.
+
+   [11] Miscellanies, I, 275.
+
+   [12] Exam. of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, II, 310, 311.
+
+   [13] Gladstone, I, 195.
+
+   [14] p. 142.
+
+   [15] Trevelyan, I, 91.
+
+   [16] Froude, II, 317.
+
+   [17] Nichol, 20.
+
+   [18] Talks with Emerson, 162.
+
+   [19] Trevelyan, I, 379, 387, 409.
+
+   [20] Froude, III, 64, 65.
+
+   [21] _Ibid._, II, 385; III, 59.
+
+   [22] _Ibid._, III, 73.
+
+   [23] English Composition, 158.
+
+   [24] Letters of Jane Carlyle, II, 31.
+
+   [25] Froude's Carlyle, IV, 125.
+
+   [26] Causeries du Lundi, XV, 95.
+
+   [27] Froude, II, 19.
+
+   [28] Dramatic Opinions, II, 53.
+
+   [29] "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
+         Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
+         A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:" etc.
+
+   [30] Trevelyan, II, 388, n.
+
+   [31] Eng. trans., 236.
+
+   [32] _Ibid._, 115.
+
+   [33] Nouveaux Lundis, III, 265.
+
+   [34] Eng. trans., 222.
+
+   [35] Nouveaux Lundis, III, 328.
+
+   [36] Enc. Brit.
+
+   [37] Balzac, 309.
+
+   [38] Brander Matthews, _Cent. Mag._, 1901.
+
+   [39] Letter of April 4, 1864, _Harper's Mag._, June, 1889.
+
+   [40] I speak of the first four volumes.
+
+   [41] _L.c._
+
+   [42] p. 103.
+
+   [43] New Letters, II, 11.
+
+   [44] Life, II, 345.
+
+
+
+
+NEWSPAPERS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES
+
+A paper read before the American Historical Association in Washington on
+December 29, 1908; printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+NEWSPAPERS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES
+
+
+The impulse of an American writer in justifying the use of newspapers as
+historical materials is to adopt an apologetic tone. It is somewhat
+curious that such should be the case, for newspapers satisfy so many
+canons of historical evidence. They are contemporary, and, being written
+without knowledge of the end, cannot bolster any cause without making a
+plain showing of their intent. Their object is the relation of daily
+events; and if their relation is colored by honest or dishonest
+partisanship, this is easily discernible by the critic from the internal
+evidence and from an easily acquired knowledge of a few external facts.
+As the journals themselves say, their aim is to print the news; and much
+of the news is present politics. Moreover, the newspaper itself, its
+news and editorial columns, its advertisements, is a graphic picture of
+society.
+
+When Aulard, in his illuminating criticism of Taine, writes that the
+journals are a very important source of the history of the French
+Revolution, provided they are revised and checked by one another, the
+statement seems in accordance with the canons of historical writing; and
+when he blames Taine for using two journals only and neglecting ten
+others which he names, the impression on the mind is the same as if
+Taine were charged with the neglect of evidence of another class. One
+would hardly attempt to justify Taine by declaring that all journals are
+inaccurate, partisan, and dishonest, and that the omission was a merit,
+not a defect. Leaving out of account the greater size and diffuseness of
+the modern journal, the dictum of Aulard would seem to apply to any
+period of history.
+
+Why is it then that some American students fall consciously or
+unconsciously into an apologetic tone when they attempt to justify the
+use of newspapers as historical sources? I suppose it is because of the
+attitude of cultivated society to the newspaper of to-day. Society calls
+the ordinary newspaper sensational and unreliable; and, if neither, its
+accounts are so diffuse and badly proportioned as to weary the seeker
+after the facts of any given transaction. Despite the disfavor into
+which the American newspaper has fallen in certain circles, I suspect
+that it has only exaggerated these defects, and that the journals of
+different democracies have more resemblances than diversities. The
+newspaper that caters to the "masses" will never suit the "classes," and
+the necessity for a large circulation induces it to furnish the sheet
+which the greatest number of readers desire.
+
+But this does not concern the historian. He does not make his materials.
+He has to take them as they are. It would undoubtedly render his task
+easier if all men spoke and wrote everywhere with accuracy and
+sincerity; but his work would lose much of its interest. Take the
+newspaper for what it is, a hasty gatherer of facts, a hurried
+commentator on the same, and it may well constitute a part of historical
+evidence.
+
+When, in 1887, I began the critical study of the History of the United
+States from 1850 to 1860, I was struck with the paucity of material
+which would serve the purpose of an animated narrative. The main facts
+were to be had in the state papers, the Statutes, the _Congressional
+Globe_ and documents, the records of national conventions and platforms,
+and the tabulated results of elections. But there was much less private
+correspondence than is available for the early history of our country;
+and, compared with the period of the Civil War and later, a scarcity of
+biographies and reminiscences, containing personal letters of high
+historical value. Since I wrote my first two volumes, much new matter
+concerning the decade of 1850 to 1860 has been published. The work of
+the American Historical Association, and of many historical societies,
+the monographs of advanced university students, have thrown light upon
+this, as they have upon other periods, with the result that future
+delvers in this field can hardly be so much struck with the paucity of
+material as I was twenty-one years ago.
+
+Boy though I was during the decade of 1850 to 1860, I had a vivid
+remembrance of the part that the newspaper played in politics, and the
+thought came to me that the best way to arrive at the spirit of the
+times was to steep my mind in journalistic material; that there was the
+secret of living over again that decade, as the Abolitionist, the
+Republican, the Whig, and the Democrat had actually lived in it. In the
+critical use of such sources, I was helped by the example of von Holst,
+who employed them freely in his volumes covering the same period, and by
+the counsel and collaboration of my friend Edward G. Bourne, whose
+training was in the modern school. For whatever training I had beyond
+that of self came from the mastery, under the guidance of teachers, of
+certain general historians belonging to an epoch when power of
+expression was as much studied as the collecting and sifting of
+evidence.
+
+While considering my materials, I was struck with a statement cited by
+Herbert Spencer as an illustration in his "Philosophy of Style": "A
+modern newspaper statement, though probably true, if quoted in a book as
+testimony, would be laughed at; but the letter of a court gossip, if
+written some centuries ago, is thought good historical evidence." At
+about the same time, I noticed that Motley used as one of his main
+authorities for the battle of St. Quentin the manuscript of an anonymous
+writer. From these two circumstances, it was a logical reflection that
+some historians might make an exaggerated estimate of the value of
+manuscript material because it reposed in dusty archives and could be
+utilized only by severe labor and long patience; and that, imbued with
+this idea, other historians for other periods might neglect the
+newspaper because of its ready accessibility.
+
+These several considerations justified a belief, arrived at from my
+preliminary survey of the field, that the use of newspapers as sources
+for the decade of 1850 to 1860 was desirable. At each step of my pretty
+thorough study of them, I became more and more convinced that I was on
+the right track. I found facts in them which I could have found nowhere
+else. The public meeting is a great factor in the political life of this
+decade, and is most fully and graphically reported in the press. The
+newspaper, too, was a vehicle for personal accounts of a
+quasi-confidential nature, of which I can give a significant example. In
+an investigation that Edward Bourne made for me during the summer of
+1889, he came across in the _Boston Courier_ an inside account of the
+Whig convention of 1852, showing, more conclusively than I have seen
+elsewhere, the reason of the failure to unite the conservative Whigs,
+who were apparently in a majority, on Webster. From collateral evidence
+we were convinced that it was written by a Massachusetts delegate; and
+the _Springfield Republican_, which copied the account, furnished a
+confirmation of it. It was an interesting story, and I incorporated it
+in my narrative.
+
+I am well aware that Dr. Dryasdust may ask, What of it? The report of
+the convention shows that Webster received a very small vote and that
+Scott was nominated. Why waste time and words over the "might have
+been"? I can plead only the human interest in the great Daniel Webster
+ardently desiring that nomination, Rufus Choate advocating it in sublime
+oratory, the two antislavery delegates from Massachusetts refusing their
+votes for Webster, thus preventing a unanimous Massachusetts, and the
+delegates from Maine, among whom was Webster's godson William P.
+Fessenden, coldly refusing their much-needed aid.
+
+General Scott, having received the nomination, made a stumping tour in
+the autumn through some of the Western States. No accurate account of it
+is possible without the newspapers, yet it was esteemed a factor in his
+overwhelming defeat, and the story of it is well worth preserving as
+data for a discussion of the question, Is it wise for a presidential
+candidate to make a stumping tour during his electoral campaign?
+
+The story of the formation of the Republican party, and the rise of the
+Know-nothings, may possibly be written without recourse to the
+newspapers, but thorough steeping in such material cannot fail to add to
+the animation and accuracy of the story. In detailed history and
+biographical books, dates, through mistakes of the writer or printer,
+are frequently wrong; and when the date was an affair of supreme
+importance, I have sometimes found a doubt resolved by a reference to
+the newspaper, which, from its strictly contemporary character, cannot
+in such a matter lead one astray.
+
+I found the newspapers of value in the correction of logical
+assumptions, which frequently appear in American historical and
+biographical books, especially in those written by men who bore a part
+in public affairs. By a logical assumption, I mean the statement of a
+seemingly necessary consequence which apparently ought to follow some
+well-attested fact or condition. A striking instance of this occurred
+during the political campaign of 1856, when "bleeding Kansas" was a
+thrilling catchword used by the Republicans, whose candidate for
+president was Frémont. In a year and a half seven free-state men had
+been killed in Kansas by the border ruffians, and these outrages,
+thoroughly ventilated, made excellent campaign ammunition. But the
+Democrats had a _tu quoque_ argument which ought to have done much
+towards eliminating this question from the canvass.
+
+On the night of May 24, 1856, five pro-slavery men, living on the
+Pottawatomie Creek, were deliberately and foully murdered by John Brown
+and seven of his disciples; and, while this massacre caused profound
+excitement in Kansas and Missouri, it seems to have had no influence
+east of the Mississippi River, although the fact was well attested. A
+Kansas journalist of 1856, writing in 1879, made this logical
+assumption: "The opposition press both North and South took up the
+damning tale ... of that midnight butchery on the Pottawatomie.... Whole
+columns of leaders from week to week, with startling headlines,
+liberally distributed capitals, and frightful exclamation points, filled
+all the newspapers." And it was his opinion that, had it not been for
+this massacre, Frémont would have been elected.
+
+But I could not discover that the massacre had any influence on the
+voters in the pivotal states. I examined, or had examined, the files of
+the _New York Journal of Commerce_, _New York Herald_, _Philadelphia
+Pennsylvanian_, _Washington Union_, and _Cleveland Plain Dealer_, all
+Democratic papers except the _New York Herald_, and I was struck with
+the fact that substantially no use was made of the massacre as a
+campaign argument. Yet could anything have been more logical than the
+assumption that the Democrats would have been equal to their opportunity
+and spread far and wide such a story? The facts in the case show
+therefore that cause and effect in actual American history are not
+always the same as the statesman may conceive them in his cabinet or the
+historian in his study.
+
+In the newspapers of 1850 to 1860 many speeches, and many public, and
+some private, letters of conspicuous public men are printed; these are
+valuable material for the history of the decade, and their use is in
+entire accordance with modern historical canons.
+
+I have so far considered the press in its character of a register of
+facts; but it has a further use for historical purposes, since it is
+both a representative and guide of public sentiment. Kinglake shows that
+the _Times_ was the potent influence which induced England to invade the
+Crimea; Bismarck said in 1877 that the press "was the cause of the last
+three wars"; Lord Cromer writes, "The people of England as represented
+by the press insisted on sending General Gordon to the Soudan, and
+accordingly to the Soudan he was sent;" and it is current talk that the
+yellow journals brought on the Spanish-American War. Giving these
+statements due weight, can a historian be justified in neglecting the
+important influence of the press on public opinion?
+
+As reflecting and leading popular sentiment during the decade of 1850 to
+1860, the newspapers of the Northern States were potent. I own that many
+times one needs no further index to public sentiment than our frequent
+elections, but in 1854 conditions were peculiar. The repeal of the
+Missouri Compromise had outraged the North and indicated that a new
+party must be formed to resist the extension of slavery. In the
+disorganization of the Democratic party, and the effacement of the Whig,
+nowhere may the new movement so well be traced as in the news and
+editorial columns of the newspapers, and in the speeches of the
+Northern leaders, many of these indeed being printed nowhere else than
+in the press. What journals and what journalists there were in those
+days! Greeley and Dana of the _New York Tribune_; Bryant and Bigelow of
+the _Evening Post_; Raymond of the _Times_; Webb of the _Courier_ and
+_Enquirer_; Bowles of the _Springfield Republican_; Thurlow Weed of the
+_Albany Journal_; Schouler of the _Cincinnati Gazette_,--all inspired by
+their opposition to the spread of slavery, wrote with vigor and
+enthusiasm, representing the ideas of men who had burning thoughts
+without power of expression, and guiding others who needed the constant
+iteration of positive opinions to determine their political action.
+
+The main and cross currents which resulted in the formation of the
+compact Republican party of 1856 have their principal record in the
+press, and from it, directly or indirectly, must the story be told.
+Unquestionably the newspapers had greater influence than in an ordinary
+time, because the question was a moral one and could be concretely put.
+Was slavery right or wrong? If wrong, should not its extension be
+stopped? That was the issue, and all the arguments, constitutional and
+social, turned on that point.
+
+The greatest single journalistic influence was the _New York Weekly
+Tribune_ which had in 1854 a circulation of 112,000, and many times that
+number of readers. These readers were of the thorough kind, reading all
+the news, all the printed speeches and addresses, and all the
+editorials, and pondering as they read. The questions were discussed in
+their family circles and with their neighbors, and, as differences
+arose, the _Tribune_, always at hand, was consulted and re-read. There
+being few popular magazines during this decade, the weekly newspaper, in
+some degree, took their place; and, through this medium, Greeley and
+his able coadjutors spoke to the people of New York and of the West,
+where New England ideas predominated, with a power never before or since
+known in this country. When Motley was studying the old letters and
+documents of the sixteenth century in the archives of Brussels, he
+wrote: "It is something to read the real _bona fide_ signs manual of
+such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander Farnese,
+Philip the Second, Cardinal Granville and the rest of them. It gives a
+'realizing sense,' as the Americans have it." I had somewhat of the same
+feeling as I turned over the pages of the bound volumes of the _Weekly
+Tribune_, reading the editorials and letters of Greeley, the articles of
+Dana and Hildreth. I could recall enough of the time to feel the
+influence of this political bible, as it was termed, and I can
+emphatically say that if you want to penetrate into the thoughts,
+feelings, and ground of decision of the 1,866,000 men who voted for
+Lincoln in 1860, you should study with care the _New York Weekly
+Tribune_.
+
+One reason why the press was a better representative of opinion during
+the years from 1854 to 1860 than now is that there were few, if any,
+independent journals. The party man read his own newspaper and no other;
+in that, he found an expression of his own views. And the party
+newspaper in the main printed only the speeches and arguments of its own
+side. Greeley on one occasion was asked by John Russell Young, an
+associate, for permission to reprint a speech of Horatio Seymour in full
+as a matter of news. "Yes," Greeley said, "I will print Seymour's speech
+when the _World_ will print those of our side."
+
+Before the war, Charleston was one of the most interesting cities of the
+country. It was a small aristocratic community, with an air of
+refinement and distinction. The story of Athens proclaims that a large
+population is not necessary to exercise a powerful influence on the
+world; and, after the election of Lincoln in 1860, the 40,000 people of
+Charleston, or rather the few patricians who controlled its fate and
+that of South Carolina, attracted the attention of the whole country.
+The story of the secession movement of November and December, 1860,
+cannot be told with correctness and life without frequent references to
+the _Charleston Mercury_ and the _Charleston Courier_. The _Mercury_
+especially was an index of opinion, and so vivid is its daily chronicle
+of events that the historian is able to put himself in the place of
+those ardent South Carolinians and understand their point of view.
+
+For the history of the Civil War, newspapers are not so important. The
+other material is superabundant, and in choosing from the mass of it,
+the newspapers, so-far as affairs at the North are concerned, need only
+be used in special cases, and rarely for matters of fact. The accounts
+of campaigns and battles, which filled so much of their space, may be
+ignored, as the best possible authorities for these are the one hundred
+and twenty-eight volumes of the United States government publication,
+the "Official Records of the Union and Confederate armies." The faithful
+study of the correspondence and the reports in these unique volumes is
+absolutely essential to a comprehension of the war; and it is a labor of
+love. When one thinks of the mass of manuscripts students of certain
+periods of European history have been obliged to read, the American
+historian is profoundly grateful to his government, that at a cost to
+itself of nearly three million dollars,[45] it has furnished him this
+priceless material in neatly printed volumes with excellent indexes. The
+serious student can generally procure these volumes gratis through the
+favor of his congressman; or, failing in this, may purchase the set at a
+moderate price, so that he is not obliged to go to a public library to
+consult them.
+
+Next to manuscript material, the physical and mental labor of turning
+over and reading bound volumes of newspapers is the most severe, and I
+remember my feeling of relief at being able to divert my attention from
+what Edward L. Pierce called this back-breaking and eye-destroying
+labor, much of it in public libraries, to these convenient books in my
+own private library. A mass of other materials, notably Nicolay and
+Hay's contributions, military narratives, biographies, private
+correspondence, to say nothing of the Congressional publications, render
+the student fairly independent of the newspapers. But I did myself make,
+for certain periods, special researches among them to ascertain their
+influence on public sentiment; and I also found them very useful in my
+account of the New York draft riots of 1863. It is true the press did
+not accurately reflect the gloom and sickness of heart at the North
+after the battle of Chancellorsville, for the reason that many editors
+wrote for the purpose of keeping up the hopes of their readers. In sum,
+the student may congratulate himself that a continuous study of the
+Northern newspapers for the period of the Civil War is unnecessary, for
+their size and diffuseness are appalling.
+
+But what I have said about the press of the North will not apply to that
+of the South. Though strenuous efforts have been made, with the diligent
+coöperation of Southern men, to secure the utmost possible amount of
+Confederate material for the "Official Records," it actually forms only
+about twenty-nine per cent of the whole matter. Other historical
+material is also less copious. For example, there is no record of the
+proceedings of the Confederate Congress, like the _Globe_; there are no
+reports of committees, like that of the Committee on the Conduct of the
+War; and even the journal of the Congress was kept on loose memoranda,
+and not written up until after the close of the war. With the exception
+of this journal, which has been printed by our government, and the
+"Statutes at Large," our information of the work of the Confederate
+Congress comes from the newspapers and some books of biography and
+recollections. The case of the Southern States was peculiar, because
+they were so long cut off from intercourse with the outer world, owing
+to the efficient Federal blockade; and the newspaper in its local news,
+editorials, and advertisements, is important material for portraying
+life in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Fortunately for the
+student, the Southern newspaper was not the same voluminous issue as the
+Northern, and, if it had not been badly printed, its use would be
+attended with little difficulty. Owing to the scarcity of paper, many of
+the newspapers were gradually reduced in size, and in the end were
+printed on half-sheets, occasionally one on brown paper, and another on
+wall paper; even the white paper was frequently coarse, and this, with
+poor type, made the news-sheet itself a daily record of the waning
+fortunes of the Confederacy.
+
+In the history of Reconstruction the historian may be to a large extent
+independent of the daily newspaper. For the work of reconstruction was
+done by Congress, and Congress had the full support of the Northern
+people, as was shown by the continuous large Republican majority which
+was maintained. The debates, the reports, and the acts of Congress are
+essential, and little else is required except whatever private
+correspondence may be accessible. Congress represented public sentiment
+of the North, and if one desires newspaper opinion, one may find it in
+many pithy expressions on the floor of the House or the Senate. For the
+congressman and the senator are industrious newspaper readers. They are
+apt to read some able New York journal which speaks for their party, and
+the congressman will read the daily and weekly newspapers of his
+district, and the senator the prominent ones of his state which belong
+to his party.
+
+For the period which covered Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, I used
+the _Nation_ to a large extent. Its bound volumes are convenient to
+handle in one's own library, and its summary of events is useful in
+itself, and as giving leads to the investigation of other material.
+Frequently its editorials have spoken for the sober sense of the people
+with amazing success. As a constant reader of the _Nation_ since 1866, I
+have felt the fascination of Godkin, and have been consciously on guard
+against it. I tried not to be led away by his incisive statements and
+sometimes uncharitable judgments. But whatever may be thought of his
+bias, he had an honest mind, and was incapable of knowingly making a
+false statement; and this, with his other qualities, makes his journal
+excellent historical material. After considering with great care some
+friendly criticism, I can truly say that I have no apology to make for
+the extent to which I used the _Nation_.
+
+Recurring now to the point with which I began this discussion,--that
+learned prejudice against employing newspapers as historical
+material,--I wish to add that, like all other evidence, they must be
+used with care and skepticism, as one good authority is undoubtedly
+better than a dozen poor ones. An anecdote I heard years ago has been
+useful to me in weighing different historical evidence. A
+Pennsylvania-Dutch justice of the peace in one of the interior townships
+of Ohio had a man arraigned before him for stealing a pig. One witness
+swore that he distinctly saw the theft committed; eight swore that they
+never saw the accused steal a pig, and the verdict was worthy of
+Dogberry. "I discharge the accused," said the justice. "The testimony of
+eight men is certainly worth more than the testimony of one."
+
+Private and confidential correspondence is highly valuable historical
+material, for such utterances are less constrained and more sincere than
+public declarations; but all men cannot be rated alike. Some men have
+lied as freely in private letters as in public speeches; therefore the
+historian must get at the character of the man who has written the
+letter and the influences surrounding him; these factors must count in
+any satisfactory estimate of his accuracy and truth. The newspaper must
+be subjected to similar tests. For example, to test an article or public
+letter written by Greeley or Godkin, the general situation, the
+surrounding influences, and the individual bias must be taken into
+account, and, when allowance is made for these circumstances, as well as
+for the public character of the utterance, it may be used for historical
+evidence. For the history of the last half of the nineteenth century
+just such material--the material of the fourth estate--must be used.
+Neglect of it would be like neglect of the third estate in the history
+of France for the eighteenth century.
+
+In the United States we have not, politically speaking, either the first
+or second estates, but we have the third and fourth estates with an
+intimate connection between the two. Lord Cromer said, when writing of
+the sending of Gordon to the Soudan, "Newspaper government has certain
+disadvantages;" and this he emphasized by quoting a wise remark of Sir
+George Cornewall Lewis, "Anonymous authorship places the public under
+the direction of guides who have no sense of personal responsibility."
+Nevertheless this newspaper government must be reckoned with. The duty
+of the historian is, not to decide if the newspapers are as good as they
+ought to be, but to measure their influence on the present, and to
+recognize their importance as an ample and contemporary record of the
+past.
+
+
+   [45] $2,858,514, without including the pay of army officers detailed
+        from time to time for duty in connection with the work. Official
+        Records, 130, V.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE COMMENCEMENT
+DINNER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
+
+June 26, 1901 (not delivered).
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE COMMENCEMENT
+DINNER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
+
+
+Thanking heartily the governing boards of Harvard College for the honor
+conferred upon me, I shall say, on this my first admission to the circle
+of the Harvard alumni, a word on the University as it appears to one
+whose work has lain outside of it. The spirit of the academy in general
+and especially of this University impels men to get to the bottom of
+things, to strive after exact knowledge; and this spirit permeates my
+own study of history in a remarkable degree. "The first of all Gospels
+is this," said Carlyle, "that a lie cannot endure forever." This is the
+gospel of historical students. A part of their work has been to expose
+popular fallacies, and to show up errors which have been made through
+partiality and misguided patriotism or because of incomplete
+investigation. Men of my age are obliged to unlearn much. The youthful
+student of history has a distinct advantage over us in that he begins
+with a correct knowledge of the main historical facts. He does not for
+example learn what we all used to learn--that in the year 1000 the
+appearance of a fiery comet caused a panic of terror to fall upon
+Christendom and gave rise to the belief that the end of the world was at
+hand. Nor is he taught that the followers of Peter the Hermit in the
+first crusade were a number of spiritually minded men and women of
+austere morality. It is to the University that we owe it that we are
+seeing things as they are in history, that the fables, the fallacies,
+and the exaggerations are disappearing from the books.
+
+To regard the past with accuracy and truth is a preparation for
+envisaging the present in the same way. For this attitude towards the
+past and the present gained by college students of history, and for
+other reasons which it is not necessary here to detail, the man of
+University training has, other things being equal, this advantage over
+him who lacks it, that in life in the world he will get at things more
+certainly and state them more accurately.
+
+"A university," said Lowell, "is a place where nothing useful is
+taught." By utility Lowell undoubtedly meant, to use the definition
+which Huxley puts into the average Englishman's mouth, "that by which we
+get pudding or praise or both." A natural reply to the statement of
+Lowell is that great numbers of fathers every year, at a pecuniary
+sacrifice, send their sons to college with the idea of fitting them
+better to earn their living, in obedience to the general sentiment of
+men of this country that there is a money value to college training. But
+the remark of Lowell suggests another object of the University which, to
+use the words of Huxley again, is "to catch the exceptional people, the
+glorious sports of nature, and turn them to account for the good of
+society." This appeals to those imbued with the spirit of the academy
+who frankly acknowledge, in the main, our inferiority in the
+scholarship, which produces great works of literature and science, to
+England, Germany, and France, and who with patriotic eagerness wish that
+we may reach the height attained in the older countries. To recur to my
+own study again, should we produce a historian or historical writer the
+equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay there would be a feeling
+of pride in our historical genius which would make itself felt at every
+academical and historical gathering. We have something of that sentiment
+in regard to Francis Parkman, our most original historian. But it may
+be that the historical field of Parkman is too narrow to awaken a
+world-wide interest and I suspect that the American who will be
+recognized as the equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay must
+secure that recognition by writing of some period of European history
+better than the Englishman, German, or Frenchman has written of it. He
+must do it not only in the way of scientific history, in which in his
+field Henry Charles Lea has won so much honor for himself and his
+country, but he must bring to bear on his history that quality which has
+made the historical writings of Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GIBBON
+
+Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and printed in
+_Scribner's Magazine_, June, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GIBBON
+
+
+No English or American lover of history visits Rome without bending
+reverent footsteps to the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. Two visits
+are necessary, as on the first you are at once seized by the sacristan,
+who can conceive of no other motive for entering this church on the
+Capitol Hill than to see the miraculous Bambino--the painted doll
+swaddled in gold and silver tissue and "crusted over with magnificent
+diamonds, emeralds, and rubies." When you have heard the tale of what
+has been called "the oldest medical practitioner in Rome," of his
+miraculous cures, of these votive offerings, the imaginary picture you
+had conjured up is effaced; and it is better to go away and come a
+second time when the sacristan will recognize you and leave you to
+yourself. Then you may open your Gibbon's Autobiography and read that it
+was the subtle influence of Italy and Rome that determined the choice,
+from amongst many contemplated subjects of historical writing, of "The
+Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." "In my Journal," wrote Gibbon,
+"the place and moment of conception are recorded; the 15th of October,
+1764, in the close of the evening, as I sat musing in the Church of the
+Franciscan friars while they were singing vespers in the Temple of
+Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol."[46] Gibbon was twenty-seven when
+he made this fruitful visit of eighteen weeks to Rome, and his first
+impression, though often quoted, never loses interest, showing, as it
+does, the enthusiasm of an unemotional man. "At the distance of
+twenty-five years," he wrote, "I can neither forget nor express the
+strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered
+the _Eternal City_. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step
+the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus _stood_ or
+Cicero spoke or Cæsar fell was at once present to my eye."
+
+The admirer of Gibbon as he travels northward will stop at Lausanne and
+visit the hotel which bears the historian's name. Twice have I taken
+luncheon in the garden where he wrote the last words of his history; and
+on a third visit, after lunching at another inn, I could not fail to
+admire the penetration of the Swiss concierge. As I alighted, he seemed
+to divine at once the object of my visit, and before I had half the
+words of explanation out of my mouth, he said, "Oh, yes. It is this way.
+But I cannot show you anything but a spot." I have quoted from Gibbon's
+Autobiography the expression of his inspiration of twenty-seven; a
+fitting companion-piece is the reflection of the man of fifty. "I have
+presumed to mark the moment of conception," he wrote; "I shall now
+commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or
+rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven
+and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a
+summer-house in my garden.... I will not dissemble the first emotions of
+joy on the recovery of my freedom and perhaps the establishment of my
+fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread
+over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old
+and agreeable companion."[47]
+
+Although the idea was conceived when Gibbon was twenty-seven, he was
+thirty-one before he set himself seriously at work to study his
+material. At thirty-six he began the composition, and he was
+thirty-nine, when, in February, 1776, the first quarto volume was
+published. The history had an immediate success. "My book," he wrote,
+"was on every table and almost on every toilette; the historian was
+crowned by the taste or fashion of the day."[48] The first edition was
+exhausted in a few days, a second was printed in 1776, and next year a
+third. The second and third volumes, which ended the history of the
+Western empire, were published in 1781, and seven years later the three
+volumes devoted to the Eastern empire saw the light. The last sentence
+of the work, written in the summer-house at Lausanne, is, "It was among
+the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which
+has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which,
+however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity
+and candor of the public."
+
+This is a brief account of one of the greatest historical works, if
+indeed it is not the greatest, ever written. Let us imagine an
+assemblage of English, German, and American historical scholars called
+upon to answer the question, Who is the greatest modern historian? No
+doubt can exist that Gibbon would have a large majority of the voices;
+and I think a like meeting of French and Italian scholars would indorse
+the verdict. "Gibbon's work will never be excelled," declared
+Niebuhr.[49] "That great master of us all," said Freeman, "whose
+immortal tale none of us can hope to displace."[50] Bury, the latest
+editor of Gibbon, who has acutely criticised and carefully weighed "The
+Decline and Fall," concludes "that Gibbon is behind date in many
+details. But in the main things he is still our master, above and beyond
+date."[51] His work wins plaudits from those who believe that history
+in its highest form should be literature and from those who hold that it
+should be nothing more than a scientific narrative. The disciples of
+Macaulay and Carlyle, of Stubbs and Gardiner, would be found voting in
+unison in my imaginary Congress. Gibbon, writes Bury, is "the historian
+and the man of letters," thus ranking with Thucydides and Tacitus. These
+three are put in the highest class, exemplifying that "brilliance of
+style and accuracy of statement are perfectly compatible in an
+historian."[52] Accepting this authoritative classification it is well
+worth while to point out the salient differences between the ancient
+historians and the modern. From Thucydides we have twenty-four years of
+contemporary history of his own country. If the whole of the Annals and
+History of Tacitus had come down to us, we should have had eighty-three
+years; as it is, we actually have forty-one of nearly contemporary
+history of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's tale covers 1240 years. He went
+far beyond his own country for his subject, and the date of his
+termination is three centuries before he was born. Milman spoke of "the
+amplitude, the magnificence, and the harmony of Gibbon's design,"[53]
+and Bury writes, "If we take into account the vast range of his work,
+his accuracy is amazing."[54] Men have wondered and will long wonder at
+the brain with such a grasp and with the power to execute skillfully so
+mighty a conception. "The public is seldom wrong" in their judgment of a
+book, wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography,[55] and, if that be true at the
+time of actual publication to which Gibbon intended to apply the remark,
+how much truer it is in the long run of years. "The Decline and Fall of
+the Roman Empire" has had a life of over one hundred and thirty years,
+and there is no indication that it will not endure as long as any
+interest is taken in the study of history. "I have never presumed to
+accept a place in the triumvirate of British historians," said Gibbon,
+referring to Hume and Robertson. But in our day Hume and Robertson
+gather dust on the shelf, while Gibbon is continually studied by
+students and read by serious men.
+
+A work covering Gibbon's vast range of time would have been impossible
+for Thucydides or Tacitus. Historical skepticism had not been fully
+enough developed. There had not been a sufficient sifting and criticism
+of historical materials for a master's work of synthesis. And it is
+probable that Thucydides lacked a model. Tacitus could indeed have drawn
+inspiration from the Greek, while Gibbon had lessons from both, showing
+a profound study of Tacitus and a thorough acquaintance with Thucydides.
+
+If circumstances then made it impossible for the Greek or the Roman to
+attempt history on the grand scale of Gibbon, could Gibbon have written
+contemporary history with accuracy and impartiality equal to his great
+predecessors? This is one of those delightful questions that may be ever
+discussed and never resolved. When twenty-three years old, arguing
+against the desire of his father that he should go into Parliament,
+Gibbon assigned, as one of the reasons, that he lacked "necessary
+prejudices of party and of nation";[56] and when in middle life he
+embraced the fortunate opportunity of becoming a member of the House of
+Commons, he thus summed up his experience, "The eight sessions that I
+sat in Parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most
+essential virtue of an historian."[57] At the end of this political
+career, Gibbon, in a private letter to an intimate Swiss friend, gave
+the reason why he had embraced it. "I entered Parliament," he said,
+"without patriotism, and without ambition, and I had no other aim than
+to secure the comfortable and honest place of a _Lord of Trade_. I
+obtained this place at last. I held it for three years, from 1779 to
+1782, and the net annual product of it, being £750 sterling, increased
+my revenue to the level of my wants and desires."[58] His retirement
+from Parliament was followed by ten years' residence at Lausanne, in the
+first four of which he completed his history. A year and a half after
+his removal to Lausanne, he referred, in a letter to his closest friend,
+Lord Sheffield, to the "abyss of your cursed politics," and added: "I
+never was a very warm patriot and I grow every day a citizen of the
+world. The scramble for power and profit at Westminster or St. James's,
+and the names of Pitt and Fox become less interesting to me than those
+of Cæsar and Pompey."[59]
+
+These expressions would seem to indicate that Gibbon might have written
+contemporary history well and that the candor displayed in "The Decline
+and Fall" might not have been lacking had he written of England in his
+own time. But that subject he never contemplated. When twenty-four years
+old he had however considered a number of English periods and finally
+fixed upon Sir Walter Raleigh for his hero; but a year later, he wrote
+in his journal: "I shrink with terror from the modern history of
+England, where every character is a problem, and every reader a friend
+or an enemy; where a writer is supposed to hoist a flag of party and is
+devoted to damnation by the adverse faction.... I must embrace a safer
+and more extensive theme."[60]
+
+How well Gibbon knew himself! Despite his coolness and candor, war and
+revolution revealed his strong Tory prejudices, which he undoubtedly
+feared might color any history of England that he might undertake. "I
+took my seat," in the House of Commons, he wrote, "at the beginning of
+the memorable contest between Great Britain and America; and supported
+with many a sincere and _silent_ vote the rights though perhaps not the
+interests of the mother country."[61] In 1782 he recorded the
+conclusion: "The American war had once been the favorite of the country,
+the pride of England was irritated by the resistance of her colonies,
+and the executive power was driven by national clamor into the most
+vigorous and coercive measures." But it was a fruitless contest. Armies
+were lost; the debt and taxes were increased; the hostile confederacy of
+France, Spain and Holland was disquieting. As a result the war became
+unpopular and Lord North's ministry fell. Dr. Johnson thought that no
+nation not absolutely conquered had declined so much in so short a time.
+"We seem to be sinking," he said. "I am afraid of a civil war." Dr.
+Franklin, according to Horace Walpole, said "he would furnish Mr. Gibbon
+with materials for writing the History of the Decline of the British
+Empire." With his country tottering, the self-centered but truthful
+Gibbon could not avoid mention of his personal loss, due to the fall of
+his patron, Lord North. "I was stripped of a convenient salary," he
+said, "after having enjoyed it about three years."[62]
+
+The outbreak of the French Revolution intensified his conservatism. He
+was then at Lausanne, the tranquillity of which was broken up by the
+dissolution of the neighboring kingdom. Many Lausanne families were
+terrified by the menace of bankruptcy. "This town and country," Gibbon
+wrote, "are crowded with noble exiles, and we sometimes count in an
+assembly a dozen princesses and duchesses."[63] Bitter disputes between
+them and the triumphant Democrats disturbed the harmony of social
+circles. Gibbon espoused the cause of the royalists. "I beg leave to
+subscribe my assent to Mr. Burke's creed on the Revolution of France,"
+he wrote. "I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his
+chivalry, and I can almost excuse his reverence for Church
+establishments."[64] Thirteen days after the massacre of the Swiss guard
+in the attack on the Tuileries in August, 1792, Gibbon wrote to Lord
+Sheffield, "The last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced
+almost everybody of the fatal consequences of Democratical principles
+which lead by a path of flowers into the abyss of hell."[65] Gibbon, who
+was astonished by so few things in history, wrote Sainte-Beuve, was
+amazed by the French Revolution.[66] Nothing could be more natural. The
+historian in his study may consider the fall of dynasties, social
+upheavals, violent revolutions, and the destruction of order without a
+tremor. The things have passed away. The events furnish food for his
+reflections and subjects for his pen, while sanguine uprisings at home
+or in a neighboring country in his own time inspire him with terror lest
+the oft-prophesied dissolution of society is at hand. It is the
+difference between the earthquake in your own city and the one 3000
+miles away. As Gibbon's pocket-nerve was sensitive, it may be he was
+also thinking of the £1300 he had invested in 1784 in the new loan of
+the King of France, deeming the French funds as solid as the
+English.[67]
+
+It is well now to repeat our dictum that Gibbon is the greatest modern
+historian, but, in reasserting this, it is no more than fair to cite the
+opinions of two dissentients--the great literary historians of the
+nineteenth century, Macaulay and Carlyle. "The truth is," wrote Macaulay
+in his diary, "that I admire no historians much except Herodotus,
+Thucydides, and Tacitus.... There is merit no doubt in Hume, Robertson,
+Voltaire, and Gibbon. Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of
+history more just, I am confident, than theirs."[68] "Gibbon," said
+Carlyle in a public lecture, is "a greater historian than Robertson but
+not so great as Hume. With all his swagger and bombast, no man ever gave
+a more futile account of human things than he has done of the decline
+and fall of the Roman Empire; assigning no profound cause for these
+phenomena, nothing but diseased nerves, and all sorts of miserable
+motives, to the actors in them."[69] Carlyle's statement shows envious
+criticism as well as a prejudice in favor of his brother Scotchman. It
+was made in 1838, since when opinion has raised Gibbon to the top, for
+he actually lives while Hume is read perfunctorily, if at all. Moreover
+among the three--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle--whose works are
+literature as well as history, modern criticism has no hesitation in
+awarding the palm to Gibbon.
+
+Before finally deciding upon his subject Gibbon thought of "The History
+of the Liberty of the Swiss" and "The History of the Republic of
+Florence under the House of Medicis,"[70] but in the end, as we have
+seen, he settled on the later history of the Roman Empire, showing, as
+Lowell said of Parkman, his genius in the choice of his subject. His
+history really begins with the death of Marcus Aurelius, 180 A.D., but
+the main narrative is preceded by three excellent introductory chapters,
+covering in Bury's edition eighty-two pages. After the completion of his
+work, he regretted that he had not begun it at an earlier period. On
+the first page of his own printed copy of his book where he announces
+his design, he has entered this marginal note: "Should I not have given
+the _history_ of that fortunate period which was interposed between two
+iron ages? Should I not have deduced the decline of the Empire from the
+Civil Wars that ensued after the Fall of Nero or even from the tyranny
+which succeeded the reign of Augustus? Alas! I should; but of what avail
+is this tardy knowledge?"[71] We may echo Gibbon's regret that he had
+not commenced his history with the reign of Tiberius, as, in his
+necessary use of Tacitus, we should have had the running comment of one
+great historian on another, of which we have a significant example in
+Gibbon's famous sixteenth chapter wherein he discusses Tacitus's account
+of the persecution of the Christians by Nero. With his power of historic
+divination, he would have so absorbed Tacitus and his time that the
+history would almost have seemed a collaboration between two great and
+sympathetic minds. "Tacitus," he wrote, "very frequently trusts to the
+curiosity or reflection of his readers to supply those intermediate
+circumstances and ideas, which, in his extreme conciseness, he has
+thought proper to suppress."[72] How Gibbon would have filled those
+gaps! Though he was seldom swayed by enthusiasm, his admiration of the
+Roman historian fell little short of idolatry. His references in "The
+Decline and Fall" are many, and some of them are here worth recalling to
+mind. "In their primitive state of simplicity and independence," he
+wrote, "the Germans were surveyed by the discerning eye and delineated
+by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first of historians who applied
+the science of philosophy to the study of facts."[73] Again he speaks of
+him as "the philosophic historian whose writings will instruct the last
+generation of mankind."[74] And in Chapter XVI he devoted five pages to
+citation from, and comment on, Tacitus, and paid him one of the most
+splendid tributes one historian ever paid another. "To collect, to
+dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore years in an immortal work,
+every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and
+the most lively images, was an undertaking sufficient to exercise the
+genius of Tacitus himself during the greatest part of his life."[75] So
+much for admiration. That, nevertheless, Gibbon could wield the critical
+pen at the expense of the historian he rated so highly, is shown by a
+marginal note in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall." It will
+be remembered that Tacitus published his History and wrote his Annals
+during the reign of Trajan, whom he undoubtedly respected and admired.
+He referred to the reigns of Nerva and Trajan in suggested contrast to
+that of Domitian as "times when men were blessed with the rare privilege
+of thinking with freedom, and uttering what they thought."[76] It fell
+to both Tacitus and Gibbon to speak of the testament of Augustus which,
+after his death, was read in the Senate: and Tacitus wrote, Augustus
+"added a recommendation to keep the empire within fixed limits," on
+which he thus commented, "but whether from apprehension for its safety,
+or jealousy of future rivals, is uncertain."[77] Gibbon thus criticised
+this comment: "Why must rational advice be imputed to a base or foolish
+motive? To what cause, error, malevolence, or flattery, shall I ascribe
+the unworthy alternative? Was the historian dazzled by Trajan's
+conquests?"[78]
+
+The intellectual training of the greatest modern historian is a matter
+of great interest. "From my early youth," wrote Gibbon in his
+Autobiography, "I aspired to the character of an historian."[79] He had
+"an early and invincible love of reading" which he said he "would not
+exchange for the treasures of India" and which led him to a "vague and
+multifarious" perusal of books. Before he reached the age of fifteen he
+was matriculated at Magdalen College, giving this account of his
+preparation. "I arrived at Oxford," he said, "with a stock of erudition
+that might have puzzled a Doctor and a degree of ignorance of which a
+schoolboy would have been ashamed."[80] He did not adapt himself to the
+life or the method of Oxford, and from them apparently derived no
+benefit. "I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College," he wrote; "they
+proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole
+life."[81] He became a Roman Catholic. It was quite characteristic of
+this bookish man that his conversion was effected, not by the emotional
+influence of some proselytizer, but by the reading of books. English
+translations of two famous works of Bossuet fell into his hands. "I
+read," he said, "I applauded, I believed ... and I surely fell by a
+noble hand." Before a priest in London, on June 8, 1753, he privately
+"abjured the errors of heresy" and was admitted into the "pale of the
+church." But at that time this was a serious business for both priest
+and proselyte. For the rule laid down by Blackstone was this, "Where a
+person is reconciled to the see of Rome, or procures others to be
+reconciled, the offence amounts to High-Treason." This severe rule was
+not enforced, but there were milder laws under which a priest might
+suffer perpetual imprisonment and the proselyte's estate be transferred
+to his nearest relations. Under such laws prosecutions were had and
+convictions obtained. Little wonder was it when Gibbon apprised his
+father in an "elaborate controversial epistle" of the serious step
+which he had taken, that the elder Gibbon should be astonished and
+indignant. In his passion he divulged the secret which effectually
+closed the gates of Magdalen College to his son,[82] who was packed off
+to Lausanne and "settled under the roof and tuition" of a Calvinist
+minister.[83] Edward Gibbon passed nearly five years at Lausanne, from
+the age of sixteen to that of twenty-one, and they were fruitful years
+for his education. It was almost entirely an affair of self-training, as
+his tutor soon perceived that the student had gone beyond the teacher
+and allowed him to pursue his own special bent. After his history was
+published and his fame won, he recorded this opinion: "In the life of
+every man of letters there is an æra, from a level, from whence he soars
+with his own wings to his proper height, and the most important part of
+his education is that which he bestows on himself."[84] This was
+certainly true in Gibbon's case. On his arrival at Lausanne he hardly
+knew any French, but before he returned to England he thought
+spontaneously in French and understood, spoke, and wrote it better than
+he did his mother tongue.[85] He read Montesquieu frequently and was
+struck with his "energy of style and boldness of hypothesis." Among the
+books which "may have remotely contributed to form the historian of the
+Roman Empire" were the Provincial Letters of Pascal, which he read "with
+a new pleasure" almost every year. From them he said, "I learned to
+manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of
+ecclesiastical solemnity." As one thinks of his chapters in "The Decline
+and Fall" on Julian, one is interested to know that during this period
+he was introduced to the life and times of this Roman emperor by a book
+written by a French abbé. He read Locke, Grotius, and Puffendorf, but
+unquestionably his greatest knowledge, mental discipline, and peculiar
+mastery of his own tongue came from his diligent and systematic study of
+the Latin classics. He read nearly all of the historians, poets,
+orators, and philosophers, going over for a second or even a third time
+Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Tacitus. He mastered Cicero's Orations and
+Letters so that they became ingrained in his mental fiber, and he termed
+these and his other works, "a library of eloquence and reason." "As I
+read Cicero," he wrote, "I applauded the observation of Quintilian, that
+every student may judge of his own proficiency by the satisfaction which
+he receives from the Roman orator." And again, "Cicero's epistles may in
+particular afford the models of every form of correspondence from the
+careless effusions of tenderness and friendship to the well-guarded
+declaration of discreet and dignified resentment."[86] Gibbon never
+mastered Greek as he did Latin; and Dr. Smith, one of his editors,
+points out where he has fallen into three errors from the use of the
+French or Latin translation of Procopius instead of consulting the
+original.[87] Indeed he himself has disclosed one defect of
+self-training. Referring to his youthful residence at Lausanne, he
+wrote: "I worked my way through about half the Iliad, and afterwards
+interpreted alone a large portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my
+ardor, destitute of aid and emulation, was gradually cooled and, from
+the barren task of searching words in a lexicon, I withdrew to the free
+and familiar conversation of Virgil and Tacitus."[88]
+
+All things considered, however, it was an excellent training for a
+historian of the Roman Empire. But all except the living knowledge of
+French he might have had in his "elegant apartment in Magdalen College"
+just as well as in his "ill-contrived and ill-furnished small chamber"
+in "an old inconvenient house," situated in a "narrow gloomy street, the
+most unfrequented of an unhandsome town";[89] and in Oxford he would
+have had the "aid and emulation" of which at Lausanne he sadly felt the
+lack.
+
+The Calvinist minister, his tutor, was a more useful guide for Gibbon in
+the matter of religion than in his intellectual training. Through his
+efforts and Gibbon's "private reflections," Christmas Day, 1754, one
+year and a half after his arrival at Lausanne, was witness to his
+reconversion, as he then received the sacrament in the Calvinistic
+Church. "The articles of the Romish creed," he said, had "disappeared
+like a dream"; and he wrote home to his aunt, "I am now a good
+Protestant and am extremely glad of it."[90]
+
+An intellectual and social experience of value was his meeting with
+Voltaire, who had set up a theater in the neighborhood of Lausanne for
+the performance mainly of his own plays. Gibbon seldom failed to procure
+a ticket to these representations. Voltaire played the parts suited to
+his years; his declamation, Gibbon thought, was old-fashioned, and "he
+expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of nature."
+"The parts of the young and fair," he said, "were distorted by
+Voltaire's fat and ugly niece." Despite this criticism, these
+performances fostered a taste for the French theater, to the abatement
+of his idolatry for Shakespeare, which seemed to him to be "inculcated
+from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman."[91] Personally,
+Voltaire and Gibbon did not get on well together. Dr. Hill suggests that
+Voltaire may have slighted the "English youth," and if this is correct,
+Gibbon was somewhat spiteful to carry the feeling more than thirty
+years. Besides the criticism of the acting, he called Voltaire "the
+envious bard" because it was only with much reluctance and ill-humor
+that he permitted the performance of Iphigenie of Racine. Nevertheless,
+Gibbon is impressed with the social influence of the great Frenchman.
+"The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre," he wrote,
+"refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne, and however
+addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the amusements of society.
+After the theatrical representations, I sometimes supped with the
+actors: I was now familiar in some, and acquainted in many, houses; and
+my evenings were generally devoted to cards and conversation, either in
+private parties or numerous assemblies."[92]
+
+Gibbon was twenty-one when he returned to England. Dividing his time
+between London and the country, he continued his self-culture. He read
+English, French, and Latin, and took up the study of Greek. "Every day,
+every hour," he wrote, "was agreeably filled"; and "I was never less
+alone than when by myself."[93] He read repeatedly Robertson and Hume,
+and has in the words of Sainte-Beuve left a testimony so spirited and so
+delicately expressed as could have come only from a man of taste who
+appreciated Xenophon.[94] "The perfect composition, the nervous
+language," wrote Gibbon, "the well-turned periods of Dr. Robertson
+inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his
+footsteps; the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties of his
+friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume with a mixed
+sensation of delight and despair."[95] He made little progress in London
+society and his solitary evenings were passed with his books, but he
+consoled himself by thinking that he lost nothing by a withdrawal from a
+"noisy and expensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation
+without pleasure." At twenty-four he published his "Essay on the Study
+of Literature," begun at Lausanne and written entirely in French. This
+possesses no interest for the historical student except to know the bare
+fact of the writing and publication as a step in the intellectual
+development of the historian. Sainte-Beuve in his two essays on Gibbon
+devoted three pages to an abstract and criticism of it, perhaps because
+it had a greater success in France than in England; and his opinion of
+Gibbon's language is interesting. "The French" Sainte-Beuve wrote, "is
+that of one who has read Montesquieu much and imitates him; it is
+correct, but artificial French."[96]
+
+Then followed two and a half years' service in the Hampshire militia.
+But he did not neglect his reading. He mastered Homer, whom he termed
+"the Bible of the ancients," and in the militia he acquired "a just and
+indelible knowledge" of what he called "the first of languages." And his
+love for Latin abided also: "On every march, in every journey, Horace
+was always in my pocket and often in my hand."[97] Practical knowledge
+he absorbed almost insensibly. "The daily occupations of the militia,"
+he wrote, "introduced me to the science of Tactics" and led to the study
+of "the precepts of Polybius and Cæsar." In this connection occurs the
+remark which admirers of Gibbon will never tire of citing: "A familiar
+view of the discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a
+clearer notion of the Phalanx and the Legion; and the Captain of the
+Hampshire Grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the
+historian of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire."[98] The grand
+tour followed his militia service. Three and a half months in Paris, and
+a revisit to Lausanne preceded the year that he passed in Italy. Of the
+conception of the History of the Decline and Fall, during his stay in
+Rome, I have already spoken.
+
+On his return to England, contemplating "the decline and fall of Rome at
+an awful distance," he began, in collaboration with the Swiss Deyverdun,
+his bosom friend, a history of Switzerland written in French. During the
+winter of 1767, the first book of it was submitted to a literary society
+of foreigners in London. As the author was unknown the strictures were
+free and the verdict unfavorable. Gibbon was present at the meeting and
+related that "the momentary sensation was painful," but, on cooler
+reflection, he agreed with his judges and intended to consign his
+manuscript to the flames. But this, as Lord Sheffield, his literary
+executor and first editor, shows conclusively, he neglected to do.[99]
+This essay of Gibbon's possesses interest for us, inasmuch as David Hume
+read it, and wrote to Gibbon a friendly letter, in which he said: "I
+have perused your manuscript with great pleasure and satisfaction. I
+have only one objection, derived from the language in which it is
+written. Why do you compose in French, and carry faggots into the wood,
+as Horace says with regard to Romans who wrote in Greek?"[100] This
+critical query of Hume must have profoundly influenced Gibbon. Next year
+he began to work seriously on "The Decline and Fall" and five years
+later began the composition of it in English. It does not appear that he
+had any idea of writing his magnum opus in French.
+
+In this rambling discourse, in which I have purposely avoided relating
+the life of Gibbon in anything like a chronological order, we return
+again and again to the great History. And it could not well be
+otherwise. For if Edward Gibbon could not have proudly said, I am the
+author of "six volumes in quartos"[101] he would have had no interest
+for us. Dr. Hill writes, "For one reader who has read his 'Decline and
+Fall,' there are at least a score who have read his Autobiography, and
+who know him, not as the great historian, but as a man of a most
+original and interesting nature."[102] But these twenty people would
+never have looked into the Autobiography had it not been the life of a
+great historian; indeed the Autobiography would never have been written
+except to give an account of a great life work. "The Decline and Fall,"
+therefore, is the thing about which all the other incidents of his life
+revolve. The longer this history is read and studied, the greater is the
+appreciation of it. Dean Milman followed Gibbon's track through many
+portions of his work, and read his authorities, ending with a deliberate
+judgment in favor of his "general accuracy." "Many of his seeming
+errors," he wrote, "are almost inevitable from the close condensation of
+his matter."[103] Guizot had three different opinions based on three
+various readings. After the first rapid perusal, the dominant feeling
+was one of interest in a narrative, always animated in spite of its
+extent, always clear and limpid in spite of the variety of objects.
+During the second reading, when he examined particularly certain points,
+he was somewhat disappointed; he encountered some errors either in the
+citations or in the facts and especially shades and strokes of
+partiality which led him to a comparatively rigorous judgment. In the
+ensuing complete third reading, the first impression, doubtless
+corrected by the second, but not destroyed, survived and was
+maintained; and with some restrictions and reservations, Guizot declared
+that, concerning that vast and able work, there remained with him an
+appreciation of the immensity of research, the variety of knowledge, the
+sagacious breadth and especially that truly philosophical rectitude of a
+mind which judges the past as it would judge the present.[104] Mommsen
+said in 1894: "Amid all the changes that have come over the study of the
+history of the Roman Empire, in spite of all the rush of the new
+evidence that has poured in upon us and almost overwhelmed us, in spite
+of changes which must be made, in spite of alterations of view, or
+alterations even in the aspect of great characters, no one would in the
+future be able to read the history of the Roman Empire unless he read,
+possibly with a fuller knowledge, but with the broad views, the clear
+insight, the strong grasp of Edward Gibbon."[105]
+
+It is difficult for an admirer of Gibbon to refrain from quoting some of
+his favorite passages. The opinion of a great historian on history
+always possesses interest. History, wrote Gibbon, is "little more than
+the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Again,
+"Wars and the administration of public affairs are the principal
+subjects of history." And the following cannot fail to recall a similar
+thought in Tacitus, "History undertakes to record the transactions of
+the past for the instruction of future ages."[106] Two references to
+religion under the Pagan empire are always worth repeating. "The various
+modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world," he wrote, "were
+all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as
+equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful." "The fashion of
+incredulity was communicated from the philosopher to the man of
+pleasure or business, from the noble to the plebeian, and from the
+master to the menial slave who waited at his table and who equally
+listened to the freedom of his conversation."[107] Gibbon's idea of the
+happiest period of mankind is interesting and characteristic. "If," he
+wrote, "a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world
+during which the condition of the human race was most happy and
+prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from
+the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus."[108] This period
+was from A.D. 96 to 180, covering the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,
+Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. Professor Carter, in a lecture in
+Rome in 1907, drew, by a modern comparison, a characterization of the
+first three named. When we were studying in Germany, he said, we were
+accustomed to sum up the three emperors, William I, Frederick III, and
+William II, as der greise Kaiser, der weise Kaiser, und der reise
+Kaiser. The characterizations will fit well Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.
+Gibbon speaks of the "restless activity" of Hadrian, whose life "was
+almost a perpetual journey," and who during his reign visited every
+province of his empire.[109]
+
+A casual remark of Gibbon's, "Corruption [is] the most infallible
+symptom of constitutional liberty,"[110] shows the sentiment of the
+eighteenth century. The generality of the history becomes specific in a
+letter to his father, who has given him hopes of a seat in Parliament.
+"This seat," so Edward Gibbon wrote, "according to the custom of our
+venal country was to be bought, and fifteen hundred pounds were
+mentioned as the price of purchase."[111]
+
+Gibbon anticipated Captain Mahan. In speaking of a naval battle between
+the fleet of Justinian and that of the Goths in which the galleys of the
+Eastern empire gained a signal victory, he wrote, "The Goths affected to
+depreciate an element in which they were unskilled; but their own
+experience confirmed the truth of a maxim, that the master of the sea
+will always acquire the dominion of the land."[112] But Gibbon's
+anticipation was one of the frequent cases where the same idea has
+occurred to a number of men of genius, as doubtless Captain Mahan was
+not aware of this sentence any more than he was of Bacon's and Raleigh's
+epitomes of the theme which he has so originally and brilliantly
+treated.[113]
+
+No modern historian has been the subject of so much critical comment as
+Gibbon. I do not know how it will compare in volume with either of the
+similar examinations of Thucydides and Tacitus; but the criticism is of
+a different sort. The only guarantee of the honesty of Tacitus, wrote
+Sainte-Beuve, is Tacitus himself;[114] and a like remark will apply to
+Thucydides. But a fierce light beats on Gibbon. His voluminous notes
+furnish the critics the materials on which he built his history, which,
+in the case of the ancient historians, must be largely a matter of
+conjecture. With all the searching examination of "The Decline and
+Fall," it is surprising how few errors have been found and, of the
+errors which have been noted, how few are really important. Guizot,
+Milman, Dr. Smith, Cotter Morison, Bury, and a number of lesser lights
+have raked his text and his notes with few momentous results. We have,
+writes Bury, improved methods over Gibbon and "much new material of
+various kinds," but "Gibbon's historical sense kept him constantly right
+in dealing with his sources"; and "in the main things he is still our
+master."[115] The man is generally reflected in his book. That Gibbon
+has been weighed and not found wanting is because he was as honest and
+truthful as any man who ever wrote history. The autobiographies and
+letters exhibit to us a transparent man, which indeed some of the
+personal allusions in the history might have foreshadowed. "I have often
+fluctuated and shall _tamely_ follow the Colbert Ms.," he wrote, where
+the authenticity of a book was in question.[116] In another case "the
+scarcity of facts and the uncertainty of dates" opposed his attempt to
+describe the first invasion of Italy by Alaric.[117] In the beginning of
+the famous Chapter XLIV which is "admired by jurists as a brief and
+brilliant exposition of the principles of Roman law,"[118] Gibbon wrote,
+"Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and candor of
+history, and directed by the most temperate and skillful guides, I enter
+with just diffidence on the subject of civil law."[119] In speaking of
+the state of Britain between 409 and 449, he said, "I owe it to myself
+and to historic truth to declare that some _circumstances_ in this
+paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy."[120] Throughout
+his whole work the scarcity of materials forces Gibbon to the frequent
+use of conjecture, but I believe that for the most part his conjectures
+seem reasonable to the critics. Impressed with the correctness of his
+account of the Eastern empire a student of the subject once told me that
+Gibbon certainly possessed the power of wise divination.
+
+Gibbon's striving after precision and accuracy is shown in some marginal
+corrections he made in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall."
+On the first page in his first printed edition and as it now stands, he
+said, "To deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and
+fall: a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still felt by
+the nations of the earth." For this the following is substituted: "To
+prosecute the decline and fall of the empire of Rome: of whose language,
+religion, and laws the impression will be long preserved in our own and
+the neighboring countries of Europe." He thus explains the change: "Mr.
+Hume told me that, in correcting his history, he always labored to
+reduce superlatives and soften positives. Have Asia and Africa, from
+Japan to Morocco, any feeling or memory of the Roman Empire?"
+
+On page 6, Bury's edition, the text is, "The praises of Alexander,
+transmitted by a succession of poets and historians, had kindled a
+dangerous emulation in the mind of Trajan." We can imagine that Gibbon
+reflected, What evidence have I that Trajan had read these poets and
+historians? Therefore he made this change: "Late generations and far
+distant climates may impute their calamities to the immortal author of
+the Iliad. The spirit of Alexander was inflamed by the praises of
+Achilles; and succeeding heroes have been ambitious to tread in the
+footsteps of Alexander. Like him, the Emperor Trajan aspired to the
+conquest of the East."[121]
+
+The "advertisement" to the first octavo edition published in 1783 is an
+instance of Gibbon's truthfulness. He wrote, "Some alterations and
+improvements had presented themselves to my mind, but I was unwilling to
+injure or offend the purchasers of the preceding editions." Then he
+seems to reflect that this is not quite the whole truth and adds,
+"Perhaps I may stand excused if, amidst the avocations of a busy winter,
+I have preferred the pleasures of composition and study to the minute
+diligence of revising a former publication."[122]
+
+The severest criticism that Gibbon has received is on his famous
+chapters XV and XVI which conclude his first volume in the original
+quarto edition of 1776. We may disregard the flood of contemporary
+criticism from certain people who were excited by what they deemed an
+attack on the Christian religion. Dean Milman, who objected seriously to
+much in these chapters, consulted these various answers to Gibbon on the
+first appearance of his work with, according to his own confession,
+little profit.[123] "Against his celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth
+chapters," wrote Buckle, "all the devices of controversy have been
+exhausted; but the only result has been, that while the fame of the
+historian is untarnished, the attacks of his enemies are falling into
+complete oblivion. The work of Gibbon remains; but who is there who
+feels any interest in what was written against him?"[124] During the
+last generation, however, criticism has taken another form and
+scientific men now do not exactly share Buckle's gleeful opinion. Both
+Bury and Cotter Morison state or imply that well-grounded exceptions may
+be taken to Gibbon's treatment of the early Christian church. He ignored
+some facts; his combination of others, his inferences, his opinions are
+not fair and unprejudiced. A further grave objection may be made to the
+tone of these two chapters: sarcasm pervades them and the Gibbon sneer
+has become an apt characterization.
+
+Francis Parkman admitted that he was a reverent agnostic, and if Gibbon
+had been a reverent free-thinker these two chapters would have been far
+different in tone. Lecky regarded the Christian church as a great
+institution worthy of reverence and respect although he stated the
+central thesis of Gibbon with emphasis just as great. Of the conversion
+of the Roman Empire to Christianity, Lecky wrote, "it may be boldly
+asserted that the assumption of a moral or intellectual miracle is
+utterly gratuitous. Never before was a religious transformation so
+manifestly inevitable."[125] Gibbon's sneering tone was a characteristic
+of his time. There existed during the latter part of the eighteenth
+century, wrote Sir James Mackintosh, "an unphilosophical and indeed
+fanatical animosity against Christianity." But Gibbon's private defense
+is entitled to consideration as placing him in a better light. "The
+primitive church, which I have treated with some freedom," he wrote to
+Lord Sheffield in 1791, "was itself at that time an innovation, and I
+was attached to the old Pagan establishment."[126] "Had I believed," he
+said in his Autobiography, "that the majority of English readers were so
+fondly attached to the name and shadow of Christianity, had I foreseen
+that the pious, the timid, and the prudent would feel, or affect to
+feel, with such exquisite sensibility, I might perhaps have softened the
+two invidious chapters."[127]
+
+On the other hand Gibbon's treatment of Julian the Apostate is in
+accordance with the best modern standard. It might have been supposed
+that a quasi-Pagan, as he avowed himself, would have emphasized Julian's
+virtues and ignored his weaknesses as did Voltaire, who invested him
+with all the good qualities of Trajan, Cato, and Julius Cæsar, without
+their defects.[128] Robertson indeed feared that he might fail in this
+part of the history;[129] but Gibbon weighed Julian in the balance, duly
+estimating his strength and his weakness, with the result that he has
+given a clear and just account in his best and most dignified
+style.[130]
+
+Gibbon's treatment of Theodora, the wife of Justinian, is certainly open
+to objection. Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has
+incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its
+salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's
+love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical
+criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. "I am justified," he
+wrote, "in painting the manners of the times; the vices of Theodora form
+an essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian.... My
+English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the
+obscurity of a learned language."[131] This explanation satisfies
+neither Cotter Morison nor Bury, nor would it hold for a moment as a
+justification of a historian of our own day. Gibbon is really so
+scientific, so much like a late nineteenth-century man, that we do right
+to subject him to our present-day rigid tests.
+
+There has been much discussion about Gibbon's style, which we all know
+is pompous and Latinized. On a long reading his rounded and sonorous
+periods become wearisome, and one wishes that occasionally a sentence
+would terminate with a small word, even a preposition. One feels as did
+Dickens after walking for an hour or two about the handsome but
+"distractingly regular" city of Philadelphia. "I felt," he wrote, "that
+I would have given the world for a crooked street."[132] Despite the
+pomposity, Gibbon's style is correct, and the exact use of words is a
+marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or change of words
+will improve upon the precision of the text. His compression and
+selection of salient points are remarkable. Amid some commonplace
+philosophy he frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is
+truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of history; one
+feels that Gibbon looked upon his work as very serious, and thought with
+Thucydides, "My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize
+composition which is heard and forgotten."
+
+To a writer of history few things are more interesting than a great
+historian's autobiographical remarks which relate to the composition of
+his work. "Had I been more indigent or more wealthy," wrote Gibbon in
+his Autobiography, "I should not have possessed the leisure or the
+perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous history."[133]
+"Notwithstanding the hurry of business and pleasure," he wrote from
+London in 1778, "I steal some moments for the Roman Empire."[134]
+Between the writing of the first three and the last three volumes, he
+took a rest of "near a twelvemonth" and gave expression to a thought
+which may be echoed by every studious writer, "Yet in the luxury of
+freedom, I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit which
+gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry."[135] Every
+one who has written a historical book will sympathize with the following
+expression of personal experience as he approached the completion of
+"The Decline and Fall": "Let no man who builds a house or writes a book
+presume to say when he will have finished. When he imagines that he is
+drawing near to his journey's end, Alps rise on Alps, and he continually
+finds something to add and something to correct."[136]
+
+Plain truthful tales are Gibbon's autobiographies. The style is that of
+the history, and he writes of himself as frankly as he does of any of
+his historical characters. His failings--what he has somewhere termed
+"the amiable weaknesses of human nature"--are disclosed with the
+openness of a Frenchman. All but one of the ten years between 1783 and
+1793, between the ages of 46 and 56, he passed at Lausanne. There he
+completed "The Decline and Fall," and of that period he spent from
+August, 1787, to July, 1788, in England to look after the publication of
+the last three volumes. His life in Lausanne was one of study, writing,
+and agreeable society, of which his correspondence with his English
+friends gives an animated account. The two things one is most impressed
+with are his love for books and his love for Madeira. "Though a lover of
+society," he wrote, "my library is the room to which I am most
+attached."[137] While getting settled at Lausanne, he complains that his
+boxes of books "loiter on the road."[138] And then he harps on another
+string. "Good Madeira," he writes, "is now become essential to my health
+and reputation;"[139] yet again, "If I do not receive a supply of
+Madeira in the course of the summer, I shall be in great shame and
+distress."[140] His good friend in England, Lord Sheffield, regarded his
+prayer and sent him a hogshead of "best old Madeira" and a tierce,
+containing six dozen bottles of "finest Malmsey," and at the same time
+wrote: "You will remember that a hogshead is on his travels through the
+torrid zone for you.... No wine is meliorated to a greater degree by
+keeping than Madeira, and you latterly appeared so ravenous for it, that
+I must conceive you wish to have a stock."[141] Gibbon's devotion to
+Madeira bore its penalty. At the age of forty-eight he sent this account
+to his stepmother: "I was in hopes that my old Enemy the Gout had given
+over the attack, but the Villain, with his ally the winter, convinced
+me of my error, and about the latter end of March I found myself a
+prisoner in my library and my great chair. I attempted twice to rise, he
+twice knocked me down again and kept possession of both my feet and
+knees longer (I must confess) than he ever had done before."[142] Eager
+to finish his history, he lamented that his "long gout" lost him "three
+months in the spring." Thus as you go through his correspondence, you
+find that orders for Madeira and attacks of gout alternate with
+regularity. Gibbon apparently did not connect the two as cause and
+effect, as in his autobiography he charged his malady to his service in
+the Hampshire militia, when "the daily practice of hard and even
+excessive drinking" had sown in his constitution "the seeds of the
+gout."[143]
+
+Gibbon has never been a favorite with women, owing largely to his
+account of his early love affair. While at Lausanne, he had heard much
+of "the wit and beauty and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod" and when
+he first met her, he had reached the age of twenty. "I saw and loved,"
+he wrote. "I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation,
+pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners.... She listened to the voice
+of truth and passion.... At Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity";
+and indeed he appeared to be an ardent lover. "He was seen," said a
+contemporary, "stopping country people near Lausanne and demanding at
+the point of a naked dagger whether a more adorable creature existed
+than Suzanne Curchod."[144] On his return to England, however, he soon
+discovered that his father would not hear of this alliance, and he thus
+related the sequence: "After a painful struggle, I yielded to my
+fate.... I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son."[145] From England he
+wrote to Mademoiselle Curchod breaking off the engagement. Perhaps it is
+because of feminine criticism that Cotter Morison indulges in an
+elaborate defense of Gibbon, which indeed hardly seems necessary.
+Rousseau, who was privy to the love affair, said that "Gibbon was too
+cold-blooded a young man for his taste or for Mademoiselle Curchod's
+happiness."[146] Mademoiselle Curchod a few years later married Necker,
+a rich Paris banker, who under Louis XVI held the office of
+director-general of the finances. She was the mother of Madame de Staël,
+was a leader of the literary society in Paris and, despite the troublous
+times, must have led a happy life. One delightful aspect of the story is
+the warm friendship that existed between Madame Necker and Edward
+Gibbon. This began less than a year after her marriage. "The Curchod
+(Madame Necker) I saw at Paris," he wrote to his friend Holroyd. "She
+was very fond of me and the husband particularly civil. Could they
+insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to supper; go to bed, and
+leave me alone with his wife--what an impertinent security!"[147]
+
+If women read the Correspondence as they do the Autobiography, I think
+that their aversion to the great historian would be increased by these
+confiding words to his stepmother, written when he was forty-nine: "The
+habits of female conversation have sometimes tempted me to acquire the
+piece of furniture, a wife, and could I unite in a single Woman the
+virtues and accomplishments of half a dozen of my acquaintance, I would
+instantly pay my addresses to the Constellation."[148]
+
+I have always been impressed with Gibbon's pride at being the author of
+"six volumes in quartos"; but as nearly all histories now are published
+in octavo, I had not a distinct idea of the appearance of a quarto
+volume until the preparation of this essay led me to look at different
+editions of Gibbon in the Boston Athenæum. There I found the quartos,
+the first volume of which is the third edition, published in 1777 [it
+will be remembered that the original publication of the first volume was
+in February, 1776]. The volume is 11¼ inches long by 9 inches wide and
+is much heavier than our very heavy octavo volumes. With this volume in
+my hand I could appreciate the remark of the Duke of Gloucester when
+Gibbon brought him the second volume of the "Decline and Fall." Laying
+the quarto on the table he said, "Another d--d thick square book! Always
+scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"[149]
+
+During my researches at the Athenæum, I found an octavo edition, the
+first volume of which was published in 1791, and on the cover was
+written, "Given to the Athenæum by Charles Cabot. Received December 10,
+1807." This was the year of the foundation of the Athenæum. On the
+quarto of 1777 there was no indication, but the scholarly cataloguer
+informed me that it was probably also received in 1807. Three later
+editions than these two are in this library, the last of which is Bury's
+of 1900 to which I have constantly referred. Meditating in the quiet
+alcove, with the two early editions of Gibbon before me, I found an
+answer to the comment of H. G. Wells in his book "The Future in America"
+which I confess had somewhat irritated me. Thus wrote Wells: "Frankly I
+grieve over Boston as a great waste of leisure and energy, as a
+frittering away of moral and intellectual possibilities. We give too
+much to the past.... We are obsessed by the scholastic prestige of mere
+knowledge and genteel remoteness."[150] Pondering this iconoclastic
+utterance, how delightful it is to light upon evidence in the way of
+well-worn volumes that, since 1807, men and women here have been
+carefully reading Gibbon, who, as Dean Milman said, "has bridged the
+abyss between ancient and modern times and connected together the two
+worlds of history."[151] A knowledge of "The Decline and Fall" is a
+basis for the study of all other history; it is a mental discipline, and
+a training for the problems of modern life. These Athenæum readers did
+not waste their leisure, did not give too much to the past. They were
+supremely right to take account of the scholastic prestige of Gibbon,
+and to endeavor to make part of their mental fiber this greatest history
+of modern times.
+
+I will close with a quotation from the Autobiography, which in its
+sincerity and absolute freedom from literary cant will be cherished by
+all whose desire is to behold "the bright countenance of truth in the
+quiet and still air of delightful studies." "I have drawn a high prize
+in the lottery of life," wrote Gibbon. "I am disgusted with the
+affectation of men of letters, who complain that they have renounced a
+substance for a shadow and that their fame affords a poor compensation
+for envy, censure, and persecution. My own experience at least has
+taught me a very different lesson: twenty happy years have been animated
+by the labor of my history; and its success has given me a name, a rank,
+a character in the world, to which I should not otherwise have been
+entitled.... D'Alembert relates that as he was walking in the gardens of
+Sans-souci with the King of Prussia, Frederick said to him, 'Do you see
+that old woman, a poor weeder, asleep on that sunny bank? She is
+probably a more happy Being than either of us.'" Now the comment of
+Gibbon: "The King and the Philosopher may speak for themselves; for my
+part I do not envy the old woman."[152]
+
+
+   [46] Autobiography, 270.
+
+   [47] Autobiography, 333.
+
+   [48] Autobiography, 311.
+
+   [49] Lectures, 763.
+
+   [50] Chief Periods European Hist., 75.
+
+   [51] Introduction, lxvii.
+
+   [52] Introduction, xxxi.
+
+   [53] Preface, ix.
+
+   [54] Introduction, xli.
+
+   [55] p. 324.
+
+   [56] Letters, I, 23.
+
+   [57] Autobiography, 310.
+
+   [58] Letters, II, 36.
+
+   [59] _Ibid._, 127.
+
+   [60] Autobiography, 196.
+
+   [61] Autobiography, 310. "I am more and more convinced that we have
+        both the right and power on our side." Letters, I, 248.
+
+   [62] Hill's ed. Gibbon Autobiography, 212, 213, 314.
+
+   [63] Letters, II, 249.
+
+   [64] Autobiography, 342.
+
+   [65] Letters, II, 310.
+
+   [66] Causeries du Lundi, viii, 469.
+
+   [67] Letters, II, 98.
+
+   [68] Trevelyan, II, 232.
+
+   [69] Lectures on the Hist. of Literature, 185.
+
+   [70] Autobiography, 196.
+
+   [71] Bury's ed., xxxv.
+
+   [72] Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., 236.
+
+   [73] _Ibid._, I, 349.
+
+   [74] Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., II, 35.
+
+   [75] II, 235.
+
+   [76] History, I, 1.
+
+   [77] Annals, I, 11.
+
+   [78] Bury's introduction, xxxv.
+
+   [79] Autobiography, 193.
+
+   [80] _Ibid._, 48, 59.
+
+   [81] _Ibid._, 67.
+
+   [82] Autobiography, 86 _et seq._; Hill's ed., 69, 291.
+
+   [83] Autobiography, 131.
+
+   [84] _Ibid._, 137.
+
+   [85] _Ibid._, 134.
+
+   [86] Autobiography, 139-142.
+
+   [87] V, 108, 130, 231.
+
+   [88] Autobiography, 141.
+
+   [89] Autobiography, 133.
+
+   [90] Hill's ed., 89, 293.
+
+   [91] Autobiography, 149.
+
+   [92] Autobiography, 149.
+
+   [93] _Ibid._, 161.
+
+   [94] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 445.
+
+   [95] Autobiography, 167.
+
+   [96] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 446.
+
+   [97] Autobiography, Hill's ed., 142.
+
+   [98] Autobiography, 258.
+
+   [99] _Ibid._, 277.
+
+  [100] _Ibid._
+
+  [101] Letters, II, 279.
+
+  [102] Preface, x.
+
+  [103] Smith's ed., I, xi.
+
+  [104] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 453.
+
+  [105] _London Times_, November 16, 1894.
+
+  [106] Smith's ed., I, 215, 371; II, 230.
+
+  [107] Smith's ed., I, 165; II, 205.
+
+  [108] _Ibid._, I, 216.
+
+  [109] _Ibid._, I, 144.
+
+  [110] _Ibid._, III, 78.
+
+  [111] Letters, I, 23.
+
+  [112] Smith's ed., V, 230.
+
+  [113] See Mahan's From Sail to Steam, 276.
+
+  [114] Causeries du Lundi, I, 153.
+
+  [115] Introduction, xlv, l, lxvii.
+
+  [116] Smith's ed., III, 14.
+
+  [117] _Ibid._, IV, 31.
+
+  [118] Bury, lii.
+
+  [119] Smith's ed., V, 258.
+
+  [120] _Ibid._, IV, 132 n.
+
+  [121] Bury's ed., xxxv, xxxvi.
+
+  [122] Smith's ed., I, xxi.
+
+  [123] Smith's ed., I, xvii.
+
+  [124] History of Civilization, II, 308 n.
+
+  [125] Morals, I, 419.
+
+  [126] Letters, II, 237.
+
+  [127] Autobiography, 316.
+
+  [128] Cotter Morison, 118.
+
+  [129] Sainte-Beuve, 458.
+
+  [130] Cotter Morison, 120.
+
+  [131] Autobiography, 337 n.
+
+  [132] American Notes, Chap. VII.
+
+  [133] p. 155.
+
+  [134] Letters, I, 331.
+
+  [135] Autobiography, 325.
+
+  [136] Letters, II, 143.
+
+  [137] Letters, II, 130.
+
+  [138] _Ibid._, 89.
+
+  [139] _Ibid._, 211.
+
+  [140] _Ibid._, 217.
+
+  [141] _Ibid._, II, 232.
+
+  [142] Letters, II, 129.
+
+  [143] _Ibid._, 189.
+
+  [144] _Ibid._, I, 40.
+
+  [145] Autobiography, pp. 151, 239.
+
+  [146] Letters, I, 41.
+
+  [147] Letters, I, 81. In 1790 Madame de Staël, then at Coppet, wrote:
+        "Nous possédons dans ce château M. Gibbon, l'ancien amoreux de
+        ma mère, celui qui voulait l'épouser. Quand je le vois, je me
+        demande si je serais née de son union avec ma mère: je me
+        reponds que non et qu'il suffisait de mon père seul pour que je
+        vinsse au monde."--Hill's ed., 107, n. 2.
+
+  [148] Letters, II, 143.
+
+  [149] Birkbeck Hill's ed., 127.
+
+  [150] p. 235.
+
+  [151] Smith's ed., I, vii.
+
+  [152] Autobiography, 343, 346.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the March
+meeting of 1902, and printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER
+
+
+It is my purpose to say a word of Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the English
+historian, who died February 23, 1902, and who in his research and
+manner of statement represents fitly the scientific school of historical
+writers. He was thorough in his investigation, sparing neither labor nor
+pains to get at the truth. It may well enough be true that the
+designedly untruthful historian, like the undevout astronomer, is an
+anomaly, for inaccuracy comes not from purpose, but from neglect. Now
+Gardiner went to the bottom of things, and was not satisfied until he
+had compassed all the material within his reach. As a matter of course
+he read many languages. Whether his facts were in Spanish, Italian,
+French, German, Dutch, Swedish, or English made apparently no
+difference. Nor did he stop at what was in plain language. He read a
+diary written chiefly in symbols, and many letters in cipher. A large
+part of his material was in manuscript, which entailed greater labor
+than if it had been in print. As one reads the prefaces to his various
+volumes and his footnotes, amazement is the word to express the feeling
+that a man could have accomplished so much in forty-seven years. One
+feels that there is no one-sided use of any material. The Spanish, the
+Venetian, the French, the Dutch nowhere displaces the English. In
+Froude's Elizabeth one gets the impression that the Simancas manuscripts
+furnish a disproportionate basis of the narrative; in Ranke's England,
+that the story is made up too much from the Venetian archives. Gardiner
+himself copied many Simancas manuscripts in Spain, and he studied the
+archives in Venice, Paris, Brussels, and Rome, but these, and all the
+other great mass of foreign material, are kept adjunctive to that found
+in his own land. My impression from a study of his volumes is that more
+than half of his material is in manuscript, but because he has matter
+which no one else had ever used, he does not neglect the printed pages
+open to every one. To form "a judgment on the character and aims of
+Cromwell," he writes, "it is absolutely necessary to take Carlyle's
+monumental work as a starting point;"[153] yet, distrusting Carlyle's
+printed transcripts, he goes back to the original speeches and letters
+themselves. Carlyle, he says, "amends the text without warning" in many
+places; these emendations Gardiner corrects, and out of the abundance of
+his learning he stops a moment to show how Carlyle has misled the
+learned Dr. Murray in attributing to Cromwell the use of the word
+"communicative" in its modern meaning, when it was on the contrary
+employed in what is now an obsolete sense.[154]
+
+Gardiner's great work is the History of England from 1603 to 1656. In
+the revised editions there are ten volumes called the "History of
+England, from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil
+War," and four volumes on the Great Civil War. Since this revision he
+has published three volumes on the History of the Commonwealth and the
+Protectorate. He was also the author of a number of smaller volumes, a
+contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Dictionary of
+National Biography, and for ten years editor-in-chief of the _English
+Historical Review_.
+
+I know not which is the more remarkable, the learning, accuracy, and
+diligence of the man, or withal his modesty. With his great store of
+knowledge, the very truthfulness of his soul impels him to be forward
+in admitting his own mistakes. Lowell said in 1878 that Darwin was
+"almost the only perfectly disinterested lover of truth" he had ever
+encountered. Had Lowell known the historian as we know him, he would
+have placed Gardiner upon the same elevation. In the preface to the
+revised ten-volume edition he alludes to the "defects" of his work.
+"Much material," he wrote, "has accumulated since the early volumes were
+published, and my own point of view is not quite the same as it was when
+I started with the first years of James I."[155] The most important
+contribution to this portion of his period had been Spedding's edition
+of Bacon's Letters and Life. In a note to page 208 of his second volume
+he tells how Spedding's arguments have caused him to modify some of his
+statements, although the two regard the history of the seventeenth
+century differently. Writing this soon after the death of Spedding, to
+which he refers as "the loss of one whose mind was so acute and whose
+nature was so patient and kindly," he adds, "It was a true pleasure to
+have one's statements and arguments exposed to the testing fire of his
+hostile criticism." Having pointed out later some inaccuracies in the
+work of Professor Masson, he accuses himself. "I have little doubt," he
+writes, "that if my work were subjected to as careful a revision, it
+would yield a far greater crop of errors."[156]
+
+Gardiner was born in 1829. Soon after he was twenty-six years old he
+conceived the idea of writing the history of England from the accession
+of James I to the restoration of Charles II. It was a noble conception,
+but his means were small. Having married, as his first wife, the
+youngest daughter of Edward Irving, the enthusiastic founder of the
+Catholic Apostolic Church, he became an Irvingite. Because he was an
+Irvingite, his university,--he was a son of Oxford,--so it is commonly
+said, would give him no position whereby he might gain his living.
+Nevertheless, Gardiner studied and toiled, and in 1863 published two
+volumes entitled "A History of England from the Accession of James I to
+the Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke." Of this work only one hundred and
+forty copies were sold. Still he struggled on. In 1869 two volumes
+called "Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage" were published and sold
+five hundred copies. Six years later appeared two volumes entitled "A
+History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I." This
+installment paid expenses, but no profit. One is reminded of what
+Carlyle said about the pecuniary rewards of literary men in England:
+"Homer's Iliad would have brought the author, had he offered it to Mr.
+Murray on the half-profit system, say five-and-twenty guineas. The
+Prophecies of Isaiah would have made a small article in a review which
+... could cheerfully enough have remunerated him with a five-pound
+note." The first book from which Gardiner received any money was a
+little volume for the Epochs of Modern History Series on the Thirty
+Years' War, published in 1874. Two more installments of the history
+appearing in 1877 and 1881 made up the first edition of what is now our
+ten-volume history, but in the meantime some of the volumes went out of
+print. It was not until 1883, the year of the publication of the revised
+edition, that the value of his labors was generally recognized. During
+this twenty-eight years, from the age of twenty-six to fifty-four,
+Gardiner had his living to earn. He might have recalled the remark made,
+I think, by either Goldsmith or Lamb, that the books which will live are
+not those by which we ourselves can live. Therefore Gardiner got his
+bread by teaching. He became a professor in King's College, London, and
+he lectured on history for the London Society for the Extension of
+University Teaching, having large audiences all over London, and being
+well appreciated in the East End. He wrote schoolbooks on history.
+Finally success came twenty-eight years after his glorious conception,
+twenty years after the publication of his first volume. He had had a
+hard struggle for a living with money coming in by driblets. Bread won
+in such a way is come by hard, yet he remained true to his ideal. His
+potboilers were good and honest books; his brief history on the Thirty
+Years' War has received the praise of scholars. Recognition brought him
+money rewards. In 1882 Mr. Gladstone bestowed upon him a civil list
+pension of £150 a year. Two years later All Souls College, Oxford,
+elected him to a research fellowship; when this expired Merton made him
+a fellow. Academic honors came late. Not until 1884, when he was
+fifty-five, did he take his degree of M.A. Edinburgh conferred upon him
+an LL.D., and Göttingen a Ph.D.; but he was sixty-six when he received
+the coveted D.C.L. from his own university. The year previous Lord
+Rosebery offered him the Regius Professorship of History at Oxford, but
+he declined it because the prosecution of his great work required him to
+be near the British Museum. It is worthy of mention that in 1874, nine
+years before he was generally appreciated in England, the Massachusetts
+Historical Society elected him a corresponding member.[157]
+
+During the latter part of his life Gardiner resided in the country near
+London, whence it took him about an hour to reach the British Museum,
+where he did his work. He labored on his history from eleven o'clock to
+half-past four, with an intermission of half an hour for luncheon. He
+did not dictate to a stenographer, but wrote everything out. Totally
+unaccustomed to collaboration, he never employed a secretary or
+assistant of any kind. In his evenings he did no serious labor; he spent
+them with his family, attended to his correspondence, or read a novel.
+Thus he wrought five hours daily. What a brain, and what a splendid
+training he had given himself to accomplish such results in so short a
+working day!
+
+In the preface to his first volume of the "History of the Commonwealth,"
+published in 1894, Gardiner said that he was "entering upon the third
+and last stage of a task the accomplishment of which seemed to me many
+years ago to be within the bounds of possibility." One more volume
+bringing the history down to the death of Cromwell would have completed
+the work, and then Mr. Charles H. Firth, a fellow of All Souls College,
+Oxford, was to take up the story. Firth now purposes to begin his
+narrative with the year 1656. Gardiner's mantle has fallen on worthy
+shoulders.
+
+Where historical scholars congregate in England and America, Gardiner is
+highly esteemed. But the critics must have their day. They cannot attack
+him for lack of diligence and accuracy, which according to Gibbon, the
+master of us all, are the prime requisites of a historian, so they
+assert that he was deficient in literary style, he had no dramatic
+power, his work is not interesting and will not live. Gardiner is the
+product solely of the university and the library. You may visualize him
+at Oxford, in the British Museum, or at work in the archives on the
+Continent, but of affairs and of society by personal contact he knew
+nothing. In short, he was not a man of the world, and the histories must
+be written, so these critics aver, by those who have an actual knowledge
+by experience of their fellow-men. It is profitable to examine these
+dicta by the light of concrete examples. Froude saw much of society, and
+was a man of the world. He wrote six volumes on the reign of Elizabeth,
+from which we get the distinct impression that the dominant
+characteristics of Elizabeth were meanness, vacillation, selfishness,
+and cruelty. Gardiner in an introductory chapter of forty-three pages
+restores to us the great queen of Shakespeare, who brought upon her land
+"a thousand, thousand blessings." She loved her people well, he writes,
+and ruled them wisely. She "cleared the way for liberty, though she
+understood it not."[158] Elsewhere he speaks of "her high spirit and
+enlightened judgment."[159] The writer who has spent his life in the
+library among dusty archives estimates the great ruler more correctly
+than the man of the world. We all know Macaulay, a member of Parliament,
+a member of the Supreme Council of India, a cabinet minister, a
+historian of great merit, a brilliant man of letters. In such a one,
+according to the principles laid down by these critics, we should expect
+to find a supreme judge of men. Macaulay in his essays and the first
+chapter of the History painted Wentworth and Laud in the very blackest
+of colors, which "had burned themselves into the heart of the people of
+England." Gardiner came. Wentworth and Laud, he wrote, were controlled
+by a "noble ambition," which was "not stained with personal selfishness
+or greed."[160] "England may well be proud of possessing in Wentworth a
+nobler if a less practical statesman than Richelieu, of the type to
+which the great cardinal belonged."[161] Again Wentworth was "the
+high-minded, masterful statesman, erring gravely through defects of
+temper and knowledge."[162] From Macaulay we carry away the impression
+that Wentworth was very wicked and that Cromwell was very good. Gardiner
+loved Cromwell not less than did Macaulay, but thus he speaks of his
+government: "Step by step the government of the Commonwealth was
+compelled ... to rule by means which every one of its members would have
+condemned if they had been employed by Charles or Wentworth." Is it not
+a triumph for the bookish man that in his estimate of Wentworth and Laud
+he has with him the consensus of the historical scholars of England?
+
+What a change there has been in English opinion of Cromwell in the last
+half century! Unquestionably that is due to Carlyle more than to any
+other one man, but there might have been a reaction from the conception
+of the hero worshiper had it not been supported and somewhat modified by
+so careful and impartial a student as Gardiner.
+
+The alteration of sentiment toward Wentworth and Laud is principally due
+to Gardiner, that toward Cromwell is due to him in part. These are two
+of the striking results, but they are only two of many things we see
+differently because of the single-minded devotion of this great
+historian. We know the history in England from 1603 to 1656 better than
+we do that of any other period of the world; and for this we are
+indebted mainly to Samuel Rawson Gardiner.
+
+
+  [153] History of the Great Civil War, I, viii.
+
+  [154] History of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, III, 27.
+
+  [155] History, I, v.
+
+  [156] _Ibid._, IX, viii.
+
+  [157] He was transferred to the roll of honorary members in October,
+        1896.
+
+  [158] History, I, 43.
+
+  [159] _Ibid._, VIII, 36.
+
+  [160] _Ibid._, 67.
+
+  [161] _Ibid._, 215.
+
+  [162] _Ibid._, IX, 229.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM E. H. LECKY
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November
+meeting of 1903.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM E. H. LECKY
+
+
+Amazement was the feeling of the reading world on learning that the
+author of the History of Rationalism was only twenty-seven, and the
+writer of the History of European Morals only thirty-one. The sentiment
+was that a prodigy of learning had appeared, and a perusal of these
+works now renders comprehensible the contemporary astonishment. The
+Morals (published in 1869) is the better book of the two, and, if I may
+judge from my own personal experience, it may be read with delight when
+young, and re-read with respect and advantage at an age when the
+enthusiasms of youth have given way to the critical attitude of
+experience. Grant all the critics say of it, that the reasoning by which
+Lecky attempts to demolish the utilitarian theory of morals is no longer
+of value, and that it lacks the consistency of either the orthodox or
+the agnostic, that there is no new historical light, and that much of
+the treatise is commonplace, nevertheless the historical illustrations
+and disquisitions, the fresh combination of well-known facts are
+valuable for instruction and for a new point of view. His analysis of
+the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is drawn, of
+course, from Gibbon, but I have met those who prefer the interesting
+story of Lecky to the majestic sweep of the great master. Much less
+brilliant than Buckle's "History of Civilization," the first volume of
+which appeared twelve years earlier, the Morals has stood better the
+test of time.
+
+The intellectual biography of so precocious a writer is interesting, and
+fortunately it has been related by Lecky himself. When he entered
+Trinity College, Dublin, in 1856, "Mill was in the zenith of his fame
+and influence"; Hugh Miller was attempting to reconcile the recent
+discoveries of geology with the Mosaic cosmogony. "In poetry," wrote
+Lecky, "Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I think with an approach to
+equality which has not continued." In government the orthodox political
+economists furnished the theory and the Manchester school the practice.
+All this intellectual fermentation affected this inquiring young
+student; but at first Bishop Butler's Analogy and sermons, which were
+then much studied at Dublin, had the paramount influence. Of the living
+men, Archbishop Whately, then at Dublin, held sway. Other writers whom
+he mastered were Coleridge, Newman, and Emerson, Pascal, Bossuet,
+Rousseau, and Voltaire, Dugald Stewart, and Mill. In 1857 Buckle burst
+upon the world, and proved a stimulus to Lecky as well as to most
+serious historical students. The result of these studies, Lecky relates,
+was his History of Rationalism, published in the early part of 1865.
+
+The claim made by many of Lecky's admirers, that he was a philosophic
+historian, as distinct from literary historians like Carlyle and
+Macaulay, and scientific like Stubbs and Gardiner, has injured him in
+the eyes of many historical students who believe that if there be such a
+thing as the philosophy of history the narrative ought to carry it
+naturally. To interrupt the relation of events or the delineation of
+character with parading of trite reflections or with rashly broad
+generalizations is neither science nor art. Lecky has sometimes been
+condemned by students who, revolting at the term "philosophy" in
+connection with history, have failed to read his greatest work, the
+"History of England in the Eighteenth Century." This is a decided
+advance on the History of Morals, and shows honest investigation in
+original material, much of it manuscript, and an excellent power of
+generalization widely different from that which exhibits itself in a
+paltry philosophy. These volumes are a real contribution to historical
+knowledge. Parts of them which I like often to recur to are the account
+of the ministry of Walpole, the treatment of "parliamentary corruption,"
+of the condition of London, and of "national tastes and manners." His
+Chapter IX, which relates the rise of Methodism, has a peculiarly
+attractive swing and go, and his use of anecdote is effective.
+
+Chapter XX, on the "Causes of the French Revolution," covering one
+hundred and forty-one pages, is an ambitious effort, but it shows a
+thorough digestion of his material, profound reflection, and a lively
+presentation of his view. Mr. Morse Stephens believes that it is idle to
+attempt to inquire into the causes of this political and social
+overturn. If a historian tells the _how_, he asserts he should not be
+asked to tell the _why_. This is an epigrammatic statement of a tenet of
+the scientific historical school of Oxford, but men will always be
+interested in inquiring why the French Revolution happened, and such
+chapters as this of Lecky, a blending of speculation and narrative, will
+hold their place. These volumes have much well and impartially written
+Irish history, and being published between 1878 and 1890, at the time
+when the Irish question in its various forms became acute, they
+attracted considerable attention from the political world. Gladstone was
+an admirer of Lecky, and said in a chat with John Morley: "Lecky has
+real insight into the motives of statesmen. Now Carlyle, so mighty as he
+is in flash and penetration, has no eye for motives. Macaulay, too, is
+so caught by a picture, by color, by surface, that he is seldom to be
+counted on for just account of motive." The Irish chapters furnished
+arguments for the Liberals, but did not convert Lecky himself to the
+policy of home rule. When Gladstone and his party adopted it, he became
+a Liberal Unionist, and as such was elected in 1895 a member of the
+House of Commons by Dublin University. In view of the many comments that
+he was not successful in parliamentary life, I may say that the election
+not only came to him unsought, but that he recognized that he was too
+old to adapt himself to the atmosphere of the House of Commons; he
+accepted the position in the belief which was pressed upon him by many
+friends that he could in Parliament be useful to the University.
+
+Within less than three years have we commemorated in this hall three
+great English historians--Stubbs, Gardiner, and Lecky. The one we honor
+to-day was the most popular of the three. Not studied so much at the
+seats of learning, he is better known to journalists, to statesmen, to
+men of affairs, in short to general readers. Even our Society made him
+an honorary member fourteen years before it so honored Gardiner,
+although Gardiner was the older man and two volumes of his history had
+been published before Lecky's Rationalism, and two volumes more in the
+same year as the Morals. One year after it was published, Rationalism
+went into a third edition. Gardiner's first volumes sold one hundred and
+forty copies. It must, however, be stated that the Society recognized
+Gardiner's work as early as 1874 by electing him a corresponding member.
+
+It is difficult to guess how long Lecky will be read. His popularity is
+distinct. He was the rare combination of a scholar and a man of the
+world, made so by his own peculiar talent and by lucky opportunities. He
+was not obliged to earn his living. In early life, by intimate personal
+intercourse, he drew intellectual inspiration from Dean Milman, and
+later he learned practical politics through his friendship with Lord
+Russell. He knew well Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall. In private
+conversation he was a very interesting man. His discourse ran on books
+and on men; he turned from one to the other and mixed up the two with a
+ready familiarity. He went much into London society, and though entirely
+serious and without having, so far as I know, a gleam of humor, he was a
+fluent and entertaining talker.
+
+Mr. Lecky was vitally interested in the affairs of this country, and
+sympathized with the North during our Civil War. He once wrote to me: "I
+am old enough to remember vividly your great war, and was then much with
+an American friend--a very clever lawyer named George Bemis--whom I came
+to know very well at Rome.... I was myself a decided Northerner, but the
+'right of revolution' was always rather a stumbling block." Talking with
+Mr. Lecky in 1895, not long after the judgment of the United States
+Supreme Court that the income tax was unconstitutional, he expressed the
+opinion that it was a grand decision, evidencing a high respect for
+private property, but in the next breath came the question, "How are you
+ever to manage continuing the payment of those enormous pensions of
+yours?"
+
+It is not, I think, difficult to explain why Stubbs and Gardiner are
+more precious possessions for students than Lecky. Gardiner devoted his
+life to the seventeenth century. If we may reckon the previous
+preparation and the ceaseless revision, Stubbs devoted a good part of
+his life to the constitutional history from the beginnings of it to
+Henry VII. Lecky's eight volumes on the eighteenth century were
+published in thirteen years. A mastery of such an amount of original
+material as Stubbs and Gardiner mastered was impossible within that
+time. Lecky had the faculty of historic divination which compensated to
+some extent for the lack of a more thorough study of the sources. Genius
+stood in the place of painstaking engrossment in a single task.
+
+The last important work of Lecky, "Democracy and Liberty," was a brave
+undertaking. Many years ago he wrote: "When I was deeply immersed in the
+'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' I remember being struck
+by the saying of an old and illustrious friend that he could not
+understand the state of mind of a man who, when so many questions of
+burning and absorbing interest were rising around him, could devote the
+best years of his life to the study of a vanished past." Hence the book
+which considered present issues of practical politics and party
+controversies, and a result that satisfied no party and hardly any
+faction. It is an interesting question who chose the better part,--he or
+Stubbs and Gardiner--they who devoted themselves entirely to the past or
+he who made a conscientious endeavor to bring to bear his study of
+history upon the questions of the present.
+
+
+
+
+SIR SPENCER WALPOLE
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November
+meeting of 1907.
+
+
+
+
+SIR SPENCER WALPOLE
+
+
+Sir Spencer Walpole was an excellent historian and industrious writer.
+His first important work, entitled "The History of England from 1815,"
+was published at intervals from 1878 to 1886; the first installment
+appeared when he was thirty-nine years old. This in six volumes carried
+the history to 1858 in an interesting, accurate, and impartial
+narrative. Four of the five chapters of the first volume are entitled
+"The Material Condition of England in 1815," "Society in England,"
+"Opinion in 1815," "The Last of the Ebb Tide," and they are masterly in
+their description and relation. During the Napoleonic wars business was
+good. The development of English manufactures, due largely to the
+introduction of steam as a motive power, was marked. "Twenty years of
+war," he wrote, "had concentrated the trade of the world in the British
+Empire." Wheat was dear; in consequence the country gentlemen received
+high rents. The clergy, being largely dependent on tithes,--the tenth of
+the produce,--found their incomes increased as the price of corn
+advanced. But the laboring classes, both those engaged in manufactures
+and agriculture, did not share in the general prosperity. Either their
+wages did not rise at all or did not advance commensurately with the
+increase of the cost of living and the decline in the value of the
+currency. Walpole's detailed and thorough treatment of this subject is
+historic work of high value.
+
+In the third volume I was much impressed with his account of the Reform
+Act of 1832. We all have read that wonderful story over and over again,
+but I doubt whether its salient points have been better combined and
+presented than in Walpole's chapter. I had not remembered the reason of
+the selection of Lord John Russell to present the bill in the House of
+Commons when he was only Paymaster of the Forces, without a seat in the
+Cabinet. It will, of course, be recalled that Lord Grey, the Prime
+Minister, was in the House of Lords, and, not so readily I think, that
+Althorp was Chancellor of the Exchequer and the leader of the House of
+Commons. On Althorp, under ordinary circumstances, it would have been
+incumbent to take charge of this highly important measure, which had
+been agreed upon by the Cabinet after counsel with the King. Russell was
+the youngest son of the Duke of Bedford; and the Duke was one of the
+large territorial magnates and a proprietor of rotten boroughs. "A bill
+recommended by his son's authority," wrote Walpole, "was likely to
+reassure timid or wavering politicians." "Russell," Walpole continued,
+"told his tale in the plainest language. But the tale which he had to
+tell required no extraordinary language to adorn it. The Radicals had
+not dared to expect, the Tories, in their wildest fears, had not
+apprehended, so complete a measure. Enthusiasm was visible on one side
+of the House; consternation and dismay on the other. At last, when
+Russell read the list of boroughs which were doomed to extinction, the
+Tories hoped that the completeness of the measure would insure its
+defeat. Forgetting their fears, they began to be amused and burst into
+peals of derisive laughter" (III, 208).
+
+Walpole's next book was the "Life of Lord John Russell," two volumes
+published in 1889. This was undertaken at the request of Lady Russell,
+who placed at his disposal a mass of private and official papers and
+"diaries and letters of a much more private nature." She also acceded to
+his request that she was not to see the biography until it was ready
+for publication, so that the whole responsibility of it would be
+Walpole's alone. The Queen gave him access to three bound volumes of
+Russell's letters to herself, and sanctioned the publication of certain
+letters of King William IV. Walpole wrote the biography in about two
+years and a half; and this, considering that at the time he held an
+active office, displayed unusual industry. If I may judge the work by a
+careful study of the chapter on "The American Civil War," it is a
+valuable contribution to political history.
+
+Passing over three minor publications, we come to Walpole's "History of
+Twenty-five Years," two volumes of which were published in 1904. A brief
+extract from his preface is noteworthy, written as it is by a man of
+keen intelligence, with great power of investigation and continuous
+labor, and possessed of a sound judgment. After a reference to his
+"History of England from 1815," he said: "The time has consequently
+arrived when it ought to be as possible to write the History of England
+from 1857 to 1880, as it was twenty years ago to bring down the
+narrative of that History to 1856 or 1857.... So far as I am able to
+judge, most of the material which is likely to be available for British
+history in the period with which these two volumes are concerned
+[1856-1870] is already accessible. It is not probable that much which is
+wholly new remains unavailable." I read carefully these two volumes when
+they first appeared, and found them exceedingly fascinating. Palmerston
+and Russell, Gladstone and Disraeli, are made so real that we follow
+their contests as if we ourselves had a hand in them. A half dozen or
+more years ago an Englishman told me that Palmerston and Russell were no
+longer considered of account in England. But I do not believe one can
+rise from reading these volumes without being glad of a knowledge of
+these two men whose patriotism was of a high order. Walpole's several
+characterizations, in a summing up of Palmerston, display his knowledge
+of men. "Men pronounced Lord Melbourne indifferent," he wrote, "Sir
+Robert Peel cold, Lord John Russell uncertain, Lord Aberdeen weak, Lord
+Derby haughty, Mr. Gladstone subtle, Lord Beaconsfield unscrupulous. But
+they had no such epithet for Lord Palmerston. He was as earnest as Lord
+Melbourne was indifferent, as strong as Lord Aberdeen was weak, as
+honest as Lord Beaconsfield was unscrupulous. Sir Robert Peel repelled
+men by his temper; Lord John Russell, by his coldness; Lord Derby
+offended them by his pride; Mr. Gladstone distracted them by his
+subtlety. But Lord Palmerston drew both friends and foes together by the
+warmth of his manners and the excellence of his heart" (I, 525).
+
+Walpole's knowledge of continental politics was apparently thorough. At
+all events, any one who desires two entrancing tales, should read the
+chapter on "The Union of Italy," of which Cavour and Napoleon III are
+the heroes; and the two chapters entitled "The Growth of Prussia and the
+Decline of France" and "The Fall of the Second Empire." In these two
+chapters Napoleon III again appears, but Bismarck is the hero. Walpole's
+chapter on "The American Civil War" is the writing of a broad-minded,
+intelligent man, who could look on two sides.
+
+Of Walpole's last book, "Studies in Biography," published in 1907, I
+have left myself no time to speak. Those who are interested in it should
+read the review of it in the _Nation_ early this year, which awards it
+high and unusual commendation.
+
+The readers of Walpole's histories may easily detect in them a treatment
+not possible from a mere closet student of books and manuscripts. A
+knowledge of the science of government and of practical politics is
+there. For Walpole was of a political family. He was of the same house
+as the great Whig Prime Minister, Sir Robert; and his father was Home
+Secretary in the Lord Derby ministry of 1858, and again in 1866, when he
+had to deal with the famous Hyde Park meeting of July 23. On his
+mother's side he was a grandson of Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister
+who in 1812 was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons.
+Walpole's earliest publication was a biography of Perceval.
+
+And Spencer Walpole himself was a man of affairs. A clerk in the War
+Office in 1858, private secretary to his father in 1866, next year
+Inspector of Fisheries, later Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man,
+and from 1893 to 1899 Secretary to the Post-office. In spite of all this
+administrative work his books show that he was a wide, general reader,
+apart from his special historical studies. He wrote in an agreeable
+literary style, with Macaulay undoubtedly as his model, although he was
+by no means a slavish imitator. His "History of Twenty-five Years" seems
+to me to be written with a freer hand than the earlier history. He is
+here animated by the spirit rather than the letter of Macaulay. I no
+longer noticed certain tricks of expression which one catches so easily
+in a study of the great historian, and which seem so well to suit
+Macaulay's own work, but nobody else's.
+
+An article by Walpole on my first four volumes, in the _Edinburgh
+Review_ of January, 1901, led to a correspondence which resulted in my
+receiving an invitation last May to pass Sunday with him at Hartfield
+Grove, his Sussex country place. We were to meet at Victoria station and
+take an early morning train. Seeing Mr. Frederic Harrison the day
+previous, I asked for a personal description of his friend Walpole in
+order that I might easily recognize him. "Well," says Harrison, "perhaps
+I can guide you. A while ago I sat next to a lady during a dinner who
+took me for Walpole and never discovered her mistake until, when she
+addressed me as Sir Spencer, I undeceived her just as the ladies were
+retiring from the table. Now I am the elder by eight years and I don't
+think I look like Walpole, but that good lady had another opinion."
+Walpole and Harrison met that Saturday evening at the Academy dinner,
+and Walpole obtained a personal description of myself. This caution on
+both our parts was unnecessary. We were the only historians traveling
+down on the train and could not possibly have missed one another. I
+found him a thoroughly genial man, and after fifteen minutes in the
+railway carriage we were well acquainted. The preface to his "History of
+Twenty-five Years" told that the two volumes were the work of five
+years. I asked him how he was getting on with the succeeding volumes. He
+replied that he had done a good deal of work on them, and now that he
+was no longer in an administrative position he could concentrate his
+efforts, and he expected to have the work finished before long. I
+inquired if the prominence of his family in politics hampered him at all
+in writing so nearly contemporary history, and he said, "Not a bit." An
+hour of the railroad and a half-hour's drive brought us to his home. It
+was not an ancestral place, but a purchase not many years back. An old
+house had been remodeled with modern improvements, and comfort and ease
+were the predominant aspects. Sir Spencer proposed a "turn" before
+luncheon, which meant a short walk, and after luncheon we had a real
+walk. I am aware that the English mile and our own are alike 5280 feet,
+but I am always impressed with the fact that the English mile seems
+longer, and so I was on this Sunday. For after a good two hours'
+exertion over hills and meadows my host told me that we had gone only
+five miles. Only by direct question did I elicit the fact that had he
+been alone he would have done seven miles in the same time.
+
+There were no other guests, and Lady Walpole, Sir Spencer, and I had all
+of the conversation at luncheon and dinner and during the evening. We
+talked about history and literature, English and American politics, and
+public men. He was singularly well informed about our country, although
+he had only made one brief visit and then in an official capacity.
+English expressions of friendship are now so common that I will not
+quote even one of the many scattered through his volumes, but he
+displayed everywhere a candid appreciation of our good traits and
+creditable doings. I was struck with his knowledge and love of lyric
+poetry. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Lowell were
+thoroughly familiar to him. He would repeat some favorite passage of
+Keats, and at once turn to a discussion of the administrative details of
+his work in the post-office. Of course the day and evening passed very
+quickly,--it was one of the days to be marked with a white stone,--and
+when I bade Walpole good-by on the Monday morning I felt as if I were
+parting from a warm friend. I found him broad-minded, intelligent,
+sympathetic, affable, and he seemed as strong physically as he was sound
+intellectually. His death on Sunday, July 7, of cerebral hemorrhage was
+alike a shock and a grief.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+Address at a gathering of historians on June 5, 1909, to mark the
+placing of a tablet in the inner quadrangle of Jesus College, Oxford, to
+the memory of John Richard Green.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+
+I wish indeed that I had the tongues of men and of angels to express the
+admiration of the reading public of America for the History of John
+Richard Green. I suppose that he has had more readers in our country
+than any other historian except Macaulay, and he has shaped the opinions
+of men who read, more than any writers of history except those whom John
+Morley called the great born men of letters,--Gibbon, Macaulay, and
+Carlyle.
+
+I think it is the earlier volumes rather than the last volume of his
+more extended work which have taken hold of us. Of course we thrill at
+his tribute to Washington, where he has summed up our reverence, trust,
+and faith in him in one single sentence which shows true appreciation
+and deep feeling; and it flatters our national vanity, of which we have
+a goodly stock, to read in his fourth volume that the creation of the
+United States was one of the turning points in the history of the world.
+
+No saying is more trite, at any rate to an educated American audience,
+than that the development of the English nation is one of the most
+wonderful things, if not the most wonderful thing, which history
+records. That history before James I is our own, and, to our general
+readers, it has never been so well presented as in Green's first two
+volumes. The victories of war are our own. It was our ancestors who
+preserved liberty, maintained order, set the train moving toward
+religious toleration, and wrought out that language and literature which
+we are proud of, as well as you.
+
+For my own part, I should not have liked to miss reading and re-reading
+the five chapters on Elizabeth in the second volume. What eloquence in
+simply the title of the last,--The England of Shakespeare! And in fact
+my conception of Elizabeth, derived from Shakespeare, is confirmed by
+Green. As I think how much was at stake in the last half of the
+sixteenth century, and how well the troubles were met by that great
+monarch and the wise statesman whom she called to her aid, I feel that
+we could not be what we are, had a weak, irresolute sovereign been at
+the head of the state.
+
+With the power of a master Green manifests what was accomplished. At the
+accession of Elizabeth--"Never" so he wrote--"had the fortunes of
+England sunk to a lower ebb. The loss of Calais gave France the mastery
+of the Channel. The French King in fact 'bestrode the realm, having one
+foot in Calais, and the other in Scotland.'"
+
+And at the death of Elizabeth, thus Green tells the story: "The danger
+which had hitherto threatened our national existence and our national
+unity had disappeared: France clung to the friendship of England, Spain
+trembled beneath its blows."
+
+With the wide range of years of his subject, with a grasp of an extended
+period akin to Gibbon's, complete accuracy was, of course, not
+attainable, but Samuel R. Gardiner once told me that Green, although
+sometimes inaccurate in details, gave a general impression that was
+justifiable and correct; and that is in substance the published opinion
+of Stubbs.
+
+Goethe said that in reading Molière you perceive that he possessed the
+charm of an amiable nature in habitual contact with good society. So we,
+who had not the advantage of personal intercourse, divined was the case
+of Green; and when the volume of Letters appeared, we saw that we had
+guessed correctly. But not until then did we know of his devotion to his
+work, and his heroic struggle, which renders the story of his short and
+brilliant career a touching and fascinating biography of a historian who
+made his mark upon his time.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD L. PIERCE
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the October
+meeting of 1897.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD L. PIERCE
+
+
+I shall first speak of Mr. Pierce as an author. His Life of Sumner it
+seems to me is an excellent biography, and the third and fourth volumes
+of it are an important contribution to the history of our country. Any
+one who has gone through the original material of the period he embraces
+must be struck not only with the picture of Sumner, but with the skill
+of the biographer in the use of his data to present a general historical
+view. The injunction of Cicero, "Choose with discretion out of the
+plenty that lies before you," Mr. Pierce observed. To those who know how
+extensive was his reading of books, letters, newspaper files, how much
+he had conversed with the actors in those stirring scenes--and who will
+take into account the mass of memories that crowd upon the mind of one
+who has lived through such an era--this biography will seem not too long
+but rather admirable in its relative brevity. In a talk that I had with
+Mr. Pierce I referred to the notice in an English literary weekly of his
+third and fourth volumes which maintained that the biography was twice
+too long, and I took occasion to say that in comparison with other
+American works of the kind the criticism seemed unjust. "Moreover," I
+went on, "I think you showed restraint in not making use of much of your
+valuable material,--of the interesting and even important unprinted
+letters of Cobden, the Duke of Argyll, and of John Bright." "Yes,"
+replied Mr. Pierce, with a twinkle in his eye, "I can say with Lord
+Clive, 'Great Heavens, at this moment I stand astonished at my own
+moderation.'"
+
+Any one who has studied public sentiment in this country for any period
+knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the
+subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how
+unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are
+essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the
+truth. If a student should ask me in what one book he would find the
+best statement of popular opinion at the North during the Civil War, I
+should say, Read Sumner's letters as cited in Mr. Pierce's biography
+with the author's comments. The speeches of Sumner may smell too much of
+the lamp to be admirable, but the off-hand letters written to his
+English and to a few American friends during our great struggle are
+worthy of the highest esteem. From his conversations with the President,
+the Cabinet ministers, his fellow-senators and congressmen, his
+newspaper reading,--in short, from the many impressions that go to make
+up the daily life of an influential public man,--there has resulted an
+accurate statement of the popular feeling from day to day. In spite of
+his intense desire to have Englishmen of power and position espouse the
+right side, he would not misrepresent anything by the suppression of
+facts, any more than he would make a misleading statement. In the
+selection of these letters Mr. Pierce has shown a nice discrimination.
+
+Sumner, whom I take to have been one of the most truthful of men, was
+fortunate in having one of the most honest of biographers. Mr. Pierce
+would not, I think, have wittingly suppressed anything that told against
+him. I love to think of one citation which would never have been made by
+an idolizing biographer, so sharply did it bring out the folly of the
+opinion expressed. Sumner wrote, May 3, 1863: "There is no doubt here
+about Hooker. He told Judge Bates ... that he 'did not mean to drive the
+enemy but to bag him.' It is thought he is now doing it." The
+biographer's comment is brief, "The letter was written on the day of
+Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville."
+
+It seems to me that Mr. Pierce was as impartial in his writing as is
+possible for a man who has taken an active part in political affairs,
+who is thoroughly in earnest, and who has a positive manner of
+expression. It is not so difficult as some imagine for a student of
+history whose work is done in the library to be impartial, provided he
+has inherited or acquired the desire to be fair and honest, and provided
+he has the diligence and patience to go through the mass of evidence.
+His historical material will show him that to every question there are
+two sides. But what of the man who has been in the heat of the conflict,
+and who, when the fight was on, believed with Sumner that there was no
+other side? If such a man displays candor, how much greater his merit
+than the impartiality of the scholar who shuns political activity and
+has given himself up to a life of speculation!
+
+I had the good fortune to have three long conversations with the Hon.
+Robert C. Winthrop, the last of which occurred shortly after the
+publication of the third and fourth volumes of the Life of Sumner.
+"What," said Mr. Winthrop to me, "do you think of the chapter on the
+Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War?" "I think," was my reply, "that
+Mr. Pierce has treated a delicate subject like a gentleman." "From what
+I have heard of it," responded Mr. Winthrop, earnestly, "and from so
+much as I have read of it, that is also my own opinion." Such a private
+conversation I could, of course, repeat, and, somewhat later the
+occasion presenting itself, I did so to Mr. Pierce. "That is more
+grateful to me," he said, almost with tears in his eyes, "than all the
+praise I have received for these volumes."
+
+Mr. Pierce had, I think, the historic sense. I consulted him several
+times on the treatment of historical matters, taking care not to trench
+on questions where, so different was our point of view, we could not
+possibly agree, and I always received from him advice that was
+suggestive, even if I did not always follow it to the letter. I sent to
+him, while he was in London, my account of Secretary Cameron's report
+proposing to arm the slaves and of his removal from office by President
+Lincoln. Mr. Pierce thought my inferences were far-fetched, and wrote:
+"I prefer the natural explanation. Horace says we must not introduce a
+god into a play unless it is necessary."
+
+As a friend, he was warm-hearted and true. He brought cheer and
+animation into your house. His talk was fresh; his zeal for whatever was
+uppermost in his mind was contagious, and he inspired you with
+enthusiasm. He was not good at conversation, in the French sense of the
+term, for he was given to monologue; but he was never dull. His
+artlessness was charming. He gave you confidences that you would have
+shrunk from hearing out of the mouth of any other man, in the fear that
+you intruded on a privacy where you had no right; but this openness of
+mind was so natural in Mr. Pierce that you listened with concern and
+sympathized warmly. He took interest in everything; he had infinite
+resources, and until his health began to fail, enjoyed life thoroughly.
+He loved society, conversation, travel; and while he had no passion for
+books, he listened to you attentively while you gave an abstract or
+criticism of some book that was attracting attention. In all intercourse
+with him you felt that you were in a healthy moral atmosphere. I never
+knew a man who went out of his way oftener to do good works in which
+there was absolutely no reward, and at a great sacrifice of his time--to
+him a most precious commodity. He was in the true sense of the word a
+philanthropist, and yet no one would have approved more heartily than
+he this remark of Emerson: "The professed philanthropists are an
+altogether odious set of people, whom one would shun as the worst of
+bores and canters."
+
+His interest in this Society the published Proceedings will show in some
+measure, but they cannot reflect the tone of devotion in which he spoke
+of it in conversation, or exhibit his loyalty to it as set forth in the
+personal letter. It was a real privation that his legislative duties
+prevented his attending these meetings last winter.
+
+Of Mr. Pierce as a citizen most of you, gentlemen, can speak better than
+I, but it does appear to me an instance of rare civic virtue that a man
+of his age, political experience, ability, and mental resources could
+take pride and pleasure in his service in the House of Representatives
+of his Commonwealth. He was sixty-eight years old, suffering from
+disease, yet in his service last winter he did not miss one legislative
+session nor a day meeting of his committee. His love for his town was a
+mark of local attachment both praiseworthy and useful. "I would rather
+be moderator of the Milton town-meeting," he said, "than hold any other
+office in the United States."
+
+
+
+
+JACOB D. COX
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the October
+meeting of 1900.
+
+
+
+
+JACOB D. COX
+
+
+A useful member of the legislature of his state, a general in the army
+during the Civil War, governor of his state, Secretary of the Interior
+in President Grant's Cabinet, a member of Congress, the president of a
+large railroad, a writer of books, dean and teacher in a law school, and
+a reviewer of books in the _Nation_,--such were the varied activities of
+General Cox. All this work was done with credit. He bore a prominent
+part in the battle of Antietam, where Ropes speaks of his "brilliant
+success"; he was the second in command at the battle of Franklin, and
+bore the brunt of the battle. "Brigadier-General J. D. Cox," wrote
+Schofield, the commanding general, in his report, "deserves a very large
+share of credit for the brilliant victory at Franklin."
+
+The governor of the state of Ohio did not then have a great opportunity
+of impressing himself upon the minds of the people of his state, but Cox
+made his mark in the canvass for that office. We must call to mind that
+in the year 1865, when he was the Republican candidate for governor,
+President Johnson had initiated his policy of reconstruction, but had
+not yet made a formal break with his party. Negro suffrage, which only a
+few had favored during the last year of the war, was now advocated by
+the radical Republicans, and the popular sentiment of the party was
+tending in that direction. Cox had been a strong antislavery man before
+the war, a supporter of President Lincoln in his emancipation measures,
+but soon after his nomination for governor he wrote a letter to his
+radical friends at Oberlin in opposition to negro suffrage. "You
+assume," he said, "that the extension of the right of suffrage to the
+blacks, leaving them intermixed with the whites, will cure all the
+trouble. I believe it would rather be like the decision in that outer
+darkness of which Milton speaks where
+
+          "'chaos umpire sits,
+  And by decision more embroils the fray.'"
+
+While governor, he said in a private conversation that he had come to
+the conclusion "that so large bodies of black men and white as were in
+presence in the Southern States never could share political power, and
+that the insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would lead
+to their ruin."
+
+President Grant appointed General Cox Secretary of the Interior, and he
+remained for nearly two years in the Cabinet. James Russell Lowell, on a
+visit to Washington in 1870, gave expression to the feeling among
+independent Republicans. "Judge Hoar," he wrote, "and Mr. Cox struck me
+as the only really strong men in the Cabinet." This was long before the
+Civil Service Reform Act had passed Congress, but Secretary Cox put the
+Interior Department on a merit basis, and he was ever afterwards an
+advocate of civil service reform by word of mouth and with his pen.
+Differences with the President, in which I feel pretty sure that the
+Secretary was in the right, caused him to resign the office.
+
+Elected to Congress in 1876, he was a useful member for one term. He has
+always been known to men in public life, and when President McKinley
+offered him the position of Minister to Spain something over three years
+ago, it was felt that a well-known and capable man had been selected.
+For various reasons he did not accept the appointment, but if he had
+done so, no one could doubt that he would have shown tact and judgment
+in the difficult position.
+
+As president of the Wabash Railroad, one of the large railroads in the
+West, he gained a name among business men, and five or six years ago was
+offered the place of Railroad Commissioner in New York City. This was
+practically the position of arbitrator between the trunk lines, but he
+was then Dean of the Cincinnati Law School and interested in a work
+which he did not care to relinquish.
+
+Besides a controversial monograph, he wrote three books on military
+campaigns: "Atlanta"; "The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville";
+"The Battle of Franklin"; and he wrote four excellent chapters for
+Force's "Life of General Sherman." In these he showed qualities of a
+military historian of a high order. Before his death he had finished his
+Reminiscences, which will be brought out by the Scribners this autumn.
+
+His differences with President Grant while in his Cabinet left a wound,
+and in private conversation he was quite severe in his strictures of
+many of the President's acts, but he never let this feeling influence
+him in the slightest degree in the consideration of Grant the General.
+He had a very high idea of Grant's military talents, which he has in
+many ways emphatically stated.
+
+Since 1874 he had been a constant contributor to the literary department
+of the _Nation_. In his book reviews he showed a fine critical faculty
+and large general information, and some of his obituary
+notices--especially those of Generals Buell, Grant, Sherman, Joseph E.
+Johnston, and Jefferson Davis--showed that power of impartial
+characterization which is so great a merit in a historian. He was an
+omnivorous reader of serious books. It was difficult to name any
+noteworthy work of history or biography or any popular book on natural
+science with which he was not acquainted.
+
+As I saw him two years ago, when he was seventy years old, he was in the
+best of health and vigor, which seemed to promise many years of life. He
+was tall, erect, with a frame denoting great physical strength, and he
+had distinctively a military bearing. He was an agreeable companion, an
+excellent talker, a scrupulously honest and truthful man, and a
+gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the March
+meeting of 1908.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE
+
+
+When an associate dies who was not yet forty-eight years old, whom most
+of us knew as a strong enduring man, who was capable of an immense
+amount of intellectual work, it is a real calamity,--a calamity which in
+this case History mourns, as Edward Gaylord Bourne was an excellent
+teacher and a thorough historical scholar. The physical details of any
+illness are apt to be repulsive, but the malady in Bourne's case was
+somehow so bound up in his life that an inquiry into it comes from no
+morbid curiosity. When ten years old he was attacked with tubercular
+disease of the hip, and for some weeks his life was despaired of; but he
+was saved by the loving care of his parents, receiving particular
+devotion from his father, who was a Congregational minister in charge of
+a parish in Connecticut. As the left leg had out-grown the other, Bourne
+was obliged to use crutches for three years, when his father took him to
+a specialist in Boston, and the result was that he was able to abandon
+crutches and in the end to get about by an appliance to adjust the
+lengths of the different legs, such as his friends were familiar with.
+Despite this disability he developed great physical strength, especially
+in the chest and arms, but his lameness prevented his accompanying his
+college companions on long tramps, so that the bicycle was for him a
+most welcome invention. He became expert in the use of it, riding on it
+down Pike's Peak at the time of his visit to Colorado; and he performed
+a similar feat of endurance on another occasion when stopping with me at
+Jefferson in the White Mountains. Starting early in the morning, he
+traveled by rail to the terminus of the mountain railroad, went up Mount
+Washington on the railroad, and rode down the carriage road on his wheel
+to the Glen House, which ought to have been enough of fatigue and
+exertion for one day, but he then had about ten miles to make on his
+bicycle over a somewhat rough mountain road to reach Jefferson.
+Jefferson he did make, but not until after midnight.
+
+During an acquaintance of over nineteen years with Bourne, I was always
+impressed with his physical strength and endurance; and I was therefore
+much surprised to learn, in a letter received from him last winter while
+I was in Rome, that his youthful malady had attacked him, that he was
+again on crutches and had been obliged to give up his work at Yale. In
+truth ever since the autumn of 1906 he has had a painful, hopeless
+struggle. He has had the benefit of all the resources of medicine and
+surgery, and he and his wife were buoyed up by hope until the last; but
+as the sequel of one of a series of operations death came to his relief
+on February 24.
+
+Only less remarkable than his struggle for life and physical strength
+was his energy in acquiring an education. The sacrifices that parents in
+New England and the rest of the country make in order to send their boys
+to school and college is a common enough circumstance, but not always is
+the return so satisfactory as it was in the case of Edward Bourne, and
+his brother. Edward went to the Norwich Academy, where his studious
+disposition and diligent purpose gained him the favor of the principal.
+Thence to Yale, where he attracted the attention of Professor William G.
+Sumner, who became to him a guide and a friend. Until his senior year at
+Yale his favorite studies were Latin and Greek; and his brother, who was
+in his class, informs me that ever since his preparatory school days, it
+was his custom to read the whole of any author in hand as well as the
+part set for the class. During recitations he recalls seeing him again
+and again reading ahead in additional books of the author, keeping at
+the same time "a finger on the page where the class was translating, in
+order not to be caught off his guard." In his senior year at Yale, under
+the influence of Professor Sumner, he became interested in economics and
+won the Cobden medal. After graduation he wrote his first historical
+book, "The History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837," published in 1885 in
+Putnam's "Questions of the Day" series. For this and his other graduate
+work his university later conferred upon him the degree of Ph.D. Since I
+have learned the story of his boyhood and youth, it is with peculiar
+appreciation that I read the dedication of this first book: "To my
+Father and Mother." I may add in this connection that while pursuing his
+indefatigable labors for the support of his large family, his father's
+sickness and death overtaxed his strength, and the breakdown followed.
+
+At Yale during his graduate work he won the Foote scholarship; he was
+instructor in history there from 1886 to 1888, then took a similar
+position at Adelbert College, Cleveland, becoming Professor of History
+in 1890. This post he held until 1895, when he was called to Yale
+University as Professor of History, a position that he held at the time
+of his death.
+
+Besides the doctor's thesis, Bourne published two books, the first of
+which was "Essays in Historical Criticism," one of the Yale bicentennial
+publications, the most notable essay in which is that on Marcus Whitman.
+A paper read at the Ann Arbor session of the American Historical meeting
+in Detroit and later published in the _American Historical Review_ is
+here amplified into a long and exhaustive treatment of the subject. The
+original paper gained Bourne some celebrity and subjected him to some
+harsh criticism, both of which, I think, he thoroughly enjoyed. Feeling
+sure of his facts and ground, he delighted in his final word to support
+the contention which he had read with emphasis and pleasure to an
+attentive audience in one of the halls of the University of Michigan.
+The final paragraph sums up what he set out to prove with undoubted
+success:
+
+    That Marcus Whitman was a devoted and heroic missionary who braved
+    every hardship and imperilled his life for the cause of Christian
+    missions and Christian civilization in the far Northwest and finally
+    died at his post, a sacrifice to the cause, will not be gainsaid.
+    That he deserves grateful commemoration in Oregon and Washington is
+    beyond dispute. But that he is a national figure in American
+    history, or that he "saved" Oregon, must be rejected as a fiction
+    [p. 100].
+
+Bourne had a good knowledge of American history, and he specialized on
+the Discoveries period, to which he gave close and continuous attention.
+He was indebted to Professor Hart's ambitious and excellent coöperative
+history, "The American Nation," for the opportunity to obtain a hearing
+on his favorite subject. His "Spain in America," his third published
+book, is the book of a scholar. While the conditions of his narrative
+allowed only forty-six pages to the story of Columbus, he had
+undoubtedly material enough well arranged and digested to fill the
+volume on this topic alone. I desire to quote a signal example of
+compression:
+
+    It was November, 1504, when Columbus arrived in Seville, a broken
+    man, something over twelve years from the time he first set sail
+    from Palos. Each successive voyage since his first had left him at a
+    lower point. On his return from the second he was on the defensive;
+    after his third he was deprived of his viceroyalty; on his fourth he
+    was shipwrecked.... The last blow, the death of his patron Isabella,
+    soon followed. It was months before he was able to attend court.
+    His strength gradually failed, he sank from public view, and on the
+    eve of Ascension Day, May 20, 1506, he passed away in obscurity
+    [p. 81].
+
+And I am very fond of this final characterization:
+
+    Columbus ... has revealed himself in his writings as few men of
+    action have been revealed. His hopes, his illusions, his vanity, and
+    love of money, his devotion to by-gone ideals, his keen and
+    sensitive observation of the natural world, his credulity and utter
+    lack of critical power in dealing with literary evidence, his
+    practical abilities as a navigator, his tenacity of purpose and
+    boldness of execution, his lack of fidelity as a husband and a
+    lover,... all stand out in clear relief.... Of all the self-made men
+    that America has produced, none has had a more dazzling success, a
+    more pathetic sinking to obscurity, or achieved a more universal
+    celebrity [p. 82].
+
+His chapter on Magellan is thoroughly interesting. The treatment of
+Columbus and Magellan shows what Bourne might have achieved in
+historical work if he could have had leisure to select his own subjects
+and elaborate them at will.
+
+Before "Spain in America" appeared, he wrote a scholarly introduction to
+the vast work on the "Philippine Islands" published by the Arthur H.
+Clark Company, of Cleveland, of which fifty-one volumes are already out.
+The study of this subject gave Bourne a chance for the exhibition of his
+dry wit at one of the gatherings of the American Historical Association.
+It was asserted that in the acquisition of the Philippine Islands our
+country had violated the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, which properly
+confined our indulgence of the land hunger that is preying upon the
+world to the Western hemisphere. Bourne took issue with this statement.
+He said that it might well be a question whether the Philippine Islands
+did not belong to the Western hemisphere and that--
+
+    for the first three centuries of their recorded history, they were
+    in a sense a dependency of America. As a dependency of New Spain
+    they constituted the extreme western verge of the Spanish dominions
+    and were commonly known as the Western Islands. When the sun rose in
+    Madrid it was still early afternoon of the preceding day in Manila.
+    Down to the end of the year 1844 the Manilan calendar was reckoned
+    after that of Spain, that is, Manila time was about sixteen hours
+    slower than Madrid time.
+
+Bourne undertook to write the Life of Motley for Houghton, Mifflin and
+Company's American Men of Letters series, and he had done considerable
+work in the investigation of material. He was editor of a number of
+publications, one of which was John Fiske's posthumous volume, "New
+France and New England," and he wrote critical notices for the _Nation_,
+_New York Tribune_, and the _New York Times_. As I have said, he had a
+large family to support, and he sought work of the potboiling order; but
+in this necessary labor he never sacrificed his ideal of thoroughness. A
+remark that he made to me some while ago has come back with pathetic
+interest. After telling me what he was doing, how much time his teaching
+left for outside work, why he did this and that because it brought him
+money, he said: "I can get along all right. I can support my family,
+educate my children, and get a little needed recreation, if only my
+health does not break down."
+
+Bourne took great interest in the American Historical Association, and
+rarely if ever missed an annual meeting. He frequently read papers,
+which were carefully prepared, and a number of them are printed in the
+volume of Essays to which I have referred. He was the efficient chairman
+of the programme committee at the meeting in New Haven in 1898; and as
+chairman of an important committee, or as member of the Council, he
+attended the November dinners and meetings in New York, so that he came
+to be looked upon as one of the chief supporters of the Association.
+Interested also in the _American Historical Review_, he was a frequent
+contributor of critical book notices.
+
+My acquaintance with Bourne began in 1888, the year in which I commenced
+the composition of my history. We were both living in Cleveland, and, as
+it was his custom to dine with me once or twice a month, acquaintance
+grew into friendship, and I came to have a great respect for his
+training and knowledge as a historical scholar. The vastness of
+historical inquiry impressed me, as it has all writers of history.
+Recognizing in Bourne a kindred spirit, it occurred to me whether I
+could not hasten my work if he would employ part of his summer vacation
+in collecting material. I imparted the idea to Bourne, who received it
+favorably, and he spent a month of the summer of 1889 at work for me in
+the Boston Athenæum on my general specifications, laboring with industry
+and discrimination over the newspapers of the early '50's to which we
+had agreed to confine his work. His task completed, he made me a visit
+of a few days at Bar Harbor, affording an opportunity for us to discuss
+the period and his material. I was so impressed with the value of his
+assistance that, when the manuscript of my first two volumes was
+completed in 1891, I asked him to spend a month with me and work jointly
+on its revision. We used to devote four or five hours a day to this
+labor, and in 1894, when I had finished my third volume, we had a
+similar collaboration.[163] I have never known a better test of general
+knowledge and intellectual temper.
+
+Bourne was a slow thinker and worker, but he was sure, and, when he knew
+a thing, his exposition was clear and pointed. The chance of reflection
+over night and the occasional discussion at meal times, outside of our
+set hours, gave him the opportunity to recall all his knowledge bearing
+on the subject in hand, to digest and classify it thoroughly, so that,
+when he tackled a question, he talked, so to speak, like a book. Two
+chapters especially attracted him,--the one on Slavery in my first
+volume, and the one on general financial and social conditions at the
+beginning of the third; and I think that I may say that not only every
+paragraph and sentence, but every important word in these two chapters
+was discussed and weighed. Bourne was a good critic, and, to set him
+entirely at ease, as he was twelve years younger, I told him to lay
+aside any respect on account of age, and to speak out frankly, no matter
+how hard it hit, adding that I had better hear disagreeable things from
+him than to have them said by critics after the volumes were printed.
+
+The intelligent note on page 51 of my third volume was written by
+Bourne, as I state in the note itself, but I did not speak of the large
+amount of study he gave to it. I never knew a man take keener interest
+in anything, and as we had all the necessary authorities at hand, he
+worked over them for two days, coming down on the morning of the third
+day with the triumphant air of one who had wrestled successfully with a
+mathematical problem all night. He sat down and, as I remember it, wrote
+the note substantially as it now stands in the volume. He was very
+strong on all economic and sociological questions, displaying in a
+marked degree the intellectual stimulus he had derived from his
+association with Professor Sumner. He was a born controversialist and
+liked to argue. "The appetite comes in eating" is a French saying, and
+with Bourne his knowledge seemed to be best evolved by the actual joint
+working and collision with another mind.
+
+I remember one felicitous suggestion of Bourne's which after much
+working over we incorporated into a paragraph to our common
+satisfaction; and this paragraph received commendation in some critical
+notice. Showing this to Bourne, I said: "That is the way of the world.
+You did the thinking, I got the credit." Bourne had, however, forgotten
+his part in the paragraph. His mind was really so full of knowledge,
+when one could get at it, that he did not remember giving off any part
+of it. In addition to his quality of close concentration, he acquired a
+good deal of knowledge in a desultory way. In my library when
+conversation lagged he would go to the shelves and take down book after
+book, reading a little here or there, lighting especially upon any books
+that had been acquired since his previous visit, and with reading he
+would comment. This love of browsing in a library he acquired when a
+boy, so his brother informs me, and when at Yale it was said that he
+knew the library as well as the librarian himself.
+
+It will be remembered that last spring our accomplished editor, Mr.
+Smith, decided that he could no longer bear the burden of this highly
+important work; and the question of a fit successor came up at once in
+the mind of our President. Writing to me while I was in Europe, he
+expressed the desire of consulting with me on the subject as soon as I
+returned. I was unfortunately unable to get back in time for the June
+meeting of the Society; and afterwards when I reached Boston the
+President had gone West, and when he got home I was at Seal Harbor. To
+spare me the trip to Boston and Lincoln, he courteously offered to come
+to see me at Seal Harbor, where we had the opportunity to discuss the
+subject in all its bearings. It will be quite evident from this
+narrative that my choice for editor would be no other than Professor
+Bourne, and I was much gratified to learn that the President from his
+own observation and reflection had determined on the same man. Mr. Adams
+had been accustomed to see Bourne at meetings of the American
+Historical Association and at dinners of their Council; but, so he
+informed me, he was not specially impressed by him until he read the
+essay on Marcus Whitman, which gave him a high idea of Bourne's power of
+working over material, and his faculty of trenchant criticism. We
+arrived readily at the conclusion that Bourne would be an ideal editor
+and that the position would suit him perfectly. Relieved of the drudgery
+of teaching, he could give full swing to his love of books and to his
+desire of running down through all the authorities some fact or
+reference bearing upon the subject in hand. The work would be a labor of
+love on which he could bring to bear his knowledge, conscientious
+endeavor, and historical training. It would have been a case of mutual
+benefit. He would be fortunate in securing such a position, and the
+Society might be congratulated on being able to get a man so peculiarly
+qualified for editorial work. But there was the question of Bourne's
+health. We both knew that he had been failing, but we were not aware
+that his case was hopeless. The President did not wish to present his
+recommendation to the Council until there was a reasonable chance of his
+recovery, and I undertook from time to time to get information from a
+common friend in New Haven of his progress. But there was no good news.
+While Bourne, with the help of his devoted wife, made an energetic fight
+for life, it was unavailing. In his death Yale lost an excellent teacher
+of history and this Society a candidate who, if he had been chosen,
+would have made an accomplished editor.
+
+
+  [163] Bourne also revised the manuscript of my fourth volume, but the
+        conditions did not admit of our being together more than two
+        days, and the revision was not so satisfactory to either of us
+        as that of the first three volumes.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE
+
+Printed in _Scribner's Magazine_, of February, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE
+
+
+The English Constitution, as it existed between 1760 and 1787, was the
+model of the American, but parts of it were inapplicable to the
+conditions in which the thirteen Colonies found themselves, and where
+the model failed the Convention struck out anew. The sagacity of the
+American statesmen in this creative work may well fill Englishmen, so
+Sir Henry Maine wrote, "with wonder and envy." Mr. Bryce's
+classification of constitutions as flexible and rigid is apt: of our
+Constitution it may be said that in the main it is rigid in those
+matters which should not be submitted to the decision of a legislature
+or to a popular vote without checks which secure reflection and a chance
+for the sober second thought, and that it has proved flexible in its
+adaptation to the growth of the country and to the development of the
+nineteenth century. Sometimes, though, it is flexible to the extent of
+lacking precision. An instance of this is the proviso for the counting
+of the electoral vote. "The votes shall then be counted" are the words.
+Thus, when in 1876 it was doubtful whether Tilden or Hayes had been
+chosen President, a fierce controversy arose as to who should count the
+votes, the President of the Senate or Congress. While many regretted the
+absence of an incontrovertible provision, it was fortunate for the
+country that the Constitution did not provide that the vote should be
+counted by the President of the Senate, who, the Vice President having
+died in office, was in 1877 a creature of the partisan majority. It is
+doubtful, too, if the decision of such an officer would have been
+acquiesced in by the mass of Democrats, who thought that they had fairly
+elected their candidate. There being no express declaration of the
+Constitution, it devolved upon Congress to settle the dispute; the
+ability and patriotism of that body was equal to the crisis. By a
+well-devised plan of arbitration, Congress relieved the strain and
+provided for a peaceful settlement of a difficulty which in most
+countries would have led to civil war.
+
+In the provisions conferring the powers and defining the duties of the
+executive the flexible character of the Constitution is shown in another
+way. Everything is clearly stated, but the statements go not beyond the
+elementary. The Convention knew what it wanted to say, and Gouverneur
+Morris, who in the end drew up the document, wrote this part of it, as
+indeed all other parts, in clear and effective words. It is due to him,
+wrote Laboulaye, that the Constitution has a "distinctness entirely
+French, in happy contrast to the complicated language of the English
+laws." Yet on account of the elementary character of the article of the
+Constitution on the powers of the President, there is room for
+inference, a chance for development, and an opportunity for a strong man
+to imprint his character upon the office. The Convention, writes Mr.
+Bryce, made its executive a George III "shorn of a part of his
+prerogative," his influence and dignity diminished by a reduction of the
+term of office to four years. The English writer was thoroughly familiar
+with the _Federalist_, and appreciated Hamilton's politic efforts to
+demonstrate that the executive of the Constitution was modeled after the
+governors of the states, and not after the British monarch; but "an
+enlarged copy of the state governor," Mr. Bryce asserts, is one and the
+same thing as "a reduced and improved copy of the English king." But, on
+the other hand, Bagehot did not believe that the Americans comprehended
+the English Constitution. "Living across the Atlantic," he wrote, "and
+misled by accepted doctrines, the acute framers of the Federal
+Constitution, even after the keenest attention, did not perceive the
+Prime Minister to be the principal executive of the British
+Constitution, and the sovereign a cog in the mechanism;" and he seems to
+think that if this had been understood the executive power would have
+been differently constituted.
+
+It is a pertinent suggestion of Mr. Bryce's that the members of the
+Convention must have been thinking of their presiding officer, George
+Washington, as the first man who would exercise the powers of the
+executive office they were creating. So it turned out. Never did a
+country begin a new enterprise with so wise a ruler. An admirable polity
+had been adopted, but much depended upon getting it to work, and the man
+who was selected to start the government was the man of all men for the
+task. Histories many and from different points of view have been written
+of Washington's administration; all are interesting, and the subject
+seems to ennoble the writers. Statesmen meeting with students to discuss
+the character and political acts of Washington marvel at his wisdom in
+great things and his patience in small things, at the dignity and good
+sense with which he established the etiquette of his office, at the tact
+which retained in his service two such irreconcilable men as Jefferson
+and Hamilton. The importance of a good start for an infant government is
+well understood. But for our little state of four million people such a
+start was difficult to secure. The contentions which grew out of the
+ratification of the Constitution in the different states had left bitter
+feelings behind them, and these domestic troubles were heightened by our
+intimate relations with foreign countries. We touched England, France,
+and Spain at delicate points, and the infancy of our nation was passed
+during the turmoil of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. In
+our midst there was an English and a French party. Moreover, in the
+judgment of the world the experiment of the new government was
+foredoomed to failure. Wrote Sir Henry Maine, "It is not at all easy to
+bring home to the men of the present day how low the credit of republics
+had sunk before the establishment of the United States." Hardly were
+success to be won had we fallen upon quiet times; but with free
+governments discredited, and the word "liberty" made a reproach by the
+course of the French Revolution, it would seem impossible.
+
+Washington's prescience is remarkable. Recognizing, in October, 1789,
+that France had "gone triumphantly through the first paroxysm," he felt
+that she must encounter others, that more blood must be shed, that she
+might run from one extreme to another, and that "a higher-toned
+despotism" might replace "the one which existed before." Mentally
+prepared as he was, he met with skill the difficulties as they arose, so
+that the conduct of our foreign relations during the eight years of his
+administration was marked by discretion and furnished a good pattern to
+follow. During his foreign negotiations he determined a constitutional
+question of importance. When the Senate had ratified and Washington,
+after some delay, had signed the Jay treaty, the House of
+Representatives, standing for the popular clamor against it, asked the
+President for all the papers relating to the negotiation, on the ground
+that the House of Representatives must give its concurrence. This demand
+he resisted, maintaining that it struck at "the fundamental principles
+of the Constitution," which conferred upon the President and the Senate
+the power of making treaties, and provided that these treaties when made
+and ratified were the supreme law of the land. In domestic affairs he
+showed discernment in selecting as his confidential adviser, Alexander
+Hamilton, a man who had great constructive talent; and he gave a
+demonstration of the physical strength of the government by putting
+down the whisky rebellion in Pennsylvania. During his eight years he
+construed the powers conferred upon the executive by the Constitution
+with wisdom, and exercised them with firmness and vigor. Washington was
+a man of exquisite manners and his conduct of the office gave it a
+dignity and prestige which, with the exception of a part of one term, it
+has never lost.
+
+Four of the five Presidents who followed Washington were men of
+education and ability, and all of them had large political training and
+experience; they reached their position by the process of a natural
+selection in politics, being entitled fitly to the places for which they
+were chosen. The three first fell upon stormy times and did their work
+during periods of intense partisan excitement; they were also subject to
+personal detraction, but the result in the aggregate of their
+administrations was good, inasmuch as they either maintained the power
+of the executive or increased its influence. Despite their many mistakes
+they somehow overcame the great difficulties. Each one did something of
+merit and the country made a distinct gain from John Adams to Monroe.
+Any one of them suffers by comparison with Washington: the "era of good
+feeling" was due to Congress and the people as well as to the executive.
+Nevertheless, the three turbulent administrations and the two quiet ones
+which succeeded Washington's may at this distance from them be
+contemplated with a feeling of gratulation. The Presidents surrounded
+themselves for the most part with men of ability, experience, and
+refinement, who carried on the government with dignity and a sense of
+proportion, building well upon the foundations which Washington had
+laid.
+
+A contrast between France and the United States leads to curious
+reflections. The one has a past rich in art, literature, and
+architecture, which the other almost entirely lacks. But politically the
+older country has broken with the past, while we have political
+traditions peculiar to ourselves of the highest value. For the man
+American-born they may be summed up in Washington, the rest of the
+"Fathers," and the Constitution; and those who leave England, Scotland,
+Ireland, Wales, Germany, and Scandinavia to make their home in America
+soon come to share in these possessions. While the immigrants from
+southern Europe do not comprehend the Constitution, they know
+Washington. An object lesson may be had almost any pleasant Sunday or
+holiday in the public garden in Boston from the group of Italians who
+gather about the statue of Washington, showing, by their mobile faces
+and animated talk, that they revere him who is the father of their
+adopted country.
+
+During these five administrations, at least two important extensions or
+assertions of executive power were made. In 1803 Jefferson bought
+Louisiana, doing, he said, "an act beyond the Constitution." He was a
+strict constructionist, and was deeply concerned at the variance between
+his constitutional principles and a desire for the material advantage of
+his country. In an effort to preserve his consistency he suggested to
+his Cabinet and political friends an amendment to the Constitution
+approving and confirming the cession of this territory, but they,
+deeming such an amendment entirely unnecessary, received his suggestion
+coldly. In the debate on the Louisiana treaty in the Senate and the
+House, all speakers of both parties agreed that "the United States
+government had the power to acquire new territory either by conquest or
+by treaty."[164] Louisiana, "without its consent and against its will,"
+was annexed to the United States, and Jefferson "made himself monarch of
+the new territory, and wielded over it, against its protests, the
+powers of its old kings."[165]
+
+The assertion by the President in 1823 of the Monroe Doctrine (which Mr.
+Worthington C. Ford has shown to be the John Quincy Adams doctrine) is
+an important circumstance in the development of the executive power.
+
+President John Quincy Adams was succeeded by Andrew Jackson, a man of
+entirely different character from those who had preceded him in the
+office, and he represented different aims. Adams deserved another term.
+His sturdy Americanism, tempered by the cautiousness in procedure which
+was due to his rare training, made him an excellent public servant, and
+the country erred in not availing itself of his further service. The
+change from the _régime_ of the first six Presidents to that of Jackson
+was probably inevitable. A high-toned democracy, based on a qualified
+suffrage, believing in the value of training for public life and
+administrative office, setting a value on refinement and good manners,
+was in the end sure to give way to a pure democracy based on universal
+suffrage whenever it could find a leader to give it force and direction.
+Jackson was such a leader. His followers felt: "He is one of us. He is
+not proud and does not care for style."[166] The era of vulgarity in
+national politics was ushered in by Jackson, who as President introduced
+the custom of rewarding political workers with offices, an innovation
+entirely indefensible; he ought to have continued the practice of his
+six predecessors. The interaction between government and politics on the
+one hand and the life of the people on the other is persistent, and it
+may be doubted whether the United States would have seemed as it did to
+Dickens had not Jackson played such an important part in the
+vulgarization of politics. Yet it was a happy country, as the pages of
+Tocqueville bear witness.
+
+Jackson was a strong executive and placed in his Cabinet men who would
+do his will, and who, from his own point of view, were good advisers,
+since they counseled him to pursue the course he had marked out for
+himself. Comparing his Cabinet officers to those of the Presidents
+preceding him, one realizes that another plan of governing was set on
+foot, based on the theory that any American citizen is fit for any
+position to which he is called. It was an era when special training for
+administrative work began to be slighted, when education beyond the
+rudiments was considered unnecessary except in the three professions,
+when the practical man was apotheosized and the bookish man despised.
+Jackson, uneducated and with little experience in civil life, showed
+what power might be exercised by an arbitrary, unreasonable man who had
+the people at his back. The brilliant three--Webster, Clay, and
+Calhoun--were unable to prevail against his power.
+
+Jackson's financial policy may be defended; yet had it not been for his
+course during the nullification trouble, his declaration, "Our Federal
+Union: It must be preserved," and his consistent and vigorous action in
+accordance with that sentiment it would be difficult to affirm that the
+influence of his two terms of office was good. It cannot be said that he
+increased permanently the power of the executive, but he showed its
+capabilities. It is somewhat curious, however, that Tocqueville, whose
+observations were made under Jackson, should have written: "The
+President possesses almost royal prerogatives, which he never has an
+opportunity of using.... The laws permit him to be strong; circumstances
+keep him weak."
+
+The eight Presidents from Jackson to Lincoln did not raise the character
+of the presidential office. Van Buren was the heir of Jackson. Of the
+others, five owed their nominations to their availability. The evil
+which Jackson did lived after him; indeed, only a man as powerful for
+the good as he had been for the bad could have restored the civil
+service to the merit system which had prevailed before he occupied the
+White House. The offices were at stake in every election, and the
+scramble for them after the determination of the result was great and
+pressing. The chief business of a President for many months after his
+inauguration was the dealing out of the offices to his followers and
+henchmen. It was a bad scheme, from the political point of view, for
+every President except him who inaugurated it. Richelieu is reported to
+have said, on making an appointment, "I have made a hundred enemies and
+one ingrate." So might have said many times the Presidents who succeeded
+Jackson.
+
+The Whig, a very respectable party, having in its ranks the majority of
+the men of wealth and education, fell a victim to the doctrine of
+availability when it nominated Harrison on account of his military
+reputation. He lived only one month after his inauguration, and Tyler,
+the Vice President, who succeeded him, reverted to his old political
+principles, which were Democratic, and broke with the Whigs. By an
+adroit and steady use of the executive power he effected the annexation
+of Texas, but the master spirit in this enterprise was Calhoun, his
+Secretary of State. Polk, his Democratic successor, coveted California
+and New Mexico, tried to purchase them, and not being able to do this,
+determined on war. In fact, he had decided to send in a war message to
+Congress before the news came that the Mexicans, goaded to it by the
+action of General Taylor, under direct orders of the President, had
+attacked an American force and killed sixteen of our dragoons. This
+gave a different complexion to his message, and enabled him to get a
+strong backing from Congress for his war policy. The actions of Tyler
+and of Polk illustrate the power inherent in the executive office. It
+might seem that the exercise of this authority, securing for us at small
+material cost the magnificent domains of Texas, California, and New
+Mexico, would have given these Presidents a fame somewhat like that
+which Jefferson won by the purchase of Louisiana. But such has not been
+the case. The main reason is that the extension of slavery was involved
+in both enterprises, and the histories of these times, which have molded
+historical sentiment, have been written from the antislavery point of
+view. It seems hardly probable that this sentiment will be changed in
+any time that we can forecast, but there is an undoubted tendency in the
+younger historical students to look upon the expansion of the country as
+the important consideration, and the slavery question as incidental.
+Professor von Holst thought this changing historical sentiment entirely
+natural, but he felt sure that in the end men would come round to the
+antislavery view, of which he was so powerful an advocate.
+
+From Taylor to Lincoln slavery dominated all other questions. Taylor was
+a Southern man and a slaveholder, and by his course on the Compromise
+measures attracted the favor of antislavery men; while Fillmore of New
+York, who succeeded this second President to die in office, and who
+exerted the power of the Administration to secure the passage of Clay's
+Compromise and signed the Fugitive Slave Law, had but a small political
+following at the North. Pierce and Buchanan were weak, the more positive
+men in their Cabinets and in the Senate swayed them. For a part of both
+of their terms the House of Representatives was controlled by the
+opposition, the Senate remaining Democratic. These circumstances are
+evidence both of the length of time required to change the political
+complexion of the Senate and of the increasing power of the North, which
+was dominant in the popular House. For the decade before the Civil War
+we should study the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme
+Court, the action of the states, and popular sentiment. The executive is
+still powerful, but he is powerful because he is the representative of a
+party or faction which dictates the use that shall be made of his
+constitutional powers. The presidential office loses interest:
+irresolute men are in the White House, strong men everywhere else.
+
+Lincoln is inaugurated President; the Civil War ensues, and with it an
+extraordinary development of the executive power. It is an interesting
+fact that the ruler of a republic which sprang from a resistance to the
+English king and Parliament should exercise more arbitrary power than
+any Englishman since Oliver Cromwell, and that many of his acts should
+be worthy of a Tudor. Lincoln was a good lawyer who reverenced the
+Constitution and the laws, and only through necessity assumed and
+exercised extra-legal powers, trying at the same time to give to these
+actions the color of legality. Hence his theory of the war power of the
+Constitution, which may be construed to permit everything necessary to
+carry on the war. Yet his dictatorship was different from Cæsar's and
+different from the absolute authority of Napoleon. He acted under the
+restraints imposed by his own legal conscience and patriotic soul, whose
+influence was revealed in his confidential letters and talks. We know
+furthermore that he often took counsel of his Cabinet officers before
+deciding matters of moment. Certain it is that in arbitrary arrests
+Seward and Stanton were disposed to go further than Lincoln. The spirit
+of arbitrary power was in the air, and unwise and unjust acts were done
+by subordinates, which, although Lincoln would not have done them
+himself, he deemed it better to ratify than to undo. This was notably
+the case in the arrest of Vallandigham. Again, Congress did not always
+do what Lincoln wished, and certain men of his own party in Congress
+were strong enough to influence his actions in various ways. But, after
+all, he was himself a strong man exercising comprehensive authority; and
+it is an example of the flexibility of the Constitution that, while it
+surely did not authorize certain of Lincoln's acts, it did not expressly
+forbid them. It was, for example, an open question whether the
+Constitution authorized Congress or the President to suspend the writ of
+_habeas corpus_.
+
+It seems to be pretty well settled by the common sense of mankind that
+when a nation is fighting for its existence it cannot be fettered by all
+the legal technicalities which obtain in the time of peace. Happy the
+country whose dictatorship, if dictator there must be, falls into wise
+and honest hands! The honesty, magnanimity, and wisdom of Lincoln guided
+him aright, and no harm has come to the great principles of liberty from
+the arbitrary acts which he did or suffered to be done. On the other
+hand he has so impressed himself upon the Commonwealth that he has made
+a precedent for future rulers in a time of national peril, and what he
+excused and defended will be assumed as a matter of course because it
+will be according to the Constitution as interpreted by Abraham Lincoln.
+This the Supreme Court foresaw when it rendered its judgment in the
+Milligan case, saying: "Wicked men ambitious of power, with hatred of
+liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by
+Washington and Lincoln, and if this right is conceded [that of a
+commander in a time of war to declare martial law within the lines of
+his military district and subject citizens as well as soldiers to the
+rule of _his will_] and the calamities of war again befall us, the
+dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate." No one can deny
+that a danger here exists, but it is not so great as the solemn words of
+the Supreme Court might lead one to believe. For Lincoln could not have
+persisted in his arbitrary acts had a majority of Congress definitely
+opposed them, and his real strength lay in the fact that he had the
+people at his back. This may be said of the period from the first call
+of troops in April, 1861, until the summer of 1862. McClellan's failure
+on the Peninsula, Pope's disaster at the second battle of Bull Run, the
+defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville lost Lincoln the
+confidence of many; and while the emancipation proclamation of
+September, 1862, intensified the support of others, it nevertheless
+alienated some Republicans and gave to the opposition of the Democrats a
+new vigor. But after Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July, 1863, Lincoln had
+the support of the mass of the Northern people. Whatever he did the
+people believed was right because he had done it. The trust each placed
+in the other is one of the inspiring examples of free government and
+democracy. Lincoln did not betray their confidence: they did not falter
+save possibly for brief moments during the gloomy summer of 1864. The
+people who gave their unreserved support to Lincoln were endued with
+intelligence and common sense; not attracted by any personal magnetism
+of the man, they had, by a process of homely reasoning, attained their
+convictions and from these they were not to be shaken. This is the
+safety of a dictatorship as long as the same intelligence obtains among
+the voters as now; for the people will not support a ruler in the
+exercise of extra-legal powers unless he be honest and patriotic. The
+danger may come in a time of trouble from either an irresolute or an
+unduly obstinate executive. The irresolute man would baffle the best
+intentions of the voters; the obstinate man might quarrel with Congress
+and the people. Either event in time of war would be serious and might
+be disastrous. But the chances are against another Buchanan or Johnson
+in the presidential office.
+
+If the Civil War showed the flexibility of the Constitution in that the
+executive by the general agreement of Congress and the people was able
+to assume unwarranted powers, the course of affairs under Johnson
+demonstrated the strength that Congress derived from the organic act.
+The story is told in a sentence by Blaine: "Two thirds of each House
+united and stimulated to one end can practically neutralize the
+executive power of the government and lay down its policy in defiance of
+the efforts and opposition of the President."[167] What a contrast
+between the two administrations! Under Lincoln Congress, for the most
+part, simply registered the will of the President; under Johnson the
+President became a mere executive clerk of Congress. In the one case the
+people supported the President, in the other they sustained Congress.
+Nothing could better illustrate the flexibility of the Constitution than
+the contrast between these administrations; but it needs no argument to
+show that to pass from one such extreme to another is not healthy for
+the body politic. The violent antagonisms aroused during Johnson's
+administration, when the difficult questions to be settled needed the
+best statesmanship of the country, and when the President and Congress
+should have coöperated wisely and sympathetically, did incalculable
+harm. Johnson, by habits, manners, mind, and character, was unfit for
+the presidential office, and whatever may have been the merit of his
+policy, a policy devised by angels could never have been carried on by
+such an advocate. The American people love order and decency; they have
+a high regard for the presidential office, and they desire to see its
+occupant conduct himself with dignity. Jackson and Lincoln lacked many
+of the external graces of a gentleman, but both had native qualities
+which enabled them to bear themselves with dignity on public occasions.
+Johnson degraded the office, and he is the only one of our Presidents of
+whom this can be said. Bagehot, writing in 1872, drew an illustration
+from one of the darkest periods of our republic to show the superiority
+of the English Constitution. If we have a Prime Minister who does not
+suit Parliament and the people, he argued, we remove him by a simple
+vote of the House of Commons. The United States can only get rid of its
+undesirable executive by a cumbrous and tedious process which can only
+be brought to bear during a period of revolutionary excitement; and even
+this failed because a legal case was not made against the President. The
+criticism was pregnant, but the remedy was not Cabinet responsibility.
+Whatever may be the merits or demerits of our polity, it has grown as
+has the English; it has fitted itself to the people, and cabinet
+government cannot be had without a complete change of the organic act,
+which is neither possible nor desirable. The lesson was that the
+national conventions should exercise more care in naming their
+vice-presidential candidates; and these bodies have heeded it. When
+Grant, popular throughout the country, nominated by the unanimous vote
+of the Republican convention, became President, Congress restored to the
+executive a large portion of the powers of which it had been shorn
+during Johnson's administration. Grant had splendid opportunities which
+he did not improve, and he left no especial impression on the office. In
+the opinion of one of his warm friends and supporters he made "a pretty
+poor President." An able opposition to him developed in his own party;
+and as he was a sensitive man he felt keenly their attacks. Colonel John
+Hay told me that, when on a visit to Washington during Grant's
+administration, he had arrived at the Arlington Hotel at an early hour
+and started out for a walk; in front of the White House he was surprised
+to meet the President, who was out for the same purpose. The two walked
+together to the Capitol and back, Grant showing himself to be anything
+but a silent man. Manifesting a keen sensitiveness to the attacks upon
+him, he talked all of the time in a voluble manner, and the burden of
+his talk was a defense of his administrative acts. It is impossible in
+our minds to dissociate Grant the President from Grant the General, and
+for this reason American historical criticism will deal kindly with him.
+The brilliant victor of Donelson, the bold strategist of Vicksburg, the
+compeller of men at Chattanooga, the vanquisher of Robert E. Lee in
+March and April, 1865, the magnanimous conqueror at Appomattox, will be
+treated with charity by those who write about his presidential terms,
+because he meant well although he did not know how to do well. Moreover,
+the good which Grant did is of that salient kind which will not be
+forgotten. The victorious general, with two trusted military
+subordinates in the prime of life and a personnel for a strong navy,
+persisted, under the guidance of his wise Secretary of State, Hamilton
+Fish, in negotiating a treaty which provided for arbitration and
+preserved the peace with Great Britain; although, in the opinion of the
+majority, the country had a just cause of war in the escape of the
+Florida and the Alabama. After the panic of 1873, when financiers and
+capitalists lost their heads, and Congress with the approval of public
+sentiment passed an act increasing the amount of United States notes in
+circulation, Grant, by a manly and bold veto, prevented this inflation
+of the currency. The wisdom of the framers of the Constitution in giving
+the President the veto power was exemplified. Congress did not pass the
+act over the veto, and Grant has been justified by the later judgment of
+the nation. His action demonstrated what a President may do in resisting
+by his constitutional authority some transitory wave of popular opinion,
+and it has proved a precedent of no mean value. Johnson's vetoes became
+ridiculous. Grant's veto compensates for many of his mistakes.
+
+Said Chancellor Kent in 1826: "If ever the tranquillity of this nation
+is to be disturbed and its liberties endangered by a struggle for power,
+it will be upon this very subject of the choice of a President. This is
+the question that is eventually to test the goodness and try the
+strength of the Constitution, and if we shall be able for half a century
+hereafter to continue to elect the chief magistrate of the Union with
+discretion, moderation, and integrity we shall undoubtedly stamp the
+highest value on our national character." Just fifty years later came a
+more dangerous test than Kent could have imagined. Somewhat more than
+half of the country believed that the states of Florida and Louisiana
+should be counted for Tilden, and that he was therefore elected. On the
+other hand, nearly one half of the voters were of the opinion that those
+electoral votes should be given to Hayes, which would elect him by the
+majority of one electoral vote. Each of the parties had apparently a
+good case, and after an angry controversy became only the more firmly
+and sincerely convinced that its own point of view was unassailable. The
+Senate was Republican, the House Democratic. The great Civil War had
+been ended only eleven years before, and the country was full of
+fighting men. The Southern people were embittered against the dominant
+party for the reason that Reconstruction had gone otherwise than they
+had expected in 1865 when they laid down their arms. The country was on
+the verge of a civil war over the disputed Presidency--a war that might
+have begun with an armed encounter on the floor of the Senate or the
+House. This was averted by a carefully prepared congressional act, which
+in effect left the dispute to a board of arbitration. To the statesmen
+of both parties who devised this plan and who coöperated in carrying the
+measure through Congress; to the members of the Electoral Commission,
+who in the bitterest strife conducted themselves with dignity; to the
+Democratic Speaker of the House and the Democrats who followed his lead,
+the eternal gratitude of the country is due. "He that ruleth his spirit
+is better than he that taketh a city." The victories of Manila and
+Santiago are as nothing compared with the victorious restraint of the
+American people in 1876 and 1877 and the acquiescence of one half of the
+country in what they believed to be an unrighteous decision. Hayes was
+inaugurated peacefully, but had to conduct his administration in the
+view of 4,300,000 voters who believed that, whatever might be his legal
+claim, he had no moral right to the place he occupied. The Democrats
+controlled the House of Representatives during the whole of his term,
+and the Senate for a part of it, and at the outset he encountered the
+opposition of the stalwart faction of his own party. Nevertheless he
+made a successful President, and under him the office gained in force
+and dignity. Hayes was not a man of brilliant parts or wide
+intelligence, but he had common sense and decision of character.
+Surrounding himself with a strong Cabinet, three members of which were
+really remarkable for their ability, he entered upon a distinct policy
+from which flowed good results. He withdrew the Federal troops from the
+states of South Carolina and Louisiana, inaugurating in these states an
+era of comparative peace and tranquillity. Something was done in the
+interest of Civil Service Reform. In opposition to the view of his
+Secretary of the Treasury and confidential friend, John Sherman, he
+vetoed the act of 1878 for the remonetization of silver by the coinage
+of a certain amount of silver dollars--the first of those measures which
+almost brought us to the monetary basis of silver. His guiding principle
+was embodied in a remark he made in his inaugural address, "He serves
+his party best who serves the country best." He and his accomplished
+wife had a social and moral influence in Washington of no mean value.
+The Civil War had been followed by a period of corruption, profligacy,
+and personal immorality. In politics, if a man were sound on the main
+question, which meant if he were a thorough-going Republican, all else
+was forgiven. Under Hayes account was again taken of character and
+fitness. The standard of political administration was high. While Mrs.
+Hayes undoubtedly carried her total abstinence principles to an extreme
+not warranted by the usage of good society, the moral atmosphere of the
+White House was that of most American homes. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes belonged
+to that large class who are neither rich nor poor, neither learned nor
+ignorant, but who are led both by their native common sense and by their
+upbringing to have a high respect for learning, a belief in education,
+morality, and religion, and a lofty ideal for their own personal
+conduct.
+
+The salient feature of Garfield's few months of administration was a
+quarrel between him and the senators from New York State about an
+important appointment. Into this discussion, which ended in a tragedy,
+entered so many factors that it is impossible to determine exactly the
+influence on the power of the President and the growing power of the
+Senate. One important result of it shall be mentioned. The Civil Service
+Reform Bill, introduced into the Senate by a Democrat, was enacted
+during Arthur's administration by a large and non-partisan majority. It
+provided for a non-partisan civil service commission, and established
+open competitive examinations for applicants for certain offices, making
+a commencement by law of the merit system, which before had depended
+entirely upon executive favor. It was a victory for reformers who had
+been advocating legislation of such a character from a period shortly
+after the close of the Civil War; for it was at that time that a few
+began the work of educating public sentiment, which had acquiesced in
+the rotation of offices as an American principle well worthy of
+maintenance. Consequences far-reaching and wholesome followed the
+passage of this important act. Grant had attempted and Hayes had
+accomplished a measure of reform, but to really fix the merit system in
+the civil service a law was needed.
+
+Regarded by the lovers of good government as a machine politician,
+Arthur happily disappointed them by breaking loose from his old
+associations and pursuing a manly course. He gave the country a
+dignified administration; but, even had he been a man to impress his
+character upon the office, conditions were against him. His party was
+torn by internal dissensions and suffered many defeats, of which the
+most notable was in his own state of New York, where his Secretary of
+the Treasury and personal friend was overwhelmingly defeated for
+governor by Grover Cleveland.
+
+The unprecedented majority which Cleveland received in this election and
+his excellent administration as Governor of New York secured for him the
+Democratic nomination for President in 1884. New York State decided the
+election, but the vote was so close that for some days the result was in
+doubt and the country was nervous lest there should be another disputed
+Presidency; in the end it was determined that Cleveland had carried that
+state by a plurality of 1149. Cleveland was the first Democratic
+President elected since 1856; the Democrats had been out of office for
+twenty-four years, and it had galled them to think that their historic
+party had so long been deprived of power and patronage. While many of
+their leaders had a good record on the question of Civil Service Reform,
+the rank and file believed in the Jacksonian doctrine of rewarding party
+workers with the offices, or, as most of them would have put it, "To the
+victors belong the spoils." With this principle so fixed in the minds of
+his supporters, it became an interesting question how Cleveland would
+meet it. No one could doubt that he would enforce fairly the statute,
+but would he content himself with this and use the offices not covered
+by the act to reward his followers in the old Democratic fashion? An
+avowed civil service reformer, and warmly supported by independents and
+some former Republicans on that account, he justified the confidence
+which they had reposed in him and refused "to make a clean sweep." In
+resisting this very powerful pressure from his party he accomplished
+much toward the establishment of the merit system in the civil service.
+It is true that he made political changes gradually, but his insistence
+on a rule which gained him time for reflection in making appointments
+was of marked importance. It would be idle to assert that in his two
+terms he lived wholly up to the ideal of the reformers; undoubtedly a
+long list of backslidings might be made up, but in striking a fair
+balance it is not too much to say that in this respect his
+administration made for righteousness. All the more credit is due him in
+that he not only resisted personal pressure, but, aspiring to be a party
+leader for the carrying out of a cherished policy on finance and the
+tariff, he made more difficult the accomplishment of these ends by
+refusing to be a mere partisan in the question of the offices. In his
+second term it is alleged, probably with truth, that he made a skillful
+use of his patronage to secure the passage by the Senate of the repeal
+of the Silver Act of 1890, which repeal had gone easily through the
+House. It seemed to him and to many financiers that unless this large
+purchase of silver bullion should be stopped the country would be forced
+on to a silver basis, the existing financial panic would be grievously
+intensified, and the road back to the sound money basis of the rest of
+the civilized world would be long and arduous. His course is defended as
+doing a little wrong in order to bring about a great right; and the
+sequence of events has justified that defense. Harm was done to the
+cause of Civil Service Reform, but probably no permanent injury. The
+repeal of the Silver Act of 1890 was the first important step in the
+direction of insuring a permanent gold standard, and Grover Cleveland is
+the hero of it.
+
+The presidential office gained in strength during Cleveland's two terms.
+As we look back upon them, the President is the central figure round
+which revolves each policy and its success or failure. At the same time,
+it is his party more than he that is to be blamed for the failures. He
+made a distinct move toward a reduction of the tariff, and while this
+failed, leaving us with the reactionary result of higher duties than
+ever before, it is not impossible that the words, actions, and
+sacrifices of Cleveland will be the foundation of a new tariff-reform
+party. Allusion has been made to his soundness on finance. His course in
+this respect was unvarying. Capitalists and financiers can take care of
+themselves, no matter what are the changes in the currency; but men and
+women of fixed incomes, professors of colleges, teachers in schools,
+clergymen and ministers, accountants and clerks in receipt of salaries,
+and farmers and laborers have had their comfort increased and their
+anxieties lessened by the adoption of the gold standard; and to
+Cleveland, as one of the pioneers in this movement for stability, their
+thanks are due.
+
+In the railroad riots of 1894 Cleveland, under the advice of his able
+Attorney-General, made a precedent in the way of interference for the
+supremacy of law and the maintenance of order. The Governor of Illinois
+would not preserve order, and the President determined that at all
+hazards riotous acts must be suppressed and law must resume its sway. In
+ordering United States troops to the scene of the disturbance without an
+application of the Legislature or Governor of Illinois he accomplished a
+fresh extension of executive power without an infraction of the
+Constitution.
+
+In his most important diplomatic action Cleveland was not so happy as in
+his domestic policy. There are able men experienced in diplomacy who
+defend his message of December 17, 1895, to Congress in regard to
+Venezuela, and the wisdom of that action is still a mooted question. Yet
+two facts placed in juxtaposition would seem to indicate that the
+message was a mistake. It contained a veiled threat of war if England
+would not arbitrate her difference with Venezuela, the implication being
+that the stronger power was trying to browbeat the weaker one. Later an
+arbitration took place, the award of which was a compromise, England
+gaining more than Venezuela, and the award demonstrated that England
+had not been as extreme and unjust in her claim as had been Venezuela.
+It is even probable that England might have accepted, as the result of
+negotiation, the line decided on by the arbitrators. But, to the credit
+of Mr. Cleveland and his Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, it must be
+remembered that they later negotiated a treaty "for the arbitration of
+all matters in difference between the United States and Great Britain,"
+which unfortunately failed of ratification by the Senate.
+
+It is a fair charge against Cleveland as a partisan leader that, while
+he led a strong following to victory in 1892, he left his party
+disorganized in 1897. But it fell to him to decide between principle and
+party, and he chose principle. He served his country at the expense of
+his party. From the point of view of Democrats it was grievous that the
+only man under whom they had secured victory since the Civil War should
+leave them in a shattered condition, and it may be a question whether a
+ruler of more tact could not have secured his ends without so great a
+schism. Those, however, to whom this party consideration does not appeal
+have no difficulty in approving Cleveland's course. It is undeniable
+that his character is stamped on the presidential office, and his
+occupancy of it is a distinct mark in the history of executive power.
+
+Harrison occupied the presidential office between the two terms of
+Cleveland, and although a positive man, left no particular impress upon
+the office. He was noted for his excellent judicial appointments, and he
+had undoubtedly a high standard of official conduct which he endeavored
+to live up to. Cold in his personal bearing he did not attract friends,
+and he was not popular with the prominent men in his own party. While
+Cleveland and McKinley were denounced by their opponents, Harrison was
+ridiculed; but the universal respect in which he was held after he
+retired to private life is evidence that the great office lost no
+dignity while he held it. During his term Congress overshadowed the
+executive and the House was more conspicuous than the Senate. Thomas B.
+Reed was speaker and developed the power of that office to an
+extraordinary extent. McKinley was the leader of the House and from long
+service in that body had become an efficient leader. The election of
+Harrison was interpreted to mean that the country needed a higher
+tariff, and McKinley carried through the House the bill which is known
+by his name. Among the other Representatives Mr. Lodge was prominent. It
+was not an uncommon saying at that time that the House was a better
+arena for the rising politician than the Senate. In addition to the
+higher tariff the country apparently wanted more silver and a determined
+struggle was made for the free coinage of silver which nearly won in
+Congress. In the end, however, a compromise was effected by Senator
+Sherman which averted free silver but committed the country to the
+purchase annually of an enormous amount of silver bullion against which
+Treasury notes redeemable in coin were issued. This was the Act of 1890
+which, as I have mentioned, was repealed under Cleveland in 1893. It is
+entirely clear from the sequence of events that the Republican party as
+a party should have opposed the purchase of more silver. It could not
+have been beaten worse than it was in 1892, but it could have preserved
+a consistency in principle which, when the tide turned, would have been
+of political value. The party which has stuck to the right principle has
+in the long run generally been rewarded with power, and as the
+Republicans, in spite of certain defections, had been the party of sound
+money since the Civil War, they should now have fought cheap money under
+the guise of unlimited silver as they had before under the guise of
+unlimited greenbacks. But the leaders thought differently, and from
+their own point of view their course was natural. The country desired
+more silver. Business was largely extended, overtrading was the rule.
+Farmers and business men were straitened for money. Economists,
+statesmen, and politicians had told them that, as their trouble had come
+largely from the demonetization of silver, their relief lay in
+bimetallism. It was easy to argue that the best form of bimetallism was
+the free coinage of gold and silver, and after the panic of 1893 this
+delusion grew, but the strength of it was hardly appreciated by
+optimistic men in the East until the Democrats made it the chief plank
+in the platform on which they fought the presidential campaign of 1896.
+Nominating an orator who had an effective manner of presenting his
+arguments to hard-working farmers whose farms were mortgaged, to
+business men who were under a continued strain to meet their
+obligations, and to laborers out of employment, it seemed for two or
+three months as if the party of silver and discontent might carry the
+day. After some hesitation the Republicans grappled with the question
+boldly, took ground against free silver, and with some modification
+declared their approval of the gold standard. On this issue they fought
+the campaign. Their able and adroit manager was quick to see, after the
+issue was joined, the force of the principle of sound money and started
+a remarkable campaign of education by issuing speeches and articles by
+the millions in a number of different languages, in providing excellent
+arguments for the country press, and in convincing those who would
+listen only to arguments of sententious brevity by a well-devised
+circulation of "nuggets" of financial wisdom. McKinley had also the
+support of the greater part of the Independent and Democratic press.
+While financial magnates and the bankers of the country were alarmed at
+the strength of the Bryan party, and felt that its defeat was necessary
+to financial surety, the strength of the Republican canvass lay in the
+fact that the speakers and writers who made it believed sincerely that
+the gold standard would conduce to the greatest good of the greatest
+number. It was an inspiring canvass. The honest advocacy of sound
+principle won.
+
+Under McKinley the Democratic tariff bill was superseded by the Dingley
+act, which on dutiable articles is, I believe, the highest tariff the
+country has known. The Republican party believes sincerely in the policy
+of protection, and the country undoubtedly has faith in it. It is
+attractive to those who allow immediate returns to obscure prospective
+advantage, and if a majority decides whether or not a political and
+economic doctrine is sound, it has a powerful backing, for every large
+country in the civilized world, I think, except England, adheres to
+protection; and some of them have returned to it after trying a measure
+of commercial freedom. McKinley and the majority of Congress were in
+full sympathy, and the Dingley act had the approval of the
+administration. But the change in business conditions which, though long
+in operation, became signally apparent after 1893, wrought in McKinley,
+during his four and a half years of office, a change of opinion. Under
+improved processes and economies in all branches of manufactures the
+United States began to make many articles cheaper than any other
+country, and sought foreign markets for its surplus, disputing
+successfully certain open marts with England and Germany. In McKinley's
+earlier utterances the home market is the dominating feature; in his
+later ones, trade with foreign countries. In his last speech at Buffalo
+he gave mature expression to his views, which for one who had been a
+leader of protectionists showed him to have taken advanced ground. "We
+find our long-time principles echoed," declared the _Nation_. McKinley's
+manner of developing foreign trade was not that of the tariff reformers,
+for he proposed to bring this about by a variety of reciprocity
+treaties; but it was important that he recognized the sound economic
+principle that if we are to sell to foreign countries we must buy from
+them also. That McKinley had a strong hold on the country is
+indisputable from the unanimous renomination by his party and his
+triumphant reëlection, and it was a step toward commercial freedom that
+he who more than all other men had the ear of the country and who had
+been an arch-protectionist should advocate the exchange of commodities
+with foreign lands. Economists do not educate the mass of voters, but
+men like McKinley do, and these sentences of his were read and pondered
+by millions: "A system which provides a mutual exchange of commodities
+is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our
+export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever
+sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible
+it would not be best for us or for those with whom we deal." It is
+useless to speculate on what would have been the result had McKinley
+lived. Those who considered him a weak President aver that when he
+encountered opposition in Congress from interests which were seemingly
+menaced, he would have yielded and abandoned reciprocity. Others believe
+that he understood the question thoroughly and that his arguments would
+in the end have prevailed with Congress; yielding, perhaps, in points of
+detail he would have secured the adoption of the essential part of his
+policy.
+
+After his election McKinley became a believer in the gold standard and
+urged proper legislation upon Congress. It is to his credit and to that
+of Congress that on March 14, 1900, a bill became a law which
+establishes the gold standard and puts it out of the power of any
+President to place the country upon a silver basis by a simple direction
+to his Secretary of the Treasury, which could have been done in 1897. As
+it has turned out, it was fortunate that there was no undue haste in
+this financial legislation. A better act was obtained than would have
+been possible in the first two years of McKinley's administration. The
+reaction from the crisis following the panic of 1893 had arrived, made
+sure by the result of the election of 1896; and the prosperity had
+become a telling argument in favor of the gold standard with the people
+and with Congress.
+
+McKinley was essentially adapted for a peace minister, but under him
+came war. Opinions of him will differ, not only according to one's
+sentiments on war and imperialism, but according to one's ideal of what
+a President should be. Let us make a comparison which shall not include
+Washington, for the reason that under him the country had not become the
+pure democracy it is at the present day. Of such a democracy it seems to
+me that Lincoln is the ideal President, in that he led public sentiment,
+represented it, and followed it. "I claim not to have controlled
+events," he said, "but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
+During his term of office he was one day called "very weak," and the
+next "a tyrant"; but when his whole work was done, a careful survey of
+it could bring one only to the conclusion that he knew when to follow
+and when to lead. He was in complete touch with popular sentiment, and
+divined with nicety when he could take a step in advance. He made an
+effort to keep on good terms with Congress, and he differed with that
+body reluctantly, although, when the necessity came, decisively. While
+he had consideration for those who did not agree with him, and while he
+acted always with a regard to proportion, he was nevertheless a strong
+and self-confident executive. Now Cleveland did not comprehend popular
+opinion as did Lincoln. In him the desire to lead was paramount, to the
+exclusion at times of a proper consideration for Congress and the
+people. It has been said by one of his political friends that he used
+the same energy and force in deciding a small matter as a great one, and
+he alienated senators, congressmen, and other supporters by an
+unyielding disposition when no principle was involved. He did not
+possess the gracious quality of Lincoln, who yielded in small things
+that he might prevail in great ones. Yet for this quality of sturdy
+insistence on his own idea Cleveland has won admiration from a vast
+number of independent thinkers. Temperaments such as these are not in
+sympathy with McKinley, who represents another phase of Lincoln's
+genius. The controlling idea of McKinley probably was that as he was
+elected by the people he should represent them. He did not believe that,
+if a matter were fully and fairly presented, the people would go wrong.
+At times he felt he should wait for their sober, second thought, but if,
+after due consideration, the people spoke, it was his duty to carry out
+their will. Unquestionably if the Cleveland and McKinley qualities can
+be happily combined as they were in Lincoln, the nearest possible
+approach to the ideal ruler is the result. One Lincoln, though, in a
+century, is all that any country can expect: and there is a place in our
+polity for either the Cleveland or the McKinley type of executive. So it
+seemed to the makers of the Constitution. "The republican principle,"
+wrote Hamilton in the _Federalist_, "demands that the deliberate sense
+of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust
+the management of their affairs." "But," he said in the same essay,
+"however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance
+in the executive to the inclinations of the people, we can with no
+propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the
+legislature.... The executive should be in a situation to dare to act
+his own opinion with vigor and decision." It is frequently remarked that
+no President since Lincoln had so thorough a comprehension of public
+sentiment as McKinley. This knowledge and his theory of action, if I
+have divined it aright, are an explanation of his course in regard to
+the Spanish War and the taking of the Philippines. It does not fall to
+me to discuss in this article these two questions, nor do I feel certain
+that all the documents necessary to a fair judgment are accessible to
+the public, but I can show what was McKinley's attitude toward them by
+reporting a confidential conversation he had on May 2, 1899, with Mr.
+Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Massachusetts Institute of
+Technology, who made a record of it the day afterward. The President,
+Mr. Pritchett relates, spoke of the "war and of his own responsibility,
+and the way in which he has gradually come to have his present position
+with respect to the Philippines. The talk was started by my reminding
+him of the fact that just a year ago that morning, on May 2, 1898, I had
+come into his room with a map of Manila and Cavité on a large scale--the
+first time he had seen such a map--and from this he drifted into a most
+serious and interesting talk of his own place in the history of the past
+twelve months. He described his efforts to avert the war, how he had
+carried the effort to the point of rupture with his party, then came the
+Maine incident, and, finally, a declaration of war over all efforts to
+stem the tide. Then he spoke of Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines,
+related at some length the correspondence he had had with the Paris
+Commission, how he had been gradually made to feel in his struggling for
+the right ground that first Luzon and finally all the Philippines must
+be kept. He then went on to indicate his belief that Providence had led
+in all this matter, that to him the march of events had been so
+irresistible that nothing could turn them aside. Nobody, he said, could
+have tried harder than he to be rid of the burden of the Philippines,
+and yet the trend of events had been such that it seemed impossible to
+escape this duty. He finally came to speak with more emotion than I have
+ever seen him exhibit, and no one could doubt the sincerity of the man."
+
+Of McKinley's achievements in the field of diplomacy Secretary Hay in
+his memorial address spoke with knowledge and in words of high praise.
+Sometimes the expression of a careful foreign observer anticipates the
+judgment of posterity, and with that view the words of the
+_Spectator_,[168] in an article on the presidential election of 1900,
+are worth quoting: "We believe that Mr. McKinley and the wise statesman
+who is his Secretary of State, Colonel Hay, are administrators of a high
+order. They have learnt their business thoroughly, hold all the strings
+of policy in their hands."
+
+Opinions will differ as to the impress McKinley has left on the
+presidential office. It is the judgment of two men of large knowledge of
+American history and present affairs that no President since Jefferson
+has been so successful in getting Congress to adopt the positive
+measures he desired.
+
+Of the administration of Theodore Roosevelt it would be neither proper
+nor wise for me to speak in other terms than those of expectation and
+prophecy. But of Mr. Roosevelt himself something may be said. His birth,
+breeding, education, and social advantages have been of the best. He
+has led an industrious and useful life. As an American citizen we are
+all proud of him, and when he reached the presidential office by a
+tragedy that nobody deplored more than he, every one wished him success.
+His transparent honesty and sincerity are winning qualities, and in the
+opinion of Burke especially important in him who is the ruler of a
+nation. "Plain good intention," he wrote, "which is as easily discovered
+at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say,
+of no mean force in the government of mankind." To these qualities, and
+to a physical and moral courage that can never be questioned, Mr.
+Roosevelt adds a large intelligence and, as his books show, a power of
+combination of ideas and cohesive thought. Moreover, he has had a good
+political training, and he has the faculty of writing his political
+papers in a pregnant and forcible literary style. He is fit for what Mr.
+Bryce calls "the greatest office in the world, unless we except the
+Papacy." His ideals are Washington and Lincoln. "I like to see in my
+mind's eye," he said, "the gaunt form of Lincoln stalking through these
+halls." "To gratify the hopes, secure the reverence, and sustain the
+dignity of the nation," said Justice Story, "the presidential office
+should always be occupied by a man of elevated talents, of ripe virtues,
+of incorruptible integrity, and of tried patriotism; one who shall
+forget his own interests and remember that he represents not a party but
+the whole nation." These qualities Theodore Roosevelt has. Whether he
+shall in action carry out the other requirements of Justice Story may
+only be judged after he shall have retired to private life.
+
+Mr. Roosevelt merits the encouragement and sympathy of all lovers of
+good government, and he is entitled, as indeed is every President, to
+considerate and forbearing criticism. For, ardently desired as the
+office is, it is a hard place to fill. Through the kindness of President
+Roosevelt, I have been enabled to observe the daily routine of his work,
+and I am free to say that from the business point of view, no man better
+earns his pay than does he. Mr. Bryce remarks that a good deal of the
+President's work is like that of the manager of a railway. So far as
+concerns the consultation with heads of departments, prompt decisions,
+and the disposition of daily matters, the comparison is apt, if a great
+American railway and a manager like Thomas A. Scott are borne in mind.
+But the railway manager's labor is done in comparative privacy, he can
+be free from interruption and dispose of his own time in a systematic
+manner. That is impossible for the President during the session of
+Congress. Office-seekers themselves do not trouble the President so much
+as in former days; they may be referred to the heads of the departments;
+and, moreover, the introduction of competitive examinations and the
+merit system has operated as a relief to the President and his Cabinet
+officers. But hearing the recommendations by senators and congressmen of
+their friends for offices consumes a large amount of time. There are, as
+Senator Lodge has kindly informed me, 4818 presidential offices
+exclusive of 4000 presidential post offices; in addition there are army
+and naval officers to be appointed. The proper selection in four years
+of the number of men these figures imply is in itself no small labor; it
+would by a railway manager be considered an onerous and exacting
+business. But the railway manager may hear the claims of applicants in
+his own proper way, and to prevent encroachments on his time may give
+the candidates or their friends a curt dismissal. The President may not
+treat senators and representatives in that manner, nor would he desire
+to do so, for the intercourse between them and the executive is of great
+value. "The President," wrote John Sherman, "should 'touch elbows' with
+Congress." There are important legislative measures to be discussed in a
+frank interchange of opinion. Senators and representatives are a guide
+to the President in their estimates of public sentiment; often they
+exert an influence over him, and he is dependent on them for the
+carrying out of any policy he may have at heart. While the encroachments
+on the President's time are great, I am convinced that no plan should be
+adopted which should curtail the unconventional and frank interchange of
+views between the President and members of the National Legislature. The
+relief lies with the public. Much of the President's time is taken up
+with receptions of the friends of senators and representatives, of
+members of conventions and learned bodies meeting in Washington, of
+deputations of school-teachers and the like who have gone to the capital
+for a holiday: all desire to pay their respects to the Chief Magistrate.
+Undoubtedly, if he could have a quiet talk with most of these people, it
+would be of value, but the conventional shaking of hands and the "I am
+glad to see you" is not a satisfaction great enough to the recipients to
+pay for what it costs the President in time and the expenditure of
+nervous force. He should have time for deliberation. The railway manager
+can closet himself when he likes: that should be the privilege of the
+President; yet on a certain day last April, when he wished to have a
+long confidential talk with his Secretary of War, this was only to be
+contrived by the two taking a long horseback ride in the country. It is
+difficult for the President to refuse to see these good, patriotic, and
+learned people; and senators and representatives like to gratify their
+constituents. The remedy lies with the public in denying themselves this
+pleasant feature of a visit to Washington. One does not call on the
+president of the Pennsylvania Railroad or the president of the New York
+Central Railroad in business hours unless for business purposes; and
+this should be the rule observed by citizens of the United States toward
+the President. The weekly public receptions are no longer held. All
+these other receptions and calls simply for shaking hands and wishing
+him God-speed should no longer be asked for. For the President has
+larger and more serious work than the railway manager and should have at
+least as much time for thought and deliberation.
+
+Moreover, the work of the railway manager is done in secret. Fiercer by
+far than the light which beats upon the throne is that which beats upon
+the White House. The people are eager to know the President's thoughts
+and plans, and an insistent press endeavors to satisfy them. Considering
+the conditions under which the President does his work, the wonder is
+not that he makes so many mistakes, but that he makes so few. There is
+no railway or business manager or college president who has not more
+time to himself for the reflection necessary to the maturing of large
+and correct policies. I chanced to be in the President's room when he
+dictated the rough draft of his famous dispatch to General Chaffee
+respecting torture in the Philippines. While he was dictating, two or
+three cards were brought in, also some books with a request for the
+President's autograph, and there were some other interruptions. While
+the dispatch as it went out in its revised form could not be improved, a
+President cannot expect to be always so happy in dictating dispatches in
+the midst of distractions. Office work of far-reaching importance should
+be done in the closet. Certainly no monarch or minister in Europe does
+administrative work under such unfavorable conditions; indeed, this
+public which exacts so much of the President's time should in all
+fairness be considerate in its criticism.
+
+No one, I think, would care to have abated the fearless political
+criticism which has in this country and in England attained to the
+highest point ever reached. From the nature of things the press must
+comment promptly and without the full knowledge of conditions that might
+alter its judgments. But on account of the necessary haste of its
+expressions, the writers should avoid extravagant language and the too
+ready imputation of bad motives to the public servants. "It is strange
+that men cannot allow others to differ with them without charging
+corruption as the cause of the difference," are the plaintive words of
+Grant during a confidential conversation with his Secretary of State.
+
+The contrast between the savage criticism of Cleveland and Harrison
+while each occupied the presidential chair and the respect each enjoyed
+from political opponents after retiring to private life is an effective
+illustration of the lesson I should like to teach. At the time of
+Harrison's death people spoke from their hearts and said, "Well done,
+good and faithful servant." A fine example of political criticism in a
+time of great excitement were two articles by Mr. Carl Schurz in
+_Harper's Weekly_ during the Venezuela crisis. Mr. Schurz was a
+supporter and political friend of Cleveland, but condemned his Venezuela
+message. In the articles to which I refer he was charitable in feeling
+and moderate in tone, and though at the time I heard the term
+"wishy-washy" applied to one of them, I suspect that Mr. Schurz now
+looks back with satisfaction to his reserve; and those of us who used
+more forcible language in regard to the same incident may well wish that
+we had emulated his moderation.
+
+The presidential office differs from all other political offices in the
+world, and has justified the hopes of its creators. It has not realized
+their fears, one of which was expressed by Hamilton in the _Federalist_.
+"A man raised from the station of a private citizen to the rank of Chief
+Magistrate," he wrote, "possessed of a moderate or slender fortune, and
+looking forward to a period not very remote, when he may probably be
+obliged to return to the station from which he was taken, might
+sometimes be under temptations to sacrifice his duty to his interest,
+which it would require superlative virtue to withstand. An avaricious
+man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the
+acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man might make his own
+aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his
+treachery to his constituents."[169] From dangers of this sort the
+political virtue which we inherited from our English ancestors has
+preserved us. We may fairly maintain that the creation and
+administration of our presidential office have added something to
+political history, and when we contrast in character and ability the men
+who have filled it with the monarchs of England and of France, we may
+have a feeling of just pride. Mr. Bryce makes a suggestive comparison in
+ability of our Presidents to the prime ministers of England, awarding
+the palm to the Englishmen,[170] and from his large knowledge of both
+countries and impartial judgment we may readily accept his conclusion.
+It is, however, a merit of our Constitution that as great ability is not
+required for its chief executive office as is demanded in England. The
+prime minister must have a talent for both administration and debate,
+which is a rare combination of powers, and if he be chosen from the
+House of Commons, it may happen that too much stress will be laid upon
+oratory, or the power of making ready replies to the attacks of the
+opposition. It is impossible to conceive of Washington defending his
+policy in the House or the Senate from a fire of questions and
+cross-questions. Lincoln might have developed this quality of a prime
+minister, but his replies and sallies of wit to put to confusion his
+opponents would have lacked the dignity his state papers and
+confidential letters possess. Hayes and Cleveland were excellent
+administrators, but neither could have reached his high position had the
+debating ability of a prime minister been required. On the other hand,
+Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley would have been effective speakers in
+either the House or the Senate.
+
+An American may judge his own country best from European soil,
+impregnated as he there is with European ideas. Twice have I been in
+Europe during Cleveland's administration, twice during McKinley's, once
+during Roosevelt's. During the natural process of comparison, when one
+must recognize in many things the distinct superiority of England,
+Germany, and France, I have never had a feeling other than high respect
+for each one of these Presidents; and taking it by and large, in the
+endeavor to consider fairly the hits and misses of all, I have never had
+any reason to feel that the conduct of our national government has been
+inferior to that of any one of these highly civilized powers.
+
+
+  [164] Henry Adams, II, 113.
+
+  [165] _Ibid._, 130.
+
+  [166] Sumner's Jackson, 138.
+
+  [167] Twenty Years of Congress, II, 185.
+
+  [168] July 14, 1900.
+
+  [169] See also the _Federalist_ (Lodge's edition), 452. Bryce,
+        Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 308.
+
+  [170] American Commonwealth, I, 80.
+
+
+
+
+A REVIEW OF PRESIDENT HAYES'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+Address delivered at the annual meeting of the Graduate School of Arts
+and Sciences, and the Graduate Schools of Applied Science and Business
+Administration, Harvard University, on October 8, 1908; printed in the
+_Century Magazine_ for October, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+A REVIEW OF PRESIDENT HAYES'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+
+Many of our Presidents have been inaugurated under curious and trying
+circumstances, but no one of them except Hayes has taken the oath of
+office when there was a cloud on his title. Every man who had voted for
+Tilden,--whose popular vote exceeded that of Hayes by 264,000,--believed
+that Hayes had reached his high place by means of fraud. Indeed, some of
+the Hayes voters shared this belief, and stigmatized as monstrous the
+action of the Louisiana returning board in awarding the electoral vote
+of Louisiana to Hayes. The four men, three of them dishonest and the
+fourth incompetent, who constituted this returning board, rejected, on
+the ground of intimidation of negro voters, eleven thousand votes that
+had been cast in due form for Tilden. In the seventh volume of my
+history I have told the story of the compromise in the form of the
+Electoral Commission which passed on the conflicting claims and adjudged
+the votes of the disputed states, notably Florida and Louisiana, to
+Hayes, giving him a majority of one in the electoral college, thus
+making him President. When the count was completed and the usual
+declaration made, Hayes had no choice but to abide by the decision. Duty
+to his country and to his party, the Republican, required his acceptance
+of the office, and there is no reason for thinking that he had any
+doubts regarding his proper course. His legal title was perfect, but his
+moral title was unsound, and it added to the difficulty of his situation
+that the opposition, the Democrats, had a majority in the House of
+Representatives. None but a determined optimist could have predicted
+anything but failure for an administration beginning under such
+conditions.
+
+Hayes was an Ohio man, and we in Ohio now watched his successive steps
+with keen interest. We knew him as a man of high character, with a fine
+sense of honor, but we placed no great faith in his ability. He had
+added to his reputation by the political campaign that he had made for
+governor, in 1875, against the Democrats under William Allen, who
+demanded an inflation of the greenback currency. He took an
+uncompromising stand for sound money, although that cause was unpopular
+in Ohio, and he spoke from the stump unremittingly and fearlessly,
+although overshadowed by the greater ability and power of expression of
+Senator Sherman and of Carl Schurz, who did yeoman's service for the
+Republicans in this campaign. Senator Sherman had suggested Hayes as
+candidate for President, and the nomination by the Republican national
+convention had come to him in June, 1876. While his letter of acceptance
+may not have surprised his intimate friends, it was a revelation to most
+of us from its outspoken and common-sense advocacy of civil service
+reform, and it gave us the first glimmering that in Rutherford B. Hayes
+the Republicans had for standard bearer a man of more than respectable
+ability.
+
+His inaugural address confirmed this impression. He spoke with dignity
+and sympathy of the disputed Presidency, promised a liberal policy
+toward the Southern states, and declared that a reform in our civil
+service was a "paramount necessity." He chose for his Cabinet men in
+sympathy with his high ideals. William M. Evarts, the Secretary of
+State, was one of the ablest lawyers in the country. He had been one of
+the leading counsel in the defense of President Johnson in the
+impeachment trial, and had managed the Republican cause before the
+Electoral Commission with adroitness and zeal. John Sherman, the
+Secretary of the Treasury, was the most capable financier in public
+life. Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior, was an aggressive and
+uncompromising reformer, who had served the Republican party well in the
+campaigns of 1875 and 1876. If these three men could work together under
+Hayes, the United States need envy the governors of no other country.
+They were in the brilliant but solid class, were abreast of the best
+thought of their time, had a solemn sense of duty, and believed in
+righteous government. Devens, the Attorney-General, had served with
+credit in the army and had held the honorable position of Justice of the
+Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Thompson of Indiana, Secretary
+of the Navy, was a political appointment due to the influence of Senator
+Morton, but, all things considered, it was not a bad choice. McCrary of
+Iowa, as Secretary of War, had been a useful member of the House of
+Representatives. The Postmaster-General was Key of Tennessee, who had
+served in the Confederate army and voted for Tilden. This appointment
+was not so genuine a recognition of the South as would have been made if
+Hayes could have carried out his first intention, which was the
+appointment of General Joseph E. Johnston as Secretary of War.
+Considering that Johnston had surrendered the second great army of the
+Confederacy only twelve years before, the thought was possible only to a
+magnanimous nature, and in the inner circle of Hayes's counselors
+obvious and grave objections were urged. General Sherman doubted the
+wisdom of the proposed appointment, although he said that as General of
+the army he would be entirely content to receive the President's orders
+through his old antagonist. Although the appointment of Johnston would
+have added strength, the Cabinet as finally made up was strong, and the
+selection of such advisers created a favorable impression upon the
+intelligent sentiment of the country; it was spoken of as the ablest
+Cabinet since Washington's.
+
+A wise inaugural address and an able Cabinet made a good beginning, but
+before the harmonious coöperation of these extraordinary men could be
+developed a weighty question, which brooked no delay, had to be settled.
+The Stevens-Sumner plan of the reconstruction of the South on the basis
+of universal negro suffrage and military support of the governments thus
+constituted had failed. One by one in various ways the Southern states
+had recovered home rule until, on the inauguration of Hayes, carpet-bag
+negro governments existed in only two states, South Carolina and
+Louisiana. In both of these the Democrats maintained that their
+candidates for governor had been lawfully elected. The case of South
+Carolina presented no serious difficulty. Hayes electors had been
+rightfully chosen, and so had the Democratic governor, Hampton. But
+Chamberlain, the Republican candidate, had a claim based on the
+exclusion of the votes of two counties by the board of state canvassers.
+After conferences between each of the claimants and the President, the
+question was settled in favor of the Democrat, which was the meaning of
+the withdrawal of the United States troops from the State House in
+Columbia.
+
+The case of Louisiana was much more troublesome. Packard, the Republican
+candidate for governor, had received as many votes as Hayes, and logic
+seemed to require that, if Hayes be President, Packard should be
+governor. While the question was pending, Blaine said in the Senate:
+"You discredit Packard, and you discredit Hayes. You hold that Packard
+is not the legal governor of Louisiana, and President Hayes has no
+title." And the other leaders of the Republican party, for the most
+part, held this view. To these and their followers Blaine applied the
+name "Stalwarts," stiff partisans, who did not believe in surrendering
+the hold of the Republicans on the Southern states.
+
+Between the policies of a continuance of the support of the Republican
+party in Louisiana or its withdrawal, a weak man would have allowed
+things to drift, while a strong man of the Conkling and Chandler type
+would have sustained the Packard government with the whole force at his
+command. Hayes acted slowly and cautiously, asked for and received much
+good counsel, and in the end determined to withdraw the United States
+troops from the immediate vicinity of the State House in Louisiana. The
+Packard government fell, and the Democrats took possession. The lawyers
+could furnish cogent reasons why Packard was not entitled to the
+governorship, although the electoral vote of Louisiana had been counted
+for Hayes; but the Stalwarts maintained that no legal quibble could
+varnish over so glaring an inconsistency. Indeed, it was one of those
+illogical acts, so numerous in English and American history, that
+resolve difficulties, when a rigid adherence to logic would tend to
+foment trouble.
+
+The inaugural address and the distinctively reform Cabinet did not suit
+the party workers, and when the President declined to sustain the
+Packard government in Louisiana, disapproval was succeeded by rage. In
+six weeks after his inauguration Hayes was without a party; that is to
+say, the men who carried on the organization were bitterly opposed to
+his policy, and they made much more noise than the independent thinking
+voters who believed that a man had arisen after their own hearts. Except
+from the Southern wing, he received little sympathy from the Democratic
+party. In their parlance, fraud was written on his brow. He had the
+honor and perquisites of office which were rightfully theirs.
+
+Once the troops were withdrawn from South Carolina and Louisiana, no
+backward step was possible, and although Hayes would have liked
+congressional support and sympathy for his act, this was not necessary.
+The next most important question of his administration related to
+finance. He and his Secretary of the Treasury would have been gratified
+by an obedient majority in Congress at their back. Presidents before and
+after Hayes have made a greater or less employment of their patronage to
+secure the passage of their favorite measures, but Hayes immediately
+relinquished that power by taking a decided position for a civil service
+based on merit. In a little over a month after the withdrawal of the
+troops from the immediate vicinity of the State House in Louisiana, he
+announced his policy in a letter to his Secretary of the Treasury. "It
+is my wish," he wrote, "that the collection of the revenues should be
+free from partisan control, and organized on a strictly business basis,
+with the same guaranties for efficiency and fidelity in the selection of
+the chief and subordinate officers that would be required by a prudent
+merchant. Party leaders should have no more influence in appointments
+than other equally respectable citizens. No assessments for political
+purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed. No useless
+officer or employee should be retained. No officer should be required or
+permitted to take part in the management of political organizations,
+caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns." The mandatory parts of
+this letter he incorporated in an order to Federal office-holders,
+adding: "This rule is applicable to every department of the civil
+service. It should be understood by every officer of the general
+government that he is expected to conform his conduct to its
+requirements."
+
+It must be a source of gratification to the alumni and faculty of
+Harvard College that its president and governing boards were, in June,
+1877, in the judicious minority, and recognized their appreciation of
+Hayes by conferring upon him its highest honorary degree. Schurz, who
+had received his LL.D. the year before, accompanied Hayes to Cambridge,
+and, in his Harvard speech at Commencement, gave his forcible and
+sympathetic approval of the "famous order of the President," as it had
+now come to be called.
+
+A liberal and just Southern policy, the beginning of a genuine reform in
+the civil service and the resumption of specie payments, are measures
+which distinguish and glorify President Hayes's administration, but in
+July, 1877, public attention was diverted from all these by a movement
+which partook of the nature of a social uprising. The depression
+following the panic of 1873 had been widespread and severe. The slight
+revival of business resulting from the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and
+the consequent large passenger traffic had been succeeded by a reaction
+in 1877 that brought business men to the verge of despair. Failures of
+merchants and manufacturers, stoppage of factories, diminished traffic
+on the railroads, railroad bankruptcies and receiverships, threw a
+multitude of laborers out of employment; and those fortunate enough to
+retain their jobs were less steadily employed, and were subject to
+reductions in wages.
+
+The state of railroad transportation was deplorable. The competition of
+the trunk lines, as the railroads running from Chicago to the seaboard
+were called, was sharp, and, as there was not business enough for all,
+the cutting of through freight rates caused such business to be done at
+an actual loss, while the through passenger transportation afforded
+little profit. Any freight agent knew the remedy: an increase of freight
+rates by agreement or through a system of pooling earnings. Agreements
+were made, but not honestly kept, and, after a breach of faith, the
+fight was renewed with increased fury. As the railroad managers thought
+that they could not increase their gross earnings, they resolved on
+decreasing their expenses, and somewhat hastily and jauntily they
+announced a reduction of ten per cent in the wages of their employees.
+
+This was resisted. Trouble first began on the Baltimore and Ohio
+Railroad, where the men not only struck against the reduction, but
+prevented other men from taking their places, and stopped by force the
+running of trains. The militia of West Virginia was inadequate to cope
+with the situation, and the governor of that state called on the
+President for troops, which were sent with a beneficial effect. But the
+trouble spread to Maryland, and a conflict in Baltimore between the
+militia and rioters in sympathy with the strikers resulted in a number
+of killed and wounded. The next day, Saturday, July 21, a riot in
+Pittsburg caused the most profound sensation in the country since the
+draft riots of the Civil War. The men on the Pennsylvania and the
+Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroads, had struck, and all freight
+traffic was arrested. On this day six hundred and fifty men of the first
+division of the Pennsylvania national guard at Philadelphia arrived in
+Pittsburg, and, in the attempt to clear the Twenty-eighth Street
+crossing, they replied to the missiles thrown at them by the mob with
+volleys of musketry, killing instantly sixteen of the rioters and
+wounding many.
+
+Here was cause for exasperation, and a furious mob, composed of
+strikers, idle factory hands, and miners, tramps, communists, and
+outcasts, began its work of vengeance and plunder. Possessed of
+firearms, through breaking into a number of gun shops, they attacked the
+Philadelphia soldiers, who had withdrawn to the railroad roundhouse, and
+a fierce battle ensued. Unable to dislodge the soldiers by assault, the
+rioters attempted to roast them out by setting fire to cars of coke
+saturated with petroleum and pushing these down the track against the
+roundhouse. This eventually forced the soldiers to leave the building,
+but, though pursued by the rioters, they made a good retreat across the
+Allegheny River. The mob, completely beyond control, began the
+destruction of railroad property. The torch was applied to two
+roundhouses, to railroad sheds, shops and offices, cars and locomotives.
+Barrels of spirits, taken from the freight cars, and opened and drunk,
+made demons of the men, and the work of plunder and destruction of goods
+in transit went on with renewed fury.
+
+That Saturday night Pittsburg witnessed a reign of terror. On Sunday the
+rioting and pillage were continued, and in the afternoon the Union Depot
+and Railroad Hotel and an elevator near by were burned. Then as the
+rioters were satiated and too drunk to be longer dangerous, the riot
+died out: it was not checked. On Monday, through the action of the
+authorities, armed companies of law-abiding citizens, and some faithful
+companies of the militia, order was restored. But meanwhile the strike
+had spread to a large number of other railroads between the seaboard and
+Chicago and St. Louis. Freight traffic was entirely suspended, and
+passenger trains were run only on sufferance of the strikers. Business
+was paralyzed, and the condition of disorganization and unrest continued
+throughout the month of July. The governors of West Virginia, Maryland,
+Pennsylvania, and Illinois called upon the President for United States
+troops, which were promptly sent, and in Indiana and Missouri they were
+employed on the demand of the United States marshals. Where the regular
+soldiers appeared order was at once restored without bloodshed, and it
+was said that the rioters feared one Federal bayonet more than a whole
+company of militia. The gravity of the situation is attested by three
+proclamations of warning from President Hayes.
+
+Strikes had been common in our country, and, while serious enough in
+certain localities, had aroused no general concern, but the action of
+the mob in Baltimore, Pittsburg, and Chicago seemed like an attack on
+society itself, and it came like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky,
+startling Americans, who had hugged the delusion that such social
+uprisings belonged to Europe, and had no reason of being in a great,
+free republic where all men had an equal chance. The railroad managers
+had no idea that they were letting loose a slumbering giant when their
+edict of a ten per cent reduction went forth. It was due to the prompt
+and efficient action of the President that order was ultimately
+restored. In the profound and earnest thinking and discussion that went
+on during the rest of the year, whenever thoughtful men gathered
+together, many a grateful word was said of the quiet, unassuming man in
+the White House who saw clearly his duty and never faltered in pursuing
+it. It was seen that the Federal government, with a resolute President
+at its head, was a tower of strength in the event of a social uprising.
+
+In the reform of the civil service Hayes proceeded from words to action.
+He reappointed Thomas L. James as postmaster of New York City, who had
+conducted his office on a thorough business basis, and gave him
+sympathetic support. The New York Custom-house had long been a political
+machine in which the interests of politicians had been more considered
+than those of the public it was supposed to serve. The President began
+an investigation of it through an impartial commission, and he and
+Sherman came to the conclusion that the renovation desired, in line with
+his letter to the Secretary of the Treasury and his order to the
+Federal officers, could not be effected so long as the present
+collector, Chester A. Arthur, and the naval officer, A. B. Cornell,
+remained in office. Courteous intimations were sent to them that their
+resignations were desired on the ground that new officers could better
+carry out the reform which the President had at heart. Arthur and
+Cornell, under the influence of Senator Conkling, refused to resign, and
+a plain issue was made between the President and the New York senator.
+At the special session of Congress, in October, 1877, he sent to the
+Senate nominations of new men for these places, but the power of
+Conkling, working through the "courtesy of the Senate," was sufficient
+to procure their rejection; and this was also the result when the same
+nominations were made in December.
+
+In July, 1878, after the adjournment of Congress, Hayes removed Arthur
+and Cornell, and appointed Merritt and Burt in their places. During the
+following December these appointments came before the Senate for
+confirmation. Sherman decided to resign if they were rejected, and he
+made a strong personal appeal to Senators Allison, Windom, and Morrill
+that they should not permit "the insane hate of Conkling" to override
+the good of the service and the party. A seven hours' struggle ensued in
+the Senate, but Merritt and Burt were confirmed by a decisive majority.
+After the confirmation, Hayes wrote to Merritt: "My desire is that the
+office be conducted on strictly business principles and according to the
+rules for the civil service which were recommended by the Civil Service
+Commission in the administration of General Grant."
+
+In three of his annual messages, Hayes presented strong arguments for a
+reform in the civil service, and he begged Congress, without avail, to
+make appropriations to sustain the Civil Service Commission. He
+sympathized with and supported Schurz in his introduction into the
+Interior Department of competitive examinations for appointments and
+promotions, and he himself extended that system to the custom-houses and
+post-offices of the larger cities.
+
+All that was accomplished in this direction was due to his efforts and
+those of his Cabinet. He received neither sympathy nor help from
+Congress; indeed, he met with great opposition from his own party. A
+picture not without humor is Hayes reading, as his justification, to the
+Republican remonstrants against his policy of appointments the strong
+declaration for a civil service based on merit in the Republican
+platform, on which he had stood as candidate for President. Though his
+preaching did not secure the needed legislation from Congress, it
+produced a marked effect on public sentiment.
+
+The organization of civil service reform associations began under Hayes.
+The New York association was begun in 1877, reorganized three years
+later, and soon had a large national membership, which induced the
+formation of other state associations; and although the national civil
+service reform league was not formed until after his term of office
+expired, the origin of the society may be safely referred to his
+influence. In the melioration of the public service which has been so
+conspicuously in operation since 1877, Hayes must be rated the pioneer
+President. Some of Grant's efforts in this direction were well meant,
+but he had no fundamental appreciation of the importance of the question
+or enthusiasm for the work, and, in a general way, it may be said that
+he left the civil service in a demoralized condition. How pregnant was
+Hayes's remark in his last annual message, and what a text it has been
+for many homilies! "My views," he wrote, "concerning the dangers of
+patronage or appointments for personal or partisan considerations have
+been strengthened by my observation and experience in the executive
+office, and I believe these dangers threaten the stability of the
+government."
+
+The brightest page in the history of the Republican party since the
+Civil War tells of its work in the cause of sound finance, and no
+administration is more noteworthy than that of Hayes. Here again the
+work was done by the President and his Cabinet in the face of a
+determined opposition in Congress. During the first two years of his
+administration, the Democrats had a majority in the House, and during
+the last two a majority in both the House and the Senate. The Republican
+party was sounder than the Democratic on the resumption of specie
+payments and in the advocacy of a correct money standard, but Hayes had
+by no means all of his own party at his back. Enough Republicans,
+however, were of his way of thinking to prevent an irremediable
+inflation of either greenbacks or silver.
+
+The credit for what was accomplished in finance belongs in the main to
+John Sherman, a great financier and consummate statesman; but he had the
+constant sympathy and support of the President. It was their custom to
+take long drives together every Sunday afternoon and discuss
+systematically and thoroughly the affairs of the Treasury and the
+official functions of the President. No President ever had a better
+counselor than Sherman, no Secretary of the Treasury more sympathetic
+and earnest support than was given by Hayes. Sherman refunded 845
+millions of the public debt at a lower rate of interest, showing in his
+negotiations with bankers a remarkable combination of business and
+political ability. Cool, watchful, and confident, he grasped the point
+of view of New York and London financial syndicates, and to that
+interested and somewhat narrow vision he joined the intelligence and
+foresight of a statesman. Sherman brought about the resumption of
+specie payments on the 1st of January, 1879, the date fixed in the bill
+of which he was the chief author and which, four years before, he had
+carried through the Senate. It was once the fashion of his opponents to
+discredit his work, and, emphasizing the large crop of 1878 and the
+European demand for our breadstuffs, to declare that resumption was
+brought about by Providence and not by John Sherman. No historian of
+American finance can fail to see how important is the part often played
+by bountiful nature, but it is to the lasting merit of Sherman and Hayes
+that, in the dark years of 1877 and 1878, with cool heads and unshaken
+faith, they kept the country in the path of financial safety and honor
+despite bitter opposition and clamorous abuse.
+
+These two years formed a part of my own business career, and I can add
+my vivid recollection to my present study of the period. As values
+steadily declined and losses rather than profits in business became the
+rule, the depression and even despair of business men and manufacturers
+can hardly be exaggerated. The daily list of failures and bankruptcies
+was appalling. How often one heard that iron and coal and land were
+worth too little and money too much, that only the bondholder could be
+happy, for his interest was sure and the purchasing power of his money
+great! In August, 1878, when John Sherman went to Toledo to speak to a
+gathering three thousand strong, he was greeted with such cries as, "You
+are responsible for all the failures in the country"; "You work to the
+interest of the capitalist"; "Capitalists own you, John Sherman, and you
+rob the poor widows and orphans to make them rich."
+
+By many the resumption of specie payments was deemed impossible. The
+most charitable of Sherman's opponents looked upon him as an honest but
+visionary enthusiast who would fail in his policy and be "the deadest
+man politically" in the country. Others deemed resumption possible only
+by driving to the wall a majority of active business men. It was this
+sentiment which gave strength to the majority in the House of
+Representatives, which was opposed to any contraction of the greenback
+currency and in favor of the free coinage of silver, and of making it
+likewise a full legal tender. Most of these members of Congress were
+sincere, and thought that they were asking no more than justice for the
+trader, the manufacturer, and the laborer. The "Ohio idea" was
+originally associated with an inflation of the paper currency, but by
+extension it came to mean an abundance of cheap money, whether paper or
+silver. Proposed legislation, with this as its aim, was very popular in
+Ohio, but, despite the intense feeling against the President's and
+Secretary's policy in their own state and generally throughout the West,
+Hayes and Sherman maintained it consistently, and finally brought about
+the resumption of specie payments.
+
+In their way of meeting the insistent demand for the remonetization of
+silver Hayes and Sherman differed. In November, 1877, the House of
+Representatives, under a suspension of the rules, passed by a vote of
+163 to 34 a bill for the free coinage of the 412½ grain silver dollar,
+making that dollar likewise a legal tender for all debts and dues. The
+Senate was still Republican, but the Republican senators were by no
+means unanimous for the gold standard. Sherman became convinced that,
+although the free-silver bill could not pass the Senate, something must
+nevertheless be done for silver, and, in coöperation with Senator
+Allison, he was instrumental in the adoption of the compromise which
+finally became law. This remonetized silver, providing for the purchase
+of not less than two million dollars' worth of silver bullion per month,
+nor more than four millions, and for its coinage into 412½ grain silver
+dollars. Hayes vetoed this bill, sending a sound and manly message to
+the House of Representatives; but Congress passed it over his veto by a
+decided majority.
+
+The regard for John Sherman's ability in Ohio was unbounded, and it was
+generally supposed that in all financial affairs, as well as in many
+others, he dominated Hayes. I shared that opinion until I learned
+indirectly from John Hay, who was first assistant Secretary of State and
+intimate in inner administration circles, that this was not true; that
+Hayes had decided opinions of his own and did not hesitate to differ
+with his Secretary of the Treasury. Nevertheless, not until John
+Sherman's "Recollections" were published was it generally known, I
+believe, that Sherman had a share in the Allison compromise, and did not
+approve of the President's veto of the bill remonetizing silver.
+
+The Federal control of congressional and presidential elections, being a
+part of the Reconstruction legislation, was obnoxious to the Democrats,
+and they attempted to abrogate it by "riders" attached to several
+appropriation bills, especially that providing for the army. While the
+Senate remained Republican, there was chance for an accommodation
+between the President and the Senate on one side and the House on the
+other. Two useful compromises were made, the Democrats yielding in one
+case, the Republicans in the other. But in 1879, when both the House and
+the Senate were Democratic, a sharp contest began between Congress and
+the executive, the history of which is written in seven veto messages.
+For lack of appropriations to carry on the government, the President
+called an extra session of Congress in the first year of his
+administration and another in 1879, which was a remarkable record of
+extra sessions in a time of peace. The Democratic House passed a
+resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate Hayes's
+title and aroused some alarm lest an effort might be made "to oust
+President Hayes and inaugurate Tilden." Although this alarm was stilled
+less than a month later by a decisive vote of the House, the action and
+investigation were somewhat disquieting.
+
+Thus Hayes encountered sharp opposition from the Democrats, who
+frequently pointed their arguments by declaring that he held his place
+by means of fraud. He received sympathy from hardly any of the leaders
+of his own party in Congress, and met with open condemnation from the
+Stalwarts; yet he pursued his course with steadiness and equanimity, and
+was happy in his office. His serene amiability and hopefulness,
+especially in regard to affairs in the Southern states, were a source of
+irritation to the Stalwarts; but it was the serenity of a man who felt
+himself fully equal to his responsibilities.
+
+In his inaugural address, Hayes contributed an addition to our political
+idiom, "He serves his party best who serves the country best." His
+administration was a striking illustration of this maxim. When he became
+President, the Republican party was in a demoralized condition, but,
+despite the factional criticism to which he was subject, he gained in
+the first few months of his Presidency the approval of men of
+intelligence and independent thought, and, as success attended his
+different policies, he received the support of the masses. The signal
+Republican triumph in the presidential election of 1880 was due to the
+improvement in business conditions and to the clean and efficient
+administration of Hayes.
+
+In recalling his predecessor in office, we think more gladly of the
+Grant of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Appomattox than of Grant the
+President, for during his two administrations corruption was rife and
+bad government to the fore. Financial scandals were so frequent that
+despairing patriots cried out, "Is there no longer honesty in public
+life?" Our country then reached the high-water mark of corruption in
+national affairs. A striking improvement began under Hayes, who infused
+into the public service his own high ideals of honesty and efficiency.
+Hayes was much assisted in his social duties by his wife, a woman of
+character and intelligence, who carried herself with grace and dignity.
+One sometimes heard the remark that as Hayes was ruled in political
+matters by John Sherman, so in social affairs he was ruled by his wife.
+The sole foundation for this lay in his deference to her total
+abstinence principles, which she held so strongly as to exclude wine
+from the White House table except, I believe, at one official dinner,
+that to the Russian Grand Dukes.
+
+Hayes's able Cabinet was likewise a harmonious one. Its members were
+accustomed to dine together at regular intervals (fortnightly, I think),
+when affairs of state and other subjects were discussed, and the
+geniality of these occasions was enhanced by a temperate circulation of
+the wine bottle. There must have been very good talk at these social
+meetings. Evarts and Schurz were citizens of the world. Evarts was a man
+of keen intelligence and wide information, and possessed a genial as
+well as a caustic wit. Schurz could discuss present politics and past
+history. He was well versed in European history of the eighteenth
+century and the Napoleonic wars, and could talk about the power of
+Voltaire in literature and the influence of Lessing on Goethe. From
+appreciative discourse on the Wagner opera and the French drama, he
+could, if the conversation turned to the Civil War, give a lively
+account of the battles of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, in both of
+which he had borne an honorable part. Sherman was not a cosmopolitan
+like his two colleagues, but he loved dining out. His manners were those
+of the old-school gentleman; he could listen with genial appreciation,
+and he could talk of events in American history of which he had been a
+contemporaneous observer; as, for example, of the impressive oratory of
+Daniel Webster at a dinner in Plymouth; or the difference between the
+national conventions of his early political life and the huge ones of
+the present, illustrating his comparison with an account of the Whig
+convention of 1852, to which he went as a delegate.
+
+Differing in many respects, Hayes and Grover Cleveland were alike in the
+possession of executive ability and the lack of oratorical. We all know
+that it is a purely academic question which is the better form of
+government, the English or our own, as both have grown up to adapt
+themselves to peculiar conditions. But when I hear an enthusiast for
+Cabinet government and ministerial responsibility, I like to point out
+that men like Hayes and Cleveland, who made excellent Presidents, could
+never have been prime ministers. One cannot conceive of either in an
+office equivalent to that of First Lord of the Treasury, being heckled
+by members on the front opposition bench and holding his own or getting
+the better of his opponents.
+
+I have brought Hayes and Cleveland into juxtaposition, as each had a
+high personal regard for the other. Hayes died on January 17, 1893.
+Cleveland, the President-elect, was to be inaugurated on the following
+fourth of March. Despite remonstrance and criticism from bitter
+partisans of his own party, who deprecated any honor paid to one whom
+all good Democrats deemed a fraudulent President, Cleveland traveled
+from New York to Fremont, Ohio, to attend the funeral. He could only
+think of Hayes as an ex-President and a man whom he highly esteemed.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
+
+Lecture read at Harvard University, April 13, 1908; printed in the
+_Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
+
+
+Our two great journalists of the nineteenth century were Greeley and
+Godkin. Though differing in very many respects, they were alike in
+possessing a definite moral purpose. The most glorious and influential
+portion of Greeley's career lay between the passage of the
+Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and the election of Lincoln in 1860, when
+the press played an important part in the upbuilding of a political
+party which formulated in a practical manner the antislavery sentiment
+of the country. Foremost among newspapers was the _New York Tribune_;
+foremost among editors was Horace Greeley. Of Greeley in his best days
+Godkin wrote: "He has an enthusiasm which never flags, and a faith in
+principles which nothing can shake, and an English style which, for
+vigor, terseness, clearness, and simplicity, has never been surpassed,
+except perhaps by Cobbett."[171]
+
+Greeley and Godkin were alike in furnishing their readers with telling
+arguments. In northern New York and the Western Reserve of Ohio the
+_Weekly Tribune_ was a political Bible. "Why do you look so gloomy?"
+said a traveler, riding along the highway in the Western Reserve during
+the old antislavery days, to a farmer who was sitting moodily on a
+fence. "Because," replied the farmer, "my Democratic friend next door
+got the best of me in an argument last night. But when I get my _Weekly
+Tribune_ to-morrow I'll knock the foundations all out from under
+him."[172]
+
+Premising that Godkin is as closely identified with _The Nation_ and the
+_Evening Post_ as Greeley with the _Tribune_, I shall refer to a
+personal experience. Passing a part of the winter of 1886 in a hotel at
+Thomasville, Georgia, it chanced that among the hundred or more guests
+there were eight or ten of us who regularly received _The Nation_ by
+post. Ordinarily it arrived on the Friday noon train from Savannah, and
+when we came from our mid-day dinner into the hotel office, there, in
+our respective boxes, easily seen, and from their peculiar form
+recognized by every one, were our copies of _The Nation_. Occasionally
+the papers missed connection at Savannah, and our _Nations_ did not
+arrive until after supper. It used to be said by certain scoffers that
+if a discussion of political questions came up in the afternoon of one
+of those days of disappointment, we readers were mum; but in the late
+evening, after having digested our political pabulum, we were ready to
+join issue with any antagonist. Indeed, each of us might have used the
+words of James Russell Lowell, written while he was traveling on the
+Continent and visiting many places where _The Nation_ could not be
+bought: "All the time I was without it, my mind was chaos and I didn't
+feel that I had a safe opinion to swear by."[173]
+
+While the farmer of the Western Reserve and Lowell are extreme types of
+clientèle, each represents fairly well the peculiar following of Greeley
+and of Godkin, which differed as much as did the personal traits of the
+two journalists. Godkin speaks of Greeley's "odd attire, shambling gait,
+simple, good-natured and hopelessly peaceable face, and long yellow
+locks."[174] His "old white hat and white coat," which in New York were
+regarded as an affectation, counted with his following west of the
+Hudson River as a winning eccentricity. When he came out upon the
+lecture platform with crumpled shirt, cravat awry, and wrinkled coat
+looking as if he had traveled for a number of nights and days, such
+disorder appeared to many of his Western audiences as nothing worse than
+the mark of a very busy man, who had paid them the compliment of
+leaving his editorial rooms to speak to them in person, and who had
+their full sympathy as he thus opened his discourse, "You mustn't, my
+friends, expect fine words from a rough busy man like me."[175]
+
+The people who read the _Tribune_ did not expect fine words; they were
+used to the coarse, abusive language in which Greeley repelled attacks,
+and to his giving the lie with heartiness and vehemence. They enjoyed
+reading that "another lie was nailed to the counter," and that an
+antagonist "was a liar, knowing himself to be a liar, and lying with
+naked intent to deceive."[176]
+
+On the contrary, the dress, the face, and the personal bearing of Godkin
+proclaimed at once the gentleman and cultivated man of the world. You
+felt that he was a man whom you would like to meet at dinner, accompany
+on a long walk, or cross the Atlantic with, were you an acquaintance or
+friend.
+
+An incident related by Godkin himself shows that at least one
+distinguished gentleman did not enjoy sitting at meat with Greeley.
+During the spring of 1864 Godkin met Greeley at breakfast at the house
+of Mr. John A. C. Gray. William Cullen Bryant, at that time editor of
+the New York _Evening Post_, was one of the guests, and, when Greeley
+entered the room, was standing near the fireplace conversing with his
+host. On observing that Bryant did not speak to Greeley, Gray asked him
+in a whisper, "Don't you know Mr. Greeley?" In a loud whisper Bryant
+replied, "No, I don't; he's a blackguard--he's a blackguard."[177]
+
+In the numbers of people whom he influenced, Greeley had the advantage
+over Godkin. In February, 1855, the circulation of the _Tribune_ was
+172,000, and its own estimate of its readers half a million, which was
+certainly not excessive. It is not a consideration beyond bounds to
+infer that the readers of the _Tribune_ in 1860 furnished a goodly part
+of the 1,866,000 votes which were received by Lincoln.
+
+At different times, while Godkin was editor, _The Nation_ stated its
+exact circulation, which, as I remember it, was about 10,000, and it
+probably had 50,000 readers. As many of its readers were in the class of
+Lowell, its indirect influence was immense. Emerson said that _The
+Nation_ had "breadth, variety, self-sustainment, and an admirable style
+of thought and expression."--"I owe much to _The Nation_," wrote Francis
+Parkman. "I regard it as the most valuable of American journals, and
+feel that the best interests of the country are doubly involved in its
+success."--"What an influence you have!" said George William Curtis to
+Godkin. "What a sanitary element in our affairs _The Nation_ is!"--"To
+my generation," wrote William James, "Godkin's was certainly the
+towering influence in all thought concerning public affairs, and
+indirectly his influence has certainly been more pervasive than that of
+any other writer of the generation, for he influenced other writers who
+never quoted him, and determined the whole current of
+discussion."--"When the work of this century is summed up," wrote
+Charles Eliot Norton to Godkin, "what you have done for the good old
+cause of civilization, the cause which is always defeated, but always
+after defeat taking more advanced position than before--what you have
+done for this cause will count for much."--"I am conscious," wrote
+President Eliot to Godkin, "that _The Nation_ has had a decided effect
+on my opinions and my action for nearly forty years; and I believe it
+has had like effect on thousands of educated Americans."[178]
+
+A string of quotations, as is well known, becomes wearisome; but the
+importance of the point that I am trying to make will probably justify
+one more. "I find myself so thoroughly agreeing with _The Nation_
+always," wrote Lowell, "that I am half persuaded that I edit it
+myself!"[179] Truly Lowell had a good company: Emerson, Parkman, Curtis,
+Norton, James, Eliot,--all teachers in various ways. Through their
+lectures, books, and speeches, they influenced college students at an
+impressible age; they appealed to young and to middle-aged men; and they
+furnished comfort and entertainment for the old. It would have been
+difficult to find anywhere in the country an educated man whose thought
+was not affected by some one of these seven; and their influence on
+editorial writers for newspapers was remarkable. These seven were all
+taught by Godkin.
+
+"Every Friday morning when _The Nation_ comes," wrote Lowell to Godkin,
+"I fill my pipe, and read it from beginning to end. Do you do it all
+yourself? Or are there really so many clever men in the country?"[180]
+Lowell's experience, with or without tobacco, was undoubtedly that of
+hundreds, perhaps of thousands, of educated men, and the query he raised
+was not an uncommon one. At one time, Godkin, I believe, wrote most of
+"The Week," which was made up of brief and pungent comments on events,
+as well as the principal editorial articles. The power of iteration,
+which the journalist possesses, is great, and, when that power is
+wielded by a man of keen intelligence and wide information, possessing a
+knowledge of the world, a sense of humor, and an effective literary
+style, it becomes tremendous. The only escape from Godkin's iteration
+was one frequently tried, and that was, to stop _The Nation_.
+
+Although Godkin published three volumes of Essays, the honors he
+received during his lifetime were due to his work as editor of _The
+Nation_ and the _Evening Post_; and this is his chief title of fame. The
+education, early experience, and aspiration of such a journalist are
+naturally matter of interest. Born in 1831, in the County of Wicklow in
+the southeastern part of Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he
+was able to say when referring to Goldwin Smith, "I am an Irishman, but
+I am as English in blood as he is."[181] Receiving his higher education
+at Queen's College, Belfast, he took a lively interest in present
+politics, his college friends being Liberals. John Stuart Mill was their
+prophet, Grote and Bentham their daily companions, and America was their
+promised land. "To the scoffs of the Tories that our schemes were
+impracticable," he has written of these days, "our answer was that in
+America, barring slavery, they were actually at work. There, the chief
+of the state and the legislators were freely elected by the people.
+There, the offices were open to everybody who had the capacity to fill
+them. There was no army or navy, two great curses of humanity in all
+ages. There was to be no war except war in self-defense.... In fact, we
+did not doubt that in America at last the triumph of humanity over its
+own weaknesses and superstitions was being achieved, and the dream of
+Christendom was at last being realized."[182]
+
+As a correspondent of the London _Daily News_ he went to the Crimea. The
+scenes at Malakoff gave him a disgust for war which thenceforth he never
+failed to express upon every opportunity. When a man of sixty-eight,
+reckoning its cost in blood and treasure, he deemed the Crimean War
+entirely unnecessary and very deplorable.[183] Godkin arrived in America
+in November, 1856, and soon afterwards, with Olmsted's "Journey in the
+Seaboard Slave States," the "Back Country," and "Texas," as guidebooks,
+took a horseback journey through the South. Following closely Olmsted's
+trail, and speaking therefore with knowledge, he has paid him one of the
+highest compliments one traveler ever paid another. "Olmsted's work," he
+wrote, "in vividness of description and in photographic minuteness far
+surpasses Arthur Young's."[184] During this journey he wrote letters to
+the London _Daily News_, and these were continued after his return to
+New York City. For the last three years of our Civil War, he was its
+regular correspondent, and, as no one denies that he was a powerful
+advocate when his heart was enlisted, he rendered efficient service to
+the cause of the North. The _News_ was strongly pro-Northern, and Godkin
+furnished the facts which rendered its leaders sound and instructive as
+well as sympathetic. All this while he was seeing socially the best
+people in New York City, and making useful and desirable acquaintances
+in Boston and Cambridge.
+
+The interesting story of the foundation of _The Nation_ has been told a
+number of times, and it will suffice for our purpose to say that there
+were forty stockholders who contributed a capital of one hundred
+thousand dollars, one half of which was raised in Boston, and one
+quarter each in Philadelphia and New York. Godkin was the editor, and
+next to him the chief promoters were James M. McKim of Philadelphia and
+Charles Eliot Norton. The first number of this "weekly journal of
+politics, literature, science, and art" appeared on July 6, 1865.
+Financial embarrassment and disagreements among the stockholders marked
+the first year of its existence, at the end of which Godkin, McKim, and
+Frederick Law Olmsted took over the property, and continued the
+publication under the proprietorship of E. L. Godkin & Co. "_The Nation_
+owed its continued existence to Charles Eliot Norton," wrote Godkin in
+1899. "It was his calm and confidence amid the shrieks of combatants ...
+which enabled me to do my work even with decency."[185]
+
+Sixteen years after _The Nation_ was started, in 1881, Godkin sold it
+out to the _Evening Post_, becoming associate editor of that journal,
+with Carl Schurz as his chief. _The Nation_ was thereafter published as
+the weekly edition of the _Evening Post_. In 1883 Schurz retired and
+Godkin was made editor-in-chief, having the aid and support of one of
+the owners, Horace White. On January 1, 1900, on account of ill health,
+he withdrew from the editorship of the _Evening Post_,[186] thus
+retiring from active journalism.
+
+For thirty-five years he had devoted himself to his work with
+extraordinary ability and singleness of purpose. Marked appreciation
+came to him: invitations to deliver courses of lectures from both
+Harvard and Yale, the degree of A.M. from Harvard, and the degree of
+D.C.L. from Oxford. What might have been a turning point in his career
+was the offer in 1870 of the professorship of history at Harvard. He was
+strongly tempted to accept it, but, before coming to a decision, he took
+counsel of a number of friends; and few men, I think, have ever received
+such wise and disinterested advice as did Godkin when he was thus
+hesitating in what way he should apply his teaching. The burden of the
+advice was not to take the professorship, if he had to give up _The
+Nation_.
+
+Frederick Law Olmsted wrote to him: "If you can't write fully half of
+'The Week' and half the leaders, and control the drift and tone of the
+whole while living at Cambridge, give up the professorship, for _The
+Nation_ is worth many professorships. It is a question of loyalty over a
+question of comfort." Lowell wrote to him in the same strain: "_Stay_ if
+the two things are incompatible. We may find another professor by and by
+... but we can't find another editor for _The Nation_." From Germany,
+John Bigelow sent a characteristic message: "Tell the University to
+require each student to take a copy of _The Nation_. Do not profess
+history for them in any other way. I dare say your lectures would be
+good, but why limit your pupils to hundreds which are now counted by
+thousands?"[187]
+
+As is well known, Godkin relinquished the idea of the college connection
+and stuck to his job, although the quiet and serenity of a professor's
+life in Cambridge contrasted with his own turbulent days appealed to him
+powerfully. "Ten years hence," he wrote to Norton, "if things go on as
+they are now I shall be the most odious man in America. Not that I shall
+not have plenty of friends, but my enemies will be far more numerous and
+active." Six years after he had founded _The Nation_, and one year after
+he had declined the Harvard professorship, when he was yet but forty
+years old, he gave this humorously exaggerated account of his physical
+failings due to his nervous strain: "I began _The Nation_ young,
+handsome, and fascinating, and am now withered and somewhat broken,
+rheumatism gaining on me rapidly, my complexion ruined, as also my
+figure, for I am growing stout."[188]
+
+But his choice between the Harvard professorship and _The Nation_ was a
+wise one. He was a born writer of paragraphs and editorials. The files
+of _The Nation_ are his monument. A crown of his laborious days is the
+tribute of James Bryce: "_The Nation_ was the best weekly not only in
+America but in the world."[189]
+
+Thirty-five years of journalism, in which Godkin was accustomed to give
+hard blows, did not, as he himself foreshadowed, call forth a unanimous
+chorus of praise; and the objections of intelligent and high-minded men
+are well worth taking into account. The most common one is that his
+criticism was always destructive; that he had an eye for the weak side
+of causes and men that he did not favor, and these he set forth with
+unremitting vigor without regard for palliating circumstances; that he
+erected a high and impossible ideal and judged all men by it; hence, if
+a public man was right eight times out of ten, he would seize upon the
+two failures and so parade them with his withering sarcasm that the
+reader could get no other idea than that the man was either weak or
+wicked. An editor of very positive opinions, he was apt to convey the
+idea that if any one differed from him on a vital question, like the
+tariff or finance or civil service reform, he was necessarily a bad man.
+He made no allowances for the weaknesses of human nature, and had no
+idea that he himself ever could be mistaken. Though a powerful critic,
+he did not realize the highest criticism, which discerns and brings out
+the good as well as the evil. He won his reputation by dealing out
+censure, which has a rare attraction for a certain class of minds, as
+Tacitus observed in his "History." "People," he wrote, "lend a ready ear
+to detraction and spite," for "malignity wears the imposing appearance
+of independence."[190]
+
+The influence of _The Nation_, therefore,--so these objectors to Godkin
+aver,--was especially unfortunate on the intelligent youth of the
+country. It was in 1870 that John Bigelow, whom I have just quoted,
+advised Harvard University to include _The Nation_ among its
+requirements; and it is true that at that time, and for a good while
+afterwards, _The Nation_ was favorite reading for serious Harvard
+students. The same practice undoubtedly prevailed at most other
+colleges. Now I have been told that the effect of reading _The Nation_
+was to prevent these young men from understanding their own country;
+that, as Godkin himself did not comprehend America, he was an unsound
+teacher and made his youthful readers see her through a false medium.
+And I am further informed that in mature life it cost an effort, a
+mental wrench, so to speak, to get rid of this influence and see things
+as they really were, which was necessary for usefulness in lives cast in
+America. The United States was our country; she was entitled to our love
+and service; and yet such a frame of mind was impossible, so this
+objection runs, if we read and believed the writing of _The Nation_. A
+man of character and ability, who had filled a number of public offices
+with credit, told me that the influence of _The Nation_ had been potent
+in keeping college graduates out of public life; that things in the
+United States were painted so black both relatively and absolutely that
+the young men naturally reasoned, "Why shall we concern ourselves about
+a country which is surely going to destruction?" Far better, they may
+have said, to pattern after Plato's philosopher who kept out of
+politics, being "like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the
+storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along."[191]
+
+Such considerations undoubtedly lost _The Nation_ valuable subscribers.
+I have been struck with three circumstances in juxtaposition. At the
+time of Judge Hoar's forced resignation from Grant's Cabinet in 1870,
+_The Nation_ said, "In peace as in war 'that is best blood which hath
+most iron in't;' and much is to be excused to the man [that is, Judge
+Hoar] who has for the first time in many years of Washington history
+given a back-handed blow to many an impudent and arrogant dispenser of
+patronage. He may well be proud of most of the enmity that he won while
+in office, and may go back contented to Massachusetts to be her most
+honored citizen."[192] Two months later Lowell wrote to Godkin, "The
+bound volumes of _The Nation_ standing on Judge Hoar's library table, as
+I saw them the other day, were a sign of the estimation in which it is
+held by solid people and it is they who in the long run decide the
+fortunes of such a journal."[193] But _The Nation_ lost Judge Hoar's
+support. When I called upon him in 1893 he was no longer taking or
+reading it.
+
+It is the sum of individual experiences that makes up the influence of a
+journal like _The Nation_, and one may therefore be pardoned the egotism
+necessarily arising from a relation of one's own contact with it. In
+1866, while a student at the University of Chicago, I remember well
+that, in a desultory talk in the English Literature class, Professor
+William Matthews spoke of _The Nation_ and advised the students to read
+it each week as a political education of high value. This was the first
+knowledge I had of it, but I was at that time, along with many other
+young men, devoted to the _Round Table_, an "Independent weekly review
+of Politics, Finance, Literature, Society, and Art," which flourished
+between the years 1864 and 1868. We asked the professor, "Do you
+consider _The Nation_ superior to the _Round Table_?"--"Decidedly," was
+his reply. "The editors of the _Round Table_ seem to write for the sake
+of writing, while the men who are expressing themselves in _The Nation_
+do so because their hearts and minds are full of their matter." This was
+a just estimate of the difference between the two journals. The _Round
+Table_, modeled after the _Saturday Review_, was a feeble imitation of
+the London weekly, then in its palmy days, while _The Nation_, which was
+patterned after the _Spectator_, did not suffer by the side of its
+model. On this hint from Professor Matthews, I began taking and reading
+_The Nation_, and with the exception of one year in Europe during my
+student days, I have read it ever since.
+
+Before I touch on certain specifications I must premise that the
+influence of this journal on a Westerner, who read it in a receptive
+spirit, was probably more potent than on one living in the East. The
+arrogance of a higher civilization in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
+than elsewhere in the United States, the term "wild and woolly West,"
+applied to the region west of the Alleghany Mountains, is somewhat
+irritating to a Westerner. Yet it remains none the less true that, other
+things being equal, a man living in the environment of Boston or New
+York would have arrived more easily and more quickly at certain sound
+political views I shall proceed to specify than he would while living in
+Cleveland or Chicago. The gospel which Godkin preached was needed much
+more in the West than in the East; and his disciples in the western
+country had for him a high degree of reverence. In the biography of
+Godkin, allusion is made to the small pecuniary return for his work, but
+in thinking of him we never considered the money question. We supposed
+that he made a living; we knew from his articles that he was a
+gentleman, and saw much of good society, and there was not one of us who
+would not rather have been in his shoes than in those of the richest man
+in New York. We placed such trust in him--which his life shows to have
+been abundantly justified--that we should have lost all confidence in
+human nature had he ever been tempted by place or profit. And his
+influence was abiding. Presidents, statesmen, senators, congressmen rose
+and fell; political administrations changed; good, bad, and weak public
+men passed away; but Godkin preached to us every week a timely and
+cogent sermon.
+
+To return now to my personal experience. I owe wholly to _The Nation_ my
+conviction in favor of civil service reform; in fact, it was from these
+columns that I first came to understand the question. The arguments
+advanced were sane and strong, and especially intelligible to men in
+business, who, in the main, chose their employees on the ground of
+fitness, and who made it a rule to retain and advance competent and
+honest men in their employ. I think that on this subject the indirect
+influence of _The Nation_ was very great, in furnishing arguments to men
+like myself, who never lost an opportunity to restate them, and to
+editorial writers for the Western newspapers, who generally read _The
+Nation_ and who were apt to reproduce its line of reasoning. When I look
+back to 1869, the year in which I became a voter, and recall the
+strenuous opposition to civil service reform on the part of the
+politicians of both parties, and the indifference of the public, I
+confess that I am amazed at the progress which has been made. Such a
+reform is of course effected only by a number of contributing causes and
+some favoring circumstances, but I feel certain that it was accelerated
+by the constant and vigorous support of _The Nation_.
+
+I owe to _The Nation_ more than to any other agency my correct ideas on
+finance in two crises. The first was the "greenback craze" from 1869 to
+1875. It was easy to be a hard-money man in Boston or New York, where
+one might imbibe the correct doctrine as one everywhere takes in the
+fundamental principles of civilization and morality. But it was not so
+in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where the severe money stringency
+before and during the panic of 1873, and the depression after it, caused
+many good and representative men to join in the cry for a larger issue
+of greenbacks by the government. It required no moral courage for the
+average citizen to resist what in 1875 seemed to be the popular move,
+but it did require the correct knowledge and the forcible arguments put
+forward weekly by _The Nation_. I do not forget my indebtedness to John
+Sherman, Carl Schurz, and Senator Thurman, but Sherman and Thurman were
+not always consistent on this question, and Schurz's voice was only
+occasionally heard; but every seven days came _The Nation_ with its
+unremitting iteration, and it was an iteration varied enough to be
+always interesting and worthy of study. As one looks back over nearly
+forty years of politics one likes to recall the occasions when one has
+done the thing one's mature judgment fully approves; and I like to think
+that in 1875 I refused to vote for my party's candidate for governor,
+the Democratic William Allen, whose platform was "that the volume of
+currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade."
+
+A severer ordeal was the silver question of 1878, because the argument
+for silver was more weighty than that for irredeemable paper, and was
+believed to be sound by business men of both parties. I remember that
+many representative business men of Cleveland used to assemble around
+the large luncheon table of the Union Club and discuss the pending
+silver-coinage bill, which received the votes of both of the senators
+from Ohio and of all her representatives except Garfield. The gold men
+were in a minority also at the luncheon table, but, fortified by _The
+Nation_, we thought that we held our own in this daily discussion.
+
+In my conversion from a belief in a protective tariff to the advocacy
+of one for revenue only, I recognize an obligation to Godkin, but his
+was only one of many influences. I owe _The Nation_ much for its
+accurate knowledge of foreign affairs, especially of English politics,
+in which its readers were enlightened by one of the most capable of
+living men, Albert V. Dicey. I am indebted to it for sound ideas on
+municipal government, and for its advocacy of many minor measures, such
+for instance as the International Copyright Bill. I owe it something for
+its later attitude on Reconstruction, and its condemnation of the negro
+carpet-bag governments in the South. In a word, _The Nation_ was on the
+side of civilization and good political morals.
+
+Confessing thus my great political indebtedness to Godkin, it is with
+some reluctance that I present a certain phase of his thought which was
+regretted by many of his best friends, and which undoubtedly limited his
+influence in the later years of his life. A knowledge of this
+shortcoming is, however, essential to a thorough comprehension of the
+man. It is frequently said that Godkin rarely, if ever, made a
+retraction or a rectification of personal charges shown to be incorrect.
+A thorough search of _The Nation's_ columns would be necessary fully to
+substantiate this statement, but my own impression, covering as it does
+thirty-three years' reading of the paper under Godkin's control,
+inclines me to believe in its truth, as I do not remember an instance of
+the kind.
+
+A grave fault of omission occurs to me as showing a regrettable bias in
+a leader of intelligent opinion. On January 5, 1897, General Francis A.
+Walker died. He had served with credit as an officer during our Civil
+War, and in two thoughtful books had made a valuable contribution to its
+military history. He was superintendent of the United States Census of
+1870, and did work that statisticians and historians refer to with
+gratitude and praise. For sixteen years he served with honor the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its president. He was a
+celebrated political economist, his books being (I think) as well known
+in England as in this country. Yale, Amherst, Harvard, Columbia, St.
+Andrews, and Dublin conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. Withal he
+served his city with public spirit. Trinity Church, "crowded and silent"
+in celebrating its last service over the dead body of Walker, witnessed
+one of the three most impressive funerals which Boston has seen for at
+least sixteen years--a funeral conspicuous for the attendance of a large
+number of delegates from colleges and learned societies.
+
+Walker was distinctly of the intellectual élite of the country. But _The
+Nation_ made not the slightest reference to his death. In the issue of
+January 7, appearing two days later, I looked for an allusion in "The
+Week," and subsequently for one of those remarkable and discriminating
+eulogies, which in smaller type follow the editorials, and for which
+_The Nation_ is justly celebrated; but there was not one word. You might
+search the 1897 volume of _The Nation_ and, but for a brief reference in
+the April "Notes" to Walker's annual report posthumously published, you
+would not learn that a great intellectual leader had passed away. I
+wrote to a valued contributor of _The Nation_, a friend of Walker, of
+Godkin, and of Wendell P. Garrison (the literary editor), inquiring if
+he knew the reason for the omission, and in answer he could only tell me
+that his amazement had been as great as mine. He at first looked
+eagerly, and, when the last number came in which a eulogy could possibly
+appear, he turned over the pages of _The Nation_ with sorrowful regret,
+hardly believing his eyes that the article he sought was not there.
+
+Now I suspect that the reason of this extraordinary omission was due to
+the irreconcilable opinions of Walker and Godkin on a question of
+finance. It was a period when the contest between the advocates of a
+single gold standard and the bimetallists raged fiercely, and the
+contest had not been fully settled by the election of McKinley in 1896.
+Godkin was emphatically for gold, Walker equally emphatic for a double
+standard. And they clashed. It is a notable example of the peculiarity
+of Godkin, to allow at the portal of death the one point of political
+policy on which he and Walker disagreed to overweigh the nine points in
+which they were at one.
+
+Most readers of _The Nation_ noticed distinctly that, from 1895 on, its
+tone became more pessimistic and its criticism was marked by greater
+acerbity. Mr. Rollo Ogden in his biography shows that Godkin's feeling
+of disappointment over the progress of the democratic experiment in
+America, and his hopelessness of our future, began at an earlier date.
+
+During his first years in the United States, he had no desire to return
+to his mother country. When the financial fortune of _The Nation_ was
+doubtful, he wrote to Norton that he should not go back to England
+except as a "last extremity. It would be going back into an atmosphere
+that I detest, and a social system that I have hated since I was
+fourteen years old."[194] In 1889, after an absence of twenty-seven
+years, he went to England. The best intellectual society of London and
+Oxford opened its doors to him and he fell under its charm as would any
+American who was the recipient of marked attentions from people of such
+distinction. He began to draw contrasts which were not favorable to his
+adopted country. "I took a walk along the wonderful Thames embankment,"
+he wrote, "a splendid work, and I sighed to think how impossible it
+would be to get such a thing done in New York. The differences in
+government and political manners are in fact awful, and for me very
+depressing. Henry James [with whom he stopped in London] and I talk over
+them sometimes 'des larmes dans la voix.'" In 1894, however, Godkin
+wrote in the _Forum_: "There is probably no government in the world
+to-day as stable as that of the United States. The chief advantage of
+democratic government is, in a country like this, the enormous force it
+can command in an emergency."[195] But next year his pessimism is
+clearly apparent. On January 12, 1895, he wrote to Norton: "You see I am
+not sanguine about the future of democracy. I think we shall have a long
+period of decline like that which followed (?) the fall of the Roman
+Empire, and then a recrudescence under some other form of society."[196]
+
+A number of things had combined to affect him profoundly. An admirer of
+Grover Cleveland and three times a warm supporter of his candidacy for
+the Presidency, he saw with regret the loss of his hold on his party,
+which was drifting into the hands of the advocates of free silver. Then
+in December, 1895, Godkin lost faith in his idol. "I was thunderstruck
+by Cleveland's message" on the Venezuela question, he wrote to Norton.
+His submission to the Jingoes "is a terrible shock."[197] Later, in a
+calm review of passing events, he called the message a "sudden
+declaration of war without notice against Great Britain."[198] The
+danger of such a proceeding he had pointed out to Norton: Our "immense
+democracy, mostly ignorant ... is constantly on the brink of some
+frightful catastrophe like that which overtook France in 1870."[199] In
+1896 he was deeply distressed at the country having to choose for
+President between the arch-protectionist McKinley and the free-silver
+advocate Bryan, for he had spent a good part of his life combating a
+protective tariff and advocating sound money. Though the _Evening Post_
+contributed powerfully to the election of McKinley, from the fact that
+its catechism, teaching financial truths in a popular form, was
+distributed throughout the West in immense quantities by the chairman of
+the Republican National Committee, Godkin himself refused to vote for
+McKinley and put in his ballot for Palmer, the gold Democrat.[200]
+
+The Spanish-American war seems to have destroyed any lingering hope that
+he had left for the future of American democracy. He spoke of it as "a
+perfectly avoidable war forced on by a band of unscrupulous politicians"
+who had behind them "a roaring mob."[201] The taking of the Philippines
+and the subsequent war in these islands confirmed him in his despair. In
+a private letter written from Paris, he said, "American ideals were the
+intellectual food of my youth, and to see America converted into a
+senseless, Old-World conqueror, embitters my age."[202] To another he
+wrote that his former "high and fond ideals about America were now all
+shattered."[203] "Sometimes he seemed to feel," said his intimate
+friend, James Bryce, "as though he had labored in vain for forty
+years."[204]
+
+Such regrets expressed by an honest and sincere man with a high ideal
+must command our respectful attention. Though due in part to old age and
+enfeebled health, they are still more attributable to his
+disappointment that the country had not developed in the way that he
+had marked out for her. For with men of Godkin's positive convictions,
+there is only one way to salvation. Sometimes such men are true
+prophets; at other times, while they see clearly certain aspects of a
+case, their narrowness of vision prevents them from taking in the whole
+range of possibilities, especially when the enthusiasm of manhood is
+gone.
+
+Godkin took a broader view in 1868, which he forcibly expressed in a
+letter to the London _Daily News_. "There is no careful and intelligent
+observer," he wrote, "whether he be a friend to democracy or not, who
+can help admiring the unbroken power with which the popular common
+sense--that shrewdness, or intelligence, or instinct of
+self-preservation, I care not what you call it, which so often makes the
+American farmer a far better politician than nine tenths of the best
+read European political philosophers--works under all this tumult and
+confusion of tongues. The newspapers and politicians fret and fume and
+shout and denounce; but the great mass, the nineteen or twenty millions,
+work away in the fields and workshops, saying little, thinking much,
+hardy, earnest, self-reliant, very tolerant, very indulgent, very
+shrewd, but ready whenever the government needs it, with musket, or
+purse, or vote, as the case may be, laughing and cheering occasionally
+at public meetings, but when you meet them individually on the highroad
+or in their own houses, very cool, then, sensible men, filled with no
+delusions, carried away by no frenzies, believing firmly in the future
+greatness and glory of the republic, but holding to no other article of
+faith as essential to political salvation."
+
+Before continuing the quotation I wish to call attention to the fact
+that Godkin's illustration was more effective in 1868 than now: then
+there was a solemn and vital meaning to the prayers offered up for
+persons going to sea that they might be preserved from the dangers of
+the deep. "Every now and then," he went on to say, "as one watches the
+political storms in the United States, one is reminded of one's feelings
+as one lies in bed on a stormy night in an ocean steamer in a head wind.
+Each blow of the sea shakes the ship from stem to stern, and every now
+and then a tremendous one seems to paralyze her. The machinery seems to
+stop work; there is a dead pause, and you think for a moment the end has
+come; but the throbbing begins once more, and if you go up on deck and
+look down in the hold, you see the firemen and engineers at their posts,
+apparently unconscious of anything but their work, and as sure of
+getting into port as if there was not a ripple on the water."
+
+This letter of Godkin's was written on January 8, 1868, when Congress
+was engaged in the reconstruction of the South on the basis of negro
+suffrage, when the quarrel between Congress and President Johnson was
+acute and his impeachment not two months off. At about this time Godkin
+set down Evarts's opinion that "we are witnessing the decline of public
+morality which usually presages revolution," and reported that Howells
+was talking "despondently like everybody else about the condition of
+morals and manners."[205] Of like tenor was the opinion of an
+arch-conservative, George Ticknor, written in 1869, which bears a
+resemblance to the lamentation of Godkin's later years. "The civil war
+of '61," wrote Ticknor, "has made a great gulf between what happened
+before it in our century and what has happened since, or what is likely
+to happen hereafter. It does not seem to me as if I were living in the
+country in which I was born, or in which I received whatever I ever got
+of political education or principles. Webster seems to have been the
+last of the Romans."[206]
+
+In 1868 Godkin was an optimist, having a cogent answer to all gloomy
+predictions; from 1895 to 1902 he was a pessimist; yet reasons just as
+strong may be adduced for considering the future of the country secure
+in the later as were urged in the earlier period. But as Godkin grew
+older, he became a moral censor, and it is characteristic of censors to
+exaggerate both the evil of the present and the good of the past. Thus
+in 1899 he wrote of the years 1857-1860: "The air was full of the real
+Americanism. The American gospel was on people's lips and was growing
+with fervor. Force was worshiped, but it was moral force: it was the
+force of reason, of humanity, of human equality, of a good example. The
+abolitionist gospel seemed to be permeating the views of the American
+people, and overturning and destroying the last remaining traditions of
+the old-world public morality. It was really what might be called the
+golden age of America."[207] These were the days of slavery. James
+Buchanan was President. The internal policy of the party in power was
+expressed in the Dred Scott decision and the attempt to force slavery on
+Kansas; the foreign policy, in the Ostend Manifesto, which declared that
+if Spain would not sell Cuba, the United States would take it by force.
+The rule in the civil service was, "to the victors belong the spoils."
+And New York City, where Godkin resided, had for its mayor Fernando
+Wood.
+
+In this somewhat rambling paper I have subjected Godkin to a severe test
+by a contrast of his public and private utterances covering many years,
+not however with the intention of accusing him of inconsistency. Ferrero
+writes that historians of our day find it easy to expose the
+contradictions of Cicero, but they forget that probably as much could
+be said of his contemporaries, if we possessed also their private
+correspondence. Similarly, it is a pertinent question how many
+journalists and how many public men would stand as well as Godkin in
+this matter of consistency if we possessed the same abundant records of
+their activity?
+
+The more careful the study of Godkin's utterances, the less will be the
+irritation felt by men who love and believe in their country. It is
+evident that he was a born critic, and his private correspondence is
+full of expressions showing that if he had been conducting a journal in
+England, his criticism of certain phases of English policy would have
+been as severe as those which he indulged in weekly at the expense of
+this country. "How Ireland sits heavy on your soul!" he wrote to James
+Bryce. "Salisbury was an utterly discredited Foreign Secretary when you
+brought up Home Rule. Now he is one of the wisest of men. Balfour and
+Chamberlain have all been lifted into eminence by opposition to Home
+Rule simply." To Professor Norton: "Chamberlain is a capital specimen of
+the rise of an unscrupulous politician." Again: "The fall of England
+into the hands of a creature like Chamberlain recalls the capture of
+Rome by Alaric." To another friend: "I do not like to talk about the
+Boer War, it is too painful.... When I do speak of the war my language
+becomes unfit for publication." On seeing the Queen and the Prince of
+Wales driving through the gardens at Windsor, his comment was "Fat,
+useless royalty;" and in 1897 he wrote from England to Arthur Sedgwick,
+"There are many things here which reconcile me to America."[208]
+
+In truth, much of his criticism of America is only an elaboration of his
+criticism of democracy. In common with many Europeans born at about the
+same time, who began their political life as radicals, he shows his keen
+disappointment that democracy has not regenerated mankind. "There is not
+a country in the world, living under parliamentary government," he
+wrote, "which has not begun to complain of the decline in the quality of
+its legislators. More and more, it is said, the work of government is
+falling into the hands of men to whom even small pay is important, and
+who are suspected of adding to their income by corruption. The
+withdrawal of the more intelligent class from legislative duties is more
+and more lamented, and the complaint is somewhat justified by the mass
+of crude, hasty, incoherent, and unnecessary laws which are poured on
+the world at every session."[209]
+
+I have thus far spoken only of the political influence of _The Nation_,
+but its literary department was equally important. Associated with
+Godkin from the beginning was Wendell P. Garrison, who became literary
+editor of the journal, and, who, Godkin wrote in 1871, "has really
+toiled for six years with the fidelity of a Christian martyr and upon
+the pay of an oysterman."[210] I have often heard the literary criticism
+of _The Nation_ called destructive like the political, but, it appears
+to me, with less reason. Books for review were sent to experts in
+different parts of the country, and the list of contributors included
+many professors from various colleges. While the editor, I believe,
+retained, and sometimes exercised, the right to omit parts of the review
+and make some additions, yet writers drawn from so many sources must
+have preserved their own individuality. I have heard it said that _The
+Nation_ gave you the impression of having been entirely written by one
+man; but whatever there is more than fanciful in that impression must
+have arisen from the general agreement between the editor and the
+contributors. Paul Leicester Ford once told me that, when he wrote a
+criticism for _The Nation_, he unconsciously took on _The Nation's_
+style, but he could write in that way for no other journal, nor did he
+ever fall into it in his books. Garrison was much more tolerant than is
+sometimes supposed. I know of his sending many books to two men, one of
+whom differed from him radically on the negro question and the other on
+socialism.
+
+It is only after hearing much detraction of the literary department of
+_The Nation_, and after considerable reflection, that I have arrived at
+the conviction that it came somewhat near to realizing criticism as
+defined by Matthew Arnold, thus: "A disinterested endeavor to learn and
+propagate the best that is known and thought in the world."[211] I am
+well aware that it was not always equal, and I remember two harsh
+reviews which ought not to have been printed; but this simply proves
+that the editor was human and _The Nation_ was not perfect. I feel safe,
+however, in saying that if the best critical reviews of _The Nation_
+were collected and printed in book form, they would show an aspiration
+after the standard erected by Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold.
+
+Again I must appeal to my individual experience. The man who lived in
+the middle West for the twenty-five years between 1865 and 1890 needed
+the literary department of _The Nation_ more than one who lived in
+Boston or New York. Most of the books written in America were by New
+England, New York, and Philadelphia authors, and in those communities
+literary criticism was evolved by social contact in clubs and other
+gatherings. We had nothing of the sort in Cleveland, where a writer of
+books walking down Euclid Avenue would have been stared at as a
+somewhat remarkable personage. The literary columns of _The Nation_ were
+therefore our most important link between our practical life and the
+literary world. I used to copy into my _Index Rerum_ long extracts from
+important reviews, in which the writers appeared to have a thorough
+grasp of their subjects; and these I read and re-read as I would a
+significant passage in a favorite book. In the days when many of us were
+profoundly influenced by Herbert Spencer's "Sociology," I was somewhat
+astonished to read one week in _The Nation_, in a review of Pollock's
+"Introduction to the Science of Politics," these words: "Herbert
+Spencer's contributions to political and historical science seem to us
+mere commonplaces, sometimes false, sometimes true, but in both cases
+trying to disguise their essential flatness and commonness in a garb of
+dogmatic formalism."[212] Such an opinion, evidencing a conflict between
+two intellectual guides, staggered me, and it was with some curiosity
+that I looked subsequently, when the _Index to Periodicals_ came out, to
+see who had the temerity thus to belittle Spencer--the greatest
+political philosopher, so some of his disciples thought, since
+Aristotle. I ascertained that the writer of the review was James Bryce,
+and whatever else might be thought, it could not be denied that the
+controversy was one between giants. I can, I think, date the beginning
+of my emancipation from Spencer from that review in 1891.
+
+In the same year I read a discriminating eulogy of George Bancroft,
+ending with an intelligent criticism of his history, which produced on
+me a marked impression. The reviewer wrote: Bancroft falls into "that
+error so common with the graphic school of historians--the exaggerated
+estimate of manuscripts or fragmentary material at the expense of what
+is printed and permanent.... But a fault far more serious than this is
+one which Mr. Bancroft shared with his historical contemporaries, but in
+which he far exceeded any of them--an utter ignoring of the very meaning
+and significance of a quotation mark."[213] Sound and scientific
+doctrine is this; and the whole article exhibited a thorough knowledge
+of our colonial and revolutionary history which inspired confidence in
+the conclusions of the writer, who, I later ascertained, was Thomas
+Wentworth Higginson.
+
+These two examples could be multiplied at length. There were many
+reviewers from Harvard and Yale; and undoubtedly other Eastern colleges
+were well represented. The University of Wisconsin furnished at least
+one contributor, as probably did the University of Michigan and other
+Western colleges. Men in Washington, New York, and Boston, not in
+academic life, were drawn upon; a soldier of the Civil War, living in
+Cincinnati, a man of affairs, sent many reviews. James Bryce was an
+occasional contributor, and at least three notable reviews came from the
+pen of Albert V. Dicey. In 1885, Godkin, in speaking of _The Nation's_
+department of Literature and Art, wrote that "the list of those who have
+contributed to the columns of the paper from the first issue to the
+present day contains a large number of the most eminent names in
+American literature, science, art, philosophy, and law."[214] With men
+so gifted, and chosen from all parts of the country, uniformly
+destructive criticism could not have prevailed. Among them were
+optimists as well as pessimists, and men as independent in thought as
+was Godkin himself.
+
+Believing that Godkin's thirty-five years of critical work was of great
+benefit to this country, I have sometimes asked myself whether the fact
+of his being a foreigner has made it more irritating to many good
+people, who term his criticism "fault-finding" or "scolding." Although
+he married in America and his home life was centered here, he confessed
+that in many essential things it was a foreign country.[215] Some
+readers who admired _The Nation_ told Mr. Bryce that they did not want
+"to be taught by a European how to run this republic." But Bryce, who in
+this matter is the most competent of judges, intimates that Godkin's
+foreign education, giving him detachment and perspective, was a distinct
+advantage. If it will help any one to a better appreciation of the man,
+let Godkin be regarded as "a chiel amang us takin' notes"; as an
+observer not so philosophic as Tocqueville, not so genial and
+sympathetic as Bryce. Yet, whether we look upon him as an Irishman, an
+Englishman, or an American, let us rejoice that he cast his lot with us,
+and that we have had the benefit of his illuminating pen. He was not
+always right; he was sometimes unjust; he often told the truth with
+"needless asperity,"[216] as Parkman put it; but his merits so
+outweighed his defects that he had a marked influence on opinion, and
+probably on history, during his thirty-five years of journalistic work,
+when, according to James Bryce, he showed a courage such as is rare
+everywhere.[217] General J. D. Cox, who had not missed a number of _The
+Nation_ from 1865 to 1899, wrote to Godkin, on hearing of his
+prospective retirement from the _Evening Post_, "I really believe that
+earnest men, all over the land, whether they agree with you or differ,
+will unite in the exclamation which Lincoln made as to Grant, 'We can't
+spare this man--he _fights_.'"[218]
+
+Our country, wrapped up in no smug complacency, listened to this man,
+respected him and supported him, and on his death a number of people
+were glad to unite to endow a lectureship in his honor in Harvard
+University.
+
+In closing, I cannot do better than quote what may be called Godkin's
+farewell words, printed forty days before the attack of cerebral
+hemorrhage which ended his active career. "The election of the chief
+officer of the state by universal suffrage," he wrote, "by a nation
+approaching one hundred millions, is not simply a novelty in the history
+of man's efforts to govern himself, but an experiment of which no one
+can foresee the result. The mass is yearly becoming more and more
+difficult to move. The old arts of persuasion are already ceasing to be
+employed on it. Presidential elections are less and less carried by
+speeches and articles. The American people is a less instructed people
+than it used to be. The necessity for drilling, organizing, and guiding
+it, in order to extract the vote from it is becoming plain; and out of
+this necessity has arisen the boss system, which is now found in
+existence everywhere, is growing more powerful, and has thus far
+resisted all attempts to overthrow it."
+
+I shall not stop to urge a qualification of some of these statements,
+but will proceed to the brighter side of our case, which Godkin, even in
+his pessimistic mood, could not fail to see distinctly. "On the other
+hand," he continued, "I think the progress made by the colleges
+throughout the country, big and little, both in the quality of the
+instruction and in the amount of money devoted to books, laboratories,
+and educational facilities of all kinds, is something unparalleled in
+the history of the civilized world. And the progress of the nation in
+all the arts, except that of government, in science, in literature, in
+commerce, in invention, is something unprecedented and becomes daily
+more astonishing. How it is that this splendid progress does not drag
+on politics with it I do not profess to know."[219]
+
+Let us be as hopeful as was Godkin in his earlier days, and rest assured
+that intellectual training will eventually exert its power in politics,
+as it has done in business and in other domains of active life.
+
+
+  [171] R. Ogden's Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin, I, 255.
+
+  [172] Rhodes's History of the United States, II, 72 (C. M. Depew).
+
+  [173] Ogden, II, 88.
+
+  [174] _Ibid._, I, 257.
+
+  [175] Parton's Greeley, 331, 576; my own recollections; Ogden, I, 255.
+
+  [176] Godkin, Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [177] Ogden, I, 168.
+
+  [178] Ogden, I, 221, 249, 251, 252; II, 222, 231.
+
+  [179] Letters of J. R. Lowell, II, 76.
+
+  [180] _Ibid._, I, 368.
+
+  [181] Ogden, I, 1.
+
+  [182] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899; Ogden, I, 11.
+
+  [183] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [184] _Ibid._; Ogden, I, 113.
+
+  [185] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899; Ogden, I, _passim_;
+        _The Nation_, June 25, 1885, May 23, 1902.
+
+  [186] Ogden, II, Chap. XVII.
+
+  [187] Ogden, II, Chap. XI.
+
+  [188] _Ibid._, II, 51.
+
+  [189] Studies in Contemporary Biography, 372.
+
+  [190] Tacitus, History, I, 1.
+
+  [191] Republic.
+
+  [192] June 23, Rhodes, VI, 382.
+
+  [193] Ogden, II, 66.
+
+  [194] Ogden, II, 140.
+
+  [195] Problems of Modern Democracy, 209.
+
+  [196] Ogden, II, 199.
+
+  [197] _Ibid._, II, 202.
+
+  [198] Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [199] Ogden, II, 202.
+
+  [200] _Ibid._, II, 214.
+
+  [201] _Ibid._, II, 238.
+
+  [202] _Ibid._, II, 219.
+
+  [203] _Ibid._, II, 237.
+
+  [204] Biographical Studies, 378.
+
+  [205] Ogden, I, 301, 307.
+
+  [206] Life and Letters, II, 485.
+
+  [207] Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [208] Ogden, II, 30, 136, 213, 214, 247, 253.
+
+  [209] Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, 117.
+
+  [210] Ogden, II, 51.
+
+  [211] Essays, 38.
+
+  [212] Vol. 52, p. 267.
+
+  [213] Vol. 52, p. 66.
+
+  [214] June 25, 1885.
+
+  [215] Ogden, II, 116.
+
+  [216] _Ibid._, I, 252.
+
+  [217] Biographical Studies, 370.
+
+  [218] Ogden, II, 229.
+
+  [219] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+
+
+
+WHO BURNED COLUMBIA?
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November
+meeting of 1901, and printed in the _American Historical Review_ of
+April, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+WHO BURNED COLUMBIA?
+
+
+The story goes that when General Sherman lived in New York City, which
+was during the last five years of his life, he attended one night a
+dinner party at which he and an ex-Confederate general who had fought
+against him in the southwest were the chief guests; and that an
+Englishman present asked in perfect innocence the question, Who burned
+Columbia? Had bombshells struck the tents of these generals during the
+war, they would not have caused half the commotion in their breasts that
+did this question put solely with the desire of information. The
+emphatic language of Sherman interlarded with the oaths he uttered
+spontaneously, the bitter charges of the Confederate, the pounding of
+the table, the dancing of the glasses, told the Englishman that the
+bloody chasm had not been entirely filled. With a little variation and
+with some figurative meaning, he might have used the words of Iago:
+"Friends all but now, even now in peace; and then but now as if some
+planet had outwitted men, tilting at one another's breast in opposition.
+I cannot speak any beginning to this peevish odds."
+
+But the question which disturbed the New York dinner party is a delight
+to the historian. Feeling that history may be known best when there are
+most documents, he may derive the greatest pleasure from a perusal of
+the mass of evidence bearing on this disputed point; and if he is of
+Northern birth he ought to approach the subject with absolute candor. Of
+a Southerner who had himself lost property or whose parents had lost
+property, through Sherman's campaign of invasion, it would be asking too
+much to expect him to consider this subject in a judicial spirit. Even
+Trent, a moderate and impartial Southern writer whose tone is a lesson
+to us all, when referring, in his life of William Gilmore Simms, to
+"the much vexed question, Who burned Columbia," used words of the
+sternest condemnation.
+
+Sherman, with his army of 60,000, left Savannah February 1, 1865, and
+reached the neighborhood of Columbia February 16. The next day Columbia
+was evacuated by the Confederates, occupied by troops of the fifteenth
+corps of the Federal army, and by the morning of the 18th either three
+fifths or two thirds of the town lay in ashes. The facts contained in
+these two sentences are almost the only ones undisputed. We shall
+consider this episode most curiously if we take first Sherman's account,
+then Wade Hampton's, ending with what I conceive to be a true relation.
+
+The city was surrendered by the mayor and three aldermen to Colonel
+George A. Stone at the head of his brigade. Soon afterwards Sherman and
+Howard, the commander of the right wing of the army, rode into the city;
+they observed piles of cotton burning, and Union soldiers and citizens
+working to extinguish the fire, which was partially subdued. Let Sherman
+speak for himself in the first account that he wrote, which was his
+report of April 4, 1865: "Before one single public building had been
+fired by order, the smouldering fires [cotton] set by Hampton's order
+were rekindled by the wind, and communicated to the buildings around.
+[Wade Hampton commanded the Confederate cavalry.] About dark they began
+to spread, and got beyond the control of the brigade on duty within the
+city. The whole of Woods' division was brought in, but it was found
+impossible to check the flames, which, by midnight, had become
+unmanageable, and raged until about 4 A.M., when the wind subsiding,
+they were got under control.
+
+"I was up nearly all night, and saw Generals Howard, Logan, Woods, and
+others, laboring to save houses and protect families thus suddenly
+deprived of shelter, and even of bedding and wearing apparel. I disclaim
+on the part of my army any agency in this fire, but, on the contrary,
+claim that we saved what of Columbia remains unconsumed. And without
+hesitation I charge General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city
+of Columbia, not with a malicious intent or as the manifestation of a
+silly 'Roman stoicism,' but from folly, and want of sense, in filling it
+with lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty worked well
+to extinguish the flames; but others not on duty, including the officers
+who had long been imprisoned there, rescued by us, may have assisted in
+spreading the fire after it had once begun, and may have indulged in
+unconcealed joy to see the ruin of the capital of South Carolina."
+Howard, in his report, with some modification agrees with his chief, and
+the account in "The March to the Sea" of General Cox, whose experience
+and training fitted him well to weigh the evidence, gives at least a
+partial confirmation to Sherman's theory of the origin of the fire.
+
+I have not, however, discovered sufficient evidence to support the
+assertion of Sherman that Wade Hampton ordered the cotton in the streets
+of Columbia to be burned. Nor do I believe Sherman knew a single fact on
+which he might base so positive a statement.[220] It had generally been
+the custom for the Confederates in their retreat to burn cotton to
+prevent its falling into the hands of the invading army, and because
+such was the general rule Sherman assumed that it had been applied in
+this particular case. This assumption suited his interest, as he sought
+a victim to whom he might charge the burning of Columbia. His statement
+in his "Memoirs," published in 1875, is a delicious bit of historical
+naïveté. "In my official report of this conflagration," he wrote, "I
+distinctly charged it to General Wade Hampton, and confess I did so
+pointedly, to shake the faith of his people in him, for he was in my
+opinion boastful and professed to be the special champion of South
+Carolina."
+
+Instead of Hampton giving an order to burn the cotton, I am satisfied
+that he urged Beauregard, the general in command, to issue an order that
+this cotton should not be burned, lest the fire might spread to the
+shops and houses, which for the most part were built of wood, and I am
+further satisfied that such an order was given. Unfortunately the
+evidence for this is not contemporary. No such order is printed in the
+"Official Records," and I am advised from the War Department that no
+such order has been found. The nearest evidence to the time which I have
+discovered is a letter of Wade Hampton of April 21, 1866, and one of
+Beauregard of May 2, 1866. Since these dates, there is an abundance of
+evidence, some of it sworn testimony, and while it is mixed up with
+inaccurate statements on another point, and all of it is of the nature
+of recollections, I cannot resist the conclusion that Beauregard and
+Hampton gave such an order. It was unquestionably the wise thing to do.
+There was absolutely no object in burning the cotton, as the Federal
+troops could not carry it with them and could not ship it to any seaport
+which was under Union control.
+
+An order of Beauregard issued two days after the burning of Columbia and
+printed in the "Official Records" shows that the policy of burning
+cotton to keep it out of the hands of Sherman's army had been abandoned.
+Sherman's charge, then, that Wade Hampton burned Columbia, falls to the
+ground. The other part of his account, in which he maintained that the
+fire spread to the buildings from the smoldering cotton rekindled by
+the wind, which was blowing a gale, deserves more respect. His report
+saying that he saw cotton afire in the streets was written April 4,
+1865, and Howard's in which the same fact is stated was written April 1,
+very soon after the event, when their recollection would be fresh. All
+of the Southern evidence (except one statement, the most important of
+all) is to the effect that no cotton was burning until after the Federal
+troops entered the city. Many Southerners in their testimony before the
+British and American mixed commission under examination and
+cross-examination swear to this; and Wade Hampton swears that he was one
+of the last Confederates to leave the city, and that, when he left, no
+cotton was afire, and he knew that it was not fired by his men. But this
+testimony was taken in 1872 and 1873, and may be balanced by the sworn
+testimony of Sherman, Howard, and other Union officers before the same
+commission in 1872.
+
+The weight of the evidence already referred to would seem to me to show
+that cotton was afire when the Federal troops entered Columbia, but a
+contemporary statement of a Confederate officer puts it beyond doubt.
+Major Chambliss, who was endeavoring to secure the means of
+transportation for the Confederate ordnance and ordnance stores, wrote,
+in a letter of February 20, that at three o'clock on the morning of
+February 17, which was a number of hours before the Union soldiers
+entered Columbia, "the city was illuminated with burning cotton." But it
+does not follow that the burning cotton in the streets of Columbia was
+the cause of the fire which destroyed the city. When we come to the
+probably correct account of the incident, we shall see that the
+preponderance of the evidence points to another cause.
+
+February 27, ten days after the fire, Wade Hampton, in a letter to
+Sherman, charged him with having permitted the burning of Columbia, if
+he did not order it directly; and this has been iterated later by many
+Southern writers. The correspondence between Halleck and Sherman is
+cited to show premeditation on the part of the general. "Should you
+capture Charleston," wrote Halleck, December 18, 1864, "I hope that by
+some accident the place may be destroyed, and if a little salt should be
+sown upon the site it may prevent the growth of future crops of
+nullification and secession." Sherman thus replied six days later: "I
+will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and don't think salt will
+be necessary. When I move, the Fifteenth Corps will be on the right of
+the Right Wing, and their position will bring them naturally into
+Charleston first; and if you have watched the history of that corps you
+will have remarked that they generally do their work up pretty well. The
+truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak
+vengeance on South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that
+she deserves all that seems in store for her.... I look upon Columbia as
+quite as bad as Charleston."
+
+The evidence from many points of view corroborating this statement of
+the feeling of the army towards South Carolina is ample. The rank and
+file of Sherman's army were men of some education and intelligence; they
+were accustomed to discuss public matters, weigh reasons, and draw
+conclusions. They thought that South Carolina had brought on the Civil
+War, was responsible for the cost and bloodshed of it, and no punishment
+for her could be too severe. That was likewise the sentiment of the
+officers. A characteristic expression of the feeling may be found in a
+home letter of Colonel Charles F. Morse, of the second Massachusetts,
+who speaks of the "miserable, rebellious State of South Carolina." "Pity
+for these inhabitants," he further writes, "I have none. In the first
+place, they are rebels, and I am almost prepared to agree with Sherman
+that a rebel has no rights, not even the right to live except by our
+permission."
+
+It is no wonder, then, that Southern writers, smarting at the loss
+caused by Sherman's campaign of invasion, should believe that Sherman
+connived at the destruction of Columbia. But they are wrong in that
+belief. The general's actions were not so bad as his words. Before his
+troops made their entrance he issued this order: "General Howard will
+... occupy Columbia, destroy the public buildings, railroad property,
+manufacturing and machine shops, but will spare libraries and asylums
+and private dwellings." That Sherman was entirely sincere when he gave
+this order, and that his general officers endeavored to carry it out
+cannot be questioned. A statement which he made under oath in 1872
+indicates that he did not connive at the destruction of Columbia. "If I
+had made up my mind to burn Columbia," he declared, "I would have burnt
+it with no more feeling than I would a common prairie dog village; but I
+did not do it."
+
+Other words of his exhibit without disguise his feelings in regard to
+the occurrence which the South has regarded as a piece of wanton
+mischief. "The ulterior and strategic advantages of the occupation of
+Columbia are seen now clearly by the result," said Sherman under oath.
+"The burning of the private dwellings, though never designed by me, was
+a trifling matter compared with the manifold results that soon followed.
+Though I never ordered it and never wished it, I have never shed many
+tears over the event, because I believe it hastened what we all fought
+for, the end of the war." It is true that he feared previous to their
+entry the burning of Columbia by his soldiers, owing to their
+"deep-seated feeling of hostility" to the town, but no general of such
+an army during such a campaign of invasion would have refused them the
+permission to occupy the capital city of South Carolina. "I could have
+had them stay in the ranks," he declared, "but I would not have done it
+under the circumstances to save Columbia."
+
+Historical and legal canons for weighing evidence are not the same. It
+is a satisfaction, however, when after the investigation of any case
+they lead to the same decision. The members of the British and American
+mixed commission (an Englishman, an American, and the Italian Minister
+at Washington), having to adjudicate upon claims for "property alleged
+to have been destroyed by the burning of Columbia, on the allegation
+that that city was wantonly fired by the army of General Sherman, either
+under his orders or with his consent and permission," disallowed all the
+claims, "all the commissioners agreeing." While they were not called
+upon to deliver a formal opinion in the case, the American agent was
+advised "that the commissioners were unanimous in the conclusion that
+the conflagration which destroyed Columbia was not to be ascribed to
+either the intention or default of either the Federal or Confederate
+officers."
+
+To recapitulate, then, what I think I have established: Sherman's
+account and that of the Union writers who follow him cannot be accepted
+as history. Neither is the version of Wade Hampton and the Southern
+writers worthy of credence. Let me now give what I am convinced is the
+true relation. My authorities are the contemporary accounts of six
+Federal officers, whose names will appear when the evidence is presented
+in detail; the report of Major Chambliss of the Confederate army; "The
+Sack and Destruction of Columbia," a series of articles in the _Columbia
+Phoenix_, written by William Gilmore Simms and printed a little over a
+month after the event; and a letter written from Charlotte, February 22,
+to the _Richmond Whig_, by F. G. de F., who remained in Columbia until
+the day before the entrance of the Union troops.
+
+Two days before the entrance of the Federal troops, Columbia was placed
+under martial law, but this did not prevent some riotous conduct after
+nightfall and a number of highway robberies; stores were also broken
+into and robbed. There was great disorder and confusion in the
+preparations of the inhabitants for flight; it was a frantic attempt to
+get themselves and their portable belongings away before the enemy
+should enter the city. "A party of Wheeler's Cavalry," wrote F. G. de F.
+to the _Richmond Whig_, "accompanied by their officers dashed into town
+[February 16], tied their horses, and as systematically as if they had
+been bred to the business, proceeded to break into the stores along Main
+Street and rob them of their contents." Early in the morning of the
+17th, the South Carolina railroad depot took fire through the reckless
+operations of a band of greedy plunderers, who while engaged in robbing
+"the stores of merchants and planters, trunks of treasure, wares and
+goods of fugitives," sent there awaiting shipment, fired, by the
+careless use of their lights, a train leading to a number of kegs of
+powder; the explosion which followed killed many of the thieves and set
+fire to the building. Major Chambliss, who was endeavoring to secure the
+means of transportation for the Confederate ordnance and ordnance
+stores, wrote: "The straggling cavalry and rabble were stripping the
+warehouses and railroad depots. The city was in the wildest terror."
+
+When the Union soldiers of Colonel Stone's brigade entered the city,
+they were at once supplied by citizens and negroes with large
+quantities of intoxicating liquor, brought to them in cups, bottles,
+demijohns, and buckets. Many had been without supper, and all of them
+without sleep the night before, and none had eaten breakfast that
+morning. They were soon drunk, excited, and unmanageable. The stragglers
+and "bummers," who had increased during the march through South
+Carolina, were now attracted by the opportunity for plunder and swelled
+the crowd. Union prisoners of war had escaped from their places of
+confinement in the city and suburbs, and joining their comrades were
+eager to avenge their real or fancied injuries. Convicts in the jail had
+in some manner been released. The pillage of shops and houses and the
+robbing of men in the streets began soon after the entrance of the army.
+The officers tried to preserve discipline. Colonel Stone ordered all the
+liquor to be destroyed, and furnished guards for the private property of
+citizens and for the public buildings; but the extent of the disorder
+and plundering during the day was probably not appreciated by Sherman
+and those high in command. Stone was hampered in his efforts to preserve
+order by the smallness of his force for patrol duty and by the
+drunkenness of his men. In fact, the condition of his men was such that
+at eight o'clock in the evening they were relieved from provost duty,
+and a brigade of the same division, who had been encamped outside of the
+city during the day, took their place. But the mob of convicts, escaped
+Union prisoners, stragglers and "bummers," drunken soldiers and negroes,
+Union soldiers who were eager to take vengeance on South Carolina, could
+not be controlled. The sack of the city went on, and when darkness came,
+the torch was applied to many houses; the high wind carried the flames
+from building to building, until the best part of Columbia--a city of
+eight thousand inhabitants--was destroyed.
+
+Colonel Stone wrote, two days afterwards: "About eight o'clock the city
+was fired in a number of places by some of our escaped prisoners and
+citizens." "I am satisfied," said General W. B. Woods, commander of the
+brigade that relieved Stone, in his report of March 26, "by statements
+made to me by respectable citizens of the town, that the fire was first
+set by the negro inhabitants." General C. R. Woods, commander of the
+first division, fifteenth corps, wrote, February 21: "The town was fired
+in several different places by the villains that had that day been
+improperly freed from their confinement in the town prison. The town
+itself was full of drunken negroes and the vilest vagabond soldiers, the
+veriest scum of the entire army being collected in the streets." The
+very night of the conflagration he spoke of the efforts "to arrest the
+countless villains of every command that were roaming over the streets."
+
+General Logan, commander of the fifteenth corps, said, in his report of
+March 31: "The citizens had so crazed our men with liquor that it was
+almost impossible to control them. The scenes in Columbia that night
+were terrible. Some fiend first applied the torch, and the wild flames
+leaped from house to house and street to street, until the lower and
+business part of the city was wrapped in flames. Frightened citizens
+rushed in every direction, and the reeling incendiaries dashed, torch in
+hand, from street to street, spreading dismay wherever they went."
+
+"Some escaped prisoners," wrote General Howard, commander of the right
+wing, April 1, "convicts from the penitentiary just broken open, army
+followers, and drunken soldiers ran through house after house, and were
+doubtless guilty of all manner of villainies, and it is these men that I
+presume set new fires farther and farther to the windward in the
+northern part of the city. Old men, women, and children, with everything
+they could get, were herded together in the streets. At some places we
+found officers and kind-hearted soldiers protecting families from the
+insults and roughness of the careless. Meanwhile the flames made fearful
+ravages, and magnificent residences and churches were consumed in a very
+few minutes." All these quotations are from Federal officers who were
+witnesses of the scene and who wrote their accounts shortly after the
+event, without collusion or dictation. They wrote too before they knew
+that the question, Who burned Columbia? would be an irritating one in
+after years. These accounts are therefore the best of evidence. Nor does
+the acceptance of any one of them imply the exclusion of the others. All
+may be believed, leading us to the conclusion that all the classes named
+had a hand in the sack and destruction of Columbia.
+
+When the fire was well under way, Sherman appeared on the scene, but
+gave no orders. Nor was it necessary, for Generals Howard, Logan, Woods,
+and others were laboring earnestly to prevent the spread of the
+conflagration. By their efforts and by the change and subsidence of
+wind, the fire in the early morning of February 18 was stayed. Columbia,
+wrote General Howard, was little "except a blackened surface peopled
+with numerous chimneys and an occasional house that had been spared as
+if by a miracle." Science, history, and art might mourn at the loss they
+sustained in the destruction of the house of Dr. Gibbes, an antiquary
+and naturalist, a scientific acquaintance, if not a friend, of Agassiz.
+His large library, portfolios of fine engravings, two hundred paintings,
+a remarkable cabinet of Southern fossils, a collection of sharks' teeth,
+"pronounced by Agassiz to be the finest in the world," relics of our
+aborigines and others from Mexico, "his collection of historical
+documents, original correspondence of the Revolution, especially that
+of South Carolina," were all burned.
+
+The story of quelling the disorder is told by General Oliver: "February
+18, at 4 A.M., the Third Brigade was called out to suppress riot; did
+so, killing 2 men, wounding 30 and arresting 370." It is worthy of note
+that, despite the reign of lawlessness during the night, very few, if
+any, outrages were committed on women.
+
+
+  [220] In a letter presented to the Senate of the United States (some
+        while before April 21, 1866) Sherman said, "I saw in your
+        Columbia newspaper the printed order of General Wade Hampton
+        that on the approach of the Yankee army all the cotton should be
+        burned" (_South. Hist. Soc. Papers_, VII, 156).
+
+
+
+
+A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the January
+meeting of 1898, and printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of June, 1898.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL
+
+
+The most notable contributions to the historical literature of England
+during the year 1897 are two volumes by Samuel R. Gardiner: the Oxford
+lectures, "Cromwell's Place in History," published in the spring; and
+the second volume of "History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,"
+which appeared in the autumn. These present what is probably a new view
+of Cromwell.
+
+If one loves a country or an historic epoch, it is natural for the mind
+to seek a hero to represent it. We are fortunate in having Washington
+and Lincoln, whose characters and whose lives sum up well the periods in
+which they were our benefactors. But if we look upon our history as
+being the continuation of a branch of that of England, who is the
+political hero in the nation from which we sprang who represents a great
+principle or idea that we love to cherish? Hampden might answer if only
+we knew more about him. It occurs to me that Gray, in his poem which is
+read and conned from boyhood to old age, has done more than any one else
+to spread abroad the fame of Hampden. Included in the same stanza with
+Milton and with Cromwell, he seems to the mere reader of the poem to
+occupy the same place in history. In truth, however, as Mr. Gardiner
+writes, "it is remarkable how little can be discovered about Hampden.
+All that is known is to his credit, but his greatness appears from the
+impression he created upon others more than from the circumstances of
+his own life as they have been handed down to us."
+
+The minds of American boys educated under Puritan influences before and
+during the war of secession accordingly turned to Cromwell. Had our
+Puritan ancestors remained at home till the civil war in England, they
+would have fought under the great Oliver, and it is natural that their
+descendants should venerate him. All young men of the period of which I
+am speaking, who were interested in history, read Macaulay, the first
+volume of whose history appeared in 1848, and they found in Cromwell a
+hero to their liking. Carlyle's Cromwell was published three years
+before, and those who could digest stronger food found the great man
+therein portrayed a chosen one of God to lead his people in the right
+path. Everybody echoed the thought of Carlyle when he averred that ten
+years more of Oliver Cromwell's life would have given another history to
+all the centuries of England.
+
+In these two volumes Gardiner presents a different conception of
+Cromwell from that of Carlyle and Macaulay, and in greater detail. We
+arrive at Gardiner's notion by degrees, being prepared by the reversal
+of some of our pretty well established opinions about the Puritans.
+Macaulay's epigrammatic sentence touching their attitude towards
+amusements undoubtedly colored the opinions of men for at least a
+generation. "The Puritan hated bear-baiting," he says, "not because it
+gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."
+How coolly Gardiner disposes of this well-turned rhetorical phrase: "The
+order for the complete suppression of bear-baiting and bull-baiting at
+Southwark and elsewhere was grounded, not, as has been often repeated,
+on Puritan aversion to amusements giving 'pleasure to the spectators,'
+but upon Puritan disgust at the immorality which these exhibitions
+fostered." Again he writes: "Zealous as were the leaders of the
+Commonwealth in the suppression of vice, they displayed but little of
+that sour austerity with which they have frequently been credited. On
+his way to Dunbar, Cromwell laughed heartily at the sight of one soldier
+overturning a full cream tub and slamming it down on the head of
+another, whilst on his return from Worcester he spent a day hawking in
+the fields near Aylesbury. 'Oliver,' we hear, 'loved an innocent jest.'
+Music and song were cultivated in his family. If the graver Puritans did
+not admit what has been called 'promiscuous dancing' into their
+households, they made no attempt to prohibit it elsewhere." In the
+spring of 1651 appeared the "English Dancing Master," containing rules
+for country dances, and the tunes by which they were to be accompanied.
+
+Macaulay's description of Cromwell's army has so pervaded our literature
+as to be accepted as historic truth; and J. R. Green, acute as he was,
+seems, consciously or unconsciously, to have been affected by it, which
+is not a matter of wonderment, indeed, for such is its rhetorical force
+that it leaves an impression hard to be obliterated. Macaulay writes:
+"That which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies
+was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks.
+It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that in that singular
+camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that
+during the long dominion of the soldiery the property of the peaceable
+citizen and the honor of woman were held sacred. If outrages were
+committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of
+which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained
+of the rough gallantry of the redcoats; not an ounce of plate was taken
+from the shops of the goldsmiths; but a Pelagian sermon, or a window on
+which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks
+an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to
+quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his
+musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of
+ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not
+savory."
+
+What a different impression we get from Gardiner! "Much that has been
+said of Cromwell's army has no evidence behind it," he declares. "The
+majority of the soldiers were pressed men, selected because they had
+strong bodies, and not because of their religion. The remainder were
+taken out of the armies already in existence.... The distinctive feature
+of the army was its officers. All existing commands having been vacated,
+men of a distinctly Puritan and for the most part of an Independent type
+were appointed to their places.... The strictest discipline was
+enforced, and the soldiers, whether Puritan or not, were thus brought
+firmly under the control of officers bent upon the one object, of
+defeating the king."
+
+To those who have regarded the men who governed England, from the time
+the Long Parliament became supreme to the death of Cromwell, as saints
+in conduct as well as in name, Mr. Gardiner's facts about the members of
+the rump of the Long Parliament will be an awakening. "It was
+notorious," he records, "that many members who entered the House poor
+were now rolling in wealth." From Gardiner's references and quotations,
+it is not a strained inference that in subjection to lobbying, in
+log-rolling and corruption, this Parliament would hardly be surpassed by
+a corrupt American legislature. As to personal morality, he by
+implication confirms the truth of Cromwell's bitter speech on the
+memorable day when he forced the dissolution of the Long Parliament.
+"Some of you," he said, "are whoremasters. Others," he continued,
+pointing to one and another with his hands, "are drunkards, and some
+corrupt and unjust men, and scandalous to the profession of the gospel.
+It is not fit that you should sit as a Parliament any longer."
+
+While I am well aware that to him, who makes but a casual study of any
+historic period, matters will appear fresh that to the master of it are
+well-worn inferences and generalizations, and while therefore I can
+pretend to offer only a shallow experience, I confess that on the points
+to which I have referred I received new light, and it prepared me for
+the overturning of the view of Cromwell which I had derived from the
+Puritanical instruction of my early days and from Macaulay.
+
+In his foreign policy Cromwell was irresolute, vacillating and tricky.
+"A study of the foreign policy of the Protectorate," writes Mr.
+Gardiner, "reveals a distracting maze of fluctuations. Oliver is seen
+alternately courting France and Spain, constant only in inconstancy."
+
+Cromwell lacked constructive statesmanship. "The tragedy of his career
+lies in the inevitable result that his efforts to establish religion and
+morality melted away as the morning mist, whilst his abiding influence
+was built upon the vigor with which he promoted the material aims of his
+countrymen." In another place Mr. Gardiner says: "Cromwell's negative
+work lasted; his positive work vanished away. His constitutions perished
+with him, his Protectorate descended from the proud position to which he
+had raised it, his peace with the Dutch Republic was followed by two
+wars with the United Provinces, his alliance with the French monarchy
+only led to a succession of wars with France lasting into the nineteenth
+century. All that lasted was the support given by him to maritime
+enterprise, and in that he followed the tradition of the governments
+preceding him."
+
+What is Cromwell's place in history? Thus Mr. Gardiner answers the
+question: "He stands forth as the typical Englishman of the modern
+world.... It is in England that his fame has grown up since the
+publication of Carlyle's monumental work, and it is as an Englishman
+that he must be judged.... With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with
+ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the
+masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to
+regard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral audacity,
+with all his tenderness and spiritual yearnings, in the world of action
+what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the
+most typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring sense,
+is Cromwell's place in history."
+
+The idea most difficult for me to relinquish is that of Cromwell as a
+link in that historic chain which led to the Revolution of 1688, with
+its blessed combination of liberty and order. I have loved to think, as
+Carlyle expressed it: "'Their works follow them,' as I think this Oliver
+Cromwell's works have done and are still doing! We have had our
+'Revolution of '88' officially called 'glorious,' and other Revolutions
+not yet called glorious; and somewhat has been gained for poor mankind.
+Men's ears are not now slit off by rash Officiality. Officiality will
+for long henceforth be more cautious about men's ears. The tyrannous
+star chambers, branding irons, chimerical kings and surplices at
+Allhallowtide, they are gone or with immense velocity going. Oliver's
+works do follow him!"
+
+In these two volumes of Gardiner it is not from what is said, but from
+what is omitted, that one may deduce the author's opinion that
+Cromwell's career as Protector contributed in no wise to the Revolution
+of 1688. But touching this matter he has thus written to me: "I am
+inclined to question your view that Cromwell paved the way for the
+Revolution of 1688, except so far as his victories and the King's
+execution frightened off James II. Pym and Hampden did pave the way,
+but Cromwell's work took other lines. The Instrument of Government was
+framed on quite different principles, and the extension of the suffrage
+and reformed franchise found no place in England until 1832. It was not
+Cromwell's fault that it was so."
+
+If I relinquish this one of my old historic notions, I feel that I must
+do it for the reason that Lord Auckland agreed with Macaulay after
+reading the first volume of his history. "I had also hated Cromwell more
+than I now do," he said; "for I always agree with Tom Macaulay; and it
+saves trouble to agree with him at once, because he is sure to make you
+do so at last."
+
+I asked Professor Edward Channing of Harvard College, who teaches
+English History of the Tudor and Stuart periods, his opinion of
+Gardiner. "I firmly believe," he told me, "that Mr. Gardiner is the
+greatest English historical writer who has appeared since Gibbon. He has
+the instinct of the truth-seeker as no other English student I know of
+has shown it since the end of the last century."
+
+General J. D. Cox, a statesman and a lawyer, a student of history and of
+law, writes to me: "In reading Gardiner, I feel that I am sitting at the
+feet of an historical chief justice, a sort of John Marshall in his
+genius for putting the final results of learning in the garb of simple
+common sense."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Adams, C. F., and E. G. Bourne, 200.
+
+  Adams, J. Q., as President, 207, 209.
+
+  Adams, John, as President, 207.
+
+  Adelaide, Australia, Froude's description, 42.
+
+  Alabama claims, arbitration, 218.
+
+  Alexander Severus, homage to history, 4.
+
+  Alison, Sir Archibald, present-day reputation, 40.
+
+  Allison, W. B., and Hayes's New York Custom-house appointments, 255;
+    and Silver Bill of 1878, 260.
+
+  American historians, European recognition, 103.
+
+  American Historical Association,
+    author's addresses before, 1 _n._, 25, 81;
+    interest of E. G. Bourne, 196.
+
+  American history, qualities, 4, 20-23;
+    newspapers as sources, 29-32, 85-95;
+    and early English history, 170.
+    _See also_ Elections, History, Presidential, United States,
+      and periods by name.
+
+  American Revolution, Gibbon on, 113.
+
+  Amyot, Jacques, on Alexander Severus, 4.
+
+  Ancient history, monopoly of German historians, 75.
+    _See also_ Ferrero, Gibbon, Herodotus, Tacitus, Thucydides.
+
+  Annexations, Philippines, 195, 233, 234, 286;
+    constitutional control, Louisiana, 208, 211;
+    and slavery, Texas and California, 212.
+
+  Arbitrary arrests during Civil War, 214, 215.
+
+  Arbitration, Alabama claims, 218;
+    Cleveland and Venezuela, 225, 285;
+    English draft general treaty, 226.
+
+  Army, Federal, and suppression of rioting, 225, 253;
+    character of Cromwell's, 319, 320.
+
+  Arnold, Matthew, on Americans, 21;
+    on Sainte-Beuve, 73;
+    on criticism, 292.
+
+  Arthur, C. A., as President, 222;
+    removal by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Auckland, Lord, on agreeing with Macaulay, 323.
+
+  Aulard, F. A., on Taine, 83.
+
+
+  Bagehot, Walter, on presidential office, 204, 217.
+
+  Baltimore, railroad riot of 1877, 252.
+
+  Balzac, Honoré de, importance to historians, 50, 73.
+
+  Bancroft, George, use of footnotes, 33;
+    remuneration, 78;
+    T. W. Higginson on, over-fondness for manuscript sources, inaccuracy
+      of quotations, 294.
+
+  Beauregard, P. G. T., and burning of Columbia, 304.
+
+  Bemis, George, and Lecky, 157.
+
+  Bigelow, John, as journalist, 90;
+    on importance of Godkin to _The Nation_, 275.
+
+  Bismarck, Fürst von, on power of press, 89.
+
+  Blaine, J. G., value of "Twenty Years," 33;
+    on power of Congress over President, 216;
+    on Hayes and Packard, 248.
+
+  Boer War, Godkin on, 290.
+
+  Boston, H. G. Wells's criticism considered, 138.
+
+  Boston Athenæum, editions of Gibbon in, 138.
+
+  Bourne, E. G., and preparation of author's history, as critic, 85, 86,
+      197-199;
+    essay on, 191-200;
+    malady, 191, 192;
+    physique, 191;
+    death, 192;
+    education, 192;
+    works, 193-195;
+    professorships, 193;
+    on Marcus Whitman, 193;
+    on Columbus, 194, 195;
+    on Philippines and Monroe Doctrine, 195;
+    unfinished biography of Motley, 196;
+    critical notices, 196, 197;
+    thoroughness, 196;
+    interest in American Historical Association, 196;
+    desultory reading, 199;
+    and editorship of publications of Massachusetts Historical
+      Society, 199.
+
+  Bowles, Samuel, as journalist, 90.
+
+  Brown, John, Pottawatomie Massacre and election of 1856, 88.
+
+  Browning, Oscar, on Carlyle, 41.
+
+  Brunetière, Ferdinand, on French literary masters, 73.
+
+  Bryan, W. J., campaign of 1896, 228, 286.
+
+  Bryant, W. C., as journalist, 90;
+    and Greeley, 269.
+
+  Bryce, James, importance of "Holy Roman Empire," 60, 61;
+    on Federal Constitution, 203;
+    on presidential office, 204, 205, 235, 240;
+    on Godkin and _The Nation_, 276, 286, 295;
+    on Herbert Spencer, 293.
+
+  Buchanan, James, as President, 213.
+
+  Buckle, H. T., enthusiasm, 38;
+    influence on Lecky, 154.
+
+  Burt, S. W., appointment by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Bury, J. B., edition of Gibbon, 61;
+    on Gibbon, 109, 110.
+
+  Butler, Joseph, influence on Lecky, 154.
+
+
+  Cabinet, Grant's, 186, 278;
+    character of Jackson's, 210;
+    Pierce and Buchanan controlled by, 213;
+    Hayes's, 221, 246-248, 262.
+
+  Cabot, Charles, gift to Boston Athenæum, 138.
+
+  Calhoun, J. C., and annexation of Texas, 211.
+
+  Carlyle, Thomas, as historian, 38, 41;
+    and mathematics, 56, 57;
+    importance in training of historians, "French Revolution" and
+      "Frederick," 62-64;
+    biography, 64;
+    self-education, 65;
+    lack of practical experience, 66;
+    on historical method, 77;
+    on Gibbon, 115;
+    on Cromwell, inaccuracy of quotations, 144, 318, 321;
+    on pecuniary rewards of literary men, 146;
+    Gladstone on, 155.
+
+  Chamberlain, D. H., contested election, 248.
+
+  Chamberlain, Joseph, on newspapers and public opinion, 31;
+    Godkin on, 290.
+
+  Chambliss, N. R., on burning of Columbia, 305, 309.
+
+  Channing, Edward, on Gardiner, 323.
+
+  Charleston, secession movement, 91;
+    feeling of Union army towards, 306.
+
+  _Charleston Courier_, and secession movement, 92.
+
+  _Charleston Mercury_, and secession movement, 92.
+
+  Chatham, Earl of, on Thucydides, 15.
+
+  Choate, Rufus, and Whig nominations in 1852, 87.
+
+  Christianity, Gibbon on early church, 131-133.
+
+  Cicero, homage to history, 4;
+    importance to historians, 51;
+    Gibbon on, 120;
+    contradictions, 290.
+
+  Civil service, J. D. Cox and reform, 186;
+    spoils system, 209, 211;
+    need of special training ignored, 210;
+    reform under Hayes, 221, 254-257;
+    Reform Bill, 222;
+    Cleveland and reform, 223, 224;
+    demand on President's time of appointments, number of presidential
+      offices, 236;
+    Godkin and reform, 280.
+
+  Civil War, newspapers as historical source on, 32, 92-94;
+    value of Official Records, 92;
+    attitude of Lecky, 157;
+    presidential office during, arbitrary actions, 213-216;
+    Godkin as correspondent during, 273;
+    burning of Columbia, 301-313.
+
+  Cleveland, Grover, as President, 223-226;
+    and civil service reform, 223;
+    soundness on finances, 225;
+    and railroad riots, 225;
+    foreign policy, 225;
+    and disorganization of Democracy, 226;
+    and public opinion, 231;
+    as a prime minister, 241, 263;
+    and Hayes, attends funeral of Hayes, 263;
+    attitude of Godkin, 285.
+
+  Columbia, S. C., burning of, 301-313;
+    Sherman's and Hampton's accounts discredited, 301-308;
+    feeling of Union army towards, 306-308;
+    Sherman's orders on occupation, 307;
+    verdict of mixed commission on, 308;
+    mob responsibility, 308-313.
+
+  Columbia University, lecture by author at, 47.
+
+  Commonwealth of England. _See_ Cromwell.
+
+  Comte, Auguste, influence, 73.
+
+  Conciseness in history, 11, 14, 16, 20, 36.
+
+  Congress, control of Senate over Pierce and Buchanan, 213;
+    power during Johnson's administration, 216;
+    overshadows President, power of Speaker of House, 227;
+    McKinley's control over, 234;
+    contact with President, 237;
+    and Hayes, 249, 256, 257, 261.
+
+  Conkling, Roscoe, contest with Hayes over New York Custom-house, 255.
+
+  Constitution. _See_ Federal Constitution.
+
+  Copyright, _The Nation_ and international, 282.
+
+  Cornell, A. B., removal by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Corruption, Gibbon on, 127.
+
+  Cox, J. D., on Gardiner, 44, 323;
+    essay on, 185-188;
+    varied activities, 185;
+    as general, 185;
+    as governor, 185;
+    and negro suffrage, 186;
+    as cabinet officer, 186;
+    and civil service reform, 186;
+    in Congress, 186;
+    and Spanish Mission, 186;
+    private positions, 187;
+    works, as military historian, 187;
+    and Grant, 187;
+    contributions to _The Nation_, 187;
+    as reader, 187;
+    character, 188;
+    on Godkin, 295;
+    on burning of Columbia, 303.
+
+  Crimean War, Godkin on, 273.
+
+  Cromer, Lord, on power of press, 89, 96.
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, Carlyle's biography, 144, 150;
+    Gardiner's influence on fame, 150;
+    Gardiner's estimate, 317-323;
+    character, 319;
+    character of army, 319, 320;
+    foreign policy, 321;
+    lack of constructive statesmanship, 321;
+    as typical Englishman, 322;
+    and Revolution of 1688, 322, 323.
+
+  Curchod, Suzanne, and Gibbon, 136.
+
+  Curtis, G. W., on _The Nation_, 270.
+
+  Curtius, Ernst, as historian, 34, 43.
+
+
+  Dana, C. A., as journalist, historical value of articles, 31, 90.
+
+  Darwin, C. R., biography, 59;
+    truthfulness, 145.
+
+  Dates in historical work, importance of newspapers, 87.
+
+  Democratic party, and Cleveland's administration, 223, 226.
+
+  Demosthenes, and Thucydides, 15.
+
+  Desultory reading in training of historian, 64, 65, 199.
+
+  Devens, Charles, in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  Deyverdun, Georges, collaboration with Gibbon, 124.
+
+  Dicey, A. V., as contributor to _The Nation_, 282, 294.
+
+  Dictionaries, importance of quotations in, 55.
+
+  Dingley Tariff Act, 229.
+
+  Duff, Sir M. E. Grant, on Herodotus, 5.
+
+
+  Eckermann, J. P., "Conversations with Goethe," 70-72.
+
+  Elections, 1852, Whig nominations, Scott's stumping tour, 86, 87;
+    1856, Kansas as issue, 88;
+    1876, controversy, and flexibility of Constitution, 203, 219, 245;
+    1896, bimetallism as issue, 228;
+    attitude of Godkin, 286.
+
+  Elizabeth, Froude and Gardiner on, 149;
+    and Anglo-Saxon development, 172.
+
+  Emerson, R. W., on originality, 28;
+    on mathematics, 57;
+    on philanthropists, 181;
+    on _The Nation_, 270.
+
+  England, Macaulay's history, 37, 41, 62;
+    Gardiner's history, 143-150;
+    Lecky's history, 154, 155;
+    Walpole's history, 161, 163, 164;
+    conditions in 1815, 161;
+    Green's history, 171, 172;
+    Alabama claims arbitration, 217;
+    Venezuela-Guiana boundary, 225, 285;
+    draft general arbitration treaty, 226;
+    attitude of Godkin, 272, 284, 290;
+    Cromwell and the Commonwealth, 317-323.
+
+  Evarts, W. M., Secretary of State, ability, 246;
+    social character, 262;
+    pessimism, 288.
+
+  _Evening Post_, acquires _The Nation_, Godkin as editor, 274.
+
+  Evolution, and history, 4, 36.
+
+  Executive. _See_ Civil service, Presidential office.
+
+
+  Federal Constitution, English model, 203;
+    rigidity and flexibility, 203, 216;
+    as political tradition, 208.
+    _See also_ Presidential office.
+
+  Ferrero, Guglielmo, as historian, 75;
+    on Cicero's contradictions, 290.
+
+  Fessenden, W. P., and Whig nominations in 1852, 87.
+
+  Fillmore, Martin, as President, 212.
+
+  Finances, greenback craze, 219, 246, 281;
+    silver agitation of 1878, 221, 259, 260;
+    Silver Act of 1890, 224, 227;
+    Cleveland's soundness, 225;
+    attitude of Republican party on money, 227, 257;
+    issue in campaign of 1896, 228, 286;
+    gold standard, 231;
+    depression (1877-1878), 251, 258;
+    Hayes's administration, 257-260;
+    Sherman's refunding, 257;
+    resumption of specie payments, 258, 259;
+    _The Nation_ and sound, 280-282.
+
+  Fine arts, and training of historian, 59.
+
+  Firth, C. H., to continue Gardiner's history, 148.
+
+  Fish, Hamilton, and arbitration of Alabama claims, 218.
+
+  Fiske, John, anecdote of the Websters, 54;
+    as popular scientist, 58;
+    power of concentration, 69.
+
+  Footnotes, use in histories, 33.
+
+  Ford, P. L., on writing criticisms for _The Nation_, 292.
+
+  Foreign relations, under Washington, 206;
+    under Tyler and Polk, 211;
+    under Grant, 218;
+    under Cleveland, 225, 285;
+    under McKinley, 231-234.
+    _See also_ Monroe Doctrine.
+
+  Fourth estate, newspaper as, 96.
+
+  Franklin, battle of, J. D. Cox in, 185.
+
+  Frederick the Great, Carlyle's biography, 63.
+
+  Frederick III of Germany, "wise emperor," 127.
+
+  Freeman, E. A., on Gibbon, 109.
+
+  French, importance to historians, 49-51;
+    Gibbon's knowledge, 119, 123.
+
+  French Revolution, Carlyle's history, 62;
+    Gibbon and, 113.
+
+  Froude, J. A., on Ulysses, 2;
+    inaccuracy, 41;
+    biography of Carlyle, 64;
+    on Elizabeth, 143, 149.
+
+  Gardiner, S. R., truthfulness, 7, 145;
+    as historical model, 42, 45;
+    lack of practical experience, 66, 148;
+    method, 76;
+    essay on, 143-150;
+    death, 143;
+    thoroughness of research, 143, 157;
+    as linguist, 143;
+    manuscript material, 143;
+    on Carlyle's "Cromwell," 144;
+    writings and editorial work, 144;
+    birth, 145;
+    conception of great work, 145;
+    Irvingite, 146;
+    struggles and success, 146, 147;
+    as teacher, 147;
+    honors, 147;
+    day's routine, manner of composition, 147;
+    style, 148;
+    soundness and influence of historical estimates, 149-150;
+    estimate of Cromwell, 150, 317-323;
+    on J. R. Green, 172;
+    on Hampden, 317;
+    on character of Puritans, 318;
+    on Cromwell's army, 320;
+    on character of Rump, 320;
+    rank as historian, 323.
+
+  Gardner, Percy, on Herodotus, 5, 40.
+
+  Garfield, J. A., desire for fame, 3;
+    as President, 222;
+    as speaker, 241.
+
+  Garrison, W. P., as literary editor of _The Nation_, 291-295.
+
+  Generalizations, need of care, 32, 178.
+
+  German, importance to historians, 52.
+
+  German historians, and ancient history, 75.
+
+  Gibbes, R. W., destruction of collections, 312.
+
+  Gibbon, Edward, rank and characteristics as historian, 5, 10, 109, 114;
+    on Tacitus, 10, 116;
+    style, 53, 133;
+    and mathematics, 56;
+    importance in training of historian, 60;
+    autobiographies, 64, 134;
+    essay on, 107-140;
+    conception of history, 107;
+    completion of it, 108;
+    progress and success of work, 108;
+    and classic masters, 110;
+    range of work, 110;
+    its endurance, 110;
+    as possible writer of contemporary history, 111, 112;
+    political career, 111;
+    conservatism, 112;
+    and American Revolution, 113;
+    historical subjects considered by, 115;
+    and earlier period of Roman Empire, 116;
+    intellectual training, 117-123;
+    love of reading, 118;
+    at Oxford, 118;
+    conversion and reconversion, 118, 121;
+    at Lausanne, 119;
+    self-training, 119, 122;
+    linguistic knowledge, 119, 120, 122, 123;
+    influence of Pascal, 119;
+    and Voltaire, 121;
+    on Robertson, 122;
+    "Essay on Study of Literature," 123;
+    service in militia, its influence, 123;
+    manuscript history of Switzerland, 124;
+    begins work on history, 124;
+    fame rests on it, 125;
+    Milman, Guizot, and Mommsen on it, 125;
+    quotations from, 126-128;
+    definitions of history, 126;
+    on religion under Pagan empire, 126;
+    on happiest period of mankind, 127;
+    on corruption, 127;
+    on sea-power, 127;
+    subjection to criticism, 128;
+    correctness, 128;
+    truthfulness, 129, 130;
+    use of conjecture, 129;
+    precision and accuracy, 129;
+    treatment of early Christian church, 131-133;
+    on Julian the Apostate, 132;
+    on Theodora, licentious passages, 133;
+    composition of history, 134;
+    love of books and wine, 135;
+    gout, 135;
+    and women, love affair, 136-138;
+    history in quarto edition, 138;
+    human importance of work, 139;
+    satisfaction with career, 139.
+
+  Gladstone, W. E., on Lecky, Carlyle, and Macaulay, 155.
+
+  Gloucester, William Henry, Duke of, on Gibbon's history, 138.
+
+  Godkin, E. L., power as journalist, 95;
+    essay on, 267-297;
+    rank as journalist, 267;
+    on Greeley, 267, 268;
+    illustration of influence, 268;
+    character, 269;
+    indirect influence, character of clientèle, 270, 271;
+    authorship of articles in _The Nation_, 271;
+    Essays, 272;
+    early life, 272;
+    early optimism and later pessimism concerning America, 272, 284-290,
+      296;
+    as war correspondent, 272;
+    in America, journey in South, 273;
+    correspondent of London _News_, 273;
+    foundation of _The Nation_, 273;
+    editor of _Evening Post_, 274;
+    retirement, 274;
+    lectures, honors, 274;
+    and offer of professorship, 274-276;
+    nervous strain, 275;
+    accused of censorious criticism, 276;
+    of unfortunate influence on intellectual youth, 277;
+    influence on author, 278-282, 292-294;
+    influence in West, 279;
+    disinterestedness, 280;
+    and civil service reform, 280;
+    and sound finances, 280-282;
+    and tariff, 282;
+    and foreign affairs, 282;
+    other phases of influence, 282;
+    never retracted personal charges, 282;
+    implacability, ignores death of F. A. Walker, 282-284;
+    and Cleveland, 285;
+    and election of 1896, 286;
+    and Spanish War and Philippines, 286;
+    moral censor, 289;
+    criticism of England, 290;
+    disappointment in democracy, 291;
+    literary criticism in _The Nation_, 291-295;
+    on W. P. Garrison, 291;
+    influence of foreign birth, 295;
+    fame, 295;
+    lectureship as memorial to, 296;
+    farewell words, on general progress and political decline, 296, 297.
+
+  Goethe, J. W. von, on Molière, 50;
+    on linguistic ability, 52;
+    "Faust" and study of human character, 68;
+    "Conversations," 70, 72;
+    wide outlook, 71.
+
+  Gold Standard Act, 231.
+
+  Gordon, C. G., newspapers and Soudan expedition, 89.
+
+  Gout, Gibbon on, 135.
+
+  Grant, U. S., first cabinet, 186, 278;
+    and Cox, 187;
+    as President, moral tone of administration, 217-219, 262;
+    on criticism, 218, 239.
+
+  Greek, importance to historians, 51;
+    Gibbon's knowledge, 120, 122, 123.
+
+  Greek history. _See_ Herodotus, Thucydides.
+
+  Greeley, Horace, influence as journalist,
+    historical value of articles, 31, 90, 267;
+    partisanship, 91; character, 268-270.
+
+  Green, J. R., as historian, 42;
+    address on, 171-173;
+    popularity in America, 171;
+    on Elizabeth, 172;
+    accuracy, 172;
+    character, 172;
+    on Cromwell's army, 319.
+
+  Greenbacks. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Grote, George, on Thucydides, 7;
+    on references, 33;
+    business training, 78.
+
+  Guizot, F. P. G., on Gibbon's history, 125.
+
+
+  Hadrian, "traveling emperor," 127.
+
+  Halleck, H. W., attitude towards Charleston, 306.
+
+  Hamilton, Alexander, on presidential office, 204, 233, 240;
+    as adviser of Washington, 207.
+
+  Hampden, John, as possible Anglo-Saxon hero, 317;
+    and Revolution of 1688, 323.
+
+  Hampton, Wade, and burning of Columbia, 302-305, 308.
+
+  Harrison, Benjamin, as President, 226;
+    as speaker, 241.
+
+  Harrison, Frederic, on Gibbon, 10;
+    on Spencer Walpole, 165.
+
+  Harrison, W. H., as President, 211.
+
+  Hart, A. B., on Herodotus, 6.
+
+  Harvard University, addresses of author at, 47, 101-103, 105, 243, 265;
+    striving after exact knowledge, 101;
+    honorary degree for Hayes, 251;
+    offers professorship to Godkin, 274, 275;
+    Godkin Lectureship, 296.
+
+  Hawthorne, Nathaniel, conciseness, 36.
+
+  Hay, John, anecdote of Grant, 218;
+    as Secretary of State, 234;
+    on Hayes and finances, 260.
+
+  Hayes, Lucy W., as wife of President, 221, 262.
+
+  Hayes, R. B., election controversy, 203, 219, 245;
+    administration, 219-222, 245-264;
+    as a prime minister, 241, 263;
+    righteousness of acceptance of election, 245;
+    difficulty of situation, 245, 261;
+    as governor, 246;
+    letter of acceptance, 246;
+    inaugural, 246;
+    cabinet, 246-248, 262;
+    withdrawal of troops from South, 248, 249;
+    and Congress, 249, 256, 257, 261;
+    civil service reforms, contest with Conkling, 250, 254-257;
+    honorary degree from Harvard, 251;
+    and railroad riots, 253, 254;
+    and finances, independent thinking, 257-260;
+    vetoes of repeal of Federal election laws, 260;
+    extra sessions of Congress, 261;
+    serenity, 261;
+    popular support, 261;
+    and election of 1880, 261;
+    moral tone of administration, 262;
+    and Cleveland, 263.
+
+  Herodotus, on purpose of history, 2;
+    rank as historian, 5, 34, 40;
+    as contemporary historian, 17.
+
+  Higginson, T. W., on Bancroft, 294.
+
+  Hildreth, Richard, historical value of newspaper articles, 31.
+
+  Hill, G. B., on Gibbon's history and autobiography, 125.
+
+  Historian, training, 49-79;
+    necessary linguistic knowledge, 49-52;
+    acquisition of style, 52-55;
+    knowledge of mathematics, 55-57;
+    of other sciences, 57-59;
+    of fine arts, 59;
+    general historical reading, 60-70;
+    mastery of Gibbon and Bryce, 60;
+    of Tacitus and Thucydides, 61;
+    of other historians, 62-64;
+    knowledge of lives of historians, 64;
+    desultory reading, 64-65;
+    study of human character, experimental and through books, 66-68;
+    thorough reading of characteristic works, 68;
+    speed and retention of reading, 69;
+    importance of "Conversations of Goethe," 70-72;
+    of Sainte-Beuve's criticisms, 72;
+    choice of subject, 74;
+    method, originality, 75;
+    note-making, 76;
+    Carlyle on method, 77;
+    remuneration, 77;
+    and teaching of history, 78;
+    and business training, 78.
+    _See also_ next two titles.
+
+  Historians, Shakespeare and Homer as, 1, 2, 7;
+    advantages and disadvantages of present-day, 4, 20;
+    best, 5, 11;
+    Herodotus, 5, 17, 34, 40;
+    Thucydides, 6-8, 11-15, 17-19, 35, 61, 110, 111, 128;
+    Tacitus, 8-10, 15, 17-20, 61, 110, 111, 116, 128;
+    Gibbon, 10, 60, 107-140;
+    conciseness, 11, 14, 16, 20, 36;
+    source material, 12-16, 20, 22;
+    contemporaneousness, 17-20;
+    necessary qualities, 20;
+    monographs, 22;
+    patriotism, 22;
+    necessity and kinds of originality, 27-29, 75;
+    use of newspapers, 29-32, 83-97;
+    generalizations, 32, 178;
+    use of footnotes, 33;
+    fresh combination of well-known facts, 34;
+    present-day models, 34-43;
+    reflection, 37;
+    enthusiasm, 38;
+    Macaulay, 36-38, 41, 62;
+    Carlyle, 38, 41, 62;
+    old and new schools, ethical judgments, human interest, 39, 43-45;
+    Hume, Robertson, Alison, 40;
+    Froude, 41;
+    Green, 42, 171-173;
+    Stubbs, 42, 157;
+    Gardiner, 42, 143-150, 157, 323;
+    and popularity, 44;
+    growth of candor, 45;
+    Bryce, 60, 61;
+    use of manuscript material, 85, 294;
+    gospel of exact knowledge, 101;
+    Lecky, 153-158;
+    Spencer Walpole, 161-167;
+    E. L. Pierce, 177-181;
+    J. D. Cox, 187;
+    E. G. Bourne, 191-200;
+    Bancroft, 294.
+    _See also_ titles above and below.
+
+  History, intellectual rank, 1;
+    and poetry, 1, 2;
+    and physical sciences, 2;
+    definitions, 2, 6, 43, 126;
+    homage of politicians, 3;
+    and evolution, 4, 36;
+    newspapers as source, 29-32, 83-97;
+    value of manuscript sources, 85, 294.
+    _See also_ two titles above.
+
+  Hoar, E. R., in Grant's cabinet, 186, 278;
+    and _The Nation_, 278.
+
+  Holm, Adolf, on Thucydides, 39;
+    on scientific history, 43; as historian, 75.
+
+  Holst, H. E. von, use of newspapers, 29, 85;
+    on westward expansion and slavery, 212.
+
+  Home rule, Lecky's attitude, 156.
+
+  Homer, as historian, 1, 2, 22;
+    and study of human character, 67.
+
+  House of Representatives. See Congress.
+
+  Howard, O. O., at burning of Columbia, 302, 307, 311, 312.
+
+  Howells, W. D., pessimism, 288.
+
+  Hugo, Victor, influence, 73.
+
+  Hume, David, present-day reputation, 40, 111;
+    on Gibbon's history of Switzerland, 124.
+
+  Huxley, T. H., as popular scientist, 58;
+    biography, 59;
+    on things useful, 102;
+    on college training, 102.
+
+
+  Income tax decision, Lecky on, 157.
+
+  Ireland, Lecky's history, 155.
+
+
+  Jackson, Andrew, as President, 209-211;
+    as leader of democracy, 209;
+    and spoils system, 209;
+    and training for administrative work, 210;
+    and nullification, 210.
+
+  James, Henry, on Sainte-Beuve, 73.
+
+  James, T. L., as postmaster of New York, 254.
+
+  James, William, on Godkin, 270.
+
+  Jay Treaty, as precedent for treaty-making power, 206.
+
+  Jebb, Sir R. C., on Herodotus, 6, 17;
+    on Tacitus, 10;
+    on Thucydides, 17.
+
+  Jefferson, Thomas, as President, 207, 208;
+    Louisiana Purchase, 208.
+
+  Johnson, Andrew, as President, 216.
+
+  Johnson, Samuel, on American Revolution, 113.
+
+  Johnston, J. E., Hayes desires to offer cabinet position to, 247.
+
+  Journalists, Godkin, 267-297.
+    _See also_ Newspapers.
+
+  Jowett, Benjamin, on Thucydides, 6.
+
+  Julian the Apostate, Gibbon's treatment, 132.
+
+
+  Kansas, and election of 1856, 88.
+
+  Kent, James, on danger in presidential contests, 219.
+
+  Key, D. M., in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  Kinglake, A. W., on power of press, 89.
+
+
+  Laboulaye, Édouard, on Federal Constitution, 204.
+
+  Langlois, C. V., on Froude, 41;
+    on ethical judgments, 43;
+    on note-making, 76.
+
+  Latin, importance to historians, 49, 51, 54;
+    Gibbon's knowledge, 120, 123.
+
+  Laud, William, Macaulay and Gardiner on, 149.
+
+  Lausanne, Gibbon at, 108, 113, 119, 121;
+    Voltaire's theatre, 121.
+
+  Lea, H. C., business training, 79;
+    as scientific historian, 103.
+
+  Lecky, W. E. H., and Christianity, 131;
+    essay on, 153-158;
+    precocity, 153;
+    value of "Morals," 153;
+    intellectual training, 153;
+    as philosophic historian, 154;
+    "England," 154, 155;
+    on French Revolution, 155;
+    on Irish history, 155;
+    in politics, 156;
+    popularity of history, 156;
+    social traits, 156;
+    interest in America, 157;
+    historic divination, 158;
+    "Democracy and Liberty," 158.
+
+  Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, on power of press, 96.
+
+  Lincoln, Abraham, as President, 213-216;
+    theory and action of war power, 213;
+    as a precedent, 214;
+    popular support, 215;
+    and public opinion, 231;
+    as a prime minister, 241.
+
+  Linguistic ability, importance to historians, 49-52;
+    Gibbon's, 133;
+    Gardiner's, 143.
+
+  Literary criticism in _The Nation_, 291-295.
+
+  Literary style, acquisition by historian, 52-55;
+    Macaulay's, 55;
+    Gibbon's, 133;
+    Gardiner's, 148;
+    Spencer Walpole's, 165.
+
+  Lodge, H. C., in the House, 227.
+
+  Logan, J. A., at burning of Columbia, 303, 311, 312.
+
+  London _Daily News_, Godkin as American correspondent, 273.
+
+  Long Parliament, character of rump, 320.
+
+  Louisiana, purchase as precedent, 208;
+    overthrow of carpet-bag government, 248, 249.
+
+  Lowell, J. R., on present-day life, 21;
+    on Carlyle, 39;
+    on college training, 102;
+    on Darwin, 145;
+    on Grant's cabinet, 186;
+    on _The Nation_, 268, 271, 278;
+    on importance of Godkin to it, 275.
+
+
+  Macaulay, Lord, on Shakespeare as historian, 2;
+    on Herodotus, 5;
+    prolixity, 11, 16, 36;
+    on Thucydides, 19, 61;
+    lack of reflection and digestion, 37;
+    enthusiasm, 38;
+    as partisan, 41;
+    and popularity, 44;
+    on Greek and Latin, 51;
+    style, 55;
+    on mathematics, 56;
+    importance in training of historian, 62;
+    biography, 64;
+    as reader, 69;
+    on Gibbon, 115;
+    on Wentworth and Laud, 149;
+    Gladstone on, 155;
+    on Cromwell, 318;
+    on character of Puritans, 318;
+    on Cromwell's army, 319;
+    Auckland on agreeing with, 323.
+
+  McCrary, G. W., in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  McKim, J. M., and foundation of _The Nation_, 273, 274.
+
+  McKinley, William, as leader of House, 227;
+    tariff bill, 227;
+    as President, 229-234;
+    change in tariff views, 229-231;
+    and gold standard, 231;
+    and public opinion, Spanish War and Philippines, 231-234;
+    diplomacy, 234;
+    influence on Congress, 234;
+    as speaker, 241;
+    attitude of Godkin, 286.
+
+  Mackintosh, Sir James, on irreligion of Gibbon's time, 132.
+
+  Madison, James, as President, 207.
+
+  Mahaffy, J. P., on Herodotus, 5;
+    on Thucydides, 8.
+
+  Mahan, A. T., anticipation of theory, 127.
+
+  Maine, Sir Henry, on Federal Constitution, 203, 206.
+
+  Manuscript sources, value, 85, 91, 294;
+    Gardiner's use, 143, 144.
+
+  Massachusetts Historical Society, papers by author before, 141, 151,
+      159, 175, 183, 189, 315;
+    recognition of Gardiner, 147;
+    of Lecky, 156;
+    interest of E. L. Pierce in, 181;
+    E. G. Bourne and editorship of publications, 199.
+
+  Mathematics, and training of historian, 55-57.
+
+  Matthews, William, on _The Nation_, 278, 279.
+
+  Merritt, E. A., appointment by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Mexican War, aggression, 212;
+    and slavery, 212.
+
+  Mill, J. S., and mathematics, 56;
+    prodigy, 56.
+
+  Milligan case, and arbitrary government, 215.
+
+  Milman, H. H., on Gibbon's history, 125, 139.
+
+  Milton, John, on books, 60.
+
+  Molière, importance to historians, 49.
+
+  Mommsen, Theodor, on Gibbon, 11, 125;
+    as scientific historian, 43.
+
+  Money. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Monographs, use by general historians, 22.
+
+  Monroe, James, as President, 207, 209.
+
+  Monroe Doctrine, and Philippines, 195;
+    and development of presidential office, 209.
+
+  Montesquieu, Gibbon on, 119.
+
+  Morison, J. A. Cotter, on Gibbon, 131.
+
+  Morley, John, on Macaulay, 16, 38, 55;
+    on Cicero and Voltaire, 51.
+
+  Morrill, J. S., and Hayes's New York Custom-house appointments, 255.
+
+  Morris, Gouverneur, and framing of Constitution, 204.
+
+  Morse, C. F., on feeling in Union army towards South Carolina, 307.
+
+  Motley, J. L., best work, 68;
+    advice to historians, 74, 75;
+    and manuscript sources, 86, 91;
+    Bourne's unfinished biography, 196.
+
+
+  _Nation_, as historical source, 95;
+    J. D. Cox as contributor, 187;
+    circulation, 270;
+    foundation, 273;
+    weekly edition of _Evening Post_, 274.
+    _See also_ Godkin.
+
+  Necker, Mme. _See_ Curchod.
+
+  Negro suffrage, opposition of J. D. Cox, 186.
+
+  Nerva, as "gray emperor," 127.
+
+  "New English Dictionary," importance of quotations in, 55.
+
+  New York Custom-house, Hayes's reforms and appointments, 254.
+
+  _New York Weekly Tribune_, influence, 31, 90, 91, 267.
+    _See also_ Greeley.
+
+  Newspapers, as historical sources, 29-32, 83-97;
+    use by Von Holst, 29;
+    as registers of facts, 30, 86-89;
+    importance for dates, 30, 87;
+    as guide of public opinion, 31, 89-92;
+    power of _New York Weekly Tribune_, 31, 90, 91, 267-269;
+    qualities of evidence, 83, 84;
+    value in American history, for period 1850-1860, 85-92;
+    and correction of logical assumptions, 87-89;
+    as record of speeches and letters, 89;
+    value of partisanship, 91;
+    value of Northern, for Civil War period, 92, 93;
+    of Southern, 93;
+    laboriousness of research, 93;
+    value for Reconstruction, 94;
+    canons of use, 96;
+    as fourth estate, 96;
+    criticisms of Presidents, 239.
+    _See also Nation_.
+
+  Niebuhr, B. G., on Gibbon, 10, 109;
+    on training of historian, 29.
+
+  North, Sir Thomas, translation of Plutarch, 1.
+
+  Norton, C. E., on Godkin, 270;
+    and foundation of _The Nation_, 273, 274.
+
+  Note-making in historical work, 76.
+
+  Nullification, Jackson's course, 210.
+
+
+  "Official Records of Union and Confederate armies," value as
+    historical source, 92.
+
+  "Ohio idea," 259.
+
+  Oliver, J. M., at burning of Columbia, 313.
+
+  Olmsted, F. L., Godkin on Southern books, 273;
+    interest in _The Nation_, 274;
+    on importance of Godkin to it, 275.
+
+  Olney, Richard, draft general arbitration treaty, 226.
+
+  Originality in history, 27-29, 34, 75.
+
+  Oxford University, address of author at, 169.
+
+
+  Pacific Coast, Goethe's prophecy, 71.
+
+  Packard, S. B., overthrow of government, 248, 249.
+
+  Palmerston, Lord, Spencer Walpole's estimate, 164.
+
+  Panama Canal, Goethe's prophecy, 72.
+
+  Paper money. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Parkman, Francis, originality, 28;
+    best work, 68;
+    remuneration, 78;
+    national pride in, 102;
+    and religion, 131;
+    on _The Nation_, 270, 295.
+
+  Partisanship, historical value of newspaper, 83, 91.
+
+  Pascal, Blaise, influence on Gibbon, 119.
+
+  Pasteur, Louis, biography, 59.
+
+  Patriotism in historians, 22.
+
+  Pericles, funeral oration, 18, 23.
+
+  Philippines, annexation and Monroe Doctrine, 195;
+    McKinley's attitude, 233;
+    Godkin's attitude, 286.
+
+  Physical sciences, and history, 2;
+    and training of historian, 55-59.
+
+  Pierce, E. L., essay on, 177-181;
+    biography of Sumner, 177-179;
+    as politician and citizen, 179, 181;
+    historic sense, 179;
+    character, 180;
+    interest in Massachusetts Historical Society, 181.
+
+  Pierce, Franklin, as President, 213.
+
+  Pike, J. S., historical value of newspaper articles, 31.
+
+  Pittsburg, railroad riot of 1877, 252, 253.
+
+  Pliny the Younger, on Tacitus, 9.
+
+  Plutarch, North's translation, 1;
+    on Thucydides, 19.
+
+  Poetry, and history, 1.
+
+  Politics, Godkin on decline, 296, 297.
+  _See also_ Civil service, Congress, Elections, Newspapers,
+    Presidential office, and parties by name.
+
+  Polk, J. K., as President, 211.
+
+  Polybius, as historian, 6.
+
+  Popularity, and historical writing, 44.
+
+  Presidential office, essay on, 203-241;
+    flexibility of powers and duties, 204;
+    under Washington, control of treaties, 205-207;
+    John Adams to J. Q. Adams, extension of power, 207-209;
+    and annexations, 208;
+    and Monroe Doctrine, 209;
+    under Jackson, era of vulgarity, spoils system, 209-211;
+    Van Buren to Buchanan, annexations and slavery, 211-213;
+    period of weakness, 213;
+    under Lincoln, war power, 213-216;
+    under Johnson, nadir, 216;
+    and cabinet government, 217, 240, 263;
+    under Grant, 217-219, 262;
+    veto power, 219;
+    Kent on dangers in elections, 219;
+    contested election of 1876, 219, 254;
+    under Hayes, 220-222, 245-264;
+    under Garfield, civil service reform, 222;
+    under Arthur, 222;
+    under Cleveland, advance in power, 223-226;
+    under Harrison, 226-228;
+    under McKinley, 229-234;
+    and public opinion, 231-234;
+    character of Roosevelt, 235;
+    business, interruptions and their remedy, 236-239;
+    appointments, number of presidential offices, 236;
+    contact with Congress, 237;
+    criticisms, 238-240;
+    success of system, 240-241.
+
+  Pritchett, H. S., on McKinley and Philippines, 233.
+
+  Public opinion, newspapers as guide, 31, 89-92;
+    backing of Lincoln's extra-legal actions, 215;
+    influence on Presidents, 231-234.
+
+  Puritans, Macaulay and Gardiner on character, 318.
+
+  Pym, John, and Revolution of 1688, 323.
+
+
+  Railroad riots, 1894, Cleveland and use of Federal troops, 225;
+    1877, cause, 251;
+    strike and conflicts, 253;
+    use of Federal troops, 253;
+    social alarm, 254;
+    conduct of Hayes, 254.
+
+  Ranke, Leopold von, "England," 143.
+
+  Raymond, H. J., power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Reading, desultory, 64, 65, 199;
+    facility and retention, 69;
+    note-making, 76.
+
+  Reconstruction, newspapers as historical source, 94, 95;
+    J. D. Cox's opposition to negro suffrage, 186;
+    failure, final withdrawal of troops, 248, 249;
+    attitude of _The Nation_, 282.
+
+  Reed, T. B., and power of Speaker, 227.
+
+  Reflection in historical work, 37.
+
+  Reform act of 1832, Lord John Russell's introduction, 162.
+
+  Religion, Gibbon on, under Pagan empire, 126;
+    Gibbon's treatment of early Christian church, 131-133.
+
+  Republican party, newspapers as record of formation, 90;
+    and sound money, 227, 257.
+
+  Resumption of specie payments, opposition and success, 258, 259.
+
+  Revolution of 1688, question of Cromwell's influence, 322, 323.
+
+  Riots. _See_ Railroad.
+
+  Robertson, William, present-day reputation, 40, 111;
+    Gibbon on, 122.
+
+  Rome. _See_ Gibbon, Tacitus.
+
+  Roosevelt, Theodore, character, 235;
+    routine as President, 236, 238.
+
+  Ropes, J. C., as military historian, 13.
+
+  _Round Table_, character, 279.
+
+  Rousseau, J. J., on Gibbon as lover, 137.
+
+  Russell, Lord John, and Reform Act of 1832, 162;
+    Spencer Walpole's biography, 162.
+
+
+  Sainte-Beuve, C. A., style, 53;
+    on desultory reading, 65;
+    on biographies of Goethe, 72;
+    as critic, 72;
+    on Gibbon, 114, 123;
+    on Tacitus, 128.
+
+  Salisbury, Lord, Godkin on, 290.
+
+  Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, Bambino, 107;
+    connection with Gibbon, 107.
+
+  Schofield, J. M., on J. D. Cox, 185.
+
+  Schouler, William, power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Schurz, Carl, on history as profession, 78;
+    criticism of Cleveland's Venezuelan policy, 239;
+    in Ohio campaign of 1875, 246;
+    Secretary of Interior, ability, 247;
+    with Hayes at Harvard commencement, 251;
+    and civil service reform, 256;
+    social character, 262;
+    as editor of _Evening Post_, 274;
+    and greenback inflation, 281.
+
+  Scott, Winfield, presidential campaign, 86, 87.
+
+  Sea-power, Gibbon on, 127.
+
+  Senate. _See_ Congress.
+
+  Seward, W. H., and arbitrary arrests, 214.
+
+  Shakespeare, William, as historian, 1, 7, 22;
+    conciseness, 36;
+    and study of human character, 67.
+
+  Shaw, Bernard, on reality of Shakespeare's characters, 67.
+
+  Sheffield, Lord, sends wine to Gibbon, 135.
+
+  Sherman, John, and Silver Bill of 1878, 221, 259, 260;
+    on contact of President and Congress, 237;
+    in Ohio campaign of 1875, 246;
+    Secretary of Treasury, ability, 247, 258;
+    refunding, 258;
+    abused for depression, specie resumption, 258, 259;
+    social character, 263;
+    and greenback inflation, 281.
+
+  Sherman, W. T., and Hayes's suggestion of war portfolio for General
+      Johnston, 247;
+    and burning of Columbia, 301-313.
+
+  Sicilian expedition, Thucydides's account, 19, 61.
+
+  Silver. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Slavery, and westward expansion, 212.
+
+  Source material, use by Thucydides and Tacitus, 12-16;
+    modern, 20, 22;
+    newspapers, 29-32, 83-97;
+    manuscript, 85, 91, 143, 294.
+
+  South Carolina, overthrow of carpet-bag government, 248;
+    feeling of Union army towards, 306.
+
+  Spanish War, newspapers and cause, 89;
+    McKinley's course, 233;
+    attitude of Godkin, 286.
+
+  Speaker of House of Representatives, power, 227.
+
+  _Spectator_, on McKinley's diplomacy, 234.
+
+  Spedding, James, Gardiner on, 145.
+
+  Spencer, Herbert, on aim of education, 77;
+    on age as factor in evidence, 85;
+    Bryce on, 293.
+
+  Spoils system. _See_ Civil service.
+
+  Staël, Madame de, parents, 137;
+    on Gibbon, 137 n.
+
+  "Stalwarts," origin of name, 249.
+
+  Stanton, E. M., and arbitrary arrests, 214.
+
+  Stephens, H. M., on French Revolution, 155.
+
+  Stone, G. A., at burning of Columbia, 302, 310, 311.
+
+  Story, Joseph, on presidential character, 235.
+
+  Stubbs, William, as historian, 42, 69, 157.
+
+  Suffrage, Godkin on universal, 296.
+    _See also_ Negro.
+
+  Sumner, Charles, style, 53.
+
+  Switzerland, Gibbon's manuscript history, 124.
+
+
+  Tacitus, rank as historian, 5;
+    characteristics as historian, 8-10, 128;
+    conciseness, 11, 16;
+    use of source material, 15;
+    as contemporary historian, 17, 19, 111;
+    on history, 43;
+    importance in training of historian, 61;
+    Gibbon on, 116;
+    on censure, 276.
+
+  Taine, H. A., use of journals, 83.
+
+  Tariff, Cleveland's attitude, 225;
+    McKinley Act, 227;
+    Dingley Act, 229;
+    McKinley's change of opinion, 229-231;
+    _The Nation_ and protection, 282.
+
+  Taylor, Zachary, as President, 212.
+
+  Texan annexation, 211; and slavery, 212.
+
+  Thackeray, W. M., on Macaulay, 38.
+
+  Theodora, Gibbon's treatment, 133.
+
+  Thompson, R. W., in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  Thucydides, rank as historian, 5;
+    on history, 6;
+    characteristics as historian, 6-8, 39, 128;
+    conciseness, 11, 14, 16, 36;
+    use of personal sources material, 12-14;
+    as contemporary historian, 17, 111;
+    importance in training of historian, 61.
+
+  Thurman, A. G., and greenback inflation, 281.
+
+  Ticknor, George, pessimism, 288.
+
+  Tilden, S. J., election controversy, 203, 219, 245.
+
+  Tocqueville, Alexis de, style, 65;
+    on presidential office, 210.
+
+  Trajan, "wise emperor," 127.
+
+  Treaty-making power, Jay Treaty as precedent, 206.
+
+  Trent, W. P., on burning of Columbia, 302.
+
+  Trevelyan, Sir G. O., biography of Macaulay, 64.
+
+  Tyler, John, as President, 211, 212.
+
+  Tyndall, John, as popular scientist, 58.
+
+
+  Ulysses, and study of human character, 67.
+
+  United States, Goethe's prophecy of westward extension and Panama
+      Canal, 71;
+    political traditions, 208;
+    Godkin's early optimism and later pessimism concerning, 272,
+      284-290, 296;
+    Godkin on general progress and political decline, 296.
+    _See also_ American, Finances, Newspapers, Politics.
+
+  Universities, strife after exact knowledge, 101;
+    advantages and aim of training, 102.
+
+
+  Vallandigham case, Lincoln's attitude, 214.
+
+  Van Buren, Martin, as President, 211.
+
+  Venezuela-Guiana boundary, Cleveland's action, 225
+    Godkin's attitude, 285.
+
+  Veto power, wisdom, 219.
+
+  Voltaire, importance to historians, 51;
+    theatre at Lausanne, 121;
+    and Gibbon, 121.
+
+
+  Walker, F. A., career, 283;
+    _The Nation_ ignores death of, 283, 284.
+
+  Walpole, Sir Spencer, essay on, 161-167;
+    "England," 161, 163, 164;
+    biography of Lord John Russell, 162;
+    knowledge of men, 164;
+    of continental politics, 164;
+    "Studies in Biography," 164;
+    knowledge of practical politics, 165;
+    as man of affairs, 165;
+    style, 165;
+    visit to, character, 165-167;
+    death, 167.
+
+  War power, exemplification by Lincoln, 213-216.
+
+  Warner, C. D., on originality in style, 27.
+
+  Washington, George, as President, 205-207;
+    prescience, 206;
+    as political tradition, 208.
+
+  Webb, J. W., power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Webster, Daniel, basis of style, 53, 54;
+    and presidential nomination in 1852, 86.
+
+  Weed, Thurlow, power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Wells, H. G., on Boston, 138.
+
+  Wentworth, Thomas, Macaulay and Gardiner on, 149.
+
+  West Virginia, railroad riots of 1877, 252.
+
+  Western Reserve University, lecture by author at, 47.
+
+  Wheeler, Joseph, lootings by his cavalry at Columbia, 309.
+
+  Whig party, nominations in 1852, 86.
+
+  Whitman, Marcus, Bourne's essay on, 193.
+
+  William I of Germany, "gray emperor," 127.
+
+  William II of Germany, "traveling emperor," 127.
+
+  Windom, William, and Hayes's New York Custom-house appointments, 255.
+
+  Wine, Gibbon's love for, 135.
+
+  Winthrop, R. C., on E. L. Pierce, 179.
+
+  Woods, C. R., at burning of Columbia, 303, 311, 312.
+
+  Woods, W. B., at burning of Columbia, 311.
+
+  Woolsey, T. D., on Thucydides, 39.
+
+
+  Yale University, lecture by author at, 47.
+
+
+This Index was made for me by D. M. Matteson.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Essays, by James Ford Rhodes
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Essays, by James Ford Rhodes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Historical Essays
+
+Author: James Ford Rhodes
+
+Release Date: April 18, 2008 [EBook #25099]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL ESSAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, David Wilson and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="pg" />
+
+<div class="tp">
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="png.001" id="png.001"></a><span class="ns">[p&nbsp;</span><span
+ class="pgmark">iii</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span><strong><big>HISTORICAL ESSAYS</big></strong><br />
+<small class="tiny">BY</small><br />
+JAMES FORD RHODES, <span class="smcap">LL.D., D.Litt.</span></h1>
+
+<p class="blurb">AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THE
+COMPROMISE OF 1850 TO THE FINAL RESTORATION OF
+<span class="nw">HOME RULE AT THE SOUTH IN 1877</span></p>
+
+<p class="spread"><small>New York</small><br />
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+
+1909<br />
+
+<em><small class="tiny">All rights reserved</small></em></p>
+
+<hr class="mini" />
+
+<p><a name="png.002" id="png.002"></a><span class="ns">[p&nbsp;</span><span
+ class="pgmark">iv</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>
+
+<small class="smcap">Copyright, 1909,<br />
+By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</small></p>
+
+<hr class="mini" />
+
+<p><small>Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1909.</small></p>
+
+<p><small class="tiny">Norwood Press<br />
+J.&nbsp;S. Cushing Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.<br />
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</small></p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="main">
+
+
+
+
+<div class="chap">
+<h2><a name="png.003" id="png.003"></a><span class="ns">[p&nbsp;</span><span
+ class="pgmark">v</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> offering to the public this volume of Essays, all but
+two of which have been read at various places on different
+occasions, I am aware that there is some repetition in ideas
+and illustrations, but, as the dates of their delivery and
+previous publication are indicated, I am letting them stand
+substantially as they were written and delivered.</p>
+
+<p>I am indebted to my son, Daniel P. Rhodes, for a literary
+revision of these Essays; and I have to thank the
+editors of the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>, of <cite>Scribner&#8217;s Magazine</cite>,
+and of the <cite>Century Magazine</cite> for leave to reprint the articles
+which have already appeared in their periodicals.</p>
+
+<p class="dateline"><span class="smcap">Boston</span>, November, 1909.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chap">
+<h2><a name="png.005" id="png.005"></a><span class="ns">[p&nbsp;</span><span
+ class="pgmark">vii</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table class="toc" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="page">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="num">I.</td>
+<td class="ttl">History</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.009">1</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+President&#8217;s Inaugural Address, American Historical Association,
+Boston, December 27, 1899; printed in the <cite>Atlantic
+Monthly</cite> of February, 1900.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">II.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Concerning the Writing of History</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.033">25</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+Address delivered at the Meeting of the American Historical
+Association in Detroit, December, 1900.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">III.</td>
+<td class="ttl">The Profession of Historian</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.055">47</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+Lecture read before the History Club of Harvard University,
+April 27, 1908, and at Yale, Columbia, and Western Reserve
+Universities.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">IV.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Newspapers as Historical Sources</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.089">81</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the American Historical Association in
+Washington on December 29, 1908; printed in the <cite>Atlantic
+Monthly</cite> of May, 1909.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">V.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Speech prepared for the Commencement Dinner
+at Harvard University, June 26, 1901. (Not
+delivered)</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.107">99</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">VI.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Edward Gibbon</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.113">105</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and printed
+in <cite>Scribner&#8217;s Magazine</cite> of June, 1909.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">VII.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Samuel Rawson Gardiner</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.149">141</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at
+the March Meeting of 1902, and printed in the <cite>Atlantic
+Monthly</cite> of May, 1902.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">VIII.</td>
+<td class="ttl">William E.&nbsp;H. Lecky</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.159">151</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at
+the November Meeting of 1903.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">IX.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Sir Spencer Walpole</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.167">159</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at
+the November Meeting of 1907.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num"><a name="png.006" id="png.006"></a><span class="ns">[p&nbsp;</span><span
+ class="pgmark">viii</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>X.</td>
+<td class="ttl">John Richard Green</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.177">169</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+Address at a Gathering of Historians on June 5, 1909, to
+mark the Placing of a Tablet in the Inner Quadrangle of
+Jesus College, Oxford, to the Memory of John Richard
+Green.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XI.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Edward L. Pierce</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.183">175</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+at the October Meeting of 1897.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XII.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Jacob D. Cox</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.191">183</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+at the October Meeting of 1900.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XIII.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Edward Gaylord Bourne</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.197">189</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+at the March Meeting of 1908.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XIV.</td>
+<td class="ttl">The Presidential Office</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.209">201</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+An Essay printed in <cite>Scribner&#8217;s Magazine</cite> of February, 1903.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XV.</td>
+<td class="ttl">A Review of President Hayes&#8217;s Administration</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.251">243</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Graduate
+School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, on October
+8, 1908; printed in the <cite>Century Magazine</cite> for October,
+1909.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XVI.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Edwin Lawrence Godkin</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.273">265</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+Lecture read at Harvard University, April 13, 1908; printed
+in the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite> for September, 1908.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XVII.</td>
+<td class="ttl">Who Burned Columbia?</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.307">299</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+at the November Meeting of 1901, and printed in the
+<cite>American Historical Review</cite> of April, 1902.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num">XVIII.</td>
+<td class="ttl">A New Estimate of Cromwell</td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.323">315</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="desc">
+A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+at the January Meeting of 1898, and printed in the <cite>Atlantic
+Monthly</cite> of June, 1898.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="num lft smcap">Index</td>
+<td class="ttl"></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#png.333">325</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="divider">
+<h2><a name="png.007" id="png.007"></a><span class="ns">[p&nbsp;</span><span
+ class="pgmark">ix</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>HISTORY</h2>
+
+
+<p>President&#8217;s Inaugural Address, American Historical Association,
+Boston, December 27, 1899; printed in the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite> of
+February, 1900.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chap">
+<h1><a name="png.009" id="png.009"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">1</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>HISTORICAL ESSAYS</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>HISTORY<sup><a href="#fn.i.1" name="fna.i.1" id="fna.i.1">1</a></sup></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My</span> theme is history. It is an old subject, which has
+been discoursed about since Herodotus, and I should be
+vain indeed if I flattered myself that I could say aught
+new concerning the methods of writing it, when this has
+for so long a period engaged the minds of so many gifted
+men. Yet to a sympathetic audience, to people who love
+history, there is always the chance that a fresh treatment
+may present the commonplaces in some different combination,
+and augment for the moment an interest which is
+perennial.</p>
+
+<p>Holding a brief for history as do I your representative,
+let me at once concede that it is not the highest form of
+intellectual endeavor; let us at once agree that it were
+better that all the histories ever written were burned than
+for the world to lose Homer and Shakespeare. Yet as it
+is generally true that an advocate rarely admits anything
+without qualification, I should not be loyal to my client
+did I not urge that Shakespeare was historian as well as
+poet. We all prefer his Antony and Cleopatra and Julius
+C&aelig;sar to the Lives in North&#8217;s Plutarch which furnished
+him his materials. The history is in substance as true as
+Plutarch, the dramatic force greater; the language is better
+than that of Sir Thomas North, who himself did a
+remarkable piece of work when he gave his country a
+<a name="png.010" id="png.010"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">2</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>classic by Englishing a French version of the stories of the
+Greek. It is true as Macaulay wrote, the historical plays
+of Shakespeare have superseded history. When we think
+of Henry V, it is of Prince Hal, the boon companion of
+Falstaff, who spent his youth in brawl and riot, and then
+became a sober and duty-loving king; and our idea of
+Richard III. is a deceitful, dissembling, cruel wretch who
+knew no touch of pity, a bloody tyrant who knew no law
+of God or man.</p>
+
+<p>The Achilles of Homer was a very living personage to
+Alexander. How happy he was, said the great general,
+when he visited Troy, &ldquo;in having while he lived so faithful
+a friend, and when he was dead so famous a poet to proclaim
+his actions&rdquo;! In our century, as more in consonance
+with society under the régime of contract, when
+force has largely given, pay to craft, we feel in greater
+sympathy with Ulysses; &ldquo;The one person I would like
+to have met and talked with,&rdquo; Froude used to say, &ldquo;was
+Ulysses. How interesting it would be to have his opinion
+on universal suffrage, and on a House of Parliament where
+Thersites is listened to as patiently as the king of men!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We may also concede that, in the realm of intellectual
+endeavor, the natural and physical sciences should have
+the precedence of history. The present is more important
+than the past, and those sciences which contribute to our
+comfort, place within the reach of the laborer and mechanic
+as common necessaries what would have been the
+highest luxury to the Roman emperor or to the king of
+the Middle Ages, contribute to health and the preservation
+of life, and by the development of railroads make possible
+such a gathering as this,&mdash;these sciences, we cheerfully
+admit, outrank our modest enterprise, which, in the words
+of Herodotus, is &ldquo;to preserve from decay the remembrance
+<a name="png.011" id="png.011"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">3</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of what men have done.&rdquo; It may be true, as a geologist
+once said, in extolling his study at the expense of the
+humanities, &ldquo;Rocks do not lie, although men do;&rdquo; yet, on
+the other hand, the historic sense, which during our century
+has diffused itself widely, has invaded the domain of
+physical science. If you are unfortunate enough to be ill,
+and consult a doctor, he expatiates on the history of your
+disease. It was once my duty to attend the Commencement
+exercises of a technical school, when one of the graduates
+had a thesis on bridges. As he began by telling
+how they were built in Julius C&aelig;sar&#8217;s time, and tracing
+at some length the development of the art during the
+period of the material prosperity of the Roman Empire, he
+had little time and space left to consider their construction
+at the present day. One of the most brilliant surgeons
+I ever knew, the originator of a number of important
+surgical methods, who, being physician as well, was remarkable
+in his expedients for saving life when called to
+counsel in grave and apparently hopeless cases, desired to
+write a book embodying his discoveries and devices, but
+said that the feeling was strong within him that he must
+begin his work with an account of medicine in Egypt, and
+trace its development down to our own time. As he was
+a busy man in his profession, he lacked the leisure to make
+the preliminary historical study, and his book was never
+written. Men of affairs, who, taking &ldquo;the present time
+by the top,&rdquo; are looked upon as devoted to the physical
+and mechanical sciences, continually pay tribute to our art.
+President Garfield, on his deathbed, asked one of his most
+trusted Cabinet advisers, in words that become pathetic as
+one thinks of the opportunities destroyed by the assassin&#8217;s
+bullet, &ldquo;Shall I live in history?&rdquo; A clever politician, who
+knew more of ward meetings, caucuses, and the machinery
+<a name="png.012" id="png.012"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">4</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of conventions than he did of history books, and who was
+earnest for the renomination of President Arthur in 1884,
+said to me, in the way of clinching his argument, &ldquo;That
+administration will live in history.&rdquo; So it was, according
+to Amyot, in the olden time. &ldquo;Whensoever,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;the right sage and virtuous Emperor of Rome, Alexander
+Severus, was to consult of any matter of great importance,
+whether it concerned war or government, he always called
+such to counsel as were reported to be well seen in histories.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;What,&rdquo; demanded Cicero of Atticus, &ldquo;will history say of me
+six hundred years hence?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Proper concessions being made to poetry and the physical
+sciences, our place in the field remains secure. Moreover,
+we live in a fortunate age; for was there ever so propitious a
+time for writing history as in the last forty years? There
+has been a general acquisition of the historic sense. The
+methods of teaching history have so improved that they may
+be called scientific. Even as the chemist and physicist, we
+talk of practice in the laboratory. Most biologists will accept
+Haeckel&#8217;s designation of &ldquo;the last forty years as the age of
+Darwin,&rdquo; for the theory of evolution is firmly established.
+The publication of the Origin of Species, in 1859, converted
+it from a poet&#8217;s dream and philosopher&#8217;s speculation to a
+well-demonstrated scientific theory. Evolution, heredity,
+environment, have become household words, and their
+application to history has influenced every one who has
+had to trace the development of a people, the growth of an
+institution, or the establishment of a cause. Other scientific
+theories and methods have affected physical science as
+potently, but none has entered so vitally into the study of
+man. What hitherto the eye of genius alone could perceive
+may become the common property of every one who
+cares to read a dozen books. But with all of our advantages,
+<a name="png.013" id="png.013"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">5</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>do we write better history than was written before the year
+1859, which we may call the line of demarcation between the
+old and the new? If the English, German, and American
+historical scholars should vote as to who were the two best
+historians, I have little doubt that Thucydides and Tacitus
+would have a pretty large majority. If they were asked
+to name a third choice, it would undoubtedly lie between
+Herodotus and Gibbon. At the meeting of this association
+in Cleveland, when methods of historical teaching were under
+discussion, Herodotus and Thucydides, but no others, were
+mentioned as proper object lessons. What are the merits
+of Herodotus? Accuracy in details, as we understand it,
+was certainly not one of them. Neither does he sift critically
+his facts, but intimates that he will not make a positive
+decision in the case of conflicting testimony. &ldquo;For myself,&rdquo;
+he wrote, &ldquo;my duty is to report all that is said, but I am not
+obliged to believe it all alike,&mdash;a remark which may be
+understood to apply to my whole history.&rdquo; He had none of
+the wholesome skepticism which we deem necessary in the
+weighing of historical evidence; on the contrary, he is
+frequently accused of credulity. Nevertheless, Percy Gardner
+calls his narrative nobler than that of Thucydides, and
+Mahaffy terms it an &ldquo;incomparable history.&rdquo; &ldquo;The truth
+is,&rdquo; wrote Macaulay in his diary, when he was forty-nine
+years old, &ldquo;I admire no historians much except Herodotus,
+Thucydides, and Tacitus.&rdquo; Sir M.&nbsp;E. Grant Duff devoted
+his presidential address of 1895, before the Royal Historical
+Society, wholly to Herodotus, ending with the conclusion,
+&ldquo;The fame of Herodotus, which has a little waned, will
+surely wax again.&rdquo; Whereupon the London Times devoted
+a leader to the subject. &ldquo;We are concerned,&rdquo; it said, &ldquo;to
+hear, on authority so eminent, that one of the most delightful
+writers of antiquity has a little waned of late in favor with the
+<a name="png.014" id="png.014"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">6</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>world. If this indeed be the case, so much the worse for
+the world&hellip;. When Homer and Dante and Shakespeare
+are neglected, then will Herodotus cease to be read.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There we have the secret of his hold upon the minds of
+men. He knows how to tell a story, said Professor Hart,
+in the discussion previously referred to, in Cleveland. He
+has &ldquo;an epic unity of plan,&rdquo; writes Professor Jebb. Herodotus
+has furnished delight to all generations, while Polybius,
+more accurate and painstaking, a learned historian and a
+practical statesman, gathers dust on the shelf or is read as a
+penance. Nevertheless, it may be demonstrated from the
+historical literature of England of our century that literary
+style and great power of narration alone will not give a man
+a niche in the temple of history. Herodotus showed diligence
+and honesty, without which his other qualities would
+have failed to secure him the place he holds in the estimation
+of historical scholars.</p>
+
+<p>From Herodotus we naturally turn to Thucydides, who in
+the beginning charms historical students by his impression
+of the seriousness and dignity of his business. History, he
+writes, will be &ldquo;found profitable by those who desire an
+exact knowledge of the past as a key to the future, which in
+all human probability will repeat or resemble the past. My
+history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition
+which is heard and forgotten.&rdquo; Diligence, accuracy, love
+of truth, and impartiality are merits commonly ascribed to
+Thucydides, and the internal evidence of the history bears
+out fully the general opinion. But, in my judgment, there
+is a tendency to rate, in the comparative estimates, the
+Athenian too high, for the possession of these qualities; for
+certainly some modern writers have possessed all of these
+merits in an eminent degree. When Jowett wrote in the preface
+to his translation, Thucydides &ldquo;stands absolutely alone
+<a name="png.015" id="png.015"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">7</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>among the historians, not only of Hellas, but of the world, in
+his impartiality and love of truth,&rdquo; he was unaware that a
+son of his own university was writing the history of a momentous
+period of his own country, in a manner to impugn the
+correctness of that statement. When the Jowett Thucydides
+appeared, Samuel R. Gardiner had published eight volumes
+of his history, though he had not reached the great Civil War,
+and his reputation, which has since grown with a cumulative
+force, was not fully established; but I have now no hesitation
+in saying that the internal evidence demonstrates that in
+impartiality and love of truth Gardiner is the peer of Thucydides.
+From the point of view of external evidence, the
+case is even stronger for Gardiner; he submits to a harder
+test. That he has been able to treat so stormy, so controverted,
+and so well known a period as the seventeenth
+century in England, with hardly a question of his impartiality,
+is a wonderful tribute. In fact, in an excellent
+review of his work I have seen him criticised for being too
+impartial. On the other hand, Grote thinks that he has
+found Thucydides in error,&mdash;in the long dialogue between
+the Athenian representatives and the Melians. &ldquo;This dialogue,&rdquo;
+Grote writes, &ldquo;can hardly represent what actually
+passed, except as to a few general points which the historian
+has followed out into deductions and illustrations, thus
+dramatizing the given situation in a powerful and characteristic
+manner.&rdquo; Those very words might characterize Shakespeare&#8217;s
+account of the assassination of Julius C&aelig;sar, and his
+reproduction of the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony.
+Compare the relation in Plutarch with the third act of the
+tragedy, and see how, in his amplification of the story, Shakespeare
+has remained true to the essential facts of the time.
+Plutarch gives no account of the speeches of Brutus and
+Mark Antony, confining himself, to an allusion to the one,
+<a name="png.016" id="png.016"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">8</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and a reference to the other; but Appian of Alexandria, in
+his history, has reported them. The speeches in Appian
+lack the force which they have in Shakespeare, nor do they
+seemingly fit into the situation as well. I have adverted
+to this criticism of Grote, not that I love Thucydides less,
+but that I love Shakespeare more. For my part, the historian&#8217;s
+candid acknowledgment in the beginning has convinced
+me of the essential&mdash;not the literal&mdash;truth of his
+accounts of speeches and dialogues. &ldquo;As to the speeches,&rdquo;
+wrote the Athenian, &ldquo;which were made either before or
+during the war, it was hard for me, and for others who
+reported them to me, to recollect the exact words. I have
+therefore put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments
+proper to the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be
+likely to express them; while at the same time I endeavored,
+as nearly as I could, to give the general purport of what
+was actually said.&rdquo; That is the very essence of candor.
+But be the historian as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, he
+shall not escape calumny. Mahaffy declares that, &ldquo;although
+all modern historians quote Thucydides with more confidence
+than they would quote the Gospels,&rdquo; the Athenian has
+exaggerated; he is one-sided, partial, misleading, dry, and
+surly. Other critics agree with Mahaffy that he has been
+unjust to Cleon, and has screened Nicias from blame that was
+his due for defective generalship.</p>
+
+<p>We approach Tacitus with respect. We rise from reading
+his Annals, his History, and his Germany with reverence.
+We know that we have been in the society of a gentleman
+who had a high standard of morality and honor. We feel
+that our guide was a serious student, a solid thinker, and a
+man of the world; that he expressed his opinions and delivered
+his judgments with a remarkable freedom from
+prejudice. He draws us to him with sympathy. He
+<a name="png.017" id="png.017"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">9</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>sounds the same mournful note which we detect in Thucydides.
+Tacitus deplores the folly and dissoluteness of the
+rulers of his nation; he bewails the misfortunes of his country.
+The merits we ascribe to Thucydides, diligence, accuracy,
+love of truth, impartiality, are his. The desire to quote
+from Tacitus is irresistible. &ldquo;The more I meditate,&rdquo; he
+writes, &ldquo;on the events of ancient and modern times, the more
+I am struck with the capricious uncertainty which mocks
+the calculations of men in all their transactions.&rdquo; Again:
+&ldquo;Possibly there is in all things a kind of cycle, and there may
+be moral revolutions just as there are changes of seasons.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Commonplaces!&rdquo; sneer the scientific historians. True
+enough, but they might not have been commonplaces if
+Tacitus had not uttered them, and his works had not been
+read and re-read until they have become a common possession
+of historical students. From a thinker who deemed the time
+&ldquo;out of joint,&rdquo; as Tacitus obviously did, and who, had he not
+possessed great strength of mind and character, might
+have lapsed into a gloomy pessimism, what noble words are
+these: &ldquo;This I regard as history&#8217;s highest function: to let no
+worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the
+reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds.&rdquo;
+The modesty of the Roman is fascinating. &ldquo;Much of what
+I have related,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;and shall have to relate, may
+perhaps, I am aware, seem petty trifles to record&hellip;. My
+labors are circumscribed and unproductive of renown to
+the author.&rdquo; How agreeable to place in contrast with this
+the prophecy of his friend, the younger Pliny, in a letter to
+the historian: &ldquo;I augur&mdash;nor does my augury deceive me&mdash;that
+your histories will be immortal: hence all the more do
+I desire to find a place in them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To my mind, one of the most charming things in historical
+literature is the praise which one great historian bestows
+<a name="png.018" id="png.018"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">10</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>upon another. Gibbon speaks of &ldquo;the discerning eye&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;masterly pencil of Tacitus,&mdash;the first of historians
+who applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;whose writings will instruct the last generations of mankind.&rdquo;
+He has produced an immortal work, &ldquo;every sentence
+of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and
+most lively images.&rdquo; I mention Gibbon, for it is more than
+a strong probability that in diligence, accuracy, and love of
+truth he is the equal of Tacitus. A common edition of the
+History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is
+that with notes by Dean Milman, Guizot, and Dr. Smith.
+Niebuhr, Villemain, and Sir James Mackintosh are each
+drawn upon for criticism. Did ever such a fierce light beat
+upon a history? With what keen relish do the annotators
+pounce upon mistakes or inaccuracies, and in that portion of
+the work which ends with the fall of the Western Empire
+how few do they find! Would Tacitus stand the supreme
+test better? There is, so far as I know, only one case in
+which we may compare his Annals with an original record.
+On bronze tablets found at Lyons in the sixteenth century
+is engraved the same speech made by the Emperor Claudius
+to the Senate that Tacitus reports. &ldquo;Tacitus and the tablets,&rdquo;
+writes Professor Jebb, &ldquo;disagree hopelessly in language
+and in nearly all the detail, but agree in the general
+line of argument.&rdquo; Gibbon&#8217;s work has richly deserved its
+life of more than one hundred years, a period which I believe
+no other modern history has endured. Niebuhr, in a course
+of lectures at Bonn, in 1829, said that Gibbon&#8217;s &ldquo;work will
+never be excelled.&rdquo; At the Gibbon Centenary Commemoration
+in London, in 1894, many distinguished men, among
+whom the Church had a distinct representation, gathered
+together to pay honor to him who, in the words of Frederic
+Harrison, had written &ldquo;the most perfect book that
+<a name="png.019" id="png.019"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">11</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>English prose (outside its fiction) possesses.&rdquo; Mommsen, prevented
+by age and work from being present, sent his tribute.
+No one, he said, would in the future be able to read the history
+of the Roman Empire unless he read Edward Gibbon.
+The Times, in a leader devoted to the subject, apparently
+expressed the general voice: &ldquo;<span class="lthinsp">&lsquo;Back</span> to Gibbon&rsquo; is already,
+both here and among the scholars of Germany and France,
+the watchword of the younger historians.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I have now set forth certain general propositions which,
+with time for adducing the evidence in detail, might, I
+think, be established: that, in the consensus of learned
+people, Thucydides and Tacitus stand at the head of historians;
+and that it is not alone their accuracy, love of truth,
+and impartiality which entitle them to this preëminence
+since Gibbon and Gardiner among the moderns possess
+equally the same qualities. What is it, then, that makes
+these men supreme? In venturing a solution of this question,
+I confine myself necessarily to the English translations
+of the Greek and Latin authors. We have thus a common
+denominator of language, and need not take into account
+the unrivaled precision and terseness of the Greek and the
+force and clearness of the Latin. It seems to me that one
+special merit of Thucydides and Tacitus is their compressed
+narrative,&mdash;that they have related so many events and put
+so much meaning in so few words. Our manner of writing
+history is really curious. The histories which cover long
+periods of time are brief; those which have to do with but
+a few years are long. The works of Thucydides and Tacitus
+are not like our compendiums of history, which merely touch
+on great affairs, since want of space precludes any elaboration.
+Tacitus treats of a comparatively short epoch, Thucydides
+of a much shorter one: both histories are brief. Thucydides
+and Macaulay are examples of extremes. The Athenian
+<a name="png.020" id="png.020"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">12</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>tells the story of twenty-four years in one volume;
+the Englishman takes nearly five volumes of equal size for
+his account of seventeen years. But it is safe to say that
+Thucydides tells us as much that is worth knowing as
+Macaulay. One is concise, the other is not. It is impossible
+to paraphrase the fine parts of Thucydides, but Macaulay
+lends himself readily to such an exercise. The thought of
+the Athenian is so close that he has got rid of all redundancies
+of expression: hence the effort to reproduce his ideas in
+other words fails. The account of the plague in Athens
+has been studied and imitated, and every imitation falls
+short of the original not only in vividness but in brevity.
+It is the triumph of art that in this and in other splendid
+portions we wish more had been told. As the French say,
+&ldquo;the secret of wearying is to say all,&rdquo; and this the Athenian
+thoroughly understood. Between our compendiums, which
+tell too little, and our long general histories, which tell too
+much, are Thucydides and Tacitus.</p>
+
+<p>Again, it is a common opinion that our condensed histories
+lack life and movement. This is due in part to their
+being written generally from a study of second-hand&mdash;not
+original&mdash;materials. Those of the Athenian and the
+Roman are mainly the original.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think, however, that we may infer that we have
+a much greater mass of materials, and thereby excuse our
+modern prolixity. In written documents, of course, we exceed
+the ancients, for we have been flooded with these by
+the art of printing. Yet any one who has investigated any
+period knows how the same facts are told over and over
+again, in different ways, by various writers; and if one can
+get beyond the mass of verbiage and down to the really
+significant original material, what a simplification of ideas
+there is, what a lightening of the load! I own that this
+<a name="png.021" id="png.021"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">13</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>process of reduction is painful, and thereby our work is made
+more difficult than that of the ancients. A historian will
+adapt himself naturally to the age in which he lives, and
+Thucydides made use of the matter that was at his hand.
+&ldquo;Of the events of the war,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;I have not ventured
+to speak from any chance information, nor according to any
+notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I
+either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made
+the most careful and particular inquiry. The task was a
+laborious one, because eye-witnesses of the same occurrences
+gave different accounts of them, as they remembered or
+were interested in the actions of one side or the other.&rdquo; His
+materials, then, were what he saw and heard. His books
+and his manuscripts were living men. Our distinguished
+military historian, John C. Ropes, whose untimely death we
+deplore, might have written his history from the same sort
+of materials; for he was contemporary with our Civil War,
+and followed the daily events with intense interest. A
+brother of his was killed at Gettysburg, and he had many
+friends in the army. He paid at least one memorable visit
+to Meade&#8217;s headquarters in the field, and at the end of the
+war had a mass of memories and impressions of the great
+conflict. He never ceased his inquiries; he never lost a
+chance to get a particular account from those who took
+part in battles or campaigns; and before he began his Story
+of the Civil War, he too could have said, &ldquo;I made the most
+careful and particular inquiry&rdquo; of generals and officers on
+both sides, and of men in civil office privy to the great
+transactions. His knowledge drawn from living lips was
+marvelous, and his conversation, when he poured this knowledge
+forth, often took the form of a flowing narrative in an
+animated style. While there are not, so far as I remember,
+any direct references in his two volumes to these memories,
+<a name="png.022" id="png.022"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">14</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>or to memoranda of conversations which he had with living
+actors after the close of the war drama, and while his main
+authority is the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
+Armies,&mdash;which, no one appreciated better than he,
+were unique historical materials,&mdash;nevertheless this personal
+knowledge trained his judgment and gave color to
+his narrative.</p>
+
+<p>It is pretty clear that Thucydides spent a large part of a
+life of about threescore years and ten in gathering materials
+and writing his history. The mass of facts which he set
+down or stored away in his memory must have been enormous.
+He was a man of business, and had a home in
+Thrace as well as in Athens, traveling probably at fairly
+frequent intervals between the two places; but the main
+portion of the first forty years of his life was undoubtedly
+spent in Athens, where, during those glorious years of peace
+and the process of beautifying the city, he received the best
+education a man could get. To walk about the city and
+view the buildings and statues was both directly and insensibly
+a refining influence. As Thucydides himself, in
+the funeral oration of Pericles, said of the works which the
+Athenian saw around him, &ldquo;the daily delight of them
+banishes gloom.&rdquo; There was the opportunity to talk with as
+good conversers as the world has ever known; and he undoubtedly
+saw much of the men who were making history.
+There was the great theater and the sublime poetry. In a
+word, the life of Thucydides was adapted to the gathering of
+a mass of historical materials of the best sort; and his daily
+walk, his reading, his intense thought, gave him an intellectual
+grasp of the facts he has so ably handled. Of course
+he was a genius, and he wrote in an effective literary style;
+but seemingly his natural parts and acquired talents are
+directed to this: a digestion of his materials, and a
+<a name="png.023" id="png.023"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">15</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>compression of his narrative without taking the vigor out of his
+story in a manner I believe to be without parallel. He
+devoted a life to writing a volume. His years after the
+peace was broken, his career as a general, his banishment
+and enforced residence in Thrace, his visit to the countries
+of the Peloponnesian allies with whom Athens was at war,&mdash;all
+these gave him a signal opportunity to gather materials,
+and to assimilate them in the gathering. We may fancy
+him looking at an alleged fact on all sides, and turning it over
+and over in his mind; we know that he must have meditated
+long on ideas, opinions, and events; and the result is a brief,
+pithy narrative. Tradition hath it that Demosthenes copied
+out this history eight times, or even learned it by heart.
+Chatham, urging the removal of the forces from Boston, had
+reason to refer to the history of Greece, and, that he might
+impress it upon the lords that he knew whereof he spoke,
+declared, &ldquo;I have read Thucydides.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Of Tacitus likewise is conciseness a well-known merit.
+Living in an age of books and libraries, he drew more from
+the written word than did Thucydides; and his method of
+working, therefore, resembled more our own. These are common
+expressions of his: &ldquo;It is related by most of the writers
+of those times;&rdquo; I adopt the account &ldquo;in which the authors
+are agreed;&rdquo; this account &ldquo;agrees with those of the other
+writers.&rdquo; Relating a case of recklessness of vice in Messalina,
+he acknowledges that it will appear fabulous, and asserts
+his truthfulness thus: &ldquo;But I would not dress up my narrative
+with fictions, to give it an air of marvel, rather than
+relate what has been stated to me or written by my seniors.&rdquo;
+He also speaks of the authority of tradition, and tells what he
+remembers &ldquo;to have heard from aged men.&rdquo; He will not
+paraphrase the eloquence of Seneca after he had his veins
+opened, because the very words of the philosopher had been
+<a name="png.024" id="png.024"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">16</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>published; but when, a little later, Flavius the tribune came
+to die, the historian gives this report of his defiance of Nero.
+&ldquo;I hated you,&rdquo; the tribune said to the emperor; &ldquo;nor had
+you a soldier more true to you while you deserved to be loved.
+I began to hate you from the time you showed yourself
+the impious murderer of your mother and your wife, a
+charioteer, a stage-player, an incendiary.&rdquo; &ldquo;I have given
+the very words,&rdquo; Tacitus adds, &ldquo;because they were not,
+like those of Seneca, published, though the rough and vigorous
+sentiments of a soldier ought to be no less known.&rdquo;
+Everywhere we see in Tacitus, as in Thucydides, a dislike of
+superfluous detail, a closeness of thought, a compression of
+language. He was likewise a man of affairs, but his life
+work was his historical writings, which, had we all of them,
+would fill probably four moderate-sized octavo volumes.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, then: Thucydides and Tacitus are superior
+to the historians who have written in our century, because,
+by long reflection and studious method, they have better
+digested their materials and compressed their narrative.
+Unity in narration has been adhered to more rigidly. They
+stick closer to their subject. They are not allured into the
+fascinating bypaths of narration, which are so tempting to
+men who have accumulated a mass of facts, incidents, and
+opinions. One reason why Macaulay is so prolix is because
+he could not resist the temptation to treat events which had
+a picturesque side and which were suited to his literary
+style; so that, as John Morley says, &ldquo;in many portions of
+his too elaborated history of William III. he describes a
+large number of events about which, I think, no sensible man
+can in the least care either how they happened, or whether
+indeed they happened at all or not.&rdquo; If I am right in my
+supposition that Thucydides and Tacitus had a mass of
+materials, they showed reserve and discretion in throwing a
+<a name="png.025" id="png.025"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">17</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>large part of them away, as not being necessary or important
+to the posterity for which they were writing. This could
+only be the result of a careful comparison of their materials,
+and of long meditation on their relative value. I suspect
+that they cared little whether a set daily task was accomplished
+or not; for if you propose to write only one large
+volume or four moderate-sized volumes in a lifetime, art is
+not too long nor is life too short.</p>
+
+<p>Another superiority of the classical historians, as I reckon,
+arose from the fact that they wrote what was practically
+contemporaneous history. Herodotus was born 484&nbsp;<span class="smcap lc">B.C.</span>,
+and the most important and accurate part of his history is
+the account of the Persian invasion which took place four
+years later. The case of Thucydides is more remarkable.
+Born in 471&nbsp;<span class="smcap lc">B.C.</span>, he relates the events which happened
+between 435 and 411, when he was between the ages of
+thirty-six and sixty. Tacitus, born in 52&nbsp;<span class="smcap lc">A.D.</span>, covered
+with his Annals and History the years between 14 and 96.
+&ldquo;Herodotus and Thucydides belong to an age in which the
+historian draws from life and for life,&rdquo; writes Professor Jebb.
+It is manifestly easier to describe a life you know than one
+you must imagine, which is what you must do if you aim to
+relate events which took place before your own and your
+father&#8217;s time. In many treatises which have been written
+demanding an extraordinary equipment for the historian, it
+is generally insisted that he shall have a fine constructive
+imagination; for how can he re-create his historic period
+unless he live in it? In the same treatises it is asserted that
+contemporary history cannot be written correctly, for impartiality
+in the treatment of events near at hand is impossible.
+Therefore the canon requires the quality of a
+great poet, and denies that there may be had the merit of a
+judge in a country where there are no great poets, but where
+<a name="png.026" id="png.026"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">18</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>candid judges abound. Does not the common rating of
+Thucydides and Tacitus refute the dictum that history within
+the memory of men living cannot be written truthfully and
+fairly? Given, then, the judicial mind, how much easier to
+write it! The rare quality of a poet&#8217;s imagination is no
+longer necessary, for your boyhood recollections, your
+youthful experiences, your successes and failures of manhood,
+the grandfather&#8217;s tales, the parent&#8217;s recollections,
+the conversation in society,&mdash;all these put you in vital
+touch with the life you seek to describe. These not only
+give color and freshness to the vivifying of the facts you
+must find in the record, but they are in a way materials
+themselves, not strictly authentic, but of the kind that direct
+you in search and verification. Not only is no extraordinary
+ability required to write contemporary history, but the labor
+of the historian is lightened, and Dryasdust is no longer his
+sole guide. The funeral oration of Pericles is pretty nearly
+what was actually spoken, or else it is the substance of the
+speech written out in the historian&#8217;s own words. Its intensity
+of feeling and the fitting of it so well into the situation
+indicate it to be a living contemporaneous document, and at
+the same time it has that universal application which we
+note in so many speeches of Shakespeare. A few years after
+our Civil War, a lawyer in a city of the middle West, who had
+been selected to deliver the Memorial Day oration, came
+to a friend of his in despair because he could write nothing
+but the commonplaces about those who had died for the
+Union and for the freedom of a race which had been uttered
+many times before, and he asked for advice. &ldquo;Take the
+funeral oration of Pericles for a model,&rdquo; was the reply.
+&ldquo;Use his words where they will fit, and dress up the rest to
+suit our day.&rdquo; The orator was surprised to find how much
+of the oration could be used bodily, and how much, with
+<a name="png.027" id="png.027"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">19</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>adaptation, was germane to his subject. But slight alterations
+are necessary to make the opening sentence this:
+&ldquo;Most of those who have spoken here have commended the
+law-giver who added this oration to our other customs;
+it seemed to them a worthy thing that such an honor should
+be given to the dead who have fallen on the field of battle.&rdquo;
+In many places you may let the speech run on with hardly a
+change. &ldquo;In the face of death [these men] resolved to rely
+upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they
+were minded to resist and suffer rather than to fly and save
+their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but
+on the battlefield their feet stood fast; and while for a moment
+they were in the hands of fortune, at the height, not of
+terror, but of glory, they passed away. Such was the end of
+these men; they were worthy of their country.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Consider for a moment, as the work of a contemporary, the
+book which continues the account of the Sicilian expedition,
+and ends with the disaster at Syracuse. &ldquo;In the describing
+and reporting whereof,&rdquo; Plutarch writes, &ldquo;Thucydides hath
+gone beyond himself, both for variety and liveliness of narration,
+as also in choice and excellent words.&rdquo; &ldquo;There is no
+prose composition in the world,&rdquo; wrote Macaulay, &ldquo;which I
+place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides&hellip;. I was
+delighted to find in Gray&#8217;s letters, the other day, this query to
+Wharton: &lsquo;The retreat from Syracuse,&mdash;is it or is it not the
+finest thing you ever read in your <span class="rthinsp">life?&rsquo;</span>&rdquo; In the Annals of
+Tacitus we have an account of part of the reign of Emperor
+Nero, which is intense in its interest as the picture of a state
+of society that would be incredible, did we not know that
+our guide was a truthful man. One rises from a perusal of
+this with the trite expression, &ldquo;Truth is stranger than
+fiction;&rdquo; and one need only compare the account of Tacitus
+with the romance of Quo Vadis to be convinced that true
+<a name="png.028" id="png.028"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">20</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>history is more interesting than a novel. One of the most
+vivid impressions I ever had came immediately after
+reading the story of Nero and Agrippina in Tacitus, from a
+view of the statue of Agrippina in the National Museum
+at Naples.<sup><a href="#fn.i.2" name="fna.i.2" id="fna.i.2">2</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>It will be worth our while now to sum up what I think
+may be established with sufficient time and care. Natural
+ability being presupposed, the qualities necessary for a
+historian are diligence, accuracy, love of truth, impartiality,
+the thorough digestion of his materials by careful selection
+and long meditating, and the compression of his narrative
+into the smallest compass consistent with the life of his story.
+He must also have a power of expression suitable for his
+purpose. All these qualities, we have seen, were possessed
+by Thucydides and Tacitus; and we have seen furthermore
+that, by bringing to bear these endowments and acquirements
+upon contemporary history, their success has been
+greater than it would have been had they treated a more
+distant period. Applying these considerations to the writing
+of history in America, it would seem that all we have
+to gain in method, in order that when the genius appears
+he shall rival the great Greek and the great Roman, is thorough
+assimilation of materials and rigorous conciseness
+in relation. I admit that the two things we lack are difficult
+to get as our own. In the collection of materials, in criticism
+and detailed analysis, in the study of cause and effect, in
+applying the principle of growth, of evolution, we certainly
+surpass the ancients. But if we live in the age of Darwin,
+we also live in an age of newspapers and magazines, when,
+as Lowell said, not only great events, but a vast &ldquo;number of
+trivial incidents, are now recorded, and this dust of time gets
+<a name="png.029" id="png.029"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">21</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in our eyes&rdquo;; when distractions are manifold; when the desire
+&ldquo;to see one&#8217;s name in print&rdquo; and make books takes possession
+of us all. If one has something like an original idea or
+a fresh combination of truisms, one obtains easily a hearing.
+The hearing once had, something of a success being made, the
+writer is urged by magazine editors and by publishers for
+more. The good side of this is apparent. It is certainly a
+wholesome indication that a demand exists for many serious
+books, but the evil is that one is pressed to publish his
+thoughts before he has them fully matured. The periods of
+fruitful meditation out of which emerged the works of
+Thucydides and Tacitus seem not to be a natural incident of
+our time. To change slightly the meaning of Lowell, &ldquo;the
+bustle of our lives keeps breaking the thread of that attention
+which is the material of memory, till no one has patience
+to spin from it a continuous thread of thought.&rdquo; We have
+the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck
+with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks
+and Matthew Arnold&#8217;s characterization of the Americans.
+Greek thought, it is said, goes straight to the mark, and
+penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote,
+&ldquo;think straight and see clear.&rdquo; Greek life was adapted to
+meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the
+short cut to the goal make us averse to the patient and elaborate
+method of the ancients. In manner of expression,
+however, we have improved. The Fourth of July spread-eagle
+oration, not uncommon even in New England in former
+days, would now be listened to hardly anywhere without
+merriment. In a Lowell Institute lecture in 1855 Lowell
+said, &ldquo;In modern times, the desire for startling expression
+is so strong that people hardly think a thought is good for
+anything unless it goes off with a <em>pop</em>, like a ginger-beer
+cork.&rdquo; No one would thus characterize our present writing.
+<a name="png.030" id="png.030"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">22</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Between reserve in expression and reserve in thought there
+must be interaction. We may hope, therefore, that the
+trend in the one will become the trend in the other, and that
+we may look for as great historians in the future as in the
+past. The Thucydides or Tacitus of the future will write
+his history from the original materials, knowing that there
+only will he find the living spirit; but he will have the helps of
+the modern world. He will have at his hand monographs of
+students whom the professors of history in our colleges are
+teaching with diligence and wisdom, and he will accept these
+aids with thankfulness in his laborious search. He will have
+grasped the generalizations and methods of physical science,
+but he must know to the bottom his Thucydides and Tacitus.
+He will recognize in Homer and Shakespeare the great
+historians of human nature, and he will ever attempt,
+although feeling that failure is certain, to wrest from them
+their secret of narration, to acquire their art of portrayal
+of character. He must be a man of the world, but equally
+well a man of the academy. If, like Thucydides and Tacitus,
+the American historian chooses the history of his own
+country as his field, he may infuse his patriotism into his
+narrative. He will speak of the broad acres and their
+products, the splendid industrial development due to the
+capacity and energy of the captains of industry; but he will
+like to dwell on the universities and colleges, on the great
+numbers seeking a higher education, on the morality of the
+people, their purity of life, their domestic happiness. He
+will never be weary of referring to Washington and Lincoln,
+feeling that a country with such exemplars is indeed one to
+awaken envy, and he will not forget the brave souls who
+followed where they led. I like to think of the Memorial
+Day orator, speaking thirty years ago with his mind full of
+the Civil War and our Revolution, giving utterance to these
+<a name="png.031" id="png.031"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">23</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>noble words of Pericles: &ldquo;I would have you day by day fix
+your eyes upon the greatness of your country, until you become
+filled with love of her; and when you are impressed by
+the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire has been
+acquired by men who knew their duty and had the courage
+to do it; who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor
+always present to them; and who, if ever they failed in an
+enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their
+country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest
+offering which they could present at her feast. They received
+each one for himself a praise which grows not old,
+and the noblest of all sepulchers. For the whole earth is
+the sepulcher of illustrious men; not only are they commemorated
+by columns and inscriptions in their own country,
+but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten
+memorial of them, graven not on stone, but in the hearts of
+men.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.i.1" id="fn.i.1" href="#fna.i.1">1</a>
+President&#8217;s Inaugural Address, American Historical Association, Boston,
+December 27, 1899; printed in the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1900.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.i.2" id="fn.i.2" href="#fna.i.2">2</a>
+Since this essay was first printed I have seen the authenticity of
+this portrait statue questioned.</p>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="divider">
+<h2><a name="png.033" id="png.033"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">25</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>CONCERNING THE WRITING OF HISTORY</h2>
+
+<p>Address delivered at the Meeting of the American Historical Association
+in Detroit, December, 1900.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.035" id="png.035"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">27</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>CONCERNING THE WRITING OF HISTORY</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Called</span> on at the last moment, owing to the illness of Mr.
+Eggleston, to take the place of one whose absence can never
+be fully compensated, I present to you a paper on the writing
+of history. It is in a way a continuance of my inaugural
+address before this association one year ago, and despite
+the continuity of the thought I have endeavored to treat the
+same subject from a different point of view. While going
+over the same ground and drawing my lessons from the same
+historians, it is new matter so far as I have had the honor to
+present it to the American Historical Association.</p>
+
+<p>A historian, to make a mark, must show some originality
+somewhere in his work. The originality may be in a method
+of investigation; it may be in the use of some hitherto inaccessible
+or unprinted material; it may be in the employment
+of some sources of information open to everybody, but not
+before used, or it may be in a fresh combination of well-known
+and well-elaborated facts. It is this last-named feature
+that leads Mr. Winsor to say, in speaking of the different
+views that may be honestly maintained from working over
+the same material, &ldquo;The study of history is perennial.&rdquo; I
+think I can make my meaning clearer as to the originality one
+should try to infuse into historical work by drawing an illustration
+from the advice of a literary man as to the art of
+writing. Charles Dudley Warner once said to me, &ldquo;Every
+one who writes should have something to add to the world&#8217;s
+stock of knowledge or literary expression. If he falls
+<a name="png.036" id="png.036"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">28</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>unconsciously into imitation or quotation, he takes away from
+his originality. No matter if some great writer has expressed
+the thought in better language than you can use, if you take
+his words you detract from your own originality. Express
+your thought feebly in your own way rather than with
+strength by borrowing the words of another.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This same principle in the art of authorship may be applied
+to the art of writing history. &ldquo;Follow your own star,&rdquo;
+said Emerson, &ldquo;and it will lead you to that which none
+other can attain. Imitation is suicide. You must take
+yourself for better or worse as your own portion.&rdquo; Any one
+who is bent upon writing history, may be sure that there is
+in him some originality, that he can add something to the
+knowledge of some period. Let him give himself to meditation,
+to searching out what epoch and what kind of treatment
+of that epoch is best adapted to his powers and to his
+training. I mean not only the collegiate training, but the
+sort of training one gets consciously or unconsciously from
+the very circumstances of one&#8217;s life. In the persistence of
+thinking, his subject will flash upon him. Parkman, said
+Lowell, showed genius in the choice of his subject. The
+recent biography of Parkman emphasizes the idea which
+we get from his works&mdash;that only a man who lived in the
+virgin forests of this country and loved them, and who had
+traveled in the far West as a pioneer, with Indians for companions,
+could have done that work. Parkman&#8217;s experience
+cannot be had by any one again, and he brought to bear the
+wealth of it in that fifty years&#8217; occupation of his. Critics of
+exact knowledge&mdash;such as Justin Winsor, for instance&mdash;find
+limitations in Parkman&#8217;s books that may impair the
+permanence of his fame, but I suspect that his is the only
+work in American history that cannot and will not be written
+over again. The reason of it is that he had a unique
+<a name="png.037" id="png.037"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">29</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>life which has permeated his narrative, giving it the stamp of
+originality. No man whose training had been gained wholly
+in the best schools of Germany, France, or England could
+have written those books. A training racy of the soil was
+needed. &ldquo;A practical knowledge,&rdquo; wrote Niebuhr, &ldquo;must
+support historical jurisprudence, and if any one has got that
+he can easily master all scholastic speculations.&rdquo; A man&#8217;s
+knowledge of everyday life in some way fits him for a certain
+field of historical study&mdash;in that field lies success. In
+seeking a period, no American need confine himself to his
+own country. &ldquo;European history for Americans,&rdquo; said
+Motley, &ldquo;has to be almost entirely rewritten.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I shall touch upon only two of the headings of historical
+originality which I have mentioned. The first that I shall
+speak of is the employment of some sources of information
+open to everybody, but not before used. A significant case
+of this in American history is the use which Doctor von
+Holst made of newspaper material. <cite>Niles&#8217;s Register</cite>, a lot
+of newspaper cuttings, as well as speeches and state papers
+in a compact form, had, of course, been referred to by many
+writers who dealt with the period they covered, but in the
+part of his history covering the ten years from 1850 to 1860
+von Holst made an extensive and varied employment of
+newspapers by studying the newspaper files themselves.
+As the aim of history is truth, and as newspapers fail sadly
+in accuracy, it is not surprising that many historical students
+believe that the examination of newspapers for any given
+period will not pay for the labor and drudgery involved;
+but the fact that a trained German historical scholar and
+teacher at a German university should have found some
+truth in our newspaper files when he came to write the history
+of our own country, gives to their use for that period
+the seal of scientific approval. Doctor von Holst used this
+<a name="png.038" id="png.038"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">30</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>material with pertinence and effect; his touch was nice.
+I used to wonder at his knowledge of the newspaper world,
+of the men who made and wrote our journals, until he told
+me that when he first came to this country one of his methods
+in gaining a knowledge of English was to read the advertisements
+in the newspapers. Reflection will show one
+what a picture of the life of a people this must be, in addition
+to the news columns.</p>
+
+<p>No one, of course, will go to newspapers for facts if he can
+find those facts in better-attested documents. The haste
+with which the daily records of the world&#8217;s doings are made
+up precludes sifting and revision. Yet in the decade between
+1850 and 1860 you will find facts in the newspapers
+which are nowhere else set down. Public men of commanding
+position were fond of writing letters to the journals
+with a view to influencing public sentiment. These letters
+in the newspapers are as valuable historical material as if
+they were carefully collected, edited, and published in the
+form of books. Speeches were made which must be read,
+and which will be found nowhere but in the journals.
+The immortal debates of Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 were
+never put into a book until 1860, existing previously only
+in newspaper print. Newspapers are sometimes important
+in fixing a date and in establishing the whereabouts of a man.
+If, for example, a writer draws a fruitful inference from
+the alleged fact that President Lincoln went to see Edwin
+Booth play Hamlet in Washington in February, 1863, and
+if one finds by a consultation of the newspaper theatrical
+advertisements that Edwin Booth did not visit Washington
+during that month, the significance of the inference is destroyed.
+Lincoln paid General Scott a memorable visit at
+West Point in June, 1862. You may, if I remember correctly,
+search the books in vain to get at the exact date of
+<a name="png.039" id="png.039"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">31</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>this visit; but turn to the newspaper files and you find that
+the President left Washington at such an hour on such a day,
+arrived at Jersey City at a stated time, and made the transfer
+to the other railroad which took him to the station opposite
+West Point. The time of his leaving West Point and
+the hour of his return to Washington are also given.</p>
+
+<p>The value of newspapers as an indication of public sentiment
+is sometimes questioned, but it can hardly be doubted
+that the average man will read the newspaper with the
+sentiments of which he agrees. &ldquo;I inquired about newspaper
+opinion,&rdquo; said Joseph Chamberlain in the House of
+Commons last May. &ldquo;I knew no other way of getting at
+popular opinion.&rdquo; During the years between 1854 and 1860
+the daily journals were a pretty good reflection of public sentiment
+in the United States. Wherever, for instance, you
+found the <cite>New York Weekly Tribune</cite> largely read, Republican
+majorities were sure to be had when election day came.
+For fact and for opinion, if you knew the contributors,
+statements and editorials by them were entitled to as much
+weight as similar public expressions in any other form. You
+get to know Greeley and you learn to recognize his style.
+Now, an editorial from him is proper historical material,
+taking into account always the circumstances under which
+he wrote. The same may be said of Dana and of Hildreth,
+both editorial writers for the <cite>Tribune</cite>, and of the Washington
+despatches of J.&nbsp;S. Pike. It is interesting to compare the
+public letters of Greeley to the <cite>Tribune</cite> from Washington in
+1856 with his private letters written at the same time to
+Dana. There are no misstatements in the public letters,
+but there is a suppression of the truth. The explanations
+in the private correspondence are clearer, and you need them
+to know fully how affairs looked in Washington to Greeley
+at the time; but this fact by no means detracts from the
+<a name="png.040" id="png.040"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">32</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>value of the public letters as historical material. I have
+found newspapers of greater value both for fact and opinion
+during the decade of 1850 to 1860 than for the period of the
+Civil War. A comparison of the newspaper accounts of
+battles with the history of them which may be drawn from
+the correspondence and reports in the Official Records of
+the War of the Rebellion will show how inaccurate and misleading
+was the war correspondence of the daily journals.
+It could not well be otherwise. The correspondent was
+obliged in haste to write the story of a battle of which he saw
+but a small section, and instead of telling the little part which
+he knew actually, he had to give to a public greedy for news
+a complete survey of the whole battlefield. This story was
+too often colored by his liking or aversion for the generals in
+command. A study of the confidential historical material
+of the Civil War, apart from the military operations, in comparison
+with the journalistic accounts, gives one a higher
+idea of the accuracy and shrewdness of the newspaper correspondents.
+Few important things were brewing at Washington
+of which they did not get an inkling. But I always
+like to think of two signal exceptions. Nothing ever leaked
+out in regard to the famous &ldquo;Thoughts for the President&#8217;s
+consideration,&rdquo; which Seward submitted to Lincoln in
+March, 1861, and only very incorrect guesses of the President&#8217;s
+first emancipation proclamation, brought before his
+Cabinet in July, 1862, got into newspaper print.</p>
+
+<p>Beware of hasty, strained, and imperfect generalizations.
+A historian should always remember that he is a sort of
+trustee for his readers. No matter how copious may be his
+notes, he cannot fully explain his processes or the reason of
+his confidence in one witness and not in another, his belief in
+one honest man against a half dozen untrustworthy men,
+without such prolixity as to make a general history
+<a name="png.041" id="png.041"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">33</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>unreadable. Now, in this position as trustee he is bound to assert
+nothing for which he has not evidence, as much as an executor
+of a will or the trustee for widows and orphans is
+obligated to render a correct account of the moneys in his
+possession. For this reason Grote has said, &ldquo;An historian
+is bound to produce the materials upon which he builds, be
+they never so fantastic, absurd, or incredible.&rdquo; Hence the
+necessity for footnotes. While mere illustrative and interesting
+footnotes are perhaps to be avoided, on account of
+their redundancy, those which give authority for the statements
+in the text can never be in excess. Many good histories
+have undoubtedly been published where the authors
+have not printed their footnotes; but they must have had,
+nevertheless, precise records for their authorities. The advantage
+and necessity of printing the notes is that you furnish
+your critic an opportunity of finding you out if you have
+mistaken or strained your authorities. Bancroft&#8217;s example
+is peculiar. In his earlier volumes he used footnotes, but
+in volume vii he changed his plan and omitted notes,
+whether of reference or explanation. Nor do you find them
+in either of his carefully revised editions. &ldquo;This is done,&rdquo;
+Bancroft wrote in the preface to his seventh volume, &ldquo;not
+from an unwillingness to subject every statement of fact,
+even in its minutest details, to the severest scrutiny; but
+from the variety and the multitude of the papers which
+have been used and which could not be intelligently cited
+without a disproportionate commentary.&rdquo; Again, Blaine&#8217;s
+&ldquo;Twenty Years of Congress,&rdquo; a work which, properly weighed,
+is not without historical value, is only to be read with great
+care on account of his hasty and inaccurate generalizations.
+There are evidences of good, honest labor in those two volumes,
+much of which must have been done by himself.
+There is an aim at truth and impartiality, but many of his
+<a name="png.042" id="png.042"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">34</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>general statements will seem, to any one who has gone over
+the original material, to rest on a slight basis. If Blaine
+had felt the necessity of giving authorities in a footnote for
+every statement about which there might have been a question,
+he certainly would have written an entirely different
+sort of a book.</p>
+
+<p>My other head is the originality which comes from a fresh
+combination of known historical facts.</p>
+
+<p>I do not now call to mind any more notable chapter which
+illustrates this than the chapter of Curtius, &ldquo;The years of
+peace.&rdquo; One is perhaps better adapted for the keen enjoyment
+of it if he does not know the original material, for his
+suspicion that some of the inferences are strained and unwarranted
+might become a certainty. But accepting it as a
+mature and honest elaboration by one of the greatest historians
+of Greece of our day, it is a sample of the vivifying of
+dry bones and of a dovetailing of facts and ideas that makes
+a narrative to charm and instruct. You feel that the spirit
+of that age we all like to think and dream about is there,
+and if you have been so fortunate as to visit the Athens of
+to-day, that chapter, so great is the author&#8217;s constructive
+imagination, carries you back and makes you for the moment
+live in the Athens of Pericles, of Sophocles, of Phidias and
+Herodotus.</p>
+
+<p>With the abundance of materials for modern history, and,
+for that reason, our tendency to diffuseness, nothing is so
+important as a thorough acquaintance with the best classic
+models, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. In
+Herodotus you have an example of an interesting story with
+the unity of the narrative well sustained in spite of certain
+unnecessary digressions. His book is obviously a life work
+and the work of a man who had an extensive knowledge
+gained by reading, social intercourse, and travel, and who
+<a name="png.043" id="png.043"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">35</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>brought his knowledge to bear upon his chosen task. That
+the history is interesting all admit, but in different periods
+of criticism stress is sometimes laid on the untrustworthy
+character of the narrative, with the result that there has
+been danger of striking Herodotus from the list of historical
+models; but such is the merit of his work that the Herodotus
+cult again revives, and, I take it, is now at its height.
+I received, six years ago, while in Egypt, a vivid impression
+of him whom we used to style the Father of History.
+Spending one day at the great Pyramids, when, after I had
+satisfied my first curiosity, after I had filled my eyes and
+mind with the novelty of the spectacle, I found nothing so
+gratifying to the historic sense as to gaze on those most
+wonderful monuments of human industry, constructed certainly
+5000 years ago, and to read at the same time the account
+that Herodotus gave of his visit there about 2350 years
+before the date of my own. That same night I read in a
+modern and garish Cairo hotel the current number of the
+<cite>London Times</cite>. In it was an account of an annual meeting
+of the Royal Historical Society and a report of a formal
+and carefully prepared address of its president, whose
+subject was &ldquo;Herodotus,&rdquo; whose aim was to point out the
+value of the Greek writer as a model to modern historians.
+The <cite>Times</cite>, for the moment laying aside its habitual attack
+on the then Liberal government, devoted its main leader to
+Herodotus&mdash;to his merits and the lessons he conveyed to
+the European writers. The article was a remarkable blending
+of scholarship and good sense, and I ended the day with
+the reflection of what a space in the world&#8217;s history Herodotus
+filled, himself describing the work of twenty-six hundred
+years before his own time and being dilated on in 1894 by
+one of the most modern of nineteenth-century newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>It is generally agreed, I think, that Thucydides is first in
+<a name="png.044" id="png.044"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">36</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>order of time of philosophic historians, but it does not seem
+to me that we have most to learn from him in the philosophic
+quality. The tracing of cause and effect, the orderly sequence
+of events, is certainly better developed by moderns
+than it has been by ancients. The influence of Darwin and
+the support and proof which he gives to the doctrine of
+evolution furnish a training of thought which was impossible
+to the ancients; but Thucydides has digested his material
+and compressed his narrative without taking the life out of
+his story in a manner to make us despair, and this does not,
+I take it, come from paucity of materials. A test which I
+began to make as a study in style has helped me in estimating
+the solidity of a writer. Washington Irving formed his
+style by reading attentively from time to time a page of
+Addison and then, closing the book, endeavored to write out
+the same ideas in his own words. In this way his style
+became assimilated to that of the great English essayist.
+I have tried the same mode with several writers. I found
+that the plan succeeded with Macaulay and with Lecky. I
+tried it again and again with Shakespeare and Hawthorne,
+but if I succeeded in writing out the paragraph I found that
+it was because I memorized their very words. To write
+out their ideas in my own language I found impossible.
+I have had the same result with Thucydides in trying to do
+this with his description of the plague in Athens. Now, I
+reason from this in the case of Shakespeare and Thucydides
+that their thought was so concise they themselves got rid of
+all redundancies; hence to effect the reproduction of their
+ideas in any but their own language is practically impossible.</p>
+
+<p>It is related of Macaulay somewhere in his &ldquo;Life and
+Letters,&rdquo; that in a moment of despair, when he instituted
+a comparison between his manuscript and the work of
+<a name="png.045" id="png.045"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">37</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Thucydides, he thought of throwing his into the fire. I
+suspect that Macaulay had not the knack of discarding material
+on which he had spent time and effort, seeing how
+easily such events glowed under his graphic pen. This is
+one reason why he is prolix in the last three volumes. The
+first two, which begin with the famous introductory chapter
+and continue the story through the revolution of 1688
+to the accession of William and Mary, seem to me models
+of historical composition so far as arrangement, orderly
+method, and liveliness of narration go. Another defect of
+Macaulay is that, while he was an omnivorous reader and
+had a prodigious memory, he was not given to long-continued
+and profound reflection. He read and rehearsed his reading
+in memory, but he did not give himself to &ldquo;deep, abstract
+meditation&rdquo; and did not surrender himself to &ldquo;the fruitful
+leisures of the spirit.&rdquo; Take this instance of Macaulay&#8217;s
+account of a journey: &ldquo;The express train reached Hollyhead
+about 7 in the evening. I read between London
+and Bangor the lives of the emperors from Maximin
+to Carinus, inclusive, in the Augustine history, and was
+greatly amused and interested.&rdquo; On board the steamer:
+&ldquo;I put on my greatcoat and sat on deck during the whole
+voyage. As I could not read, I used an excellent substitute
+for reading. I went through &lsquo;Paradise Lost&rsquo; in my head.
+I could still repeat half of it, and that the best half.
+I really never enjoyed it so much.&rdquo; In Dublin: &ldquo;The rain
+was so heavy that I was forced to come back in a covered
+car. While in this detestable vehicle I looked rapidly through
+the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan and thought
+that Trajan made a most creditable figure.&rdquo; It may be
+that Macaulay did not always digest his knowledge well.
+Yet in reading his &ldquo;Life and Letters&rdquo; you know that you are
+in company with a man who read many books and you give
+<a name="png.046" id="png.046"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">38</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>faith to Thackeray&#8217;s remark, &ldquo;Macaulay reads twenty books
+to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make
+a line of description.&rdquo; It is a matter of regret that the
+progress of historical criticism and the scientific teaching
+of history have had the tendency to drive Macaulay out of
+the fashion with students, and I know not whether the good
+we used to get out of him thirty-five years ago can now be
+got from other sources. For I seem to miss something that
+we historical students had a generation ago&mdash;and that is
+enthusiasm for the subject. The enthusiasm that we had
+then had&mdash;the desire to compass all knowledge, the wish to
+gather the fruits of learning and lay them devoutly at the
+feet of our chosen muse&mdash;this enthusiasm we owed to
+Macaulay and to Buckle. Quite properly, no one reads
+Buckle now, and I cannot gainsay what John Morley said
+of Macaulay: &ldquo;Macaulay seeks truth, not as she should
+be sought, devoutly, tentatively, with the air of one touching
+the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by the
+hair of the head and dragging her after him in a kind of
+boisterous triumph, a prisoner of war and not a goddess.&rdquo;
+It is, nevertheless, true that Macaulay and Buckle imparted
+a new interest to history.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the impression we get of Macaulay
+through reading his &ldquo;Life and Letters.&rdquo; Of Carlyle, in reading
+the remarkable biography of him, we get the notion of a
+great thinker as well as a great reader. He was not as keen
+and diligent in the pursuit of material as Macaulay. He
+did not like to work in libraries; he wanted every book he
+used in his own study&mdash;padded as it was against the noises
+which drove him wild. H.&nbsp;Morse Stephens relates that
+Carlyle would not use a collection of documents relating to
+the French Revolution in the British Museum for the reason
+that the museum authorities would not have a private room
+<a name="png.047" id="png.047"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">39</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>reserved for him where he might study. Rather than work
+in a room with other people, he neglected this valuable
+material. But Carlyle has certainly digested and used his
+material well. His &ldquo;French Revolution&rdquo; seems to approach
+the historical works of the classics in there being so much in
+a little space. &ldquo;With the gift of song,&rdquo; Lowell said, &ldquo;Carlyle
+would have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer;&rdquo;
+and he also wrote, Carlyle&#8217;s historical compositions are no
+more history than the historical plays of Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>The contention between the scientific historians and those
+who hold to the old models is interesting and profitable.
+One may enjoy the controversy and derive benefit from it
+without taking sides. I suspect that there is truth in the
+view of both. We may be sure that the long-continued study
+and approval by scholars of many ages of the works of Herodotus,
+Thucydides, and Tacitus implies historical merit on
+their part in addition to literary art. It is, however, interesting
+to note the profound difference between President
+Woolsey&#8217;s opinion of Thucydides and that of some of his
+late German critics. Woolsey said, &ldquo;I have such confidence
+in the absolute truthfulness of Thucydides that were he
+really chargeable with folly, as Grote alleges [in the affair of
+Amphipolis], I believe he would have avowed it.&rdquo; On
+the other hand, a German critic, cited by Holm, says that
+Thucydides is a poet who invents facts partly in order to
+teach people how things ought to be done and partly because
+he liked to depict certain scenes of horror. He says
+further, a narrative of certain occurrences is so full of impossibilities
+that it must be pure invention on the part of the
+historian. Another German maintains that Thucydides has
+indulged in &ldquo;a fanciful and half-romantic picture of events.&rdquo;
+But Holm, whom the scientific historians claim as one of
+their own, says, &ldquo;Thucydides still remains a trustworthy
+<a name="png.048" id="png.048"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">40</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>historical authority;&rdquo; and, &ldquo;On the whole, therefore, the old
+view that he is a truthful writer is not in the least shaken.&rdquo;
+Again Holm writes: &ldquo;Attempts have been made to convict
+Thucydides of serious inaccuracies, but without success.
+On the other hand, the writer of this work [that is, the scientific
+historian, Holm] is able to state that he has followed
+him topographically for the greater part of the sixth and
+seventh books&mdash;and consequently for nearly one fourth
+of the whole history&mdash;and has found that the more carefully
+his words are weighed and the more accurately the
+ground is studied the clearer both the text and events become,
+and this is certainly high praise.&rdquo; Holm and Percy
+Gardner, both of whom have the modern method and have
+studied diligently the historical evidence from coins and
+inscriptions, placed great reliance on Herodotus, who, as
+well as Thucydides and Tacitus, is taken by scholars as a
+model of historical composition.</p>
+
+<p>The sifting of time settles the reputations of historians.
+Of the English of the eighteenth century only one historian
+has come down to us as worthy of serious study. Time is
+wasted in reading Hume and Robertson as models, and no
+one goes to them for facts. But thirty years ago no course
+of historical reading was complete without Hume. In this
+century the sifting process still goes on. One loses little by
+not reading Alison&#8217;s &ldquo;History of Europe.&rdquo; But he was much
+in vogue in the &#8217;50&#8217;s. <cite>Harper&#8217;s Magazine</cite> published a part of
+his history as a serial. His rounded periods and bombastic
+utterances were quoted with delight by those who thought
+that history was not history unless it was bombastic. Emerson
+says somewhere, &ldquo;Avoid adjectives; let your nouns do
+the work.&rdquo; There was hardly a sentence in Alison which
+did not traverse this rule. One of his admirers told me that
+the great merit of his style was his choiceness and aptness
+<a name="png.049" id="png.049"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">41</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in his use of adjectives. It is a style which now provokes
+merriment, and even had Alison been learned and impartial,
+and had he possessed a good method, his style for the present
+taste would have killed his book. Gibbon is sometimes called
+pompous, but place him by the side of Alison and what one
+may have previously called pompousness one now calls
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the literary historians of our century survive&mdash;Carlyle
+and Macaulay. They may be read with care. We
+may do as Cassius said Brutus did to him, observe all their
+faults, set them in a note-book, learn and con them by rote;
+nevertheless we shall get good from them. Oscar Browning
+said&mdash;I am quoting H.&nbsp;Morse Stephens again&mdash;of Carlyle&#8217;s
+description of the flight of the king to Varennes, that
+in every one of his details where a writer could go wrong,
+Carlyle had gone wrong; but added that, although all the
+details were wrong, Carlyle&#8217;s account is essentially accurate.
+No defense, I think, can be made of Carlyle&#8217;s statement that
+Marat was a &ldquo;blear-eyed dog leach,&rdquo; nor of those statements
+from which you get the distinct impression that the
+complexion of Robespierre was green; nevertheless, every
+one who studies the French Revolution reads Carlyle, and he
+is read because the reading is profitable. The battle descriptions
+in Carlyle&#8217;s &ldquo;Frederick the Great&rdquo; are well worth reading.
+How refreshing they are after technical descriptions!
+Carlyle said once, &ldquo;Battles since Homer&#8217;s time, when they
+were nothing but fighting mobs, have ceased to be worth
+reading about,&rdquo; but he made the modern battle interesting.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay is an honest partisan. You learn very soon how
+to take him, and when distrust begins one has correctives
+in Gardiner and Ranke. Froude is much more dangerous.
+His splendid narrative style does not compensate for his
+inaccuracies. Langlois makes an apt quotation from
+<a name="png.050" id="png.050"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">42</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Froude. &ldquo;We saw,&rdquo; says Froude, of the city of Adelaide,
+in Australia, &ldquo;below us in a basin, with the river winding
+through it, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, none of whom has
+ever known or ever will know one moment&#8217;s anxiety as to
+the recurring regularity of three meals a day.&rdquo; Now for
+the facts. Langlois says: &ldquo;Adelaide is built on an eminence;
+no river runs through it. When Froude visited it
+the population did not exceed 75,000, and it was suffering
+from a famine at the time.&rdquo; Froude was curious in his inaccuracies.
+He furnished the data which convict him of
+error. He quoted inaccurately the Simancas manuscripts
+and deposited correct copies in the British Museum. Carlyle
+and Macaulay are honest partisans and you know how
+to take them, but for constitutional inaccuracy such as
+Froude&#8217;s no allowance can be made.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it may be said of Green that he combines
+the merits of the scientific and literary historian. He has
+written an honest and artistic piece of work. But he is
+not infallible. I have been told on good authority that in
+his reference to the Thirty Years&#8217; War he has hardly stated
+a single fact correctly, yet the general impression you get
+from his account is correct. Saintsbury writes that Green
+has &ldquo;out-Macaulayed Macaulay in reckless abuse&rdquo; of Dryden.
+Stubbs and Gardiner are preëminently the scientific
+historians of England. Of Stubbs, from actual knowledge,
+I regret that I cannot speak, but the reputation he has
+among historical experts is positive proof of his great value.
+Of Gardiner I can speak with knowledge. Any one who
+desires to write history will do well to read every line Gardiner
+has written&mdash;not the text alone, but also the notes.
+It is an admirable study in method which will bear important
+fruit. But because Gibbon, Gardiner, and Stubbs
+should be one&#8217;s chief reliance, it does not follow that one may
+<a name="png.051" id="png.051"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">43</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>neglect Macaulay, Carlyle, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Herodotus.
+Gardiner himself has learned much from Macaulay
+and Carlyle. All of them may be criticised on one point or
+another, but they all have lessons for us.</p>
+
+<p>We shall all agree that the aim of history is to get at the
+truth and express it as clearly as possible. The differences
+crop out when we begin to elaborate our meaning. &ldquo;This
+I regard as the historian&#8217;s highest function,&rdquo; writes Tacitus,
+&ldquo;to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold
+out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words
+and deeds;&rdquo; while Langlois and the majority of the scholars
+of Oxford are of the opinion that the formation and expression
+of ethical judgments, the approval or condemnation of
+Julius C&aelig;sar or of C&aelig;sar Borgia is not a thing within the
+historian&#8217;s province. Let the controversy go on! It is
+well worth one&#8217;s while to read the presentations of the subject
+from the different points of view. But infallibility
+will nowhere be found. Mommsen and Curtius in their detailed
+investigations received applause from those who adhered
+rigidly to the scientific view of history, but when they
+addressed the public in their endeavor, it is said, to produce
+an effect upon it, they relaxed their scientific rigor;
+hence such a chapter as Curtius&#8217;s &ldquo;The years of peace,&rdquo; and
+in another place his transmuting a conjecture of Grote into
+an assertion; hence Mommsen&#8217;s effusive panegyric of C&aelig;sar.
+If Mommsen did depart from the scientific rules, I suspect
+that it came from no desire of a popular success, but rather
+from the enthusiasm of much learning. The examples of
+Curtius and Mommsen show probably that such a departure
+from strict impartiality is inherent in the writing of general
+history, and it comes, I take it, naturally and unconsciously.
+Holm is a scientific historian, but on the Persian Invasion
+he writes: &ldquo;I have followed Herodotus in many passages
+<a name="png.052" id="png.052"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">44</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>which are unauthenticated and probably even untrue, because
+he reproduces the popular traditions of the Greeks.&rdquo;
+And again: &ldquo;History in the main ought only to be a
+record of facts, but now and then the historian may be
+allowed to display a certain interest in his subject.&rdquo; These
+expressions traverse the canons of scientific history as much
+as the sayings of the ancient historiographers themselves.
+But because men have warm sympathies that cause them
+to color their narratives, shall no more general histories be
+written? Shall history be confined to the printing of original
+documents and to the publication of learned monographs
+in which the discussion of authorities is mixed up with the
+relation of events? The proper mental attitude of the
+general historian is to take no thought of popularity. The
+remark of Macaulay that he would make his history take the
+place of the last novel on my lady&#8217;s table is not scientific.
+The audience which the general historian should have in
+mind is that of historical experts&mdash;men who are devoting
+their lives to the study of history. Words of approval
+from them are worth more than any popular recognition,
+for theirs is the enduring praise. Their criticism should be
+respected; there should be unceasing effort to avoid giving
+them cause for fault-finding. No labor should be despised
+which shall enable one to present things just as they are.
+Our endeavor should be to think straight and see clear. An
+incident should not be related on insufficient evidence because
+it is interesting, but an affair well attested should not be discarded
+because it happens to have a human interest. I feel
+quite sure that the cardinal aim of Gardiner was to be accurate
+and to proportion his story well. In this he has succeeded;
+but it is no drawback that he has made his volumes
+interesting. Jacob D. Cox, who added to other accomplishments
+that of being learned in the law, and who looked upon
+<a name="png.053" id="png.053"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">45</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Gardiner with such reverence that he called him the Chief
+Justice, said there was no reason why he should read novels,
+as he found Gardiner&#8217;s history more interesting than any
+romance. The scientific historians have not revolutionized
+historical methods, but they have added much. The process
+of accretion has been going on since, at any rate, the
+time of Herodotus, and the canons for weighing evidence
+and the synthesis of materials are better understood now
+than ever before, for they have been reduced from many
+models. I feel sure that there has been a growth in candor.
+Compare the critical note to a later edition which Macaulay
+wrote in 1857, maintaining the truth of his charge against
+William Penn, with the manly way in which Gardiner owns
+up when an error or insufficient evidence for a statement is
+pointed out. It is the ethics of the profession to be forward
+in correcting errors. The difference between the old and the
+new lies in the desire to have men think you are infallible
+and the desire to be accurate.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.055" id="png.055"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">47</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>THE PROFESSION OF HISTORIAN</h2>
+
+
+<p>Lecture read before the History Club of Harvard University, April
+27, 1908, and at Yale, Columbia, and Western Reserve Universities.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.057" id="png.057"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">49</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>THE PROFESSION OF HISTORIAN</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I am</span> assuming that among my audience there are some
+students who aspire to become historians. To these especially
+my discourse is addressed.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be expected that I should speak positively
+and in detail on matters of education. Nevertheless, a man
+of sixty who has devoted the better part of his life to reading,
+observation, and reflection must have gained, if only through
+a perception of his own deficiencies, some ideas that should
+be useful to those who have, life&#8217;s experience before them.
+Hence, if a Freshman should say to me, I wish to be a
+historian, tell me what preliminary studies you would advise,
+I should welcome the opportunity. From the nature
+of the case, the history courses will be sought and studied in
+their logical order and my advice will have to do only with
+collateral branches of learning.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, I esteem a knowledge of Latin and French
+of the highest importance. By a knowledge of French, I mean
+that you should be able to read it substantially as well as you
+read English, so that when you have recourse to a dictionary
+it will be a French dictionary and not one of the French-English
+kind. The historical and other literature that is thus
+opened up to you enables you to live in another world, with
+a point of view impossible to one who reads for pleasure only
+in his own tongue. To take two instances: Molière is a
+complement to Shakespeare, and the man who knows his
+Molière as he does his Shakespeare has made a propitious
+<a name="png.058" id="png.058"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">50</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>beginning in that study of human character which must be
+understood if he desires to write a history that shall gain
+readers. &ldquo;I have known and loved Molière,&rdquo; said Goethe,
+&ldquo;from my youth and have learned from him during my
+whole life. I never fail to read some of his plays every year,
+that I may keep up a constant intercourse with what is excellent.
+It is not merely the perfectly artistic treatment
+which delights me; but particularly the amiable nature, the
+highly formed mind of the poet. There is in him a grace
+and a feeling for the decorous, and a tone of good society,
+which his innate beautiful nature could only attain by
+daily intercourse with the most eminent men of his
+ age.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.1" name="fna.iii.1" id="fna.iii.1">1</a></sup>
+</p>
+
+<p>My other instance is Balzac. In reading him for pleasure,
+as you read Dickens and Thackeray, you are absorbing an
+exact and fruitful knowledge of French society of the Restoration
+and of Louis Philippe. Moreover you are still
+pursuing your study of human character under one of the
+acute critics of the nineteenth century. Balzac has always
+seemed to me peculiarly French, his characters belong
+essentially to Paris or to the provinces. I associate Eugénie
+Grandet with Saumur in the Touraine and César Birotteau
+with the Rue St. Honoré in Paris; and all his other men and
+women move naturally in the great city or in the provinces
+which he has given them for their home. A devoted
+admirer however tells me that in his opinion Balzac has
+created universal types; the counterpart of some of his men
+may be seen in the business and social world of Boston, and
+the peculiarly sharp and dishonest transaction which
+brought César Birotteau to financial ruin was here exactly
+reproduced.</p>
+
+<p>The French language and literature seem to possess the
+merits which ours lack; and the writer of history cannot
+<a name="png.059" id="png.059"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">51</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>afford to miss the lessons he will receive by a constant reading
+of the best French prose.</p>
+
+<p>I do not ask the Freshman who is going to be a historian
+to realize Macaulay&#8217;s ideal of a scholar, to &ldquo;read Plato with
+his feet on the fender,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.2" name="fna.iii.2" id="fna.iii.2">2</a></sup>
+ but he should at least acquire a
+pretty thorough knowledge of classical Latin, so that he can
+read Latin, let me say, as many of us read German, that is
+with the use of a lexicon and the occasional translation of a
+sentence or a paragraph into English to arrive at its exact
+meaning. Of this, I can speak from the point of view of one
+who is deficient. The reading of Latin has been for me a
+grinding labor and I would have liked to read with pleasure
+in the original, the History and Annals of Tacitus, C&aelig;sar&#8217;s
+Gallic and Civil wars and Cicero&#8217;s Orations and Private
+Letters even to the point of following Macaulay&#8217;s
+advice, &ldquo;Soak your mind with Cicero.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.2">2</a></sup>
+ These would have
+given me, I fancy, a more vivid impression of two periods
+of Roman history than I now possess. Ferrero, who is imparting
+a fresh interest to the last period of the Roman republic,
+owes a part of his success, I think, to his thorough
+digestion and effective use of Cicero&#8217;s letters, which have the
+faculty of making one acquainted with Cicero just as if he
+were a modern man. During a sojourn on the shores of
+Lake Geneva, I read two volumes of Voltaire&#8217;s private correspondence,
+and later, while passing the winter in Rome,
+the four volumes of Cicero&#8217;s letters in French. I could not
+help thinking that in the republic of letters one was not in
+time at a far greater distance from Cicero than from Voltaire.
+While the impression of nearness may have come from
+reading both series of letters in French, or because, to use
+John Morley&#8217;s words, &ldquo;two of the most perfect masters
+of the art of letter writing were Cicero and
+ Voltaire,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.3" name="fna.iii.3" id="fna.iii.3">3</a></sup>
+<a name="png.060" id="png.060"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">52</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>there is a decided flavor of the nineteenth century in Cicero&#8217;s
+words to a good liver whom he is going to visit. &ldquo;You
+must not reckon,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;on my eating your hors
+d&#8217;&oelig;uvre. I have given them up entirely. The time has
+gone by when I can abuse my stomach with your olives and
+your Lucanian sausages.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.4"
+ name="fna.iii.4" id="fna.iii.4">4</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>To repeat then, if the student, who is going to be a historian,
+uses his acquisitive years in obtaining a thorough
+knowledge of French and Latin, he will afterwards be spared
+useless regrets. He will naturally add German for the purpose
+of general culture and, if languages come easy, perhaps
+Greek. &ldquo;Who is not acquainted with another language,&rdquo;
+said Goethe, &ldquo;knows not his own.&rdquo; A thorough knowledge
+of Latin and French is a long stride towards an efficient
+mastery of English. In the matter of diction, the
+English writer is rarely in doubt as to words of Anglo-Saxon
+origin, for these are deep-rooted in his childhood and his
+choice is generally instinctive. The difficulties most persistently
+besetting him concern words that come from the
+Latin or the French; and here he must use reason or the
+dictionary or both. The author who has a thorough knowledge
+of Latin and French will argue with himself as to the
+correct diction, will follow Emerson&#8217;s advice, &ldquo;Know words
+etymologically; pull them apart; see how they are made;
+and use them only where they fit.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.5"
+ name="fna.iii.5" id="fna.iii.5">5</a></sup> As it is in action
+through life, so it is in writing; the conclusions arrived at by
+reason are apt to be more valuable than those which we
+accept on authority. The reasoned literary style is more
+virile than that based on the dictionary. A judgment arrived
+at by argument sticks in the memory, while it is necessary
+for the user of the dictionary constantly to invoke
+authority, so that the writer who reasons out the meaning
+<a name="png.061" id="png.061"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">53</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of words may constantly accelerate his pace, for the doubt
+and decision of yesterday is to-day a solid acquirement, ingrained
+in his mental being. I have lately been reading a
+good deal of Gibbon and I cannot imagine his having had
+frequent recourse to a dictionary. I do not remember even
+an allusion either in his autobiographies or in his private
+letters to any such aid. Undoubtedly his thorough knowledge
+of Latin and French, his vast reading of Latin, French,
+and English books, enabled him to dispense with the thumbing
+of a dictionary and there was probably a reasoning
+process at the back of every important word. It is difficult,
+if not impossible, to improve on Gibbon by the substitution
+of one word for another.</p>
+
+<p>A rather large reading of Sainte-Beuve gives me the same
+impression. Indeed his literary fecundity, the necessity of
+having the Causerie ready for each Monday&#8217;s issue of the
+<cite>Constitutionnel</cite> or the <cite>Moniteur</cite>, precluded a study of words
+while composing, and his rapid and correct writing was undoubtedly
+due to the training obtained by the process of
+reasoning. Charles Sumner seems to be an exception to
+my general rule. Although presumably he knew Latin
+well, he was a slave to dictionaries. He generally had five
+at his elbow (Johnson, Webster, Worcester, Walker, and
+Pickering) and when in doubt as to the use of a word he
+consulted all five and let the matter be decided on the American
+democratic principle of majority rule.<sup><a href="#fn.iii.6"
+ name="fna.iii.6" id="fna.iii.6">6</a></sup> Perhaps this
+is one cause of the stilted and artificial character of Sumner&#8217;s
+speeches which, unlike Daniel Webster&#8217;s, are not to be thought
+of as literature. One does not associate dictionaries with
+Webster. Thus had I written the sentence without thinking
+of a not infrequent confusion between Noah and Daniel
+Webster, and this confusion reminded me of a story which
+<a name="png.062" id="png.062"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">54</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>John Fiske used to tell with gusto and which some of you
+may not have heard. An English gentleman remarked to an
+American: &ldquo;What a giant intellect that Webster of yours
+had! To think of so great an orator and statesman writing
+that dictionary! But I felt sure that one who towered so
+much above his fellows would come to a bad end and I was
+not a bit surprised to learn that he had been hanged for the
+murder of Dr. Parkman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To return to my theme: One does not associate dictionaries
+with Daniel Webster. He was given to preparing
+his speeches in the solitudes of nature, and his first Bunker
+Hill oration, delivered in 1825, was mainly composed while
+wading in a trout stream and desultorily fishing for trout.<sup><a href="#fn.iii.7"
+ name="fna.iii.7" id="fna.iii.7">7</a></sup>
+Joe Jefferson, who loved fishing as well as Webster, used to
+say, &ldquo;The trout is a gentleman and must be treated as such.&rdquo;
+Webster&#8217;s companion might have believed that some such
+thought as this was passing through the mind of the great
+Daniel as, standing middle deep in the stream, he uttered
+these sonorous words: &ldquo;Venerable men! You have come down
+to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously
+lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous
+day.&rdquo; I think Daniel Webster for the most part reasoned
+out his choice of words; he left the dictionary work to
+others. After delivery, he threw down the manuscript of
+his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson and said to a student in
+his law office, &ldquo;There, Tom, please to take that discourse and
+weed out the Latin words.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.8"
+ name="fna.iii.8" id="fna.iii.8">8</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>When doubtful as to the use of words, I should have been
+helped by a better knowledge of Latin and enabled very often
+to write with a surer touch. Though compelled to resort
+frequently to the dictionary, I early learned to pay little
+attention to the definition but to regard with care the illustrative
+<a name="png.063" id="png.063"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">55</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span> meaning in the citations from standard authors.
+When I began writing I used the Imperial Dictionary, an
+improvement over Webster in this respect. Soon the Century
+Dictionary began to appear, and best of all the New
+English Dictionary on historical principles edited by Murray
+and Bradley and published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford.
+A study of the mass of quotations in these two dictionaries
+undoubtedly does much to atone for the lack of
+linguistic knowledge; and the tracing of the history of words,
+as it is done in the Oxford dictionary, makes any inquiry as
+to the meaning of a word fascinating work for the historian.
+Amongst the multiplicity of aids for the student and the
+writer no single one is so serviceable as this product of labor
+and self-sacrifice, fostered by the Clarendon Press, to whom,
+all writers in the English language owe a debt of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay had a large fund of knowledge on which he
+might base his reasoning, and his indefatigable mind welcomed
+any outside assistance. He knew Greek and Latin
+thoroughly and a number of other languages, but it is related
+of him that he so thumbed his copy of Johnson&#8217;s Dictionary
+that he was continually sending it to the binder. In return
+for his mastery of the languages, the dictionaries are fond of
+quoting Macaulay. If I may depend upon a rough mental
+computation, no prose writer of the nineteenth century is
+so frequently cited. &ldquo;He never wrote an obscure sentence
+in his life,&rdquo; said John Morley;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.9"
+ name="fna.iii.9" id="fna.iii.9">9</a></sup> and this is partly due to his
+exact use of words. There is never any doubt about his
+meaning. Macaulay began the use of Latin words at an
+early age. When four and a half years old he was asked if
+he had got over the toothache, to which question came
+this reply, &ldquo;The agony is abated.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mathematics beyond arithmetic are of no use to the
+<a name="png.064" id="png.064"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">56</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>historian and may be entirely discarded. I do not ignore John
+Stuart Mill&#8217;s able plea for them, some words of which are
+worth quoting. &ldquo;Mathematical studies,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are of
+immense benefit to the student&#8217;s education by habituating
+him to precision. It is one of the peculiar excellences of
+mathematical discipline that the mathematician is never
+satisfied with an <em>à peu près</em>. He requires the <em>exact</em> truth&hellip;.
+The practice of mathematical reasoning gives wariness of
+the mind; it accustoms us to demand a sure footing.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.10"
+ name="fna.iii.10" id="fna.iii.10">10</a></sup>
+Mill, however, is no guide except for exceptionally gifted
+youth. He began to learn Greek when he was three years
+old, and by the time he had reached the age of twelve had
+read a good part of Latin and Greek literature and knew
+elementary geometry and algebra thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>The three English historians who have most influenced
+thought from 1776 to 1900 are those whom John Morley
+called &ldquo;great born men of letters&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.11"
+ name="fna.iii.11" id="fna.iii.11">11</a></sup>&mdash;Gibbon, Macaulay, and
+Carlyle; and two of these despised mathematics. &ldquo;As soon
+as I understood the principles,&rdquo; wrote Gibbon in his &ldquo;Autobiography,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;I relinquished forever the pursuit of the Mathematics;
+nor can I lament that I desisted before my mind
+was hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive
+of the finer feelings of moral evidence, which must
+however determine the actions and opinions of our lives.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.12"
+ name="fna.iii.12" id="fna.iii.12">12</a></sup>
+Macaulay, while a student at Cambridge, wrote to his mother:
+&ldquo;Oh, for words to express my abomination of mathematics &hellip; &lsquo;Discipline&rsquo;
+of the mind! Say rather starvation, confinement,
+torture, annihilation!&hellip; I feel myself becoming
+a personification of Algebra, a living trigonometrical
+canon, a walking table of logarithms. All my perceptions
+of elegance and beauty gone, or at least going&hellip;. Farewell
+<a name="png.065" id="png.065"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">57</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>then Homer and Sophocles and Cicero.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.13"
+ name="fna.iii.13" id="fna.iii.13">13</a></sup> I must in
+fairness state that in after life Macaulay regretted his lack of
+knowledge of mathematics and physics, but his career and
+Gibbon&#8217;s demonstrate that mathematics need have no place
+on the list of the historian&#8217;s studies. Carlyle, however,
+showed mathematical ability which attracted the attention
+of Legendre and deemed himself sufficiently qualified to
+apply, when he was thirty-nine years old, for the professorship
+of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. He did
+not succeed in obtaining the post but, had he done so, he
+&ldquo;would have made,&rdquo; so Froude his biographer thinks, &ldquo;the
+school of Astronomy at Edinburgh famous throughout Europe.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.14"
+ name="fna.iii.14" id="fna.iii.14">14</a></sup>
+When fifty-two, Carlyle said that &ldquo;the man who
+had mastered the first forty-seven propositions of Euclid
+stood nearer to God than he had done before.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.15"
+ name="fna.iii.15" id="fna.iii.15">15</a></sup> I may cap
+this with some words of Emerson, who in much of his
+thought resembled Carlyle: &ldquo;What hours of melancholy
+my mathematical works cost! It was long before I learned
+that there is something wrong with a man&#8217;s brain who loves
+them.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.16"
+ name="fna.iii.16" id="fna.iii.16">16</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Mathematics are of course the basis of many studies,
+trades, and professions and are sometimes of benefit as a
+recreation for men of affairs. Devotion to Euclid undoubtedly
+added to Lincoln&#8217;s strength, but the necessary range
+of knowledge for the historian is so vast that he cannot spend
+his evenings and restless nights in the solution of mathematical
+problems. In short, mathematics are of no more
+use to him than is Greek to the civil or mechanical engineer.</p>
+
+<p>In the category with mathematics must be placed a detailed
+study of any of the physical or natural sciences. I
+think that a student during his college course should have
+<a name="png.066" id="png.066"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">58</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>a year&#8217;s work in a chemical laboratory or else, if his taste
+inclines him to botany, geology, or zoölogy, a year&#8217;s training
+of his observing powers in some one of these studies. For he
+ought to get, while at an impressible age, a superficial knowledge
+of the methods of scientific men, as a basis for his future
+reading. We all know that science is moving the world
+and to keep abreast with the movement is a necessity for
+every educated man. Happily, there are scientific men who
+popularize their knowledge. John Fiske, Huxley, and Tyndall
+presented to us the theories and demonstrations of science
+in a literary style that makes learning attractive. Huxley
+and Tyndall were workers in laboratories and gave us the
+results of their patient and long-continued experiments. It
+is too much to expect that every generation will produce
+men of the remarkable power of expression of Huxley and
+John Fiske, but there will always be clear writers who will
+delight in instructing the general public in language easily
+understood. In an address which I delivered eight or nine
+years ago before the American Historical Association, I
+cheerfully conceded that, in the realm of intellectual endeavor,
+the natural and physical sciences should have the
+precedence of history. The question with us now is not
+which is the nobler pursuit, but how is the greatest economy
+of time to be compassed for the historian. My advice is in
+the line of concentration. Failure in life arises frequently
+from intellectual scattering; hence I like to see the historical
+student getting his physical and natural science at second-hand.</p>
+
+<p>The religious and political revolutions of the last four
+hundred years have weakened authority; but in intellectual
+development I believe that in general an important
+advantage lies in accepting the dicta of specialists. In this
+respect our scientific men may teach us a lesson. One not
+<a name="png.067" id="png.067"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">59</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>infrequently meets a naturalist or a physician, who possesses
+an excellent knowledge of history, acquired by reading the
+works of general historians who have told an interesting
+story. He would laugh at the idea that he must verify the
+notes of his author and read the original documents, for he
+has confidence that the interpretation is accurate and truthful.
+This is all that I ask of the would-be historian. For
+the sake of going to the bottom of things in his own special
+study, let him take his physical and natural science on trust
+and he may well begin to do this during his college course.
+As a manner of doing this, there occur to me three interesting
+biographies, the Life of Darwin, the Life of Huxley,
+and the Life of Pasteur, which give the important part of
+the story of scientific development during the last half of
+the nineteenth century. Now I believe that a thorough
+mastery of these three books will be worth more to the
+historical student than any driblets of science that he may
+pick up in an unsystematic college course.</p>
+
+<p>With this elimination of undesirable studies&mdash;undesirable
+because of lack of time&mdash;there remains ample time for those
+studies which are necessary for the equipment of a historian;
+to wit, languages, histories, English, French, and Latin literature,
+and as much of economics as his experienced teachers
+advise. Let him also study the fine arts as well as he can in
+America, fitting himself for an appreciation of the great works
+of architecture, sculpture, and painting in Europe which he
+will recognize as landmarks of history in their potent influence
+on the civilization of mankind. Let us suppose that
+our hypothetical student has marked out on these lines his
+college course of four years, and his graduate course of three.
+At the age of twenty-five he will then have received an
+excellent college education. The university with its learned
+and hard-working teachers, its wealth, its varied and wholesome
+<a name="png.068" id="png.068"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">60</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>traditions has done for him the utmost possible.
+Henceforward his education must depend upon himself
+and, unless he has an insatiable love of reading, he had better
+abandon the idea of becoming a historian; for books, pamphlets,
+old newspapers, and manuscripts are the stock of his
+profession and to them he must show a single-minded devotion.
+He must love his library as Pasteur did his laboratory
+and must fill with delight most of the hours of the day
+in reading or writing. To this necessity there is no alternative.
+Whether it be in general preparation or in the
+detailed study of a special period, there is no end to the material
+which may be read with advantage. The young man
+of twenty-five can do no better than to devote five years of
+his life to general preparation. And what enjoyment he
+has before him! He may draw upon a large mass of histories
+and biographies, of books of correspondence, of poems,
+plays, and novels; it is then for him to select with discrimination,
+choosing the most valuable, as they afford
+him facts, augment his knowledge of human nature, and
+teach him method and expression. &ldquo;A good book,&rdquo; said
+Milton, &ldquo;is the precious life blood of a master spirit,&rdquo;
+and every good book which wins our student&#8217;s interest
+and which he reads carefully will help him directly or
+indirectly in his career. And there are some books which
+he will wish to master, as if he were to be subjected
+to an examination on them. As to these he will be guided
+by strong inclination and possibly with a view to the subject
+of his magnum opus; but if these considerations be
+absent and if the work has not been done in the university,
+I cannot too strongly recommend the mastery of Gibbon&#8217;s
+&ldquo;Decline and Fall&rdquo; and Bryce&#8217;s &ldquo;Holy Roman Empire.&rdquo;
+Gibbon merits close study because his is undoubtedly the
+greatest history of modern times and because it is, in the
+<a name="png.069" id="png.069"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">61</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>words of Carlyle, a splendid bridge from the old world to the
+new. He should be read in the edition of Bury, whose
+scholarly introduction gives a careful and just estimate of
+Gibbon and whose notes show the results of the latest researches.
+This edition does not include Guizot&#8217;s and Milman&#8217;s
+notes, which seem to an old-fashioned reader of Gibbon
+like myself worthy of attention, especially those on the
+famous Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters. Bryce&#8217;s &ldquo;Holy
+Roman Empire&rdquo; is a fitting complement to Gibbon, and the
+intellectual possession of the two is an education in itself
+which will be useful in the study of any period of history that
+may be chosen.</p>
+
+<p>The student who reads Gibbon will doubtless be influenced
+by his many tributes to Tacitus and will master the Roman
+historian. I shall let Macaulay furnish the warrant for a
+close study of Thucydides. &ldquo;This day,&rdquo; Macaulay said,
+when in his thirty-fifth year, &ldquo;I finished Thucydides after
+reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration.
+He is the greatest historian that ever lived.&rdquo; Again during
+the same year he wrote: &ldquo;What are all the Roman historians
+to the great Athenian? I do assure you there is no prose
+composition in the world, not even the oration on the Crown,
+which I place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides.
+It is the <em>ne plus ultra</em> of human art. I was delighted to find
+in Gray&#8217;s letters the other day this query to Wharton: &lsquo;The
+retreat from Syracuse&mdash;is or is it not the finest thing you
+ever read in your life?&rsquo; &hellip; Most people read all the
+Greek they ever read before they are five and twenty.
+They never find time for such studies afterwards until
+they are in the decline of life; and then their knowledge of
+the language is in great measure lost, and cannot easily be
+recovered. Accordingly, almost all the ideas that people
+have of Greek literature are ideas formed while they were
+<a name="png.070" id="png.070"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">62</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>still very young. A young man, whatever his genius may
+be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides. I had no
+high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading
+him with a mind accustomed to historical researches and
+to political affairs and I am astonished at my own former
+blindness and at his greatness.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.17"
+ name="fna.iii.17" id="fna.iii.17">17</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>I have borrowed John Morley&#8217;s words, speaking of Gibbon,
+Macaulay, and Carlyle as &ldquo;three great born men of letters.&rdquo;
+Our student cannot therefore afford to miss a knowledge of
+Macaulay&#8217;s History, but the Essays, except perhaps three
+or four of the latest ones, need not be read. In a preface
+to the authorized edition of the Essays, Macaulay wrote
+that he was &ldquo;sensible of their defects,&rdquo; deemed them &ldquo;imperfect
+pieces,&rdquo; and did not think that they were &ldquo;worthy of a
+permanent place in English literature.&rdquo; For instance, his
+essay on Milton contained scarcely a paragraph which his
+matured judgment approved. Macaulay&#8217;s peculiar faults
+are emphasized in his Essays and much of the harsh criticism
+which he has received comes from the glaring defects of
+these earlier productions. His history, however, is a great
+book, shows extensive research, a sane method and an excellent
+power of narration; and when he is a partisan, he is
+so honest and transparent that the effect of his partiality
+is neither enduring nor mischievous.</p>
+
+<p>I must say further to the student: read either Carlyle&#8217;s
+&ldquo;French Revolution&rdquo; or his &ldquo;Frederick the Great,&rdquo; I
+care not which, although it is well worth one&#8217;s while to
+read both. If your friends who maintain that history
+is a science convince you that the &ldquo;French Revolution&rdquo;
+is not history, as perhaps they may, read it as a narrative
+poem. Truly Carlyle spoke rather like a poet than
+a historian when he wrote to his wife (in his forty-first
+<a name="png.071" id="png.071"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">63</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>year): &ldquo;A hundred pages more and this cursed book is flung
+out of me. I mean to write with force of fire till that consummation;
+above all with the speed of fire&hellip;. It all
+stands pretty fair in my head, nor do I mean to investigate
+much more about it, but to splash down what I know in
+large masses of colors, that it may look like a smoke-and-flame
+conflagration in the distance, which it is.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.18"
+ name="fna.iii.18" id="fna.iii.18">18</a></sup> It was
+Carlyle&#8217;s custom to work all of the morning and take a solitary
+walk in Hyde Park in the afternoon, when looking upon
+the gay scene, the display of wealth and fashion, &ldquo;seeing,&rdquo;
+as he said, &ldquo;all the carriages dash hither and thither and so
+many human bipeds cheerily hurrying along,&rdquo; he said to
+himself: &ldquo;There you go, brothers, in your gilt carriages and
+prosperities, better or worse, and make an extreme bother
+and confusion, the devil very largely in it&hellip;. Not one
+of you could do what I am doing, and it concerns you too,
+if you did but know it.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.19"
+ name="fna.iii.19" id="fna.iii.19">19</a></sup> When the book was done he
+wrote to his brother, &ldquo;It is a wild, savage book, itself a kind
+of French Revolution.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.20"
+ name="fna.iii.20" id="fna.iii.20">20</a></sup> From its somewhat obscure style
+it requires a slow perusal and careful study, but this serves
+all the more to fix it in the memory causing it to remain an
+abiding influence.</p>
+
+<p>There are eight volumes of &ldquo;Frederick the Great,&rdquo; containing,
+according to Barrett Wendell&#8217;s computation, over one
+million words; and this eighteenth-century tale, with its large
+number of great and little characters, its &ldquo;mass of living
+facts&rdquo; impressed Wendell chiefly with its unity. &ldquo;Whatever
+else Carlyle was,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;the unity of this enormous
+book proves him, when he chose to be, a Titanic artist.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.21"
+ name="fna.iii.21" id="fna.iii.21">21</a></sup>
+Only those who have striven for unity in a narrative can
+appreciate the tribute contained in these words. It was a
+<a name="png.072" id="png.072"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">64</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>struggle, too, for Carlyle. Fifty-six years old when he conceived
+the idea of Frederick, his nervousness and irritability
+were a constant torment to himself and his devoted wife.
+Many entries in his journal tell of his &ldquo;dismal continual
+wrestle with Friedrich,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.22"
+ name="fna.iii.22" id="fna.iii.22">22</a></sup> perhaps the most characteristic
+of which is this: &ldquo;My Frederick looks as if it would never
+take shape in me; in fact the problem is to burn away the
+immense dungheap of the eighteenth century, with its ghastly
+cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties, and <em>inanity</em> now
+fallen <em>putrid</em>, rotting inevitably towards annihilation; to
+destroy and extinguish all that, having got to know it, and
+to know that it must be rejected for evermore; after which
+the perennial portion, pretty much Friedrich and Voltaire
+so far as I can see, may remain conspicuous and capable of
+being delineated.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.23"
+ name="fna.iii.23" id="fna.iii.23">23</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The student, who has become acquainted with the works
+of Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle, will wish to know something
+of the men themselves and this curiosity may be easily
+and delightfully gratified. The autobiographies of Gibbon,
+the Life of Macaulay by Sir George Trevelyan, the History
+of Carlyle&#8217;s Life by Froude, present the personality of these
+historians in a vivid manner. Gibbon has himself told of
+all his own faults and Froude has omitted none of Carlyle&#8217;s,
+so that these two books are useful aids in a study of human
+nature, in which respect they are real adjuncts of Boswell&#8217;s
+Johnson. Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay had an insatiable
+love of reading; in their solitary hours they were seldom
+without books in their hands. Valuable instruction may be
+derived from a study of their lives from their suggestions of
+books, helpful in the development of a historian. They
+knew how to employ their odd moments, and Gibbon and
+Macaulay were adepts in the art of desultory reading. Sainte-Beuve
+<a name="png.073" id="png.073"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">65</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>makes a plea for desultory reading in instancing
+Tocqueville&#8217;s lack of it, so that he failed to illustrate and
+animate his pages with its fruits, the result being, in the long
+run, great monotony.<sup><a href="#fn.iii.24"
+ name="fna.iii.24" id="fna.iii.24">24</a></sup> As a relief to the tired brain, without
+a complete loss of time, the reading at hazard, even browsing
+in a library, has its place in the equipment of a historian.
+One of the most striking examples of self-education in
+literature is Carlyle&#8217;s seven years, from the age of thirty-two
+to thirty-nine, passed at Craigenputtock where his native inclination
+was enforced by his physical surroundings. Craigenputtock,
+wrote Froude, is &ldquo;the dreariest spot in all the British
+dominions. The nearest cottage is more than a mile from
+it; the elevation, 700 feet above the sea, stunts the trees and
+limits the garden produce to the hardiest vegetables. The
+house is gaunt and hungry-looking.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.25"
+ name="fna.iii.25" id="fna.iii.25">25</a></sup> The place realized
+Tennyson&#8217;s words, &ldquo;O, the dreary, dreary moorland.&rdquo;
+Here Carlyle read books, gave himself over to silent meditation,
+and wrote for his bread, although a man who possessed
+an adequate income could not have been more independent
+in thought than he was, or more averse to writing to the
+order of editors of reviews and magazines. With no outside
+distractions, books were his companions as well as
+his friends. As you read Froude&#8217;s intimate biography, it
+comes upon you, as you consider Carlyle&#8217;s life in London,
+what a tremendous intellectual stride he had made while
+living in this dreary solitude of Craigenputtock. It was
+there that he continued his development under the intellectual
+influence of Goethe, wrote &ldquo;Sartor Resartus&rdquo; and conceived
+the idea of writing the story of the French Revolution.
+Those seven years, as you trace their influence during the
+rest of his life, will ever be a tribute to the concentrated,
+bookish labors of bookish men.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.074" id="png.074"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">66</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>It is often said that some practical experience in life is
+necessary for the training of a historian; that only thus can
+he arrive at a knowledge of human nature and become a
+judge of character; that, while the theory is occasionally
+advanced that history is a series of movements which may
+be described without taking individuals into account, as a
+matter of fact, one cannot go far on this hypothesis without
+running up against the truth that movements have motors
+and the motors are men. Hence we are to believe the
+dictum that the historian needs that knowledge of men
+which is to be obtained only by practical dealings with them.
+It is true that Gibbon&#8217;s service in the Hampshire militia
+and his membership in the House of Commons were of benefit
+to the historian of the Roman Empire. Grote&#8217;s business
+life, Macaulay&#8217;s administrative work in India, and the parliamentary
+experience of both were undoubtedly of value to
+their work as historians, but there are excellent historians
+who have never had any such training. Carlyle is an example,
+and Samuel R. Gardiner is another. Curiously
+enough, Gardiner, who was a pure product of the university
+and the library, has expressed sounder judgments on many
+of the prominent men of the seventeenth century than Macaulay.
+I am not aware that there is in historical literature
+any other such striking contrast as this, for it is difficult to
+draw the line closely between the historian and the man of
+affairs, but Gardiner&#8217;s example is strengthened in other historians&#8217;
+lives sufficiently to warrant the statement that the
+historian need not be a man of the world. Books are written
+by men and treat of the thoughts and actions of men and
+a good study may be made of human character without going
+beyond the walls of a library.</p>
+
+<p>Drawing upon my individual experience again I feel that
+the two authors who have helped me most in this study of
+<a name="png.075" id="png.075"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">67</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>human character are Shakespeare and Homer. I do not
+mean that in the modern world we meet Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth,
+and Shylock, but when we perceive &ldquo;the native hue of
+resolution sicklied o&#8217;er with the pale cast of thought,&rdquo; when
+we come in contact with the treachery of a seeming friend,
+with unholy ambition and insensate greed, we are better
+able to interpret them on the page of history from having
+grasped the lessons of Shakespeare to mankind. A constant
+reading of Shakespeare will show us unchanging passions
+and feelings; and we need not make literal contrasts, as did
+the British matron who remarked of &ldquo;Antony and Cleopatra&rdquo;
+that it was &ldquo;so unlike the home life of our beloved
+queen.&rdquo; Bernard Shaw, who has said much in detraction
+of Shakespeare, writes in one of his admiring moods, &ldquo;that
+the imaginary scenes and people he has created become more
+real to us than our actual life&mdash;at least until our knowledge
+and grip of actual life begins to deepen and glow beyond
+the common. When I was twenty,&rdquo; Shaw continues, &ldquo;I
+knew everybody in Shakespeare from Hamlet to Abhorson,
+much more intimately than I knew my living contemporaries;
+and to this day, if the name of Pistol or Polonius
+catches my eye in a newspaper, I turn to the passage with
+curiosity.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.26"
+ name="fna.iii.26" id="fna.iii.26">26</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Homer&#8217;s character of Ulysses is a link between the ancient
+and the modern world. One feels that Ulysses would be at
+home in the twentieth century and would adapt himself to
+the conditions of modern political life. Perhaps, indeed, he
+would have preferred to his militant age our industrial one
+where prizes are often won by craft and persuasive eloquence
+rather than by strength of arm. The story of Ulysses is a
+signal lesson in the study of human character, and receives
+a luminous commentary in Shakespeare&#8217;s adaptation of it.
+<a name="png.076" id="png.076"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">68</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>The advice which Ulysses gives to Achilles<sup><a href="#fn.iii.27"
+ name="fna.iii.27" id="fna.iii.27">27</a></sup> is a piece of
+worldly wisdom and may well be acted on by those who
+desire advancement in life and are little scrupulous in regard
+to means. The first part of Goethe&#8217;s &ldquo;Faust&rdquo; is another book
+which has profoundly affected my view of life. I read it
+first when seventeen years old and have continually re-read
+it; and, while I fail to comprehend it wholly, and, although
+it does not give me the same kind of knowledge of human
+character that I derive from Shakespeare&#8217;s plays, I carry
+away from it abiding impressions from the contact that it
+affords with one of the greatest of human minds.</p>
+
+<p>All this counsel of mine, as to the reading of the embryo
+historian is, of course, merely supplementary, and does not
+pretend to be exhaustive. I am assuming that during his
+undergraduate and graduate course the student has been
+advised to read, either wholly or in part, most of the English,
+German, and French scientific historians of the past
+fifty years, and that he has become acquainted in a greater
+or less degree with all the eminent American historians. My
+own experience has been that a thorough knowledge of one
+book of an author is better than a superficial acquaintance
+with all of his works. The only book of Francis Parkman&#8217;s
+which I have read is his &ldquo;Montcalm and Wolfe,&rdquo; parts of
+which I have gone over again and again. One chapter, pervaded
+with the scenery of the place, I have read on Lake
+George, three others more than once at Quebec, and I feel
+that I know Parkman&#8217;s method as well as if I had skimmed
+all his volumes. But I believe I was careful in my selection,
+for in his own estimation, and in that of the general public,
+&ldquo;Montcalm and Wolfe&rdquo; is his best work. So with Motley,
+<a name="png.077" id="png.077"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">69</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>I have read nothing but the &ldquo;Dutch Republic,&rdquo; but that I
+have read through twice carefully. I will not say that it is
+the most accurate of his works, but it is probably the most
+interesting and shows his graphic and dashing style at its
+best. An admirer of Stubbs told me that his &ldquo;Lectures and
+Addresses on Medi&aelig;val and Modern History&rdquo; would give me
+a good idea of his scholarship and literary manner and that
+I need not tackle his magnum opus. But those lectures
+gave me a taste for more and, undeterred by the remark of
+still another admirer that nobody ever read his &ldquo;Constitutional
+History&rdquo; through, I did read one volume with
+interest and profit, and I hope at some future time to read
+the other two. On the other hand, I have read everything
+that Samuel R. Gardiner has written except &ldquo;What Gunpowder
+Plot Was.&rdquo; Readers differ. There are fast readers
+who have the faculty of getting just what they want out of
+a book in a brief time and they retain the thing which they
+have sought. Assuredly I envy men that power. For myself,
+I have never found any royal road to learning, have
+been a slow reader, and needed a re-reading, sometimes
+more than one, to acquire any degree of mastery of a book.
+Macaulay used to read his favorite Greek and Latin classics
+over and over again and presumably always with care, but
+modern books he turned off with extraordinary speed. Of
+Buckle&#8217;s large volume of the &ldquo;History of Civilization&rdquo;
+Macaulay wrote in his journal: &ldquo;I read Buckle&#8217;s book all
+day, and got to the end, skipping, of course. A man of
+talent and of a good deal of reading, but paradoxical and
+incoherent.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.28"
+ name="fna.iii.28" id="fna.iii.28">28</a></sup> John Fiske, I believe, was a slow reader, but
+he had such a remarkable power of concentration that what
+he read once was his own. Of this I can give a notable instance.
+At a meeting in Boston a number of years ago of the
+<a name="png.078" id="png.078"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">70</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, Colonel William
+R. Livermore read a learned and interesting paper on Napoleon&#8217;s
+Campaigns in Northern Italy, and a few men, among
+whom were Fiske and John C. Ropes, remained after supper
+to discuss the paper. The discussion went well into details
+and was technical. Fiske had as much to say as any one
+and met the military critics on their own ground, holding
+his own in this interchange of expert opinions. As we returned
+to Cambridge together, I expressed my surprise at his
+wide technical knowledge. &ldquo;It is all due to one book,&rdquo;
+he said. &ldquo;A few summers ago I had occasion to read Sir
+Edward Hamley&#8217;s &lsquo;Operations of War&rsquo; and for some reason
+or other everything in it seemed to sink into my mind and
+to be there retained, ready for use, as was the case to-night
+with his references to the Northern Italian campaigns.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Outside of ordinary historical reading, a book occurs to
+me which is well worth a historian&#8217;s mastery. I am assuming
+that our hypothetical student has read Goethe&#8217;s
+&ldquo;Faust,&rdquo; &ldquo;Werther,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Wilhelm Meister,&rdquo; and desires
+to know something of the personality of this great writer.
+He should, therefore, read Eckermann&#8217;s &ldquo;Conversations
+with Goethe,&rdquo; in which he will find a body of profitable
+literary criticism, given out in a familiar way by the most
+celebrated man then living. The talks began when he was
+seventy-three and continued until near his death, ten years
+later; they reveal his maturity of judgment. Greek, Roman,
+German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian authors
+are taken up from time to time and discussed with clearness
+and appreciation, running sometimes to enthusiasm. As a
+guide to the best reading extant up to 1832 I know nothing
+better. Eckermann is inferior as a biographer to Boswell,
+and his book is neither so interesting nor amusing; but
+Goethe was far greater than Johnson, and his talk is
+<a name="png.079" id="png.079"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">71</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>cosmopolitan and broad, while Johnson&#8217;s is apt to be insular and
+narrow. &ldquo;One should not study contemporaries and competitors,&rdquo;
+Goethe said, &ldquo;but the great men of antiquity,
+whose works have for centuries received equal homage and
+consideration&hellip;. Let us study Molière, let us study
+Shakespeare, but above all things, the old Greeks and always
+the Greeks.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.29"
+ name="fna.iii.29" id="fna.iii.29">29</a></sup> Here is an opinion I like to dwell upon: &ldquo;He
+who will work aright must never rail, must not trouble himself
+at all about what is ill done, but only to do well himself.
+For the great point is, not to pull down, but to build up and
+in this humanity finds pure joy.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.30"
+ name="fna.iii.30" id="fna.iii.30">30</a></sup> It is well worth our
+while to listen to a man so great as to be free from envy and
+jealousy, but this was a lesson Carlyle could not learn from
+his revered master. It is undoubtedly his broad mind in
+connection with his wide knowledge which induced Sainte-Beuve
+to write that Goethe is &ldquo;the greatest of modern critics
+and of critics of all time.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.31"
+ name="fna.iii.31" id="fna.iii.31">31</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>All of the conversations did not run upon literature and
+writers. Although Goethe never visited either Paris or
+London, and resided for a good part of his life in the little
+city of Weimar, he kept abreast of the world&#8217;s progress
+through books, newspapers, and conversations with visiting
+strangers. No statesman or man of business could have
+had a wider outlook than Goethe, when on February 21,
+1827, he thus spoke: &ldquo;I should wish to see England in possession
+of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez&hellip;. And
+it may be foreseen that the United States, with its decided
+predilection to the West will, in thirty or forty years, have
+occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the
+Rocky Mountains. It may furthermore be foreseen that
+along the whole coast of the Pacific Ocean where nature
+has already formed the most capacious and secure harbors,
+<a name="png.080" id="png.080"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">72</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>important commercial towns will gradually arise, for the
+furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the
+East Indies and the United States. In such a case, it would
+not only be desirable, but almost necessary, that a more
+rapid communication should be maintained between the
+eastern and western shores of North America, both by merchant
+ships and men-of-war than has hitherto been possible
+with the tedious, disagreeable, and expensive voyage around
+Cape Horn&hellip;. It is absolutely indispensable for the
+United States to effect a passage from the Gulf of Mexico to
+the Pacific Ocean, and I am certain that they will do it.
+Would that I might live to see it!&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.32"
+ name="fna.iii.32" id="fna.iii.32">32</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eckermann&#8217;s book,&rdquo; wrote Sainte-Beuve, &ldquo;is the best
+biography of Goethe; that of Lewes, for the facts; that of
+Eckermann, for the portrait from the inside and the physiognomy.
+The soul of a great man breathes in it.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.33"
+ name="fna.iii.33" id="fna.iii.33">33</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>I have had frequent occasion to speak of Sainte-Beuve
+and I cannot recommend our student too strongly to read
+from time to time some of his critical essays. His best work
+is contained in the fifteen volumes of &ldquo;Causeries du Lundi&rdquo;
+and in the thirteen volumes of &ldquo;Nouveaux Lundis&rdquo; which
+were articles written for the daily newspapers, the <cite>Constitutionnel</cite>,
+the <cite>Moniteur</cite>, and the <cite>Temps</cite>, when, between the
+ages of forty-five and sixty-five, he was at the maturity of
+his powers. Considering the very high quality of the work,
+the quantity is enormous, and makes us call to mind the remark
+of Goethe that &ldquo;genius and fecundity are very closely
+allied.&rdquo; Excluding Goethe, we may safely, I think, call
+Sainte-Beuve the greatest of modern critics, and there is
+enough of resemblance between historical and literary criticism
+to warrant a study by the historian of these remarkable
+essays. &ldquo;The root of everything in his criticism,&rdquo; wrote
+<a name="png.081" id="png.081"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">73</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Matthew Arnold, &ldquo;is his single-hearted devotion to truth.
+What he called &lsquo;fictions&rsquo; in literature, in politics, in religion,
+were not allowed to influence him.&rdquo; And Sainte-Beuve
+himself has said, &ldquo;I am accustomed incessantly to call my
+judgments in question anew and to recast my opinions the
+moment I suspect them to be without validity.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.34"
+ name="fna.iii.34" id="fna.iii.34">34</a></sup> The
+writer who conforms to such a high standard is an excellent
+guide for the historian and no one who has made a study of
+these Causeries can help feeling their spirit of candor and
+being inspired to the attempt to realize so high an ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Sainte-Beuve&#8217;s essays deal almost entirely with French
+literature and history, which were the subjects he knew
+best. It is very desirable for us Anglo-Saxons to broaden
+our minds and soften our prejudices by excursions outside
+of our own literature and history, and with Goethe for our
+guide in Germany, we can do no better than to accept Sainte-Beuve
+for France. Brunetière wrote that the four literary
+men of France in the nineteenth century who had exercised
+the most profound influence were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac,
+Victor Hugo, and Auguste Comte.<sup><a href="#fn.iii.35"
+ name="fna.iii.35" id="fna.iii.35">35</a></sup> I have already
+recommended Balzac, who portrays the life of the nineteenth
+century; and Sainte-Beuve, in developing the thought of
+the same period, gives us a history of French literature and
+society. Moreover, his volumes are valuable to one who is
+studying human character by the means of books. &ldquo;Sainte-Beuve
+had,&rdquo; wrote Henry James, &ldquo;two passions which are
+commonly assumed to exclude each other, the passion for
+scholarship and the passion for life. He valued life and
+literature equally for the light they threw on each other;
+to his mind, one implied the other; he was unable to conceive
+of them apart.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.36"
+ name="fna.iii.36" id="fna.iii.36">36</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Supposing the student to have devoted five years to this
+<a name="png.082" id="png.082"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">74</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>general preparation and to have arrived at the age of thirty,
+which Motley, in similar advice to an aspiring historian,
+fixed as the earliest age at which one should devote himself
+to his special work, he is ready to choose a period and write
+a history, if indeed his period has not already suggested
+itself during his years of general preparation. At all events
+it is doubtless that his own predilection will fix his country
+and epoch and the only counsel I have to offer is to select
+an interesting period. As to this, opinions will differ; but
+I would say for example that the attractive parts of German
+history are the Reformation, the Thirty Years&#8217; War, the
+epoch of Frederick the Great, and the unification of Germany
+which we have witnessed in our own day. The French
+Revolution is to me the most striking period in modern
+annals, whilst the history of the Directory is dull, relieved
+only by the exploits of Napoleon; but when Napoleon becomes
+the chief officer of state, interest revives and we
+follow with unflagging attention the story of this master of
+men, for which there is a superabundance of material, in
+striking contrast with the little that is known about his
+Titanic predecessors, Alexander and C&aelig;sar, in the accounts
+of whose careers conjecture must so frequently come to the
+aid of facts to construct a continuous story. The Restoration
+and the reign of Louis Philippe would for me be dull
+periods were they not illumined by the novels of Balzac;
+but from the Revolution of 1848 to the fall of the Second
+Empire and the Commune, a wonderful drama was enacted.
+In our own history the Revolutionary War, the framing of
+the Constitution, and Washington&#8217;s administrations seem
+to me replete with interest which is somewhat lacking for
+the period between Washington and the slavery conflict.
+&ldquo;As to special history,&rdquo; wrote Motley to the aspiring historian,
+&ldquo;I should be inclined rather to direct your attention
+<a name="png.083" id="png.083"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">75</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to that of the last three and a half centuries.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.37"
+ name="fna.iii.37" id="fna.iii.37">37</a></sup> Discussing
+the subject before the advanced historical students of Harvard
+a number of years ago, I gave an extension to Motley&#8217;s
+counsel by saying that ancient history had better be left to
+the Germans. I was fresh from reading Holm&#8217;s History
+of Greece and was impressed with his vast learning, elaboration
+of detail, and exhaustive treatment of every subject
+which seemed to me to require a steady application and patience,
+hardly consonant with the American character. But
+within the past five years Ferrero, an Italian, has demonstrated
+that others besides Germans are equal to the work
+by writing an interesting history of Rome, which intelligent
+men and scholars discuss in the same breath with Mommsen&#8217;s.
+Courageously adopting the title &ldquo;Grandeur and
+Decadence of Rome&rdquo; which suggests that of Montesquieu,
+Ferrero has gleaned the well-reaped field from the appearance
+of Julius C&aelig;sar to the reign of Augustus<sup><a href="#fn.iii.38"
+ name="fna.iii.38" id="fna.iii.38">38</a></sup> in a manner
+to attract the attention of the reading public in Italy,
+France, England, and the United States. There is no reason
+why an American should not have done the same. &ldquo;All
+history is public property,&rdquo; wrote Motley in the letter previously
+referred to. &ldquo;All history may be rewritten and it
+is impossible that with exhaustive research and deep reflection
+you should not be able to produce something new
+and valuable on almost any subject.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.39"
+ name="fna.iii.39" id="fna.iii.39">39</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>After the student has chosen his period I have little advice
+to offer him beyond what I have previously given in two
+formal addresses before the American Historical Association,
+but a few additional words may be useful. You will evolve
+your own method by practice and by comparison with the
+methods of other historians. &ldquo;Follow your own star.&rdquo;
+<a name="png.084" id="png.084"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">76</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>If you feel impelled to praise or blame as do the older historians,
+if it is forced upon you that your subject demands
+such treatment, proceed fearlessly, so that you do nothing
+for effect, so that you do not sacrifice the least particle of
+truth for a telling statement. If, however, you fall naturally
+into the rigorously judicial method of Gardiner you may
+feel your position sure. It is well, as the scientific historians
+warn you, to be suspicious of interesting things, but,
+on the other hand, every interesting incident is not necessarily
+untrue. If you have made a conscientious search
+for historical material and use it with scrupulous honesty,
+have no fear that you will transgress any reasonable canon
+of historical writing.</p>
+
+<p>An obvious question to be put to a historian is, What
+plan do you follow in making notes of your reading? Langlois,
+an experienced teacher and tried scholar, in his introduction
+to the &ldquo;Study of History,&rdquo; condemns the natural
+impulse to set them down in notebooks in the order in
+which one&#8217;s authorities are studied, and says, &ldquo;Every one
+admits nowadays that it is advisable to collect materials
+on separate cards or slips of paper,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.40"
+ name="fna.iii.40" id="fna.iii.40">40</a></sup> arranging them by a
+systematic classification of subjects. This is a case in point
+where writers will, I think, learn best from their own experience.
+I have made my notes mainly in notebooks on
+the plan which Langlois condemns, but by colored pencil-marks
+of emphasis and summary, I keep before me the
+prominent facts which I wish to combine; and I have
+found this, on the whole, better than the card system. For
+I have aimed to study my authorities in a logical succession.
+First I go over the period in some general history, if one is
+to be had; then I read very carefully my original authorities
+in the order of their estimated importance, making
+<a name="png.085" id="png.085"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">77</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>copious excerpts. Afterwards I skim my second-hand
+materials. Now I maintain that it is logical and natural
+to have the extracts before me in the order of my study.
+When unusually careful and critical treatment has been
+required, I have drawn off my memoranda from the notebooks
+to cards, classifying them according to subjects.
+Such a method enables me to digest thoroughly my materials,
+but in the main I find that a frequent re-perusal of my
+notes answers fully as well and is an economy of time.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle, in answer to an inquiry regarding his own procedure,
+has gone to the heart of the matter. &ldquo;I go into the
+business,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;with all the intelligence, patience,
+silence, and other gifts and virtues that I have &hellip; and
+on the whole try to keep the whole matter simmering in the
+<em>living</em> mind and memory rather than laid up in paper bundles
+or otherwise laid up in the inert way. For this certainly
+turns out to be a truth; only what you at last <em>have
+living</em> in your own memory and heart is worth putting down
+to be printed; this alone has much chance to get into the
+living heart and memory of other men. And here indeed,
+I believe, is the essence of all the rules I have ever been able
+to devise for myself. I have tried various schemes of arrangement
+and artificial helps to remembrance,&rdquo; but the
+gist of the matter is, &ldquo;to keep the thing you are elaborating
+as much as possible actually <em>in</em> your own living mind; in
+order that this same mind, as much awake as possible, may
+have a chance to make something of it!&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.iii.41"
+ name="fna.iii.41" id="fna.iii.41">41</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The objection may be made to my discourse that I have
+considered our student as possessing the purse of Fortunatus
+and have lost sight of Herbert Spencer&#8217;s doctrine that
+a very important part of education is to fit a man to acquire
+the means of living. I may reply that there are a number
+<a name="png.086" id="png.086"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">78</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of Harvard students who will not have to work for their
+bread and whose parents would be glad to have them follow
+the course that I have recommended. It is not too much
+to hope, therefore, that among these there are, to use Huxley&#8217;s
+words, &ldquo;glorious sports of nature&rdquo; who will not be
+&ldquo;corrupted by luxury&rdquo; but will become industrious historians.
+To others who are not so fortunately situated, I
+cannot recommend the profession of historian as a means
+of gaining a livelihood. Bancroft and Parkman, who had a
+good deal of popularity, spent more money in the collection
+and copying of documents than they ever received as income
+from their histories. A young friend of mine, at the
+outset of his career and with his living in part to be earned,
+went for advice to Carl Schurz, who was very fond of him.
+&ldquo;What is your aim?&rdquo; asked Mr. Schurz. &ldquo;I purpose being
+a historian,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; laughed Schurz,
+&ldquo;you are adopting an aristocratic profession, one which
+requires a rent-roll.&rdquo; Every aspiring historian has, I suppose,
+dreamed of that check of £20,000, which Macaulay
+received as royalty on his history for its sale during the year
+1856,<sup><a href="#fn.iii.42" name="fna.iii.42"
+ id="fna.iii.42">42</a></sup> but no such dream has since been realized.</p>
+
+<p>Teaching and writing are allied pursuits. And the teacher
+helps the writer, especially in history, through the necessary
+elaboration and digestion of materials. Much excellent
+history is given to the world by college professors. Law
+and medicine are too exacting professions with too large a
+literature of their own to leave any leisure for historical
+investigation. If one has the opportunity to get a good
+start, or, in the talk of the day, the right sort of a &ldquo;pull,&rdquo;
+I can recommend business as a means of gaining a competence
+which shall enable one to devote one&#8217;s whole time
+to a favorite pursuit. Grote was a banker until he reached
+<a name="png.087" id="png.087"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">79</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the age of forty-nine when he retired from the banking house
+and began the composition of the first volume of his history.
+Henry C. Lea was in the active publishing business until he
+was fifty-five, and as I have already frequently referred to
+my own personal experience, I may add that I was immersed
+in business between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-seven.
+After three years of general and special preparation
+I began my writing at forty. The business man has many
+free evenings and many journeys by rail, as well as a summer
+vacation, when devotion to a line of study may constitute
+a valuable recreation. Much may be done in odd hours in
+the way of preparation for historical work, and a business
+life is an excellent school for the study of human character.</p>
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.1" id="fn.iii.1" href="#fna.iii.1">1</a>
+Conversations of Goethe, Eng. trans., 230.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.2" id="fn.iii.2" href="#fna.iii.2">2</a>
+Trevelyan, I, 86.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.3" id="fn.iii.3" href="#fna.iii.3">3</a>
+Life of Gladstone, II, 181.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.4" id="fn.iii.4" href="#fna.iii.4">4</a>
+III, 51.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.5" id="fn.iii.5" href="#fna.iii.5">5</a>
+Talks with Emerson, 23.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.6" id="fn.iii.6" href="#fna.iii.6">6</a>
+My Vol. II, 142, n.&nbsp;2.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.7" id="fn.iii.7" href="#fna.iii.7">7</a>
+Curtis, I, 250.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.8" id="fn.iii.8" href="#fna.iii.8">8</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, I, 252.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iii.9" id="fn.iii.9" href="#fna.iii.9">9</a>
+Miscellanies, I, 275.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.10" id="fn.iii.10" href="#fna.iii.10">10</a>
+Exam. of Sir W. Hamilton&#8217;s Philosophy, II, 310, 311.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.11" id="fn.iii.11" href="#fna.iii.11">11</a>
+Gladstone, I, 195.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.12" id="fn.iii.12" href="#fna.iii.12">12</a>
+p.&nbsp;142.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.13" id="fn.iii.13" href="#fna.iii.13">13</a>
+Trevelyan, I, 91.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.14" id="fn.iii.14" href="#fna.iii.14">14</a>
+Froude, II, 317.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.15" id="fn.iii.15" href="#fna.iii.15">15</a>
+Nichol, 20.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.16" id="fn.iii.16" href="#fna.iii.16">16</a>
+Talks with Emerson, 162.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.17" id="fn.iii.17" href="#fna.iii.17">17</a>
+Trevelyan, I, 379, 387, 409.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.18" id="fn.iii.18" href="#fna.iii.18">18</a>
+Froude, III, 64, 65.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.19" id="fn.iii.19" href="#fna.iii.19">19</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, II, 385; III, 59.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.20" id="fn.iii.20" href="#fna.iii.20">20</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, III, 73.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.21" id="fn.iii.21" href="#fna.iii.21">21</a>
+English Composition, 158.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.22" id="fn.iii.22" href="#fna.iii.22">22</a>
+Letters of Jane Carlyle, II, 31.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.23" id="fn.iii.23" href="#fna.iii.23">23</a>
+Froude&#8217;s Carlyle, IV, 125.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.24" id="fn.iii.24" href="#fna.iii.24">24</a>
+Causeries du Lundi, XV, 95.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.25" id="fn.iii.25" href="#fna.iii.25">25</a>
+Froude, II, 19.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.26" id="fn.iii.26" href="#fna.iii.26">26</a>
+Dramatic Opinions, II, 53.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.27" id="fn.iii.27" href="#fna.iii.27">27</a>
+&ldquo;Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back<br />
+<span class="lemsp">Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,</span><br />
+<span class="lemsp">A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:&rdquo; etc.</span></p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.28" id="fn.iii.28" href="#fna.iii.28">28</a>
+Trevelyan, II, 388, n.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.29" id="fn.iii.29" href="#fna.iii.29">29</a>
+Eng. trans., 236.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.30" id="fn.iii.30" href="#fna.iii.30">30</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, 115.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.31" id="fn.iii.31" href="#fna.iii.31">31</a>
+Nouveaux Lundis, III, 265.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.32" id="fn.iii.32" href="#fna.iii.32">32</a>
+Eng. trans., 222.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.33" id="fn.iii.33" href="#fna.iii.33">33</a>
+Nouveaux Lundis, III, 328.</p>
+<p><a name="fn.iii.34" id="fn.iii.34" href="#fna.iii.34">34</a>
+Enc. Brit.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.35" id="fn.iii.35" href="#fna.iii.35">35</a>
+Balzac, 309.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.36" id="fn.iii.36" href="#fna.iii.36">36</a>
+Brander Matthews, <cite>Cent. Mag.</cite>, 1901.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.37" id="fn.iii.37" href="#fna.iii.37">37</a>
+Letter of April 4, 1864, <cite>Harper&#8217;s Mag.</cite>, June, 1889.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.38" id="fn.iii.38" href="#fna.iii.38">38</a>
+I speak of the first four volumes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.39" id="fn.iii.39" href="#fna.iii.39">39</a>
+<i>L.c.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.40" id="fn.iii.40" href="#fna.iii.40">40</a>
+p.&nbsp;103.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.41" id="fn.iii.41" href="#fna.iii.41">41</a>
+New Letters, II, 11.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.iii.42" id="fn.iii.42" href="#fna.iii.42">42</a>
+Life, II, 345.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.089" id="png.089"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">81</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>NEWSPAPERS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES</h2>
+
+<p>A paper read before the American Historical Association in Washington
+on December 29, 1908; printed in the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>,
+May, 1909.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.091" id="png.091"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">83</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>NEWSPAPERS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> impulse of an American writer in justifying the use
+of newspapers as historical materials is to adopt an apologetic
+tone. It is somewhat curious that such should be
+the case, for newspapers satisfy so many canons of historical
+evidence. They are contemporary, and, being written
+without knowledge of the end, cannot bolster any cause
+without making a plain showing of their intent. Their
+object is the relation of daily events; and if their relation is
+colored by honest or dishonest partisanship, this is easily
+discernible by the critic from the internal evidence and
+from an easily acquired knowledge of a few external facts.
+As the journals themselves say, their aim is to print the
+news; and much of the news is present politics. Moreover,
+the newspaper itself, its news and editorial columns, its
+advertisements, is a graphic picture of society.</p>
+
+<p>When Aulard, in his illuminating criticism of Taine, writes
+that the journals are a very important source of the history
+of the French Revolution, provided they are revised and
+checked by one another, the statement seems in accordance
+with the canons of historical writing; and when he blames
+Taine for using two journals only and neglecting ten others
+which he names, the impression on the mind is the same as
+if Taine were charged with the neglect of evidence of another
+class. One would hardly attempt to justify Taine
+by declaring that all journals are inaccurate, partisan, and
+dishonest, and that the omission was a merit, not a defect.
+Leaving out of account the greater size and diffuseness of
+the modern journal, the dictum of Aulard would seem to
+apply to any period of history.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.092" id="png.092"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">84</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Why is it then that some American students fall consciously
+or unconsciously into an apologetic tone when they
+attempt to justify the use of newspapers as historical
+sources? I suppose it is because of the attitude of cultivated
+society to the newspaper of to-day. Society calls the
+ordinary newspaper sensational and unreliable; and, if
+neither, its accounts are so diffuse and badly proportioned
+as to weary the seeker after the facts of any given transaction.
+Despite the disfavor into which the American newspaper
+has fallen in certain circles, I suspect that it has only
+exaggerated these defects, and that the journals of different
+democracies have more resemblances than diversities. The
+newspaper that caters to the &ldquo;masses&rdquo; will never suit the
+&ldquo;classes,&rdquo; and the necessity for a large circulation induces
+it to furnish the sheet which the greatest number of readers
+desire.</p>
+
+<p>But this does not concern the historian. He does not
+make his materials. He has to take them as they are. It
+would undoubtedly render his task easier if all men spoke
+and wrote everywhere with accuracy and sincerity; but
+his work would lose much of its interest. Take the newspaper
+for what it is, a hasty gatherer of facts, a hurried
+commentator on the same, and it may well constitute a part
+of historical evidence.</p>
+
+<p>When, in 1887, I began the critical study of the History
+of the United States from 1850 to 1860, I was struck with the
+paucity of material which would serve the purpose of an
+animated narrative. The main facts were to be had in the
+state papers, the Statutes, the <cite>Congressional Globe</cite> and documents,
+the records of national conventions and platforms,
+and the tabulated results of elections. But there was much
+less private correspondence than is available for the early
+history of our country; and, compared with the period of
+<a name="png.093" id="png.093"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">85</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the Civil War and later, a scarcity of biographies and reminiscences,
+containing personal letters of high historical
+value. Since I wrote my first two volumes, much new matter
+concerning the decade of 1850 to 1860 has been published.
+The work of the American Historical Association, and of
+many historical societies, the monographs of advanced university
+students, have thrown light upon this, as they
+have upon other periods, with the result that future delvers
+in this field can hardly be so much struck with the paucity
+of material as I was twenty-one years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Boy though I was during the decade of 1850 to 1860, I had
+a vivid remembrance of the part that the newspaper played
+in politics, and the thought came to me that the best way
+to arrive at the spirit of the times was to steep my mind in
+journalistic material; that there was the secret of living
+over again that decade, as the Abolitionist, the Republican,
+the Whig, and the Democrat had actually lived in it. In
+the critical use of such sources, I was helped by the example
+of von Holst, who employed them freely in his volumes
+covering the same period, and by the counsel and collaboration
+of my friend Edward G. Bourne, whose training was
+in the modern school. For whatever training I had beyond
+that of self came from the mastery, under the guidance of
+teachers, of certain general historians belonging to an epoch
+when power of expression was as much studied as the collecting
+and sifting of evidence.</p>
+
+<p>While considering my materials, I was struck with a
+statement cited by Herbert Spencer as an illustration in his
+&ldquo;Philosophy of Style&rdquo;: &ldquo;A modern newspaper statement,
+though probably true, if quoted in a book as testimony,
+would be laughed at; but the letter of a court gossip, if
+written some centuries ago, is thought good historical evidence.&rdquo;
+At about the same time, I noticed that Motley
+<a name="png.094" id="png.094"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">86</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>used as one of his main authorities for the battle of St.
+Quentin the manuscript of an anonymous writer. From
+these two circumstances, it was a logical reflection that
+some historians might make an exaggerated estimate of the
+value of manuscript material because it reposed in dusty
+archives and could be utilized only by severe labor and
+long patience; and that, imbued with this idea, other historians
+for other periods might neglect the newspaper because
+of its ready accessibility.</p>
+
+<p>These several considerations justified a belief, arrived at
+from my preliminary survey of the field, that the use of newspapers
+as sources for the decade of 1850 to 1860 was desirable.
+At each step of my pretty thorough study of them, I became
+more and more convinced that I was on the right track. I
+found facts in them which I could have found nowhere else.
+The public meeting is a great factor in the political life of
+this decade, and is most fully and graphically reported in
+the press. The newspaper, too, was a vehicle for personal
+accounts of a quasi-confidential nature, of which I can give
+a significant example. In an investigation that Edward
+Bourne made for me during the summer of 1889, he came
+across in the <cite>Boston Courier</cite> an inside account of the
+Whig convention of 1852, showing, more conclusively than
+I have seen elsewhere, the reason of the failure to unite the
+conservative Whigs, who were apparently in a majority, on
+Webster. From collateral evidence we were convinced
+that it was written by a Massachusetts delegate; and the
+<cite>Springfield Republican</cite>, which copied the account, furnished
+a confirmation of it. It was an interesting story, and I
+incorporated it in my narrative.</p>
+
+<p>I am well aware that Dr. Dryasdust may ask, What of it?
+The report of the convention shows that Webster received
+a very small vote and that Scott was nominated. Why
+<a name="png.095" id="png.095"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">87</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>waste time and words over the &ldquo;might have been&rdquo;? I can
+plead only the human interest in the great Daniel Webster
+ardently desiring that nomination, Rufus Choate advocating
+it in sublime oratory, the two antislavery delegates
+from Massachusetts refusing their votes for Webster, thus
+preventing a unanimous Massachusetts, and the delegates
+from Maine, among whom was Webster&#8217;s godson William P.
+Fessenden, coldly refusing their much-needed aid.</p>
+
+<p>General Scott, having received the nomination, made a
+stumping tour in the autumn through some of the Western
+States. No accurate account of it is possible without the
+newspapers, yet it was esteemed a factor in his overwhelming
+defeat, and the story of it is well worth preserving as data
+for a discussion of the question, Is it wise for a presidential
+candidate to make a stumping tour during his electoral
+campaign?</p>
+
+<p>The story of the formation of the Republican party, and
+the rise of the Know-nothings, may possibly be written
+without recourse to the newspapers, but thorough steeping
+in such material cannot fail to add to the animation and accuracy
+of the story. In detailed history and biographical
+books, dates, through mistakes of the writer or printer,
+are frequently wrong; and when the date was an affair of
+supreme importance, I have sometimes found a doubt resolved
+by a reference to the newspaper, which, from its
+strictly contemporary character, cannot in such a matter
+lead one astray.</p>
+
+<p>I found the newspapers of value in the correction of logical
+assumptions, which frequently appear in American historical
+and biographical books, especially in those written by men
+who bore a part in public affairs. By a logical assumption,
+I mean the statement of a seemingly necessary consequence
+which apparently ought to follow some well-attested fact or
+<a name="png.096" id="png.096"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">88</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>condition. A striking instance of this occurred during the
+political campaign of 1856, when &ldquo;bleeding Kansas&rdquo; was a
+thrilling catchword used by the Republicans, whose candidate
+for president was Frémont. In a year and a half seven
+free-state men had been killed in Kansas by the border
+ruffians, and these outrages, thoroughly ventilated, made
+excellent campaign ammunition. But the Democrats had
+a <em>tu quoque</em> argument which ought to have done much towards
+eliminating this question from the canvass.</p>
+
+<p>On the night of May 24, 1856, five pro-slavery men, living
+on the Pottawatomie Creek, were deliberately and foully
+murdered by John Brown and seven of his disciples; and,
+while this massacre caused profound excitement in Kansas
+and Missouri, it seems to have had no influence east of the
+Mississippi River, although the fact was well attested. A
+Kansas journalist of 1856, writing in 1879, made this logical
+assumption: &ldquo;The opposition press both North and South
+took up the damning tale &hellip; of that midnight butchery
+on the Pottawatomie&hellip;. Whole columns of leaders
+from week to week, with startling headlines, liberally distributed
+capitals, and frightful exclamation points, filled
+all the newspapers.&rdquo; And it was his opinion that, had it
+not been for this massacre, Frémont would have been elected.</p>
+
+<p>But I could not discover that the massacre had any influence
+on the voters in the pivotal states. I examined,
+or had examined, the files of the <cite>New York Journal of
+Commerce</cite>, <cite>New York Herald</cite>, <cite>Philadelphia Pennsylvanian</cite>,
+<cite>Washington Union</cite>, and <cite>Cleveland Plain Dealer</cite>, all Democratic
+papers except the <cite>New York Herald</cite>, and I was struck
+with the fact that substantially no use was made of the massacre
+as a campaign argument. Yet could anything have
+been more logical than the assumption that the Democrats
+would have been equal to their opportunity and spread far
+<a name="png.097" id="png.097"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">89</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and wide such a story? The facts in the case show therefore
+that cause and effect in actual American history are
+not always the same as the statesman may conceive them
+in his cabinet or the historian in his study.</p>
+
+<p>In the newspapers of 1850 to 1860 many speeches, and
+many public, and some private, letters of conspicuous public
+men are printed; these are valuable material for the history
+of the decade, and their use is in entire accordance with
+modern historical canons.</p>
+
+<p>I have so far considered the press in its character of a
+register of facts; but it has a further use for historical purposes,
+since it is both a representative and guide of public
+sentiment. Kinglake shows that the <cite>Times</cite> was the potent
+influence which induced England to invade the Crimea;
+Bismarck said in 1877 that the press &ldquo;was the cause of the
+last three wars&rdquo;; Lord Cromer writes, &ldquo;The people of England
+as represented by the press insisted on sending General
+Gordon to the Soudan, and accordingly to the Soudan he
+was sent;&rdquo; and it is current talk that the yellow journals
+brought on the Spanish-American War. Giving these statements
+due weight, can a historian be justified in neglecting
+the important influence of the press on public opinion?</p>
+
+<p>As reflecting and leading popular sentiment during the
+decade of 1850 to 1860, the newspapers of the Northern
+States were potent. I own that many times one needs no
+further index to public sentiment than our frequent elections,
+but in 1854 conditions were peculiar. The repeal of
+the Missouri Compromise had outraged the North and indicated
+that a new party must be formed to resist the extension
+of slavery. In the disorganization of the Democratic
+party, and the effacement of the Whig, nowhere may
+the new movement so well be traced as in the news and
+editorial columns of the newspapers, and in the speeches of
+<a name="png.098" id="png.098"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">90</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the Northern leaders, many of these indeed being printed
+nowhere else than in the press. What journals and what
+journalists there were in those days! Greeley and Dana
+of the <cite>New York Tribune</cite>; Bryant and Bigelow of the
+<cite>Evening Post</cite>; Raymond of the <cite>Times</cite>; Webb of the <cite>Courier</cite>
+and <cite>Enquirer</cite>; Bowles of the <cite>Springfield Republican</cite>; Thurlow
+Weed of the <cite>Albany Journal</cite>; Schouler of the <cite>Cincinnati
+Gazette</cite>,&mdash;all inspired by their opposition to the spread of
+slavery, wrote with vigor and enthusiasm, representing the
+ideas of men who had burning thoughts without power of
+expression, and guiding others who needed the constant
+iteration of positive opinions to determine their political
+action.</p>
+
+<p>The main and cross currents which resulted in the formation
+of the compact Republican party of 1856 have their
+principal record in the press, and from it, directly or indirectly,
+must the story be told. Unquestionably the newspapers
+had greater influence than in an ordinary time,
+because the question was a moral one and could be concretely
+put. Was slavery right or wrong? If wrong, should not
+its extension be stopped? That was the issue, and all the
+arguments, constitutional and social, turned on that point.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest single journalistic influence was the <cite>New
+York Weekly Tribune</cite> which had in 1854 a circulation of
+112,000, and many times that number of readers. These
+readers were of the thorough kind, reading all the news, all
+the printed speeches and addresses, and all the editorials,
+and pondering as they read. The questions were discussed
+in their family circles and with their neighbors, and, as
+differences arose, the <cite>Tribune</cite>, always at hand, was consulted
+and re-read. There being few popular magazines during
+this decade, the weekly newspaper, in some degree, took
+their place; and, through this medium, Greeley and his
+<a name="png.099" id="png.099"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">91</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>able coadjutors spoke to the people of New York and of
+the West, where New England ideas predominated, with a
+power never before or since known in this country. When
+Motley was studying the old letters and documents of the
+sixteenth century in the archives of Brussels, he wrote:
+&ldquo;It is something to read the real <em>bona fide</em> signs manual of
+such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander
+Farnese, Philip the Second, Cardinal Granville and
+the rest of them. It gives a &lsquo;realizing sense,&rsquo; as the Americans
+have it.&rdquo; I had somewhat of the same feeling as I
+turned over the pages of the bound volumes of the <cite>Weekly
+Tribune</cite>, reading the editorials and letters of Greeley, the
+articles of Dana and Hildreth. I could recall enough of
+the time to feel the influence of this political bible, as it was
+termed, and I can emphatically say that if you want to penetrate
+into the thoughts, feelings, and ground of decision
+of the 1,866,000 men who voted for Lincoln in 1860, you
+should study with care the <cite>New York Weekly Tribune</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>One reason why the press was a better representative of
+opinion during the years from 1854 to 1860 than now is
+that there were few, if any, independent journals. The
+party man read his own newspaper and no other; in that,
+he found an expression of his own views. And the party
+newspaper in the main printed only the speeches and arguments
+of its own side. Greeley on one occasion was asked
+by John Russell Young, an associate, for permission to reprint
+a speech of Horatio Seymour in full as a matter of
+news. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Greeley said, &ldquo;I will print Seymour&#8217;s speech
+when the <cite>World</cite> will print those of our side.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Before the war, Charleston was one of the most interesting
+cities of the country. It was a small aristocratic community,
+with an air of refinement and distinction. The story of
+Athens proclaims that a large population is not necessary
+<a name="png.100" id="png.100"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">92</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to exercise a powerful influence on the world; and, after
+the election of Lincoln in 1860, the 40,000 people of Charleston,
+or rather the few patricians who controlled its fate and
+that of South Carolina, attracted the attention of the whole
+country. The story of the secession movement of November
+and December, 1860, cannot be told with correctness
+and life without frequent references to the <cite>Charleston Mercury</cite>
+and the <cite>Charleston Courier</cite>. The <cite>Mercury</cite> especially
+was an index of opinion, and so vivid is its daily chronicle
+of events that the historian is able to put himself in the
+place of those ardent South Carolinians and understand
+their point of view.</p>
+
+<p>For the history of the Civil War, newspapers are not so
+important. The other material is superabundant, and in
+choosing from the mass of it, the newspapers, so-far as affairs
+at the North are concerned, need only be used in special
+cases, and rarely for matters of fact. The accounts of campaigns
+and battles, which filled so much of their space, may
+be ignored, as the best possible authorities for these are the
+one hundred and twenty-eight volumes of the United States
+government publication, the &ldquo;Official Records of the Union
+and Confederate armies.&rdquo; The faithful study of the correspondence
+and the reports in these unique volumes is
+absolutely essential to a comprehension of the war; and it
+is a labor of love. When one thinks of the mass of manuscripts
+students of certain periods of European history have
+been obliged to read, the American historian is profoundly
+grateful to his government, that at a cost to itself of nearly
+three million dollars,<sup><a href="#fn.iv.1" name="fna.iv.1" id="fna.iv.1">1</a></sup>
+ it has furnished him this priceless
+material in neatly printed volumes with excellent indexes.
+The serious student can generally procure these volumes
+<a name="png.101" id="png.101"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">93</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>gratis through the favor of his congressman; or, failing in
+this, may purchase the set at a moderate price, so that he is
+not obliged to go to a public library to consult them.</p>
+
+<p>Next to manuscript material, the physical and mental
+labor of turning over and reading bound volumes of newspapers
+is the most severe, and I remember my feeling of relief
+at being able to divert my attention from what Edward L.
+Pierce called this back-breaking and eye-destroying labor,
+much of it in public libraries, to these convenient books in
+my own private library. A mass of other materials, notably
+Nicolay and Hay&#8217;s contributions, military narratives,
+biographies, private correspondence, to say nothing of the
+Congressional publications, render the student fairly independent
+of the newspapers. But I did myself make, for
+certain periods, special researches among them to ascertain
+their influence on public sentiment; and I also found them
+very useful in my account of the New York draft riots of
+1863. It is true the press did not accurately reflect the
+gloom and sickness of heart at the North after the battle
+of Chancellorsville, for the reason that many editors wrote
+for the purpose of keeping up the hopes of their readers. In
+sum, the student may congratulate himself that a continuous
+study of the Northern newspapers for the period of the
+Civil War is unnecessary, for their size and diffuseness are
+appalling.</p>
+
+<p>But what I have said about the press of the North will
+not apply to that of the South. Though strenuous efforts
+have been made, with the diligent coöperation of Southern
+men, to secure the utmost possible amount of Confederate material
+for the &ldquo;Official Records,&rdquo; it actually forms only about
+twenty-nine per cent of the whole matter. Other historical
+material is also less copious. For example, there is no record
+of the proceedings of the Confederate Congress, like the
+<a name="png.102" id="png.102"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">94</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span><cite>Globe</cite>; there are no reports of committees, like that of the
+Committee on the Conduct of the War; and even the journal
+of the Congress was kept on loose memoranda, and not
+written up until after the close of the war. With the exception
+of this journal, which has been printed by our government,
+and the &ldquo;Statutes at Large,&rdquo; our information of
+the work of the Confederate Congress comes from the newspapers
+and some books of biography and recollections.
+The case of the Southern States was peculiar, because they
+were so long cut off from intercourse with the outer world,
+owing to the efficient Federal blockade; and the newspaper
+in its local news, editorials, and advertisements, is important
+material for portraying life in the Confederacy during the
+Civil War. Fortunately for the student, the Southern
+newspaper was not the same voluminous issue as the Northern,
+and, if it had not been badly printed, its use would
+be attended with little difficulty. Owing to the scarcity of
+paper, many of the newspapers were gradually reduced in
+size, and in the end were printed on half-sheets, occasionally
+one on brown paper, and another on wall paper; even the
+white paper was frequently coarse, and this, with poor type,
+made the news-sheet itself a daily record of the waning
+fortunes of the Confederacy.</p>
+
+<p>In the history of Reconstruction the historian may be to
+a large extent independent of the daily newspaper. For
+the work of reconstruction was done by Congress, and
+Congress had the full support of the Northern people, as was
+shown by the continuous large Republican majority which
+was maintained. The debates, the reports, and the acts of
+Congress are essential, and little else is required except whatever
+private correspondence may be accessible. Congress
+represented public sentiment of the North, and if one desires
+newspaper opinion, one may find it in many pithy
+<a name="png.103" id="png.103"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">95</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>expressions on the floor of the House or the Senate. For the
+congressman and the senator are industrious newspaper
+readers. They are apt to read some able New York journal
+which speaks for their party, and the congressman will
+read the daily and weekly newspapers of his district, and
+the senator the prominent ones of his state which belong
+to his party.</p>
+
+<p>For the period which covered Reconstruction, from 1865
+to 1877, I used the <cite>Nation</cite> to a large extent. Its bound
+volumes are convenient to handle in one&#8217;s own library, and
+its summary of events is useful in itself, and as giving leads
+to the investigation of other material. Frequently its
+editorials have spoken for the sober sense of the people with
+amazing success. As a constant reader of the <cite>Nation</cite> since
+1866, I have felt the fascination of Godkin, and have been
+consciously on guard against it. I tried not to be led away
+by his incisive statements and sometimes uncharitable
+judgments. But whatever may be thought of his bias, he
+had an honest mind, and was incapable of knowingly making
+a false statement; and this, with his other qualities, makes
+his journal excellent historical material. After considering
+with great care some friendly criticism, I can truly say that
+I have no apology to make for the extent to which I used
+the <cite>Nation</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>Recurring now to the point with which I began this discussion,&mdash;that
+learned prejudice against employing newspapers
+as historical material,&mdash;I wish to add that, like all
+other evidence, they must be used with care and skepticism,
+as one good authority is undoubtedly better than a dozen
+poor ones. An anecdote I heard years ago has been useful
+to me in weighing different historical evidence. A Pennsylvania-Dutch
+justice of the peace in one of the interior
+townships of Ohio had a man arraigned before him for
+<a name="png.104" id="png.104"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">96</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>stealing a pig. One witness swore that he distinctly saw the
+theft committed; eight swore that they never saw the accused
+steal a pig, and the verdict was worthy of Dogberry.
+&ldquo;I discharge the accused,&rdquo; said the justice. &ldquo;The testimony
+of eight men is certainly worth more than the testimony
+of one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Private and confidential correspondence is highly valuable
+historical material, for such utterances are less constrained
+and more sincere than public declarations; but all men cannot
+be rated alike. Some men have lied as freely in private letters
+as in public speeches; therefore the historian must get at
+the character of the man who has written the letter and the
+influences surrounding him; these factors must count in any
+satisfactory estimate of his accuracy and truth. The newspaper
+must be subjected to similar tests. For example, to
+test an article or public letter written by Greeley or Godkin,
+the general situation, the surrounding influences, and the
+individual bias must be taken into account, and, when allowance
+is made for these circumstances, as well as for the
+public character of the utterance, it may be used for historical
+evidence. For the history of the last half of the nineteenth
+century just such material&mdash;the material of the
+fourth estate&mdash;must be used. Neglect of it would be like
+neglect of the third estate in the history of France for the
+eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>In the United States we have not, politically speaking,
+either the first or second estates, but we have the third and
+fourth estates with an intimate connection between the two.
+Lord Cromer said, when writing of the sending of Gordon
+to the Soudan, &ldquo;Newspaper government has certain disadvantages;&rdquo;
+and this he emphasized by quoting a wise
+remark of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, &ldquo;Anonymous authorship
+places the public under the direction of guides who
+<a name="png.105" id="png.105"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">97</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>have no sense of personal responsibility.&rdquo; Nevertheless
+this newspaper government must be reckoned with. The
+duty of the historian is, not to decide if the newspapers are
+as good as they ought to be, but to measure their influence
+on the present, and to recognize their importance as an
+ample and contemporary record of the past.</p>
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.iv.1" id="fn.iv.1" href="#fna.iv.1">1</a>
+$2,858,514, without including the pay of army officers detailed from
+time to time for duty in connection with the work. Official Records, 130,&nbsp;V.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.107" id="png.107"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">99</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE COMMENCEMENT
+DINNER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY</h2>
+
+<p>June 26, 1901 (not delivered).</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.109" id="png.109"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">101</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE COMMENCEMENT
+DINNER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Thanking</span> heartily the governing boards of Harvard
+College for the honor conferred upon me, I shall say, on
+this my first admission to the circle of the Harvard alumni,
+a word on the University as it appears to one whose work
+has lain outside of it. The spirit of the academy in general
+and especially of this University impels men to get to the
+bottom of things, to strive after exact knowledge; and this
+spirit permeates my own study of history in a remarkable
+degree. &ldquo;The first of all Gospels is this,&rdquo; said Carlyle,
+&ldquo;that a lie cannot endure forever.&rdquo; This is the gospel of
+historical students. A part of their work has been to expose
+popular fallacies, and to show up errors which have
+been made through partiality and misguided patriotism or
+because of incomplete investigation. Men of my age are
+obliged to unlearn much. The youthful student of history
+has a distinct advantage over us in that he begins with a
+correct knowledge of the main historical facts. He does
+not for example learn what we all used to learn&mdash;that in
+the year 1000 the appearance of a fiery comet caused a panic
+of terror to fall upon Christendom and gave rise to the belief
+that the end of the world was at hand. Nor is he taught
+that the followers of Peter the Hermit in the first crusade
+were a number of spiritually minded men and women of
+austere morality. It is to the University that we owe it that
+we are seeing things as they are in history, that the fables,
+the fallacies, and the exaggerations are disappearing from
+the books.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.110" id="png.110"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">102</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>To regard the past with accuracy and truth is a preparation
+for envisaging the present in the same way. For this
+attitude towards the past and the present gained by college
+students of history, and for other reasons which it is not
+necessary here to detail, the man of University training has,
+other things being equal, this advantage over him who lacks
+it, that in life in the world he will get at things more certainly
+and state them more accurately.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A university,&rdquo; said Lowell, &ldquo;is a place where nothing
+useful is taught.&rdquo; By utility Lowell undoubtedly meant,
+to use the definition which Huxley puts into the average
+Englishman&#8217;s mouth, &ldquo;that by which we get pudding or
+praise or both.&rdquo; A natural reply to the statement of Lowell
+is that great numbers of fathers every year, at a pecuniary
+sacrifice, send their sons to college with the idea of fitting
+them better to earn their living, in obedience to the general
+sentiment of men of this country that there is a money
+value to college training. But the remark of Lowell suggests
+another object of the University which, to use the words
+of Huxley again, is &ldquo;to catch the exceptional people, the glorious
+sports of nature, and turn them to account for the
+good of society.&rdquo; This appeals to those imbued with the
+spirit of the academy who frankly acknowledge, in the main,
+our inferiority in the scholarship, which produces great
+works of literature and science, to England, Germany, and
+France, and who with patriotic eagerness wish that we may
+reach the height attained in the older countries. To recur
+to my own study again, should we produce a historian or
+historical writer the equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle,
+or Macaulay there would be a feeling of pride in our historical
+genius which would make itself felt at every academical
+and historical gathering. We have something of that sentiment
+in regard to Francis Parkman, our most original
+<a name="png.111" id="png.111"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">103</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>historian. But it may be that the historical field of Parkman
+is too narrow to awaken a world-wide interest and I
+suspect that the American who will be recognized as the
+equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay must secure
+that recognition by writing of some period of European
+history better than the Englishman, German, or Frenchman
+has written of it. He must do it not only in the way of
+scientific history, in which in his field Henry Charles Lea has
+won so much honor for himself and his country, but he
+must bring to bear on his history that quality which
+has made the historical writings of Gibbon, Carlyle, and
+Macaulay literature.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.113" id="png.113"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">105</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>EDWARD GIBBON</h2>
+
+<p>Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and printed in
+<cite>Scribner&#8217;s Magazine</cite>, June, 1909.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.115" id="png.115"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">107</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>
+EDWARD GIBBON</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">No</span> English or American lover of history visits Rome
+without bending reverent footsteps to the Church of Santa
+Maria in Ara C&oelig;li. Two visits are necessary, as on the first
+you are at once seized by the sacristan, who can conceive
+of no other motive for entering this church on the Capitol
+Hill than to see the miraculous Bambino&mdash;the painted
+doll swaddled in gold and silver tissue and &ldquo;crusted over
+with magnificent diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.&rdquo; When
+you have heard the tale of what has been called &ldquo;the oldest
+medical practitioner in Rome,&rdquo; of his miraculous cures, of
+these votive offerings, the imaginary picture you had conjured
+up is effaced; and it is better to go away and come
+a second time when the sacristan will recognize you and
+leave you to yourself. Then you may open your Gibbon&#8217;s
+Autobiography and read that it was the subtle influence
+of Italy and Rome that determined the choice, from amongst
+many contemplated subjects of historical writing, of &ldquo;The
+Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.&rdquo; &ldquo;In my Journal,&rdquo;
+wrote Gibbon, &ldquo;the place and moment of conception are
+recorded; the 15th of October, 1764, in the close of the
+evening, as I sat musing in the Church of the Franciscan
+friars while they were singing vespers in the Temple of
+Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.1"
+ name="fna.vi.1" id="fna.vi.1">1</a></sup> Gibbon was twenty-seven
+when he made this fruitful visit of eighteen weeks to
+Rome, and his first impression, though often quoted, never
+loses interest, showing, as it does, the enthusiasm of an unemotional
+man. &ldquo;At the distance of twenty-five years,&rdquo;
+<a name="png.116" id="png.116"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">108</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>he wrote, &ldquo;I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions
+which agitated my mind as I first approached and
+entered the <cite>Eternal City</cite>. After a sleepless night, I trod
+with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable
+spot where Romulus <cite>stood</cite> or Cicero spoke or C&aelig;sar fell was
+at once present to my eye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The admirer of Gibbon as he travels northward will stop
+at Lausanne and visit the hotel which bears the historian&#8217;s
+name. Twice have I taken luncheon in the garden where
+he wrote the last words of his history; and on a third visit,
+after lunching at another inn, I could not fail to admire the
+penetration of the Swiss concierge. As I alighted, he seemed
+to divine at once the object of my visit, and before I had
+half the words of explanation out of my mouth, he said,
+&ldquo;Oh, yes. It is this way. But I cannot show you anything
+but a spot.&rdquo; I have quoted from Gibbon&#8217;s Autobiography
+the expression of his inspiration of twenty-seven; a fitting
+companion-piece is the reflection of the man of fifty. &ldquo;I
+have presumed to mark the moment of conception,&rdquo; he
+wrote; &ldquo;I shall now commemorate the hour of my final
+deliverance. It was on the day, or rather the night, of the
+27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve,
+that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house
+in my garden&hellip;. I will not dissemble the first emotions
+of joy on the recovery of my freedom and perhaps the establishment
+of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled,
+and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the
+idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and
+agreeable companion.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.2"
+ name="fna.vi.2" id="fna.vi.2">2</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Although the idea was conceived when Gibbon was twenty-seven,
+he was thirty-one before he set himself seriously at
+work to study his material. At thirty-six he began the
+<a name="png.117" id="png.117"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">109</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>composition, and he was thirty-nine, when, in February, 1776,
+the first quarto volume was published. The history had an
+immediate success. &ldquo;My book,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;was on every
+table and almost on every toilette; the historian was
+crowned by the taste or fashion of the day.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.3"
+ name="fna.vi.3" id="fna.vi.3">3</a></sup> The first
+edition was exhausted in a few days, a second was printed
+in 1776, and next year a third. The second and third volumes,
+which ended the history of the Western empire,
+were published in 1781, and seven years later the three volumes
+devoted to the Eastern empire saw the light. The
+last sentence of the work, written in the summer-house at
+Lausanne, is, &ldquo;It was among the ruins of the Capitol that
+I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and
+exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however
+inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity
+and candor of the public.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This is a brief account of one of the greatest historical
+works, if indeed it is not the greatest, ever written. Let us
+imagine an assemblage of English, German, and American
+historical scholars called upon to answer the question,
+Who is the greatest modern historian? No doubt can exist
+that Gibbon would have a large majority of the voices; and
+I think a like meeting of French and Italian scholars would
+indorse the verdict. &ldquo;Gibbon&#8217;s work will never be excelled,&rdquo;
+declared Niebuhr.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.4"
+ name="fna.vi.4" id="fna.vi.4">4</a></sup> &ldquo;That great master of us all,&rdquo;
+said Freeman, &ldquo;whose immortal tale none of us can hope to
+displace.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.5"
+ name="fna.vi.5" id="fna.vi.5">5</a></sup> Bury, the latest editor of Gibbon, who has
+acutely criticised and carefully weighed &ldquo;The Decline and
+Fall,&rdquo; concludes &ldquo;that Gibbon is behind date in many details.
+But in the main things he is still our master, above
+and beyond date.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.6"
+ name="fna.vi.6" id="fna.vi.6">6</a></sup> His work wins plaudits from those
+<a name="png.118" id="png.118"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">110</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>who believe that history in its highest form should be literature
+and from those who hold that it should be nothing
+more than a scientific narrative. The disciples of Macaulay
+and Carlyle, of Stubbs and Gardiner, would be found voting
+in unison in my imaginary Congress. Gibbon, writes Bury,
+is &ldquo;the historian and the man of letters,&rdquo; thus ranking with
+Thucydides and Tacitus. These three are put in the highest
+class, exemplifying that &ldquo;brilliance of style and accuracy
+of statement are perfectly compatible in an historian.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.7"
+ name="fna.vi.7" id="fna.vi.7">7</a></sup>
+Accepting this authoritative classification it is well worth
+while to point out the salient differences between the ancient
+historians and the modern. From Thucydides we have
+twenty-four years of contemporary history of his own country.
+If the whole of the Annals and History of Tacitus
+had come down to us, we should have had eighty-three
+years; as it is, we actually have forty-one of nearly contemporary
+history of the Roman Empire. Gibbon&#8217;s tale covers
+1240 years. He went far beyond his own country for his
+subject, and the date of his termination is three centuries
+before he was born. Milman spoke of &ldquo;the amplitude, the
+magnificence, and the harmony of Gibbon&#8217;s design,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.8"
+ name="fna.vi.8" id="fna.vi.8">8</a></sup> and
+Bury writes, &ldquo;If we take into account the vast range of his
+work, his accuracy is amazing.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.9"
+ name="fna.vi.9" id="fna.vi.9">9</a></sup> Men have wondered and
+will long wonder at the brain with such a grasp and with
+the power to execute skillfully so mighty a conception. &ldquo;The
+public is seldom wrong&rdquo; in their judgment of a book, wrote
+Gibbon in his Autobiography,<sup><a href="#fn.vi.10"
+ name="fna.vi.10" id="fna.vi.10">10</a></sup> and, if that be true at the
+time of actual publication to which Gibbon intended to
+apply the remark, how much truer it is in the long run of
+years. &ldquo;The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire&rdquo; has
+had a life of over one hundred and thirty years, and there is
+no indication that it will not endure as long as any interest
+<a name="png.119" id="png.119"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">111</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>is taken in the study of history. &ldquo;I have never presumed
+to accept a place in the triumvirate of British historians,&rdquo;
+said Gibbon, referring to Hume and Robertson. But in our
+day Hume and Robertson gather dust on the shelf, while
+Gibbon is continually studied by students and read by serious
+men.</p>
+
+<p>A work covering Gibbon&#8217;s vast range of time would have
+been impossible for Thucydides or Tacitus. Historical skepticism
+had not been fully enough developed. There had
+not been a sufficient sifting and criticism of historical materials
+for a master&#8217;s work of synthesis. And it is probable
+that Thucydides lacked a model. Tacitus could indeed have
+drawn inspiration from the Greek, while Gibbon had lessons
+from both, showing a profound study of Tacitus and a
+thorough acquaintance with Thucydides.</p>
+
+<p>If circumstances then made it impossible for the Greek
+or the Roman to attempt history on the grand scale of Gibbon,
+could Gibbon have written contemporary history with
+accuracy and impartiality equal to his great predecessors?
+This is one of those delightful questions that may be ever
+discussed and never resolved. When twenty-three years
+old, arguing against the desire of his father that he should
+go into Parliament, Gibbon assigned, as one of the reasons,
+that he lacked &ldquo;necessary prejudices of party and of nation&rdquo;;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.11"
+ name="fna.vi.11" id="fna.vi.11">11</a></sup>
+and when in middle life he embraced the fortunate
+opportunity of becoming a member of the House of Commons,
+he thus summed up his experience, &ldquo;The eight sessions
+that I sat in Parliament were a school of civil prudence, the
+first and most essential virtue of an historian.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.12"
+ name="fna.vi.12" id="fna.vi.12">12</a></sup> At the
+end of this political career, Gibbon, in a private letter to
+an intimate Swiss friend, gave the reason why he had embraced
+it. &ldquo;I entered Parliament,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;without
+<a name="png.120" id="png.120"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">112</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>patriotism, and without ambition, and I had no other aim
+than to secure the comfortable and honest place of a <em>Lord of
+Trade</em>. I obtained this place at last. I held it for three
+years, from 1779 to 1782, and the net annual product of it,
+being £750 sterling, increased my revenue to the level of
+my wants and desires.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.13"
+ name="fna.vi.13" id="fna.vi.13">13</a></sup> His retirement from Parliament
+was followed by ten years&#8217; residence at Lausanne, in the first
+four of which he completed his history. A year and a half
+after his removal to Lausanne, he referred, in a letter to his
+closest friend, Lord Sheffield, to the &ldquo;abyss of your cursed
+politics,&rdquo; and added: &ldquo;I never was a very warm patriot
+and I grow every day a citizen of the world. The scramble
+for power and profit at Westminster or St. James&#8217;s, and the
+names of Pitt and Fox become less interesting to me than
+those of C&aelig;sar and Pompey.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.14"
+ name="fna.vi.14" id="fna.vi.14">14</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>These expressions would seem to indicate that Gibbon
+might have written contemporary history well and that the
+candor displayed in &ldquo;The Decline and Fall&rdquo; might not have
+been lacking had he written of England in his own time.
+But that subject he never contemplated. When twenty-four
+years old he had however considered a number of English
+periods and finally fixed upon Sir Walter Raleigh for
+his hero; but a year later, he wrote in his journal: &ldquo;I
+shrink with terror from the modern history of England,
+where every character is a problem, and every reader a
+friend or an enemy; where a writer is supposed to hoist a
+flag of party and is devoted to damnation by the adverse
+faction&hellip;. I must embrace a safer and more extensive
+theme.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.15"
+ name="fna.vi.15" id="fna.vi.15">15</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>How well Gibbon knew himself! Despite his coolness
+and candor, war and revolution revealed his strong Tory
+prejudices, which he undoubtedly feared might color any
+<a name="png.121" id="png.121"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">113</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>history of England that he might undertake. &ldquo;I took my
+seat,&rdquo; in the House of Commons, he wrote, &ldquo;at the beginning
+of the memorable contest between Great Britain and America;
+and supported with many a sincere and <em>silent</em> vote
+the rights though perhaps not the interests of the mother
+country.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.16"
+ name="fna.vi.16" id="fna.vi.16">16</a></sup> In 1782 he recorded the conclusion: &ldquo;The
+American war had once been the favorite of the country,
+the pride of England was irritated by the resistance of her
+colonies, and the executive power was driven by national
+clamor into the most vigorous and coercive measures.&rdquo;
+But it was a fruitless contest. Armies were lost; the debt
+and taxes were increased; the hostile confederacy of France,
+Spain and Holland was disquieting. As a result the war
+became unpopular and Lord North&#8217;s ministry fell. Dr.
+Johnson thought that no nation not absolutely conquered
+had declined so much in so short a time. &ldquo;We seem to be
+sinking,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am afraid of a civil war.&rdquo; Dr. Franklin,
+according to Horace Walpole, said &ldquo;he would furnish
+Mr. Gibbon with materials for writing the History of the
+Decline of the British Empire.&rdquo; With his country tottering,
+the self-centered but truthful Gibbon could not avoid mention
+of his personal loss, due to the fall of his patron, Lord
+North. &ldquo;I was stripped of a convenient salary,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;after having enjoyed it about three years.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.17"
+ name="fna.vi.17" id="fna.vi.17">17</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The outbreak of the French Revolution intensified his
+conservatism. He was then at Lausanne, the tranquillity
+of which was broken up by the dissolution of the neighboring
+kingdom. Many Lausanne families were terrified by the
+menace of bankruptcy. &ldquo;This town and country,&rdquo; Gibbon
+wrote, &ldquo;are crowded with noble exiles, and we sometimes
+<a name="png.122" id="png.122"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">114</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>count in an assembly a dozen princesses and duchesses.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.18"
+ name="fna.vi.18" id="fna.vi.18">18</a></sup>
+Bitter disputes between them and the triumphant Democrats
+disturbed the harmony of social circles. Gibbon
+espoused the cause of the royalists. &ldquo;I beg leave to subscribe
+my assent to Mr. Burke&#8217;s creed on the Revolution of
+France,&rdquo; he wrote. &ldquo;I admire his eloquence, I approve
+his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can almost excuse his
+reverence for Church establishments.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.19"
+ name="fna.vi.19" id="fna.vi.19">19</a></sup> Thirteen days
+after the massacre of the Swiss guard in the attack on the
+Tuileries in August, 1792, Gibbon wrote to Lord Sheffield,
+&ldquo;The last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced
+almost everybody of the fatal consequences of Democratical
+principles which lead by a path of flowers into the abyss of
+hell.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.20"
+ name="fna.vi.20" id="fna.vi.20">20</a></sup> Gibbon, who was astonished by so few things in
+history, wrote Sainte-Beuve, was amazed by the French
+Revolution.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.21"
+ name="fna.vi.21" id="fna.vi.21">21</a></sup> Nothing could be more natural. The historian
+in his study may consider the fall of dynasties, social
+upheavals, violent revolutions, and the destruction of order
+without a tremor. The things have passed away. The
+events furnish food for his reflections and subjects for his
+pen, while sanguine uprisings at home or in a neighboring
+country in his own time inspire him with terror lest the oft-prophesied
+dissolution of society is at hand. It is the difference
+between the earthquake in your own city and the
+one 3000 miles away. As Gibbon&#8217;s pocket-nerve was
+sensitive, it may be he was also thinking of the £1300 he
+had invested in 1784 in the new loan of the King of France,
+deeming the French funds as solid as the English.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.22"
+ name="fna.vi.22" id="fna.vi.22">22</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>It is well now to repeat our dictum that Gibbon is the
+greatest modern historian, but, in reasserting this, it is no
+more than fair to cite the opinions of two dissentients&mdash;the
+<a name="png.123" id="png.123"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">115</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>great literary historians of the nineteenth century,
+Macaulay and Carlyle. &ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; wrote Macaulay
+in his diary, &ldquo;that I admire no historians much except Herodotus,
+Thucydides, and Tacitus&hellip;. There is merit no
+doubt in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. Yet it
+is not the thing. I have a conception of history more just,
+I am confident, than theirs.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.23"
+ name="fna.vi.23" id="fna.vi.23">23</a></sup> &ldquo;Gibbon,&rdquo; said Carlyle in
+a public lecture, is &ldquo;a greater historian than Robertson
+but not so great as Hume. With all his swagger and bombast,
+no man ever gave a more futile account of human
+things than he has done of the decline and fall of the Roman
+Empire; assigning no profound cause for these phenomena,
+nothing but diseased nerves, and all sorts of miserable motives,
+to the actors in them.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.24"
+ name="fna.vi.24" id="fna.vi.24">24</a></sup> Carlyle&#8217;s statement shows
+envious criticism as well as a prejudice in favor of his brother
+Scotchman. It was made in 1838, since when opinion has
+raised Gibbon to the top, for he actually lives while Hume
+is read perfunctorily, if at all. Moreover among the three&mdash;Gibbon,
+Macaulay, and Carlyle&mdash;whose works are literature
+as well as history, modern criticism has no hesitation in
+awarding the palm to Gibbon.</p>
+
+<p>Before finally deciding upon his subject Gibbon thought
+of &ldquo;The History of the Liberty of the Swiss&rdquo; and &ldquo;The
+History of the Republic of Florence under the House of
+Medicis,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.25"
+ name="fna.vi.25" id="fna.vi.25">25</a></sup> but in the end, as we have seen, he settled on the
+later history of the Roman Empire, showing, as Lowell
+said of Parkman, his genius in the choice of his subject. His
+history really begins with the death of Marcus Aurelius,
+180&nbsp;<span class="smcap lc">A.D.</span>, but the main narrative is preceded by three excellent
+introductory chapters, covering in Bury&#8217;s edition eighty-two
+pages. After the completion of his work, he regretted
+<a name="png.124" id="png.124"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">116</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>that he had not begun it at an earlier period. On the first
+page of his own printed copy of his book where he announces
+his design, he has entered this marginal note: &ldquo;Should I not
+have given the <em>history</em> of that fortunate period which was interposed
+between two iron ages? Should I not have deduced
+the decline of the Empire from the Civil Wars that ensued
+after the Fall of Nero or even from the tyranny which succeeded
+the reign of Augustus? Alas! I should; but of
+what avail is this tardy knowledge?&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.26"
+ name="fna.vi.26" id="fna.vi.26">26</a></sup> We may echo
+Gibbon&#8217;s regret that he had not commenced his history
+with the reign of Tiberius, as, in his necessary use of Tacitus,
+we should have had the running comment of one great historian
+on another, of which we have a significant example
+in Gibbon&#8217;s famous sixteenth chapter wherein he discusses
+Tacitus&#8217;s account of the persecution of the Christians by
+Nero. With his power of historic divination, he would have
+so absorbed Tacitus and his time that the history would
+almost have seemed a collaboration between two great and
+sympathetic minds. &ldquo;Tacitus,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;very frequently
+trusts to the curiosity or reflection of his readers to supply
+those intermediate circumstances and ideas, which, in his
+extreme conciseness, he has thought proper to suppress.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.27"
+ name="fna.vi.27" id="fna.vi.27">27</a></sup>
+How Gibbon would have filled those gaps!  Though he
+was seldom swayed by enthusiasm, his admiration of the
+Roman historian fell little short of idolatry. His references
+in &ldquo;The Decline and Fall&rdquo; are many, and some of
+them are here worth recalling to mind. &ldquo;In their primitive
+state of simplicity and independence,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;the Germans
+were surveyed by the discerning eye and delineated
+by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first of historians who
+applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.28"
+ name="fna.vi.28" id="fna.vi.28">28</a></sup>
+Again he speaks of him as &ldquo;the philosophic historian whose
+<a name="png.125" id="png.125"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">117</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>writings will instruct the last generation of mankind.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.29"
+ name="fna.vi.29" id="fna.vi.29">29</a></sup>
+And in Chapter XVI he devoted five pages to citation from,
+and comment on, Tacitus, and paid him one of the most
+splendid tributes one historian ever paid another. &ldquo;To
+collect, to dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore years
+in an immortal work, every sentence of which is pregnant
+with the deepest observations and the most lively images,
+was an undertaking sufficient to exercise the genius of Tacitus
+himself during the greatest part of his life.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.30"
+ name="fna.vi.30" id="fna.vi.30">30</a></sup> So much
+for admiration. That, nevertheless, Gibbon could wield the
+critical pen at the expense of the historian he rated so highly,
+is shown by a marginal note in his own printed copy of &ldquo;The
+Decline and Fall.&rdquo; It will be remembered that Tacitus
+published his History and wrote his Annals during the reign
+of Trajan, whom he undoubtedly respected and admired.
+He referred to the reigns of Nerva and Trajan in suggested
+contrast to that of Domitian as &ldquo;times when men were
+blessed with the rare privilege of thinking with freedom, and
+uttering what they thought.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.31"
+ name="fna.vi.31" id="fna.vi.31">31</a></sup> It fell to both Tacitus and
+Gibbon to speak of the testament of Augustus which, after
+his death, was read in the Senate: and Tacitus wrote, Augustus
+&ldquo;added a recommendation to keep the empire within
+fixed limits,&rdquo; on which he thus commented, &ldquo;but whether
+from apprehension for its safety, or jealousy of future rivals,
+is uncertain.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.32"
+ name="fna.vi.32" id="fna.vi.32">32</a></sup> Gibbon thus criticised this comment: &ldquo;Why
+must rational advice be imputed to a base or foolish motive?
+To what cause, error, malevolence, or flattery, shall I ascribe
+the unworthy alternative? Was the historian dazzled by
+Trajan&#8217;s conquests?&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.33"
+ name="fna.vi.33" id="fna.vi.33">33</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The intellectual training of the greatest modern historian
+is a matter of great interest. &ldquo;From my early youth,&rdquo;
+<a name="png.126" id="png.126"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">118</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography, &ldquo;I aspired to the character
+of an historian.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.34"
+ name="fna.vi.34" id="fna.vi.34">34</a></sup> He had &ldquo;an early and invincible
+love of reading&rdquo; which he said he &ldquo;would not exchange for
+the treasures of India&rdquo; and which led him to a &ldquo;vague and
+multifarious&rdquo; perusal of books. Before he reached the age
+of fifteen he was matriculated at Magdalen College, giving
+this account of his preparation. &ldquo;I arrived at Oxford,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled
+a Doctor and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy would
+have been ashamed.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.35"
+ name="fna.vi.35" id="fna.vi.35">35</a></sup> He did not adapt himself to the
+life or the method of Oxford, and from them apparently
+derived no benefit. &ldquo;I spent fourteen months at Magdalen
+College,&rdquo; he wrote; &ldquo;they proved the fourteen months the
+most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.36"
+ name="fna.vi.36" id="fna.vi.36">36</a></sup> He became
+a Roman Catholic. It was quite characteristic of this
+bookish man that his conversion was effected, not by the
+emotional influence of some proselytizer, but by the reading
+of books. English translations of two famous works of
+Bossuet fell into his hands. &ldquo;I read,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I applauded,
+I believed &hellip; and I surely fell by a noble hand.&rdquo; Before
+a priest in London, on June 8, 1753, he privately &ldquo;abjured
+the errors of heresy&rdquo; and was admitted into the &ldquo;pale of
+the church.&rdquo; But at that time this was a serious business
+for both priest and proselyte. For the rule laid down by
+Blackstone was this, &ldquo;Where a person is reconciled to the
+see of Rome, or procures others to be reconciled, the offence
+amounts to High-Treason.&rdquo; This severe rule was not enforced,
+but there were milder laws under which a priest
+might suffer perpetual imprisonment and the proselyte&#8217;s
+estate be transferred to his nearest relations. Under such
+laws prosecutions were had and convictions obtained.
+Little wonder was it when Gibbon apprised his father in
+<a name="png.127" id="png.127"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">119</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>an &ldquo;elaborate controversial epistle&rdquo; of the serious step
+which he had taken, that the elder Gibbon should be astonished
+and indignant. In his passion he divulged the
+secret which effectually closed the gates of Magdalen College
+to his son<sup><a href="#fn.vi.37"
+ name="fna.vi.37" id="fna.vi.37">37</a></sup>, who was packed off to Lausanne and &ldquo;settled
+under the roof and tuition&rdquo; of a Calvinist minister<sup><a href="#fn.vi.38"
+ name="fna.vi.38" id="fna.vi.38">38</a></sup>. Edward
+Gibbon passed nearly five years at Lausanne, from the
+age of sixteen to that of twenty-one, and they were fruitful
+years for his education. It was almost entirely an affair
+of self-training, as his tutor soon perceived that the student
+had gone beyond the teacher and allowed him to pursue his
+own special bent. After his history was published and his
+fame won, he recorded this opinion: &ldquo;In the life of every
+man of letters there is an æra, from a level, from whence
+he soars with his own wings to his proper height, and the
+most important part of his education is that which he bestows
+on himself.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.39"
+ name="fna.vi.39" id="fna.vi.39">39</a></sup> This was certainly true in Gibbon&#8217;s
+case. On his arrival at Lausanne he hardly knew any
+French, but before he returned to England he thought spontaneously
+in French and understood, spoke, and wrote it
+better than he did his mother tongue.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.40"
+ name="fna.vi.40" id="fna.vi.40">40</a></sup> He read Montesquieu
+frequently and was struck with his &ldquo;energy of style
+and boldness of hypothesis.&rdquo; Among the books which
+&ldquo;may have remotely contributed to form the historian of the
+Roman Empire&rdquo; were the Provincial Letters of Pascal,
+which he read &ldquo;with a new pleasure&rdquo; almost every year.
+From them he said, &ldquo;I learned to manage the weapon of
+grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of ecclesiastical
+solemnity.&rdquo; As one thinks of his chapters in &ldquo;The Decline
+and Fall&rdquo; on Julian, one is interested to know that during
+this period he was introduced to the life and times of this
+<a name="png.128" id="png.128"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">120</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Roman emperor by a book written by a French abbé. He
+read Locke, Grotius, and Puffendorf, but unquestionably his
+greatest knowledge, mental discipline, and peculiar mastery
+of his own tongue came from his diligent and systematic
+study of the Latin classics. He read nearly all of the historians,
+poets, orators, and philosophers, going over for a second
+or even a third time Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Tacitus.
+He mastered Cicero&#8217;s Orations and Letters so that
+they became ingrained in his mental fiber, and he termed
+these and his other works, &ldquo;a library of eloquence and
+reason.&rdquo; &ldquo;As I read Cicero,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;I applauded the
+observation of Quintilian, that every student may judge
+of his own proficiency by the satisfaction which he receives
+from the Roman orator.&rdquo; And again, &ldquo;Cicero&#8217;s epistles
+may in particular afford the models of every form of correspondence
+from the careless effusions of tenderness and
+friendship to the well-guarded declaration of discreet and
+dignified resentment.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.41"
+ name="fna.vi.41" id="fna.vi.41">41</a></sup> Gibbon never mastered Greek as
+he did Latin; and Dr. Smith, one of his editors, points
+out where he has fallen into three errors from the use of
+the French or Latin translation of Procopius instead of
+consulting the original.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.42"
+ name="fna.vi.42" id="fna.vi.42">42</a></sup> Indeed he himself has disclosed
+one defect of self-training. Referring to his youthful residence
+at Lausanne, he wrote: &ldquo;I worked my way through
+about half the Iliad, and afterwards interpreted alone a
+large portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardor,
+destitute of aid and emulation, was gradually cooled and,
+from the barren task of searching words in a lexicon, I withdrew
+to the free and familiar conversation of Virgil and
+Tacitus.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.43"
+ name="fna.vi.43" id="fna.vi.43">43</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>All things considered, however, it was an excellent training
+for a historian of the Roman Empire. But all except the
+<a name="png.129" id="png.129"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">121</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>living knowledge of French he might have had in his &ldquo;elegant
+apartment in Magdalen College&rdquo; just as well as in his
+&ldquo;ill-contrived and ill-furnished small chamber&rdquo; in &ldquo;an old
+inconvenient house,&rdquo; situated in a &ldquo;narrow gloomy street,
+the most unfrequented of an unhandsome town&rdquo;;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.44"
+ name="fna.vi.44" id="fna.vi.44">44</a></sup> and in
+Oxford he would have had the &ldquo;aid and emulation&rdquo; of
+which at Lausanne he sadly felt the lack.</p>
+
+<p>The Calvinist minister, his tutor, was a more useful guide
+for Gibbon in the matter of religion than in his intellectual
+training. Through his efforts and Gibbon&#8217;s &ldquo;private reflections,&rdquo;
+Christmas Day, 1754, one year and a half after
+his arrival at Lausanne, was witness to his reconversion, as
+he then received the sacrament in the Calvinistic Church.
+&ldquo;The articles of the Romish creed,&rdquo; he said, had &ldquo;disappeared
+like a dream&rdquo;; and he wrote home to his aunt,
+&ldquo;I am now a good Protestant and am extremely glad of it.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.45"
+ name="fna.vi.45" id="fna.vi.45">45</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>An intellectual and social experience of value was his
+meeting with Voltaire, who had set up a theater in the
+neighborhood of Lausanne for the performance mainly of
+his own plays. Gibbon seldom failed to procure a ticket to
+these representations. Voltaire played the parts suited to
+his years; his declamation, Gibbon thought, was old-fashioned,
+and &ldquo;he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry
+rather than the feelings of nature.&rdquo; &ldquo;The parts of the young
+and fair,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;were distorted by Voltaire&#8217;s fat and
+ugly niece.&rdquo; Despite this criticism, these performances
+fostered a taste for the French theater, to the abatement of
+his idolatry for Shakespeare, which seemed to him to be
+&ldquo;inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.46"
+ name="fna.vi.46" id="fna.vi.46">46</a></sup>
+Personally, Voltaire and Gibbon did not get on
+well together. Dr. Hill suggests that Voltaire may have
+slighted the &ldquo;English youth,&rdquo; and if this is correct, Gibbon
+<a name="png.130" id="png.130"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">122</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>was somewhat spiteful to carry the feeling more than thirty
+years. Besides the criticism of the acting, he called Voltaire
+&ldquo;the envious bard&rdquo; because it was only with much reluctance
+and ill-humor that he permitted the performance of
+Iphigenie of Racine. Nevertheless, Gibbon is impressed
+with the social influence of the great Frenchman. &ldquo;The
+wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre,&rdquo; he
+wrote, &ldquo;refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne,
+and however addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the
+amusements of society. After the theatrical representations,
+I sometimes supped with the actors: I was now familiar
+in some, and acquainted in many, houses; and my evenings
+were generally devoted to cards and conversation,
+either in private parties or numerous assemblies.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.47"
+ name="fna.vi.47" id="fna.vi.47">47</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Gibbon was twenty-one when he returned to England.
+Dividing his time between London and the country, he
+continued his self-culture. He read English, French, and
+Latin, and took up the study of Greek. &ldquo;Every day, every
+hour,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;was agreeably filled&rdquo;; and &ldquo;I was never
+less alone than when by myself.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.48"
+ name="fna.vi.48" id="fna.vi.48">48</a></sup> He read repeatedly
+Robertson and Hume, and has in the words of Sainte-Beuve
+left a testimony so spirited and so delicately expressed as
+could have come only from a man of taste who appreciated
+Xenophon.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.49"
+ name="fna.vi.49" id="fna.vi.49">49</a></sup> &ldquo;The perfect composition, the nervous language,&rdquo;
+wrote Gibbon, &ldquo;the well-turned periods of Dr.
+Robertson inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might
+one day tread in his footsteps; the calm philosophy, the
+careless inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often
+forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of
+delight and despair.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.50"
+ name="fna.vi.50" id="fna.vi.50">50</a></sup> He made little progress in London
+society and his solitary evenings were passed with his books,
+<a name="png.131" id="png.131"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">123</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>but he consoled himself by thinking that he lost nothing by
+a withdrawal from a &ldquo;noisy and expensive scene of crowds
+without company, and dissipation without pleasure.&rdquo; At
+twenty-four he published his &ldquo;Essay on the Study of Literature,&rdquo;
+begun at Lausanne and written entirely in French.
+This possesses no interest for the historical student except to
+know the bare fact of the writing and publication as a step
+in the intellectual development of the historian. Sainte-Beuve
+in his two essays on Gibbon devoted three pages to
+an abstract and criticism of it, perhaps because it had a
+greater success in France than in England; and his opinion
+of Gibbon&#8217;s language is interesting. &ldquo;The French&rdquo;
+Sainte-Beuve wrote, &ldquo;is that of one who has read Montesquieu
+much and imitates him; it is correct, but artificial
+French.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.51"
+ name="fna.vi.51" id="fna.vi.51">51</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Then followed two and a half years&#8217; service in the Hampshire
+militia. But he did not neglect his reading. He
+mastered Homer, whom he termed &ldquo;the Bible of the ancients,&rdquo;
+and in the militia he acquired &ldquo;a just and indelible
+knowledge&rdquo; of what he called &ldquo;the first of languages.&rdquo;
+And his love for Latin abided also: &ldquo;On every march, in
+every journey, Horace was always in my pocket and often
+in my hand.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.52"
+ name="fna.vi.52" id="fna.vi.52">52</a></sup> Practical knowledge he absorbed almost
+insensibly. &ldquo;The daily occupations of the militia,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;introduced me to the science of Tactics&rdquo; and led to the
+study of &ldquo;the precepts of Polybius and Cæsar.&rdquo; In this
+connection occurs the remark which admirers of Gibbon
+will never tire of citing: &ldquo;A familiar view of the discipline
+and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer
+notion of the Phalanx and the Legion; and the Captain of
+the Hampshire Grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not
+been useless to the historian of the decline and fall of the
+<a name="png.132" id="png.132"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">124</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Roman Empire.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.53"
+ name="fna.vi.53" id="fna.vi.53">53</a></sup> The grand tour followed his militia
+service. Three and a half months in Paris, and a revisit to
+Lausanne preceded the year that he passed in Italy. Of
+the conception of the History of the Decline and Fall, during
+his stay in Rome, I have already spoken.</p>
+
+<p>On his return to England, contemplating &ldquo;the decline
+and fall of Rome at an awful distance,&rdquo; he began, in collaboration
+with the Swiss Deyverdun, his bosom friend, a
+history of Switzerland written in French. During the winter
+of 1767, the first book of it was submitted to a literary
+society of foreigners in London. As the author was unknown
+the strictures were free and the verdict unfavorable.
+Gibbon was present at the meeting and related that &ldquo;the
+momentary sensation was painful,&rdquo; but, on cooler reflection,
+he agreed with his judges and intended to consign his manuscript
+to the flames. But this, as Lord Sheffield, his literary
+executor and first editor, shows conclusively, he neglected
+to do.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.54"
+ name="fna.vi.54" id="fna.vi.54">54</a></sup> This essay of Gibbon&#8217;s possesses interest for us,
+inasmuch as David Hume read it, and wrote to Gibbon a
+friendly letter, in which he said: &ldquo;I have perused your
+manuscript with great pleasure and satisfaction. I have
+only one objection, derived from the language in which it
+is written. Why do you compose in French, and carry
+faggots into the wood, as Horace says with regard to Romans
+who wrote in Greek?&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.55"
+ name="fna.vi.55" id="fna.vi.55">55</a></sup> This critical query of Hume
+must have profoundly influenced Gibbon. Next year he
+began to work seriously on &ldquo;The Decline and Fall&rdquo; and
+five years later began the composition of it in English. It
+does not appear that he had any idea of writing his magnum
+opus in French.</p>
+
+<p>In this rambling discourse, in which I have purposely
+avoided relating the life of Gibbon in anything like a
+<a name="png.133" id="png.133"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">125</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>chronological order, we return again and again to the great
+History. And it could not well be otherwise. For if
+Edward Gibbon could not have proudly said, I am the author
+of &ldquo;six volumes in quartos&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.56"
+ name="fna.vi.56" id="fna.vi.56">56</a></sup> he would have had no
+interest for us. Dr. Hill writes, &ldquo;For one reader who has
+read his &lsquo;Decline and Fall,&rsquo; there are at least a score who
+have read his Autobiography, and who know him, not as
+the great historian, but as a man of a most original and
+interesting nature.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.57"
+ name="fna.vi.57" id="fna.vi.57">57</a></sup> But these twenty people would
+never have looked into the Autobiography had it not been
+the life of a great historian; indeed the Autobiography
+would never have been written except to give an account
+of a great life work. &ldquo;The Decline and Fall,&rdquo; therefore, is
+the thing about which all the other incidents of his life
+revolve. The longer this history is read and studied, the
+greater is the appreciation of it. Dean Milman followed
+Gibbon&#8217;s track through many portions of his work, and
+read his authorities, ending with a deliberate judgment in
+favor of his &ldquo;general accuracy.&rdquo; &ldquo;Many of his seeming
+errors,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;are almost inevitable from the close
+condensation of his matter.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.58"
+ name="fna.vi.58" id="fna.vi.58">58</a></sup> Guizot had three different
+opinions based on three various readings. After the first
+rapid perusal, the dominant feeling was one of interest in a
+narrative, always animated in spite of its extent, always
+clear and limpid in spite of the variety of objects. During
+the second reading, when he examined particularly certain
+points, he was somewhat disappointed; he encountered
+some errors either in the citations or in the facts and especially
+shades and strokes of partiality which led him to a
+comparatively rigorous judgment. In the ensuing complete
+third reading, the first impression, doubtless corrected
+by the second, but not destroyed, survived and was
+<a name="png.134" id="png.134"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">126</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>maintained; and with some restrictions and reservations, Guizot
+declared that, concerning that vast and able work, there
+remained with him an appreciation of the immensity of
+research, the variety of knowledge, the sagacious breadth
+and especially that truly philosophical rectitude of a mind
+which judges the past as it would judge the present.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.59"
+ name="fna.vi.59" id="fna.vi.59">59</a></sup>
+Mommsen said in 1894: &ldquo;Amid all the changes that have
+come over the study of the history of the Roman Empire, in
+spite of all the rush of the new evidence that has poured in
+upon us and almost overwhelmed us, in spite of changes
+which must be made, in spite of alterations of view, or
+alterations even in the aspect of great characters, no one
+would in the future be able to read the history of the Roman
+Empire unless he read, possibly with a fuller knowledge,
+but with the broad views, the clear insight, the strong grasp
+of Edward Gibbon.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.60"
+ name="fna.vi.60" id="fna.vi.60">60</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>It is difficult for an admirer of Gibbon to refrain from
+quoting some of his favorite passages. The opinion of a
+great historian on history always possesses interest. History,
+wrote Gibbon, is &ldquo;little more than the register of the crimes,
+follies, and misfortunes of mankind.&rdquo; Again, &ldquo;Wars and
+the administration of public affairs are the principal subjects
+of history.&rdquo; And the following cannot fail to recall a
+similar thought in Tacitus, &ldquo;History undertakes to record
+the transactions of the past for the instruction of future
+ages.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.61"
+ name="fna.vi.61" id="fna.vi.61">61</a></sup> Two references to religion under the Pagan empire
+are always worth repeating. &ldquo;The various modes of
+worship which prevailed in the Roman world,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;were all considered by the people as equally true; by
+the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as
+equally useful.&rdquo; &ldquo;The fashion of incredulity was
+<a name="png.135" id="png.135"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">127</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>communicated from the philosopher to the man of pleasure or
+business, from the noble to the plebeian, and from the master
+to the menial slave who waited at his table and who equally
+listened to the freedom of his conversation.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.62"
+ name="fna.vi.62" id="fna.vi.62">62</a></sup> Gibbon&#8217;s
+idea of the happiest period of mankind is interesting and
+characteristic. &ldquo;If,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;a man were called to fix
+the period in the history of the world during which the condition
+of the human race was most happy and prosperous,
+he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from
+the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.63"
+ name="fna.vi.63" id="fna.vi.63">63</a></sup>
+This period was from <span class="smcap lc">A.D.</span> 96 to 180, covering the reigns of
+Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
+Professor Carter, in a lecture in Rome in 1907, drew,
+by a modern comparison, a characterization of the first
+three named. When we were studying in Germany, he
+said, we were accustomed to sum up the three emperors,
+William I, Frederick III, and William II, as der greise
+Kaiser, der weise Kaiser, und der reise Kaiser. The characterizations
+will fit well Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.
+Gibbon speaks of the &ldquo;restless activity&rdquo; of Hadrian, whose
+life &ldquo;was almost a perpetual journey,&rdquo; and who during his
+reign visited every province of his empire.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.64"
+ name="fna.vi.64" id="fna.vi.64">64</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>A casual remark of Gibbon&#8217;s, &ldquo;Corruption [is] the most
+infallible symptom of constitutional liberty,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.65"
+ name="fna.vi.65" id="fna.vi.65">65</a></sup> shows the
+sentiment of the eighteenth century. The generality of
+the history becomes specific in a letter to his father, who
+has given him hopes of a seat in Parliament. &ldquo;This seat,&rdquo;
+so Edward Gibbon wrote, &ldquo;according to the custom of our
+venal country was to be bought, and fifteen hundred pounds
+were mentioned as the price of purchase.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.66"
+ name="fna.vi.66" id="fna.vi.66">66</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Gibbon anticipated Captain Mahan. In speaking of a
+<a name="png.136" id="png.136"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">128</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>naval battle between the fleet of Justinian and that of the
+Goths in which the galleys of the Eastern empire gained a
+signal victory, he wrote, &ldquo;The Goths affected to depreciate
+an element in which they were unskilled; but their own
+experience confirmed the truth of a maxim, that the master
+of the sea will always acquire the dominion of the land.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.67"
+ name="fna.vi.67" id="fna.vi.67">67</a></sup>
+But Gibbon&#8217;s anticipation was one of the frequent cases
+where the same idea has occurred to a number of men of
+genius, as doubtless Captain Mahan was not aware of this
+sentence any more than he was of Bacon&#8217;s and Raleigh&#8217;s epitomes
+of the theme which he has so originally and brilliantly
+treated.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.68"
+ name="fna.vi.68" id="fna.vi.68">68</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>No modern historian has been the subject of so much
+critical comment as Gibbon. I do not know how it will
+compare in volume with either of the similar examinations
+of Thucydides and Tacitus; but the criticism is of a different
+sort. The only guarantee of the honesty of Tacitus,
+wrote Sainte-Beuve, is Tacitus himself;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.69"
+ name="fna.vi.69" id="fna.vi.69">69</a></sup> and a like remark
+will apply to Thucydides. But a fierce light beats on Gibbon.
+His voluminous notes furnish the critics the materials
+on which he built his history, which, in the case of
+the ancient historians, must be largely a matter of conjecture.
+With all the searching examination of &ldquo;The Decline
+and Fall,&rdquo; it is surprising how few errors have been found
+and, of the errors which have been noted, how few are really
+important. Guizot, Milman, Dr. Smith, Cotter Morison,
+Bury, and a number of lesser lights have raked his text and
+his notes with few momentous results. We have, writes
+Bury, improved methods over Gibbon and &ldquo;much new material
+of various kinds,&rdquo; but &ldquo;Gibbon&#8217;s historical sense
+kept him constantly right in dealing with his sources&rdquo;;
+<a name="png.137" id="png.137"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">129</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and &ldquo;in the main things he is still our master.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.70"
+ name="fna.vi.70" id="fna.vi.70">70</a></sup> The man
+is generally reflected in his book. That Gibbon has been
+weighed and not found wanting is because he was as honest
+and truthful as any man who ever wrote history. The
+autobiographies and letters exhibit to us a transparent
+man, which indeed some of the personal allusions in the
+history might have foreshadowed. &ldquo;I have often fluctuated
+and shall <em>tamely</em> follow the Colbert Ms.,&rdquo; he wrote, where
+the authenticity of a book was in question.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.71"
+ name="fna.vi.71" id="fna.vi.71">71</a></sup> In another
+case &ldquo;the scarcity of facts and the uncertainty of dates&rdquo;
+opposed his attempt to describe the first invasion of Italy
+by Alaric.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.72"
+ name="fna.vi.72" id="fna.vi.72">72</a></sup> In the beginning of the famous Chapter
+XLIV which is &ldquo;admired by jurists as a brief and brilliant
+exposition of the principles of Roman law,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.73"
+ name="fna.vi.73" id="fna.vi.73">73</a></sup> Gibbon wrote,
+&ldquo;Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and
+candor of history, and directed by the most temperate
+and skillful guides, I enter with just diffidence on the subject
+of civil law.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.74"
+ name="fna.vi.74" id="fna.vi.74">74</a></sup> In speaking of the state of Britain
+between 409 and 449, he said, &ldquo;I owe it to myself and to
+historic truth to declare that some <em>circumstances</em> in this
+paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.75"
+ name="fna.vi.75" id="fna.vi.75">75</a></sup>
+Throughout his whole work the scarcity of materials forces
+Gibbon to the frequent use of conjecture, but I believe that
+for the most part his conjectures seem reasonable to the
+critics. Impressed with the correctness of his account of
+the Eastern empire a student of the subject once told me
+that Gibbon certainly possessed the power of wise divination.</p>
+
+<p>Gibbon&#8217;s striving after precision and accuracy is shown in
+some marginal corrections he made in his own printed copy
+of &ldquo;The Decline and Fall.&rdquo; On the first page in his first
+<a name="png.138" id="png.138"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">130</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>printed edition and as it now stands, he said, &ldquo;To deduce
+the most important circumstances of its decline and fall:
+a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still
+felt by the nations of the earth.&rdquo; For this the following
+is substituted: &ldquo;To prosecute the decline and fall of the
+empire of Rome: of whose language, religion, and laws the
+impression will be long preserved in our own and the neighboring
+countries of Europe.&rdquo; He thus explains the change:
+&ldquo;Mr. Hume told me that, in correcting his history, he
+always labored to reduce superlatives and soften positives.
+Have Asia and Africa, from Japan to Morocco, any feeling
+or memory of the Roman Empire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On page 6, Bury&#8217;s edition, the text is, &ldquo;The praises of
+Alexander, transmitted by a succession of poets and historians,
+had kindled a dangerous emulation in the mind of
+Trajan.&rdquo; We can imagine that Gibbon reflected, What
+evidence have I that Trajan had read these poets and historians?
+Therefore he made this change: &ldquo;Late generations
+and far distant climates may impute their calamities
+to the immortal author of the Iliad. The spirit of Alexander
+was inflamed by the praises of Achilles; and succeeding
+heroes have been ambitious to tread in the footsteps
+of Alexander. Like him, the Emperor Trajan aspired to
+the conquest of the East.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.76"
+ name="fna.vi.76" id="fna.vi.76">76</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;advertisement&rdquo; to the first octavo edition published
+in 1783 is an instance of Gibbon&#8217;s truthfulness. He
+wrote, &ldquo;Some alterations and improvements had presented
+themselves to my mind, but I was unwilling to injure or
+offend the purchasers of the preceding editions.&rdquo; Then he
+seems to reflect that this is not quite the whole truth and
+adds, &ldquo;Perhaps I may stand excused if, amidst the avocations
+of a busy winter, I have preferred the pleasures of
+<a name="png.139" id="png.139"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">131</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>composition and study to the minute diligence of revising
+a former publication.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.77"
+ name="fna.vi.77" id="fna.vi.77">77</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The severest criticism that Gibbon has received is on
+his famous chapters XV and XVI which conclude his
+first volume in the original quarto edition of 1776. We
+may disregard the flood of contemporary criticism from
+certain people who were excited by what they deemed an
+attack on the Christian religion. Dean Milman, who objected
+seriously to much in these chapters, consulted these
+various answers to Gibbon on the first appearance of his
+work with, according to his own confession, little profit.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.78"
+ name="fna.vi.78" id="fna.vi.78">78</a></sup>
+&ldquo;Against his celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth chapters,&rdquo;
+wrote Buckle, &ldquo;all the devices of controversy have been
+exhausted; but the only result has been, that while the
+fame of the historian is untarnished, the attacks of his
+enemies are falling into complete oblivion. The work of
+Gibbon remains; but who is there who feels any interest
+in what was written against him?&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.79"
+ name="fna.vi.79" id="fna.vi.79">79</a></sup> During the last generation,
+however, criticism has taken another form and scientific
+men now do not exactly share Buckle&#8217;s gleeful opinion.
+Both Bury and Cotter Morison state or imply that well-grounded
+exceptions may be taken to Gibbon&#8217;s treatment
+of the early Christian church. He ignored some facts; his
+combination of others, his inferences, his opinions are not
+fair and unprejudiced. A further grave objection may be
+made to the tone of these two chapters: sarcasm pervades
+them and the Gibbon sneer has become an apt characterization.</p>
+
+<p>Francis Parkman admitted that he was a reverent agnostic,
+and if Gibbon had been a reverent free-thinker these
+two chapters would have been far different in tone. Lecky
+<a name="png.140" id="png.140"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">132</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>regarded the Christian church as a great institution worthy
+of reverence and respect although he stated the central
+thesis of Gibbon with emphasis just as great. Of the conversion
+of the Roman Empire to Christianity, Lecky wrote,
+&ldquo;it may be boldly asserted that the assumption of a moral
+or intellectual miracle is utterly gratuitous. Never before
+was a religious transformation so manifestly inevitable.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.80"
+ name="fna.vi.80" id="fna.vi.80">80</a></sup>
+Gibbon&#8217;s sneering tone was a characteristic of his time.
+There existed during the latter part of the eighteenth century,
+wrote Sir James Mackintosh, &ldquo;an unphilosophical
+and indeed fanatical animosity against Christianity.&rdquo; But
+Gibbon&#8217;s private defense is entitled to consideration as
+placing him in a better light. &ldquo;The primitive church, which
+I have treated with some freedom,&rdquo; he wrote to Lord Sheffield
+in 1791, &ldquo;was itself at that time an innovation, and
+I was attached to the old Pagan establishment.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.81"
+ name="fna.vi.81" id="fna.vi.81">81</a></sup> &ldquo;Had I
+believed,&rdquo; he said in his Autobiography, &ldquo;that the majority
+of English readers were so fondly attached to the
+name and shadow of Christianity, had I foreseen that the
+pious, the timid, and the prudent would feel, or affect to
+feel, with such exquisite sensibility, I might perhaps have
+softened the two invidious chapters.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.82"
+ name="fna.vi.82" id="fna.vi.82">82</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>On the other hand Gibbon&#8217;s treatment of Julian the Apostate
+is in accordance with the best modern standard. It
+might have been supposed that a quasi-Pagan, as he avowed
+himself, would have emphasized Julian&#8217;s virtues and ignored
+his weaknesses as did Voltaire, who invested him with
+all the good qualities of Trajan, Cato, and Julius Cæsar, without
+their defects.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.83"
+ name="fna.vi.83" id="fna.vi.83">83</a></sup> Robertson indeed feared that he might
+fail in this part of the history;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.84"
+ name="fna.vi.84" id="fna.vi.84">84</a></sup> but Gibbon weighed Julian
+in the balance, duly estimating his strength and his
+<a name="png.141" id="png.141"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">133</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>weakness, with the result that he has given a clear and just
+account in his best and most dignified style.<sup><a href="#fn.vi.85"
+ name="fna.vi.85" id="fna.vi.85">85</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Gibbon&#8217;s treatment of Theodora, the wife of Justinian, is
+certainly open to objection. Without proper sifting and a
+reasonable skepticism, he has incorporated into his narrative
+the questionable account with all its salacious details
+which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon&#8217;s
+love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical
+criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. &ldquo;I am
+justified,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;in painting the manners of the times;
+the vices of Theodora form an essential feature in the
+reign and character of Justinian&hellip;. My English text is
+chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity
+of a learned language.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.86"
+ name="fna.vi.86" id="fna.vi.86">86</a></sup> This explanation satisfies neither
+Cotter Morison nor Bury, nor would it hold for a moment as
+a justification of a historian of our own day. Gibbon is
+really so scientific, so much like a late nineteenth-century
+man, that we do right to subject him to our present-day
+rigid tests.</p>
+
+<p>There has been much discussion about Gibbon&#8217;s style,
+which we all know is pompous and Latinized. On a long
+reading his rounded and sonorous periods become wearisome,
+and one wishes that occasionally a sentence would
+terminate with a small word, even a preposition. One
+feels as did Dickens after walking for an hour or two about
+the handsome but &ldquo;distractingly regular&rdquo; city of Philadelphia.
+&ldquo;I felt,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;that I would have given
+the world for a crooked street.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.87"
+ name="fna.vi.87" id="fna.vi.87">87</a></sup> Despite the pomposity,
+Gibbon&#8217;s style is correct, and the exact use of words is a
+marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or change
+of words will improve upon the precision of the text. His
+<a name="png.142" id="png.142"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">134</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>compression and selection of salient points are remarkable.
+Amid some commonplace philosophy he frequently rises
+to a generalization as brilliant as it is truthful. Then, too,
+one is impressed with the dignity of history; one feels that
+Gibbon looked upon his work as very serious, and thought
+with Thucydides, &ldquo;My history is an everlasting possession,
+not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To a writer of history few things are more interesting than
+a great historian&#8217;s autobiographical remarks which relate
+to the composition of his work. &ldquo;Had I been more indigent
+or more wealthy,&rdquo; wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography,
+&ldquo;I should not have possessed the leisure or the perseverance
+to prepare and execute my voluminous history.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.88"
+ name="fna.vi.88" id="fna.vi.88">88</a></sup> &ldquo;Notwithstanding
+the hurry of business and pleasure,&rdquo; he wrote
+from London in 1778, &ldquo;I steal some moments for the Roman
+Empire.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.89"
+ name="fna.vi.89" id="fna.vi.89">89</a></sup> Between the writing of the first three and the
+last three volumes, he took a rest of &ldquo;near a twelvemonth&rdquo;
+and gave expression to a thought which may be echoed by
+every studious writer, &ldquo;Yet in the luxury of freedom, I
+began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit which
+gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.90"
+ name="fna.vi.90" id="fna.vi.90">90</a></sup>
+Every one who has written a historical book will sympathize
+with the following expression of personal experience as he approached
+the completion of &ldquo;The Decline and Fall&rdquo;: &ldquo;Let no
+man who builds a house or writes a book presume to say when
+he will have finished. When he imagines that he is drawing
+near to his journey&#8217;s end, Alps rise on Alps, and he continually
+finds something to add and something to correct.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.91"
+ name="fna.vi.91" id="fna.vi.91">91</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Plain truthful tales are Gibbon&#8217;s autobiographies. The
+style is that of the history, and he writes of himself as frankly
+as he does of any of his historical characters. His
+<a name="png.143" id="png.143"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">135</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>failings&mdash;what he has somewhere termed &ldquo;the amiable weaknesses
+of human nature&rdquo;&mdash;are disclosed with the openness
+of a Frenchman. All but one of the ten years between 1783
+and 1793, between the ages of 46 and 56, he passed at Lausanne.
+There he completed &ldquo;The Decline and Fall,&rdquo; and of
+that period he spent from August, 1787, to July, 1788, in
+England to look after the publication of the last three volumes.
+His life in Lausanne was one of study, writing, and
+agreeable society, of which his correspondence with his
+English friends gives an animated account. The two
+things one is most impressed with are his love for books
+and his love for Madeira. &ldquo;Though a lover of society,&rdquo; he
+wrote, &ldquo;my library is the room to which I am most attached.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.92"
+ name="fna.vi.92" id="fna.vi.92">92</a></sup>
+While getting settled at Lausanne, he complains
+that his boxes of books &ldquo;loiter on the road.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.93"
+ name="fna.vi.93" id="fna.vi.93">93</a></sup> And
+then he harps on another string. &ldquo;Good Madeira,&rdquo; he
+writes, &ldquo;is now become essential to my health and reputation;&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.94"
+ name="fna.vi.94" id="fna.vi.94">94</a></sup>
+yet again, &ldquo;If I do not receive a supply of Madeira
+in the course of the summer, I shall be in great shame and
+distress.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.95"
+ name="fna.vi.95" id="fna.vi.95">95</a></sup> His good friend in England, Lord Sheffield,
+regarded his prayer and sent him a hogshead of &ldquo;best old
+Madeira&rdquo; and a tierce, containing six dozen bottles of &ldquo;finest
+Malmsey,&rdquo; and at the same time wrote: <ins class="TNsilent" title="Transcriber's note:
+ original has &lsquo;You">&ldquo;You</ins> will remember
+that a hogshead is on his travels through the torrid zone for
+you&hellip;. No wine is meliorated to a greater degree by
+keeping than Madeira, and you latterly appeared so ravenous
+for it, that I must conceive you wish to have a stock.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.96"
+ name="fna.vi.96" id="fna.vi.96">96</a></sup>
+Gibbon&#8217;s devotion to Madeira bore its penalty. At the age
+of forty-eight he sent this account to his stepmother: &ldquo;I
+was in hopes that my old Enemy the Gout had given over
+the attack, but the Villain, with his ally the winter,
+<a name="png.144" id="png.144"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">136</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>convinced me of my error, and about the latter end of March I
+found myself a prisoner in my library and my great chair.
+I attempted twice to rise, he twice knocked me down again
+and kept possession of both my feet and knees longer (I
+must confess) than he ever had done before.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.97"
+ name="fna.vi.97" id="fna.vi.97">97</a></sup> Eager to
+finish his history, he lamented that his &ldquo;long gout&rdquo; lost him
+&ldquo;three months in the spring.&rdquo; Thus as you go through his
+correspondence, you find that orders for Madeira and attacks
+of gout alternate with regularity. Gibbon apparently
+did not connect the two as cause and effect, as in his
+autobiography he charged his malady to his service in the
+Hampshire militia, when &ldquo;the daily practice of hard and
+even excessive drinking&rdquo; had sown in his constitution
+&ldquo;the seeds of the gout.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.98"
+ name="fna.vi.98" id="fna.vi.98">98</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Gibbon has never been a favorite with women, owing
+largely to his account of his early love affair. While at
+Lausanne, he had heard much of &ldquo;the wit and beauty and
+erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod&rdquo; and when he first met
+her, he had reached the age of twenty. &ldquo;I saw and loved,&rdquo;
+he wrote. &ldquo;I found her learned without pedantry, lively
+in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners&hellip;.
+She listened to the voice of truth and passion&hellip;.
+At Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity&rdquo;; and indeed
+he appeared to be an ardent lover. &ldquo;He was seen,&rdquo; said a
+contemporary, &ldquo;stopping country people near Lausanne
+and demanding at the point of a naked dagger whether a
+more adorable creature existed than Suzanne Curchod.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.99"
+ name="fna.vi.99" id="fna.vi.99">99</a></sup>
+On his return to England, however, he soon discovered that
+his father would not hear of this alliance, and he thus related
+the sequence: &ldquo;After a painful struggle, I yielded to my
+fate&hellip;. I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.100"
+ name="fna.vi.100" id="fna.vi.100">100</a></sup> From
+<a name="png.145" id="png.145"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">137</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>England he wrote to Mademoiselle Curchod breaking off the
+engagement. Perhaps it is because of feminine criticism
+that Cotter Morison indulges in an elaborate defense of Gibbon,
+which indeed hardly seems necessary. Rousseau, who
+was privy to the love affair, said that &ldquo;Gibbon was too cold-blooded
+a young man for his taste or for Mademoiselle
+Curchod&#8217;s happiness.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.101"
+ name="fna.vi.101" id="fna.vi.101">101</a></sup> Mademoiselle Curchod a few years
+later married Necker, a rich Paris banker, who under Louis
+XVI held the office of director-general of the finances. She
+was the mother of Madame de Staël, was a leader of the
+literary society in Paris and, despite the troublous times,
+must have led a happy life. One delightful aspect of the
+story is the warm friendship that existed between Madame
+Necker and Edward Gibbon. This began less than a year
+after her marriage. &ldquo;The Curchod (Madame Necker) I
+saw at Paris,&rdquo; he wrote to his friend Holroyd. &ldquo;She was
+very fond of me and the husband particularly civil. Could
+they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to
+supper; go to bed, and leave me alone with his wife&mdash;what
+an impertinent security!&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.102"
+ name="fna.vi.102" id="fna.vi.102">102</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>If women read the Correspondence as they do the Autobiography,
+I think that their aversion to the great historian
+would be increased by these confiding words to his stepmother,
+written when he was forty-nine: &ldquo;The habits of
+female conversation have sometimes tempted me to acquire
+the piece of furniture, a wife, and could I unite in a single
+Woman the virtues and accomplishments of half a dozen
+<a name="png.146" id="png.146"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">138</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of my acquaintance, I would instantly pay my addresses
+to the Constellation.&rdquo; <sup><a href="#fn.vi.103"
+ name="fna.vi.103" id="fna.vi.103">103</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>I have always been impressed with Gibbon&#8217;s pride at
+being the author of &ldquo;six volumes in quartos&rdquo;; but as nearly
+all histories now are published in octavo, I had not a distinct
+idea of the appearance of a quarto volume until the preparation
+of this essay led me to look at different editions of Gibbon
+in the Boston Athenæum. There I found the quartos,
+the first volume of which is the third edition, published in
+1777 [it will be remembered that the original publication
+of the first volume was in February, 1776]. The volume
+is 11¼ inches long by 9 inches wide and is much heavier than
+our very heavy octavo volumes. With this volume in my
+hand I could appreciate the remark of the Duke of Gloucester
+when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the
+&ldquo;Decline and Fall.&rdquo; Laying the quarto on the table he
+said, &ldquo;Another d&mdash;d thick square book! Always scribble,
+scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.104"
+ name="fna.vi.104" id="fna.vi.104">104</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>During my researches at the Athenæum, I found an octavo
+edition, the first volume of which was published in 1791,
+and on the cover was written, &ldquo;Given to the Athenæum by
+Charles Cabot. Received December 10, 1807.&rdquo; This was
+the year of the foundation of the Athenæum. On the quarto
+of 1777 there was no indication, but the scholarly cataloguer
+informed me that it was probably also received in 1807.
+Three later editions than these two are in this library, the
+last of which is Bury&#8217;s of 1900 to which I have constantly
+referred. Meditating in the quiet alcove, with the two
+early editions of Gibbon before me, I found an answer to
+the comment of H.&nbsp;G. Wells in his book &ldquo;The Future in
+America&rdquo; which I confess had somewhat irritated me.
+Thus wrote Wells: &ldquo;Frankly I grieve over Boston as a
+<a name="png.147" id="png.147"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">139</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>great waste of leisure and energy, as a frittering away of
+moral and intellectual possibilities. We give too much to
+the past&hellip;. We are obsessed by the scholastic prestige
+of mere knowledge and genteel remoteness.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.105"
+ name="fna.vi.105" id="fna.vi.105">105</a></sup> Pondering
+this iconoclastic utterance, how delightful it is to light upon
+evidence in the way of well-worn volumes that, since 1807,
+men and women here have been carefully reading Gibbon,
+who, as Dean Milman said, &ldquo;has bridged the abyss between
+ancient and modern times and connected together the two
+worlds of history.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.106"
+ name="fna.vi.106" id="fna.vi.106">106</a></sup> A knowledge of &ldquo;The Decline and
+Fall&rdquo; is a basis for the study of all other history; it is a
+mental discipline, and a training for the problems of modern
+life. These Athenæum readers did not waste their leisure,
+did not give too much to the past. They were supremely
+right to take account of the scholastic prestige of Gibbon,
+and to endeavor to make part of their mental fiber this
+greatest history of modern times.</p>
+
+<p>I will close with a quotation from the Autobiography,
+which in its sincerity and absolute freedom from literary
+cant will be cherished by all whose desire is to behold &ldquo;the
+bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful
+studies.&rdquo; &ldquo;I have drawn a high prize in the lottery
+of life,&rdquo; wrote Gibbon. &ldquo;I am disgusted with the affectation
+of men of letters, who complain that they have renounced
+a substance for a shadow and that their fame
+affords a poor compensation for envy, censure, and persecution.
+My own experience at least has taught me a very
+different lesson: twenty happy years have been animated
+by the labor of my history; and its success has given me a
+name, a rank, a character in the world, to which I should
+not otherwise have been entitled&hellip;. D&#8217;Alembert relates
+that as he was walking in the gardens of Sans-souci
+<a name="png.148" id="png.148"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">140</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with the King of Prussia, Frederick said to him, &lsquo;Do you
+see that old woman, a poor weeder, asleep on that sunny
+bank? She is probably a more happy Being than either of
+<span class="rthinsp">us.&rsquo;</span>&rdquo; Now the comment of Gibbon: &ldquo;The King and the
+Philosopher may speak for themselves; for my part I do
+not envy the old woman.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vi.107"
+ name="fna.vi.107" id="fna.vi.107">107</a></sup></p>
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.1" id="fn.vi.1" href="#fna.vi.1">1</a>
+ Autobiography, 270.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.2" id="fn.vi.2" href="#fna.vi.2">2</a>
+ Autobiography, 333.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.3" id="fn.vi.3" href="#fna.vi.3">3</a>
+ Autobiography, 311.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.4" id="fn.vi.4" href="#fna.vi.4">4</a>
+ Lectures, 763.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.5" id="fn.vi.5" href="#fna.vi.5">5</a>
+ Chief Periods European Hist., 75.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.6" id="fn.vi.6" href="#fna.vi.6">6</a>
+ Introduction, lxvii.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.7" id="fn.vi.7" href="#fna.vi.7">7</a>
+ Introduction, xxxi.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.8" id="fn.vi.8" href="#fna.vi.8">8</a>
+ Preface, ix.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vi.9" id="fn.vi.9" href="#fna.vi.9">9</a>
+ Introduction, xli.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.10" id="fn.vi.10" href="#fna.vi.10">10</a>
+ p. 324.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.11" id="fn.vi.11" href="#fna.vi.11">11</a>
+ Letters, I, 23.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.12" id="fn.vi.12" href="#fna.vi.12">12</a>
+ Autobiography, 310.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.13" id="fn.vi.13" href="#fna.vi.13">13</a>
+ Letters, II, 36.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.14" id="fn.vi.14" href="#fna.vi.14">14</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 127.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.15" id="fn.vi.15" href="#fna.vi.15">15</a>
+ Autobiography, 196.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.16" id="fn.vi.16" href="#fna.vi.16">16</a>
+ Autobiography, 310. &ldquo;I am more and more convinced that we have
+both the right and power on our side.&rdquo; Letters, I, 248.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.17" id="fn.vi.17" href="#fna.vi.17">17</a>
+ Hill&#8217;s ed. Gibbon Autobiography, 212, 213, 314.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.18" id="fn.vi.18" href="#fna.vi.18">18</a>
+ Letters, II, 249.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.19" id="fn.vi.19" href="#fna.vi.19">19</a>
+ Autobiography, 342.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.20" id="fn.vi.20" href="#fna.vi.20">20</a>
+ Letters, II, 310.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.21" id="fn.vi.21" href="#fna.vi.21">21</a>
+ Causeries du Lundi, viii, 469.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.22" id="fn.vi.22" href="#fna.vi.22">22</a>
+ Letters, II, 98.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.23" id="fn.vi.23" href="#fna.vi.23">23</a>
+ Trevelyan, II, 232.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.24" id="fn.vi.24" href="#fna.vi.24">24</a>
+ Lectures on the Hist. of Literature, 185.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.25" id="fn.vi.25" href="#fna.vi.25">25</a>
+ Autobiography, 196.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.26" id="fn.vi.26" href="#fna.vi.26">26</a>
+ Bury&#8217;s ed., xxxv.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.27" id="fn.vi.27" href="#fna.vi.27">27</a>
+ Decline and Fall, Smith&#8217;s ed., 236.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.28" id="fn.vi.28" href="#fna.vi.28">28</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 349.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.29" id="fn.vi.29" href="#fna.vi.29">29</a>
+ Decline and Fall, Smith&#8217;s ed., II, 35.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.30" id="fn.vi.30" href="#fna.vi.30">30</a>
+ II, 235.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.31" id="fn.vi.31" href="#fna.vi.31">31</a>
+ History, I, 1.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.32" id="fn.vi.32" href="#fna.vi.32">32</a>
+ Annals, I, 11.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.33" id="fn.vi.33" href="#fna.vi.33">33</a>
+ Bury&#8217;s introduction, xxxv.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.34" id="fn.vi.34" href="#fna.vi.34">34</a>
+ Autobiography, 193.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.35" id="fn.vi.35" href="#fna.vi.35">35</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 48, 59.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.36" id="fn.vi.36" href="#fna.vi.36">36</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 67.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.37" id="fn.vi.37" href="#fna.vi.37">37</a>
+ Autobiography, 86 <em>et seq.</em>; Hill&#8217;s ed., 69, 291.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.38" id="fn.vi.38" href="#fna.vi.38">38</a>
+ Autobiography, 131.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.39" id="fn.vi.39" href="#fna.vi.39">39</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 137.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.40" id="fn.vi.40" href="#fna.vi.40">40</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 134.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.41" id="fn.vi.41" href="#fna.vi.41">41</a>
+ Autobiography, 139&ndash;142.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.42" id="fn.vi.42" href="#fna.vi.42">42</a>
+ V, 108, 130, 231.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.43" id="fn.vi.43" href="#fna.vi.43">43</a>
+ Autobiography, 141.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.44" id="fn.vi.44" href="#fna.vi.44">44</a>
+ Autobiography, 133.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.45" id="fn.vi.45" href="#fna.vi.45">45</a>
+ Hill&#8217;s ed., 89, 293.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.46" id="fn.vi.46" href="#fna.vi.46">46</a>
+ Autobiography, 149.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.47" id="fn.vi.47" href="#fna.vi.47">47</a>
+ Autobiography, 149.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.48" id="fn.vi.48" href="#fna.vi.48">48</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 161.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.49" id="fn.vi.49" href="#fna.vi.49">49</a>
+ Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 445.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.50" id="fn.vi.50" href="#fna.vi.50">50</a>
+ Autobiography, 167.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.51" id="fn.vi.51" href="#fna.vi.51">51</a>
+ Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 446.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.52" id="fn.vi.52" href="#fna.vi.52">52</a>
+ Autobiography, Hill&#8217;s ed., 142.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.53" id="fn.vi.53" href="#fna.vi.53">53</a>
+ Autobiography, 258.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.54" id="fn.vi.54" href="#fna.vi.54">54</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 277.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.55" id="fn.vi.55" href="#fna.vi.55">55</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.56" id="fn.vi.56" href="#fna.vi.56">56</a>
+ Letters, II, 279.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.57" id="fn.vi.57" href="#fna.vi.57">57</a>
+ Preface, x.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.58" id="fn.vi.58" href="#fna.vi.58">58</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., I, xi.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.59" id="fn.vi.59" href="#fna.vi.59">59</a>
+ Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 453.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.60" id="fn.vi.60" href="#fna.vi.60">60</a>
+ <cite>London Times</cite>, November 16, 1894.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.61" id="fn.vi.61" href="#fna.vi.61">61</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., I, 215, 371; II, 230.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.62" id="fn.vi.62" href="#fna.vi.62">62</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., I, 165; II, 205.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.63" id="fn.vi.63" href="#fna.vi.63">63</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 216.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.64" id="fn.vi.64" href="#fna.vi.64">64</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 144.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.65" id="fn.vi.65" href="#fna.vi.65">65</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, III, 78.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.66" id="fn.vi.66" href="#fna.vi.66">66</a>
+ Letters, I, 23.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.67" id="fn.vi.67" href="#fna.vi.67">67</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., V, 230.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.68" id="fn.vi.68" href="#fna.vi.68">68</a>
+ See Mahan&#8217;s From Sail to Steam, 276.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.69" id="fn.vi.69" href="#fna.vi.69">69</a>
+ Causeries du Lundi, I, 153.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.70" id="fn.vi.70" href="#fna.vi.70">70</a>
+ Introduction, xlv, l, lxvii.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.71" id="fn.vi.71" href="#fna.vi.71">71</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., III, 14.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.72" id="fn.vi.72" href="#fna.vi.72">72</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, IV, 31.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.73" id="fn.vi.73" href="#fna.vi.73">73</a>
+ Bury, lii.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.74" id="fn.vi.74" href="#fna.vi.74">74</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., V, 258.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.75" id="fn.vi.75" href="#fna.vi.75">75</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, IV, 132 n.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.76" id="fn.vi.76" href="#fna.vi.76">76</a>
+ Bury&#8217;s ed., xxxv, xxxvi.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.77" id="fn.vi.77" href="#fna.vi.77">77</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., I, xxi.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.78" id="fn.vi.78" href="#fna.vi.78">78</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., I, xvii.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.79" id="fn.vi.79" href="#fna.vi.79">79</a>
+ History of Civilization, II, 308 n.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.80" id="fn.vi.80" href="#fna.vi.80">80</a>
+ Morals, I, 419.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.81" id="fn.vi.81" href="#fna.vi.81">81</a>
+ Letters, II, 237.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.82" id="fn.vi.82" href="#fna.vi.82">82</a>
+ Autobiography, 316.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.83" id="fn.vi.83" href="#fna.vi.83">83</a>
+ Cotter Morison, 118.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.84" id="fn.vi.84" href="#fna.vi.84">84</a>
+ Sainte-Beuve, 458.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.85" id="fn.vi.85" href="#fna.vi.85">85</a>
+ Cotter Morison, 120.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.86" id="fn.vi.86" href="#fna.vi.86">86</a>
+ Autobiography, 337 n.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.87" id="fn.vi.87" href="#fna.vi.87">87</a>
+ American Notes, Chap. VII.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.88" id="fn.vi.88" href="#fna.vi.88">88</a>
+ p. 155.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.89" id="fn.vi.89" href="#fna.vi.89">89</a>
+ Letters, I, 331.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.90" id="fn.vi.90" href="#fna.vi.90">90</a>
+ Autobiography, 325.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.91" id="fn.vi.91" href="#fna.vi.91">91</a>
+ Letters, II, 143.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.92" id="fn.vi.92" href="#fna.vi.92">92</a>
+ Letters, II, 130.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.93" id="fn.vi.93" href="#fna.vi.93">93</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 89.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.94" id="fn.vi.94" href="#fna.vi.94">94</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 211.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.95" id="fn.vi.95" href="#fna.vi.95">95</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 217.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.96" id="fn.vi.96" href="#fna.vi.96">96</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 232.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.97" id="fn.vi.97" href="#fna.vi.97">97</a>
+ Letters, II, 129.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.98" id="fn.vi.98" href="#fna.vi.98">98</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, 189.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vi.99" id="fn.vi.99" href="#fna.vi.99">99</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 40.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.100" id="fn.vi.100" href="#fna.vi.100">100</a>
+ Autobiography, pp. 151, 239.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.101" id="fn.vi.101" href="#fna.vi.101">101</a>
+ Letters, I, 41.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.102" id="fn.vi.102" href="#fna.vi.102">102</a>
+ Letters, I, 81.  In 1790 Madame de Staël, then at Coppet, wrote:
+&ldquo;Nous possédons dans ce château M.&nbsp;Gibbon, l&#8217;ancien amoreux de ma
+mère, celui qui voulait l&#8217;épouser. Quand je le vois, je me demande si
+je serais née de son union avec ma mère: je me reponds que non et qu&#8217;il
+suffisait de mon père seul pour que je vinsse au monde.&rdquo;&mdash;Hill&#8217;s ed., 107,
+n.&nbsp;2.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.103" id="fn.vi.103" href="#fna.vi.103">103</a>
+ Letters, II, 143.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.104" id="fn.vi.104" href="#fna.vi.104">104</a>
+ Birkbeck Hill&#8217;s ed., 127.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.105" id="fn.vi.105" href="#fna.vi.105">105</a>
+ p. 235.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.106" id="fn.vi.106" href="#fna.vi.106">106</a>
+ Smith&#8217;s ed., I, vii.</p>
+
+<p class="iii"><a name="fn.vi.107" id="fn.vi.107" href="#fna.vi.107">107</a>
+ Autobiography, 343, 346.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.149" id="png.149"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">141</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER</h2>
+
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+March meeting of 1902, and printed in the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>,
+May, 1902.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.151" id="png.151"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">143</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is my purpose to say a word of Samuel Rawson Gardiner,
+the English historian, who died February 23, 1902,
+and who in his research and manner of statement represents
+fitly the scientific school of historical writers. He
+was thorough in his investigation, sparing neither labor nor
+pains to get at the truth. It may well enough be true that
+the designedly untruthful historian, like the undevout astronomer,
+is an anomaly, for inaccuracy comes not from
+purpose, but from neglect. Now Gardiner went to the bottom
+of things, and was not satisfied until he had compassed
+all the material within his reach. As a matter of course he
+read many languages. Whether his facts were in Spanish,
+Italian, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, or English made
+apparently no difference. Nor did he stop at what was in
+plain language. He read a diary written chiefly in symbols,
+and many letters in cipher. A large part of his material
+was in manuscript, which entailed greater labor than if it
+had been in print. As one reads the prefaces to his various
+volumes and his footnotes, amazement is the word to express
+the feeling that a man could have accomplished so
+much in forty-seven years. One feels that there is no one-sided
+use of any material. The Spanish, the Venetian, the
+French, the Dutch nowhere displaces the English. In
+Froude&#8217;s Elizabeth one gets the impression that the Simancas
+manuscripts furnish a disproportionate basis of the
+narrative; in Ranke&#8217;s England, that the story is made up
+too much from the Venetian archives. Gardiner himself
+copied many Simancas manuscripts in Spain, and he studied
+<a name="png.152" id="png.152"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">144</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the archives in Venice, Paris, Brussels, and Rome, but these,
+and all the other great mass of foreign material, are kept
+adjunctive to that found in his own land. My impression
+from a study of his volumes is that more than half of his
+material is in manuscript, but because he has matter which
+no one else had ever used, he does not neglect the printed
+pages open to every one. To form &ldquo;a judgment on the
+character and aims of Cromwell,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;it is absolutely
+necessary to take Carlyle&#8217;s monumental work as a starting
+point;&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.1" name="fna.vii.1" id="fna.vii.1">1</a></sup> yet, distrusting Carlyle&#8217;s printed transcripts, he
+goes back to the original speeches and letters themselves.
+Carlyle, he says, &ldquo;amends the text without warning&rdquo; in
+many places; these emendations Gardiner corrects, and
+out of the abundance of his learning he stops a moment to
+show how Carlyle has misled the learned Dr. Murray in
+attributing to Cromwell the use of the word &ldquo;communicative&rdquo;
+in its modern meaning, when it was on the contrary
+employed in what is now an obsolete sense.<sup><a href="#fn.vii.2" name="fna.vii.2" id="fna.vii.2">2</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Gardiner&#8217;s great work is the History of England from
+1603 to 1656. In the revised editions there are ten volumes
+called the &ldquo;History of England, from the Accession of
+James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War,&rdquo; and four
+volumes on the Great Civil War. Since this revision he has
+published three volumes on the History of the Commonwealth
+and the Protectorate. He was also the author of a
+number of smaller volumes, a contributor to the Encyclopædia
+Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography,
+and for ten years editor-in-chief of the <cite>English
+Historical Review</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>I know not which is the more remarkable, the learning,
+accuracy, and diligence of the man, or withal his modesty.
+<a name="png.153" id="png.153"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">145</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>With his great store of knowledge, the very truthfulness of
+his soul impels him to be forward in admitting his own mistakes.
+Lowell said in 1878 that Darwin was &ldquo;almost the
+only perfectly disinterested lover of truth&rdquo; he had ever
+encountered. Had Lowell known the historian as we know
+him, he would have placed Gardiner upon the same elevation.
+In the preface to the revised ten-volume edition he
+alludes to the &ldquo;defects&rdquo; of his work. &ldquo;Much material,&rdquo;
+he wrote, &ldquo;has accumulated since the early volumes were
+published, and my own point of view is not quite the same
+as it was when I started with the first years of James&nbsp;I.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.3"
+ name="fna.vii.3" id="fna.vii.3">3</a></sup>
+The most important contribution to this portion of his
+period had been Spedding&#8217;s edition of Bacon&#8217;s Letters and
+Life. In a note to page 208 of his second volume he tells
+how Spedding&#8217;s arguments have caused him to modify
+some of his statements, although the two regard the history
+of the seventeenth century differently. Writing this soon
+after the death of Spedding, to which he refers as &ldquo;the loss
+of one whose mind was so acute and whose nature was so
+patient and kindly,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;It was a true pleasure to
+have one&#8217;s statements and arguments exposed to the testing
+fire of his hostile criticism.&rdquo; Having pointed out later some
+inaccuracies in the work of Professor Masson, he accuses
+himself. &ldquo;I have little doubt,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;that if my work
+were subjected to as careful a revision, it would yield a far
+greater crop of errors.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.4" name="fna.vii.4"
+ id="fna.vii.4">4</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Gardiner was born in 1829. Soon after he was twenty-six
+years old he conceived the idea of writing the history of
+England from the accession of James I to the restoration of
+Charles II. It was a noble conception, but his means were
+small. Having married, as his first wife, the youngest
+daughter of Edward Irving, the enthusiastic founder of the
+<a name="png.154" id="png.154"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">146</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Catholic Apostolic Church, he became an Irvingite. Because
+he was an Irvingite, his university,&mdash;he was a son of
+Oxford,&mdash;so it is commonly said, would give him no position
+whereby he might gain his living. Nevertheless, Gardiner
+studied and toiled, and in 1863 published two volumes
+entitled &ldquo;A History of England from the Accession of James
+I to the Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke.&rdquo; Of this work only
+one hundred and forty copies were sold. Still he struggled
+on. In 1869 two volumes called &ldquo;Prince Charles and the
+Spanish Marriage&rdquo; were published and sold five hundred
+copies. Six years later appeared two volumes entitled
+&ldquo;A History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and
+Charles I.&rdquo; This installment paid expenses, but no profit.
+One is reminded of what Carlyle said about the pecuniary
+rewards of literary men in England: &ldquo;Homer&#8217;s Iliad would
+have brought the author, had he offered it to Mr. Murray
+on the half-profit system, say five-and-twenty guineas.
+The Prophecies of Isaiah would have made a small article
+in a review which &hellip; could cheerfully enough have remunerated
+him with a five-pound note.&rdquo; The first book
+from which Gardiner received any money was a little volume
+for the Epochs of Modern History Series on the Thirty
+Years&#8217; War, published in 1874. Two more installments of
+the history appearing in 1877 and 1881 made up the first
+edition of what is now our ten-volume history, but in the
+meantime some of the volumes went out of print. It was
+not until 1883, the year of the publication of the revised
+edition, that the value of his labors was generally recognized.
+During this twenty-eight years, from the age of twenty-six
+to fifty-four, Gardiner had his living to earn. He might
+have recalled the remark made, I think, by either Goldsmith
+or Lamb, that the books which will live are not those by
+which we ourselves can live. Therefore Gardiner got his
+<a name="png.155" id="png.155"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">147</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>bread by teaching. He became a professor in King&#8217;s College,
+London, and he lectured on history for the London
+Society for the Extension of University Teaching, having
+large audiences all over London, and being well appreciated
+in the East End. He wrote schoolbooks on history.
+Finally success came twenty-eight years after his glorious
+conception, twenty years after the publication of his first
+volume. He had had a hard struggle for a living with money
+coming in by driblets. Bread won in such a way is come
+by hard, yet he remained true to his ideal. His potboilers
+were good and honest books; his brief history on the Thirty
+Years&#8217; War has received the praise of scholars. Recognition
+brought him money rewards. In 1882 Mr. Gladstone bestowed
+upon him a civil list pension of £150 a year. Two
+years later All Souls College, Oxford, elected him to a research
+fellowship; when this expired Merton made him a
+fellow. Academic honors came late. Not until 1884, when
+he was fifty-five, did he take his degree of M.A. Edinburgh
+conferred upon him an LL.D., and Göttingen a Ph.D.; but
+he was sixty-six when he received the coveted D.C.L. from
+his own university. The year previous Lord Rosebery
+offered him the Regius Professorship of History at Oxford,
+but he declined it because the prosecution of his great
+work required him to be near the British Museum. It is
+worthy of mention that in 1874, nine years before he was
+generally appreciated in England, the Massachusetts Historical
+Society elected him a corresponding member.<sup><a href="#fn.vii.5"
+ name="fna.vii.5" id="fna.vii.5">5</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>During the latter part of his life Gardiner resided in the
+country near London, whence it took him about an hour to
+reach the British Museum, where he did his work. He
+labored on his history from eleven o&#8217;clock to half-past four,
+with an intermission of half an hour for luncheon. He did
+<a name="png.156" id="png.156"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">148</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>not dictate to a stenographer, but wrote everything out.
+Totally unaccustomed to collaboration, he never employed
+a secretary or assistant of any kind. In his evenings he
+did no serious labor; he spent them with his family, attended
+to his correspondence, or read a novel. Thus he wrought
+five hours daily. What a brain, and what a splendid training
+he had given himself to accomplish such results in so
+short a working day!</p>
+
+<p>In the preface to his first volume of the &ldquo;History of the
+Commonwealth,&rdquo; published in 1894, Gardiner said that he
+was &ldquo;entering upon the third and last stage of a task the
+accomplishment of which seemed to me many years ago to
+be within the bounds of possibility.&rdquo; One more volume
+bringing the history down to the death of Cromwell would
+have completed the work, and then Mr. Charles H. Firth,
+a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, was to take up the story.
+Firth now purposes to begin his narrative with the year 1656.
+Gardiner&#8217;s mantle has fallen on worthy shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Where historical scholars congregate in England and
+America, Gardiner is highly esteemed. But the critics
+must have their day. They cannot attack him for lack of
+diligence and accuracy, which according to Gibbon, the
+master of us all, are the prime requisites of a historian, so
+they assert that he was deficient in literary style, he had no
+dramatic power, his work is not interesting and will not live.
+Gardiner is the product solely of the university and the
+library. You may visualize him at Oxford, in the British
+Museum, or at work in the archives on the Continent, but
+of affairs and of society by personal contact he knew nothing.
+In short, he was not a man of the world, and the histories
+must be written, so these critics aver, by those who have an
+actual knowledge by experience of their fellow-men. It is
+profitable to examine these dicta by the light of concrete
+<a name="png.157" id="png.157"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">149</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>examples. Froude saw much of society, and was a man of
+the world. He wrote six volumes on the reign of Elizabeth,
+from which we get the distinct impression that the dominant
+characteristics of Elizabeth were meanness, vacillation,
+selfishness, and cruelty. Gardiner in an introductory chapter
+of forty-three pages restores to us the great queen of
+Shakespeare, who brought upon her land &ldquo;a thousand,
+thousand blessings.&rdquo; She loved her people well, he writes,
+and ruled them wisely. She &ldquo;cleared the way for liberty,
+though she understood it not.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.6"
+ name="fna.vii.6" id="fna.vii.6">6</a></sup> Elsewhere he speaks of
+&ldquo;her high spirit and enlightened judgment.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.7"
+ name="fna.vii.7" id="fna.vii.7">7</a></sup> The writer
+who has spent his life in the library among dusty archives
+estimates the great ruler more correctly than the man of
+the world. We all know Macaulay, a member of Parliament,
+a member of the Supreme Council of India, a cabinet
+minister, a historian of great merit, a brilliant man of letters.
+In such a one, according to the principles laid down by
+these critics, we should expect to find a supreme judge of
+men. Macaulay in his essays and the first chapter of the
+History painted Wentworth and Laud in the very blackest
+of colors, which &ldquo;had burned themselves into the heart
+of the people of England.&rdquo; Gardiner came. Wentworth
+and Laud, he wrote, were controlled by a &ldquo;noble ambition,&rdquo;
+which was &ldquo;not stained with personal selfishness or greed.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.8"
+ name="fna.vii.8" id="fna.vii.8">8</a></sup>
+&ldquo;England may well be proud of possessing in Wentworth a
+nobler if a less practical statesman than Richelieu, of the
+type to which the great cardinal belonged.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.9"
+ name="fna.vii.9" id="fna.vii.9">9</a></sup> Again Wentworth
+was &ldquo;the high-minded, masterful statesman, erring
+gravely through defects of temper and knowledge.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.vii.10"
+ name="fna.vii.10" id="fna.vii.10">10</a></sup> From
+Macaulay we carry away the impression that Wentworth was
+very wicked and that Cromwell was very good. Gardiner
+<a name="png.158" id="png.158"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">150</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>loved Cromwell not less than did Macaulay, but thus he
+speaks of his government: &ldquo;Step by step the government
+of the Commonwealth was compelled &hellip; to rule by
+means which every one of its members would have condemned
+if they had been employed by Charles or Wentworth.&rdquo;
+Is it not a triumph for the bookish man that in
+his estimate of Wentworth and Laud he has with him the
+consensus of the historical scholars of England?</p>
+
+<p>What a change there has been in English opinion of Cromwell
+in the last half century! Unquestionably that is due
+to Carlyle more than to any other one man, but there might
+have been a reaction from the conception of the hero worshiper
+had it not been supported and somewhat modified
+by so careful and impartial a student as Gardiner.</p>
+
+<p>The alteration of sentiment toward Wentworth and Laud
+is principally due to Gardiner, that toward Cromwell is
+due to him in part. These are two of the striking results,
+but they are only two of many things we see differently because
+of the single-minded devotion of this great historian.
+We know the history in England from 1603 to 1656 better
+than we do that of any other period of the world; and for
+this we are indebted mainly to Samuel Rawson Gardiner.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.1" id="fn.vii.1" href="#fna.vii.1">1</a>
+History of the Great Civil War, I, viii.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.2" id="fn.vii.2" href="#fna.vii.2">2</a>
+History of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, III, 27.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.3" id="fn.vii.3" href="#fna.vii.3">3</a>
+History, I, v.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.4" id="fn.vii.4" href="#fna.vii.4">4</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, IX, viii.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.5" id="fn.vii.5" href="#fna.vii.5">5</a>
+He was transferred to the roll of honorary members in October, 1896.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.6" id="fn.vii.6" href="#fna.vii.6">6</a>
+History, I, 43.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.7" id="fn.vii.7" href="#fna.vii.7">7</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, VIII, 36.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.8" id="fn.vii.8" href="#fna.vii.8">8</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, 67.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.vii.9" id="fn.vii.9" href="#fna.vii.9">9</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, 215.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.vii.10" id="fn.vii.10" href="#fna.vii.10">10</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, IX, 229.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.159" id="png.159"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">151</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>WILLIAM E.&nbsp;H. LECKY</h2>
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+November meeting of 1903.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.161" id="png.161"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">153</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>WILLIAM E.&nbsp;H. LECKY</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Amazement</span> was the feeling of the reading world on learning
+that the author of the History of Rationalism was
+only twenty-seven, and the writer of the History of European
+Morals only thirty-one. The sentiment was that a
+prodigy of learning had appeared, and a perusal of these
+works now renders comprehensible the contemporary astonishment.
+The Morals (published in 1869) is the better
+book of the two, and, if I may judge from my own personal
+experience, it may be read with delight when young,
+and re-read with respect and advantage at an age when the
+enthusiasms of youth have given way to the critical attitude
+of experience. Grant all the critics say of it, that the reasoning
+by which Lecky attempts to demolish the utilitarian
+theory of morals is no longer of value, and that it lacks the
+consistency of either the orthodox or the agnostic, that there
+is no new historical light, and that much of the treatise is
+commonplace, nevertheless the historical illustrations and
+disquisitions, the fresh combination of well-known facts are
+valuable for instruction and for a new point of view. His
+analysis of the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman
+Empire is drawn, of course, from Gibbon, but I have met
+those who prefer the interesting story of Lecky to the majestic
+sweep of the great master. Much less brilliant than
+Buckle&#8217;s &ldquo;History of Civilization,&rdquo; the first volume of which
+appeared twelve years earlier, the Morals has stood better
+the test of time.</p>
+
+<p>The intellectual biography of so precocious a writer is
+interesting, and fortunately it has been related by Lecky
+<a name="png.162" id="png.162"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">154</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>himself. When he entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1856,
+&ldquo;Mill was in the zenith of his fame and influence&rdquo;; Hugh
+Miller was attempting to reconcile the recent discoveries
+of geology with the Mosaic cosmogony. &ldquo;In poetry,&rdquo; wrote
+Lecky, &ldquo;Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I think with an
+approach to equality which has not continued.&rdquo; In government
+the orthodox political economists furnished the
+theory and the Manchester school the practice. All this
+intellectual fermentation affected this inquiring young
+student; but at first Bishop Butler&#8217;s Analogy and sermons,
+which were then much studied at Dublin, had the
+paramount influence. Of the living men, Archbishop
+Whately, then at Dublin, held sway. Other writers whom
+he mastered were Coleridge, Newman, and Emerson, Pascal,
+Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire, Dugald Stewart, and Mill.
+In 1857 Buckle burst upon the world, and proved a stimulus
+to Lecky as well as to most serious historical students. The
+result of these studies, Lecky relates, was his History of
+Rationalism, published in the early part of 1865.</p>
+
+<p>The claim made by many of Lecky&#8217;s admirers, that he
+was a philosophic historian, as distinct from literary historians
+like Carlyle and Macaulay, and scientific like Stubbs
+and Gardiner, has injured him in the eyes of many historical
+students who believe that if there be such a thing as the
+philosophy of history the narrative ought to carry it naturally.
+To interrupt the relation of events or the delineation
+of character with parading of trite reflections or with
+rashly broad generalizations is neither science nor art.
+Lecky has sometimes been condemned by students who,
+revolting at the term &ldquo;philosophy&rdquo; in connection with
+history, have failed to read his greatest work, the &ldquo;History
+of England in the Eighteenth Century.&rdquo; This is a decided
+advance on the History of Morals, and shows honest
+<a name="png.163" id="png.163"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">155</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>investigation in original material, much of it manuscript,
+and an excellent power of generalization widely different
+from that which exhibits itself in a paltry philosophy.
+These volumes are a real contribution to historical knowledge.
+Parts of them which I like often to recur to are the
+account of the ministry of Walpole, the treatment of &ldquo;parliamentary
+corruption,&rdquo; of the condition of London, and
+of &ldquo;national tastes and manners.&rdquo; His Chapter IX, which
+relates the rise of Methodism, has a peculiarly attractive
+swing and go, and his use of anecdote is effective.</p>
+
+<p>Chapter XX, on the &ldquo;Causes of the French Revolution,&rdquo;
+covering one hundred and forty-one pages, is an ambitious
+effort, but it shows a thorough digestion of his material,
+profound reflection, and a lively presentation of his view.
+Mr. Morse Stephens believes that it is idle to attempt to inquire
+into the causes of this political and social overturn.
+If a historian tells the <em>how</em>, he asserts he should not be asked
+to tell the <em>why</em>. This is an epigrammatic statement of a
+tenet of the scientific historical school of Oxford, but men
+will always be interested in inquiring why the French Revolution
+happened, and such chapters as this of Lecky, a blending
+of speculation and narrative, will hold their place.
+These volumes have much well and impartially written
+Irish history, and being published between 1878 and 1890,
+at the time when the Irish question in its various forms
+became acute, they attracted considerable attention from
+the political world. Gladstone was an admirer of Lecky,
+and said in a chat with John Morley: &ldquo;Lecky has real insight
+into the motives of statesmen. Now Carlyle, so mighty as
+he is in flash and penetration, has no eye for motives. Macaulay,
+too, is so caught by a picture, by color, by surface,
+that he is seldom to be counted on for just account of
+motive.&rdquo; The Irish chapters furnished arguments for the
+<a name="png.164" id="png.164"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">156</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Liberals, but did not convert Lecky himself to the policy of
+home rule. When Gladstone and his party adopted it, he
+became a Liberal Unionist, and as such was elected in 1895
+a member of the House of Commons by Dublin University.
+In view of the many comments that he was not successful
+in parliamentary life, I may say that the election not only
+came to him unsought, but that he recognized that he was
+too old to adapt himself to the atmosphere of the House of
+Commons; he accepted the position in the belief which was
+pressed upon him by many friends that he could in Parliament
+be useful to the University.</p>
+
+<p>Within less than three years have we commemorated in this
+hall three great English historians&mdash;Stubbs, Gardiner, and
+Lecky. The one we honor to-day was the most popular of
+the three. Not studied so much at the seats of learning,
+he is better known to journalists, to statesmen, to men of
+affairs, in short to general readers. Even our Society made
+him an honorary member fourteen years before it so honored
+Gardiner, although Gardiner was the older man and two
+volumes of his history had been published before Lecky&#8217;s
+Rationalism, and two volumes more in the same year as
+the Morals. One year after it was published, Rationalism
+went into a third edition. Gardiner&#8217;s first volumes
+sold one hundred and forty copies. It must, however, be
+stated that the Society recognized Gardiner&#8217;s work as early
+as 1874 by electing him a corresponding member.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to guess how long Lecky will be read. His
+popularity is distinct. He was the rare combination of a
+scholar and a man of the world, made so by his own peculiar
+talent and by lucky opportunities. He was not obliged to
+earn his living. In early life, by intimate personal intercourse,
+he drew intellectual inspiration from Dean Milman,
+and later he learned practical politics through his friendship
+<a name="png.165" id="png.165"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">157</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with Lord Russell. He knew well Herbert Spencer, Huxley,
+and Tyndall. In private conversation he was a very interesting
+man. His discourse ran on books and on men; he
+turned from one to the other and mixed up the two with a
+ready familiarity. He went much into London society, and
+though entirely serious and without having, so far as I
+know, a gleam of humor, he was a fluent and entertaining
+talker.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky was vitally interested in the affairs of this country,
+and sympathized with the North during our Civil War.
+He once wrote to me: &ldquo;I am old enough to remember
+vividly your great war, and was then much with an American
+friend&mdash;a very clever lawyer named George Bemis&mdash;whom
+I came to know very well at Rome&hellip;. I was myself a
+decided Northerner, but the &lsquo;right of revolution&rsquo; was always
+rather a stumbling block.&rdquo; Talking with Mr. Lecky in
+1895, not long after the judgment of the United States Supreme
+Court that the income tax was unconstitutional, he
+expressed the opinion that it was a grand decision, evidencing
+a high respect for private property, but in the next
+breath came the question, &ldquo;How are you ever to manage
+continuing the payment of those enormous pensions of
+yours?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is not, I think, difficult to explain why Stubbs and
+Gardiner are more precious possessions for students than
+Lecky. Gardiner devoted his life to the seventeenth century.
+If we may reckon the previous preparation and the
+ceaseless revision, Stubbs devoted a good part of his life to
+the constitutional history from the beginnings of it to Henry
+VII. Lecky&#8217;s eight volumes on the eighteenth century
+were published in thirteen years. A mastery of such an
+amount of original material as Stubbs and Gardiner mastered
+was impossible within that time. Lecky had the
+<a name="png.166" id="png.166"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">158</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>faculty of historic divination which compensated to some
+extent for the lack of a more thorough study of the sources.
+Genius stood in the place of painstaking engrossment in a
+single task.</p>
+
+<p>The last important work of Lecky, &ldquo;Democracy and
+Liberty,&rdquo; was a brave undertaking. Many years ago he
+wrote: &ldquo;When I was deeply immersed in the &lsquo;History of
+England in the Eighteenth Century,&rsquo; I remember being
+struck by the saying of an old and illustrious friend that he
+could not understand the state of mind of a man who, when
+so many questions of burning and absorbing interest were
+rising around him, could devote the best years of his life to
+the study of a vanished past.&rdquo; Hence the book which considered
+present issues of practical politics and party controversies,
+and a result that satisfied no party and hardly
+any faction. It is an interesting question who chose the
+better part,&mdash;he or Stubbs and Gardiner&mdash;they who devoted
+themselves entirely to the past or he who made a
+conscientious endeavor to bring to bear his study of history
+upon the questions of the present.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.167" id="png.167"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">159</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>SIR SPENCER WALPOLE</h2>
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+November meeting of 1907.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.169" id="png.169"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">161</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>SIR SPENCER WALPOLE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir Spencer Walpole</span> was an excellent historian and industrious
+writer. His first important work, entitled &ldquo;The
+History of England from 1815,&rdquo; was published at intervals
+from 1878 to 1886; the first installment appeared when he
+was thirty-nine years old. This in six volumes carried the
+history to 1858 in an interesting, accurate, and impartial
+narrative. Four of the five chapters of the first volume are
+entitled &ldquo;The Material Condition of England in 1815,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Society in England,&rdquo; &ldquo;Opinion in 1815,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Last of the
+Ebb Tide,&rdquo; and they are masterly in their description and
+relation. During the Napoleonic wars business was good.
+The development of English manufactures, due largely to
+the introduction of steam as a motive power, was marked.
+&ldquo;Twenty years of war,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;had concentrated the
+trade of the world in the British Empire.&rdquo; Wheat was
+dear; in consequence the country gentlemen received high
+rents. The clergy, being largely dependent on tithes,&mdash;the
+tenth of the produce,&mdash;found their incomes increased
+as the price of corn advanced. But the laboring classes,
+both those engaged in manufactures and agriculture, did
+not share in the general prosperity. Either their wages
+did not rise at all or did not advance commensurately with
+the increase of the cost of living and the decline in the value
+of the currency. Walpole&#8217;s detailed and thorough treatment
+of this subject is historic work of high value.</p>
+
+<p>In the third volume I was much impressed with his account
+of the Reform Act of 1832. We all have read that
+wonderful story over and over again, but I doubt whether its
+<a name="png.170" id="png.170"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">162</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>salient points have been better combined and presented
+than in Walpole&#8217;s chapter. I had not remembered the
+reason of the selection of Lord John Russell to present the
+bill in the House of Commons when he was only Paymaster
+of the Forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. It will, of
+course, be recalled that Lord Grey, the Prime Minister, was
+in the House of Lords, and, not so readily I think, that
+Althorp was Chancellor of the Exchequer and the leader of
+the House of Commons. On Althorp, under ordinary circumstances,
+it would have been incumbent to take charge
+of this highly important measure, which had been agreed
+upon by the Cabinet after counsel with the King. Russell
+was the youngest son of the Duke of Bedford; and the
+Duke was one of the large territorial magnates and a proprietor
+of rotten boroughs. &ldquo;A bill recommended by his
+son&#8217;s authority,&rdquo; wrote Walpole, &ldquo;was likely to reassure
+timid or wavering politicians.&rdquo; &ldquo;Russell,&rdquo; Walpole continued,
+&ldquo;told his tale in the plainest language. But the
+tale which he had to tell required no extraordinary language
+to adorn it. The Radicals had not dared to expect, the
+Tories, in their wildest fears, had not apprehended, so complete
+a measure. Enthusiasm was visible on one side of
+the House; consternation and dismay on the other. At
+last, when Russell read the list of boroughs which were
+doomed to extinction, the Tories hoped that the completeness
+of the measure would insure its defeat. Forgetting
+their fears, they began to be amused and burst into peals of
+derisive laughter&rdquo; (III, 208).</p>
+
+<p>Walpole&#8217;s next book was the &ldquo;Life of Lord John Russell,&rdquo;
+two volumes published in 1889. This was undertaken at
+the request of Lady Russell, who placed at his disposal a
+mass of private and official papers and &ldquo;diaries and letters
+of a much more private nature.&rdquo; She also acceded to his
+<a name="png.171" id="png.171"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">163</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>request that she was not to see the biography until it was
+ready for publication, so that the whole responsibility of it
+would be Walpole&#8217;s alone. The Queen gave him access to
+three bound volumes of Russell&#8217;s letters to herself, and sanctioned
+the publication of certain letters of King William IV.
+Walpole wrote the biography in about two years and a half;
+and this, considering that at the time he held an active office,
+displayed unusual industry. If I may judge the work by a
+careful study of the chapter on &ldquo;The American Civil War,&rdquo;
+it is a valuable contribution to political history.</p>
+
+<p>Passing over three minor publications, we come to Walpole&#8217;s
+&ldquo;History of Twenty-five Years,&rdquo; two volumes of
+which were published in 1904. A brief extract from his
+preface is noteworthy, written as it is by a man of keen intelligence,
+with great power of investigation and continuous
+labor, and possessed of a sound judgment. After a reference
+to his &ldquo;History of England from 1815,&rdquo; he said: &ldquo;The time
+has consequently arrived when it ought to be as possible to
+write the History of England from 1857 to 1880, as it was
+twenty years ago to bring down the narrative of that History
+to 1856 or 1857&hellip;. So far as I am able to judge, most of
+the material which is likely to be available for British history
+in the period with which these two volumes are concerned
+[1856&ndash;1870] is already accessible. It is not probable that
+much which is wholly new remains unavailable.&rdquo; I read
+carefully these two volumes when they first appeared, and
+found them exceedingly fascinating. Palmerston and Russell,
+Gladstone and Disraeli, are made so real that we follow
+their contests as if we ourselves had a hand in them. A half
+dozen or more years ago an Englishman told me that Palmerston
+and Russell were no longer considered of account in
+England. But I do not believe one can rise from reading
+these volumes without being glad of a knowledge of these
+<a name="png.172" id="png.172"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">164</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>two men whose patriotism was of a high order. Walpole&#8217;s
+several characterizations, in a summing up of Palmerston,
+display his knowledge of men. &ldquo;Men pronounced Lord
+Melbourne indifferent,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;Sir Robert Peel cold,
+Lord John Russell uncertain, Lord Aberdeen weak, Lord
+Derby haughty, Mr. Gladstone subtle, Lord Beaconsfield
+unscrupulous. But they had no such epithet for Lord
+Palmerston. He was as earnest as Lord Melbourne was
+indifferent, as strong as Lord Aberdeen was weak, as honest
+as Lord Beaconsfield was unscrupulous. Sir Robert Peel
+repelled men by his temper; Lord John Russell, by his
+coldness; Lord Derby offended them by his pride; Mr.
+Gladstone distracted them by his subtlety. But Lord
+Palmerston drew both friends and foes together by the
+warmth of his manners and the excellence of his heart&rdquo;
+(I, 525).</p>
+
+<p>Walpole&#8217;s knowledge of continental politics was apparently
+thorough. At all events, any one who desires two
+entrancing tales, should read the chapter on &ldquo;The Union of
+Italy,&rdquo; of which Cavour and Napoleon III are the heroes;
+and the two chapters entitled &ldquo;The Growth of Prussia and
+the Decline of France&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Fall of the Second Empire.&rdquo;
+In these two chapters Napoleon III again appears,
+but Bismarck is the hero. Walpole&#8217;s chapter on &ldquo;The
+American Civil War&rdquo; is the writing of a broad-minded, intelligent
+man, who could look on two sides.</p>
+
+<p>Of Walpole&#8217;s last book, &ldquo;Studies in Biography,&rdquo; published
+in 1907, I have left myself no time to speak. Those
+who are interested in it should read the review of it in the
+<cite>Nation</cite> early this year, which awards it high and unusual
+commendation.</p>
+
+<p>The readers of Walpole&#8217;s histories may easily detect in
+them a treatment not possible from a mere closet student
+<a name="png.173" id="png.173"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">165</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of books and manuscripts. A knowledge of the science of
+government and of practical politics is there. For Walpole
+was of a political family. He was of the same house as the
+great Whig Prime Minister, Sir Robert; and his father was
+Home Secretary in the Lord Derby ministry of 1858, and
+again in 1866, when he had to deal with the famous Hyde
+Park meeting of July 23. On his mother&#8217;s side he was a
+grandson of Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister who in
+1812 was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons.
+Walpole&#8217;s earliest publication was a biography of
+Perceval.</p>
+
+<p>And Spencer Walpole himself was a man of affairs. A clerk
+in the War Office in 1858, private secretary to his father in
+1866, next year Inspector of Fisheries, later Lieutenant-Governor
+of the Isle of Man, and from 1893 to 1899 Secretary
+to the Post-office. In spite of all this administrative
+work his books show that he was a wide, general reader,
+apart from his special historical studies. He wrote in an
+agreeable literary style, with Macaulay undoubtedly as his
+model, although he was by no means a slavish imitator.
+His &ldquo;History of Twenty-five Years&rdquo; seems to me to be
+written with a freer hand than the earlier history. He is
+here animated by the spirit rather than the letter of Macaulay.
+I no longer noticed certain tricks of expression which
+one catches so easily in a study of the great historian, and
+which seem so well to suit Macaulay&#8217;s own work, but nobody
+else&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>An article by Walpole on my first four volumes, in the
+<cite>Edinburgh Review</cite> of January, 1901, led to a correspondence
+which resulted in my receiving an invitation last May
+to pass Sunday with him at Hartfield Grove, his Sussex
+country place. We were to meet at Victoria station and
+take an early morning train. Seeing Mr. Frederic Harrison
+<a name="png.174" id="png.174"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">166</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the day previous, I asked for a personal description of his
+friend Walpole in order that I might easily recognize him.
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says Harrison, &ldquo;perhaps I can guide you. A
+while ago I sat next to a lady during a dinner who took me
+for Walpole and never discovered her mistake until, when she
+addressed me as Sir Spencer, I undeceived her just as the
+ladies were retiring from the table. Now I am the elder by
+eight years and I don&#8217;t think I look like Walpole, but that
+good lady had another opinion.&rdquo; Walpole and Harrison
+met that Saturday evening at the Academy dinner, and
+Walpole obtained a personal description of myself. This
+caution on both our parts was unnecessary. We were the
+only historians traveling down on the train and could not
+possibly have missed one another. I found him a thoroughly
+genial man, and after fifteen minutes in the railway
+carriage we were well acquainted. The preface to his
+&ldquo;History of Twenty-five Years&rdquo; told that the two volumes
+were the work of five years. I asked him how he was getting
+on with the succeeding volumes. He replied that he had
+done a good deal of work on them, and now that he was no
+longer in an administrative position he could concentrate
+his efforts, and he expected to have the work finished before
+long. I inquired if the prominence of his family in politics
+hampered him at all in writing so nearly contemporary
+history, and he said, &ldquo;Not a bit.&rdquo; An hour of the railroad
+and a half-hour&#8217;s drive brought us to his home. It was not
+an ancestral place, but a purchase not many years back.
+An old house had been remodeled with modern improvements,
+and comfort and ease were the predominant aspects.
+Sir Spencer proposed a &ldquo;turn&rdquo; before luncheon, which
+meant a short walk, and after luncheon we had a real walk.
+I am aware that the English mile and our own are alike
+5280 feet, but I am always impressed with the fact that
+<a name="png.175" id="png.175"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">167</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the English mile seems longer, and so I was on this Sunday.
+For after a good two hours&#8217; exertion over hills and meadows
+my host told me that we had gone only five miles. Only by
+direct question did I elicit the fact that had he been alone he
+would have done seven miles in the same time.</p>
+
+<p>There were no other guests, and Lady Walpole, Sir Spencer,
+and I had all of the conversation at luncheon and dinner
+and during the evening. We talked about history and
+literature, English and American politics, and public men.
+He was singularly well informed about our country, although
+he had only made one brief visit and then in an official capacity.
+English expressions of friendship are now so common
+that I will not quote even one of the many scattered through
+his volumes, but he displayed everywhere a candid appreciation
+of our good traits and creditable doings. I was struck
+with his knowledge and love of lyric poetry. Byron, Shelley,
+Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Lowell were thoroughly
+familiar to him. He would repeat some favorite
+passage of Keats, and at once turn to a discussion of the
+administrative details of his work in the post-office. Of
+course the day and evening passed very quickly,&mdash;it was
+one of the days to be marked with a white stone,&mdash;and
+when I bade Walpole good-by on the Monday morning I
+felt as if I were parting from a warm friend. I found him
+broad-minded, intelligent, sympathetic, affable, and he
+seemed as strong physically as he was sound intellectually.
+His death on Sunday, July 7, of cerebral hemorrhage was
+alike a shock and a grief.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.177" id="png.177"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">169</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>JOHN RICHARD GREEN</h2>
+
+<p>Address at a gathering of historians on June 5, 1909, to mark the
+placing of a tablet in the inner quadrangle of Jesus College,
+Oxford, to the memory of John Richard Green.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.179" id="png.179"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">171</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>JOHN RICHARD GREEN</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I wish</span> indeed that I had the tongues of men and of angels
+to express the admiration of the reading public of America
+for the History of John Richard Green. I suppose that he
+has had more readers in our country than any other historian
+except Macaulay, and he has shaped the opinions of men who
+read, more than any writers of history except those whom
+John Morley called the great born men of letters,&mdash;Gibbon,
+Macaulay, and Carlyle.</p>
+
+<p>I think it is the earlier volumes rather than the last volume
+of his more extended work which have taken hold of us. Of
+course we thrill at his tribute to Washington, where he has
+summed up our reverence, trust, and faith in him in one
+single sentence which shows true appreciation and deep
+feeling; and it flatters our national vanity, of which we
+have a goodly stock, to read in his fourth volume that the
+creation of the United States was one of the turning points
+in the history of the world.</p>
+
+<p>No saying is more trite, at any rate to an educated American
+audience, than that the development of the English
+nation is one of the most wonderful things, if not the most
+wonderful thing, which history records. That history before
+James I is our own, and, to our general readers, it has
+never been so well presented as in Green&#8217;s first two volumes.
+The victories of war are our own. It was our ancestors
+who preserved liberty, maintained order, set the train moving
+toward religious toleration, and wrought out that language
+and literature which we are proud of, as well
+as you.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.180" id="png.180"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">172</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>For my own part, I should not have liked to miss reading
+and re-reading the five chapters on Elizabeth in the second
+volume. What eloquence in simply the title of the last,&mdash;The
+England of Shakespeare! And in fact my conception
+of Elizabeth, derived from Shakespeare, is confirmed by
+Green. As I think how much was at stake in the last half
+of the sixteenth century, and how well the troubles were met
+by that great monarch and the wise statesman whom she
+called to her aid, I feel that we could not be what we are,
+had a weak, irresolute sovereign been at the head of the
+state.</p>
+
+<p>With the power of a master Green manifests what was
+accomplished. At the accession of Elizabeth&mdash;&ldquo;Never&rdquo;
+so he wrote&mdash;&ldquo;had the fortunes of England sunk to a
+lower ebb. The loss of Calais gave France the mastery
+of the Channel. The French King in fact &lsquo;bestrode the
+realm, having one foot in Calais, and the other in <span class="rthinsp">Scotland.&rsquo;</span>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And at the death of Elizabeth, thus Green tells the story:
+&ldquo;The danger which had hitherto threatened our national
+existence and our national unity had disappeared: France
+clung to the friendship of England, Spain trembled beneath
+its blows.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With the wide range of years of his subject, with a grasp
+of an extended period akin to Gibbon&#8217;s, complete accuracy
+was, of course, not attainable, but Samuel R. Gardiner once
+told me that Green, although sometimes inaccurate in details,
+gave a general impression that was justifiable and
+correct; and that is in substance the published opinion of
+Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p>Goethe said that in reading Molière you perceive that he
+possessed the charm of an amiable nature in habitual contact
+with good society. So we, who had not the advantage of
+<a name="png.181" id="png.181"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">173</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>personal intercourse, divined was the case of Green; and
+when the volume of Letters appeared, we saw that we had
+guessed correctly. But not until then did we know of his
+devotion to his work, and his heroic struggle, which renders
+the story of his short and brilliant career a touching and fascinating
+biography of a historian who made his mark upon
+his time.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.183" id="png.183"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">175</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>EDWARD L. PIERCE</h2>
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+October meeting of 1897.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.185" id="png.185"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">177</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>EDWARD L. PIERCE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I shall</span> first speak of Mr. Pierce as an author. His Life
+of Sumner it seems to me is an excellent biography, and
+the third and fourth volumes of it are an important contribution
+to the history of our country. Any one who has
+gone through the original material of the period he embraces
+must be struck not only with the picture of Sumner, but
+with the skill of the biographer in the use of his data to present
+a general historical view. The injunction of Cicero,
+&ldquo;Choose with discretion out of the plenty that lies before
+you,&rdquo; Mr. Pierce observed. To those who know how extensive
+was his reading of books, letters, newspaper files,
+how much he had conversed with the actors in those stirring
+scenes&mdash;and who will take into account the mass of memories
+that crowd upon the mind of one who has lived through
+such an era&mdash;this biography will seem not too long but
+rather admirable in its relative brevity. In a talk that I had
+with Mr. Pierce I referred to the notice in an English literary
+weekly of his third and fourth volumes which maintained
+that the biography was twice too long, and I took occasion
+to say that in comparison with other American works of
+the kind the criticism seemed unjust. &ldquo;Moreover,&rdquo; I went
+on, &ldquo;I think you showed restraint in not making use of much
+of your valuable material,&mdash;of the interesting and even
+important unprinted letters of Cobden, the Duke of Argyll,
+and of John Bright.&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Mr. Pierce, with a
+twinkle in his eye, &ldquo;I can say with Lord Clive, &lsquo;Great
+Heavens, at this moment I stand astonished at my own
+<span class="rthinsp">moderation.&rsquo;</span>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.186" id="png.186"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">178</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Any one who has studied public sentiment in this country
+for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few
+facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated,
+it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations
+are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue,
+but rather because they express only a part of the truth.
+If a student should ask me in what one book he would find
+the best statement of popular opinion at the North during
+the Civil War, I should say, Read Sumner&#8217;s letters as cited
+in Mr. Pierce&#8217;s biography with the author&#8217;s comments.
+The speeches of Sumner may smell too much of the lamp
+to be admirable, but the off-hand letters written to his English
+and to a few American friends during our great struggle
+are worthy of the highest esteem. From his conversations
+with the President, the Cabinet ministers, his fellow-senators
+and congressmen, his newspaper reading,&mdash;in short,
+from the many impressions that go to make up the daily
+life of an influential public man,&mdash;there has resulted an
+accurate statement of the popular feeling from day to day.
+In spite of his intense desire to have Englishmen of power
+and position espouse the right side, he would not misrepresent
+anything by the suppression of facts, any more than he
+would make a misleading statement. In the selection of
+these letters Mr. Pierce has shown a nice discrimination.</p>
+
+<p>Sumner, whom I take to have been one of the most truthful
+of men, was fortunate in having one of the most honest
+of biographers. Mr. Pierce would not, I think, have wittingly
+suppressed anything that told against him. I love
+to think of one citation which would never have been made
+by an idolizing biographer, so sharply did it bring out the
+folly of the opinion expressed. Sumner wrote, May 3, 1863:
+&ldquo;There is no doubt here about Hooker. He told Judge
+Bates &hellip; that he &lsquo;did not mean to drive the enemy but
+<a name="png.187" id="png.187"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">179</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to bag him.&rsquo; It is thought he is now doing it.&rdquo; The biographer&#8217;s
+comment is brief, &ldquo;The letter was written on the
+day of Hooker&#8217;s defeat at Chancellorsville.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that Mr. Pierce was as impartial in his
+writing as is possible for a man who has taken an active part
+in political affairs, who is thoroughly in earnest, and who has
+a positive manner of expression. It is not so difficult as
+some imagine for a student of history whose work is done in
+the library to be impartial, provided he has inherited or acquired
+the desire to be fair and honest, and provided he has
+the diligence and patience to go through the mass of evidence.
+His historical material will show him that to every
+question there are two sides. But what of the man who has
+been in the heat of the conflict, and who, when the fight was
+on, believed with Sumner that there was no other side?
+If such a man displays candor, how much greater his merit
+than the impartiality of the scholar who shuns political
+activity and has given himself up to a life of speculation!</p>
+
+<p>I had the good fortune to have three long conversations
+with the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, the last of which occurred
+shortly after the publication of the third and fourth volumes
+of the Life of Sumner. &ldquo;What,&rdquo; said Mr. Winthrop
+to me, &ldquo;do you think of the chapter on the Annexation of
+Texas and the Mexican War?&rdquo; &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; was my reply,
+&ldquo;that Mr. Pierce has treated a delicate subject like a gentleman.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;From what I have heard of it,&rdquo; responded Mr.
+Winthrop, earnestly, &ldquo;and from so much as I have read of it,
+that is also my own opinion.&rdquo; Such a private conversation
+I could, of course, repeat, and, somewhat later the occasion
+presenting itself, I did so to Mr. Pierce. &ldquo;That is more
+grateful to me,&rdquo; he said, almost with tears in his eyes, &ldquo;than
+all the praise I have received for these volumes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pierce had, I think, the historic sense. I consulted
+<a name="png.188" id="png.188"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">180</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>him several times on the treatment of historical matters,
+taking care not to trench on questions where, so different
+was our point of view, we could not possibly agree, and I
+always received from him advice that was suggestive, even
+if I did not always follow it to the letter. I sent to him,
+while he was in London, my account of Secretary Cameron&#8217;s
+report proposing to arm the slaves and of his removal from
+office by President Lincoln. Mr. Pierce thought my inferences
+were far-fetched, and wrote: &ldquo;I prefer the natural
+explanation. Horace says we must not introduce a god
+into a play unless it is necessary.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As a friend, he was warm-hearted and true. He brought
+cheer and animation into your house. His talk was fresh;
+his zeal for whatever was uppermost in his mind was contagious,
+and he inspired you with enthusiasm. He was not
+good at conversation, in the French sense of the term, for
+he was given to monologue; but he was never dull. His
+artlessness was charming. He gave you confidences that
+you would have shrunk from hearing out of the mouth of any
+other man, in the fear that you intruded on a privacy where
+you had no right; but this openness of mind was so natural
+in Mr. Pierce that you listened with concern and sympathized
+warmly. He took interest in everything; he had infinite
+resources, and until his health began to fail, enjoyed
+life thoroughly. He loved society, conversation, travel;
+and while he had no passion for books, he listened to you
+attentively while you gave an abstract or criticism of some
+book that was attracting attention. In all intercourse with
+him you felt that you were in a healthy moral atmosphere.
+I never knew a man who went out of his way oftener to do
+good works in which there was absolutely no reward, and
+at a great sacrifice of his time&mdash;to him a most precious
+commodity. He was in the true sense of the word a
+<a name="png.189" id="png.189"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">181</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>philanthropist, and yet no one would have approved more heartily
+than he this remark of Emerson: &ldquo;The professed philanthropists
+are an altogether odious set of people, whom one
+would shun as the worst of bores and canters.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His interest in this Society the published Proceedings will
+show in some measure, but they cannot reflect the tone of
+devotion in which he spoke of it in conversation, or exhibit
+his loyalty to it as set forth in the personal letter. It was
+a real privation that his legislative duties prevented his
+attending these meetings last winter.</p>
+
+<p>Of Mr. Pierce as a citizen most of you, gentlemen, can
+speak better than I, but it does appear to me an instance of
+rare civic virtue that a man of his age, political experience,
+ability, and mental resources could take pride and pleasure
+in his service in the House of Representatives of his Commonwealth.
+He was sixty-eight years old, suffering from
+disease, yet in his service last winter he did not miss one
+legislative session nor a day meeting of his committee. His
+love for his town was a mark of local attachment both
+praiseworthy and useful. &ldquo;I would rather be moderator
+of the Milton town-meeting,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;than hold any other
+office in the United States.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.191" id="png.191"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">183</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>JACOB D. COX</h2>
+
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+October meeting of 1900.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.193" id="png.193"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">185</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>JACOB D. COX</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A useful</span> member of the legislature of his state, a general
+in the army during the Civil War, governor of his state,
+Secretary of the Interior in President Grant&#8217;s Cabinet, a
+member of Congress, the president of a large railroad,
+a writer of books, dean and teacher in a law school, and a
+reviewer of books in the <cite>Nation</cite>,&mdash;such were the varied
+activities of General Cox. All this work was done with
+credit. He bore a prominent part in the battle of Antietam,
+where Ropes speaks of his &ldquo;brilliant success&rdquo;; he was the
+second in command at the battle of Franklin, and bore the
+brunt of the battle. &ldquo;Brigadier-General J.&nbsp;D. Cox,&rdquo; wrote
+Schofield, the commanding general, in his report, &ldquo;deserves
+a very large share of credit for the brilliant victory at
+Franklin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The governor of the state of Ohio did not then have a
+great opportunity of impressing himself upon the minds of
+the people of his state, but Cox made his mark in the canvass
+for that office. We must call to mind that in the year 1865,
+when he was the Republican candidate for governor, President
+Johnson had initiated his policy of reconstruction, but
+had not yet made a formal break with his party. Negro
+suffrage, which only a few had favored during the last year
+of the war, was now advocated by the radical Republicans,
+and the popular sentiment of the party was tending in that
+direction. Cox had been a strong antislavery man before
+the war, a supporter of President Lincoln in his emancipation
+measures, but soon after his nomination for governor he
+wrote a letter to his radical friends at Oberlin in opposition
+<a name="png.194" id="png.194"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">186</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to negro suffrage. &ldquo;You assume,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that the extension
+of the right of suffrage to the blacks, leaving them
+intermixed with the whites, will cure all the trouble. I
+believe it would rather be like the decision in that outer
+darkness of which Milton speaks where</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="i8">&ldquo;<span class="lthinsp">&lsquo;chaos</span> umpire sits,</div>
+<div>And by decision more embroils the <span class="rthinsp">fray.&rsquo;</span>&rdquo;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>While governor, he said in a private conversation that he
+had come to the conclusion &ldquo;that so large bodies of black
+men and white as were in presence in the Southern States
+never could share political power, and that the insistence
+upon it on the part of the colored people would lead to their
+ruin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>President Grant appointed General Cox Secretary of the
+Interior, and he remained for nearly two years in the
+Cabinet. James Russell Lowell, on a visit to Washington
+in 1870, gave expression to the feeling among independent
+Republicans. &ldquo;Judge Hoar,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;and Mr. Cox
+struck me as the only really strong men in the Cabinet.&rdquo;
+This was long before the Civil Service Reform Act had passed
+Congress, but Secretary Cox put the Interior Department
+on a merit basis, and he was ever afterwards an advocate of
+civil service reform by word of mouth and with his pen.
+Differences with the President, in which I feel pretty sure
+that the Secretary was in the right, caused him to resign
+the office.</p>
+
+<p>Elected to Congress in 1876, he was a useful member for
+one term. He has always been known to men in public life,
+and when President McKinley offered him the position of
+Minister to Spain something over three years ago, it was felt
+that a well-known and capable man had been selected. For
+various reasons he did not accept the appointment, but if he
+<a name="png.195" id="png.195"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">187</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>had done so, no one could doubt that he would have shown
+tact and judgment in the difficult position.</p>
+
+<p>As president of the Wabash Railroad, one of the large
+railroads in the West, he gained a name among business
+men, and five or six years ago was offered the place of Railroad
+Commissioner in New York City. This was practically
+the position of arbitrator between the trunk lines, but he
+was then Dean of the Cincinnati Law School and interested
+in a work which he did not care to relinquish.</p>
+
+<p>Besides a controversial monograph, he wrote three books
+on military campaigns: &ldquo;Atlanta&rdquo;; &ldquo;The March to the
+Sea; Franklin and Nashville&rdquo;; &ldquo;The Battle of Franklin&rdquo;;
+and he wrote four excellent chapters for Force&#8217;s &ldquo;Life of
+General Sherman.&rdquo; In these he showed qualities of a military
+historian of a high order. Before his death he had
+finished his Reminiscences, which will be brought out by
+the Scribners this autumn.</p>
+
+<p>His differences with President Grant while in his Cabinet
+left a wound, and in private conversation he was quite severe
+in his strictures of many of the President&#8217;s acts, but he never
+let this feeling influence him in the slightest degree in the
+consideration of Grant the General. He had a very high
+idea of Grant&#8217;s military talents, which he has in many ways
+emphatically stated.</p>
+
+<p>Since 1874 he had been a constant contributor to the
+literary department of the <cite>Nation</cite>. In his book reviews
+he showed a fine critical faculty and large general information,
+and some of his obituary notices&mdash;especially those of
+Generals Buell, Grant, Sherman, Joseph E. Johnston, and
+Jefferson Davis&mdash;showed that power of impartial characterization
+which is so great a merit in a historian. He was
+an omnivorous reader of serious books. It was difficult to
+name any noteworthy work of history or biography or any
+<a name="png.196" id="png.196"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">188</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>popular book on natural science with which he was not
+acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>As I saw him two years ago, when he was seventy years
+old, he was in the best of health and vigor, which seemed to
+promise many years of life. He was tall, erect, with a frame
+denoting great physical strength, and he had distinctively
+a military bearing. He was an agreeable companion, an excellent
+talker, a scrupulously honest and truthful man, and
+a gentleman.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.197" id="png.197"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">189</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE</h2>
+
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+March meeting of 1908.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.199" id="png.199"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">191</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> an associate dies who was not yet forty-eight years
+old, whom most of us knew as a strong enduring man, who
+was capable of an immense amount of intellectual work, it
+is a real calamity,&mdash;a calamity which in this case History
+mourns, as Edward Gaylord Bourne was an excellent teacher
+and a thorough historical scholar. The physical details of
+any illness are apt to be repulsive, but the malady in Bourne&#8217;s
+case was somehow so bound up in his life that an inquiry
+into it comes from no morbid curiosity. When ten years
+old he was attacked with tubercular disease of the hip, and
+for some weeks his life was despaired of; but he was saved
+by the loving care of his parents, receiving particular devotion
+from his father, who was a Congregational minister in
+charge of a parish in Connecticut. As the left leg had out-grown
+the other, Bourne was obliged to use crutches for
+three years, when his father took him to a specialist in Boston,
+and the result was that he was able to abandon crutches
+and in the end to get about by an appliance to adjust the
+lengths of the different legs, such as his friends were familiar
+with. Despite this disability he developed great physical
+strength, especially in the chest and arms, but his lameness
+prevented his accompanying his college companions on
+long tramps, so that the bicycle was for him a most welcome
+invention. He became expert in the use of it, riding on it
+down Pike&#8217;s Peak at the time of his visit to Colorado; and
+he performed a similar feat of endurance on another occasion
+when stopping with me at Jefferson in the White Mountains.
+Starting early in the morning, he traveled by rail to the
+<a name="png.200" id="png.200"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">192</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>terminus of the mountain railroad, went up Mount Washington
+on the railroad, and rode down the carriage road on his
+wheel to the Glen House, which ought to have been enough
+of fatigue and exertion for one day, but he then had about
+ten miles to make on his bicycle over a somewhat rough
+mountain road to reach Jefferson. Jefferson he did make,
+but not until after midnight.</p>
+
+<p>During an acquaintance of over nineteen years with
+Bourne, I was always impressed with his physical strength
+and endurance; and I was therefore much surprised to
+learn, in a letter received from him last winter while I was
+in Rome, that his youthful malady had attacked him, that
+he was again on crutches and had been obliged to give up
+his work at Yale. In truth ever since the autumn of 1906
+he has had a painful, hopeless struggle. He has had the
+benefit of all the resources of medicine and surgery, and he
+and his wife were buoyed up by hope until the last; but as
+the sequel of one of a series of operations death came to his
+relief on February 24.</p>
+
+<p>Only less remarkable than his struggle for life and physical
+strength was his energy in acquiring an education. The
+sacrifices that parents in New England and the rest of the
+country make in order to send their boys to school and college
+is a common enough circumstance, but not always is the
+return so satisfactory as it was in the case of Edward Bourne,
+and his brother. Edward went to the Norwich Academy,
+where his studious disposition and diligent purpose gained
+him the favor of the principal. Thence to Yale, where he
+attracted the attention of Professor William G. Sumner,
+who became to him a guide and a friend. Until his senior
+year at Yale his favorite studies were Latin and Greek; and
+his brother, who was in his class, informs me that ever since
+his preparatory school days, it was his custom to read the
+<a name="png.201" id="png.201"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">193</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>whole of any author in hand as well as the part set for the
+class. During recitations he recalls seeing him again and
+again reading ahead in additional books of the author, keeping
+at the same time &ldquo;a finger on the page where the class
+was translating, in order not to be caught off his guard.&rdquo;
+In his senior year at Yale, under the influence of Professor
+Sumner, he became interested in economics and won the
+Cobden medal. After graduation he wrote his first historical
+book, &ldquo;The History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837,&rdquo;
+published in 1885 in Putnam&#8217;s &ldquo;Questions of the Day&rdquo;
+series. For this and his other graduate work his university
+later conferred upon him the degree of Ph.D. Since I
+have learned the story of his boyhood and youth, it is with
+peculiar appreciation that I read the dedication of this first
+book: &ldquo;To my Father and Mother.&rdquo; I may add in this
+connection that while pursuing his indefatigable labors for
+the support of his large family, his father&#8217;s sickness and
+death overtaxed his strength, and the breakdown followed.</p>
+
+<p>At Yale during his graduate work he won the Foote
+scholarship; he was instructor in history there from 1886
+to 1888, then took a similar position at Adelbert College,
+Cleveland, becoming Professor of History in 1890. This
+post he held until 1895, when he was called to Yale University
+as Professor of History, a position that he held at
+the time of his death.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the doctor&#8217;s thesis, Bourne published two books,
+the first of which was &ldquo;Essays in Historical Criticism,&rdquo; one
+of the Yale bicentennial publications, the most notable
+essay in which is that on Marcus Whitman. A paper read
+at the Ann Arbor session of the American Historical meeting
+in Detroit and later published in the <cite>American Historical
+Review</cite> is here amplified into a long and exhaustive treatment
+of the subject. The original paper gained Bourne
+<a name="png.202" id="png.202"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">194</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>some celebrity and subjected him to some harsh criticism,
+both of which, I think, he thoroughly enjoyed. Feeling
+sure of his facts and ground, he delighted in his final word
+to support the contention which he had read with emphasis
+and pleasure to an attentive audience in one of the halls of
+the University of Michigan. The final paragraph sums up
+what he set out to prove with undoubted success:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquote">
+That Marcus Whitman was a devoted and heroic missionary
+who braved every hardship and imperilled his life for the cause of
+Christian missions and Christian civilization in the far Northwest
+and finally died at his post, a sacrifice to the cause, will not be
+gainsaid. That he deserves grateful commemoration in Oregon
+and Washington is beyond dispute. But that he is a national
+figure in American history, or that he &ldquo;saved&rdquo; Oregon, must be
+rejected as a fiction [p.&nbsp;100].
+</p>
+
+<p>Bourne had a good knowledge of American history, and
+he specialized on the Discoveries period, to which he gave
+close and continuous attention. He was indebted to Professor
+Hart&#8217;s ambitious and excellent coöperative history,
+&ldquo;The American Nation,&rdquo; for the opportunity to obtain a
+hearing on his favorite subject. His &ldquo;Spain in America,&rdquo;
+his third published book, is the book of a scholar. While
+the conditions of his narrative allowed only forty-six pages
+to the story of Columbus, he had undoubtedly material
+enough well arranged and digested to fill the volume on this
+topic alone. I desire to quote a signal example of compression:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquote">
+It was November, 1504, when Columbus arrived in Seville, a
+broken man, something over twelve years from the time he first
+set sail from Palos. Each successive voyage since his first had
+left him at a lower point. On his return from the second he was
+on the defensive; after his third he was deprived of his viceroyalty;
+on his fourth he was shipwrecked&hellip;. The last blow, the death
+of his patron Isabella, soon followed. It was months before he was
+<a name="png.203" id="png.203"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">195</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>able to attend court. His strength gradually failed, he sank
+from public view, and on the eve of Ascension Day, May 20, 1506,
+he passed away in obscurity [p.&nbsp;81].
+</p>
+
+<p>And I am very fond of this final characterization:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquote">
+Columbus &hellip; has revealed himself in his writings as few men
+of action have been revealed. His hopes, his illusions, his vanity,
+and love of money, his devotion to by-gone ideals, his keen and
+sensitive observation of the natural world, his credulity and utter
+lack of critical power in dealing with literary evidence, his practical
+abilities as a navigator, his tenacity of purpose and boldness of
+execution, his lack of fidelity as a husband and a lover,&hellip; all
+stand out in clear relief&hellip;. Of all the self-made men that
+America has produced, none has had a more dazzling success, a
+more pathetic sinking to obscurity, or achieved a more universal
+celebrity [p.&nbsp;82].
+</p>
+
+<p>His chapter on Magellan is thoroughly interesting. The
+treatment of Columbus and Magellan shows what Bourne
+might have achieved in historical work if he could have had
+leisure to select his own subjects and elaborate them at will.</p>
+
+<p>Before &ldquo;Spain in America&rdquo; appeared, he wrote a scholarly
+introduction to the vast work on the &ldquo;Philippine Islands&rdquo;
+published by the Arthur H. Clark Company, of Cleveland,
+of which fifty-one volumes are already out. The study of
+this subject gave Bourne a chance for the exhibition of his
+dry wit at one of the gatherings of the American Historical
+Association. It was asserted that in the acquisition of the
+Philippine Islands our country had violated the spirit of
+the Monroe Doctrine, which properly confined our indulgence
+of the land hunger that is preying upon the world to the Western
+hemisphere. Bourne took issue with this statement. He
+said that it might well be a question whether the Philippine
+Islands did not belong to the Western hemisphere and that--</p>
+
+<p class="blockquote noindent">
+for the first three centuries of their recorded history, they were in
+a sense a dependency of America. As a dependency of New Spain
+<a name="png.204" id="png.204"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">196</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>they constituted the extreme western verge of the Spanish dominions
+and were commonly known as the Western Islands.
+When the sun rose in Madrid it was still early afternoon of the
+preceding day in Manila. Down to the end of the year 1844 the
+Manilan calendar was reckoned after that of Spain, that is, Manila
+time was about sixteen hours slower than Madrid time.
+</p>
+
+<p>Bourne undertook to write the Life of Motley for
+Houghton, Mifflin and Company&#8217;s American Men of Letters
+series, and he had done considerable work in the investigation
+of material. He was editor of a number of publications,
+one of which was John Fiske&#8217;s posthumous volume, &ldquo;New
+France and New England,&rdquo; and he wrote critical notices
+for the <cite>Nation</cite>, <cite>New York Tribune</cite>, and the <cite>New York
+Times</cite>. As I have said, he had a large family to support,
+and he sought work of the potboiling order; but in this
+necessary labor he never sacrificed his ideal of thoroughness.
+A remark that he made to me some while ago has
+come back with pathetic interest. After telling me what he
+was doing, how much time his teaching left for outside work,
+why he did this and that because it brought him money, he
+said: &ldquo;I can get along all right. I can support my family,
+educate my children, and get a little needed recreation, if
+only my health does not break down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bourne took great interest in the American Historical
+Association, and rarely if ever missed an annual meeting.
+He frequently read papers, which were carefully prepared,
+and a number of them are printed in the volume of Essays
+to which I have referred. He was the efficient chairman of
+the programme committee at the meeting in New Haven in
+1898; and as chairman of an important committee, or as
+member of the Council, he attended the November dinners
+and meetings in New York, so that he came to be looked
+upon as one of the chief supporters of the Association.
+<a name="png.205" id="png.205"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">197</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Interested also in the <cite>American Historical Review</cite>, he was
+a frequent contributor of critical book notices.</p>
+
+<p>My acquaintance with Bourne began in 1888, the year in
+which I commenced the composition of my history. We
+were both living in Cleveland, and, as it was his custom to
+dine with me once or twice a month, acquaintance grew into
+friendship, and I came to have a great respect for his training
+and knowledge as a historical scholar. The vastness of historical
+inquiry impressed me, as it has all writers of history.
+Recognizing in Bourne a kindred spirit, it occurred to me
+whether I could not hasten my work if he would employ
+part of his summer vacation in collecting material. I imparted
+the idea to Bourne, who received it favorably, and
+he spent a month of the summer of 1889 at work for me in
+the Boston Athenæum on my general specifications, laboring
+with industry and discrimination over the newspapers of
+the early &#8217;50&#8217;s to which we had agreed to confine his work.
+His task completed, he made me a visit of a few days at
+Bar Harbor, affording an opportunity for us to discuss the
+period and his material. I was so impressed with the value
+of his assistance that, when the manuscript of my first two
+volumes was completed in 1891, I asked him to spend a
+month with me and work jointly on its revision. We used
+to devote four or five hours a day to this labor, and in 1894,
+when I had finished my third volume, we had a similar collaboration.<sup><a href="#fn.xiii.1"
+ name="fna.xiii.1" id="fna.xiii.1">1</a></sup>
+I have never known a better test of general
+knowledge and intellectual temper.</p>
+
+<p>Bourne was a slow thinker and worker, but he was sure,
+and, when he knew a thing, his exposition was clear and
+pointed. The chance of reflection over night and the
+<a name="png.206" id="png.206"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">198</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>occasional discussion at meal times, outside of our set hours,
+gave him the opportunity to recall all his knowledge bearing
+on the subject in hand, to digest and classify it thoroughly,
+so that, when he tackled a question, he talked, so to speak,
+like a book. Two chapters especially attracted him,&mdash;the
+one on Slavery in my first volume, and the one on general
+financial and social conditions at the beginning of the third;
+and I think that I may say that not only every paragraph
+and sentence, but every important word in these two chapters
+was discussed and weighed. Bourne was a good critic,
+and, to set him entirely at ease, as he was twelve years
+younger, I told him to lay aside any respect on account of
+age, and to speak out frankly, no matter how hard it hit,
+adding that I had better hear disagreeable things from him
+than to have them said by critics after the volumes were
+printed.</p>
+
+<p>The intelligent note on page 51 of my third volume was
+written by Bourne, as I state in the note itself, but I did not
+speak of the large amount of study he gave to it. I never
+knew a man take keener interest in anything, and as we had
+all the necessary authorities at hand, he worked over them
+for two days, coming down on the morning of the third day
+with the triumphant air of one who had wrestled successfully
+with a mathematical problem all night. He sat down and,
+as I remember it, wrote the note substantially as it now
+stands in the volume. He was very strong on all economic
+and sociological questions, displaying in a marked degree
+the intellectual stimulus he had derived from his association
+with Professor Sumner. He was a born controversialist
+and liked to argue. &ldquo;The appetite comes in eating&rdquo; is a
+French saying, and with Bourne his knowledge seemed to be
+best evolved by the actual joint working and collision with
+another mind.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.207" id="png.207"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">199</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>I remember one felicitous suggestion of Bourne&#8217;s which
+after much working over we incorporated into a paragraph
+to our common satisfaction; and this paragraph received
+commendation in some critical notice. Showing this to
+Bourne, I said: &ldquo;That is the way of the world. You did
+the thinking, I got the credit.&rdquo; Bourne had, however, forgotten
+his part in the paragraph. His mind was really so
+full of knowledge, when one could get at it, that he did not
+remember giving off any part of it. In addition to his
+quality of close concentration, he acquired a good deal of
+knowledge in a desultory way. In my library when conversation
+lagged he would go to the shelves and take down
+book after book, reading a little here or there, lighting especially
+upon any books that had been acquired since his
+previous visit, and with reading he would comment. This
+love of browsing in a library he acquired when a boy, so
+his brother informs me, and when at Yale it was said that he
+knew the library as well as the librarian himself.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that last spring our accomplished
+editor, Mr. Smith, decided that he could no longer bear the
+burden of this highly important work; and the question of
+a fit successor came up at once in the mind of our President.
+Writing to me while I was in Europe, he expressed the desire
+of consulting with me on the subject as soon as I returned.
+I was unfortunately unable to get back in time for the June
+meeting of the Society; and afterwards when I reached
+Boston the President had gone West, and when he got home
+I was at Seal Harbor. To spare me the trip to Boston and
+Lincoln, he courteously offered to come to see me at Seal
+Harbor, where we had the opportunity to discuss the subject
+in all its bearings. It will be quite evident from this
+narrative that my choice for editor would be no other than
+Professor Bourne, and I was much gratified to learn that
+<a name="png.208" id="png.208"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">200</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the President from his own observation and reflection had
+determined on the same man. Mr. Adams had been accustomed
+to see Bourne at meetings of the American Historical
+Association and at dinners of their Council; but, so
+he informed me, he was not specially impressed by him until
+he read the essay on Marcus Whitman, which gave him
+a high idea of Bourne&#8217;s power of working over material, and
+his faculty of trenchant criticism. We arrived readily at
+the conclusion that Bourne would be an ideal editor and
+that the position would suit him perfectly. Relieved of
+the drudgery of teaching, he could give full swing to his love
+of books and to his desire of running down through all the
+authorities some fact or reference bearing upon the subject
+in hand. The work would be a labor of love on which he
+could bring to bear his knowledge, conscientious endeavor,
+and historical training. It would have been a case of mutual
+benefit. He would be fortunate in securing such a
+position, and the Society might be congratulated on being
+able to get a man so peculiarly qualified for editorial work.
+But there was the question of Bourne&#8217;s health. We both
+knew that he had been failing, but we were not aware that
+his case was hopeless. The President did not wish to present
+his recommendation to the Council until there was a
+reasonable chance of his recovery, and I undertook from
+time to time to get information from a common friend in
+New Haven of his progress. But there was no good news.
+While Bourne, with the help of his devoted wife, made an
+energetic fight for life, it was unavailing. In his death Yale
+lost an excellent teacher of history and this Society a candidate
+who, if he had been chosen, would have made an
+accomplished editor.</p>
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiii.1" id="fn.xiii.1" href="#fna.xiii.1">1</a>
+Bourne also revised the manuscript of my fourth volume, but the conditions
+did not admit of our being together more than two days, and the revision
+was not so satisfactory to either of us as that of the first three volumes.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.209" id="png.209"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">201</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Printed in <cite>Scribner&#8217;s Magazine</cite>, of February, 1903.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.211" id="png.211"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">203</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> English Constitution, as it existed between 1760 and
+1787, was the model of the American, but parts of it were
+inapplicable to the conditions in which the thirteen Colonies
+found themselves, and where the model failed the Convention
+struck out anew. The sagacity of the American statesmen
+in this creative work may well fill Englishmen, so Sir
+Henry Maine wrote, &ldquo;with wonder and envy.&rdquo; Mr. Bryce&#8217;s
+classification of constitutions as flexible and rigid is apt:
+of our Constitution it may be said that in the main it is
+rigid in those matters which should not be submitted to the
+decision of a legislature or to a popular vote without checks
+which secure reflection and a chance for the sober second
+thought, and that it has proved flexible in its adaptation to
+the growth of the country and to the development of the
+nineteenth century. Sometimes, though, it is flexible to
+the extent of lacking precision. An instance of this is the
+proviso for the counting of the electoral vote. &ldquo;The votes
+shall then be counted&rdquo; are the words. Thus, when in 1876
+it was doubtful whether Tilden or Hayes had been chosen
+President, a fierce controversy arose as to who should count
+the votes, the President of the Senate or Congress. While
+many regretted the absence of an incontrovertible provision,
+it was fortunate for the country that the Constitution did not
+provide that the vote should be counted by the President of
+the Senate, who, the Vice President having died in office,
+was in 1877 a creature of the partisan majority. It is doubtful,
+too, if the decision of such an officer would have been
+acquiesced in by the mass of Democrats, who thought that
+<a name="png.212" id="png.212"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">204</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>they had fairly elected their candidate. There being no
+express declaration of the Constitution, it devolved upon
+Congress to settle the dispute; the ability and patriotism
+of that body was equal to the crisis. By a well-devised
+plan of arbitration, Congress relieved the strain and provided
+for a peaceful settlement of a difficulty which in most
+countries would have led to civil war.</p>
+
+<p>In the provisions conferring the powers and defining the
+duties of the executive the flexible character of the Constitution
+is shown in another way. Everything is clearly
+stated, but the statements go not beyond the elementary.
+The Convention knew what it wanted to say, and Gouverneur
+Morris, who in the end drew up the document, wrote
+this part of it, as indeed all other parts, in clear and effective
+words. It is due to him, wrote Laboulaye, that the Constitution
+has a &ldquo;distinctness entirely French, in happy contrast
+to the complicated language of the English laws.&rdquo;
+Yet on account of the elementary character of the article
+of the Constitution on the powers of the President, there is
+room for inference, a chance for development, and an opportunity
+for a strong man to imprint his character upon the
+office. The Convention, writes Mr. Bryce, made its executive
+a George III &ldquo;shorn of a part of his prerogative,&rdquo;
+his influence and dignity diminished by a reduction of the
+term of office to four years. The English writer was thoroughly
+familiar with the <cite>Federalist</cite>, and appreciated Hamilton&#8217;s
+politic efforts to demonstrate that the executive of
+the Constitution was modeled after the governors of the
+states, and not after the British monarch; but &ldquo;an enlarged
+copy of the state governor,&rdquo; Mr. Bryce asserts, is one and
+the same thing as &ldquo;a reduced and improved copy of the
+English king.&rdquo; But, on the other hand, Bagehot did not
+believe that the Americans comprehended the English
+<a name="png.213" id="png.213"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">205</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Constitution. &ldquo;Living across the Atlantic,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;and
+misled by accepted doctrines, the acute framers of the Federal
+Constitution, even after the keenest attention, did not
+perceive the Prime Minister to be the principal executive
+of the British Constitution, and the sovereign a cog in the
+mechanism;&rdquo; and he seems to think that if this had been
+understood the executive power would have been differently
+constituted.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pertinent suggestion of Mr. Bryce&#8217;s that the members
+of the Convention must have been thinking of their
+presiding officer, George Washington, as the first man who
+would exercise the powers of the executive office they were
+creating. So it turned out. Never did a country begin a
+new enterprise with so wise a ruler. An admirable polity
+had been adopted, but much depended upon getting it to
+work, and the man who was selected to start the government
+was the man of all men for the task. Histories many and
+from different points of view have been written of Washington&#8217;s
+administration; all are interesting, and the subject
+seems to ennoble the writers. Statesmen meeting with
+students to discuss the character and political acts of Washington
+marvel at his wisdom in great things and his patience
+in small things, at the dignity and good sense with which
+he established the etiquette of his office, at the tact which
+retained in his service two such irreconcilable men as Jefferson
+and Hamilton. The importance of a good start for an
+infant government is well understood. But for our little
+state of four million people such a start was difficult to secure.
+The contentions which grew out of the ratification
+of the Constitution in the different states had left bitter
+feelings behind them, and these domestic troubles were
+heightened by our intimate relations with foreign countries.
+We touched England, France, and Spain at delicate points,
+<a name="png.214" id="png.214"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">206</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and the infancy of our nation was passed during the turmoil
+of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
+In our midst there was an English and a French party.
+Moreover, in the judgment of the world the experiment of
+the new government was foredoomed to failure. Wrote
+Sir Henry Maine, &ldquo;It is not at all easy to bring home to
+the men of the present day how low the credit of republics
+had sunk before the establishment of the United States.&rdquo;
+Hardly were success to be won had we fallen upon quiet
+times; but with free governments discredited, and the
+word &ldquo;liberty&rdquo; made a reproach by the course of the French
+Revolution, it would seem impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Washington&#8217;s prescience is remarkable. Recognizing,
+in October, 1789, that France had &ldquo;gone triumphantly
+through the first paroxysm,&rdquo; he felt that she must encounter
+others, that more blood must be shed, that she might
+run from one extreme to another, and that &ldquo;a higher-toned
+despotism&rdquo; might replace &ldquo;the one which existed before.&rdquo;
+Mentally prepared as he was, he met with skill the difficulties
+as they arose, so that the conduct of our foreign relations
+during the eight years of his administration was marked
+by discretion and furnished a good pattern to follow. During
+his foreign negotiations he determined a constitutional
+question of importance. When the Senate had ratified and
+Washington, after some delay, had signed the Jay treaty,
+the House of Representatives, standing for the popular
+clamor against it, asked the President for all the papers
+relating to the negotiation, on the ground that the House
+of Representatives must give its concurrence. This demand
+he resisted, maintaining that it struck at &ldquo;the fundamental
+principles of the Constitution,&rdquo; which conferred upon the
+President and the Senate the power of making treaties, and
+provided that these treaties when made and ratified were
+<a name="png.215" id="png.215"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">207</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the supreme law of the land. In domestic affairs he showed
+discernment in selecting as his confidential adviser, Alexander
+Hamilton, a man who had great constructive talent;
+and he gave a demonstration of the physical strength of
+the government by putting down the whisky rebellion in
+Pennsylvania. During his eight years he construed the
+powers conferred upon the executive by the Constitution
+with wisdom, and exercised them with firmness and vigor.
+Washington was a man of exquisite manners and his conduct
+of the office gave it a dignity and prestige which, with
+the exception of a part of one term, it has never lost.</p>
+
+<p>Four of the five Presidents who followed Washington were
+men of education and ability, and all of them had large
+political training and experience; they reached their position
+by the process of a natural selection in politics, being
+entitled fitly to the places for which they were chosen. The
+three first fell upon stormy times and did their work during
+periods of intense partisan excitement; they were also
+subject to personal detraction, but the result in the aggregate
+of their administrations was good, inasmuch as they
+either maintained the power of the executive or increased
+its influence. Despite their many mistakes they somehow
+overcame the great difficulties. Each one did something
+of merit and the country made a distinct gain from John
+Adams to Monroe. Any one of them suffers by comparison
+with Washington: the &ldquo;era of good feeling&rdquo; was due to
+Congress and the people as well as to the executive. Nevertheless,
+the three turbulent administrations and the two
+quiet ones which succeeded Washington&#8217;s may at this distance
+from them be contemplated with a feeling of gratulation.
+The Presidents surrounded themselves for the most
+part with men of ability, experience, and refinement, who
+carried on the government with dignity and a sense of
+<a name="png.216" id="png.216"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">208</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>proportion, building well upon the foundations which Washington
+had laid.</p>
+
+<p>A contrast between France and the United States leads
+to curious reflections. The one has a past rich in art, literature,
+and architecture, which the other almost entirely
+lacks. But politically the older country has broken with
+the past, while we have political traditions peculiar to ourselves
+of the highest value. For the man American-born
+they may be summed up in Washington, the rest of the
+&ldquo;Fathers,&rdquo; and the Constitution; and those who leave
+England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Germany, and Scandinavia
+to make their home in America soon come to share in
+these possessions. While the immigrants from southern
+Europe do not comprehend the Constitution, they know
+Washington. An object lesson may be had almost any
+pleasant Sunday or holiday in the public garden in Boston
+from the group of Italians who gather about the statue of
+Washington, showing, by their mobile faces and animated
+talk, that they revere him who is the father of their adopted
+country.</p>
+
+<p>During these five administrations, at least two important
+extensions or assertions of executive power were made. In
+1803 Jefferson bought Louisiana, doing, he said, &ldquo;an act
+beyond the Constitution.&rdquo; He was a strict constructionist,
+and was deeply concerned at the variance between his constitutional
+principles and a desire for the material advantage
+of his country. In an effort to preserve his consistency
+he suggested to his Cabinet and political friends an amendment
+to the Constitution approving and confirming the
+cession of this territory, but they, deeming such an amendment
+entirely unnecessary, received his suggestion coldly.
+In the debate on the Louisiana treaty in the Senate and the
+House, all speakers of both parties agreed that &ldquo;the United
+<a name="png.217" id="png.217"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">209</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>States government had the power to acquire new territory
+either by conquest or by treaty.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xiv.1"
+ name="fna.xiv.1" id="fna.xiv.1">1</a></sup> Louisiana, &ldquo;without
+its consent and against its will,&rdquo; was annexed to the United
+States, and Jefferson &ldquo;made himself monarch of the new
+territory, and wielded over it, against its protests, the powers
+of its old kings.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xiv.2"
+ name="fna.xiv.2" id="fna.xiv.2">2</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The assertion by the President in 1823 of the Monroe
+Doctrine (which Mr. Worthington C. Ford has shown to be
+the John Quincy Adams doctrine) is an important circumstance
+in the development of the executive power.</p>
+
+<p>President John Quincy Adams was succeeded by Andrew
+Jackson, a man of entirely different character from those
+who had preceded him in the office, and he represented
+different aims. Adams deserved another term. His sturdy
+Americanism, tempered by the cautiousness in procedure
+which was due to his rare training, made him an excellent
+public servant, and the country erred in not availing itself
+of his further service. The change from the <em>régime</em> of the
+first six Presidents to that of Jackson was probably inevitable.
+A high-toned democracy, based on a qualified suffrage,
+believing in the value of training for public life and
+administrative office, setting a value on refinement and good
+manners, was in the end sure to give way to a pure democracy
+based on universal suffrage whenever it could find
+a leader to give it force and direction. Jackson was such a
+leader. His followers felt: &ldquo;He is one of us. He is not
+proud and does not care for style.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xiv.3"
+ name="fna.xiv.3" id="fna.xiv.3">3</a></sup> The era of vulgarity
+in national politics was ushered in by Jackson, who as President
+introduced the custom of rewarding political workers
+with offices, an innovation entirely indefensible; he ought
+to have continued the practice of his six predecessors. The
+interaction between government and politics on the one hand
+<a name="png.218" id="png.218"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">210</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and the life of the people on the other is persistent, and it
+may be doubted whether the United States would have
+seemed as it did to Dickens had not Jackson played such
+an important part in the vulgarization of politics. Yet it
+was a happy country, as the pages of Tocqueville bear
+witness.</p>
+
+<p>Jackson was a strong executive and placed in his Cabinet
+men who would do his will, and who, from his own point
+of view, were good advisers, since they counseled him to
+pursue the course he had marked out for himself. Comparing
+his Cabinet officers to those of the Presidents
+preceding him, one realizes that another plan of governing
+was set on foot, based on the theory that any American
+citizen is fit for any position to which he is called. It was
+an era when special training for administrative work
+began to be slighted, when education beyond the rudiments
+was considered unnecessary except in the three professions,
+when the practical man was apotheosized and the bookish
+man despised. Jackson, uneducated and with little experience
+in civil life, showed what power might be exercised
+by an arbitrary, unreasonable man who had the people
+at his back. The brilliant three&mdash;Webster, Clay, and Calhoun&mdash;were
+unable to prevail against his power.</p>
+
+<p>Jackson&#8217;s financial policy may be defended; yet had it
+not been for his course during the nullification trouble, his
+declaration, &ldquo;Our Federal Union: It must be preserved,&rdquo;
+and his consistent and vigorous action in accordance with
+that sentiment it would be difficult to affirm that the influence
+of his two terms of office was good. It cannot be
+said that he increased permanently the power of the executive,
+but he showed its capabilities. It is somewhat
+curious, however, that Tocqueville, whose observations were
+made under Jackson, should have written: &ldquo;The President
+<a name="png.219" id="png.219"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">211</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>possesses almost royal prerogatives, which he never
+has an opportunity of using&hellip;. The laws permit him
+to be strong; circumstances keep him weak.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The eight Presidents from Jackson to Lincoln did not
+raise the character of the presidential office. Van Buren
+was the heir of Jackson. Of the others, five owed their
+nominations to their availability. The evil which Jackson
+did lived after him; indeed, only a man as powerful for the
+good as he had been for the bad could have restored the
+civil service to the merit system which had prevailed before
+he occupied the White House. The offices were at stake
+in every election, and the scramble for them after the determination
+of the result was great and pressing. The chief
+business of a President for many months after his inauguration
+was the dealing out of the offices to his followers and
+henchmen. It was a bad scheme, from the political point of
+view, for every President except him who inaugurated it.
+Richelieu is reported to have said, on making an appointment,
+&ldquo;I have made a hundred enemies and one ingrate.&rdquo;
+So might have said many times the Presidents who succeeded
+Jackson.</p>
+
+<p>The Whig, a very respectable party, having in its ranks
+the majority of the men of wealth and education, fell a
+victim to the doctrine of availability when it nominated
+Harrison on account of his military reputation. He lived
+only one month after his inauguration, and Tyler, the Vice
+President, who succeeded him, reverted to his old political
+principles, which were Democratic, and broke with the
+Whigs. By an adroit and steady use of the executive power
+he effected the annexation of Texas, but the master spirit
+in this enterprise was Calhoun, his Secretary of State.
+Polk, his Democratic successor, coveted California and New
+Mexico, tried to purchase them, and not being able to do
+<a name="png.220" id="png.220"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">212</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>this, determined on war. In fact, he had decided to send
+in a war message to Congress before the news came that the
+Mexicans, goaded to it by the action of General Taylor,
+under direct orders of the President, had attacked an American
+force and killed sixteen of our dragoons. This gave
+a different complexion to his message, and enabled him to
+get a strong backing from Congress for his war policy. The
+actions of Tyler and of Polk illustrate the power inherent
+in the executive office. It might seem that the exercise
+of this authority, securing for us at small material cost the
+magnificent domains of Texas, California, and New Mexico,
+would have given these Presidents a fame somewhat like
+that which Jefferson won by the purchase of Louisiana.
+But such has not been the case. The main reason is that
+the extension of slavery was involved in both enterprises,
+and the histories of these times, which have molded historical
+sentiment, have been written from the <ins class="TNsilent" title="Transcriber's note:
+ original reads 'anti-slavery'">antislavery</ins>
+point of view. It seems hardly probable that this sentiment
+will be changed in any time that we can forecast, but
+there is an undoubted tendency in the younger historical
+students to look upon the expansion of the country as the
+important consideration, and the slavery question as incidental.
+Professor von Holst thought this changing historical
+sentiment entirely natural, but he felt sure that in the
+end men would come round to the antislavery view, of
+which he was so powerful an advocate.</p>
+
+<p>From Taylor to Lincoln slavery dominated all other
+questions. Taylor was a Southern man and a slaveholder,
+and by his course on the Compromise measures attracted
+the favor of antislavery men; while Fillmore of New York,
+who succeeded this second President to die in office, and
+who exerted the power of the Administration to secure the
+passage of Clay&#8217;s Compromise and signed the Fugitive
+<a name="png.221" id="png.221"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">213</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Slave Law, had but a small political following at the North.
+Pierce and Buchanan were weak, the more positive men
+in their Cabinets and in the Senate swayed them. For a
+part of both of their terms the House of Representatives
+was controlled by the opposition, the Senate remaining
+Democratic. These circumstances are evidence both of the
+length of time required to change the political complexion
+of the Senate and of the increasing power of the North,
+which was dominant in the popular House. For the decade
+before the Civil War we should study the Senate, the House
+of Representatives, the Supreme Court, the action of the
+states, and popular sentiment. The executive is still
+powerful, but he is powerful because he is the representative
+of a party or faction which dictates the use that shall be
+made of his constitutional powers. The presidential office
+loses interest: irresolute men are in the White House, strong
+men everywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln is inaugurated President; the Civil War ensues,
+and with it an extraordinary development of the executive
+power. It is an interesting fact that the ruler of a republic
+which sprang from a resistance to the English king and
+Parliament should exercise more arbitrary power than any
+Englishman since Oliver Cromwell, and that many of his
+acts should be worthy of a Tudor. Lincoln was a good
+lawyer who reverenced the Constitution and the laws, and
+only through necessity assumed and exercised extra-legal
+powers, trying at the same time to give to these actions the
+color of legality. Hence his theory of the war power of the
+Constitution, which may be construed to permit everything
+necessary to carry on the war. Yet his dictatorship was
+different from Cæsar&#8217;s and different from the absolute
+authority of Napoleon. He acted under the restraints imposed
+by his own legal conscience and patriotic soul, whose
+<a name="png.222" id="png.222"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">214</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>influence was revealed in his confidential letters and talks.
+We know furthermore that he often took counsel of his
+Cabinet officers before deciding matters of moment. Certain
+it is that in arbitrary arrests Seward and Stanton were
+disposed to go further than Lincoln. The spirit of arbitrary
+power was in the air, and unwise and unjust acts were
+done by subordinates, which, although Lincoln would not
+have done them himself, he deemed it better to ratify than
+to undo. This was notably the case in the arrest of Vallandigham.
+Again, Congress did not always do what Lincoln
+wished, and certain men of his own party in Congress were
+strong enough to influence his actions in various ways.
+But, after all, he was himself a strong man exercising comprehensive
+authority; and it is an example of the flexibility
+of the Constitution that, while it surely did not authorize
+certain of Lincoln&#8217;s acts, it did not expressly forbid
+them. It was, for example, an open question whether the
+Constitution authorized Congress or the President to suspend
+the writ of <em>habeas corpus</em>.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to be pretty well settled by the common sense
+of mankind that when a nation is fighting for its existence
+it cannot be fettered by all the legal technicalities which
+obtain in the time of peace. Happy the country whose
+dictatorship, if dictator there must be, falls into wise and
+honest hands! The honesty, magnanimity, and wisdom of
+Lincoln guided him aright, and no harm has come to the
+great principles of liberty from the arbitrary acts which he
+did or suffered to be done. On the other hand he has so
+impressed himself upon the Commonwealth that he has
+made a precedent for future rulers in a time of national
+peril, and what he excused and defended will be assumed
+as a matter of course because it will be according to the
+Constitution as interpreted by Abraham Lincoln. This the
+<a name="png.223" id="png.223"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">215</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Supreme Court foresaw when it rendered its judgment in
+the Milligan case, saying: &ldquo;Wicked men ambitious of
+power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may
+fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln,
+and if this right is conceded [that of a commander in a time
+of war to declare martial law within the lines of his military
+district and subject citizens as well as soldiers to the rule of
+<em>his will</em>] and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers
+to human liberty are frightful to contemplate.&rdquo; No
+one can deny that a danger here exists, but it is not so great
+as the solemn words of the Supreme Court might lead one
+to believe. For Lincoln could not have persisted in his arbitrary
+acts had a majority of Congress definitely opposed
+them, and his real strength lay in the fact that he had the
+people at his back. This may be said of the period from
+the first call of troops in April, 1861, until the summer of
+1862. McClellan&#8217;s failure on the Peninsula, Pope&#8217;s disaster
+at the second battle of Bull Run, the defeats at Fredericksburg
+and Chancellorsville lost Lincoln the confidence of
+many; and while the emancipation proclamation of September,
+1862, intensified the support of others, it nevertheless
+alienated some Republicans and gave to the opposition
+of the Democrats a new vigor. But after Gettysburg and
+Vicksburg in July, 1863, Lincoln had the support of the mass
+of the Northern people. Whatever he did the people believed
+was right because he had done it. The trust each
+placed in the other is one of the inspiring examples of free
+government and democracy. Lincoln did not betray their
+confidence: they did not falter save possibly for brief
+moments during the gloomy summer of 1864. The people
+who gave their unreserved support to Lincoln were endued
+with intelligence and common sense; not attracted by any
+personal magnetism of the man, they had, by a process of
+<a name="png.224" id="png.224"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">216</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>homely reasoning, attained their convictions and from
+these they were not to be shaken. This is the safety of a
+dictatorship as long as the same intelligence obtains among
+the voters as now; for the people will not support a ruler
+in the exercise of extra-legal powers unless he be honest and
+patriotic. The danger may come in a time of trouble from
+either an irresolute or an unduly obstinate executive. The
+irresolute man would baffle the best intentions of the voters;
+the obstinate man might quarrel with Congress and the
+people. Either event in time of war would be serious and
+might be disastrous. But the chances are against another
+Buchanan or Johnson in the presidential office.</p>
+
+<p>If the Civil War showed the flexibility of the Constitution
+in that the executive by the general agreement of Congress
+and the people was able to assume unwarranted powers,
+the course of affairs under Johnson demonstrated the
+strength that Congress derived from the organic act. The
+story is told in a sentence by Blaine: &ldquo;Two thirds of each
+House united and stimulated to one end can practically
+neutralize the executive power of the government and lay
+down its policy in defiance of the efforts and opposition of
+the President.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xiv.4" name="fna.xiv.4"
+ id="fna.xiv.4">4</a></sup> What a contrast between the two administrations!
+Under Lincoln Congress, for the most part,
+simply registered the will of the President; under Johnson
+the President became a mere executive clerk of Congress.
+In the one case the people supported the President, in the
+other they sustained Congress. Nothing could better illustrate
+the flexibility of the Constitution than the contrast
+between these administrations; but it needs no argument
+to show that to pass from one such extreme to another is
+not healthy for the body politic. The violent antagonisms
+aroused during Johnson&#8217;s administration, when the difficult
+<a name="png.225" id="png.225"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">217</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>questions to be settled needed the best statesmanship of
+the country, and when the President and Congress should
+have coöperated wisely and sympathetically, did incalculable
+harm. Johnson, by habits, manners, mind, and
+character, was unfit for the presidential office, and whatever
+may have been the merit of his policy, a policy devised by
+angels could never have been carried on by such an advocate.
+The American people love order and decency; they
+have a high regard for the presidential office, and they desire
+to see its occupant conduct himself with dignity. Jackson
+and Lincoln lacked many of the external graces of a gentleman,
+but both had native qualities which enabled them to
+bear themselves with dignity on public occasions. Johnson
+degraded the office, and he is the only one of our Presidents
+of whom this can be said. Bagehot, writing in 1872, drew
+an illustration from one of the darkest periods of our republic
+to show the superiority of the English Constitution. If
+we have a Prime Minister who does not suit Parliament and
+the people, he argued, we remove him by a simple vote of
+the House of Commons. The United States can only get
+rid of its undesirable executive by a cumbrous and tedious
+process which can only be brought to bear during a period
+of revolutionary excitement; and even this failed because
+a legal case was not made against the President. The criticism
+was pregnant, but the remedy was not Cabinet responsibility.
+Whatever may be the merits or demerits of
+our polity, it has grown as has the English; it has fitted
+itself to the people, and cabinet government cannot be had
+without a complete change of the organic act, which is
+neither possible nor desirable. The lesson was that the
+national conventions should exercise more care in naming
+their vice-presidential candidates; and these bodies have
+heeded it. When Grant, popular throughout the country,
+<a name="png.226" id="png.226"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">218</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>nominated by the unanimous vote of the Republican convention,
+became President, Congress restored to the executive
+a large portion of the powers of which it had been shorn
+during Johnson&#8217;s administration. Grant had splendid opportunities
+which he did not improve, and he left no especial
+impression on the office. In the opinion of one of his warm
+friends and supporters he made &ldquo;a pretty poor President.&rdquo;
+An able opposition to him developed in his own party; and
+as he was a sensitive man he felt keenly their attacks. Colonel
+John Hay told me that, when on a visit to Washington
+during Grant&#8217;s administration, he had arrived at the Arlington
+Hotel at an early hour and started out for a walk; in
+front of the White House he was surprised to meet the
+President, who was out for the same purpose. The two
+walked together to the Capitol and back, Grant showing
+himself to be anything but a silent man. Manifesting a keen
+sensitiveness to the attacks upon him, he talked all of the
+time in a voluble manner, and the burden of his talk was a
+defense of his administrative acts. It is impossible in our
+minds to dissociate Grant the President from Grant the
+General, and for this reason American historical criticism
+will deal kindly with him. The brilliant victor of Donelson,
+the bold strategist of Vicksburg, the compeller of men at
+Chattanooga, the vanquisher of Robert E. Lee in March and
+April, 1865, the magnanimous conqueror at Appomattox,
+will be treated with charity by those who write about his
+presidential terms, because he meant well although he did
+not know how to do well. Moreover, the good which Grant
+did is of that salient kind which will not be forgotten. The
+victorious general, with two trusted military subordinates
+in the prime of life and a personnel for a strong navy, persisted,
+under the guidance of his wise Secretary of State,
+Hamilton Fish, in negotiating a treaty which provided for
+<a name="png.227" id="png.227"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">219</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>arbitration and preserved the peace with Great Britain;
+although, in the opinion of the majority, the country had a
+just cause of war in the escape of the Florida and the Alabama.
+After the panic of 1873, when financiers and capitalists
+lost their heads, and Congress with the approval of
+public sentiment passed an act increasing the amount of
+United States notes in circulation, Grant, by a manly and
+bold veto, prevented this inflation of the currency. The
+wisdom of the framers of the Constitution in giving the
+President the veto power was exemplified. Congress did not
+pass the act over the veto, and Grant has been justified by
+the later judgment of the nation. His action demonstrated
+what a President may do in resisting by his constitutional
+authority some transitory wave of popular opinion, and it
+has proved a precedent of no mean value. Johnson&#8217;s vetoes
+became ridiculous. Grant&#8217;s veto compensates for many
+of his mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>Said Chancellor Kent in 1826: &ldquo;If ever the tranquillity of
+this nation is to be disturbed and its liberties endangered by
+a struggle for power, it will be upon this very subject of the
+choice of a President. This is the question that is eventually
+to test the goodness and try the strength of the Constitution,
+and if we shall be able for half a century hereafter
+to continue to elect the chief magistrate of the Union with
+discretion, moderation, and integrity we shall undoubtedly
+stamp the highest value on our national character.&rdquo; Just
+fifty years later came a more dangerous test than Kent
+could have imagined. Somewhat more than half of the
+country believed that the states of Florida and Louisiana
+should be counted for Tilden, and that he was therefore
+elected. On the other hand, nearly one half of the voters
+were of the opinion that those electoral votes should be
+given to Hayes, which would elect him by the majority of
+<a name="png.228" id="png.228"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">220</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>one electoral vote. Each of the parties had apparently a
+good case, and after an angry controversy became only the
+more firmly and sincerely convinced that its own point of
+view was unassailable. The Senate was Republican, the
+House Democratic. The great Civil War had been ended
+only eleven years before, and the country was full of fighting
+men. The Southern people were embittered against the
+dominant party for the reason that Reconstruction had
+gone otherwise than they had expected in 1865 when they
+laid down their arms. The country was on the verge of a
+civil war over the disputed Presidency&mdash;a war that might
+have begun with an armed encounter on the floor of the
+Senate or the House. This was averted by a carefully
+prepared congressional act, which in effect left the dispute
+to a board of arbitration. To the statesmen of both parties
+who devised this plan and who coöperated in carrying the
+measure through Congress; to the members of the Electoral
+Commission, who in the bitterest strife conducted themselves
+with dignity; to the Democratic Speaker of the House
+and the Democrats who followed his lead, the eternal gratitude
+of the country is due. &ldquo;He that ruleth his spirit is
+better than he that taketh a city.&rdquo; The victories of Manila
+and Santiago are as nothing compared with the victorious
+restraint of the American people in 1876 and 1877 and the
+acquiescence of one half of the country in what they believed
+to be an unrighteous decision. Hayes was inaugurated
+peacefully, but had to conduct his administration in
+the view of 4,300,000 voters who believed that, whatever
+might be his legal claim, he had no moral right to the place
+he occupied. The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives
+during the whole of his term, and the Senate
+for a part of it, and at the outset he encountered the opposition
+of the stalwart faction of his own party. Nevertheless
+<a name="png.229" id="png.229"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">221</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>he made a successful President, and under him the office
+gained in force and dignity. Hayes was not a man of brilliant
+parts or wide intelligence, but he had common sense
+and decision of character. Surrounding himself with a
+strong Cabinet, three members of which were really remarkable
+for their ability, he entered upon a distinct policy from
+which flowed good results. He withdrew the Federal troops
+from the states of South Carolina and Louisiana, inaugurating
+in these states an era of comparative peace and tranquillity.
+Something was done in the interest of Civil
+Service Reform. In opposition to the view of his Secretary
+of the Treasury and confidential friend, John Sherman, he
+vetoed the act of 1878 for the remonetization of silver by
+the coinage of a certain amount of silver dollars&mdash;the first
+of those measures which almost brought us to the monetary
+basis of silver. His guiding principle was embodied in a
+remark he made in his inaugural address, &ldquo;He serves his
+party best who serves the country best.&rdquo; He and his accomplished
+wife had a social and moral influence in Washington
+of no mean value. The Civil War had been followed
+by a period of corruption, profligacy, and personal immorality.
+In politics, if a man were sound on the main question,
+which meant if he were a thorough-going Republican, all
+else was forgiven. Under Hayes account was again taken
+of character and fitness. The standard of political administration
+was high. While Mrs. Hayes undoubtedly carried
+her total abstinence principles to an extreme not warranted
+by the usage of good society, the moral atmosphere of the
+White House was that of most American homes. Mr. and
+Mrs. Hayes belonged to that large class who are neither rich
+nor poor, neither learned nor ignorant, but who are led both
+by their native common sense and by their upbringing to
+have a high respect for learning, a belief in education,
+<a name="png.230" id="png.230"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">222</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>morality, and religion, and a lofty ideal for their own personal
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>The salient feature of Garfield&#8217;s few months of administration
+was a quarrel between him and the senators from
+New York State about an important appointment. Into
+this discussion, which ended in a tragedy, entered so many
+factors that it is impossible to determine exactly the influence
+on the power of the President and the growing power
+of the Senate. One important result of it shall be mentioned.
+The Civil Service Reform Bill, introduced into the
+Senate by a Democrat, was enacted during Arthur&#8217;s administration
+by a large and non-partisan majority. It provided
+for a non-partisan civil service commission, and
+established open competitive examinations for applicants
+for certain offices, making a commencement by law of the
+merit system, which before had depended entirely upon
+executive favor. It was a victory for reformers who had
+been advocating legislation of such a character from a
+period shortly after the close of the Civil War; for it was
+at that time that a few began the work of educating public
+sentiment, which had acquiesced in the rotation of offices
+as an American principle well worthy of maintenance.
+Consequences far-reaching and wholesome followed the
+passage of this important act. Grant had attempted and
+Hayes had accomplished a measure of reform, but to really
+fix the merit system in the civil service a law was needed.</p>
+
+<p>Regarded by the lovers of good government as a machine
+politician, Arthur happily disappointed them by breaking
+loose from his old associations and pursuing a manly course.
+He gave the country a dignified administration; but, even
+had he been a man to impress his character upon the office,
+conditions were against him. His party was torn by internal
+dissensions and suffered many defeats, of which the
+<a name="png.231" id="png.231"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">223</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>most notable was in his own state of New York, where his
+Secretary of the Treasury and personal friend was overwhelmingly
+defeated for governor by Grover Cleveland.</p>
+
+<p>The unprecedented majority which Cleveland received
+in this election and his excellent administration as Governor
+of New York secured for him the Democratic nomination
+for President in 1884. New York State decided the
+election, but the vote was so close that for some days the
+result was in doubt and the country was nervous lest there
+should be another disputed Presidency; in the end it was
+determined that Cleveland had carried that state by a
+plurality of 1149. Cleveland was the first Democratic
+President elected since 1856; the Democrats had been out
+of office for twenty-four years, and it had galled them to
+think that their historic party had so long been deprived of
+power and patronage. While many of their leaders had a
+good record on the question of Civil Service Reform, the
+rank and file believed in the Jacksonian doctrine of rewarding
+party workers with the offices, or, as most of them would
+have put it, &ldquo;To the victors belong the spoils.&rdquo; With this
+principle so fixed in the minds of his supporters, it became
+an interesting question how Cleveland would meet it. No
+one could doubt that he would enforce fairly the statute, but
+would he content himself with this and use the offices not
+covered by the act to reward his followers in the old Democratic
+fashion? An avowed civil service reformer, and
+warmly supported by independents and some former Republicans
+on that account, he justified the confidence which
+they had reposed in him and refused &ldquo;to make a clean
+sweep.&rdquo; In resisting this very powerful pressure from his
+party he accomplished much toward the establishment
+of the merit system in the civil service. It is true that he
+made political changes gradually, but his insistence on a rule
+<a name="png.232" id="png.232"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">224</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>which gained him time for reflection in making appointments
+was of marked importance. It would be idle to
+assert that in his two terms he lived wholly up to the ideal
+of the reformers; undoubtedly a long list of backslidings
+might be made up, but in striking a fair balance it is not too
+much to say that in this respect his administration made
+for righteousness. All the more credit is due him in that he
+not only resisted personal pressure, but, aspiring to be a
+party leader for the carrying out of a cherished policy on
+finance and the tariff, he made more difficult the accomplishment
+of these ends by refusing to be a mere partisan
+in the question of the offices. In his second term it is
+alleged, probably with truth, that he made a skillful use of
+his patronage to secure the passage by the Senate of the
+repeal of the Silver Act of 1890, which repeal had gone easily
+through the House. It seemed to him and to many financiers
+that unless this large purchase of silver bullion should
+be stopped the country would be forced on to a silver basis,
+the existing financial panic would be grievously intensified,
+and the road back to the sound money basis of the rest of
+the civilized world would be long and arduous. His course
+is defended as doing a little wrong in order to bring about
+a great right; and the sequence of events has justified that
+defense. Harm was done to the cause of Civil Service
+Reform, but probably no permanent injury. The repeal of
+the Silver Act of 1890 was the first important step in
+the direction of insuring a permanent gold standard, and
+Grover Cleveland is the hero of it.</p>
+
+<p>The presidential office gained in strength during Cleveland&#8217;s
+two terms. As we look back upon them, the President
+is the central figure round which revolves each policy
+and its success or failure. At the same time, it is his party
+more than he that is to be blamed for the failures. He
+<a name="png.233" id="png.233"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">225</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>made a distinct move toward a reduction of the tariff, and
+while this failed, leaving us with the reactionary result of
+higher duties than ever before, it is not impossible that the
+words, actions, and sacrifices of Cleveland will be the foundation
+of a new tariff-reform party. Allusion has been
+made to his soundness on finance. His course in this respect
+was unvarying. Capitalists and financiers can take
+care of themselves, no matter what are the changes in the
+currency; but men and women of fixed incomes, professors
+of colleges, teachers in schools, clergymen and ministers,
+accountants and clerks in receipt of salaries, and
+farmers and laborers have had their comfort increased and
+their anxieties lessened by the adoption of the gold standard;
+and to Cleveland, as one of the pioneers in this movement
+for stability, their thanks are due.</p>
+
+<p>In the railroad riots of 1894 Cleveland, under the advice
+of his able Attorney-General, made a precedent in the way
+of interference for the supremacy of law and the maintenance
+of order. The Governor of Illinois would not preserve
+order, and the President determined that at all hazards
+riotous acts must be suppressed and law must resume its
+sway. In ordering United States troops to the scene of the
+disturbance without an application of the Legislature or
+Governor of Illinois he accomplished a fresh extension of
+executive power without an infraction of the Constitution.</p>
+
+<p>In his most important diplomatic action Cleveland was not
+so happy as in his domestic policy. There are able men
+experienced in diplomacy who defend his message of December
+17, 1895, to Congress in regard to Venezuela, and the
+wisdom of that action is still a mooted question. Yet two
+facts placed in juxtaposition would seem to indicate that
+the message was a mistake. It contained a veiled threat of
+war if England would not arbitrate her difference with
+<a name="png.234" id="png.234"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">226</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Venezuela, the implication being that the stronger power was
+trying to browbeat the weaker one. Later an arbitration
+took place, the award of which was a compromise, England
+gaining more than Venezuela, and the award demonstrated
+that England had not been as extreme and unjust in her
+claim as had been Venezuela. It is even probable that
+England might have accepted, as the result of negotiation,
+the line decided on by the arbitrators. But, to the credit of
+Mr. Cleveland and his Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, it must
+be remembered that they later negotiated a treaty &ldquo;for the
+arbitration of all matters in difference between the United
+States and Great Britain,&rdquo; which unfortunately failed of
+ratification by the Senate.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fair charge against Cleveland as a partisan leader
+that, while he led a strong following to victory in 1892, he
+left his party disorganized in 1897. But it fell to him to
+decide between principle and party, and he chose principle.
+He served his country at the expense of his party. From
+the point of view of Democrats it was grievous that the only
+man under whom they had secured victory since the Civil
+War should leave them in a shattered condition, and it may
+be a question whether a ruler of more tact could not have
+secured his ends without so great a schism. Those, however,
+to whom this party consideration does not appeal have
+no difficulty in approving Cleveland&#8217;s course. It is undeniable
+that his character is stamped on the presidential
+office, and his occupancy of it is a distinct mark in the history
+of executive power.</p>
+
+<p>Harrison occupied the presidential office between the two
+terms of Cleveland, and although a positive man, left no
+particular impress upon the office. He was noted for his
+excellent judicial appointments, and he had undoubtedly
+a high standard of official conduct which he endeavored to
+<a name="png.235" id="png.235"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">227</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>live up to. Cold in his personal bearing he did not attract
+friends, and he was not popular with the prominent men in
+his own party. While Cleveland and McKinley were denounced
+by their opponents, Harrison was ridiculed; but
+the universal respect in which he was held after he retired
+to private life is evidence that the great office lost no dignity
+while he held it. During his term Congress overshadowed
+the executive and the House was more conspicuous
+than the Senate. Thomas B. Reed was speaker and developed
+the power of that office to an extraordinary extent.
+McKinley was the leader of the House and from long service
+in that body had become an efficient leader. The election
+of Harrison was interpreted to mean that the country
+needed a higher tariff, and McKinley carried through the
+House the bill which is known by his name. Among the
+other Representatives Mr. Lodge was prominent. It was
+not an uncommon saying at that time that the House was
+a better arena for the rising politician than the Senate. In
+addition to the higher tariff the country apparently wanted
+more silver and a determined struggle was made for the
+free coinage of silver which nearly won in Congress. In the
+end, however, a compromise was effected by Senator Sherman
+which averted free silver but committed the country
+to the purchase annually of an enormous amount of silver
+bullion against which Treasury notes redeemable in coin
+were issued. This was the Act of 1890 which, as I have
+mentioned, was repealed under Cleveland in 1893. It is
+entirely clear from the sequence of events that the Republican
+party as a party should have opposed the purchase of
+more silver. It could not have been beaten worse than it
+was in 1892, but it could have preserved a consistency in
+principle which, when the tide turned, would have been of
+political value. The party which has stuck to the right
+<a name="png.236" id="png.236"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">228</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>principle has in the long run generally been rewarded with
+power, and as the Republicans, in spite of certain defections,
+had been the party of sound money since the Civil War,
+they should now have fought cheap money under the guise
+of unlimited silver as they had before under the guise of unlimited
+greenbacks. But the leaders thought differently,
+and from their own point of view their course was natural.
+The country desired more silver. Business was largely
+extended, overtrading was the rule. Farmers and business
+men were straitened for money. Economists, statesmen,
+and politicians had told them that, as their trouble had come
+largely from the demonetization of silver, their relief lay in
+bimetallism. It was easy to argue that the best form of
+bimetallism was the free coinage of gold and silver, and after
+the panic of 1893 this delusion grew, but the strength of it
+was hardly appreciated by optimistic men in the East until
+the Democrats made it the chief plank in the platform on
+which they fought the presidential campaign of 1896. Nominating
+an orator who had an effective manner of presenting
+his arguments to hard-working farmers whose farms were
+mortgaged, to business men who were under a continued
+strain to meet their obligations, and to laborers out of employment,
+it seemed for two or three months as if the party
+of silver and discontent might carry the day. After some
+hesitation the Republicans grappled with the question boldly,
+took ground against free silver, and with some modification
+declared their approval of the gold standard. On this
+issue they fought the campaign. Their able and adroit
+manager was quick to see, after the issue was joined, the force
+of the principle of sound money and started a remarkable
+campaign of education by issuing speeches and articles by
+the millions in a number of different languages, in providing
+excellent arguments for the country press, and in convincing
+<a name="png.237" id="png.237"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">229</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>those who would listen only to arguments of sententious
+brevity by a well-devised circulation of &ldquo;nuggets&rdquo; of financial
+wisdom. McKinley had also the support of the greater
+part of the Independent and Democratic press. While
+financial magnates and the bankers of the country were
+alarmed at the strength of the Bryan party, and felt that
+its defeat was necessary to financial surety, the strength of
+the Republican canvass lay in the fact that the speakers and
+writers who made it believed sincerely that the gold standard
+would conduce to the greatest good of the greatest number.
+It was an inspiring canvass. The honest advocacy of sound
+principle won.</p>
+
+<p>Under McKinley the Democratic tariff bill was superseded
+by the Dingley act, which on dutiable articles is, I
+believe, the highest tariff the country has known. The
+Republican party believes sincerely in the policy of protection,
+and the country undoubtedly has faith in it. It is
+attractive to those who allow immediate returns to obscure
+prospective advantage, and if a majority decides whether
+or not a political and economic doctrine is sound, it has a
+powerful backing, for every large country in the civilized
+world, I think, except England, adheres to protection; and
+some of them have returned to it after trying a measure of
+commercial freedom. McKinley and the majority of Congress
+were in full sympathy, and the Dingley act had the
+approval of the administration. But the change in business
+conditions which, though long in operation, became signally
+apparent after 1893, wrought in McKinley, during his four
+and a half years of office, a change of opinion. Under improved
+processes and economies in all branches of manufactures
+the United States began to make many articles
+cheaper than any other country, and sought foreign markets
+for its surplus, disputing successfully certain open marts
+<a name="png.238" id="png.238"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">230</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with England and Germany. In McKinley&#8217;s earlier utterances
+the home market is the dominating feature; in his
+later ones, trade with foreign countries. In his last speech
+at Buffalo he gave mature expression to his views, which
+for one who had been a leader of protectionists showed him
+to have taken advanced ground. &ldquo;We find our long-time
+principles echoed,&rdquo; declared the <cite>Nation</cite>. McKinley&#8217;s manner
+of developing foreign trade was not that of the tariff
+reformers, for he proposed to bring this about by a variety
+of reciprocity treaties; but it was important that he recognized
+the sound economic principle that if we are to sell to
+foreign countries we must buy from them also. That
+McKinley had a strong hold on the country is indisputable
+from the unanimous renomination by his party and his
+triumphant reëlection, and it was a step toward commercial
+freedom that he who more than all other men had the
+ear of the country and who had been an arch-protectionist
+should advocate the exchange of commodities with foreign
+lands. Economists do not educate the mass of voters, but
+men like McKinley do, and these sentences of his were read
+and pondered by millions: &ldquo;A system which provides a
+mutual exchange of commodities is manifestly essential to
+the continued and healthful growth of our export trade.
+We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever
+sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing
+were possible it would not be best for us or for those with
+whom we deal.&rdquo; It is useless to speculate on what would
+have been the result had McKinley lived. Those who considered
+him a weak President aver that when he encountered
+opposition in Congress from interests which were seemingly
+menaced, he would have yielded and abandoned reciprocity.
+Others believe that he understood the question thoroughly
+and that his arguments would in the end have prevailed
+<a name="png.239" id="png.239"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">231</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with Congress; yielding, perhaps, in points of detail he would
+have secured the adoption of the essential part of his policy.</p>
+
+<p>After his election McKinley became a believer in the gold
+standard and urged proper legislation upon Congress. It
+is to his credit and to that of Congress that on March 14,
+1900, a bill became a law which establishes the gold standard
+and puts it out of the power of any President to place the
+country upon a silver basis by a simple direction to his
+Secretary of the Treasury, which could have been done in
+1897. As it has turned out, it was fortunate that there was
+no undue haste in this financial legislation. A better act
+was obtained than would have been possible in the first two
+years of McKinley&#8217;s administration. The reaction from the
+crisis following the panic of 1893 had arrived, made sure
+by the result of the election of 1896; and the prosperity had
+become a telling argument in favor of the gold standard
+with the people and with Congress.</p>
+
+<p>McKinley was essentially adapted for a peace minister,
+but under him came war. Opinions of him will differ, not
+only according to one&#8217;s sentiments on war and imperialism,
+but according to one&#8217;s ideal of what a President should be.
+Let us make a comparison which shall not include Washington,
+for the reason that under him the country had not
+become the pure democracy it is at the present day. Of
+such a democracy it seems to me that Lincoln is the ideal
+President, in that he led public sentiment, represented it,
+and followed it. &ldquo;I claim not to have controlled events,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;but confess plainly that events have controlled
+me.&rdquo; During his term of office he was one day called &ldquo;very
+weak,&rdquo; and the next &ldquo;a tyrant&rdquo;; but when his whole work
+was done, a careful survey of it could bring one only to the
+conclusion that he knew when to follow and when to lead.
+He was in complete touch with popular sentiment, and
+<a name="png.240" id="png.240"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">232</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>divined with nicety when he could take a step in advance.
+He made an effort to keep on good terms with Congress, and
+he differed with that body reluctantly, although, when the
+necessity came, decisively. While he had consideration
+for those who did not agree with him, and while he acted
+always with a regard to proportion, he was nevertheless a
+strong and self-confident executive. Now Cleveland did
+not comprehend popular opinion as did Lincoln. In him
+the desire to lead was paramount, to the exclusion at times
+of a proper consideration for Congress and the people. It
+has been said by one of his political friends that he used the
+same energy and force in deciding a small matter as a great
+one, and he alienated senators, congressmen, and other
+supporters by an unyielding disposition when no principle
+was involved. He did not possess the gracious quality of
+Lincoln, who yielded in small things that he might prevail
+in great ones. Yet for this quality of sturdy insistence on
+his own idea Cleveland has won admiration from a vast
+number of independent thinkers. Temperaments such as
+these are not in sympathy with McKinley, who represents
+another phase of Lincoln&#8217;s genius. The controlling idea of
+McKinley probably was that as he was elected by the people
+he should represent them. He did not believe that, if a
+matter were fully and fairly presented, the people would
+go wrong. At times he felt he should wait for their sober,
+second thought, but if, after due consideration, the people
+spoke, it was his duty to carry out their will. Unquestionably
+if the Cleveland and McKinley qualities can be
+happily combined as they were in Lincoln, the nearest possible
+approach to the ideal ruler is the result. One Lincoln,
+though, in a century, is all that any country can expect:
+and there is a place in our polity for either the Cleveland or
+the McKinley type of executive. So it seemed to the makers
+<a name="png.241" id="png.241"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">233</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of the Constitution. &ldquo;The republican principle,&rdquo; wrote
+Hamilton in the <cite>Federalist</cite>, &ldquo;demands that the deliberate
+sense of the community should govern the conduct of those
+to whom they intrust the management of their affairs.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he said in the same essay, &ldquo;however inclined we
+might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance in the
+executive to the inclinations of the people, we can with no
+propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of
+the legislature&hellip;. The executive should be in a situation
+to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and decision.&rdquo;
+It is frequently remarked that no President since Lincoln
+had so thorough a comprehension of public sentiment as
+McKinley. This knowledge and his theory of action, if I
+have divined it aright, are an explanation of his course in
+regard to the Spanish War and the taking of the Philippines.
+It does not fall to me to discuss in this article these two questions,
+nor do I feel certain that all the documents necessary
+to a fair judgment are accessible to the public, but I can
+show what was McKinley&#8217;s attitude toward them by reporting
+a confidential conversation he had on May 2, 1899, with
+Mr. Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Massachusetts
+Institute of Technology, who made a record of it the day
+afterward. The President, Mr. Pritchett relates, spoke of
+the &ldquo;war and of his own responsibility, and the way in
+which he has gradually come to have his present position
+with respect to the Philippines. The talk was started by
+my reminding him of the fact that just a year ago that morning,
+on May 2, 1898, I had come into his room with a map
+of Manila and Cavité on a large scale&mdash;the first time he had
+seen such a map&mdash;and from this he drifted into a most
+serious and interesting talk of his own place in the history of
+the past twelve months. He described his efforts to avert
+the war, how he had carried the effort to the point of
+<a name="png.242" id="png.242"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">234</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>rupture with his party, then came the Maine incident, and,
+finally, a declaration of war over all efforts to stem the tide.
+Then he spoke of Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines,
+related at some length the correspondence he had had with
+the Paris Commission, how he had been gradually made to
+feel in his struggling for the right ground that first Luzon
+and finally all the Philippines must be kept. He then went
+on to indicate his belief that Providence had led in all this
+matter, that to him the march of events had been so irresistible
+that nothing could turn them aside. Nobody, he said,
+could have tried harder than he to be rid of the burden of
+the Philippines, and yet the trend of events had been such
+that it seemed impossible to escape this duty. He finally
+came to speak with more emotion than I have ever seen him
+exhibit, and no one could doubt the sincerity of the man.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Of McKinley&#8217;s achievements in the field of diplomacy
+Secretary Hay in his memorial address spoke with knowledge
+and in words of high praise. Sometimes the expression
+of a careful foreign observer anticipates the judgment of
+posterity, and with that view the words of the <cite>Spectator</cite>,<sup><a href="#fn.xiv.5"
+ name="fna.xiv.5" id="fna.xiv.5">5</a></sup>
+in an article on the presidential election of 1900, are worth
+quoting: &ldquo;We believe that Mr. McKinley and the wise
+statesman who is his Secretary of State, Colonel Hay, are
+administrators of a high order. They have learnt their
+business thoroughly, hold all the strings of policy in their
+hands.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Opinions will differ as to the impress McKinley has left
+on the presidential office. It is the judgment of two men of
+large knowledge of American history and present affairs
+that no President since Jefferson has been so successful in
+getting Congress to adopt the positive measures he desired.</p>
+
+<p>Of the administration of Theodore Roosevelt it would be
+<a name="png.243" id="png.243"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">235</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>neither proper nor wise for me to speak in other terms than
+those of expectation and prophecy. But of Mr. Roosevelt
+himself something may be said. His birth, breeding, education,
+and social advantages have been of the best. He has
+led an industrious and useful life. As an American citizen
+we are all proud of him, and when he reached the presidential
+office by a tragedy that nobody deplored more than
+he, every one wished him success. His transparent honesty
+and sincerity are winning qualities, and in the opinion of
+Burke especially important in him who is the ruler of a nation.
+&ldquo;Plain good intention,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;which is as easily
+discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at
+last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of
+mankind.&rdquo; To these qualities, and to a physical and moral
+courage that can never be questioned, Mr. Roosevelt adds
+a large intelligence and, as his books show, a power of combination
+of ideas and cohesive thought. Moreover, he has
+had a good political training, and he has the faculty of
+writing his political papers in a pregnant and forcible literary
+style. He is fit for what Mr. Bryce calls &ldquo;the greatest office
+in the world, unless we except the Papacy.&rdquo; His ideals are
+Washington and Lincoln. &ldquo;I like to see in my mind&#8217;s eye,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;the gaunt form of Lincoln stalking through these
+halls.&rdquo; &ldquo;To gratify the hopes, secure the reverence, and
+sustain the dignity of the nation,&rdquo; said Justice Story, &ldquo;the
+presidential office should always be occupied by a man of
+elevated talents, of ripe virtues, of incorruptible integrity,
+and of tried patriotism; one who shall forget his own interests
+and remember that he represents not a party but the
+whole nation.&rdquo; These qualities Theodore Roosevelt has.
+Whether he shall in action carry out the other requirements
+of Justice Story may only be judged after he shall have
+retired to private life.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.244" id="png.244"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">236</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Mr. Roosevelt merits the encouragement and sympathy
+of all lovers of good government, and he is entitled, as
+indeed is every President, to considerate and forbearing
+criticism. For, ardently desired as the office is, it is a hard
+place to fill. Through the kindness of President Roosevelt,
+I have been enabled to observe the daily routine of his work,
+and I am free to say that from the business point of view,
+no man better earns his pay than does he. Mr. Bryce remarks
+that a good deal of the President&#8217;s work is like that
+of the manager of a railway. So far as concerns the consultation
+with heads of departments, prompt decisions,
+and the disposition of daily matters, the comparison is apt,
+if a great American railway and a manager like Thomas A.
+Scott are borne in mind. But the railway manager&#8217;s
+labor is done in comparative privacy, he can be free from
+interruption and dispose of his own time in a systematic
+manner. That is impossible for the President during the
+session of Congress. Office-seekers themselves do not
+trouble the President so much as in former days; they may
+be referred to the heads of the departments; and, moreover,
+the introduction of competitive examinations and the merit
+system has operated as a relief to the President and his
+Cabinet officers. But hearing the recommendations by
+senators and congressmen of their friends for offices consumes
+a large amount of time. There are, as Senator Lodge
+has kindly informed me, 4818 presidential offices exclusive
+of 4000 presidential post offices; in addition there are
+army and naval officers to be appointed. The proper selection
+in four years of the number of men these figures imply
+is in itself no small labor; it would by a railway manager
+be considered an onerous and exacting business. But the
+railway manager may hear the claims of applicants in his
+own proper way, and to prevent encroachments on his time
+<a name="png.245" id="png.245"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">237</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>may give the candidates or their friends a curt dismissal.
+The President may not treat senators and representatives
+in that manner, nor would he desire to do so, for the intercourse
+between them and the executive is of great value.
+&ldquo;The President,&rdquo; wrote John Sherman, &ldquo;should &lsquo;touch
+elbows&rsquo; with Congress.&rdquo; There are important legislative
+measures to be discussed in a frank interchange of opinion.
+Senators and representatives are a guide to the President
+in their estimates of public sentiment; often they exert
+an influence over him, and he is dependent on them for the
+carrying out of any policy he may have at heart. While
+the encroachments on the President&#8217;s time are great, I am
+convinced that no plan should be adopted which should
+curtail the unconventional and frank interchange of views
+between the President and members of the National Legislature.
+The relief lies with the public. Much of the President&#8217;s
+time is taken up with receptions of the friends of
+senators and representatives, of members of conventions
+and learned bodies meeting in Washington, of deputations
+of school-teachers and the like who have gone to the capital
+for a holiday: all desire to pay their respects to the Chief
+Magistrate. Undoubtedly, if he could have a quiet talk
+with most of these people, it would be of value, but the conventional
+shaking of hands and the &ldquo;I am glad to see you&rdquo;
+is not a satisfaction great enough to the recipients to pay
+for what it costs the President in time and the expenditure
+of nervous force. He should have time for deliberation.
+The railway manager can closet himself when he likes:
+that should be the privilege of the President; yet on a certain
+day last April, when he wished to have a long confidential
+talk with his Secretary of War, this was only to be
+contrived by the two taking a long horseback ride in the
+country. It is difficult for the President to refuse to see
+<a name="png.246" id="png.246"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">238</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>these good, patriotic, and learned people; and senators and
+representatives like to gratify their constituents. The
+remedy lies with the public in denying themselves this
+pleasant feature of a visit to Washington. One does not
+call on the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad or the
+president of the New York Central Railroad in business
+hours unless for business purposes; and this should be the
+rule observed by citizens of the United States toward the
+President. The weekly public receptions are no longer
+held. All these other receptions and calls simply for shaking
+hands and wishing him God-speed should no longer be
+asked for. For the President has larger and more serious
+work than the railway manager and should have at least as
+much time for thought and deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the work of the railway manager is done in
+secret. Fiercer by far than the light which beats upon the
+throne is that which beats upon the White House. The
+people are eager to know the President&#8217;s thoughts and plans,
+and an insistent press endeavors to satisfy them. Considering
+the conditions under which the President does his
+work, the wonder is not that he makes so many mistakes,
+but that he makes so few. There is no railway or business
+manager or college president who has not more time to himself
+for the reflection necessary to the maturing of large and
+correct policies. I chanced to be in the President&#8217;s room
+when he dictated the rough draft of his famous dispatch to
+General Chaffee respecting torture in the Philippines. While
+he was dictating, two or three cards were brought in, also
+some books with a request for the President&#8217;s autograph,
+and there were some other interruptions. While the dispatch
+as it went out in its revised form could not be improved,
+a President cannot expect to be always so happy
+in dictating dispatches in the midst of distractions. Office
+<a name="png.247" id="png.247"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">239</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>work of far-reaching importance should be done in the closet.
+Certainly no monarch or minister in Europe does administrative
+work under such unfavorable conditions; indeed,
+this public which exacts so much of the President&#8217;s time
+should in all fairness be considerate in its criticism.</p>
+
+<p>No one, I think, would care to have abated the fearless
+political criticism which has in this country and in England
+attained to the highest point ever reached. From the nature
+of things the press must comment promptly and without
+the full knowledge of conditions that might alter its judgments.
+But on account of the necessary haste of its expressions,
+the writers should avoid extravagant language and
+the too ready imputation of bad motives to the public servants.
+&ldquo;It is strange that men cannot allow others to differ
+with them without charging corruption as the cause of the
+difference,&rdquo; are the plaintive words of Grant during a confidential
+conversation with his Secretary of State.</p>
+
+<p>The contrast between the savage criticism of Cleveland
+and Harrison while each occupied the presidential chair
+and the respect each enjoyed from political opponents after
+retiring to private life is an effective illustration of the lesson
+I should like to teach. At the time of Harrison&#8217;s death
+people spoke from their hearts and said, &ldquo;Well done, good
+and faithful servant.&rdquo; A fine example of political criticism
+in a time of great excitement were two articles by Mr. Carl
+Schurz in <cite>Harper&#8217;s Weekly</cite> during the Venezuela crisis.
+Mr. Schurz was a supporter and political friend of Cleveland,
+but condemned his Venezuela message. In the articles to
+which I refer he was charitable in feeling and moderate in
+tone, and though at the time I heard the term &ldquo;wishy-washy&rdquo;
+applied to one of them, I suspect that Mr. Schurz
+now looks back with satisfaction to his reserve; and those
+of us who used more forcible language in regard to the
+<a name="png.248" id="png.248"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">240</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>same incident may well wish that we had emulated his
+moderation.</p>
+
+<p>The presidential office differs from all other political
+offices in the world, and has justified the hopes of its creators.
+It has not realized their fears, one of which was expressed
+by Hamilton in the <cite>Federalist</cite>. &ldquo;A man raised from
+the station of a private citizen to the rank of Chief Magistrate,&rdquo;
+he wrote, &ldquo;possessed of a moderate or slender fortune,
+and looking forward to a period not very remote, when
+he may probably be obliged to return to the station from
+which he was taken, might sometimes be under temptations
+to sacrifice his duty to his interest, which it would require
+superlative virtue to withstand. An avaricious man might
+be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the acquisition
+of wealth. An ambitious man might make his
+own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the
+price of his treachery to his constituents.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xiv.6"
+ name="fna.xiv.6" id="fna.xiv.6">6</a></sup> From dangers
+of this sort the political virtue which we inherited from our
+English ancestors has preserved us. We may fairly maintain
+that the creation and administration of our presidential
+office have added something to political history, and
+when we contrast in character and ability the men who have
+filled it with the monarchs of England and of France, we
+may have a feeling of just pride. Mr. Bryce makes a suggestive
+comparison in ability of our Presidents to the
+prime ministers of England, awarding the palm to the
+Englishmen,<sup><a href="#fn.xiv.7" name="fna.xiv.7"
+ id="fna.xiv.7">7</a></sup> and from his large knowledge of both countries
+and impartial judgment we may readily accept his
+conclusion. It is, however, a merit of our Constitution that
+as great ability is not required for its chief executive office
+as is demanded in England. The prime minister must have
+<a name="png.249" id="png.249"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">241</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>a talent for both administration and debate, which is a
+rare combination of powers, and if he be chosen from the
+House of Commons, it may happen that too much stress will
+be laid upon oratory, or the power of making ready replies
+to the attacks of the opposition. It is impossible to conceive
+of Washington defending his policy in the House or the Senate
+from a fire of questions and cross-questions. Lincoln
+might have developed this quality of a prime minister, but
+his replies and sallies of wit to put to confusion his opponents
+would have lacked the dignity his state papers
+and confidential letters possess. Hayes and Cleveland were
+excellent administrators, but neither could have reached
+his high position had the debating ability of a prime minister
+been required. On the other hand, Garfield, Harrison,
+and McKinley would have been effective speakers in either
+the House or the Senate.</p>
+
+<p>An American may judge his own country best from European
+soil, impregnated as he there is with European ideas.
+Twice have I been in Europe during Cleveland&#8217;s administration,
+twice during McKinley&#8217;s, once during Roosevelt&#8217;s.
+During the natural process of comparison, when one must
+recognize in many things the distinct superiority of England,
+Germany, and France, I have never had a feeling other
+than high respect for each one of these Presidents; and
+taking it by and large, in the endeavor to consider fairly
+the hits and misses of all, I have never had any reason to
+feel that the conduct of our national government has been
+inferior to that of any one of these highly civilized powers.</p>
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiv.1" id="fn.xiv.1" href="#fna.xiv.1">1</a>
+Henry Adams, II, 113.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiv.2" id="fn.xiv.2" href="#fna.xiv.2">2</a>
+<i>Ibid.</i>, 130.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiv.3" id="fn.xiv.3" href="#fna.xiv.3">3</a>
+Sumner&#8217;s Jackson, 138.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiv.4" id="fn.xiv.4" href="#fna.xiv.4">4</a>
+Twenty Years of Congress, II, 185.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiv.5" id="fn.xiv.5" href="#fna.xiv.5">5</a> July 14, 1900.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiv.6" id="fn.xiv.6" href="#fna.xiv.6">6</a> See also the <cite>Federalist</cite> (Lodge&#8217;s edition), 452. Bryce, Studies in History
+and Jurisprudence, 308.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xiv.7" id="fn.xiv.7" href="#fna.xiv.7">7</a> American Commonwealth, I, 80.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.251" id="png.251"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">243</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>A REVIEW OF PRESIDENT HAYES&#8217;S ADMINISTRATION</h2>
+
+
+<p>Address delivered at the annual meeting of the Graduate School of
+Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate Schools of Applied Science
+and Business Administration, Harvard University, on October 8,
+1908; printed in the <cite>Century Magazine</cite> for October, 1909.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.253" id="png.253"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">245</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>A REVIEW OF PRESIDENT HAYES&#8217;S ADMINISTRATION</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Many</span> of our Presidents have been inaugurated under
+curious and trying circumstances, but no one of them except
+Hayes has taken the oath of office when there was a
+cloud on his title. Every man who had voted for Tilden,&mdash;whose
+popular vote exceeded that of Hayes by 264,000,&mdash;believed
+that Hayes had reached his high place by means of
+fraud. Indeed, some of the Hayes voters shared this belief,
+and stigmatized as monstrous the action of the Louisiana
+returning board in awarding the electoral vote of Louisiana
+to Hayes. The four men, three of them dishonest and the
+fourth incompetent, who constituted this returning board,
+rejected, on the ground of intimidation of negro voters,
+eleven thousand votes that had been cast in due form for
+Tilden. In the seventh volume of my history I have told
+the story of the compromise in the form of the Electoral
+Commission which passed on the conflicting claims and adjudged
+the votes of the disputed states, notably Florida
+and Louisiana, to Hayes, giving him a majority of one in
+the electoral college, thus making him President. When
+the count was completed and the usual declaration made,
+Hayes had no choice but to abide by the decision. Duty
+to his country and to his party, the Republican, required
+his acceptance of the office, and there is no reason for thinking
+that he had any doubts regarding his proper course.
+His legal title was perfect, but his moral title was unsound,
+and it added to the difficulty of his situation that the opposition,
+the Democrats, had a majority in the House of
+<a name="png.254" id="png.254"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">246</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Representatives. None but a determined optimist could have
+predicted anything but failure for an administration beginning
+under such conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Hayes was an Ohio man, and we in Ohio now watched
+his successive steps with keen interest. We knew him as a
+man of high character, with a fine sense of honor, but we
+placed no great faith in his ability. He had added to his
+reputation by the political campaign that he had made for
+governor, in 1875, against the Democrats under William
+Allen, who demanded an inflation of the greenback currency.
+He took an uncompromising stand for sound money, although
+that cause was unpopular in Ohio, and he spoke from
+the stump unremittingly and fearlessly, although overshadowed
+by the greater ability and power of expression of
+Senator Sherman and of Carl Schurz, who did yeoman&#8217;s
+service for the Republicans in this campaign. Senator
+Sherman had suggested Hayes as candidate for President,
+and the nomination by the Republican national convention
+had come to him in June, 1876. While his letter of acceptance
+may not have surprised his intimate friends, it was a
+revelation to most of us from its outspoken and common-sense
+advocacy of civil service reform, and it gave us the
+first glimmering that in Rutherford B. Hayes the Republicans
+had for standard bearer a man of more than respectable
+ability.</p>
+
+<p>His inaugural address confirmed this impression. He
+spoke with dignity and sympathy of the disputed Presidency,
+promised a liberal policy toward the Southern states,
+and declared that a reform in our civil service was a
+&ldquo;paramount necessity.&rdquo; He chose for his Cabinet men in
+sympathy with his high ideals. William M. Evarts, the Secretary
+of State, was one of the ablest lawyers in the
+country. He had been one of the leading counsel in the
+<a name="png.255" id="png.255"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">247</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>defense of President Johnson in the impeachment trial,
+and had managed the Republican cause before the Electoral
+Commission with adroitness and zeal. John Sherman,
+the Secretary of the Treasury, was the most capable financier
+in public life. Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior,
+was an aggressive and uncompromising reformer,
+who had served the Republican party well in the campaigns
+of 1875 and 1876. If these three men could work together
+under Hayes, the United States need envy the governors of
+no other country. They were in the brilliant but solid
+class, were abreast of the best thought of their time, had a
+solemn sense of duty, and believed in righteous government.
+Devens, the Attorney-General, had served with credit in the
+army and had held the honorable position of Justice of the
+Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Thompson of
+Indiana, Secretary of the Navy, was a political appointment
+due to the influence of Senator Morton, but, all things
+considered, it was not a bad choice. McCrary of Iowa, as
+Secretary of War, had been a useful member of the House
+of Representatives. The Postmaster-General was Key of
+Tennessee, who had served in the Confederate army and
+voted for Tilden. This appointment was not so genuine a
+recognition of the South as would have been made if Hayes
+could have carried out his first intention, which was the appointment
+of General Joseph E. Johnston as Secretary of
+War. Considering that Johnston had surrendered the second
+great army of the Confederacy only twelve years before, the
+thought was possible only to a magnanimous nature, and in
+the inner circle of Hayes&#8217;s counselors obvious and grave
+objections were urged. General Sherman doubted the wisdom
+of the proposed appointment, although he said that as
+General of the army he would be entirely content to receive
+the President&#8217;s orders through his old antagonist. Although
+<a name="png.256" id="png.256"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">248</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the appointment of Johnston would have added strength,
+the Cabinet as finally made up was strong, and the selection
+of such advisers created a favorable impression upon the intelligent
+sentiment of the country; it was spoken of as the
+ablest Cabinet since Washington&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>A wise inaugural address and an able Cabinet made a good
+beginning, but before the harmonious coöperation of these
+extraordinary men could be developed a weighty question,
+which brooked no delay, had to be settled. The Stevens-Sumner
+plan of the reconstruction of the South on the basis
+of universal negro suffrage and military support of the governments
+thus constituted had failed. One by one in
+various ways the Southern states had recovered home rule
+until, on the inauguration of Hayes, carpet-bag negro governments
+existed in only two states, South Carolina and
+Louisiana. In both of these the Democrats maintained
+that their candidates for governor had been lawfully elected.
+The case of South Carolina presented no serious difficulty.
+Hayes electors had been rightfully chosen, and so had the
+Democratic governor, Hampton. But Chamberlain, the
+Republican candidate, had a claim based on the exclusion
+of the votes of two counties by the board of state canvassers.
+After conferences between each of the claimants and the
+President, the question was settled in favor of the Democrat,
+which was the meaning of the withdrawal of the United
+States troops from the State House in Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>The case of Louisiana was much more troublesome.
+Packard, the Republican candidate for governor, had received
+as many votes as Hayes, and logic seemed to require
+that, if Hayes be President, Packard should be governor.
+While the question was pending, Blaine said in the Senate:
+&ldquo;You discredit Packard, and you discredit Hayes. You
+hold that Packard is not the legal governor of Louisiana,
+<a name="png.257" id="png.257"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">249</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and President Hayes has no title.&rdquo; And the other leaders
+of the Republican party, for the most part, held this view.
+To these and their followers Blaine applied the name &ldquo;Stalwarts,&rdquo;
+stiff partisans, who did not believe in surrendering
+the hold of the Republicans on the Southern states.</p>
+
+<p>Between the policies of a continuance of the support of
+the Republican party in Louisiana or its withdrawal, a weak
+man would have allowed things to drift, while a strong man
+of the Conkling and Chandler type would have sustained the
+Packard government with the whole force at his command.
+Hayes acted slowly and cautiously, asked for and received
+much good counsel, and in the end determined to withdraw
+the United States troops from the immediate vicinity of the
+State House in Louisiana. The Packard government fell,
+and the Democrats took possession. The lawyers could
+furnish cogent reasons why Packard was not entitled to the
+governorship, although the electoral vote of Louisiana had
+been counted for Hayes; but the Stalwarts maintained
+that no legal quibble could varnish over so glaring an inconsistency.
+Indeed, it was one of those illogical acts, so
+numerous in English and American history, that resolve
+difficulties, when a rigid adherence to logic would tend to
+foment trouble.</p>
+
+<p>The inaugural address and the distinctively reform Cabinet
+did not suit the party workers, and when the President
+declined to sustain the Packard government in Louisiana,
+disapproval was succeeded by rage. In six weeks after his
+inauguration Hayes was without a party; that is to say,
+the men who carried on the organization were bitterly opposed
+to his policy, and they made much more noise than
+the independent thinking voters who believed that a man
+had arisen after their own hearts. Except from the Southern
+wing, he received little sympathy from the Democratic
+<a name="png.258" id="png.258"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">250</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>party. In their parlance, fraud was written on his brow.
+He had the honor and perquisites of office which were rightfully
+theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Once the troops were withdrawn from South Carolina and
+Louisiana, no backward step was possible, and although
+Hayes would have liked congressional support and sympathy
+for his act, this was not necessary. The next most important
+question of his administration related to finance. He
+and his Secretary of the Treasury would have been gratified
+by an obedient majority in Congress at their back. Presidents
+before and after Hayes have made a greater or less
+employment of their patronage to secure the passage of
+their favorite measures, but Hayes immediately relinquished
+that power by taking a decided position for a civil service
+based on merit. In a little over a month after the withdrawal
+of the troops from the immediate vicinity of the State
+House in Louisiana, he announced his policy in a letter to
+his Secretary of the Treasury. &ldquo;It is my wish,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;that the collection of the revenues should be free from
+partisan control, and organized on a strictly business basis,
+with the same guaranties for efficiency and fidelity in the
+selection of the chief and subordinate officers that would be
+required by a prudent merchant. Party leaders should
+have no more influence in appointments than other equally
+respectable citizens. No assessments for political purposes
+on officers or subordinates should be allowed. No useless
+officer or employee should be retained. No officer should
+be required or permitted to take part in the management of
+political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election
+campaigns.&rdquo; The mandatory parts of this letter he incorporated
+in an order to Federal office-holders, adding: &ldquo;This
+rule is applicable to every department of the civil service.
+It should be understood by every officer of the general
+<a name="png.259" id="png.259"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">251</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>government that he is expected to conform his conduct to its
+requirements.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It must be a source of gratification to the alumni and
+faculty of Harvard College that its president and governing
+boards were, in June, 1877, in the judicious minority, and
+recognized their appreciation of Hayes by conferring upon
+him its highest honorary degree. Schurz, who had received
+his LL.D. the year before, accompanied Hayes to Cambridge,
+and, in his Harvard speech at Commencement, gave
+his forcible and sympathetic approval of the &ldquo;famous order
+of the President,&rdquo; as it had now come to be called.</p>
+
+<p>A liberal and just Southern policy, the beginning of a
+genuine reform in the civil service and the resumption of
+specie payments, are measures which distinguish and glorify
+President Hayes&#8217;s administration, but in July, 1877, public
+attention was diverted from all these by a movement which
+partook of the nature of a social uprising. The depression
+following the panic of 1873 had been widespread and severe.
+The slight revival of business resulting from the Centennial
+Exposition of 1876 and the consequent large passenger
+traffic had been succeeded by a reaction in 1877 that brought
+business men to the verge of despair. Failures of merchants
+and manufacturers, stoppage of factories, diminished traffic
+on the railroads, railroad bankruptcies and receiverships,
+threw a multitude of laborers out of employment; and those
+fortunate enough to retain their jobs were less steadily employed,
+and were subject to reductions in wages.</p>
+
+<p>The state of railroad transportation was deplorable.
+The competition of the trunk lines, as the railroads running
+from Chicago to the seaboard were called, was sharp, and,
+as there was not business enough for all, the cutting of
+through freight rates caused such business to be done at an
+actual loss, while the through passenger transportation
+<a name="png.260" id="png.260"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">252</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>afforded little profit. Any freight agent knew the remedy:
+an increase of freight rates by agreement or through a system
+of pooling earnings. Agreements were made, but not
+honestly kept, and, after a breach of faith, the fight was
+renewed with increased fury. As the railroad managers
+thought that they could not increase their gross earnings,
+they resolved on decreasing their expenses, and somewhat
+hastily and jauntily they announced a reduction of ten per
+cent in the wages of their employees.</p>
+
+<p>This was resisted. Trouble first began on the Baltimore
+and Ohio Railroad, where the men not only struck against
+the reduction, but prevented other men from taking their
+places, and stopped by force the running of trains. The
+militia of West Virginia was inadequate to cope with the situation,
+and the governor of that state called on the President
+for troops, which were sent with a beneficial effect. But
+the trouble spread to Maryland, and a conflict in Baltimore
+between the militia and rioters in sympathy with the strikers
+resulted in a number of killed and wounded. The next day,
+Saturday, July 21, a riot in Pittsburg caused the most profound
+sensation in the country since the draft riots of the
+Civil War. The men on the Pennsylvania and the Pittsburg,
+Fort Wayne and Chicago railroads, had struck, and
+all freight traffic was arrested. On this day six hundred
+and fifty men of the first division of the Pennsylvania national
+guard at Philadelphia arrived in Pittsburg, and, in the
+attempt to clear the Twenty-eighth Street crossing, they
+replied to the missiles thrown at them by the mob with
+volleys of musketry, killing instantly sixteen of the rioters
+and wounding many.</p>
+
+<p>Here was cause for exasperation, and a furious mob, composed
+of strikers, idle factory hands, and miners, tramps,
+communists, and outcasts, began its work of vengeance and
+<a name="png.261" id="png.261"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">253</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>plunder. Possessed of firearms, through breaking into a
+number of gun shops, they attacked the Philadelphia soldiers,
+who had withdrawn to the railroad roundhouse, and
+a fierce battle ensued. Unable to dislodge the soldiers by
+assault, the rioters attempted to roast them out by setting
+fire to cars of coke saturated with petroleum and pushing
+these down the track against the roundhouse. This eventually
+forced the soldiers to leave the building, but, though
+pursued by the rioters, they made a good retreat across the
+Allegheny River. The mob, completely beyond control,
+began the destruction of railroad property. The torch was
+applied to two roundhouses, to railroad sheds, shops and
+offices, cars and locomotives. Barrels of spirits, taken from
+the freight cars, and opened and drunk, made demons of
+the men, and the work of plunder and destruction of goods
+in transit went on with renewed fury.</p>
+
+<p>That Saturday night Pittsburg witnessed a reign of terror.
+On Sunday the rioting and pillage were continued, and in
+the afternoon the Union Depot and Railroad Hotel and an
+elevator near by were burned. Then as the rioters were
+satiated and too drunk to be longer dangerous, the riot
+died out: it was not checked. On Monday, through the
+action of the authorities, armed companies of law-abiding
+citizens, and some faithful companies of the militia, order
+was restored. But meanwhile the strike had spread to a
+large number of other railroads between the seaboard and
+Chicago and St. Louis. Freight traffic was entirely suspended,
+and passenger trains were run only on sufferance
+of the strikers. Business was paralyzed, and the condition
+of disorganization and unrest continued throughout the
+month of July. The governors of West Virginia, Maryland,
+Pennsylvania, and Illinois called upon the President
+for United States troops, which were promptly sent, and in
+<a name="png.262" id="png.262"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">254</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Indiana and Missouri they were employed on the demand of
+the United States marshals. Where the regular soldiers
+appeared order was at once restored without bloodshed, and
+it was said that the rioters feared one Federal bayonet more
+than a whole company of militia. The gravity of the situation
+is attested by three proclamations of warning from
+President Hayes.</p>
+
+<p>Strikes had been common in our country, and, while
+serious enough in certain localities, had aroused no general
+concern, but the action of the mob in Baltimore, Pittsburg,
+and Chicago seemed like an attack on society itself, and it
+came like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, startling Americans,
+who had hugged the delusion that such social uprisings
+belonged to Europe, and had no reason of being in a
+great, free republic where all men had an equal chance.
+The railroad managers had no idea that they were letting
+loose a slumbering giant when their edict of a ten per cent
+reduction went forth. It was due to the prompt and efficient
+action of the President that order was ultimately restored.
+In the profound and earnest thinking and discussion that
+went on during the rest of the year, whenever thoughtful
+men gathered together, many a grateful word was said of the
+quiet, unassuming man in the White House who saw clearly
+his duty and never faltered in pursuing it. It was seen that
+the Federal government, with a resolute President at its head,
+was a tower of strength in the event of a social uprising.</p>
+
+<p>In the reform of the civil service Hayes proceeded from
+words to action. He reappointed Thomas L. James as
+postmaster of New York City, who had conducted his office
+on a thorough business basis, and gave him sympathetic
+support. The New York Custom-house had long been a
+political machine in which the interests of politicians had
+been more considered than those of the public it was
+<a name="png.263" id="png.263"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">255</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>supposed to serve. The President began an investigation of
+it through an impartial commission, and he and Sherman
+came to the conclusion that the renovation desired, in line
+with his letter to the Secretary of the Treasury and his
+order to the Federal officers, could not be effected so long
+as the present collector, Chester A. Arthur, and the naval
+officer, A.&nbsp;B. Cornell, remained in office. Courteous intimations
+were sent to them that their resignations were desired
+on the ground that new officers could better carry out
+the reform which the President had at heart. Arthur and
+Cornell, under the influence of Senator Conkling, refused to
+resign, and a plain issue was made between the President
+and the New York senator. At the special session of Congress,
+in October, 1877, he sent to the Senate nominations
+of new men for these places, but the power of Conkling,
+working through the &ldquo;courtesy of the Senate,&rdquo; was sufficient
+to procure their rejection; and this was also the
+result when the same nominations were made in December.</p>
+
+<p>In July, 1878, after the adjournment of Congress, Hayes
+removed Arthur and Cornell, and appointed Merritt and
+Burt in their places. During the following December these
+appointments came before the Senate for confirmation.
+Sherman decided to resign if they were rejected, and he
+made a strong personal appeal to Senators Allison, Windom,
+and Morrill that they should not permit &ldquo;the insane hate of
+Conkling&rdquo; to override the good of the service and the party.
+A seven hours&#8217; struggle ensued in the Senate, but Merritt
+and Burt were confirmed by a decisive majority. After
+the confirmation, Hayes wrote to Merritt: &ldquo;My desire is
+that the office be conducted on strictly business principles
+and according to the rules for the civil service which were
+recommended by the Civil Service Commission in the administration
+of General Grant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.264" id="png.264"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">256</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>In three of his annual messages, Hayes presented strong
+arguments for a reform in the civil service, and he begged
+Congress, without avail, to make appropriations to sustain
+the Civil Service Commission. He sympathized with and
+supported Schurz in his introduction into the Interior Department
+of competitive examinations for appointments
+and promotions, and he himself extended that system to the
+custom-houses and post-offices of the larger cities.</p>
+
+<p>All that was accomplished in this direction was due to his
+efforts and those of his Cabinet. He received neither sympathy
+nor help from Congress; indeed, he met with great
+opposition from his own party. A picture not without
+humor is Hayes reading, as his justification, to the Republican
+remonstrants against his policy of appointments the
+strong declaration for a civil service based on merit in the
+Republican platform, on which he had stood as candidate
+for President. Though his preaching did not secure the
+needed legislation from Congress, it produced a marked
+effect on public sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>The organization of civil service reform associations began
+under Hayes. The New York association was begun in
+1877, reorganized three years later, and soon had a large
+national membership, which induced the formation of other
+state associations; and although the national civil service
+reform league was not formed until after his term of office
+expired, the origin of the society may be safely referred to
+his influence. In the melioration of the public service
+which has been so conspicuously in operation since 1877,
+Hayes must be rated the pioneer President. Some of
+Grant&#8217;s efforts in this direction were well meant, but he had
+no fundamental appreciation of the importance of the question
+or enthusiasm for the work, and, in a general way, it
+may be said that he left the civil service in a demoralized
+<a name="png.265" id="png.265"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">257</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>condition. How pregnant was Hayes&#8217;s remark in his last
+annual message, and what a text it has been for many homilies!
+&ldquo;My views,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;concerning the dangers of
+patronage or appointments for personal or partisan considerations
+have been strengthened by my observation and
+experience in the executive office, and I believe these dangers
+threaten the stability of the government.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The brightest page in the history of the Republican party
+since the Civil War tells of its work in the cause of sound
+finance, and no administration is more noteworthy than
+that of Hayes. Here again the work was done by the President
+and his Cabinet in the face of a determined opposition
+in Congress. During the first two years of his administration,
+the Democrats had a majority in the House, and during
+the last two a majority in both the House and the Senate.
+The Republican party was sounder than the Democratic on
+the resumption of specie payments and in the advocacy of a
+correct money standard, but Hayes had by no means all of
+his own party at his back. Enough Republicans, however,
+were of his way of thinking to prevent an irremediable
+inflation of either greenbacks or silver.</p>
+
+<p>The credit for what was accomplished in finance belongs
+in the main to John Sherman, a great financier and consummate
+statesman; but he had the constant sympathy and
+support of the President. It was their custom to take long
+drives together every Sunday afternoon and discuss systematically
+and thoroughly the affairs of the Treasury and the
+official functions of the President. No President ever had
+a better counselor than Sherman, no Secretary of the Treasury
+more sympathetic and earnest support than was given
+by Hayes. Sherman refunded 845 millions of the public
+debt at a lower rate of interest, showing in his negotiations
+with bankers a remarkable combination of business and
+<a name="png.266" id="png.266"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">258</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>political ability. Cool, watchful, and confident, he grasped
+the point of view of New York and London financial syndicates,
+and to that interested and somewhat narrow vision
+he joined the intelligence and foresight of a statesman.
+Sherman brought about the resumption of specie payments
+on the 1st of January, 1879, the date fixed in the bill of which
+he was the chief author and which, four years before, he had
+carried through the Senate. It was once the fashion of his
+opponents to discredit his work, and, emphasizing the large
+crop of 1878 and the European demand for our breadstuffs,
+to declare that resumption was brought about by Providence
+and not by John Sherman. No historian of American
+finance can fail to see how important is the part often played
+by bountiful nature, but it is to the lasting merit of Sherman
+and Hayes that, in the dark years of 1877 and 1878,
+with cool heads and unshaken faith, they kept the country
+in the path of financial safety and honor despite bitter opposition
+and clamorous abuse.</p>
+
+<p>These two years formed a part of my own business career,
+and I can add my vivid recollection to my present study of
+the period. As values steadily declined and losses rather
+than profits in business became the rule, the depression
+and even despair of business men and manufacturers can
+hardly be exaggerated. The daily list of failures and bankruptcies
+was appalling. How often one heard that iron
+and coal and land were worth too little and money too much,
+that only the bondholder could be happy, for his interest
+was sure and the purchasing power of his money great!
+In August, 1878, when John Sherman went to Toledo to
+speak to a gathering three thousand strong, he was
+greeted with such cries as, &ldquo;You are responsible for all
+the failures in the country&rdquo;; &ldquo;You work to the interest
+of the capitalist&rdquo;; &ldquo;Capitalists own you, John Sherman,
+<a name="png.267" id="png.267"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">259</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and you rob the poor widows and orphans to make
+them rich.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By many the resumption of specie payments was deemed
+impossible. The most charitable of Sherman&#8217;s opponents
+looked upon him as an honest but visionary enthusiast who
+would fail in his policy and be &ldquo;the deadest man politically&rdquo;
+in the country. Others deemed resumption possible only
+by driving to the wall a majority of active business men.
+It was this sentiment which gave strength to the majority
+in the House of Representatives, which was opposed to any
+contraction of the greenback currency and in favor of the
+free coinage of silver, and of making it likewise a full legal
+tender. Most of these members of Congress were sincere,
+and thought that they were asking no more than justice
+for the trader, the manufacturer, and the laborer. The
+&ldquo;Ohio idea&rdquo; was originally associated with an inflation of
+the paper currency, but by extension it came to mean an
+abundance of cheap money, whether paper or silver. Proposed
+legislation, with this as its aim, was very popular in
+Ohio, but, despite the intense feeling against the President&#8217;s
+and Secretary&#8217;s policy in their own state and generally
+throughout the West, Hayes and Sherman maintained it
+consistently, and finally brought about the resumption of
+specie payments.</p>
+
+<p>In their way of meeting the insistent demand for the
+remonetization of silver Hayes and Sherman differed. In
+November, 1877, the House of Representatives, under a
+suspension of the rules, passed by a vote of 163 to 34 a bill
+for the free coinage of the 412½ grain silver dollar, making
+that dollar likewise a legal tender for all debts and dues.
+The Senate was still Republican, but the Republican senators
+were by no means unanimous for the gold standard.
+Sherman became convinced that, although the free-silver
+<a name="png.268" id="png.268"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">260</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>bill could not pass the Senate, something must nevertheless
+be done for silver, and, in coöperation with Senator Allison,
+he was instrumental in the adoption of the compromise
+which finally became law. This remonetized silver, providing
+for the purchase of not less than two million dollars&#8217; worth
+of silver bullion per month, nor more than four millions,
+and for its coinage into 412½ grain silver dollars. Hayes
+vetoed this bill, sending a sound and manly message to the
+House of Representatives; but Congress passed it over his
+veto by a decided majority.</p>
+
+<p>The regard for John Sherman&#8217;s ability in Ohio was unbounded,
+and it was generally supposed that in all financial
+affairs, as well as in many others, he dominated Hayes. I
+shared that opinion until I learned indirectly from John
+Hay, who was first assistant Secretary of State and intimate
+in inner administration circles, that this was not true; that
+Hayes had decided opinions of his own and did not hesitate
+to differ with his Secretary of the Treasury. Nevertheless,
+not until John Sherman&#8217;s &ldquo;Recollections&rdquo; were published
+was it generally known, I believe, that Sherman had a share
+in the Allison compromise, and did not approve of the President&#8217;s
+veto of the bill remonetizing silver.</p>
+
+<p>The Federal control of congressional and presidential
+elections, being a part of the Reconstruction legislation,
+was obnoxious to the Democrats, and they attempted to
+abrogate it by &ldquo;riders&rdquo; attached to several appropriation
+bills, especially that providing for the army. While the
+Senate remained Republican, there was chance for an accommodation
+between the President and the Senate on one
+side and the House on the other. Two useful compromises
+were made, the Democrats yielding in one case, the Republicans
+in the other. But in 1879, when both the House and
+the Senate were Democratic, a sharp contest began between
+<a name="png.269" id="png.269"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">261</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Congress and the executive, the history of which is written
+in seven veto messages. For lack of appropriations to
+carry on the government, the President called an extra
+session of Congress in the first year of his administration and
+another in 1879, which was a remarkable record of extra
+sessions in a time of peace. The Democratic House passed
+a resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate
+Hayes&#8217;s title and aroused some alarm lest an effort
+might be made &ldquo;to oust President Hayes and inaugurate
+Tilden.&rdquo; Although this alarm was stilled less than a month
+later by a decisive vote of the House, the action and investigation
+were somewhat disquieting.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Hayes encountered sharp opposition from the Democrats,
+who frequently pointed their arguments by declaring
+that he held his place by means of fraud. He received
+sympathy from hardly any of the leaders of his own party
+in Congress, and met with open condemnation from the
+Stalwarts; yet he pursued his course with steadiness and
+equanimity, and was happy in his office. His serene amiability
+and hopefulness, especially in regard to affairs in
+the Southern states, were a source of irritation to the Stalwarts;
+but it was the serenity of a man who felt himself
+fully equal to his responsibilities.</p>
+
+<p>In his inaugural address, Hayes contributed an addition
+to our political idiom, &ldquo;He serves his party best who
+serves the country best.&rdquo; His administration was a striking
+illustration of this maxim. When he became President, the
+Republican party was in a demoralized condition, but, despite
+the factional criticism to which he was subject, he
+gained in the first few months of his Presidency the approval
+of men of intelligence and independent thought, and, as
+success attended his different policies, he received the support
+of the masses. The signal Republican triumph in
+<a name="png.270" id="png.270"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">262</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the presidential election of 1880 was due to the improvement
+in business conditions and to the clean and efficient
+administration of Hayes.</p>
+
+<p>In recalling his predecessor in office, we think more gladly
+of the Grant of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Appomattox
+than of Grant the President, for during his two administrations
+corruption was rife and bad government to the fore.
+Financial scandals were so frequent that despairing patriots
+cried out, &ldquo;Is there no longer honesty in public life?&rdquo; Our
+country then reached the high-water mark of corruption in
+national affairs. A striking improvement began under
+Hayes, who infused into the public service his own high
+ideals of honesty and efficiency. Hayes was much assisted
+in his social duties by his wife, a woman of character and
+intelligence, who carried herself with grace and dignity.
+One sometimes heard the remark that as Hayes was ruled in
+political matters by John Sherman, so in social affairs he
+was ruled by his wife. The sole foundation for this lay in
+his deference to her total abstinence principles, which she
+held so strongly as to exclude wine from the White House
+table except, I believe, at one official dinner, that to the
+Russian Grand Dukes.</p>
+
+<p>Hayes&#8217;s able Cabinet was likewise a harmonious one.
+Its members were accustomed to dine together at regular
+intervals (fortnightly, I think), when affairs of state and
+other subjects were discussed, and the geniality of these
+occasions was enhanced by a temperate circulation of the
+wine bottle. There must have been very good talk at these
+social meetings. Evarts and Schurz were citizens of the
+world. Evarts was a man of keen intelligence and wide
+information, and possessed a genial as well as a caustic
+wit. Schurz could discuss present politics and past history.
+He was well versed in European history of the eighteenth
+<a name="png.271" id="png.271"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">263</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>century and the Napoleonic wars, and could talk about the
+power of Voltaire in literature and the influence of
+Lessing on Goethe. From appreciative discourse on the
+Wagner opera and the French drama, he could, if the conversation
+turned to the Civil War, give a lively account of
+the battles of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, in both of
+which he had borne an honorable part. Sherman was not
+a cosmopolitan like his two colleagues, but he loved dining
+out. His manners were those of the old-school gentleman;
+he could listen with genial appreciation, and he could talk
+of events in American history of which he had been a contemporaneous
+observer; as, for example, of the impressive
+oratory of Daniel Webster at a dinner in Plymouth; or the
+difference between the national conventions of his early
+political life and the huge ones of the present, illustrating
+his comparison with an account of the Whig convention of
+1852, to which he went as a delegate.</p>
+
+<p>Differing in many respects, Hayes and Grover Cleveland
+were alike in the possession of executive ability and the lack
+of oratorical. We all know that it is a purely academic
+question which is the better form of government, the English
+or our own, as both have grown up to adapt themselves
+to peculiar conditions. But when I hear an enthusiast for
+Cabinet government and ministerial responsibility, I like to
+point out that men like Hayes and Cleveland, who made
+excellent Presidents, could never have been prime ministers.
+One cannot conceive of either in an office equivalent to that
+of First Lord of the Treasury, being heckled by members
+on the front opposition bench and holding his own or getting
+the better of his opponents.</p>
+
+<p>I have brought Hayes and Cleveland into juxtaposition,
+as each had a high personal regard for the other. Hayes
+died on January 17, 1893. Cleveland, the President-elect,
+<a name="png.272" id="png.272"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">264</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>was to be inaugurated on the following fourth of March.
+Despite remonstrance and criticism from bitter partisans
+of his own party, who deprecated any honor paid to one
+whom all good Democrats deemed a fraudulent President,
+Cleveland traveled from New York to Fremont, Ohio, to
+attend the funeral. He could only think of Hayes as an
+ex-President and a man whom he highly esteemed.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.273" id="png.273"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">265</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN</h2>
+
+
+<p>Lecture read at Harvard University, April 13, 1908; printed in the
+<cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite> for September, 1908.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.275" id="png.275"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">267</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Our</span> two great journalists of the nineteenth century were
+Greeley and Godkin. Though differing in very many
+respects, they were alike in possessing a definite moral purpose.
+The most glorious and influential portion of Greeley&#8217;s
+career lay between the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act
+in 1854 and the election of Lincoln in 1860, when the press
+played an important part in the upbuilding of a political
+party which formulated in a practical manner the antislavery
+sentiment of the country. Foremost among newspapers
+was the <cite>New York Tribune</cite>; foremost among editors
+was Horace Greeley. Of Greeley in his best days Godkin
+wrote: &ldquo;He has an enthusiasm which never flags, and a
+faith in principles which nothing can shake, and an English
+style which, for vigor, terseness, clearness, and simplicity,
+has never been surpassed, except perhaps by Cobbett.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.1"
+ name="fna.xvi.1" id="fna.xvi.1">1</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Greeley and Godkin were alike in furnishing their readers
+with telling arguments. In northern New York and the
+Western Reserve of Ohio the <cite>Weekly Tribune</cite> was a political
+Bible. &ldquo;Why do you look so gloomy?&rdquo; said a traveler,
+riding along the highway in the Western Reserve during
+the old antislavery days, to a farmer who was sitting
+moodily on a fence. &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; replied the farmer, &ldquo;my
+Democratic friend next door got the best of me in an argument
+last night. But when I get my <cite>Weekly Tribune</cite> to-morrow
+I&#8217;ll knock the foundations all out from under him.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.2"
+ name="fna.xvi.2" id="fna.xvi.2">2</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Premising that Godkin is as closely identified with <cite>The
+<a name="png.276" id="png.276"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">268</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Nation</cite> and the <cite>Evening Post</cite> as Greeley with the <cite>Tribune</cite>, I
+shall refer to a personal experience. Passing a part of the
+winter of 1886 in a hotel at Thomasville, Georgia, it chanced
+that among the hundred or more guests there were eight
+or ten of us who regularly received <cite>The Nation</cite> by post.
+Ordinarily it arrived on the Friday noon train from Savannah,
+and when we came from our mid-day dinner into the
+hotel office, there, in our respective boxes, easily seen, and
+from their peculiar form recognized by every one, were our
+copies of <cite>The Nation</cite>. Occasionally the papers missed connection
+at Savannah, and our <cite>Nations</cite> did not arrive until
+after supper. It used to be said by certain scoffers that if a
+discussion of political questions came up in the afternoon of
+one of those days of disappointment, we readers were mum;
+but in the late evening, after having digested our political
+pabulum, we were ready to join issue with any antagonist.
+Indeed, each of us might have used the words of James
+Russell Lowell, written while he was traveling on the Continent
+and visiting many places where <cite>The Nation</cite> could not
+be bought: &ldquo;All the time I was without it, my mind was
+chaos and I didn&#8217;t feel that I had a safe opinion to swear
+by.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.3"
+ name="fna.xvi.3" id="fna.xvi.3">3</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>While the farmer of the Western Reserve and Lowell
+are extreme types of clientèle, each represents fairly well
+the peculiar following of Greeley and of Godkin, which
+differed as much as did the personal traits of the two journalists.
+Godkin speaks of Greeley&#8217;s &ldquo;odd attire, shambling
+gait, simple, good-natured and hopelessly peaceable
+face, and long yellow locks.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.4"
+ name="fna.xvi.4" id="fna.xvi.4">4</a></sup> His &ldquo;old white hat and
+white coat,&rdquo; which in New York were regarded as an affectation,
+counted with his following west of the Hudson River
+as a winning eccentricity. When he came out upon the
+<a name="png.277" id="png.277"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">269</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>lecture platform with crumpled shirt, cravat awry, and
+wrinkled coat looking as if he had traveled for a number of
+nights and days, such disorder appeared to many of his
+Western audiences as nothing worse than the mark of a very
+busy man, who had paid them the compliment of leaving
+his editorial rooms to speak to them in person, and who had
+their full sympathy as he thus opened his discourse, &ldquo;You
+mustn&#8217;t, my friends, expect fine words from a rough busy
+man like me.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.5"
+ name="fna.xvi.5" id="fna.xvi.5">5</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The people who read the <cite>Tribune</cite> did not expect fine
+words; they were used to the coarse, abusive language in
+which Greeley repelled attacks, and to his giving the lie
+with heartiness and vehemence. They enjoyed reading
+that &ldquo;another lie was nailed to the counter,&rdquo; and that an
+antagonist &ldquo;was a liar, knowing himself to be a liar, and
+lying with naked intent to deceive.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.6"
+ name="fna.xvi.6" id="fna.xvi.6">6</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, the dress, the face, and the personal
+bearing of Godkin proclaimed at once the gentleman and
+cultivated man of the world. You felt that he was a man
+whom you would like to meet at dinner, accompany on a
+long walk, or cross the Atlantic with, were you an acquaintance
+or friend.</p>
+
+<p>An incident related by Godkin himself shows that at
+least one distinguished gentleman did not enjoy sitting at
+meat with Greeley. During the spring of 1864 Godkin met
+Greeley at breakfast at the house of Mr. John A.&nbsp;C. Gray.
+William Cullen Bryant, at that time editor of the New York
+<cite>Evening Post</cite>, was one of the guests, and, when Greeley entered
+the room, was standing near the fireplace conversing
+with his host. On observing that Bryant did not speak to
+Greeley, Gray asked him in a whisper, &ldquo;Don&#8217;t you know
+<a name="png.278" id="png.278"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">270</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Mr. Greeley?&rdquo; In a loud whisper Bryant replied, &ldquo;No, I
+don&#8217;t; he&#8217;s a blackguard&mdash;he&#8217;s a blackguard.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.7"
+ name="fna.xvi.7" id="fna.xvi.7">7</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>In the numbers of people whom he influenced, Greeley
+had the advantage over Godkin. In February, 1855, the
+circulation of the <cite>Tribune</cite> was 172,000, and its own estimate
+of its readers half a million, which was certainly not excessive.
+It is not a consideration beyond bounds to infer that
+the readers of the <cite>Tribune</cite> in 1860 furnished a goodly part
+of the <ins class="TNsilent" title="Transcriber's note:
+ original has 1,886,000">1,866,000</ins> votes which were received by Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>At different times, while Godkin was editor, <cite>The Nation</cite>
+stated its exact circulation, which, as I remember it, was
+about 10,000, and it probably had 50,000 readers. As many
+of its readers were in the class of Lowell, its indirect influence
+was immense. Emerson said that <cite>The Nation</cite> had &ldquo;breadth,
+variety, self-sustainment, and an admirable style of thought
+and expression.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I owe much to <cite>The Nation</cite>,&rdquo; wrote
+Francis Parkman. &ldquo;I regard it as the most valuable of
+American journals, and feel that the best interests of the
+country are doubly involved in its success.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;What an
+influence you have!&rdquo; said George William Curtis to Godkin.
+&ldquo;What a sanitary element in our affairs <cite>The Nation</cite>
+ is!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;To
+my generation,&rdquo; wrote William James, &ldquo;Godkin&#8217;s was
+certainly the towering influence in all thought concerning
+public affairs, and indirectly his influence has certainly
+been more pervasive than that of any other writer of the
+generation, for he influenced other writers who never quoted
+him, and determined the whole current of discussion.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;When
+the work of this century is summed up,&rdquo; wrote
+Charles Eliot Norton to Godkin, &ldquo;what you have done for
+the good old cause of civilization, the cause which is always
+defeated, but always after defeat taking more advanced position
+than before&mdash;what you have done for this cause will
+<a name="png.279" id="png.279"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">271</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>count for much.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I am conscious,&rdquo; wrote President
+Eliot to Godkin, &ldquo;that <cite>The Nation</cite> has had a decided effect
+on my opinions and my action for nearly forty years; and
+I believe it has had like effect on thousands of educated
+Americans.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.8"
+ name="fna.xvi.8" id="fna.xvi.8">8</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>A string of quotations, as is well known, becomes wearisome;
+but the importance of the point that I am trying to
+make will probably justify one more. &ldquo;I find myself so
+thoroughly agreeing with <cite>The Nation</cite> always,&rdquo; wrote Lowell,
+&ldquo;that I am half persuaded that I edit it myself!&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.9"
+ name="fna.xvi.9" id="fna.xvi.9">9</a></sup> Truly
+Lowell had a good company: Emerson, Parkman, Curtis,
+Norton, James, Eliot,&mdash;all teachers in various ways.
+Through their lectures, books, and speeches, they influenced
+college students at an impressible age; they appealed to
+young and to middle-aged men; and they furnished comfort
+and entertainment for the old. It would have been difficult
+to find anywhere in the country an educated man whose
+thought was not affected by some one of these seven; and
+their influence on editorial writers for newspapers was remarkable.
+These seven were all taught by Godkin.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Every Friday morning when <cite>The Nation</cite> comes,&rdquo; wrote
+Lowell to Godkin, &ldquo;I fill my pipe, and read it from beginning
+to end. Do you do it all yourself? Or are there really so
+many clever men in the country?&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.10"
+ name="fna.xvi.10" id="fna.xvi.10">10</a></sup> Lowell&#8217;s experience,
+with or without tobacco, was undoubtedly that of hundreds,
+perhaps of thousands, of educated men, and the query he
+raised was not an uncommon one. At one time, Godkin, I
+believe, wrote most of &ldquo;The Week,&rdquo; which was made up
+of brief and pungent comments on events, as well as the principal
+editorial articles. The power of iteration, which the
+journalist possesses, is great, and, when that power is wielded
+<a name="png.280" id="png.280"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">272</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>by a man of keen intelligence and wide information, possessing
+a knowledge of the world, a sense of humor, and an effective
+literary style, it becomes tremendous. The only escape
+from Godkin&#8217;s iteration was one frequently tried, and that
+was, to stop <cite>The Nation</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>Although Godkin published three volumes of Essays, the
+honors he received during his lifetime were due to his work
+as editor of <cite>The Nation</cite> and the <cite>Evening Post</cite>; and this is
+his chief title of fame. The education, early experience,
+and aspiration of such a journalist are naturally matter of
+interest. Born in 1831, in the County of Wicklow in the
+southeastern part of Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian minister,
+he was able to say when referring to Goldwin Smith,
+&ldquo;I am an Irishman, but I am as English in blood as he is.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.11"
+ name="fna.xvi.11" id="fna.xvi.11">11</a></sup>
+Receiving his higher education at Queen&#8217;s College, Belfast,
+he took a lively interest in present politics, his college friends
+being Liberals. John Stuart Mill was their prophet, Grote
+and Bentham their daily companions, and America was their
+promised land. &ldquo;To the scoffs of the Tories that our
+schemes were impracticable,&rdquo; he has written of these days,
+&ldquo;our answer was that in America, barring slavery, they were
+actually at work. There, the chief of the state and the legislators
+were freely elected by the people. There, the offices
+were open to everybody who had the capacity to fill them.
+There was no army or navy, two great curses of humanity
+in all ages. There was to be no war except war in self-defense&hellip;. In
+fact, we did not doubt that in America
+at last the triumph of humanity over its own weaknesses
+and superstitions was being achieved, and the dream of
+Christendom was at last being realized.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.12"
+ name="fna.xvi.12" id="fna.xvi.12">12</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>As a correspondent of the London <cite>Daily News</cite> he went to
+the Crimea. The scenes at Malakoff gave him a disgust for
+<a name="png.281" id="png.281"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">273</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>war which thenceforth he never failed to express upon every
+opportunity. When a man of sixty-eight, reckoning its
+cost in blood and treasure, he deemed the Crimean War
+entirely unnecessary and very deplorable.<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.13"
+ name="fna.xvi.13" id="fna.xvi.13">13</a></sup> Godkin arrived
+in America in November, 1856, and soon afterwards, with
+Olmsted&#8217;s &ldquo;Journey in the Seaboard Slave States,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Back
+Country,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Texas,&rdquo; as guidebooks, took a horseback journey
+through the South. Following closely Olmsted&#8217;s trail,
+and speaking therefore with knowledge, he has paid him one
+of the highest compliments one traveler ever paid another.
+&ldquo;Olmsted&#8217;s work,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;in vividness of description
+and in photographic minuteness far surpasses Arthur
+Young&#8217;s.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.14"
+ name="fna.xvi.14" id="fna.xvi.14">14</a></sup> During this journey he wrote letters to the
+London <cite>Daily News</cite>, and these were continued after his
+return to New York City. For the last three years of our
+Civil War, he was its regular correspondent, and, as no one
+denies that he was a powerful advocate when his heart was
+enlisted, he rendered efficient service to the cause of the
+North. The <cite>News</cite> was strongly pro-Northern, and Godkin
+furnished the facts which rendered its leaders sound and
+instructive as well as sympathetic. All this while he was
+seeing socially the best people in New York City, and making
+useful and desirable acquaintances in Boston and Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>The interesting story of the foundation of <cite>The Nation</cite> has
+been told a number of times, and it will suffice for our purpose
+to say that there were forty stockholders who contributed
+a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, one half
+of which was raised in Boston, and one quarter each in
+Philadelphia and New York. Godkin was the editor, and
+next to him the chief promoters were James M. McKim of
+Philadelphia and Charles Eliot Norton. The first number
+<a name="png.282" id="png.282"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">274</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of this &ldquo;weekly journal of politics, literature, science, and
+art&rdquo; appeared on July 6, 1865. Financial embarrassment
+and disagreements among the stockholders marked the first
+year of its existence, at the end of which Godkin, McKim,
+and Frederick Law Olmsted took over the property, and
+continued the publication under the proprietorship of E.&nbsp;L.
+Godkin &amp;&nbsp;Co. &ldquo;<cite>The Nation</cite> owed its continued existence to
+Charles Eliot Norton,&rdquo; wrote Godkin in 1899. &ldquo;It was his
+calm and confidence amid the shrieks of combatants &hellip; which
+enabled me to do my work even with decency.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.15"
+ name="fna.xvi.15" id="fna.xvi.15">15</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Sixteen years after <cite>The Nation</cite> was started, in 1881, Godkin
+sold it out to the <cite>Evening Post</cite>, becoming associate editor
+of that journal, with Carl Schurz as his chief. <cite>The Nation</cite>
+was thereafter published as the weekly edition of the <cite>Evening
+Post</cite>. In 1883 Schurz retired and Godkin was made
+editor-in-chief, having the aid and support of one of the
+owners, Horace White. On January 1, 1900, on account of
+ill health, he withdrew from the editorship of the <cite>Evening
+Post</cite>,<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.16"
+ name="fna.xvi.16" id="fna.xvi.16">16</a></sup> thus retiring from active journalism.</p>
+
+<p>For thirty-five years he had devoted himself to his
+work with extraordinary ability and singleness of purpose.
+Marked appreciation came to him: invitations to deliver
+courses of lectures from both Harvard and Yale, the degree
+of A.M. from Harvard, and the degree of D.C.L. from
+Oxford. What might have been a turning point in his
+career was the offer in 1870 of the professorship of history at
+Harvard. He was strongly tempted to accept it, but, before
+coming to a decision, he took counsel of a number of
+friends; and few men, I think, have ever received such
+wise and disinterested advice as did Godkin when he was
+thus hesitating in what way he should apply his teaching.
+<a name="png.283" id="png.283"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">275</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>The burden of the advice was not to take the professorship,
+if he had to give up <cite>The Nation</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick Law Olmsted wrote to him: &ldquo;If you can&#8217;t
+write fully half of &lsquo;The Week&rsquo; and half the leaders, and
+control the drift and tone of the whole while living at Cambridge,
+give up the professorship, for <cite>The Nation</cite> is worth
+many professorships. It is a question of loyalty over a
+question of comfort.&rdquo; Lowell wrote to him in the same
+strain: &ldquo;<em>Stay</em> if the two things are incompatible. We
+may find another professor by and by &hellip; but we can&#8217;t find
+another editor for <cite>The Nation</cite>.&rdquo; From Germany, John
+Bigelow sent a characteristic message: &ldquo;Tell the University
+to require each student to take a copy of <cite>The Nation</cite>. Do
+not profess history for them in any other way. I dare say
+your lectures would be good, but why limit your pupils to
+hundreds which are now counted by thousands?&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.17"
+ name="fna.xvi.17" id="fna.xvi.17">17</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>As is well known, Godkin relinquished the idea of the
+college connection and stuck to his job, although the quiet
+and serenity of a professor&#8217;s life in Cambridge contrasted
+with his own turbulent days appealed to him powerfully.
+&ldquo;Ten years hence,&rdquo; he wrote to Norton, &ldquo;if things go on as
+they are now I shall be the most odious man in America.
+Not that I shall not have plenty of friends, but my enemies
+will be far more numerous and active.&rdquo; Six years after he
+had founded <cite>The Nation</cite>, and one year after he had declined
+the Harvard professorship, when he was yet but forty years
+old, he gave this humorously exaggerated account of his
+physical failings due to his nervous strain: &ldquo;I began <cite>The
+Nation</cite> young, handsome, and fascinating, and am now
+withered and somewhat broken, rheumatism gaining on me
+rapidly, my complexion ruined, as also my figure, for I
+am growing stout.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.18"
+ name="fna.xvi.18" id="fna.xvi.18">18</a></sup></p>
+
+<p><a name="png.284" id="png.284"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">276</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>But his choice between the Harvard professorship and
+<cite>The Nation</cite> was a wise one. He was a born writer of paragraphs
+and editorials. The files of <cite>The Nation</cite> are his monument.
+A crown of his laborious days is the tribute of James
+Bryce: &ldquo;<cite>The Nation</cite> was the best weekly not only in America
+but in the world.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.19"
+ name="fna.xvi.19" id="fna.xvi.19">19</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Thirty-five years of journalism, in which Godkin was accustomed
+to give hard blows, did not, as he himself foreshadowed,
+call forth a unanimous chorus of praise; and the
+objections of intelligent and high-minded men are well
+worth taking into account. The most common one is that
+his criticism was always destructive; that he had an eye
+for the weak side of causes and men that he did not favor,
+and these he set forth with unremitting vigor without regard
+for palliating circumstances; that he erected a high
+and impossible ideal and judged all men by it; hence, if a
+public man was right eight times out of ten, he would seize
+upon the two failures and so parade them with his withering
+sarcasm that the reader could get no other idea than that
+the man was either weak or wicked. An editor of very
+positive opinions, he was apt to convey the idea that if any
+one differed from him on a vital question, like the tariff or
+finance or civil service reform, he was necessarily a bad man.
+He made no allowances for the weaknesses of human nature,
+and had no idea that he himself ever could be mistaken.
+Though a powerful critic, he did not realize the highest
+criticism, which discerns and brings out the good as well as
+the evil. He won his reputation by dealing out censure,
+which has a rare attraction for a certain class of minds,
+as Tacitus observed in his &ldquo;History.&rdquo; &ldquo;People,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;lend a ready ear to detraction and spite,&rdquo; for &ldquo;malignity
+wears the imposing appearance of independence.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.20"
+ name="fna.xvi.20" id="fna.xvi.20">20</a></sup></p>
+
+<p><a name="png.285" id="png.285"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">277</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The influence of <cite>The Nation</cite>, therefore,&mdash;so these objectors
+to Godkin aver,&mdash;was especially unfortunate on
+the intelligent youth of the country. It was in 1870 that
+John Bigelow, whom I have just quoted, advised Harvard
+University to include <cite>The Nation</cite> among its requirements;
+and it is true that at that time, and for a good while afterwards,
+<cite>The Nation</cite> was favorite reading for serious Harvard
+students. The same practice undoubtedly prevailed at
+most other colleges. Now I have been told that the effect
+of reading <cite>The Nation</cite> was to prevent these young men from
+understanding their own country; that, as Godkin himself
+did not comprehend America, he was an unsound teacher
+and made his youthful readers see her through a false medium.
+And I am further informed that in mature life it cost
+an effort, a mental wrench, so to speak, to get rid of this influence
+and see things as they really were, which was necessary
+for usefulness in lives cast in America. The United
+States was our country; she was entitled to our love and
+service; and yet such a frame of mind was impossible, so
+this objection runs, if we read and believed the writing of
+<cite>The Nation</cite>. A man of character and ability, who had filled
+a number of public offices with credit, told me that the influence
+of <cite>The Nation</cite> had been potent in keeping college
+graduates out of public life; that things in the United States
+were painted so black both relatively and absolutely that
+the young men naturally reasoned, &ldquo;Why shall we concern
+ourselves about a country which is surely going to destruction?&rdquo;
+Far better, they may have said, to pattern after
+Plato&#8217;s philosopher who kept out of politics, being &ldquo;like
+one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the storm of
+dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.21"
+ name="fna.xvi.21" id="fna.xvi.21">21</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Such considerations undoubtedly lost <cite>The Nation</cite> valuable
+<a name="png.286" id="png.286"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">278</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>subscribers. I have been struck with three circumstances
+in juxtaposition. At the time of Judge Hoar&#8217;s forced resignation
+from Grant&#8217;s Cabinet in 1870, <cite>The Nation</cite> said, &ldquo;In
+peace as in war &lsquo;that is best blood which hath most iron in&#8217;t;&rsquo;
+and much is to be excused to the man [that is, Judge Hoar]
+who has for the first time in many years of Washington
+history given a back-handed blow to many an impudent
+and arrogant dispenser of patronage. He may well be
+proud of most of the enmity that he won while in office,
+and may go back contented to Massachusetts to be her most
+honored citizen.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.22"
+ name="fna.xvi.22" id="fna.xvi.22">22</a></sup> Two months later Lowell wrote to
+Godkin, &ldquo;The bound volumes of <cite>The Nation</cite> standing on
+Judge Hoar&#8217;s library table, as I saw them the other day,
+were a sign of the estimation in which it is held by solid people
+and it is they who in the long run decide the fortunes of
+such a journal.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.23"
+ name="fna.xvi.23" id="fna.xvi.23">23</a></sup> But <cite>The Nation</cite> lost Judge Hoar&#8217;s support.
+When I called upon him in 1893 he was no longer
+taking or reading it.</p>
+
+<p>It is the sum of individual experiences that makes up
+the influence of a journal like <cite>The Nation</cite>, and one may therefore
+be pardoned the egotism necessarily arising from a relation
+of one&#8217;s own contact with it. In 1866, while a student
+at the University of Chicago, I remember well that, in a
+desultory talk in the English Literature class, Professor
+William Matthews spoke of <cite>The Nation</cite> and advised the
+students to read it each week as a political education of
+high value. This was the first knowledge I had of it, but
+I was at that time, along with many other young men, devoted
+to the <cite>Round Table</cite>, an &ldquo;Independent weekly review
+of Politics, Finance, Literature, Society, and Art,&rdquo; which
+flourished between the years 1864 and 1868. We asked the
+professor, &ldquo;Do you consider <cite>The Nation</cite> superior to the
+<a name="png.287" id="png.287"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">279</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span><cite>Round Table</cite>?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Decidedly,&rdquo; was his reply. &ldquo;The editors
+of the <cite>Round Table</cite> seem to write for the sake of writing,
+while the men who are expressing themselves in <cite>The
+Nation</cite> do so because their hearts and minds are full of their
+matter.&rdquo; This was a just estimate of the difference between
+the two journals. The <cite>Round Table</cite>, modeled after the
+<cite>Saturday Review</cite>, was a feeble imitation of the London
+weekly, then in its palmy days, while <cite>The Nation</cite>, which was
+patterned after the <cite>Spectator</cite>, did not suffer by the side of its
+model. On this hint from Professor Matthews, I began
+taking and reading <cite>The Nation</cite>, and with the exception of
+one year in Europe during my student days, I have read it
+ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Before I touch on certain specifications I must premise
+that the influence of this journal on a Westerner, who read
+it in a receptive spirit, was probably more potent than on
+one living in the East. The arrogance of a higher civilization
+in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia than elsewhere
+in the United States, the term &ldquo;wild and woolly West,&rdquo;
+applied to the region west of the Alleghany Mountains, is
+somewhat irritating to a Westerner. Yet it remains none
+the less true that, other things being equal, a man living in
+the environment of Boston or New York would have arrived
+more easily and more quickly at certain sound political
+views I shall proceed to specify than he would while living
+in Cleveland or Chicago. The gospel which Godkin preached
+was needed much more in the West than in the East; and
+his disciples in the western country had for him a high degree
+of reverence. In the biography of Godkin, allusion is
+made to the small pecuniary return for his work, but in
+thinking of him we never considered the money question.
+We supposed that he made a living; we knew from his articles
+that he was a gentleman, and saw much of good society,
+<a name="png.288" id="png.288"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">280</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and there was not one of us who would not rather have been
+in his shoes than in those of the richest man in New York.
+We placed such trust in him&mdash;which his life shows to have
+been abundantly justified&mdash;that we should have lost all
+confidence in human nature had he ever been tempted by
+place or profit. And his influence was abiding. Presidents,
+statesmen, senators, congressmen rose and fell; political
+administrations changed; good, bad, and weak public men
+passed away; but Godkin preached to us every week a timely
+and cogent sermon.</p>
+
+<p>To return now to my personal experience. I owe wholly
+to <cite>The Nation</cite> my conviction in favor of civil service reform;
+in fact, it was from these columns that I first came to understand
+the question. The arguments advanced were sane
+and strong, and especially intelligible to men in business,
+who, in the main, chose their employees on the ground of
+fitness, and who made it a rule to retain and advance competent
+and honest men in their employ. I think that on
+this subject the indirect influence of <cite>The Nation</cite> was very
+great, in furnishing arguments to men like myself, who never
+lost an opportunity to restate them, and to editorial writers
+for the Western newspapers, who generally read <cite>The Nation</cite>
+and who were apt to reproduce its line of reasoning. When
+I look back to 1869, the year in which I became a voter, and
+recall the strenuous opposition to civil service reform on the
+part of the politicians of both parties, and the indifference
+of the public, I confess that I am amazed at the progress
+which has been made. Such a reform is of course effected
+only by a number of contributing causes and some favoring
+circumstances, but I feel certain that it was accelerated by
+the constant and vigorous support of <cite>The Nation</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>I owe to <cite>The Nation</cite> more than to any other agency my
+correct ideas on finance in two crises. The first was the
+<a name="png.289" id="png.289"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">281</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>&ldquo;greenback craze&rdquo; from 1869 to 1875. It was easy to be
+a hard-money man in Boston or New York, where one might
+imbibe the correct doctrine as one everywhere takes in the
+fundamental principles of civilization and morality. But it
+was not so in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where the severe
+money stringency before and during the panic of 1873, and
+the depression after it, caused many good and representative
+men to join in the cry for a larger issue of greenbacks by
+the government. It required no moral courage for the average
+citizen to resist what in 1875 seemed to be the popular
+move, but it did require the correct knowledge and the forcible
+arguments put forward weekly by <cite>The Nation</cite>. I do
+not forget my indebtedness to John Sherman, Carl Schurz,
+and Senator Thurman, but Sherman and Thurman were
+not always consistent on this question, and Schurz&#8217;s voice
+was only occasionally heard; but every seven days came
+<cite>The Nation</cite> with its unremitting iteration, and it was an
+iteration varied enough to be always interesting and worthy
+of study. As one looks back over nearly forty years of politics
+one likes to recall the occasions when one has done the
+thing one&#8217;s mature judgment fully approves; and I like to
+think that in 1875 I refused to vote for my party&#8217;s candidate
+for governor, the Democratic William Allen, whose
+platform was &ldquo;that the volume of currency be made and
+kept equal to the wants of trade.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A severer ordeal was the silver question of 1878, because
+the argument for silver was more weighty than that for
+irredeemable paper, and was believed to be sound by business
+men of both parties. I remember that many representative
+business men of Cleveland used to assemble around
+the large luncheon table of the Union Club and discuss the
+pending silver-coinage bill, which received the votes of both
+of the senators from Ohio and of all her representatives
+<a name="png.290" id="png.290"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">282</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>except Garfield. The gold men were in a minority also at the
+luncheon table, but, fortified by <cite>The Nation</cite>, we thought
+that we held our own in this daily discussion.</p>
+
+<p>In my conversion from a belief in a protective tariff to
+the advocacy of one for revenue only, I recognize an obligation
+to Godkin, but his was only one of many influences.
+I owe <cite>The Nation</cite> much for its accurate knowledge of foreign
+affairs, especially of English politics, in which its readers
+were enlightened by one of the most capable of living men,
+Albert V. Dicey. I am indebted to it for sound ideas on
+municipal government, and for its advocacy of many minor
+measures, such for instance as the International Copyright
+Bill. I owe it something for its later attitude on Reconstruction,
+and its condemnation of the negro carpet-bag
+governments in the South. In a word, <cite>The Nation</cite> was on
+the side of civilization and good political morals.</p>
+
+<p>Confessing thus my great political indebtedness to Godkin,
+it is with some reluctance that I present a certain phase of
+his thought which was regretted by many of his best friends,
+and which undoubtedly limited his influence in the later
+years of his life. A knowledge of this shortcoming is, however,
+essential to a thorough comprehension of the man.
+It is frequently said that Godkin rarely, if ever, made a retraction
+or a rectification of personal charges shown to be
+incorrect. A thorough search of <cite>The Nation&#8217;s</cite> columns
+would be necessary fully to substantiate this statement, but
+my own impression, covering as it does thirty-three years&#8217;
+reading of the paper under Godkin&#8217;s control, inclines me
+to believe in its truth, as I do not remember an instance of
+the kind.</p>
+
+<p>A grave fault of omission occurs to me as showing a regrettable
+bias in a leader of intelligent opinion. On January 5,
+1897, General Francis A. Walker died. He had served with
+<a name="png.291" id="png.291"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">283</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>credit as an officer during our Civil War, and in two thoughtful
+books had made a valuable contribution to its military
+history. He was superintendent of the United States Census
+of 1870, and did work that statisticians and historians
+refer to with gratitude and praise. For sixteen years he
+served with honor the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
+as its president. He was a celebrated political economist,
+his books being (I think) as well known in England
+as in this country. Yale, Amherst, Harvard, Columbia,
+St. Andrews, and Dublin conferred upon him the degree
+of LL.D. Withal he served his city with public spirit.
+Trinity Church, &ldquo;crowded and silent&rdquo; in celebrating its
+last service over the dead body of Walker, witnessed one of
+the three most impressive funerals which Boston has seen
+for at least sixteen years&mdash;a funeral conspicuous for the
+attendance of a large number of delegates from colleges and
+learned societies.</p>
+
+<p>Walker was distinctly of the intellectual élite of the country.
+But <cite>The Nation</cite> made not the slightest reference to his
+death. In the issue of January 7, appearing two days later,
+I looked for an allusion in &ldquo;The Week,&rdquo; and subsequently
+for one of those remarkable and discriminating eulogies,
+which in smaller type follow the editorials, and for which <cite>The
+Nation</cite> is justly celebrated; but there was not one word.
+You might search the 1897 volume of <cite>The Nation</cite> and, but
+for a brief reference in the April &ldquo;Notes&rdquo; to Walker&#8217;s annual
+report posthumously published, you would not learn
+that a great intellectual leader had passed away. I wrote
+to a valued contributor of <cite>The Nation</cite>, a friend of Walker, of
+Godkin, and of Wendell P. Garrison (the literary editor),
+inquiring if he knew the reason for the omission, and in
+answer he could only tell me that his amazement had been
+as great as mine. He at first looked eagerly, and, when
+<a name="png.292" id="png.292"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">284</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the last number came in which a eulogy could possibly
+appear, he turned over the pages of <cite>The Nation</cite> with sorrowful
+regret, hardly believing his eyes that the article he sought
+was not there.</p>
+
+<p>Now I suspect that the reason of this extraordinary omission
+was due to the irreconcilable opinions of Walker and
+Godkin on a question of finance. It was a period when the
+contest between the advocates of a single gold standard and
+the bimetallists raged fiercely, and the contest had not been
+fully settled by the election of McKinley in 1896. Godkin
+was emphatically for gold, Walker equally emphatic for a
+double standard. And they clashed. It is a notable example
+of the peculiarity of Godkin, to allow at the portal of
+death the one point of political policy on which he and
+Walker disagreed to overweigh the nine points in which
+they were at one.</p>
+
+<p>Most readers of <cite>The Nation</cite> noticed distinctly that, from
+1895 on, its tone became more pessimistic and its criticism
+was marked by greater acerbity. Mr. Rollo Ogden in his
+biography shows that Godkin&#8217;s feeling of disappointment
+over the progress of the democratic experiment in America,
+and his hopelessness of our future, began at an earlier
+date.</p>
+
+<p>During his first years in the United States, he had no
+desire to return to his mother country. When the financial
+fortune of <cite>The Nation</cite> was doubtful, he wrote to Norton that
+he should not go back to England except as a &ldquo;last extremity.
+It would be going back into an atmosphere that
+I detest, and a social system that I have hated since I was
+fourteen years old.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.24"
+ name="fna.xvi.24" id="fna.xvi.24">24</a></sup> In 1889, after an absence of twenty-seven
+years, he went to England. The best intellectual
+society of London and Oxford opened its doors to him and
+<a name="png.293" id="png.293"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">285</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>he fell under its charm as would any American who was the
+recipient of marked attentions from people of such distinction.
+He began to draw contrasts which were not favorable
+to his adopted country. &ldquo;I took a walk along the wonderful
+Thames embankment,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;a splendid work,
+and I sighed to think how impossible it would be to get such
+a thing done in New York. The differences in government
+and political manners are in fact awful, and for me very
+depressing. Henry James [with whom he stopped in London]
+and I talk over them sometimes &lsquo;des larmes dans la
+<span class="rthinsp">voix.&rsquo;</span>&rdquo; In 1894, however, Godkin wrote in the <cite>Forum</cite>:
+&ldquo;There is probably no government in the world to-day as
+stable as that of the United States. The chief advantage
+of democratic government is, in a country like this, the
+enormous force it can command in an emergency.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.25"
+ name="fna.xvi.25" id="fna.xvi.25">25</a></sup> But
+next year his pessimism is clearly apparent. On January
+12, 1895, he wrote to Norton: &ldquo;You see I am not sanguine
+about the future of democracy. I think we shall have a
+long period of decline like that which followed (?) the fall
+of the Roman Empire, and then a recrudescence under
+some other form of society.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.26"
+ name="fna.xvi.26" id="fna.xvi.26">26</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>A number of things had combined to affect him profoundly.
+An admirer of Grover Cleveland and three times
+a warm supporter of his candidacy for the Presidency, he
+saw with regret the loss of his hold on his party, which was
+drifting into the hands of the advocates of free silver. Then
+in December, 1895, Godkin lost faith in his idol. &ldquo;I was
+thunderstruck by Cleveland&#8217;s message&rdquo; on the Venezuela
+question, he wrote to Norton. His submission to the Jingoes
+&ldquo;is a terrible shock.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.27"
+ name="fna.xvi.27" id="fna.xvi.27">27</a></sup> Later, in a calm review of passing
+events, he called the message a &ldquo;sudden declaration of
+<a name="png.294" id="png.294"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">286</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>war without notice against Great Britain.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.28"
+ name="fna.xvi.28" id="fna.xvi.28">28</a></sup> The danger
+of such a proceeding he had pointed out to Norton: Our
+&ldquo;immense democracy, mostly ignorant &hellip; is constantly
+on the brink of some frightful catastrophe like that which
+overtook France in 1870.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.29"
+ name="fna.xvi.29" id="fna.xvi.29">29</a></sup> In 1896 he was deeply distressed
+at the country having to choose for President between
+the arch-protectionist McKinley and the free-silver
+advocate Bryan, for he had spent a good part of his life
+combating a protective tariff and advocating sound money.
+Though the <cite>Evening Post</cite> contributed powerfully to the election
+of McKinley, from the fact that its catechism, teaching
+financial truths in a popular form, was distributed throughout
+the West in immense quantities by the chairman of the
+Republican National Committee, Godkin himself refused to
+vote for McKinley and put in his ballot for Palmer, the gold
+Democrat.<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.30"
+ name="fna.xvi.30" id="fna.xvi.30">30</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>The Spanish-American war seems to have destroyed any
+lingering hope that he had left for the future of American
+democracy. He spoke of it as &ldquo;a perfectly avoidable war
+forced on by a band of unscrupulous politicians&rdquo; who had
+behind them &ldquo;a roaring mob.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.31"
+ name="fna.xvi.31" id="fna.xvi.31">31</a></sup> The taking of the Philippines
+and the subsequent war in these islands confirmed
+him in his despair. In a private letter written from Paris,
+he said, &ldquo;American ideals were the intellectual food of my
+youth, and to see America converted into a senseless, Old-World
+conqueror, embitters my age.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.32"
+ name="fna.xvi.32" id="fna.xvi.32">32</a></sup> To another he
+wrote that his former &ldquo;high and fond ideals about America
+were now all shattered.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.33"
+ name="fna.xvi.33" id="fna.xvi.33">33</a></sup> &ldquo;Sometimes he seemed to feel,&rdquo;
+said his intimate friend, James Bryce, &ldquo;as though he had
+labored in vain for forty years.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.34"
+ name="fna.xvi.34" id="fna.xvi.34">34</a></sup></p>
+
+<p><a name="png.295" id="png.295"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">287</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Such regrets expressed by an honest and sincere man
+with a high ideal must command our respectful attention.
+Though due in part to old age and enfeebled health, they are
+still more attributable to his disappointment that the country
+had not developed in the way that he had marked out
+for her. For with men of Godkin&#8217;s positive convictions,
+there is only one way to salvation. Sometimes such men
+are true prophets; at other times, while they see clearly
+certain aspects of a case, their narrowness of vision prevents
+them from taking in the whole range of possibilities, especially
+when the enthusiasm of manhood is gone.</p>
+
+<p>Godkin took a broader view in 1868, which he forcibly
+expressed in a letter to the London <cite>Daily News</cite>. &ldquo;There is
+no careful and intelligent observer,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;whether he
+be a friend to democracy or not, who can help admiring the
+unbroken power with which the popular common sense&mdash;that
+shrewdness, or intelligence, or instinct of self-preservation, I
+care not what you call it, which so often makes the American
+farmer a far better politician than nine tenths of the best
+read European political philosophers&mdash;works under all
+this tumult and confusion of tongues. The newspapers
+and politicians fret and fume and shout and denounce; but
+the great mass, the nineteen or twenty millions, work away
+in the fields and workshops, saying little, thinking much,
+hardy, earnest, self-reliant, very tolerant, very indulgent,
+very shrewd, but ready whenever the government needs it,
+with musket, or purse, or vote, as the case may be, laughing
+and cheering occasionally at public meetings, but when you
+meet them individually on the highroad or in their own
+houses, very cool, then, sensible men, filled with no delusions,
+carried away by no frenzies, believing firmly in the future
+greatness and glory of the republic, but holding to no other
+article of faith as essential to political salvation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.296" id="png.296"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">288</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Before continuing the quotation I wish to call attention
+to the fact that Godkin&#8217;s illustration was more effective in
+1868 than now: then there was a solemn and vital meaning
+to the prayers offered up for persons going to sea that they
+might be preserved from the dangers of the deep. &ldquo;Every
+now and then,&rdquo; he went on to say, &ldquo;as one watches the
+political storms in the United States, one is reminded of
+one&#8217;s feelings as one lies in bed on a stormy night in an ocean
+steamer in a head wind. Each blow of the sea shakes the
+ship from stem to stern, and every now and then a tremendous
+one seems to paralyze her. The machinery seems to
+stop work; there is a dead pause, and you think for a moment
+the end has come; but the throbbing begins once
+more, and if you go up on deck and look down in the
+hold, you see the firemen and engineers at their posts,
+apparently unconscious of anything but their work, and
+as sure of getting into port as if there was not a ripple on
+the water.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This letter of Godkin&#8217;s was written on January 8, 1868,
+when Congress was engaged in the reconstruction of the South
+on the basis of negro suffrage, when the quarrel between Congress
+and President Johnson was acute and his impeachment
+not two months off. At about this time Godkin set down
+Evarts&#8217;s opinion that &ldquo;we are witnessing the decline of public
+morality which usually presages revolution,&rdquo; and reported
+that Howells was talking &ldquo;despondently like everybody
+else about the condition of morals and manners.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.35"
+ name="fna.xvi.35" id="fna.xvi.35">35</a></sup> Of like
+tenor was the opinion of an arch-conservative, George Ticknor,
+written in 1869, which bears a resemblance to the lamentation
+of Godkin&#8217;s later years. &ldquo;The civil war of &#8217;61,&rdquo;
+wrote Ticknor, &ldquo;has made a great gulf between what happened
+before it in our century and what has happened
+<a name="png.297" id="png.297"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">289</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>since, or what is likely to happen hereafter. It does not
+seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was
+born, or in which I received whatever I ever got of political
+education or principles. Webster seems to have been the
+last of the Romans.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.36"
+ name="fna.xvi.36" id="fna.xvi.36">36</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>In 1868 Godkin was an optimist, having a cogent answer
+to all gloomy predictions; from 1895 to 1902 he was a pessimist;
+yet reasons just as strong may be adduced for considering
+the future of the country secure in the later as were
+urged in the earlier period. But as Godkin grew older, he
+became a moral censor, and it is characteristic of censors to
+exaggerate both the evil of the present and the good of the
+past. Thus in 1899 he wrote of the years 1857&ndash;1860:
+&ldquo;The air was full of the real Americanism. The American
+gospel was on people&#8217;s lips and was growing with fervor.
+Force was worshiped, but it was moral force: it was the force
+of reason, of humanity, of human equality, of a good example.
+The abolitionist gospel seemed to be permeating
+the views of the American people, and overturning and
+destroying the last remaining traditions of the old-world
+public morality. It was really what might be called the
+golden age of America.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.37"
+ name="fna.xvi.37" id="fna.xvi.37">37</a></sup> These were the days of slavery.
+James Buchanan was President. The internal policy of
+the party in power was expressed in the Dred Scott decision
+and the attempt to force slavery on Kansas; the foreign
+policy, in the Ostend Manifesto, which declared that if Spain
+would not sell Cuba, the United States would take it by force.
+The rule in the civil service was, &ldquo;to the victors belong the
+spoils.&rdquo; And New York City, where Godkin resided, had
+for its mayor Fernando Wood.</p>
+
+<p>In this somewhat rambling paper I have subjected Godkin
+<a name="png.298" id="png.298"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">290</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to a severe test by a contrast of his public and private utterances
+covering many years, not however with the intention
+of accusing him of inconsistency. Ferrero writes that historians
+of our day find it easy to expose the contradictions
+of Cicero, but they forget that probably as much could
+be said of his contemporaries, if we possessed also their
+private correspondence. Similarly, it is a pertinent
+question how many journalists and how many public
+men would stand as well as Godkin in this matter of
+consistency if we possessed the same abundant records of
+their activity?</p>
+
+<p>The more careful the study of Godkin&#8217;s utterances, the
+less will be the irritation felt by men who love and believe
+in their country. It is evident that he was a born critic,
+and his private correspondence is full of expressions showing
+that if he had been conducting a journal in England, his
+criticism of certain phases of English policy would have
+been as severe as those which he indulged in weekly at the
+expense of this country. &ldquo;How Ireland sits heavy on your
+soul!&rdquo; he wrote to James Bryce. &ldquo;Salisbury was an utterly
+discredited Foreign Secretary when you brought up
+Home Rule. Now he is one of the wisest of men. Balfour
+and Chamberlain have all been lifted into eminence by
+opposition to Home Rule simply.&rdquo; To Professor Norton:
+&ldquo;Chamberlain is a capital specimen of the rise of an unscrupulous
+politician.&rdquo; Again: &ldquo;The fall of England into
+the hands of a creature like Chamberlain recalls the capture
+of Rome by Alaric.&rdquo; To another friend: &ldquo;I do not like
+to talk about the Boer War, it is too painful&hellip;. When
+I do speak of the war my language becomes unfit for publication.&rdquo;
+On seeing the Queen and the Prince of Wales
+driving through the gardens at Windsor, his comment was
+&ldquo;Fat, useless royalty;&rdquo; and in 1897 he wrote from England
+<a name="png.299" id="png.299"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">291</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to Arthur Sedgwick, &ldquo;There are many things here which
+reconcile me to America.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.38"
+ name="fna.xvi.38" id="fna.xvi.38">38</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>In truth, much of his criticism of America is only an elaboration
+of his criticism of democracy. In common with
+many Europeans born at about the same time, who began
+their political life as radicals, he shows his keen disappointment
+that democracy has not regenerated mankind.
+&ldquo;There is not a country in the world, living under parliamentary
+government,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;which has not begun to
+complain of the decline in the quality of its legislators.
+More and more, it is said, the work of government is falling
+into the hands of men to whom even small pay is important,
+and who are suspected of adding to their income by corruption.
+The withdrawal of the more intelligent class from
+legislative duties is more and more lamented, and the complaint
+is somewhat justified by the mass of crude, hasty,
+incoherent, and unnecessary laws which are poured on the
+world at every session.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.39"
+ name="fna.xvi.39" id="fna.xvi.39">39</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>I have thus far spoken only of the political influence of
+<cite>The Nation</cite>, but its literary department was equally important.
+Associated with Godkin from the beginning was
+Wendell P. Garrison, who became literary editor of the
+journal, and, who, Godkin wrote in 1871, &ldquo;has really toiled
+for six years with the fidelity of a Christian martyr and
+upon the pay of an oysterman.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.40"
+ name="fna.xvi.40" id="fna.xvi.40">40</a></sup> I have often heard the
+literary criticism of <cite>The Nation</cite> called destructive like the
+political, but, it appears to me, with less reason. Books
+for review were sent to experts in different parts of the
+country, and the list of contributors included many professors
+from various colleges. While the editor, I believe,
+<a name="png.300" id="png.300"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">292</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>retained, and sometimes exercised, the right to omit parts
+of the review and make some additions, yet writers drawn
+from so many sources must have preserved their own individuality.
+I have heard it said that <cite>The Nation</cite> gave you
+the impression of having been entirely written by one man;
+but whatever there is more than fanciful in that impression
+must have arisen from the general agreement between the
+editor and the contributors. Paul Leicester Ford once told
+me that, when he wrote a criticism for <cite>The Nation</cite>, he unconsciously
+took on <cite>The Nation&#8217;s</cite> style, but he could write in
+that way for no other journal, nor did he ever fall into it in
+his books. Garrison was much more tolerant than is sometimes
+supposed. I know of his sending many books to two
+men, one of whom differed from him radically on the
+negro question and the other on socialism.</p>
+
+<p>It is only after hearing much detraction of the literary department
+of <cite>The Nation</cite>, and after considerable reflection,
+that I have arrived at the conviction that it came somewhat
+near to realizing criticism as defined by Matthew Arnold,
+thus: &ldquo;A disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate
+the best that is known and thought in the world.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.41"
+ name="fna.xvi.41" id="fna.xvi.41">41</a></sup> I am
+well aware that it was not always equal, and I remember
+two harsh reviews which ought not to have been printed;
+but this simply proves that the editor was human and <cite>The
+Nation</cite> was not perfect. I feel safe, however, in saying that
+if the best critical reviews of <cite>The Nation</cite> were collected and
+printed in book form, they would show an aspiration after
+the standard erected by Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold.</p>
+
+<p>Again I must appeal to my individual experience. The
+man who lived in the middle West for the twenty-five years
+between 1865 and 1890 needed the literary department of
+<cite>The Nation</cite> more than one who lived in Boston or New York.
+<a name="png.301" id="png.301"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">293</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Most of the books written in America were by New England,
+New York, and Philadelphia authors, and in those communities
+literary criticism was evolved by social contact in
+clubs and other gatherings. We had nothing of the sort in
+Cleveland, where a writer of books walking down Euclid
+Avenue would have been stared at as a somewhat remarkable
+personage. The literary columns of <cite>The Nation</cite> were
+therefore our most important link between our practical
+life and the literary world. I used to copy into my <em>Index
+Rerum</em> long extracts from important reviews, in which the
+writers appeared to have a thorough grasp of their subjects;
+and these I read and re-read as I would a significant passage
+in a favorite book. In the days when many of us were profoundly
+influenced by Herbert Spencer&#8217;s &ldquo;Sociology,&rdquo; I was
+somewhat astonished to read one week in <cite>The Nation</cite>, in a
+review of Pollock&#8217;s &ldquo;Introduction to the Science of Politics,&rdquo;
+these words: &ldquo;Herbert Spencer&#8217;s contributions to political
+and historical science seem to us mere commonplaces, sometimes
+false, sometimes true, but in both cases trying to disguise
+their essential flatness and commonness in a garb of
+dogmatic formalism.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.42"
+ name="fna.xvi.42" id="fna.xvi.42">42</a></sup> Such an opinion, evidencing a conflict
+between two intellectual guides, staggered me, and it
+was with some curiosity that I looked subsequently, when
+the <cite>Index to Periodicals</cite> came out, to see who had the temerity
+thus to belittle Spencer&mdash;the greatest political philosopher,
+so some of his disciples thought, since Aristotle.
+I ascertained that the writer of the review was James Bryce,
+and whatever else might be thought, it could not be denied
+that the controversy was one between giants. I can, I
+think, date the beginning of my emancipation from Spencer
+from that review in 1891.</p>
+
+<p>In the same year I read a discriminating eulogy of George
+<a name="png.302" id="png.302"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">294</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Bancroft, ending with an intelligent criticism of his history,
+which produced on me a marked impression. The reviewer
+wrote: Bancroft falls into &ldquo;that error so common with the
+graphic school of historians&mdash;the exaggerated estimate of
+manuscripts or fragmentary material at the expense of what
+is printed and permanent&hellip;. But a fault far more serious
+than this is one which Mr. Bancroft shared with his
+historical contemporaries, but in which he far exceeded any
+of them&mdash;an utter ignoring of the very meaning and
+significance of a quotation mark.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.43"
+ name="fna.xvi.43" id="fna.xvi.43">43</a></sup> Sound and scientific
+doctrine is this; and the whole article exhibited a thorough
+knowledge of our colonial and revolutionary history which
+inspired confidence in the conclusions of the writer, who, I
+later ascertained, was Thomas Wentworth Higginson.</p>
+
+<p>These two examples could be multiplied at length. There
+were many reviewers from Harvard and Yale; and undoubtedly
+other Eastern colleges were well represented. The
+University of Wisconsin furnished at least one contributor,
+as probably did the University of Michigan and other Western
+colleges. Men in Washington, New York, and Boston, not
+in academic life, were drawn upon; a soldier of the Civil War,
+living in Cincinnati, a man of affairs, sent many reviews.
+James Bryce was an occasional contributor, and at least
+three notable reviews came from the pen of Albert V. Dicey.
+In 1885, Godkin, in speaking of <cite>The Nation&#8217;s</cite> department of
+Literature and Art, wrote that &ldquo;the list of those who have
+contributed to the columns of the paper from the first issue
+to the present day contains a large number of the most
+eminent names in American literature, science, art, philosophy,
+and law.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.44"
+ name="fna.xvi.44" id="fna.xvi.44">44</a></sup> With men so gifted, and chosen from
+all parts of the country, uniformly destructive criticism
+could not have prevailed. Among them were optimists as
+<a name="png.303" id="png.303"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">295</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>well as pessimists, and men as independent in thought as
+was Godkin himself.</p>
+
+<p>Believing that Godkin&#8217;s thirty-five years of critical work
+was of great benefit to this country, I have sometimes asked
+myself whether the fact of his being a foreigner has made
+it more irritating to many good people, who term his criticism
+&ldquo;fault-finding&rdquo; or &ldquo;scolding.&rdquo; Although he married
+in America and his home life was centered here, he confessed
+that in many essential things it was a foreign country.<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.45"
+ name="fna.xvi.45" id="fna.xvi.45">45</a></sup>
+Some readers who admired <cite>The Nation</cite> told Mr. Bryce that
+they did not want &ldquo;to be taught by a European how to run
+this republic.&rdquo; But Bryce, who in this matter is the most
+competent of judges, intimates that Godkin&#8217;s foreign education,
+giving him detachment and perspective, was a distinct
+advantage. If it will help any one to a better appreciation
+of the man, let Godkin be regarded as &ldquo;a chiel amang
+us takin&#8217; notes&rdquo;; as an observer not so philosophic as
+Tocqueville, not so genial and sympathetic as Bryce. Yet,
+whether we look upon him as an Irishman, an Englishman,
+or an American, let us rejoice that he cast his lot with us,
+and that we have had the benefit of his illuminating pen.
+He was not always right; he was sometimes unjust; he often
+told the truth with &ldquo;needless asperity,&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.46"
+ name="fna.xvi.46" id="fna.xvi.46">46</a></sup> as Parkman put
+it; but his merits so outweighed his defects that he had a
+marked influence on opinion, and probably on history,
+during his thirty-five years of journalistic work, when, according
+to James Bryce, he showed a courage such as is
+rare everywhere.<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.47"
+ name="fna.xvi.47" id="fna.xvi.47">47</a></sup> General J.&nbsp;D. Cox, who had not missed
+a number of <cite>The Nation</cite> from 1865 to 1899, wrote to Godkin,
+on hearing of his prospective retirement from the <cite>Evening
+Post</cite>, &ldquo;I really believe that earnest men, all over the land,
+whether they agree with you or differ, will unite in the
+<a name="png.304" id="png.304"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">296</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>exclamation which Lincoln made as to Grant, &lsquo;We can&#8217;t
+spare this man&mdash;he <span class="rthinsp"><em>fights</em>.&rsquo;</span>&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.48"
+ name="fna.xvi.48" id="fna.xvi.48">48</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Our country, wrapped up in no smug complacency, listened
+to this man, respected him and supported him, and
+on his death a number of people were glad to unite to endow
+a lectureship in his honor in Harvard University.</p>
+
+<p>In closing, I cannot do better than quote what may be
+called Godkin&#8217;s farewell words, printed forty days before
+the attack of cerebral hemorrhage which ended his active
+career. &ldquo;The election of the chief officer of the state by
+universal suffrage,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;by a nation approaching one
+hundred millions, is not simply a novelty in the history of
+man&#8217;s efforts to govern himself, but an experiment of which
+no one can foresee the result. The mass is yearly becoming
+more and more difficult to move. The old arts of persuasion
+are already ceasing to be employed on it. Presidential
+elections are less and less carried by speeches and articles.
+The American people is a less instructed people than it
+used to be. The necessity for drilling, organizing, and guiding
+it, in order to extract the vote from it is becoming plain;
+and out of this necessity has arisen the boss system, which
+is now found in existence everywhere, is growing more
+powerful, and has thus far resisted all attempts to overthrow
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I shall not stop to urge a qualification of some of these
+statements, but will proceed to the brighter side of our case,
+which Godkin, even in his pessimistic mood, could not fail
+to see distinctly. &ldquo;On the other hand,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I
+think the progress made by the colleges throughout the
+country, big and little, both in the quality of the instruction
+and in the amount of money devoted to books,
+laboratories, and educational facilities of all kinds, is
+<a name="png.305" id="png.305"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">297</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>something unparalleled in the history of the civilized world.
+And the progress of the nation in all the arts, except that of
+government, in science, in literature, in commerce, in invention,
+is something unprecedented and becomes daily more
+astonishing. How it is that this splendid progress does not
+drag on politics with it I do not profess to know.&rdquo;<sup><a href="#fn.xvi.49"
+ name="fna.xvi.49" id="fna.xvi.49">49</a></sup></p>
+
+<p>Let us be as hopeful as was Godkin in his earlier days, and
+rest assured that intellectual training will eventually exert
+its power in politics, as it has done in business and in other
+domains of active life.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.1" id="fn.xvi.1" href="#fna.xvi.1">1</a>
+ R. Ogden&#8217;s Life and Letters of E.&nbsp;L. Godkin, I, 255.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.2" id="fn.xvi.2" href="#fna.xvi.2">2</a>
+ Rhodes&#8217;s History of the United States, II, 72 (C.&nbsp;M. Depew).</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.3" id="fn.xvi.3" href="#fna.xvi.3">3</a>
+ Ogden, II, 88.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.4" id="fn.xvi.4" href="#fna.xvi.4">4</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 257.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.5" id="fn.xvi.5" href="#fna.xvi.5">5</a>
+  Parton&#8217;s Greeley, 331, 576; my own recollections; Ogden, I, 255.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.6" id="fn.xvi.6" href="#fna.xvi.6">6</a>
+  Godkin, Random Recollections, <cite>Evening Post</cite>, December 30, 1899.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.7" id="fn.xvi.7" href="#fna.xvi.7">7</a>
+ Ogden, I, 168.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.8" id="fn.xvi.8" href="#fna.xvi.8">8</a>
+ Ogden, I, 221, 249, 251, 252; II, 222, 231.</p>
+
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvi.9" id="fn.xvi.9" href="#fna.xvi.9">9</a>
+ Letters of J.&nbsp;R. Lowell, II, 76.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.10" id="fn.xvi.10" href="#fna.xvi.10">10</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 368.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.11" id="fn.xvi.11" href="#fna.xvi.11">11</a>
+ Ogden, I, 1.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.12" id="fn.xvi.12" href="#fna.xvi.12">12</a>
+ <cite>Evening Post</cite>, December 30, 1899; <ins class="TNsilent" title="Transcriber's note:
+  original reads 'Odgen'">Ogden</ins>, I, 11.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.13" id="fn.xvi.13" href="#fna.xvi.13">13</a>
+ <cite>Evening Post</cite>, December 30, 1899.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.14" id="fn.xvi.14" href="#fna.xvi.14">14</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>; Ogden, I, 113.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.15" id="fn.xvi.15" href="#fna.xvi.15">15</a>
+ <cite>Evening Post</cite>, December 30, 1899; Ogden, I, <em>passim</em>;
+ <cite>The Nation</cite>, June 25, 1885, May 23, 1902.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.16" id="fn.xvi.16" href="#fna.xvi.16">16</a>
+ Ogden, II, Chap. XVII.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.17" id="fn.xvi.17" href="#fna.xvi.17">17</a>
+ Ogden, II, Chap. XI.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.18" id="fn.xvi.18" href="#fna.xvi.18">18</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 51.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.19" id="fn.xvi.19" href="#fna.xvi.19">19</a>
+ Studies in Contemporary Biography, 372.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.20" id="fn.xvi.20" href="#fna.xvi.20">20</a>
+ Tacitus, History, I, 1.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.21" id="fn.xvi.21" href="#fna.xvi.21">21</a>
+ Republic.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.22" id="fn.xvi.22" href="#fna.xvi.22">22</a>
+ June 23, Rhodes, VI, 382.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.23" id="fn.xvi.23" href="#fna.xvi.23">23</a>
+ Ogden, II, 66.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.24" id="fn.xvi.24" href="#fna.xvi.24">24</a>
+ Ogden, II, 140.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.25" id="fn.xvi.25" href="#fna.xvi.25">25</a>
+ Problems of Modern Democracy, 209.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.26" id="fn.xvi.26" href="#fna.xvi.26">26</a>
+ Ogden, II, 199.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.27" id="fn.xvi.27" href="#fna.xvi.27">27</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 202.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.28" id="fn.xvi.28" href="#fna.xvi.28">28</a>
+ Random Recollections, <cite>Evening Post</cite>, December 30, 1899.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.29" id="fn.xvi.29" href="#fna.xvi.29">29</a>
+ Ogden, II, 202.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.30" id="fn.xvi.30" href="#fna.xvi.30">30</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 214.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.31" id="fn.xvi.31" href="#fna.xvi.31">31</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 238.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.32" id="fn.xvi.32" href="#fna.xvi.32">32</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 219.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.33" id="fn.xvi.33" href="#fna.xvi.33">33</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 237.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.34" id="fn.xvi.34" href="#fna.xvi.34">34</a>
+ Biographical Studies, 378.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.35" id="fn.xvi.35" href="#fna.xvi.35">35</a>
+ Ogden, I, 301, 307.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.36" id="fn.xvi.36" href="#fna.xvi.36">36</a>
+ Life and Letters, II, 485.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.37" id="fn.xvi.37" href="#fna.xvi.37">37</a>
+ Random Recollections, <cite>Evening Post</cite>, December 30, 1899.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.38" id="fn.xvi.38" href="#fna.xvi.38">38</a>
+ Ogden, II, 30, 136, 213, 214, 247, 253.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.39" id="fn.xvi.39" href="#fna.xvi.39">39</a>
+ Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, 117.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.40" id="fn.xvi.40" href="#fna.xvi.40">40</a>
+ Ogden, II, 51.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.41" id="fn.xvi.41" href="#fna.xvi.41">41</a>
+ Essays, 38.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.42" id="fn.xvi.42" href="#fna.xvi.42">42</a>
+ Vol. 52, p. 267.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.43" id="fn.xvi.43" href="#fna.xvi.43">43</a>
+ Vol. 52, p. 66.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.44" id="fn.xvi.44" href="#fna.xvi.44">44</a>
+ June 25, 1885.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.45" id="fn.xvi.45" href="#fna.xvi.45">45</a>
+ Ogden, II, 116.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.46" id="fn.xvi.46" href="#fna.xvi.46">46</a>
+ <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 252.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.47" id="fn.xvi.47" href="#fna.xvi.47">47</a>
+ Biographical Studies, 370.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.48" id="fn.xvi.48" href="#fna.xvi.48">48</a>
+ Ogden, II, 229.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fn.xvi.49" id="fn.xvi.49" href="#fna.xvi.49">49</a>
+ <cite>Evening Post</cite>, December 30, 1899.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="divider">
+
+<h2><a name="png.307" id="png.307"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">299</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>WHO BURNED COLUMBIA?</h2>
+
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+November meeting of 1901, and printed in the <cite>American Historical
+Review</cite> of April, 1902.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.309" id="png.309"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">301</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>WHO BURNED COLUMBIA?</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> story goes that when General Sherman lived in New
+York City, which was during the last five years of his life,
+he attended one night a dinner party at which he and an
+ex-Confederate general who had fought against him in the
+southwest were the chief guests; and that an Englishman
+present asked in perfect innocence the question, Who
+burned Columbia? Had bombshells struck the tents of
+these generals during the war, they would not have caused
+half the commotion in their breasts that did this question
+put solely with the desire of information. The emphatic
+language of Sherman interlarded with the oaths he uttered
+spontaneously, the bitter charges of the Confederate, the
+pounding of the table, the dancing of the glasses, told the
+Englishman that the bloody chasm had not been entirely
+filled. With a little variation and with some figurative
+meaning, he might have used the words of Iago: &ldquo;Friends all
+but now, even now in peace; and then but now as if some
+planet had outwitted men, tilting at one another&#8217;s breast in
+opposition. I cannot speak any beginning to this peevish
+odds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the question which disturbed the New York dinner
+party is a delight to the historian. Feeling that history may
+be known best when there are most documents, he may derive
+the greatest pleasure from a perusal of the mass of evidence
+bearing on this disputed point; and if he is of Northern
+birth he ought to approach the subject with absolute candor.
+Of a Southerner who had himself lost property or
+<a name="png.310" id="png.310"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">302</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>whose parents had lost property, through Sherman&#8217;s campaign
+of invasion, it would be asking too much to expect
+him to consider this subject in a judicial spirit. Even Trent,
+a moderate and impartial Southern writer whose tone is a
+lesson to us all, when referring, in his life of William Gilmore
+Simms, to &ldquo;the much vexed question, Who burned Columbia,&rdquo;
+used words of the sternest condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>Sherman, with his army of 60,000, left Savannah February
+1, 1865, and reached the neighborhood of Columbia February
+16. The next day Columbia was evacuated by the Confederates,
+occupied by troops of the fifteenth corps of the Federal
+army, and by the morning of the 18th either three
+fifths or two thirds of the town lay in ashes. The facts
+contained in these two sentences are almost the only ones
+undisputed. We shall consider this episode most curiously
+if we take first Sherman&#8217;s account, then Wade Hampton&#8217;s,
+ending with what I conceive to be a true relation.</p>
+
+<p>The city was surrendered by the mayor and three aldermen
+to Colonel George A. Stone at the head of his brigade.
+Soon afterwards Sherman and Howard, the commander of
+the right wing of the army, rode into the city; they observed
+piles of cotton burning, and Union soldiers and citizens working
+to extinguish the fire, which was partially subdued.
+Let Sherman speak for himself in the first account that he
+wrote, which was his report of April 4, 1865: &ldquo;Before one
+single public building had been fired by order, the smouldering
+fires [cotton] set by Hampton&#8217;s order were rekindled
+by the wind, and communicated to the buildings around.
+[Wade Hampton commanded the Confederate cavalry.]
+About dark they began to spread, and got beyond the
+control of the brigade on duty within the city. The whole
+of Woods&#8217; division was brought in, but it was found impossible
+to check the flames, which, by midnight, had become
+<a name="png.311" id="png.311"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">303</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>unmanageable, and raged until about 4&nbsp;<span class="smcap lc">A.M.</span>, when the
+wind subsiding, they were got under control.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was up nearly all night, and saw Generals Howard,
+Logan, Woods, and others, laboring to save houses and protect
+families thus suddenly deprived of shelter, and even of
+bedding and wearing apparel. I disclaim on the part of
+my army any agency in this fire, but, on the contrary, claim
+that we saved what of Columbia remains unconsumed. And
+without hesitation I charge General Wade Hampton with
+having burned his own city of Columbia, not with a malicious
+intent or as the manifestation of a silly &lsquo;Roman stoicism,&rsquo;
+but from folly, and want of sense, in filling it with
+lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty
+worked well to extinguish the flames; but others not on
+duty, including the officers who had long been imprisoned
+there, rescued by us, may have assisted in spreading the fire
+after it had once begun, and may have indulged in unconcealed
+joy to see the ruin of the capital of South Carolina.&rdquo;
+Howard, in his report, with some modification agrees with
+his chief, and the account in &ldquo;The March to the Sea&rdquo; of
+General Cox, whose experience and training fitted him well
+to weigh the evidence, gives at least a partial confirmation
+to Sherman&#8217;s theory of the origin of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>I have not, however, discovered sufficient evidence to
+support the assertion of Sherman that Wade Hampton
+ordered the cotton in the streets of Columbia to be burned.
+Nor do I believe Sherman knew a single fact on which he
+might base so positive a statement.<sup><a href="#fn.xvii.1"
+ name="fna.xvii.1" id="fna.xvii.1">1</a></sup> It had generally been
+the custom for the Confederates in their retreat to burn
+<a name="png.312" id="png.312"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">304</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>cotton to prevent its falling into the hands of the invading
+army, and because such was the general rule Sherman
+assumed that it had been applied in this particular case. This
+assumption suited his interest, as he sought a victim to whom
+he might charge the burning of Columbia. His statement
+in his &ldquo;Memoirs,&rdquo; published in 1875, is a delicious bit of historical
+naïveté. &ldquo;In my official report of this conflagration,&rdquo;
+he wrote, &ldquo;I distinctly charged it to General Wade
+Hampton, and confess I did so pointedly, to shake the faith
+of his people in him, for he was in my opinion boastful and
+professed to be the special champion of South Carolina.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Instead of Hampton giving an order to burn the cotton,
+I am satisfied that he urged Beauregard, the general in command,
+to issue an order that this cotton should not be burned,
+lest the fire might spread to the shops and houses, which for
+the most part were built of wood, and I am further satisfied
+that such an order was given. Unfortunately the evidence
+for this is not contemporary. No such order is printed in the
+&ldquo;Official Records,&rdquo; and I am advised from the War Department
+that no such order has been found. The nearest evidence
+to the time which I have discovered is a letter of
+Wade Hampton of April 21, 1866, and one of Beauregard
+of May 2, 1866. Since these dates, there is an abundance
+of evidence, some of it sworn testimony, and while it is mixed
+up with inaccurate statements on another point, and all of it
+is of the nature of recollections, I cannot resist the conclusion
+that Beauregard and Hampton gave such an order.
+It was unquestionably the wise thing to do. There was absolutely
+no object in burning the cotton, as the Federal
+troops could not carry it with them and could not ship it to
+any seaport which was under Union control.</p>
+
+<p>An order of Beauregard issued two days after the burning of
+Columbia and printed in the &ldquo;Official Records&rdquo; shows that
+<a name="png.313" id="png.313"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">305</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the policy of burning cotton to keep it out of the hands of
+Sherman&#8217;s army had been abandoned. Sherman&#8217;s charge,
+then, that Wade Hampton burned Columbia, falls to the
+ground. The other part of his account, in which he maintained
+that the fire spread to the buildings from the smoldering
+cotton rekindled by the wind, which was blowing a
+gale, deserves more respect. His report saying that he
+saw cotton afire in the streets was written April 4, 1865,
+and Howard&#8217;s in which the same fact is stated was written
+April 1, very soon after the event, when their recollection
+would be fresh. All of the Southern evidence (except one
+statement, the most important of all) is to the effect that
+no cotton was burning until after the Federal troops
+entered the city. Many Southerners in their testimony
+before the British and American mixed commission under
+examination and cross-examination swear to this; and
+Wade Hampton swears that he was one of the last Confederates
+to leave the city, and that, when he left, no cotton
+was afire, and he knew that it was not fired by his men.
+But this testimony was taken in 1872 and 1873, and may be
+balanced by the sworn testimony of Sherman, Howard, and
+other Union officers before the same commission in 1872.</p>
+
+<p>The weight of the evidence already referred to would
+seem to me to show that cotton was afire when the Federal
+troops entered Columbia, but a contemporary statement of
+a Confederate officer puts it beyond doubt. Major Chambliss,
+who was endeavoring to secure the means of transportation
+for the Confederate ordnance and ordnance stores,
+wrote, in a letter of February 20, that at three o&#8217;clock on
+the morning of February 17, which was a number of hours
+before the Union soldiers entered Columbia, &ldquo;the city was
+illuminated with burning cotton.&rdquo; But it does not follow
+that the burning cotton in the streets of Columbia was the
+<a name="png.314" id="png.314"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">306</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>cause of the fire which destroyed the city. When we come
+to the probably correct account of the incident, we shall see
+that the preponderance of the evidence points to another
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>February 27, ten days after the fire, Wade Hampton, in a
+letter to Sherman, charged him with having permitted the
+burning of Columbia, if he did not order it directly; and this
+has been iterated later by many Southern writers. The
+correspondence between Halleck and Sherman is cited to
+show premeditation on the part of the general. &ldquo;Should
+you capture Charleston,&rdquo; wrote Halleck, December 18, 1864,
+&ldquo;I hope that by some accident the place may be destroyed,
+and if a little salt should be sown upon the site it may prevent
+the growth of future crops of nullification and secession.&rdquo;
+Sherman thus replied six days later: &ldquo;I will bear in mind
+your hint as to Charleston, and don&#8217;t think salt will be
+necessary. When I move, the Fifteenth Corps will be on the
+right of the Right Wing, and their position will bring them
+naturally into Charleston first; and if you have watched the
+history of that corps you will have remarked that they generally
+do their work up pretty well. The truth is, the whole
+army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance
+on South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel
+that she deserves all that seems in store for her&hellip;. I
+look upon Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The evidence from many points of view corroborating
+this statement of the feeling of the army towards South
+Carolina is ample. The rank and file of Sherman&#8217;s army
+were men of some education and intelligence; they were
+accustomed to discuss public matters, weigh reasons, and
+draw conclusions. They thought that South Carolina had
+brought on the Civil War, was responsible for the cost and
+bloodshed of it, and no punishment for her could be too
+<a name="png.315" id="png.315"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">307</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>severe. That was likewise the sentiment of the officers. A characteristic
+expression of the feeling may be found in a home
+letter of Colonel Charles F. Morse, of the second Massachusetts,
+who speaks of the &ldquo;miserable, rebellious State of South
+Carolina.&rdquo; &ldquo;Pity for these inhabitants,&rdquo; he further writes,
+&ldquo;I have none. In the first place, they are rebels, and I am
+almost prepared to agree with Sherman that a rebel has no
+rights, not even the right to live except by our permission.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is no wonder, then, that Southern writers, smarting at
+the loss caused by Sherman&#8217;s campaign of invasion, should
+believe that Sherman connived at the destruction of Columbia.
+But they are wrong in that belief. The general&#8217;s
+actions were not so bad as his words. Before his troops
+made their entrance he issued this order: &ldquo;General Howard
+will &hellip; occupy Columbia, destroy the public buildings,
+railroad property, manufacturing and machine shops, but
+will spare libraries and asylums and private dwellings.&rdquo;
+That Sherman was entirely sincere when he gave this order,
+and that his general officers endeavored to carry it out cannot
+be questioned. A statement which he made under oath
+in 1872 indicates that he did not connive at the destruction
+of Columbia. &ldquo;If I had made up my mind to burn Columbia,&rdquo;
+he declared, &ldquo;I would have burnt it with no more feeling
+than I would a common prairie dog village; but I did
+not do it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Other words of his exhibit without disguise his feelings
+in regard to the occurrence which the South has regarded as
+a piece of wanton mischief. &ldquo;The ulterior and strategic
+advantages of the occupation of Columbia are seen now
+clearly by the result,&rdquo; said Sherman under oath. &ldquo;The
+burning of the private dwellings, though never designed by
+me, was a trifling matter compared with the manifold results
+that soon followed. Though I never ordered it and never
+<a name="png.316" id="png.316"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">308</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>wished it, I have never shed many tears over the event,
+because I believe it hastened what we all fought for, the end
+of the war.&rdquo; It is true that he feared previous to their entry
+the burning of Columbia by his soldiers, owing to their
+&ldquo;deep-seated feeling of hostility&rdquo; to the town, but no general
+of such an army during such a campaign of invasion
+would have refused them the permission to occupy the capital
+city of South Carolina. &ldquo;I could have had them stay
+in the ranks,&rdquo; he declared, &ldquo;but I would not have done it
+under the circumstances to save Columbia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Historical and legal canons for weighing evidence are not
+the same. It is a satisfaction, however, when after the investigation
+of any case they lead to the same decision. The
+members of the British and American mixed commission
+(an Englishman, an American, and the Italian Minister at
+Washington), having to adjudicate upon claims for &ldquo;property
+alleged to have been destroyed by the burning of
+Columbia, on the allegation that that city was wantonly fired
+by the army of General Sherman, either under his orders
+or with his consent and permission,&rdquo; disallowed all the
+claims, &ldquo;all the commissioners agreeing.&rdquo; While they were
+not called upon to deliver a formal opinion in the case,
+the American agent was advised &ldquo;that the commissioners
+were unanimous in the conclusion that the conflagration
+which destroyed Columbia was not to be ascribed to either
+the intention or default of either the Federal or Confederate
+officers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To recapitulate, then, what I think I have established:
+Sherman&#8217;s account and that of the Union writers who follow
+him cannot be accepted as history. Neither is the version
+of Wade Hampton and the Southern writers worthy of
+credence. Let me now give what I am convinced is the
+true relation. My authorities are the contemporary
+<a name="png.317" id="png.317"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">309</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>accounts of six Federal officers, whose names will appear when
+the evidence is presented in detail; the report of Major
+Chambliss of the Confederate army; &ldquo;The Sack and Destruction
+of Columbia,&rdquo; a series of articles in the <cite>Columbia
+Ph&oelig;nix</cite>, written by William Gilmore Simms and printed a
+little over a month after the event; and a letter written
+from Charlotte, February 22, to the <cite>Richmond Whig</cite>, by
+F.&nbsp;G. de&nbsp;F., who remained in Columbia until the day before
+the entrance of the Union troops.</p>
+
+<p>Two days before the entrance of the Federal troops,
+Columbia was placed under martial law, but this did not
+prevent some riotous conduct after nightfall and a number
+of highway robberies; stores were also broken into and
+robbed. There was great disorder and confusion in the
+preparations of the inhabitants for flight; it was a frantic
+attempt to get themselves and their portable belongings
+away before the enemy should enter the city. &ldquo;A party
+of Wheeler&#8217;s Cavalry,&rdquo; wrote F.&nbsp;G. de&nbsp;F. to the <cite>Richmond
+Whig</cite>, &ldquo;accompanied by their officers dashed into town
+[February 16], tied their horses, and as systematically as if
+they had been bred to the business, proceeded to break into
+the stores along Main Street and rob them of their contents.&rdquo;
+Early in the morning of the 17th, the South Carolina railroad
+depot took fire through the reckless operations of a
+band of greedy plunderers, who while engaged in robbing
+&ldquo;the stores of merchants and planters, trunks of treasure,
+wares and goods of fugitives,&rdquo; sent there awaiting shipment,
+fired, by the careless use of their lights, a train leading to a
+number of kegs of powder; the explosion which followed
+killed many of the thieves and set fire to the building.
+Major Chambliss, who was endeavoring to secure the means
+of transportation for the Confederate ordnance and ordnance
+stores, wrote: &ldquo;The straggling cavalry and rabble
+<a name="png.318" id="png.318"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">310</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>were stripping the warehouses and railroad depots. The
+city was in the wildest terror.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When the Union soldiers of Colonel Stone&#8217;s brigade entered
+the city, they were at once supplied by citizens and
+negroes with large quantities of intoxicating liquor, brought
+to them in cups, bottles, demijohns, and buckets. Many
+had been without supper, and all of them without sleep the
+night before, and none had eaten breakfast that morning.
+They were soon drunk, excited, and unmanageable. The
+stragglers and &ldquo;bummers,&rdquo; who had increased during the
+march through South Carolina, were now attracted by the
+opportunity for plunder and swelled the crowd. Union
+prisoners of war had escaped from their places of confinement
+in the city and suburbs, and joining their comrades were
+eager to avenge their real or fancied injuries. Convicts in the
+jail had in some manner been released. The pillage of shops
+and houses and the robbing of men in the streets began soon
+after the entrance of the army. The officers tried to preserve
+discipline. Colonel Stone ordered all the liquor to
+be destroyed, and furnished guards for the private property
+of citizens and for the public buildings; but the extent of
+the disorder and plundering during the day was probably
+not appreciated by Sherman and those high in command.
+Stone was hampered in his efforts to preserve order by the
+smallness of his force for patrol duty and by the drunkenness
+of his men. In fact, the condition of his men was such that
+at eight o&#8217;clock in the evening they were relieved from provost
+duty, and a brigade of the same division, who had been
+encamped outside of the city during the day, took their
+place. But the mob of convicts, escaped Union prisoners,
+stragglers and &ldquo;bummers,&rdquo; drunken soldiers and negroes,
+Union soldiers who were eager to take vengeance on South
+Carolina, could not be controlled. The sack of the city
+<a name="png.319" id="png.319"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">311</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>went on, and when darkness came, the torch was applied to
+many houses; the high wind carried the flames from building
+to building, until the best part of Columbia&mdash;a city of
+eight thousand inhabitants&mdash;was destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Stone wrote, two days afterwards: &ldquo;About eight
+o&#8217;clock the city was fired in a number of places by some
+of our escaped prisoners and citizens.&rdquo; &ldquo;I am satisfied,&rdquo;
+said General W.&nbsp;B. Woods, commander of the brigade that
+relieved Stone, in his report of March 26, &ldquo;by statements
+made to me by respectable citizens of the town, that the
+fire was first set by the negro inhabitants.&rdquo; General C.&nbsp;R.
+Woods, commander of the first division, fifteenth corps,
+wrote, February 21: &ldquo;The town was fired in several different
+places by the villains that had that day been improperly
+freed from their confinement in the town prison. The town
+itself was full of drunken negroes and the vilest vagabond
+soldiers, the veriest scum of the entire army being collected
+in the streets.&rdquo; The very night of the conflagration he
+spoke of the efforts &ldquo;to arrest the countless villains of every
+command that were roaming over the streets.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>General Logan, commander of the fifteenth corps, said,
+in his report of March 31: &ldquo;The citizens had so crazed our
+men with liquor that it was almost impossible to control
+them. The scenes in Columbia that night were terrible.
+Some fiend first applied the torch, and the wild flames leaped
+from house to house and street to street, until the lower
+and business part of the city was wrapped in flames.
+Frightened citizens rushed in every direction, and the reeling
+incendiaries dashed, torch in hand, from street to street,
+spreading dismay wherever they went.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some escaped prisoners,&rdquo; wrote General Howard, commander
+of the right wing, April 1, &ldquo;convicts from the penitentiary
+just broken open, army followers, and drunken
+<a name="png.320" id="png.320"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">312</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>soldiers ran through house after house, and were doubtless
+guilty of all manner of villainies, and it is these men that I
+presume set new fires farther and farther to the windward
+in the northern part of the city. Old men, women, and
+children, with everything they could get, were herded together
+in the streets. At some places we found officers and
+kind-hearted soldiers protecting families from the insults
+and roughness of the careless. Meanwhile the flames made
+fearful ravages, and magnificent residences and churches
+were consumed in a very few minutes.&rdquo; All these quotations
+are from Federal officers who were witnesses of the
+scene and who wrote their accounts shortly after the event,
+without collusion or dictation. They wrote too before they
+knew that the question, Who burned Columbia? would
+be an irritating one in after years. These accounts are
+therefore the best of evidence. Nor does the acceptance
+of any one of them imply the exclusion of the others. All
+may be believed, leading us to the conclusion that all the
+classes named had a hand in the sack and destruction of
+Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>When the fire was well under way, Sherman appeared on
+the scene, but gave no orders. Nor was it necessary, for
+Generals Howard, Logan, Woods, and others were laboring
+earnestly to prevent the spread of the conflagration. By
+their efforts and by the change and subsidence of wind, the
+fire in the early morning of February 18 was stayed. Columbia,
+wrote General Howard, was little &ldquo;except a blackened
+surface peopled with numerous chimneys and an occasional
+house that had been spared as if by a miracle.&rdquo;
+Science, history, and art might mourn at the loss they sustained
+in the destruction of the house of Dr. Gibbes, an
+antiquary and naturalist, a scientific acquaintance, if not a
+friend, of Agassiz. His large library, portfolios of fine
+<a name="png.321" id="png.321"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">313</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>engravings, two hundred paintings, a remarkable cabinet of
+Southern fossils, a collection of sharks&#8217; teeth, &ldquo;pronounced
+by Agassiz to be the finest in the world,&rdquo; relics of our aborigines
+and others from Mexico, &ldquo;his collection of historical
+documents, original correspondence of the Revolution, especially
+that of South Carolina,&rdquo; were all burned.</p>
+
+<p>The story of quelling the disorder is told by General
+Oliver: &ldquo;February 18, at 4&nbsp;<span class="smcap lc">A.M.</span>, the Third Brigade was
+called out to suppress riot; did so, killing 2 men, wounding
+30 and arresting 370.&rdquo; It is worthy of note that, despite
+the reign of lawlessness during the night, very few, if any,
+outrages were committed on women.</p>
+
+<hr class="footnote" />
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="i"><a name="fn.xvii.1" id="fn.xvii.1" href="#fna.xvii.1">1</a>
+In a letter presented to the Senate of the United States (some while
+before April 21, 1866) Sherman said, &ldquo;I saw in your Columbia newspaper the
+printed order of General Wade Hampton that on the approach of the Yankee
+army all the cotton should be burned&rdquo; (<cite>South. Hist. Soc. Papers</cite>, VII, 156).</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="divider">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.323" id="png.323"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">315</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL</h2>
+
+
+<p>A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the
+January meeting of 1898, and printed in the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite> of
+June, 1898.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chap">
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.325" id="png.325"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">317</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> most notable contributions to the historical literature
+of England during the year 1897 are two volumes by
+Samuel R. Gardiner: the Oxford lectures, &ldquo;Cromwell&#8217;s Place
+in History,&rdquo; published in the spring; and the second volume
+of &ldquo;History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,&rdquo; which
+appeared in the autumn. These present what is probably
+a new view of Cromwell.</p>
+
+<p>If one loves a country or an historic epoch, it is natural
+for the mind to seek a hero to represent it. We are fortunate
+in having Washington and Lincoln, whose characters
+and whose lives sum up well the periods in which they were
+our benefactors. But if we look upon our history as being
+the continuation of a branch of that of England, who is the
+political hero in the nation from which we sprang who represents
+a great principle or idea that we love to cherish?
+Hampden might answer if only we knew more about him.
+It occurs to me that Gray, in his poem which is read and
+conned from boyhood to old age, has done more than any
+one else to spread abroad the fame of Hampden. Included
+in the same stanza with Milton and with Cromwell, he seems
+to the mere reader of the poem to occupy the same place in
+history. In truth, however, as Mr. Gardiner writes, &ldquo;it is
+remarkable how little can be discovered about Hampden.
+All that is known is to his credit, but his greatness appears
+from the impression he created upon others more than from
+the circumstances of his own life as they have been handed
+down to us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.326" id="png.326"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">318</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The minds of American boys educated under Puritan
+influences before and during the war of secession accordingly
+turned to Cromwell. Had our Puritan ancestors remained
+at home till the civil war in England, they would have fought
+under the great Oliver, and it is natural that their descendants
+should venerate him. All young men of the period
+of which I am speaking, who were interested in history,
+read Macaulay, the first volume of whose history appeared
+in 1848, and they found in Cromwell a hero to their liking.
+Carlyle&#8217;s Cromwell was published three years before, and
+those who could digest stronger food found the great man
+therein portrayed a chosen one of God to lead his people in
+the right path. Everybody echoed the thought of Carlyle
+when he averred that ten years more of Oliver Cromwell&#8217;s
+life would have given another history to all the centuries of
+England.</p>
+
+<p>In these two volumes Gardiner presents a different conception
+of Cromwell from that of Carlyle and Macaulay,
+and in greater detail. We arrive at Gardiner&#8217;s notion
+by degrees, being prepared by the reversal of some of
+our pretty well established opinions about the Puritans.
+Macaulay&#8217;s epigrammatic sentence touching their attitude
+towards amusements undoubtedly colored the opinions of
+men for at least a generation. &ldquo;The Puritan hated bear-baiting,&rdquo;
+he says, &ldquo;not because it gave pain to the bear, but
+because it gave pleasure to the spectators.&rdquo; How coolly
+Gardiner disposes of this well-turned rhetorical phrase:
+&ldquo;The order for the complete suppression of bear-baiting
+and bull-baiting at Southwark and elsewhere was grounded,
+not, as has been often repeated, on Puritan aversion to
+amusements giving &lsquo;pleasure to the spectators,&rsquo; but upon
+Puritan disgust at the immorality which these exhibitions
+fostered.&rdquo; Again he writes: &ldquo;Zealous as were the leaders
+<a name="png.327" id="png.327"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">319</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of the Commonwealth in the suppression of vice, they displayed
+but little of that sour austerity with which they have
+frequently been credited. On his way to Dunbar, Cromwell
+laughed heartily at the sight of one soldier overturning
+a full cream tub and slamming it down on the head of another,
+whilst on his return from Worcester he spent a day
+hawking in the fields near Aylesbury. &lsquo;Oliver,&rsquo; we hear,
+&lsquo;loved an innocent jest.&rsquo; Music and song were cultivated
+in his family. If the graver Puritans did not admit what has
+been called &lsquo;promiscuous dancing&rsquo; into their households,
+they made no attempt to prohibit it elsewhere.&rdquo; In the
+spring of 1651 appeared the &ldquo;English Dancing Master,&rdquo; containing
+rules for country dances, and the tunes by which
+they were to be accompanied.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay&#8217;s description of Cromwell&#8217;s army has so pervaded
+our literature as to be accepted as historic truth;
+and J.&nbsp;R. Green, acute as he was, seems, consciously or
+unconsciously, to have been affected by it, which is not a
+matter of wonderment, indeed, for such is its rhetorical
+force that it leaves an impression hard to be obliterated.
+Macaulay writes: &ldquo;That which chiefly distinguished the
+army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality
+and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged
+by the most zealous Royalists that in that singular
+camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was
+seen, and that during the long dominion of the soldiery the
+property of the peaceable citizen and the honor of woman
+were held sacred. If outrages were committed, they were
+outrages of a very different kind from those of which a
+victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained
+of the rough gallantry of the redcoats; not an ounce
+of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths; but
+a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and
+<a name="png.328" id="png.328"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">320</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement
+which it required the utmost exertions of the officers
+to quell. One of Cromwell&#8217;s chief difficulties was to
+restrain his musketeers and dragoons from invading by
+main force the pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use
+the language of that time, were not savory.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What a different impression we get from Gardiner!
+&ldquo;Much that has been said of Cromwell&#8217;s army has no evidence
+behind it,&rdquo; he declares. &ldquo;The majority of the soldiers
+were pressed men, selected because they had strong
+bodies, and not because of their religion. The remainder
+were taken out of the armies already in existence&hellip;. The
+distinctive feature of the army was its officers. All existing
+commands having been vacated, men of a distinctly Puritan
+and for the most part of an Independent type were appointed
+to their places&hellip;. The strictest discipline was enforced,
+and the soldiers, whether Puritan or not, were thus brought
+firmly under the control of officers bent upon the one object,
+of defeating the king.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To those who have regarded the men who governed England,
+from the time the Long Parliament became supreme
+to the death of Cromwell, as saints in conduct as well as in
+name, Mr. Gardiner&#8217;s facts about the members of the rump
+of the Long Parliament will be an awakening. &ldquo;It was
+notorious,&rdquo; he records, &ldquo;that many members who entered
+the House poor were now rolling in wealth.&rdquo; From Gardiner&#8217;s
+references and quotations, it is not a strained inference
+that in subjection to lobbying, in log-rolling and corruption,
+this Parliament would hardly be surpassed by a
+corrupt American legislature. As to personal morality, he
+by implication confirms the truth of Cromwell&#8217;s bitter speech
+on the memorable day when he forced the dissolution of
+the Long Parliament. &ldquo;Some of you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are
+<a name="png.329" id="png.329"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">321</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>whoremasters. Others,&rdquo; he continued, pointing to one and another
+with his hands, &ldquo;are drunkards, and some corrupt
+and unjust men, and scandalous to the profession of the
+gospel. It is not fit that you should sit as a Parliament any
+longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>While I am well aware that to him, who makes but a casual
+study of any historic period, matters will appear fresh that
+to the master of it are well-worn inferences and generalizations,
+and while therefore I can pretend to offer only a
+shallow experience, I confess that on the points to which I
+have referred I received new light, and it prepared me for
+the overturning of the view of Cromwell which I had derived
+from the Puritanical instruction of my early days and from
+Macaulay.</p>
+
+<p>In his foreign policy Cromwell was irresolute, vacillating
+and tricky. &ldquo;A study of the foreign policy of the Protectorate,&rdquo;
+writes Mr. Gardiner, &ldquo;reveals a distracting maze of
+fluctuations. Oliver is seen alternately courting France
+and Spain, constant only in inconstancy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell lacked constructive statesmanship. &ldquo;The
+tragedy of his career lies in the inevitable result that his
+efforts to establish religion and morality melted away as
+the morning mist, whilst his abiding influence was built upon
+the vigor with which he promoted the material aims of his
+countrymen.&rdquo; In another place Mr. Gardiner says: &ldquo;Cromwell&#8217;s
+negative work lasted; his positive work vanished
+away. His constitutions perished with him, his Protectorate
+descended from the proud position to which he had
+raised it, his peace with the Dutch Republic was followed
+by two wars with the United Provinces, his alliance with
+the French monarchy only led to a succession of wars with
+France lasting into the nineteenth century. All that lasted
+was the support given by him to maritime enterprise, and
+<a name="png.330" id="png.330"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">322</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in that he followed the tradition of the governments preceding
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What is Cromwell&#8217;s place in history? Thus Mr. Gardiner
+answers the question: &ldquo;He stands forth as the typical Englishman
+of the modern world&hellip;. It is in England that
+his fame has grown up since the publication of Carlyle&#8217;s
+monumental work, and it is as an Englishman that he must
+be judged&hellip;. With Cromwell&#8217;s memory it has fared as
+with ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle
+painted him as the masterful saint who suited his peculiar
+Valhalla. It is time for us to regard him as he really was,
+with all his physical and moral audacity, with all his tenderness
+and spiritual yearnings, in the world of action what
+Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because
+the most typical Englishman of all time. This, in
+the most enduring sense, is Cromwell&#8217;s place in history.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The idea most difficult for me to relinquish is that of
+Cromwell as a link in that historic chain which led to the
+Revolution of 1688, with its blessed combination of liberty
+and order. I have loved to think, as Carlyle expressed it:
+&ldquo;<span class="lthinsp">&lsquo;Their</span> works follow them,&rsquo; as I think this Oliver Cromwell&#8217;s
+works have done and are still doing! We have had
+our &lsquo;Revolution of &#8217;88&rsquo; officially called &lsquo;glorious,&rsquo; and other
+Revolutions not yet called glorious; and somewhat has been
+gained for poor mankind. Men&#8217;s ears are not now slit off
+by rash Officiality. Officiality will for long henceforth
+be more cautious about men&#8217;s ears. The tyrannous star
+chambers, branding irons, chimerical kings and surplices at
+Allhallowtide, they are gone or with immense velocity going.
+Oliver&#8217;s works do follow him!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In these two volumes of Gardiner it is not from what is
+said, but from what is omitted, that one may deduce the
+author&#8217;s opinion that Cromwell&#8217;s career as Protector
+<a name="png.331" id="png.331"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">323</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>contributed in no wise to the Revolution of 1688. But touching
+this matter he has thus written to me: &ldquo;I am inclined to
+question your view that Cromwell paved the way for the
+Revolution of 1688, except so far as his victories and the
+King&#8217;s execution frightened off James II. Pym and Hampden
+did pave the way, but Cromwell&#8217;s work took other lines.
+The Instrument of Government was framed on quite different
+principles, and the extension of the suffrage and reformed
+franchise found no place in England until 1832.
+It was not Cromwell&#8217;s fault that it was so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>If I relinquish this one of my old historic notions, I feel
+that I must do it for the reason that Lord Auckland agreed
+with Macaulay after reading the first volume of his history.
+&ldquo;I had also hated Cromwell more than I now do,&rdquo; he said;
+&ldquo;for I always agree with Tom Macaulay; and it saves trouble
+to agree with him at once, because he is sure to make you
+do so at last.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I asked Professor Edward Channing of Harvard College,
+who teaches English History of the Tudor and Stuart periods,
+his opinion of Gardiner. &ldquo;I firmly believe,&rdquo; he told me,
+&ldquo;that Mr. Gardiner is the greatest English historical writer
+who has appeared since Gibbon. He has the instinct of
+the truth-seeker as no other English student I know of has
+shown it since the end of the last century.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>General J.&nbsp;D. Cox, a statesman and a lawyer, a student of
+history and of law, writes to me: &ldquo;In reading Gardiner, I
+feel that I am sitting at the feet of an historical chief justice,
+a sort of John Marshall in his genius for putting the final
+results of learning in the garb of simple common sense.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chap">
+<h2 class="bigskip"><a name="png.333" id="png.333"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">325</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<div class="narrower">
+<div class="index">
+<p>Adams, C.&nbsp;F., and E.&nbsp;G. Bourne,
+ <a href="#png.208">200</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Adams, J.&nbsp;Q., as President,
+ <a href="#png.215">207</a>,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Adams, John, as President,
+ <a href="#png.215">207</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Adelaide, Australia, Froude&#8217;s description,
+ <a href="#png.050">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Alabama claims, arbitration,
+ <a href="#png.226">218</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander Severus, homage to history,
+ <a href="#png.012">4</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Alison, Sir Archibald, present-day reputation,
+ <a href="#png.048">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Allison, W.&nbsp;B., and Hayes&#8217;s New York
+  Custom-house appointments,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>; and
+  Silver Bill of 1878,
+ <a href="#png.268">260</a>.</p>
+
+<p>American historians, European recognition,
+ <a href="#png.111">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p>American Historical Association,
+  author&#8217;s addresses before,
+ <a href="#fn.i.1">1 <i>n.</i></a>,
+ <a href="#png.033">25</a>,
+ <a href="#png.089">81</a>;
+  interest of E.&nbsp;G. Bourne,
+ <a href="#png.204">196</a>.</p>
+
+<p>American history, qualities,
+ <a href="#png.012">4</a>,
+ <a href="#png.028">20</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.031">23</a>;
+  newspapers as sources,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.103">95</a>;
+  and early English history,
+ <a href="#png.179"><ins class="TNsilent" title="Transcriber's note:
+  original reads '170'">171</ins></a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Elections, History, Presidential,
+  United States, and periods by name.</p>
+
+<p>American Revolution, Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.121">113</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Amyot, Jacques, on Alexander Severus,
+ <a href="#png.012">4</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ancient history, monopoly of German historians,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Ferrero, Gibbon, Herodotus, Tacitus, Thucydides.</p>
+
+<p>Annexations, Philippines,
+ <a href="#png.203">195</a>,
+ <a href="#png.241">233</a>,
+ <a href="#png.242">234</a>,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>;
+  constitutional control, Louisiana,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>;
+  and slavery, Texas and California,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Arbitrary arrests during Civil War,
+ <a href="#png.222">214</a>,
+ <a href="#png.223">215</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Arbitration, Alabama claims,
+ <a href="#png.226">218</a>;
+  Cleveland and Venezuela,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>,
+ <a href="#png.293">285</a>;
+  English draft general treaty,
+ <a href="#png.234">226</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Army, Federal, and suppression of rioting,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>,
+ <a href="#png.261">253</a>;
+  character of Cromwell&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.327">319</a>,
+ <a href="#png.328">320</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold, Matthew, on Americans,
+ <a href="#png.029">21</a>;
+  on Sainte-Beuve,
+ <a href="#png.081">73</a>;
+  on criticism,
+ <a href="#png.300">292</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur, C.&nbsp;A., as President,
+ <a href="#png.230">222</a>;
+  removal by Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Auckland, Lord, on agreeing with Macaulay,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Aulard, F.&nbsp;A., on Taine,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Bagehot, Walter, on presidential office,
+ <a href="#png.212">204</a>,
+ <a href="#png.225">217</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Baltimore, railroad riot of 1877,
+ <a href="#png.260">252</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Balzac, Honoré de, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.058">50</a>,
+ <a href="#png.081">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bancroft, George, use of <ins class="TNsilent" title="Transcriber's note:
+  original reads 'foot-notes'">footnotes</ins>,
+ <a href="#png.041">33</a>;
+  remuneration,
+ <a href="#png.086">78</a>;
+  T.&nbsp;W. Higginson on, over-fondness for manuscript sources, inaccuracy of quotations,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Beauregard, P.&nbsp;G.&nbsp;T., and burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.312">304</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bemis, George, and Lecky,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bigelow, John, as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>;
+  on importance of Godkin to <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.283">275</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bismarck, Fürst von, on power of press,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Blaine, J.&nbsp;G., value of &ldquo;Twenty Years,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.041">33</a>;
+  on power of Congress over President,
+ <a href="#png.224">216</a>;
+  on Hayes and <span class="nw">Packard,
+ <a href="#png.256">248</a>.</span></p>
+
+<p>Boer War, Godkin on,
+ <a href="#png.298">290</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Boston, H.&nbsp;G. Wells&#8217;s criticism considered,
+ <a href="#png.146">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Boston Athenæum, editions of Gibbon in,
+ <a href="#png.146">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bourne, E.&nbsp;G., and preparation of author&#8217;s history, as critic,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>,
+ <a href="#png.094">86</a>,
+ <a href="#png.205">197</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.207">199</a>;
+  essay on,
+ <a href="#png.199">191</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.208">200</a>;
+  malady,
+ <a href="#png.199">191</a>,
+ <a href="#png.200">192</a>;
+  physique,
+ <a href="#png.199">191</a>;
+  death,
+ <a href="#png.200">192</a>;
+  education,
+ <a href="#png.200">192</a>;
+  works,
+ <a href="#png.201">193</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.203">195</a>;
+  professorships,
+ <a href="#png.201">193</a>;
+  on Marcus Whitman,
+ <a href="#png.201">193</a>;
+  on Columbus,
+ <a href="#png.202">194</a>,
+ <a href="#png.203">195</a>;
+  on Philippines and Monroe Doctrine,
+ <a href="#png.203">195</a>;
+  unfinished biography of Motley,
+ <a href="#png.204">196</a>;
+  critical notices,
+ <a href="#png.204">196</a>,
+ <a href="#png.205">197</a>;
+  thoroughness,
+ <a href="#png.204">196</a>;
+  interest in American Historical Association,
+ <a href="#png.204">196</a>;
+  desultory reading,
+ <a href="#png.207">199</a>;
+  and editorship of publications of Massachusetts Historical <span class="nw">Society,
+ <a href="#png.207">199</a>.</span></p>
+
+<p>Bowles, Samuel, as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Brown, John, Pottawatomie Massacre and election of <span class="nw">1856,
+ <a href="#png.096">88</a>.</span></p>
+
+<p>Browning, Oscar, on Carlyle,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Brunetière, Ferdinand, on French literary masters,
+ <a href="#png.081">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bryan, W.&nbsp;J., campaign of 1896,
+ <a href="#png.236">228</a>,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.334" id="png.334"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">326</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Bryant, W.&nbsp;C., as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>;
+  and Greeley,
+ <a href="#png.277">269</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bryce, James, importance of &ldquo;Holy Roman Empire,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.068">60</a>,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>;
+  on Federal Constitution,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>;
+  on presidential office,
+ <a href="#png.212">204</a>,
+ <a href="#png.213">205</a>,
+ <a href="#png.243">235</a>,
+ <a href="#png.248">240</a>;
+  on Godkin and <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.284">276</a>,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>,
+ <a href="#png.303">295</a>;
+  on Herbert Spencer,
+ <a href="#png.301">293</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan, James, as President,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Buckle, H.&nbsp;T., enthusiasm,
+ <a href="#png.046">38</a>;
+  influence on Lecky,
+ <a href="#png.162">154</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Burt, S.&nbsp;W., appointment by Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bury, J.&nbsp;B., edition of Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>;
+  on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.117">109</a>,
+ <a href="#png.118">110</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Butler, Joseph, influence on Lecky,
+ <a href="#png.162">154</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Cabinet, Grant&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>,
+ <a href="#png.286">278</a>;
+  character of Jackson&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.218">210</a>;
+  Pierce and Buchanan controlled by,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>;
+  Hayes&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.229">221</a>,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.256">248</a>,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cabot, Charles, gift to Boston Athenæum,
+ <a href="#png.146">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Calhoun, J.&nbsp;C., and annexation of Texas,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle, Thomas, as historian,
+ <a href="#png.046">38</a>,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>;
+  and mathematics,
+ <a href="#png.064">56</a>,
+ <a href="#png.065">57</a>;
+  importance in training of historians, &ldquo;French Revolution&rdquo; and &ldquo;Frederick,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.070">62</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.072">64</a>;
+  biography,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>;
+  self-education,
+ <a href="#png.073">65</a>;
+  lack of practical experience,
+ <a href="#png.074">66</a>;
+  on historical method,
+ <a href="#png.085">77</a>;
+  on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.123">115</a>;
+  on Cromwell, inaccuracy of quotations,
+ <a href="#png.152">144</a>,
+ <a href="#png.326">318</a>,
+ <a href="#png.329">321</a>;
+  on pecuniary rewards of literary men,
+ <a href="#png.154">146</a>;
+  Gladstone on,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chamberlain, D.&nbsp;H., contested election,
+ <a href="#png.256">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chamberlain, Joseph, on newspapers and public opinion,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>;
+  Godkin on,
+ <a href="#png.298">290</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chambliss, N.&nbsp;R., on burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.313">305</a>,
+ <a href="#png.317">309</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Channing, Edward, on Gardiner,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Charleston, secession movement,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>;
+  feeling of Union army towards,
+ <a href="#png.314">306</a>.</p>
+
+<p><cite>Charleston Courier</cite>, and secession movement,
+ <a href="#png.100">92</a>.</p>
+
+<p><cite>Charleston Mercury</cite>, and secession movement,
+ <a href="#png.100">92</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chatham, Earl of, on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.023">15</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Choate, Rufus, and Whig nominations in 1852,
+ <a href="#png.095">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity, Gibbon on early church,
+ <a href="#png.139">131</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.141">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero, homage to history,
+ <a href="#png.012">4</a>;
+  importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.059">51</a>;
+  Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.128">120</a>;
+  contradictions,
+ <a href="#png.298">290</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Civil service, J.&nbsp;D. Cox and reform,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  spoils system,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>;
+  need of special training ignored,
+ <a href="#png.218">210</a>;
+  reform under Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.229">221</a>,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.265">257</a>;
+  Reform Bill,
+ <a href="#png.230">222</a>;
+  Cleveland and reform,
+ <a href="#png.231">223</a>,
+ <a href="#png.232">224</a>;
+  demand on President&#8217;s time of appointments, number of presidential offices,
+ <a href="#png.244">236</a>;
+  Godkin and reform,
+ <a href="#png.288">280</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Civil War, newspapers as historical source on,
+ <a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.100">92</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.102">94</a>;
+  value of Official Records,
+ <a href="#png.100">92</a>;
+  attitude of Lecky,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>;
+  presidential office during, arbitrary actions,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.224">216</a>;
+  Godkin as correspondent during,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>;
+  burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.309">301</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.321">313</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cleveland, Grover, as President,
+ <a href="#png.231">223</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.234">226</a>;
+  and civil service reform,
+ <a href="#png.231">223</a>;
+  soundness on finances,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>;
+  and railroad riots,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>;
+  foreign policy,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>;
+  and disorganization of Democracy,
+ <a href="#png.234">226</a>;
+  and public opinion,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>;
+  as a prime minister,
+ <a href="#png.249">241</a>,
+ <a href="#png.271">263</a>;
+  and Hayes, attends funeral of Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.271">263</a>;
+  attitude of Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.293">285</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Columbia, S.&nbsp;C., burning of,
+ <a href="#png.309">301</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.321">313</a>;
+  Sherman&#8217;s and Hampton&#8217;s accounts discredited,
+ <a href="#png.309">301</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.316">308</a>;
+  feeling of Union army towards,
+ <a href="#png.314">306</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.316">308</a>;
+  Sherman&#8217;s orders on occupation,
+ <a href="#png.315">307</a>;
+  verdict of mixed commission on,
+ <a href="#png.316">308</a>;
+  mob responsibility,
+ <a href="#png.316">308</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.321">313</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Columbia University, lecture by author at,
+ <a href="#png.055">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Commonwealth of England. <em>See</em> Cromwell.</p>
+
+<p>Comte, Auguste, influence,
+ <a href="#png.081">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Conciseness in history,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>,
+ <a href="#png.022">14</a>,
+ <a href="#png.024">16</a>,
+ <a href="#png.028">20</a>,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Congress, control of Senate over Pierce and Buchanan,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>;
+  power during Johnson&#8217;s administration,
+ <a href="#png.224">216</a>;
+  overshadows President, power of Speaker of House,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>;
+  McKinley&#8217;s control over,
+ <a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  contact with President,
+ <a href="#png.245">237</a>;
+  and Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.257">249</a>,
+ <a href="#png.264">256</a>,
+ <a href="#png.265">257</a>,
+ <a href="#png.269">261</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Conkling, Roscoe, contest with Hayes over New York Custom-house,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Constitution. <em>See</em> Federal Constitution.</p>
+
+<p>Copyright, <cite>The Nation</cite> and international,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cornell, A.&nbsp;B., removal by Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Corruption, Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cox, J.&nbsp;D., on Gardiner,
+ <a href="#png.052">44</a>,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>;
+  essay on,
+ <a href="#png.193">185</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.196">188</a>;
+  varied activities,
+ <a href="#png.193">185</a>;
+  as general,
+ <a href="#png.193">185</a>;
+  as governor,
+ <a href="#png.193">185</a>;
+  and negro suffrage,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  as cabinet
+<a name="png.335" id="png.335"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">327</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>officer,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  and civil service reform,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  in Congress,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  and Spanish Mission,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  private positions,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  works, as military historian,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  and Grant,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  contributions to <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  as reader,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  character,
+ <a href="#png.196">188</a>;
+  on Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.303">295</a>;
+  on burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.311">303</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Crimean War, Godkin on,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cromer, Lord, on power of press,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>,
+ <a href="#png.104">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell, Oliver, Carlyle&#8217;s biography,
+ <a href="#png.152">144</a>,
+ <a href="#png.158">150</a>;
+  Gardiner&#8217;s influence on fame,
+ <a href="#png.158">150</a>;
+  Gardiner&#8217;s estimate,
+ <a href="#png.325">317</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.331">323</a>;
+  character,
+ <a href="#png.327">319</a>;
+  character of army,
+ <a href="#png.327">319</a>,
+ <a href="#png.328">320</a>;
+  foreign policy,
+ <a href="#png.329">321</a>;
+  lack of constructive statesmanship,
+ <a href="#png.329">321</a>;
+  as typical Englishman,
+ <a href="#png.330">322</a>; and
+  Revolution of 1688,
+ <a href="#png.330">322</a>,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Curchod, Suzanne, and Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.144">136</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Curtis, G.&nbsp;W., on <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.278">270</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Curtius, Ernst, as historian,
+ <a href="#png.042">34</a>,
+ <a href="#png.051">43</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Dana, C.&nbsp;A., as journalist, historical value of articles,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Darwin, C.&nbsp;R., biography,
+ <a href="#png.067">59</a>;
+  truthfulness,
+ <a href="#png.153">145</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dates in historical work, importance of newspapers,
+ <a href="#png.095">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Democratic party, and Cleveland&#8217;s administration,
+ <a href="#png.231">223</a>,
+ <a href="#png.234">226</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Demosthenes, and Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.023">15</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Desultory reading in training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>,
+ <a href="#png.073">65</a>,
+ <a href="#png.207">199</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Devens, Charles, in Hayes&#8217;s cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Deyverdun, Georges, collaboration with Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.132">124</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dicey, A.&nbsp;V., as contributor to <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dictionaries, importance of quotations in,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dingley Tariff Act,
+ <a href="#png.237">229</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Duff, Sir M.&nbsp;E. Grant, on Herodotus,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Eckermann, J.&nbsp;P., &ldquo;Conversations with Goethe,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.078">70</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.080">72</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Elections, 1852, Whig nominations,
+  Scott&#8217;s stumping tour,
+ <a href="#png.094">86</a>,
+ <a href="#png.095">87</a>;
+  1856, Kansas as issue,
+ <a href="#png.096">88</a>;
+  1876, controversy, and flexibility of Constitution,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>,
+ <a href="#png.253">245</a>;
+  1896, bimetallism as issue,
+ <a href="#png.236">228</a>;
+  attitude of Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, Froude and Gardiner on,
+ <a href="#png.157">149</a>;
+  and Anglo-Saxon development,
+ <a href="#png.180">172</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson, R.&nbsp;W., on originality,
+ <a href="#png.036">28</a>;
+  on mathematics,
+ <a href="#png.065">57</a>;
+  on philanthropists,
+ <a href="#png.189">181</a>;
+  on <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.278">270</a>.</p>
+
+<p>England, Macaulay&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.045">37</a>,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>,
+ <a href="#png.070">62</a>;
+  Gardiner&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.158">150</a>;
+  Lecky&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.162">154</a>,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>;
+  Walpole&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.169">161</a>,
+ <a href="#png.171">163</a>,
+ <a href="#png.172">164</a>;
+  conditions in 1815,
+ <a href="#png.169">161</a>;
+  Green&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.179">171</a>,
+ <a href="#png.180">172</a>;
+  Alabama claims arbitration,
+ <a href="#png.225">217</a>;
+  Venezuela-Guiana boundary,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>,
+ <a href="#png.293">285</a>;
+  draft general arbitration treaty,
+ <a href="#png.234">226</a>;
+  attitude of Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.280">272</a>,
+ <a href="#png.292">284</a>,
+ <a href="#png.298">290</a>;
+  Cromwell and the Commonwealth,
+ <a href="#png.325">317</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Evarts, W.&nbsp;M., Secretary of State, ability,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>;
+  social character,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>;
+  pessimism,
+ <a href="#png.296">288</a>.</p>
+
+<p><cite>Evening Post</cite>, acquires <cite>The Nation</cite>, Godkin as editor,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Evolution, and history,
+ <a href="#png.012">4</a>,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Executive. <em>See</em> Civil service, Presidential office.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Federal Constitution, English model,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>;
+  rigidity and flexibility,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>,
+ <a href="#png.224">216</a>;
+  as political tradition,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Presidential office.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrero, Guglielmo, as historian,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>;
+  on Cicero&#8217;s contradictions,
+ <a href="#png.298">290</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fessenden, W.&nbsp;P., and Whig nominations in 1852,
+ <a href="#png.095">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fillmore, Martin, as President,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Finances, greenback craze,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>,
+ <a href="#png.289">281</a>;
+  silver agitation of 1878,
+ <a href="#png.229">221</a>,
+ <a href="#png.267">259</a>,
+ <a href="#png.268">260</a>;
+  Silver Act of 1890,
+ <a href="#png.232">224</a>,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>;
+  Cleveland&#8217;s soundness,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>;
+  attitude of Republican party on money,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>,
+ <a href="#png.265">257</a>;
+  issue in campaign of 1896,
+ <a href="#png.236">228</a>,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>;
+  gold standard,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>;
+  depression (1877&ndash;1878),
+ <a href="#png.259">251</a>,
+ <a href="#png.266">258</a>;
+  Hayes&#8217;s administration,
+ <a href="#png.265">257</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.268">260</a>;
+  Sherman&#8217;s refunding,
+ <a href="#png.265">257</a>;
+  resumption of specie payments,
+ <a href="#png.266">258</a>,
+ <a href="#png.267">259</a>;
+  <cite>The Nation</cite> and sound,
+ <a href="#png.288">280</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.290">282</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fine arts, and training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.067">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Firth, C.&nbsp;H., to continue Gardiner&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.156">148</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fish, Hamilton, and arbitration of Alabama claims,
+ <a href="#png.226">218</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fiske, John, anecdote of the Websters,
+ <a href="#png.062">54</a>;
+  as popular scientist,
+ <a href="#png.066">58</a>;
+  power of concentration,
+ <a href="#png.077">69</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Footnotes, use in histories,
+ <a href="#png.041">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ford, P.&nbsp;L., on writing criticisms for <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.300">292</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Foreign relations, under Washington,
+ <a href="#png.214">206</a>;
+  under Tyler and Polk,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>;
+  under Grant,
+ <a href="#png.226">218</a>;
+  under Cleveland,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>,
+ <a href="#png.293">285</a>;
+  under McKinley,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.242">234</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Monroe Doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth estate, newspaper as,
+ <a href="#png.104">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.336" id="png.336"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">328</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Franklin, battle of, J.&nbsp;D. Cox in,
+ <a href="#png.193">185</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick the Great, Carlyle&#8217;s biography,
+ <a href="#png.071">63</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick III of Germany, &ldquo;wise emperor,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Freeman, E.&nbsp;A., on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.117">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p>French, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.057">49</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.059">51</a>;
+  Gibbon&#8217;s knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>,
+ <a href="#png.131">123</a>.</p>
+
+<p>French Revolution, Carlyle&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.070">62</a>;
+  Gibbon and,
+ <a href="#png.121">113</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Froude, J.&nbsp;A., on Ulysses,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>;
+  inaccuracy,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>;
+  biography of Carlyle,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>;
+  on Elizabeth,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>,
+ <a href="#png.157">149</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Gardiner, S.&nbsp;R., truthfulness,
+ <a href="#png.015">7</a>,
+ <a href="#png.153">145</a>;
+  as historical model,
+ <a href="#png.050">42</a>,
+ <a href="#png.053">45</a>;
+  lack of practical experience,
+ <a href="#png.074">66</a>,
+ <a href="#png.156">148</a>;
+  method,
+ <a href="#png.084">76</a>;
+  essay on,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.158">150</a>;
+  death,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>;
+  thoroughness of research,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>;
+  as linguist,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>;
+  manuscript material,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>;
+  on Carlyle&#8217;s &ldquo;Cromwell,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.152">144</a>;
+  writings and editorial work,
+ <a href="#png.152">144</a>;
+  birth,
+ <a href="#png.153">145</a>;
+  conception of great work,
+ <a href="#png.153">145</a>;
+  Irvingite,
+ <a href="#png.154">146</a>;
+  struggles and success,
+ <a href="#png.154">146</a>,
+ <a href="#png.155">147</a>;
+  as teacher,
+ <a href="#png.155">147</a>;
+  honors,
+ <a href="#png.155">147</a>;
+  day&#8217;s routine, manner of composition,
+ <a href="#png.155">147</a>;
+  style,
+ <a href="#png.156">148</a>;
+  soundness and influence of historical estimates,
+ <a href="#png.157">149</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.158">150</a>;
+  estimate of Cromwell,
+ <a href="#png.158">150</a>,
+ <a href="#png.325">317</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.331">323</a>;
+  on J.&nbsp;R. Green,
+ <a href="#png.180">172</a>;
+  on Hampden,
+ <a href="#png.325">317</a>;
+  on character of Puritans,
+ <a href="#png.326">318</a>;
+  on Cromwell&#8217;s army,
+ <a href="#png.328">320</a>;
+  on character of Rump,
+ <a href="#png.328">320</a>;
+  rank as historian,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gardner, Percy, on Herodotus,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>,
+ <a href="#png.048">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Garfield, J.&nbsp;A., desire for fame,
+ <a href="#png.011">3</a>;
+  as President,
+ <a href="#png.230">222</a>;
+  as speaker,
+ <a href="#png.249">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Garrison, <ins class="TNsilent" title="Transcriber's note:
+ original lacks period">W.</ins>&nbsp;P., as literary editor of <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.299">291</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.303">295</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Generalizations, need of care,
+ <a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.186">178</a>.</p>
+
+<p>German, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.060">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p>German historians, and ancient history,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gibbes, R.&nbsp;W., destruction of collections,
+ <a href="#png.320">312</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gibbon, Edward, rank and characteristics as historian,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>,
+ <a href="#png.018">10</a>,
+ <a href="#png.117">109</a>,
+ <a href="#png.122">114</a>;
+  on Tacitus,
+ <a href="#png.018">10</a>,
+ <a href="#png.124">116</a>;
+  style,
+ <a href="#png.061">53</a>,
+ <a href="#png.141">133</a>;
+  and mathematics,
+ <a href="#png.064">56</a>;
+  importance in training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.068">60</a>;
+  autobiographies,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>,
+ <a href="#png.142">134</a>;
+  essay on,
+ <a href="#png.115">107</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.148">140</a>;
+  conception of history,
+ <a href="#png.115">107</a>;
+  completion of it,
+ <a href="#png.116">108</a>;
+  progress and success of work,
+ <a href="#png.116">108</a>;
+  and classic masters,
+ <a href="#png.118">110</a>;
+  range of work,
+ <a href="#png.118">110</a>;
+  its endurance,
+ <a href="#png.118">110</a>;
+  as possible writer of contemporary history,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>,
+ <a href="#png.120">112</a>;
+  political career,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>;
+  conservatism,
+ <a href="#png.120">112</a>;
+  and American Revolution,
+ <a href="#png.121">113</a>;
+  historical subjects considered by,
+ <a href="#png.123">115</a>;
+  and earlier period of Roman Empire,
+ <a href="#png.124">116</a>;
+  intellectual training,
+ <a href="#png.125">117</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.131">123</a>;
+  love of reading,
+ <a href="#png.126">118</a>;
+  at Oxford,
+ <a href="#png.126">118</a>;
+  conversion and reconversion,
+ <a href="#png.126">118</a>,
+ <a href="#png.129">121</a>;
+  at Lausanne,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>;
+  self-training,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>,
+ <a href="#png.130">122</a>;
+  linguistic knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>,
+ <a href="#png.128">120</a>,
+ <a href="#png.130">122</a>,
+ <a href="#png.131">123</a>;
+  influence of Pascal,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>;
+  and Voltaire,
+ <a href="#png.129">121</a>;
+  on Robertson,
+ <a href="#png.130">122</a>;
+  &ldquo;Essay on Study of Literature,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.131">123</a>;
+  service in militia, its influence,
+ <a href="#png.131">123</a>;
+  manuscript history of Switzerland,
+ <a href="#png.132">124</a>;
+  begins work on history,
+ <a href="#png.132">124</a>;
+  fame rests on it,
+ <a href="#png.133">125</a>;
+  Milman, Guizot, and Mommsen on it,
+ <a href="#png.133">125</a>;
+  quotations from,
+ <a href="#png.134">126</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.136">128</a>;
+  definitions of history,
+ <a href="#png.134">126</a>;
+  on religion under Pagan empire,
+ <a href="#png.134">126</a>;
+  on happiest period of mankind,
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>;
+  on corruption,
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>;
+  on sea-power,
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>;
+  subjection to criticism,
+ <a href="#png.136">128</a>;
+  correctness,
+ <a href="#png.136">128</a>;
+  truthfulness,
+ <a href="#png.137">129</a>,
+ <a href="#png.138">130</a>;
+  use of conjecture,
+ <a href="#png.137">129</a>;
+  precision and accuracy,
+ <a href="#png.137">129</a>;
+  treatment of early Christian church,
+ <a href="#png.139">131</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.141">133</a>;
+  on Julian the Apostate,
+ <a href="#png.140">132</a>;
+  on Theodora, licentious passages,
+ <a href="#png.141">133</a>;
+  composition of history,
+ <a href="#png.142">134</a>;
+  love of books and wine,
+ <a href="#png.143">135</a>;
+  gout,
+ <a href="#png.143">135</a>;
+  and women, love affair,
+ <a href="#png.144">136</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.146">138</a>;
+  history in quarto edition,
+ <a href="#png.146">138</a>;
+  human importance of work,
+ <a href="#png.147">139</a>;
+  satisfaction with career,
+ <a href="#png.147">139</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gladstone, W.&nbsp;E., on Lecky, Carlyle, and Macaulay,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gloucester, William Henry, Duke of, on Gibbon&#8217;s <span class="nw">history,
+ <a href="#png.146">138</a>.</span></p>
+
+<p>Godkin, E.&nbsp;L., power as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.103">95</a>;
+  essay on,
+ <a href="#png.275">267</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.305">297</a>;
+  rank as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.275">267</a>;
+  on Greeley,
+ <a href="#png.275">267</a>,
+ <a href="#png.276">268</a>;
+  illustration of influence,
+ <a href="#png.276">268</a>;
+  character,
+ <a href="#png.277">269</a>;
+  indirect influence, character of clientèle,
+ <a href="#png.278">270</a>,
+ <a href="#png.279">271</a>;
+  authorship of articles in <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.279">271</a>;
+  Essays,
+ <a href="#png.280">272</a>;
+  early life,
+ <a href="#png.280">272</a>;
+  early optimism and later pessimism concerning America,
+ <a href="#png.280">272</a>,
+ <a href="#png.292">284</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.298">290</a>,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>;
+  as war correspondent,
+ <a href="#png.280">272</a>;
+  in America, journey in South,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>;
+  correspondent of London <cite>News</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>;
+  foundation of <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>;
+  editor of <cite>Evening Post</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>;
+  retirement,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>;
+  lectures, honors,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>;
+  and offer of professorship,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.284">276</a>;
+  nervous strain,
+ <a href="#png.283">275</a>;
+  accused of censorious criticism,
+ <a href="#png.284">276</a>;
+  of
+<a name="png.337" id="png.337"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">329</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>unfortunate influence on intellectual youth,
+ <a href="#png.285">277</a>;
+  influence on author,
+ <a href="#png.286">278</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.290">282</a>,
+ <a href="#png.300">292</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.302">294</a>;
+  influence in West,
+ <a href="#png.287">279</a>;
+  disinterestedness,
+ <a href="#png.288">280</a>;
+  and civil service reform,
+ <a href="#png.288">280</a>;
+  and sound finances,
+ <a href="#png.288">280</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.290">282</a>;
+  and tariff,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>;
+  and foreign affairs,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>;
+  other phases of influence,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>;
+  never retracted personal charges,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>;
+  implacability, ignores death of F.&nbsp;A. Walker,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.292">284</a>;
+  and Cleveland,
+ <a href="#png.293">285</a>;
+  and election of 1896,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>;
+  and Spanish War and Philippines,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>;
+  moral censor,
+ <a href="#png.297">289</a>;
+  criticism of England,
+ <a href="#png.298">290</a>;
+  disappointment in democracy,
+ <a href="#png.299">291</a>;
+  literary criticism in <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.299">291</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.303">295</a>;
+  on W.&nbsp;P. Garrison,
+ <a href="#png.299">291</a>;
+  influence of foreign birth,
+ <a href="#png.303">295</a>;
+  fame,
+ <a href="#png.303">295</a>;
+  lectureship as memorial to,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>;
+  farewell words, on general progress and political decline,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>,
+ <a href="#png.305">297</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Goethe, J.&nbsp;W. von, on Molière,
+ <a href="#png.058">50</a>;
+  on linguistic ability,
+ <a href="#png.060">52</a>;
+  &ldquo;Faust&rdquo; and study of human character,
+ <a href="#png.076">68</a>;
+  &ldquo;Conversations,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.078">70</a>,
+ <a href="#png.080">72</a>;
+  wide outlook,
+ <a href="#png.079">71</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gold Standard Act,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gordon, C.&nbsp;G., newspapers and Soudan expedition,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gout, Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.143">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Grant, U.&nbsp;S., first cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>,
+ <a href="#png.286">278</a>;
+  and Cox,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  as President, moral tone of administration,
+ <a href="#png.225">217</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.227">219</a>,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>;
+  on criticism,
+ <a href="#png.226">218</a>,
+ <a href="#png.247">239</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Greek, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.059">51</a>;
+  Gibbon&#8217;s knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.128">120</a>,
+ <a href="#png.130">122</a>,
+ <a href="#png.131">123</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Greek history. <em>See</em> Herodotus, Thucydides.</p>
+
+<p>Greeley, Horace, influence as journalist,
+  historical value of articles,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>,
+ <a href="#png.275">267</a>;
+  partisanship,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>; character,
+ <a href="#png.276">268</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.278">270</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Green, J.&nbsp;R., as historian,
+ <a href="#png.050">42</a>;
+  address on,
+ <a href="#png.179">171</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.181">173</a>;
+  popularity in America,
+ <a href="#png.179">171</a>;
+  on Elizabeth,
+ <a href="#png.180">172</a>;
+  accuracy,
+ <a href="#png.180">172</a>;
+  character,
+ <a href="#png.180">172</a>;
+  on Cromwell&#8217;s army,
+ <a href="#png.327">319</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Greenbacks. <em>See</em> Finances.</p>
+
+<p>Grote, George, on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.015">7</a>;
+  on references,
+ <a href="#png.041">33</a>;
+  business training,
+ <a href="#png.086">78</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Guizot, F.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;G., on Gibbon&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.133">125</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Hadrian, &ldquo;traveling emperor,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Halleck, H.&nbsp;W., attitude towards Charleston,
+ <a href="#png.314">306</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton, Alexander, on presidential office,
+ <a href="#png.212">204</a>,
+ <a href="#png.241">233</a>,
+ <a href="#png.248">240</a>;
+  as adviser of Washington,
+ <a href="#png.215">207</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hampden, John, as possible Anglo-Saxon hero,
+ <a href="#png.325">317</a>;
+  and Revolution of 1688,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hampton, Wade, and burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.310">302</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.313">305</a>,
+ <a href="#png.316">308</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Harrison, Benjamin, as President,
+ <a href="#png.234">226</a>;
+  as speaker,
+ <a href="#png.249">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Harrison, Frederic, on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.018">10</a>;
+  on Spencer Walpole,
+ <a href="#png.173">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Harrison, W.&nbsp;H., as President,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hart, A.&nbsp;B., on Herodotus,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Harvard University, addresses of author at,
+ <a href="#png.055">47</a>,
+ <a href="#png.109">101</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.111">103</a>,
+ <a href="#png.113">105</a>,
+ <a href="#png.251">243</a>,
+ <a href="#png.273">265</a>;
+  striving after exact knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.109">101</a>;
+  honorary degree for Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.259">251</a>;
+  offers professorship to Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>,
+ <a href="#png.283">275</a>;
+  Godkin Lectureship,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hawthorne, Nathaniel, conciseness,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hay, John, anecdote of Grant,
+ <a href="#png.226">218</a>;
+  as Secretary of State,
+ <a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  on Hayes and finances,
+ <a href="#png.268">260</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hayes, Lucy W., as wife of President,
+ <a href="#png.229">221</a>,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hayes, R.&nbsp;B., election controversy,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>,
+ <a href="#png.253">245</a>;
+  administration,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.230">222</a>,
+ <a href="#png.253">245</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.272">264</a>;
+  as a prime minister,
+ <a href="#png.249">241</a>,
+ <a href="#png.271">263</a>;
+  righteousness of acceptance of election,
+ <a href="#png.253">245</a>;
+  difficulty of situation,
+ <a href="#png.253">245</a>,
+ <a href="#png.269">261</a>;
+  as governor,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>;
+  letter of acceptance,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>;
+  inaugural,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>;
+  cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.256">248</a>,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>;
+  withdrawal of troops from South,
+ <a href="#png.256">248</a>,
+ <a href="#png.257">249</a>;
+  and Congress,
+ <a href="#png.257">249</a>,
+ <a href="#png.264">256</a>,
+ <a href="#png.265">257</a>,
+ <a href="#png.269">261</a>;
+  civil service reforms, contest with Conkling,
+ <a href="#png.258">250</a>,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.265">257</a>;
+  honorary degree from Harvard,
+ <a href="#png.259">251</a>;
+  and railroad riots,
+ <a href="#png.261">253</a>,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>;
+  and finances, independent thinking,
+ <a href="#png.265">257</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.268">260</a>;
+  vetoes of repeal of Federal election laws,
+ <a href="#png.268">260</a>;
+  extra sessions of Congress,
+ <a href="#png.269">261</a>;
+  serenity,
+ <a href="#png.269">261</a>;
+  popular support,
+ <a href="#png.269">261</a>;
+  and election of 1880,
+ <a href="#png.269">261</a>;
+  moral tone of administration,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>;
+  and Cleveland,
+ <a href="#png.271">263</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Herodotus, on purpose of history,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>;
+  rank as historian,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>,
+ <a href="#png.042">34</a>,
+ <a href="#png.048">40</a>;
+  as contemporary historian,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Higginson, T.&nbsp;W., on Bancroft,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hildreth, Richard, historical value of newspaper articles,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hill, G.&nbsp;B., on Gibbon&#8217;s history and autobiography,
+ <a href="#png.133">125</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Historian, training,
+ <a href="#png.057">49</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.087">79</a>;
+  necessary linguistic knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.057">49</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.060">52</a>;
+  acquisition of style,
+ <a href="#png.060">52</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.063">55</a>;
+  knowledge of
+<a name="png.338" id="png.338"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">330</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>mathematics,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.065">57</a>;
+  of other sciences,
+ <a href="#png.065">57</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.067">59</a>;
+  of fine arts,
+ <a href="#png.067">59</a>;
+  general historical reading,
+ <a href="#png.068">60</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.078">70</a>;
+  mastery of Gibbon and Bryce,
+ <a href="#png.068">60</a>;
+  of Tacitus and Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>;
+  of other historians,
+ <a href="#png.070">62</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.072">64</a>;
+  knowledge of lives of historians,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>;
+  desultory reading,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.073">65</a>;
+  study of human character, experimental and through books,
+ <a href="#png.074">66</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.076">68</a>;
+  thorough reading of characteristic works,
+ <a href="#png.076">68</a>;
+  speed and retention of reading,
+ <a href="#png.077">69</a>;
+  importance of &ldquo;Conversations of Goethe,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.078">70</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.080">72</a>;
+  of Sainte-Beuve&#8217;s criticisms,
+ <a href="#png.080">72</a>;
+  choice of subject,
+ <a href="#png.082">74</a>;
+  method, originality,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>;
+  note-making,
+ <a href="#png.084">76</a>;
+  Carlyle on method,
+ <a href="#png.085">77</a>;
+  remuneration,
+ <a href="#png.085">77</a>;
+  and teaching of history,
+ <a href="#png.086">78</a>;
+  and business training,
+ <a href="#png.086">78</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> next two titles.</p>
+
+<p>Historians, Shakespeare and Homer as,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>,
+ <a href="#png.015">7</a>;
+  advantages and disadvantages of present-day,
+ <a href="#png.012">4</a>,
+ <a href="#png.028">20</a>;
+  best,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>;
+  Herodotus,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>,
+ <a href="#png.042">34</a>,
+ <a href="#png.048">40</a>;
+  Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.016">8</a>,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.023">15</a>,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.027">19</a>,
+ <a href="#png.043">35</a>,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>,
+ <a href="#png.118">110</a>,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>,
+ <a href="#png.136">128</a>;
+  Tacitus,
+ <a href="#png.016">8</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.018">10</a>,
+ <a href="#png.023">15</a>,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.028">20</a>,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>,
+ <a href="#png.118">110</a>,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>,
+ <a href="#png.124">116</a>,
+ <a href="#png.136">128</a>;
+  Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.018">10</a>,
+ <a href="#png.068">60</a>,
+ <a href="#png.115">107</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.148">140</a>;
+  conciseness,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>,
+ <a href="#png.022">14</a>,
+ <a href="#png.024">16</a>,
+ <a href="#png.028">20</a>,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>;
+  source material,
+ <a href="#png.020">12</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.024">16</a>,
+ <a href="#png.028">20</a>,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>;
+  contemporaneousness,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.028">20</a>;
+  necessary qualities,
+ <a href="#png.028">20</a>;
+  monographs,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>;
+  patriotism,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>;
+  necessity and kinds of originality,
+ <a href="#png.035">27</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.037">29</a>,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>;
+  use of newspapers,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.105">97</a>;
+  generalizations,
+ <a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.186">178</a>;
+  use of footnotes,
+ <a href="#png.041">33</a>;
+  fresh combination of well-known facts,
+ <a href="#png.042">34</a>;
+  present-day models,
+ <a href="#png.042">34</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.051">43</a>;
+  reflection,
+ <a href="#png.045">37</a>;
+  enthusiasm,
+ <a href="#png.046">38</a>;
+  Macaulay,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.046">38</a>,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>,
+ <a href="#png.070">62</a>;
+  Carlyle,
+ <a href="#png.046">38</a>,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>,
+ <a href="#png.070">62</a>;
+  old and new schools, ethical judgments, human interest,
+ <a href="#png.047">39</a>,
+ <a href="#png.051">43</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.053">45</a>;
+  Hume, Robertson, Alison,
+ <a href="#png.048">40</a>;
+  Froude,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>;
+  Green,
+ <a href="#png.050">42</a>,
+ <a href="#png.179">171</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.181">173</a>;
+  Stubbs,
+ <a href="#png.050">42</a>,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>;
+  Gardiner,
+ <a href="#png.050">42</a>,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.158">150</a>,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>;
+  and popularity,
+ <a href="#png.052">44</a>;
+  growth of candor,
+ <a href="#png.053">45</a>;
+  Bryce,
+ <a href="#png.068">60</a>,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>;
+  use of manuscript material,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>;
+  gospel of exact knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.109">101</a>;
+  Lecky,
+ <a href="#png.161">153</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.166">158</a>;
+  Spencer Walpole,
+ <a href="#png.169">161</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.175">167</a>;
+  E.&nbsp;L. Pierce,
+ <a href="#png.185">177</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.189">181</a>;
+  J.&nbsp;D. Cox,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  E.&nbsp;G. Bourne,
+ <a href="#png.199">191</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.208">200</a>;
+  Bancroft,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> titles above and below.</p>
+
+<p>History, intellectual rank,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>;
+  and poetry,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>;
+  and physical sciences,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>;
+  definitions,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>,
+ <a href="#png.051">43</a>,
+ <a href="#png.134">126</a>;
+  homage of politicians,
+ <a href="#png.011">3</a>;
+  and evolution,
+ <a href="#png.012">4</a>,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>;
+  newspapers as source,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.105">97</a>;
+  value of manuscript sources,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> two titles above.</p>
+
+<p>Hoar, E.&nbsp;R., in Grant&#8217;s cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>,
+ <a href="#png.286">278</a>;
+  and <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.286">278</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Holm, Adolf, on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.047">39</a>;
+  on scientific history,
+ <a href="#png.051">43</a>; as historian,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Holst, H.&nbsp;E. von, use of newspapers,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>;
+  on westward expansion and slavery,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Home rule, Lecky&#8217;s attitude,
+ <a href="#png.164">156</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Homer, as historian,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>;
+  and study of human character,
+ <a href="#png.075">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p>House of Representatives. See Congress.</p>
+
+<p>Howard, O.&nbsp;O., at burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.310">302</a>,
+ <a href="#png.315">307</a>,
+ <a href="#png.319">311</a>,
+ <a href="#png.320">312</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Howells, W.&nbsp;D., pessimism,
+ <a href="#png.296">288</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hugo, Victor, influence,
+ <a href="#png.081">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hume, David, present-day reputation,
+ <a href="#png.048">40</a>,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>;
+  on Gibbon&#8217;s history of Switzerland,
+ <a href="#png.132">124</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Huxley, T.&nbsp;H., as popular scientist,
+ <a href="#png.066">58</a>;
+  biography,
+ <a href="#png.067">59</a>;
+  on things useful,
+ <a href="#png.110">102</a>;
+  on college training,
+ <a href="#png.110">102</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Income tax decision, Lecky on,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, Lecky&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Jackson, Andrew, as President,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.219">211</a>;
+  as leader of democracy,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>;
+  and spoils system,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>;
+  and training for administrative work,
+ <a href="#png.218">210</a>;
+  and nullification,
+ <a href="#png.218">210</a>.</p>
+
+<p>James, Henry, on Sainte-Beuve,
+ <a href="#png.081">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p>James, T.&nbsp;L., as postmaster of New York,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>.</p>
+
+<p>James, William, on Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.278">270</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Jay Treaty, as precedent for treaty-making power,
+ <a href="#png.214">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Jebb, Sir R.&nbsp;C., on Herodotus,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>;
+  on Tacitus,
+ <a href="#png.018">10</a>;
+  on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Jefferson, Thomas, as President,
+ <a href="#png.215">207</a>,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>;
+  Louisiana Purchase,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson, Andrew, as President,
+ <a href="#png.224">216</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson, Samuel, on American Revolution,
+ <a href="#png.121">113</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Johnston, J.&nbsp;E., Hayes desires to offer cabinet position to,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Journalists, Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.275">267</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.305">297</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>Jowett, Benjamin, on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Julian the Apostate, Gibbon&#8217;s treatment,
+ <a href="#png.140">132</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first"><a name="png.339" id="png.339"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">331</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Kansas, and election of 1856,
+ <a href="#png.096">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Kent, James, on danger in presidential contests,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Key, D.&nbsp;M., in Hayes&#8217;s cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Kinglake, A.&nbsp;W., on power of press,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Laboulaye, Édouard, on Federal Constitution,
+ <a href="#png.212">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Langlois, C.&nbsp;V., on Froude,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>;
+  on ethical judgments,
+ <a href="#png.051">43</a>;
+  on note-making,
+ <a href="#png.084">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Latin, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.057">49</a>,
+ <a href="#png.059">51</a>,
+ <a href="#png.062">54</a>;
+  Gibbon&#8217;s knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.128">120</a>,
+ <a href="#png.131">123</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Laud, William, Macaulay and Gardiner on,
+ <a href="#png.157">149</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Lausanne, Gibbon at,
+ <a href="#png.116">108</a>,
+ <a href="#png.121">113</a>,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>,
+ <a href="#png.129">121</a>;
+  Voltaire&#8217;s theatre,
+ <a href="#png.129">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Lea, H.&nbsp;C., business training,
+ <a href="#png.087">79</a>;
+  as scientific historian,
+ <a href="#png.111">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Lecky, W.&nbsp;E. H., and Christianity,
+ <a href="#png.139">131</a>;
+  essay on,
+ <a href="#png.161">153</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.166">158</a>;
+  precocity,
+ <a href="#png.161">153</a>;
+  value of &ldquo;Morals,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.161">153</a>;
+  intellectual training,
+ <a href="#png.161">153</a>;
+  as philosophic historian,
+ <a href="#png.162">154</a>;
+  &ldquo;England,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.162">154</a>,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>;
+  on French Revolution,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>;
+  on Irish history,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>;
+  in politics,
+ <a href="#png.164">156</a>;
+  popularity of history,
+ <a href="#png.164">156</a>;
+  social traits,
+ <a href="#png.164">156</a>;
+  interest in America,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>;
+  historic divination,
+ <a href="#png.166">158</a>;
+  &ldquo;Democracy and Liberty,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.166">158</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, on power of press,
+ <a href="#png.104">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln, Abraham, as President,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.224">216</a>;
+  theory and action of war power,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>;
+  as a precedent,
+ <a href="#png.222">214</a>;
+  popular support,
+ <a href="#png.223">215</a>;
+  and public opinion,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>;
+  as a prime minister,
+ <a href="#png.249">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Linguistic ability, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.057">49</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.060">52</a>;
+  Gibbon&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.141">133</a>;
+  Gardiner&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Literary criticism in <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.299">291</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.303">295</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Literary style, acquisition by historian,
+ <a href="#png.060">52</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.063">55</a>;
+  Macaulay&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>;
+  Gibbon&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.141">133</a>;
+  Gardiner&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.156">148</a>;
+  Spencer Walpole&#8217;s,
+ <a href="#png.173">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Lodge, H.&nbsp;C., in the House,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Logan, J.&nbsp;A., at burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.311">303</a>,
+ <a href="#png.319">311</a>,
+ <a href="#png.320">312</a>.</p>
+
+<p>London <cite>Daily News</cite>, Godkin as American correspondent,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Long Parliament, character of rump,
+ <a href="#png.328">320</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Louisiana, purchase as precedent,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>;
+  overthrow of carpet-bag government,
+ <a href="#png.256">248</a>,
+ <a href="#png.257">249</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Lowell, J.&nbsp;R., on present-day life,
+ <a href="#png.029">21</a>;
+  on Carlyle,
+ <a href="#png.047">39</a>;
+  on college training,
+ <a href="#png.110">102</a>;
+  on Darwin,
+ <a href="#png.153">145</a>;
+  on Grant&#8217;s cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  on <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.276">268</a>,
+ <a href="#png.279">271</a>,
+ <a href="#png.286">278</a>;
+  on importance of Godkin to it,
+ <a href="#png.283">275</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Macaulay, Lord, on Shakespeare as historian,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>;
+  on Herodotus,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>;
+  prolixity,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>,
+ <a href="#png.024">16</a>,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>;
+  on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.027">19</a>,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>;
+  lack of reflection and digestion,
+ <a href="#png.045">37</a>;
+  enthusiasm,
+ <a href="#png.046">38</a>;
+  as partisan,
+ <a href="#png.049">41</a>;
+  and popularity,
+ <a href="#png.052">44</a>;
+  on Greek and Latin,
+ <a href="#png.059">51</a>;
+  style,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>;
+  on mathematics,
+ <a href="#png.064">56</a>;
+  importance in training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.070">62</a>;
+  biography,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>;
+  as reader,
+ <a href="#png.077">69</a>;
+  on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.123">115</a>;
+  on Wentworth and Laud,
+ <a href="#png.157">149</a>;
+  Gladstone on,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>;
+  on Cromwell,
+ <a href="#png.326">318</a>;
+  on character of Puritans,
+ <a href="#png.326">318</a>;
+  on Cromwell&#8217;s army,
+ <a href="#png.327">319</a>;
+  Auckland on agreeing with,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>McCrary, G.&nbsp;W., in Hayes&#8217;s cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p>McKim, J.&nbsp;M., and foundation of <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>.</p>
+
+<p>McKinley, William, as leader of House,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>;
+  tariff bill,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>;
+  as President,
+ <a href="#png.237">229</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  change in tariff views,
+ <a href="#png.237">229</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.239">231</a>;
+  and gold standard,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>;
+  and public opinion, Spanish War and Philippines,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  diplomacy,
+ <a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  influence on Congress,
+ <a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  as speaker,
+ <a href="#png.249">241</a>;
+  attitude of Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mackintosh, Sir James, on irreligion of Gibbon&#8217;s time,
+ <a href="#png.140">132</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Madison, James, as President,
+ <a href="#png.215">207</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mahaffy, J.&nbsp;P., on Herodotus,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>;
+  on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.016">8</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mahan, A.&nbsp;T., anticipation of theory,
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Maine, Sir Henry, on Federal Constitution,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>,
+ <a href="#png.214">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Manuscript sources, value,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>;
+  Gardiner&#8217;s use,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>,
+ <a href="#png.152">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Massachusetts Historical Society, papers by author before,
+ <a href="#png.149">141</a>,
+ <a href="#png.159">151</a>,
+ <a href="#png.167">159</a>,
+ <a href="#png.183">175</a>,
+ <a href="#png.191">183</a>,
+ <a href="#png.197">189</a>,
+ <a href="#png.323">315</a>;
+  recognition of Gardiner,
+ <a href="#png.155">147</a>;
+  of Lecky,
+ <a href="#png.164">156</a>;
+  interest of E.&nbsp;L. Pierce in,
+ <a href="#png.189">181</a>;
+  E.&nbsp;G. Bourne and editorship of publications,
+ <a href="#png.207">199</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mathematics, and training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.065">57</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Matthews, William, on <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.286">278</a>,
+ <a href="#png.287">279</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Merritt, E.&nbsp;A., appointment by Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mexican War, aggression,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>;
+  and slavery,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.340" id="png.340"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">332</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Mill, J.&nbsp;S., and mathematics,
+ <a href="#png.064">56</a>;
+  prodigy,
+ <a href="#png.064">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Milligan case, and arbitrary government,
+ <a href="#png.223">215</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Milman, H.&nbsp;H., on Gibbon&#8217;s history,
+ <a href="#png.133">125</a>,
+ <a href="#png.147">139</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Milton, John, on books,
+ <a href="#png.068">60</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Molière, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.057">49</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mommsen, Theodor, on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>,
+ <a href="#png.133">125</a>;
+  as scientific historian,
+ <a href="#png.051">43</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Money. <em>See</em> Finances.</p>
+
+<p>Monographs, use by general historians,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Monroe, James, as President,
+ <a href="#png.215">207</a>,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Monroe Doctrine, and Philippines,
+ <a href="#png.203">195</a>;
+  and development of presidential office,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Montesquieu, Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Morison, J.&nbsp;A. Cotter, on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.139">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Morley, John, on Macaulay,
+ <a href="#png.024">16</a>,
+ <a href="#png.046">38</a>,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>;
+  on Cicero and Voltaire,
+ <a href="#png.059">51</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Morrill, J.&nbsp;S., and Hayes&#8217;s New York Custom-house appointments,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Morris, Gouverneur, and framing of Constitution,
+ <a href="#png.212">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Morse, C.&nbsp;F., on feeling in Union army towards South Carolina,
+ <a href="#png.315">307</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Motley, J.&nbsp;L., best work,
+ <a href="#png.076">68</a>;
+  advice to historians,
+ <a href="#png.082">74</a>,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>;
+  and manuscript sources,
+ <a href="#png.094">86</a>,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>;
+  Bourne&#8217;s unfinished biography,
+ <a href="#png.204">196</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first"><cite>Nation</cite>, as historical source,
+ <a href="#png.103">95</a>;
+  J.&nbsp;D. Cox as contributor,
+ <a href="#png.195">187</a>;
+  circulation,
+ <a href="#png.278">270</a>;
+  foundation,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>;
+  weekly edition of <cite>Evening Post</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Godkin.</p>
+
+<p>Necker, Mme. <em>See</em> Curchod.</p>
+
+<p>Negro suffrage, opposition of J.&nbsp;D. Cox,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Nerva, as &ldquo;gray emperor,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;New English Dictionary,&rdquo; importance of quotations in,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>.</p>
+
+<p>New York Custom-house, Hayes&#8217;s reforms and appointments,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>.</p>
+
+<p><cite>New York Weekly Tribune</cite>, influence,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>,
+ <a href="#png.275">267</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Greeley.</p>
+
+<p>Newspapers, as historical sources,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.105">97</a>;
+  use by Von Holst,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>;
+  as registers of facts,
+ <a href="#png.038">30</a>,
+ <a href="#png.094">86</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.097">89</a>;
+  importance for dates,
+ <a href="#png.038">30</a>,
+ <a href="#png.095">87</a>;
+  as guide of public opinion,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.100">92</a>;
+  power of <em>New York Weekly Tribune</em>,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>,
+ <a href="#png.275">267</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.277">269</a>;
+  qualities of evidence,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>,
+ <a href="#png.092">84</a>;
+  value in American history, for period 1850&ndash;1860,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.100">92</a>;
+  and correction of logical assumptions,
+ <a href="#png.095">87</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.097">89</a>;
+  as record of speeches and letters,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>;
+  value of partisanship,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>;
+  value of Northern, for Civil War period,
+ <a href="#png.100">92</a>,
+ <a href="#png.101">93</a>;
+  of Southern,
+ <a href="#png.101">93</a>;
+  laboriousness of research,
+ <a href="#png.101">93</a>;
+  value for Reconstruction,
+ <a href="#png.102">94</a>;
+  canons of use,
+ <a href="#png.104">96</a>;
+  as fourth estate,
+ <a href="#png.104">96</a>;
+  criticisms of Presidents,
+ <a href="#png.247">239</a>.
+  <em>See also Nation</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Niebuhr, B.&nbsp;G., on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.018">10</a>,
+ <a href="#png.117">109</a>;
+  on training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>.</p>
+
+<p>North, Sir Thomas, translation of Plutarch,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Norton, C.&nbsp;E., on Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.278">270</a>;
+  and foundation of <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Note-making in historical work,
+ <a href="#png.084">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Nullification, Jackson&#8217;s course,
+ <a href="#png.218">210</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">&ldquo;Official Records of Union and Confederate armies,&rdquo; value as historical source,
+ <a href="#png.100">92</a>.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ohio idea,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.267">259</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver, J.&nbsp;M., at burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.321">313</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Olmsted, F.&nbsp;L., Godkin on Southern books,
+ <a href="#png.281">273</a>;
+  interest in <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>;
+  on importance of Godkin to it,
+ <a href="#png.283">275</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Olney, Richard, draft general arbitration treaty,
+ <a href="#png.234">226</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Originality in history,
+ <a href="#png.035">27</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.037">29</a>,
+ <a href="#png.042">34</a>,
+ <a href="#png.083">75</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Oxford University, address of author at,
+ <a href="#png.177">169</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Pacific Coast, Goethe&#8217;s prophecy,
+ <a href="#png.079">71</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Packard, S.&nbsp;B., overthrow of government,
+ <a href="#png.256">248</a>,
+ <a href="#png.257">249</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Palmerston, Lord, Spencer Walpole&#8217;s estimate,
+ <a href="#png.172">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Panama Canal, Goethe&#8217;s prophecy,
+ <a href="#png.080">72</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Paper money. <em>See</em> Finances.</p>
+
+<p>Parkman, Francis, originality,
+ <a href="#png.036">28</a>;
+  best work,
+ <a href="#png.076">68</a>;
+  remuneration,
+ <a href="#png.086">78</a>;
+  national pride in,
+ <a href="#png.110">102</a>;
+  and religion,
+ <a href="#png.139">131</a>;
+  on <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.278">270</a>,
+ <a href="#png.303">295</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Partisanship, historical value of newspaper,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pascal, Blaise, influence on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.127">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pasteur, Louis, biography,
+ <a href="#png.067">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Patriotism in historians,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pericles, funeral oration,
+ <a href="#png.026">18</a>,
+ <a href="#png.031">23</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Philippines, annexation and Monroe Doctrine,
+ <a href="#png.203">195</a>;
+  McKinley&#8217;s attitude,
+ <a href="#png.241">233</a>;
+  Godkin&#8217;s attitude,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Physical sciences, and history,
+ <a href="#png.010">2</a>;
+  and training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.063">55</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.067">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.341" id="png.341"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">333</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Pierce, E.&nbsp;L., essay on,
+ <a href="#png.185">177</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.189">181</a>;
+  biography of Sumner,
+ <a href="#png.185">177</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.187">179</a>;
+  as politician and citizen,
+ <a href="#png.187">179</a>,
+ <a href="#png.189">181</a>;
+  historic sense,
+ <a href="#png.187">179</a>;
+  character,
+ <a href="#png.188">180</a>;
+  interest in Massachusetts Historical Society,
+ <a href="#png.189">181</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pierce, Franklin, as President,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pike, J.&nbsp;S., historical value of newspaper articles,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pittsburg, railroad riot of 1877,
+ <a href="#png.260">252</a>,
+ <a href="#png.261">253</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pliny the Younger, on Tacitus,
+ <a href="#png.017">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Plutarch, North&#8217;s translation,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>;
+  on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.027">19</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry, and history,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Politics, Godkin on decline,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>,
+ <a href="#png.305">297</a>.
+<em>See also</em> Civil service, Congress, Elections, Newspapers, Presidential office, and parties by name.</p>
+
+<p>Polk, J.&nbsp;K., as President,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Polybius, as historian,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Popularity, and historical writing,
+ <a href="#png.052">44</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Presidential office, essay on,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.249">241</a>;
+flexibility of powers and duties,
+ <a href="#png.212">204</a>;
+  under Washington, control of treaties,
+ <a href="#png.213">205</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.215">207</a>;
+  John Adams to J.&nbsp;Q. Adams, extension of power,
+ <a href="#png.215">207</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.217">209</a>;
+  and annexations,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>;
+  and Monroe Doctrine,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>;
+  under Jackson, era of vulgarity, spoils system,
+ <a href="#png.217">209</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.219">211</a>;
+  Van Buren to Buchanan, annexations and slavery,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.221">213</a>;
+  period of weakness,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>;
+  under Lincoln, war power,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.224">216</a>;
+  under Johnson, nadir,
+ <a href="#png.224">216</a>;
+  and cabinet government,
+ <a href="#png.225">217</a>,
+ <a href="#png.248">240</a>,
+ <a href="#png.271">263</a>;
+  under Grant,
+ <a href="#png.225">217</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.227">219</a>,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>;
+  veto power,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>;
+  Kent on dangers in elections,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>;
+  contested election of 1876,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>;
+  under Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.228">220</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.230">222</a>,
+ <a href="#png.253">245</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.272">264</a>;
+  under Garfield, civil service reform,
+ <a href="#png.230">222</a>;
+  under Arthur,
+ <a href="#png.230">222</a>;
+  under Cleveland, advance in power,
+ <a href="#png.231">223</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.234">226</a>;
+  under Harrison,
+ <a href="#png.234">226</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.236">228</a>;
+  under McKinley,
+ <a href="#png.237">229</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  and public opinion,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.242">234</a>;
+  character of Roosevelt,
+ <a href="#png.243">235</a>;
+  business, interruptions and their remedy,
+ <a href="#png.244">236</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.247">239</a>;
+  appointments, number of presidential offices,
+ <a href="#png.244">236</a>;
+  contact with Congress,
+ <a href="#png.245">237</a>;
+  criticisms,
+ <a href="#png.246">238</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.248">240</a>;
+  success of system,
+ <a href="#png.248">240</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.249">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pritchett, H.&nbsp;S., on McKinley and Philippines,
+ <a href="#png.241">233</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Public opinion, newspapers as guide,
+ <a href="#png.039">31</a>,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.100">92</a>;
+  backing of Lincoln&#8217;s extra-legal actions,
+ <a href="#png.223">215</a>;
+  influence on Presidents,
+ <a href="#png.239">231</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.242">234</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Puritans, Macaulay and Gardiner on character,
+ <a href="#png.326">318</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pym, John, and Revolution of 1688,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Railroad riots, 1894, Cleveland and use of Federal troops,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>;
+  1877, cause,
+ <a href="#png.259">251</a>;
+  strike and conflicts,
+ <a href="#png.261">253</a>;
+  use of Federal troops,
+ <a href="#png.261">253</a>;
+  social alarm,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>;
+  conduct of Hayes,
+ <a href="#png.262">254</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ranke, Leopold von, &ldquo;England,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond, H.&nbsp;J., power as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Reading, desultory,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>,
+ <a href="#png.073">65</a>,
+ <a href="#png.207">199</a>;
+  facility and retention,
+ <a href="#png.077">69</a>;
+  note-making,
+ <a href="#png.084">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Reconstruction, newspapers as historical source,
+ <a href="#png.102">94</a>,
+ <a href="#png.103">95</a>;
+  J.&nbsp;D. Cox&#8217;s opposition to negro suffrage,
+ <a href="#png.194">186</a>;
+  failure, final withdrawal of troops,
+ <a href="#png.256">248</a>,
+ <a href="#png.257">249</a>;
+  attitude of <cite>The Nation</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Reed, T.&nbsp;B., and power of Speaker,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Reflection in historical work,
+ <a href="#png.045">37</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Reform act of 1832, Lord John Russell&#8217;s introduction,
+ <a href="#png.170">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Religion, Gibbon on, under Pagan empire,
+ <a href="#png.134">126</a>;
+  Gibbon&#8217;s treatment of early Christian church,
+ <a href="#png.139">131</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.141">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Republican party, newspapers as record of formation,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>;
+  and sound money,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>,
+ <a href="#png.265">257</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Resumption of specie payments, opposition and success,
+ <a href="#png.266">258</a>,
+ <a href="#png.267">259</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Revolution of 1688, question of Cromwell&#8217;s influence,
+ <a href="#png.330">322</a>,
+ <a href="#png.331">323</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Riots. <em>See</em> Railroad.</p>
+
+<p>Robertson, William, present-day reputation,
+ <a href="#png.048">40</a>,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>;
+  Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.130">122</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Rome. <em>See</em> Gibbon, Tacitus.</p>
+
+<p>Roosevelt, Theodore, character,
+ <a href="#png.243">235</a>;
+  routine as President,
+ <a href="#png.244">236</a>,
+ <a href="#png.246">238</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ropes, J.&nbsp;C., as military historian,
+ <a href="#png.021">13</a>.</p>
+
+<p><cite>Round Table</cite>, character,
+ <a href="#png.287">279</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Rousseau, J.&nbsp;J., on Gibbon as lover,
+ <a href="#png.145">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Russell, Lord John, and Reform Act of 1832,
+ <a href="#png.170">162</a>;
+  Spencer Walpole&#8217;s biography,
+ <a href="#png.170">162</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Sainte-Beuve, C.&nbsp;A., style,
+ <a href="#png.061">53</a>;
+  on desultory reading,
+ <a href="#png.073">65</a>;
+  on biographies of Goethe,
+ <a href="#png.080">72</a>;
+  as critic,
+ <a href="#png.080">72</a>;
+  on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.122">114</a>,
+ <a href="#png.131">123</a>;
+  on Tacitus,
+ <a href="#png.136">128</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Salisbury, Lord, Godkin on,
+ <a href="#png.298">290</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Santa Maria in Ara C&oelig;li, Bambino,
+ <a href="#png.115">107</a>;
+  connection with Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.115">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Schofield, J.&nbsp;M., on J.&nbsp;D. Cox,
+ <a href="#png.193">185</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Schouler, William, power as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Schurz, Carl, on history as profession,
+ <a href="#png.086">78</a>;
+  criticism of Cleveland&#8217;s Venezuelan policy,
+ <a href="#png.247">239</a>;
+  in Ohio campaign of
+<a name="png.342" id="png.342"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">334</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>1875,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>;
+  Secretary of Interior, ability,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>;
+  with Hayes at Harvard commencement,
+ <a href="#png.259">251</a>;
+  and civil service reform,
+ <a href="#png.264">256</a>;
+  social character,
+ <a href="#png.270">262</a>;
+  as editor of <cite>Evening Post</cite>,
+ <a href="#png.282">274</a>;
+  and greenback inflation,
+ <a href="#png.289">281</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Scott, Winfield, presidential campaign,
+ <a href="#png.094">86</a>,
+ <a href="#png.095">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sea-power, Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Senate. <em>See</em> Congress.</p>
+
+<p>Seward, W.&nbsp;H., and arbitrary arrests,
+ <a href="#png.222">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, William, as historian,
+ <a href="#png.009">1</a>,
+ <a href="#png.015">7</a>,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>;
+  conciseness,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>;
+  and study of human character,
+ <a href="#png.075">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Shaw, Bernard, on reality of Shakespeare&#8217;s characters,
+ <a href="#png.075">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sheffield, Lord, sends wine to Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.143">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sherman, John, and Silver Bill of 1878,
+ <a href="#png.229">221</a>,
+ <a href="#png.267">259</a>,
+ <a href="#png.268">260</a>;
+  on contact of President and Congress,
+ <a href="#png.245">237</a>;
+  in Ohio campaign of 1875,
+ <a href="#png.254">246</a>;
+  Secretary of Treasury, ability,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>,
+ <a href="#png.266">258</a>;
+  refunding,
+ <a href="#png.266">258</a>;
+  abused for depression, specie resumption,
+ <a href="#png.266">258</a>,
+ <a href="#png.267">259</a>;
+  social character,
+ <a href="#png.271">263</a>;
+  and greenback inflation,
+ <a href="#png.289">281</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sherman, W.&nbsp;T., and Hayes&#8217;s suggestion of war portfolio for General Johnston,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>;
+  and burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.309">301</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.321">313</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sicilian expedition, Thucydides&#8217;s account,
+ <a href="#png.027">19</a>,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Silver. <em>See</em> Finances.</p>
+
+<p>Slavery, and westward expansion,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Source material, use by Thucydides and Tacitus,
+ <a href="#png.020">12</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.024">16</a>;
+  modern,
+ <a href="#png.028">20</a>,
+ <a href="#png.030">22</a>;
+  newspapers,
+ <a href="#png.037">29</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.040">32</a>,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.105">97</a>;
+  manuscript,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>,
+ <a href="#png.099">91</a>,
+ <a href="#png.151">143</a>,
+ <a href="#png.302">294</a>.</p>
+
+<p>South Carolina, overthrow of carpet-bag government,
+ <a href="#png.256">248</a>;
+  feeling of Union army towards,
+ <a href="#png.314">306</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spanish War, newspapers and cause,
+ <a href="#png.097">89</a>;
+  McKinley&#8217;s course,
+ <a href="#png.241">233</a>;
+  attitude of Godkin,
+ <a href="#png.294">286</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Speaker of House of Representatives, power,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>.</p>
+
+<p><cite>Spectator</cite>, on McKinley&#8217;s diplomacy,
+ <a href="#png.242">234</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spedding, James, Gardiner on,
+ <a href="#png.153">145</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spencer, Herbert, on aim of education,
+ <a href="#png.085">77</a>;
+  on age as factor in evidence,
+ <a href="#png.093">85</a>;
+  Bryce on,
+ <a href="#png.301">293</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spoils system. <em>See</em> Civil service.</p>
+
+<p>Staël, Madame de, parents,
+ <a href="#png.145">137</a>;
+  on Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.145">137</a> n.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stalwarts,&rdquo; origin of name,
+ <a href="#png.257">249</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stanton, E.&nbsp;M., and arbitrary arrests,
+ <a href="#png.222">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stephens, H.&nbsp;M., on French Revolution,
+ <a href="#png.163">155</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stone, G.&nbsp;A., at burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.310">302</a>,
+ <a href="#png.318">310</a>,
+ <a href="#png.319">311</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Story, Joseph, on presidential character,
+ <a href="#png.243">235</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stubbs, William, as historian,
+ <a href="#png.050">42</a>,
+ <a href="#png.077">69</a>,
+ <a href="#png.165">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Suffrage, Godkin on universal,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> Negro.</p>
+
+<p>Sumner, Charles, style,
+ <a href="#png.061">53</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Switzerland, Gibbon&#8217;s manuscript history,
+ <a href="#png.132">124</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="first">Tacitus, rank as historian,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>;
+  characteristics as historian,
+ <a href="#png.016">8</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.018">10</a>,
+ <a href="#png.136">128</a>;
+  conciseness,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>,
+ <a href="#png.024">16</a>;
+  use of source material,
+ <a href="#png.023">15</a>;
+  as contemporary historian,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>,
+ <a href="#png.027">19</a>,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>;
+  on history,
+ <a href="#png.051">43</a>;
+  importance in training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>;
+  Gibbon on,
+ <a href="#png.124">116</a>;
+  on censure,
+ <a href="#png.284">276</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Taine, H.&nbsp;A., use of journals,
+ <a href="#png.091">83</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Tariff, Cleveland&#8217;s attitude,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>;
+  McKinley Act,
+ <a href="#png.235">227</a>;
+  Dingley Act,
+ <a href="#png.237">229</a>;
+  McKinley&#8217;s change of opinion,
+ <a href="#png.237">229</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.239">231</a>;
+  <cite>The Nation</cite> and protection,
+ <a href="#png.290">282</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Taylor, Zachary, as President,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Texan annexation,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>; and slavery,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray, W.&nbsp;M., on Macaulay,
+ <a href="#png.046">38</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Theodora, Gibbon&#8217;s treatment,
+ <a href="#png.141">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson, R.&nbsp;W., in Hayes&#8217;s cabinet,
+ <a href="#png.255">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thucydides, rank as historian,
+ <a href="#png.013">5</a>;
+  on history,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>;
+  characteristics as historian,
+ <a href="#png.014">6</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.016">8</a>,
+ <a href="#png.047">39</a>,
+ <a href="#png.136">128</a>;
+  conciseness,
+ <a href="#png.019">11</a>,
+ <a href="#png.022">14</a>,
+ <a href="#png.024">16</a>,
+ <a href="#png.044">36</a>;
+  use of personal sources material,
+ <a href="#png.020">12</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.022">14</a>;
+  as contemporary historian,
+ <a href="#png.025">17</a>,
+ <a href="#png.119">111</a>;
+  importance in training of historian,
+ <a href="#png.069">61</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thurman, A.&nbsp;G., and greenback inflation,
+ <a href="#png.289">281</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ticknor, George, pessimism,
+ <a href="#png.296">288</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Tilden, S.&nbsp;J., election controversy,
+ <a href="#png.211">203</a>,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>,
+ <a href="#png.253">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Tocqueville, Alexis de, style,
+ <a href="#png.073">65</a>;
+  on presidential office,
+ <a href="#png.218">210</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Trajan, &ldquo;wise emperor,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Treaty-making power, Jay Treaty as precedent,
+ <a href="#png.214">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Trent, W.&nbsp;P., on burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.310">302</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Trevelyan, Sir G.&nbsp;O., biography of Macaulay,
+ <a href="#png.072">64</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Tyler, John, as President,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>,
+ <a href="#png.220">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Tyndall, John, as popular scientist,
+ <a href="#png.066">58</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="first"><a name="png.343" id="png.343"></a><span class="ns">[p</span><span
+ class="pgmark">335</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Ulysses, and study of human character,
+ <a href="#png.075">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p>United States, Goethe&#8217;s prophecy of westward extension and Panama Canal,
+ <a href="#png.079">71</a>;
+  political traditions,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>;
+  Godkin&#8217;s early optimism and later pessimism concerning,
+ <a href="#png.280">272</a>,
+ <a href="#png.292">284</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.298">290</a>,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>;
+  Godkin on general progress and political decline,
+ <a href="#png.304">296</a>.
+  <em>See also</em> American, Finances, Newspapers, Politics.</p>
+
+<p>Universities, strife after exact knowledge,
+ <a href="#png.109">101</a>;
+  advantages and aim of training,
+ <a href="#png.110">102</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="first">Vallandigham case, Lincoln&#8217;s attitude,
+ <a href="#png.222">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Van Buren, Martin, as President,
+ <a href="#png.219">211</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Venezuela-Guiana boundary, Cleveland&#8217;s action,
+ <a href="#png.233">225</a>
+  Godkin&#8217;s attitude,
+ <a href="#png.293">285</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Veto power, wisdom,
+ <a href="#png.227">219</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire, importance to historians,
+ <a href="#png.059">51</a>;
+  theatre at Lausanne,
+ <a href="#png.129">121</a>;
+  and Gibbon,
+ <a href="#png.129">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="first">Walker, F.&nbsp;A., career,
+ <a href="#png.291">283</a>;
+  <cite>The Nation</cite> ignores death of,
+ <a href="#png.291">283</a>,
+ <a href="#png.292">284</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Walpole, Sir Spencer, essay on,
+ <a href="#png.169">161</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.175">167</a>;
+  &ldquo;England,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.169">161</a>,
+ <a href="#png.171">163</a>,
+ <a href="#png.172">164</a>;
+  biography of Lord John Russell,
+ <a href="#png.170">162</a>;
+  knowledge of men,
+ <a href="#png.172">164</a>;
+  of continental politics,
+ <a href="#png.172">164</a>;
+  &ldquo;Studies in Biography,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.172">164</a>;
+  knowledge of practical politics,
+ <a href="#png.173">165</a>;
+  as man of affairs,
+ <a href="#png.173">165</a>;
+  style,
+ <a href="#png.173">165</a>;
+  visit to, character,
+ <a href="#png.173">165</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.175">167</a>;
+  death,
+ <a href="#png.175">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>War power, exemplification by Lincoln,
+ <a href="#png.221">213</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.224">216</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Warner, C.&nbsp;D., on originality in style,
+ <a href="#png.035">27</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Washington, George, as President,
+ <a href="#png.213">205</a>&ndash;<a href="#png.215">207</a>;
+  prescience,
+ <a href="#png.214">206</a>;
+  as political tradition,
+ <a href="#png.216">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Webb, J.&nbsp;W., power as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, Daniel, basis of style,
+ <a href="#png.061">53</a>,
+ <a href="#png.062">54</a>;
+  and presidential nomination in 1852,
+ <a href="#png.094">86</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Weed, Thurlow, power as journalist,
+ <a href="#png.098">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wells, H.&nbsp;G., on Boston,
+ <a href="#png.146">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wentworth, Thomas, Macaulay and Gardiner on,
+ <a href="#png.157">149</a>.</p>
+
+<p>West Virginia, railroad riots of 1877,
+ <a href="#png.260">252</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Western Reserve University, lecture by author at,
+ <a href="#png.055">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wheeler, Joseph, lootings by his cavalry at Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.317">309</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Whig party, nominations in 1852,
+ <a href="#png.094">86</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman, Marcus, Bourne&#8217;s essay on,
+ <a href="#png.201">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p>William&nbsp;I of Germany, &ldquo;gray emperor,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>William&nbsp;II of Germany, &ldquo;traveling emperor,&rdquo;
+ <a href="#png.135">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Windom, William, and Hayes&#8217;s New York Custom-house appointments,
+ <a href="#png.263">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wine, Gibbon&#8217;s love for,
+ <a href="#png.143">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Winthrop, R.&nbsp;C., on E.&nbsp;L. Pierce,
+ <a href="#png.187">179</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Woods, C.&nbsp;R., at burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.311">303</a>,
+ <a href="#png.319">311</a>,
+ <a href="#png.320">312</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Woods, W.&nbsp;B., at burning of Columbia,
+ <a href="#png.319">311</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Woolsey, T.&nbsp;D., on Thucydides,
+ <a href="#png.047">39</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="first">Yale University, lecture by author at,
+ <a href="#png.055">47</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="small ctr">This Index was made for me by D.&nbsp;M. Matteson.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="pg" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Essays, by James Ford Rhodes
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@@ -0,0 +1,10350 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Essays, by James Ford Rhodes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Historical Essays
+
+Author: James Ford Rhodes
+
+Release Date: April 18, 2008 [EBook #25099]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL ESSAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, David Wilson and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL ESSAYS
+
+
+BY
+JAMES FORD RHODES, LL.D., D.Litt.
+
+Author of the _History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850
+to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877_
+
+
+New York
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+1909
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+Copyright, 1909,
+By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1909.
+
+Norwood Press
+J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In offering to the public this volume of Essays, all but two of which
+have been read at various places on different occasions, I am aware that
+there is some repetition in ideas and illustrations, but, as the dates
+of their delivery and previous publication are indicated, I am letting
+them stand substantially as they were written and delivered.
+
+I am indebted to my son, Daniel P. Rhodes, for a literary revision of
+these Essays; and I have to thank the editors of the _Atlantic Monthly_,
+of _Scribner's Magazine_, and of the _Century Magazine_ for leave to
+reprint the articles which have already appeared in their periodicals.
+
+  Boston, November, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+      I. History                                                       1
+           President's Inaugural Address, American Historical
+           Association, Boston, December 27, 1899; printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1900.
+
+     II. Concerning the Writing of History                            25
+           Address delivered at the Meeting of the American
+           Historical Association in Detroit, December, 1900.
+
+    III. The Profession of Historian                                  47
+           Lecture read before the History Club of Harvard
+           University, April 27, 1908, and at Yale, Columbia, and
+           Western Reserve Universities.
+
+     IV. Newspapers as Historical Sources                             81
+           A Paper read before the American Historical Association
+           in Washington on December 29, 1908; printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of May, 1909.
+
+      V. Speech prepared for the Commencement Dinner at Harvard
+         University, June 26, 1901. (Not delivered)                   99
+
+     VI. Edward Gibbon                                               105
+           Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and
+           printed in _Scribner's Magazine_ of June, 1909.
+
+    VII. Samuel Rawson Gardiner                                      141
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the March Meeting of 1902, and printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of May, 1902.
+
+   VIII. William E. H. Lecky                                         151
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the November Meeting of 1903.
+
+     IX. Sir Spencer Walpole                                         159
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the November Meeting of 1907.
+
+      X. John Richard Green                                          169
+           Address at a Gathering of Historians on June 5, 1909, to
+           mark the Placing of a Tablet in the Inner Quadrangle of
+           Jesus College, Oxford, to the Memory of John Richard
+           Green.
+
+     XI. Edward L. Pierce                                            175
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the October Meeting of 1897.
+
+    XII. Jacob D. Cox                                                183
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the October Meeting of 1900.
+
+   XIII. Edward Gaylord Bourne                                       189
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the March Meeting of 1908.
+
+    XIV. The Presidential Office                                     201
+           An Essay printed in _Scribner's Magazine_ of February,
+           1903.
+
+     XV. A Review of President Hayes's Administration                243
+           Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Graduate
+           School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, on
+           October 8, 1908; printed in the _Century Magazine_ for
+           October, 1909.
+
+    XVI. Edwin Lawrence Godkin                                       265
+           Lecture read at Harvard University, April 13, 1908;
+           printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1908.
+
+   XVII. Who Burned Columbia?                                        299
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the November Meeting of 1901, and printed in the
+           _American Historical Review_ of April, 1902.
+
+  XVIII. A New Estimate of Cromwell                                  315
+           A Paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society
+           at the January Meeting of 1898, and printed in the
+           _Atlantic Monthly_ of June, 1898.
+
+  Index                                                              325
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+President's Inaugural Address, American Historical Association, Boston,
+December 27, 1899; printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL ESSAYS
+
+
+HISTORY[1]
+
+
+My theme is history. It is an old subject, which has been discoursed
+about since Herodotus, and I should be vain indeed if I flattered myself
+that I could say aught new concerning the methods of writing it, when
+this has for so long a period engaged the minds of so many gifted men.
+Yet to a sympathetic audience, to people who love history, there is
+always the chance that a fresh treatment may present the commonplaces in
+some different combination, and augment for the moment an interest which
+is perennial.
+
+Holding a brief for history as do I your representative, let me at once
+concede that it is not the highest form of intellectual endeavor; let us
+at once agree that it were better that all the histories ever written
+were burned than for the world to lose Homer and Shakespeare. Yet as it
+is generally true that an advocate rarely admits anything without
+qualification, I should not be loyal to my client did I not urge that
+Shakespeare was historian as well as poet. We all prefer his Antony and
+Cleopatra and Julius Caesar to the Lives in North's Plutarch which
+furnished him his materials. The history is in substance as true as
+Plutarch, the dramatic force greater; the language is better than that
+of Sir Thomas North, who himself did a remarkable piece of work when he
+gave his country a classic by Englishing a French version of the
+stories of the Greek. It is true as Macaulay wrote, the historical plays
+of Shakespeare have superseded history. When we think of Henry V, it is
+of Prince Hal, the boon companion of Falstaff, who spent his youth in
+brawl and riot, and then became a sober and duty-loving king; and our
+idea of Richard III. is a deceitful, dissembling, cruel wretch who knew
+no touch of pity, a bloody tyrant who knew no law of God or man.
+
+The Achilles of Homer was a very living personage to Alexander. How
+happy he was, said the great general, when he visited Troy, "in having
+while he lived so faithful a friend, and when he was dead so famous a
+poet to proclaim his actions"! In our century, as more in consonance
+with society under the regime of contract, when force has largely given,
+pay to craft, we feel in greater sympathy with Ulysses; "The one person
+I would like to have met and talked with," Froude used to say, "was
+Ulysses. How interesting it would be to have his opinion on universal
+suffrage, and on a House of Parliament where Thersites is listened to as
+patiently as the king of men!"
+
+We may also concede that, in the realm of intellectual endeavor, the
+natural and physical sciences should have the precedence of history. The
+present is more important than the past, and those sciences which
+contribute to our comfort, place within the reach of the laborer and
+mechanic as common necessaries what would have been the highest luxury
+to the Roman emperor or to the king of the Middle Ages, contribute to
+health and the preservation of life, and by the development of railroads
+make possible such a gathering as this,--these sciences, we cheerfully
+admit, outrank our modest enterprise, which, in the words of Herodotus,
+is "to preserve from decay the remembrance of what men have done." It
+may be true, as a geologist once said, in extolling his study at the
+expense of the humanities, "Rocks do not lie, although men do;" yet, on
+the other hand, the historic sense, which during our century has
+diffused itself widely, has invaded the domain of physical science. If
+you are unfortunate enough to be ill, and consult a doctor, he
+expatiates on the history of your disease. It was once my duty to attend
+the Commencement exercises of a technical school, when one of the
+graduates had a thesis on bridges. As he began by telling how they were
+built in Julius Caesar's time, and tracing at some length the development
+of the art during the period of the material prosperity of the Roman
+Empire, he had little time and space left to consider their construction
+at the present day. One of the most brilliant surgeons I ever knew, the
+originator of a number of important surgical methods, who, being
+physician as well, was remarkable in his expedients for saving life when
+called to counsel in grave and apparently hopeless cases, desired to
+write a book embodying his discoveries and devices, but said that the
+feeling was strong within him that he must begin his work with an
+account of medicine in Egypt, and trace its development down to our own
+time. As he was a busy man in his profession, he lacked the leisure to
+make the preliminary historical study, and his book was never written.
+Men of affairs, who, taking "the present time by the top," are looked
+upon as devoted to the physical and mechanical sciences, continually pay
+tribute to our art. President Garfield, on his deathbed, asked one of
+his most trusted Cabinet advisers, in words that become pathetic as one
+thinks of the opportunities destroyed by the assassin's bullet, "Shall I
+live in history?" A clever politician, who knew more of ward meetings,
+caucuses, and the machinery of conventions than he did of history
+books, and who was earnest for the renomination of President Arthur in
+1884, said to me, in the way of clinching his argument, "That
+administration will live in history." So it was, according to Amyot, in
+the olden time. "Whensoever," he wrote, "the right sage and virtuous
+Emperor of Rome, Alexander Severus, was to consult of any matter of
+great importance, whether it concerned war or government, he always
+called such to counsel as were reported to be well seen in histories."
+"What," demanded Cicero of Atticus, "will history say of me six hundred
+years hence?"
+
+Proper concessions being made to poetry and the physical sciences, our
+place in the field remains secure. Moreover, we live in a fortunate age;
+for was there ever so propitious a time for writing history as in the
+last forty years? There has been a general acquisition of the historic
+sense. The methods of teaching history have so improved that they may be
+called scientific. Even as the chemist and physicist, we talk of
+practice in the laboratory. Most biologists will accept Haeckel's
+designation of "the last forty years as the age of Darwin," for the
+theory of evolution is firmly established. The publication of the Origin
+of Species, in 1859, converted it from a poet's dream and philosopher's
+speculation to a well-demonstrated scientific theory. Evolution,
+heredity, environment, have become household words, and their
+application to history has influenced every one who has had to trace the
+development of a people, the growth of an institution, or the
+establishment of a cause. Other scientific theories and methods have
+affected physical science as potently, but none has entered so vitally
+into the study of man. What hitherto the eye of genius alone could
+perceive may become the common property of every one who cares to read a
+dozen books. But with all of our advantages, do we write better history
+than was written before the year 1859, which we may call the line of
+demarcation between the old and the new? If the English, German, and
+American historical scholars should vote as to who were the two best
+historians, I have little doubt that Thucydides and Tacitus would have a
+pretty large majority. If they were asked to name a third choice, it
+would undoubtedly lie between Herodotus and Gibbon. At the meeting of
+this association in Cleveland, when methods of historical teaching were
+under discussion, Herodotus and Thucydides, but no others, were
+mentioned as proper object lessons. What are the merits of Herodotus?
+Accuracy in details, as we understand it, was certainly not one of them.
+Neither does he sift critically his facts, but intimates that he will
+not make a positive decision in the case of conflicting testimony. "For
+myself," he wrote, "my duty is to report all that is said, but I am not
+obliged to believe it all alike,--a remark which may be understood to
+apply to my whole history." He had none of the wholesome skepticism
+which we deem necessary in the weighing of historical evidence; on the
+contrary, he is frequently accused of credulity. Nevertheless, Percy
+Gardner calls his narrative nobler than that of Thucydides, and Mahaffy
+terms it an "incomparable history." "The truth is," wrote Macaulay in
+his diary, when he was forty-nine years old, "I admire no historians
+much except Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus." Sir M. E. Grant Duff
+devoted his presidential address of 1895, before the Royal Historical
+Society, wholly to Herodotus, ending with the conclusion, "The fame of
+Herodotus, which has a little waned, will surely wax again." Whereupon
+the London Times devoted a leader to the subject. "We are concerned," it
+said, "to hear, on authority so eminent, that one of the most delightful
+writers of antiquity has a little waned of late in favor with the
+world. If this indeed be the case, so much the worse for the world....
+When Homer and Dante and Shakespeare are neglected, then will Herodotus
+cease to be read."
+
+There we have the secret of his hold upon the minds of men. He knows how
+to tell a story, said Professor Hart, in the discussion previously
+referred to, in Cleveland. He has "an epic unity of plan," writes
+Professor Jebb. Herodotus has furnished delight to all generations,
+while Polybius, more accurate and painstaking, a learned historian and a
+practical statesman, gathers dust on the shelf or is read as a penance.
+Nevertheless, it may be demonstrated from the historical literature of
+England of our century that literary style and great power of narration
+alone will not give a man a niche in the temple of history. Herodotus
+showed diligence and honesty, without which his other qualities would
+have failed to secure him the place he holds in the estimation of
+historical scholars.
+
+From Herodotus we naturally turn to Thucydides, who in the beginning
+charms historical students by his impression of the seriousness and
+dignity of his business. History, he writes, will be "found profitable
+by those who desire an exact knowledge of the past as a key to the
+future, which in all human probability will repeat or resemble the past.
+My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which
+is heard and forgotten." Diligence, accuracy, love of truth, and
+impartiality are merits commonly ascribed to Thucydides, and the
+internal evidence of the history bears out fully the general opinion.
+But, in my judgment, there is a tendency to rate, in the comparative
+estimates, the Athenian too high, for the possession of these qualities;
+for certainly some modern writers have possessed all of these merits in
+an eminent degree. When Jowett wrote in the preface to his translation,
+Thucydides "stands absolutely alone among the historians, not only of
+Hellas, but of the world, in his impartiality and love of truth," he was
+unaware that a son of his own university was writing the history of a
+momentous period of his own country, in a manner to impugn the
+correctness of that statement. When the Jowett Thucydides appeared,
+Samuel R. Gardiner had published eight volumes of his history, though he
+had not reached the great Civil War, and his reputation, which has since
+grown with a cumulative force, was not fully established; but I have now
+no hesitation in saying that the internal evidence demonstrates that in
+impartiality and love of truth Gardiner is the peer of Thucydides. From
+the point of view of external evidence, the case is even stronger for
+Gardiner; he submits to a harder test. That he has been able to treat so
+stormy, so controverted, and so well known a period as the seventeenth
+century in England, with hardly a question of his impartiality, is a
+wonderful tribute. In fact, in an excellent review of his work I have
+seen him criticised for being too impartial. On the other hand, Grote
+thinks that he has found Thucydides in error,--in the long dialogue
+between the Athenian representatives and the Melians. "This dialogue,"
+Grote writes, "can hardly represent what actually passed, except as to a
+few general points which the historian has followed out into deductions
+and illustrations, thus dramatizing the given situation in a powerful
+and characteristic manner." Those very words might characterize
+Shakespeare's account of the assassination of Julius Caesar, and his
+reproduction of the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony. Compare the
+relation in Plutarch with the third act of the tragedy, and see how, in
+his amplification of the story, Shakespeare has remained true to the
+essential facts of the time. Plutarch gives no account of the speeches
+of Brutus and Mark Antony, confining himself, to an allusion to the
+one, and a reference to the other; but Appian of Alexandria, in his
+history, has reported them. The speeches in Appian lack the force which
+they have in Shakespeare, nor do they seemingly fit into the situation
+as well. I have adverted to this criticism of Grote, not that I love
+Thucydides less, but that I love Shakespeare more. For my part, the
+historian's candid acknowledgment in the beginning has convinced me of
+the essential--not the literal--truth of his accounts of speeches and
+dialogues. "As to the speeches," wrote the Athenian, "which were made
+either before or during the war, it was hard for me, and for others who
+reported them to me, to recollect the exact words. I have therefore put
+into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion,
+expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them; while at the
+same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general
+purport of what was actually said." That is the very essence of candor.
+But be the historian as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, he shall not
+escape calumny. Mahaffy declares that, "although all modern historians
+quote Thucydides with more confidence than they would quote the
+Gospels," the Athenian has exaggerated; he is one-sided, partial,
+misleading, dry, and surly. Other critics agree with Mahaffy that he has
+been unjust to Cleon, and has screened Nicias from blame that was his
+due for defective generalship.
+
+We approach Tacitus with respect. We rise from reading his Annals, his
+History, and his Germany with reverence. We know that we have been in
+the society of a gentleman who had a high standard of morality and
+honor. We feel that our guide was a serious student, a solid thinker,
+and a man of the world; that he expressed his opinions and delivered his
+judgments with a remarkable freedom from prejudice. He draws us to him
+with sympathy. He sounds the same mournful note which we detect in
+Thucydides. Tacitus deplores the folly and dissoluteness of the rulers
+of his nation; he bewails the misfortunes of his country. The merits we
+ascribe to Thucydides, diligence, accuracy, love of truth, impartiality,
+are his. The desire to quote from Tacitus is irresistible. "The more I
+meditate," he writes, "on the events of ancient and modern times, the
+more I am struck with the capricious uncertainty which mocks the
+calculations of men in all their transactions." Again: "Possibly there
+is in all things a kind of cycle, and there may be moral revolutions
+just as there are changes of seasons." "Commonplaces!" sneer the
+scientific historians. True enough, but they might not have been
+commonplaces if Tacitus had not uttered them, and his works had not been
+read and re-read until they have become a common possession of
+historical students. From a thinker who deemed the time "out of joint,"
+as Tacitus obviously did, and who, had he not possessed great strength
+of mind and character, might have lapsed into a gloomy pessimism, what
+noble words are these: "This I regard as history's highest function: to
+let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation
+of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds." The modesty of the
+Roman is fascinating. "Much of what I have related," he says, "and shall
+have to relate, may perhaps, I am aware, seem petty trifles to
+record.... My labors are circumscribed and unproductive of renown to the
+author." How agreeable to place in contrast with this the prophecy of
+his friend, the younger Pliny, in a letter to the historian: "I
+augur--nor does my augury deceive me--that your histories will be
+immortal: hence all the more do I desire to find a place in them."
+
+To my mind, one of the most charming things in historical literature is
+the praise which one great historian bestows upon another. Gibbon
+speaks of "the discerning eye" and "masterly pencil of Tacitus,--the
+first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study
+of facts," "whose writings will instruct the last generations of
+mankind." He has produced an immortal work, "every sentence of which is
+pregnant with the deepest observations and most lively images." I
+mention Gibbon, for it is more than a strong probability that in
+diligence, accuracy, and love of truth he is the equal of Tacitus. A
+common edition of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire is that with notes by Dean Milman, Guizot, and Dr. Smith.
+Niebuhr, Villemain, and Sir James Mackintosh are each drawn upon for
+criticism. Did ever such a fierce light beat upon a history? With what
+keen relish do the annotators pounce upon mistakes or inaccuracies, and
+in that portion of the work which ends with the fall of the Western
+Empire how few do they find! Would Tacitus stand the supreme test
+better? There is, so far as I know, only one case in which we may
+compare his Annals with an original record. On bronze tablets found at
+Lyons in the sixteenth century is engraved the same speech made by the
+Emperor Claudius to the Senate that Tacitus reports. "Tacitus and the
+tablets," writes Professor Jebb, "disagree hopelessly in language and in
+nearly all the detail, but agree in the general line of argument."
+Gibbon's work has richly deserved its life of more than one hundred
+years, a period which I believe no other modern history has endured.
+Niebuhr, in a course of lectures at Bonn, in 1829, said that Gibbon's
+"work will never be excelled." At the Gibbon Centenary Commemoration in
+London, in 1894, many distinguished men, among whom the Church had a
+distinct representation, gathered together to pay honor to him who, in
+the words of Frederic Harrison, had written "the most perfect book that
+English prose (outside its fiction) possesses." Mommsen, prevented by
+age and work from being present, sent his tribute. No one, he said,
+would in the future be able to read the history of the Roman Empire
+unless he read Edward Gibbon. The Times, in a leader devoted to the
+subject, apparently expressed the general voice: "'Back to Gibbon' is
+already, both here and among the scholars of Germany and France, the
+watchword of the younger historians."
+
+I have now set forth certain general propositions which, with time for
+adducing the evidence in detail, might, I think, be established: that,
+in the consensus of learned people, Thucydides and Tacitus stand at the
+head of historians; and that it is not alone their accuracy, love of
+truth, and impartiality which entitle them to this preeminence since
+Gibbon and Gardiner among the moderns possess equally the same
+qualities. What is it, then, that makes these men supreme? In venturing
+a solution of this question, I confine myself necessarily to the English
+translations of the Greek and Latin authors. We have thus a common
+denominator of language, and need not take into account the unrivaled
+precision and terseness of the Greek and the force and clearness of the
+Latin. It seems to me that one special merit of Thucydides and Tacitus
+is their compressed narrative,--that they have related so many events
+and put so much meaning in so few words. Our manner of writing history
+is really curious. The histories which cover long periods of time are
+brief; those which have to do with but a few years are long. The works
+of Thucydides and Tacitus are not like our compendiums of history, which
+merely touch on great affairs, since want of space precludes any
+elaboration. Tacitus treats of a comparatively short epoch, Thucydides
+of a much shorter one: both histories are brief. Thucydides and Macaulay
+are examples of extremes. The Athenian tells the story of twenty-four
+years in one volume; the Englishman takes nearly five volumes of equal
+size for his account of seventeen years. But it is safe to say that
+Thucydides tells us as much that is worth knowing as Macaulay. One is
+concise, the other is not. It is impossible to paraphrase the fine parts
+of Thucydides, but Macaulay lends himself readily to such an exercise.
+The thought of the Athenian is so close that he has got rid of all
+redundancies of expression: hence the effort to reproduce his ideas in
+other words fails. The account of the plague in Athens has been studied
+and imitated, and every imitation falls short of the original not only
+in vividness but in brevity. It is the triumph of art that in this and
+in other splendid portions we wish more had been told. As the French
+say, "the secret of wearying is to say all," and this the Athenian
+thoroughly understood. Between our compendiums, which tell too little,
+and our long general histories, which tell too much, are Thucydides and
+Tacitus.
+
+Again, it is a common opinion that our condensed histories lack life and
+movement. This is due in part to their being written generally from a
+study of second-hand--not original--materials. Those of the Athenian and
+the Roman are mainly the original.
+
+I do not think, however, that we may infer that we have a much greater
+mass of materials, and thereby excuse our modern prolixity. In written
+documents, of course, we exceed the ancients, for we have been flooded
+with these by the art of printing. Yet any one who has investigated any
+period knows how the same facts are told over and over again, in
+different ways, by various writers; and if one can get beyond the mass
+of verbiage and down to the really significant original material, what a
+simplification of ideas there is, what a lightening of the load! I own
+that this process of reduction is painful, and thereby our work is made
+more difficult than that of the ancients. A historian will adapt himself
+naturally to the age in which he lives, and Thucydides made use of the
+matter that was at his hand. "Of the events of the war," he wrote, "I
+have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to
+any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw
+myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and
+particular inquiry. The task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses
+of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they
+remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the other."
+His materials, then, were what he saw and heard. His books and his
+manuscripts were living men. Our distinguished military historian, John
+C. Ropes, whose untimely death we deplore, might have written his
+history from the same sort of materials; for he was contemporary with
+our Civil War, and followed the daily events with intense interest. A
+brother of his was killed at Gettysburg, and he had many friends in the
+army. He paid at least one memorable visit to Meade's headquarters in
+the field, and at the end of the war had a mass of memories and
+impressions of the great conflict. He never ceased his inquiries; he
+never lost a chance to get a particular account from those who took part
+in battles or campaigns; and before he began his Story of the Civil War,
+he too could have said, "I made the most careful and particular inquiry"
+of generals and officers on both sides, and of men in civil office privy
+to the great transactions. His knowledge drawn from living lips was
+marvelous, and his conversation, when he poured this knowledge forth,
+often took the form of a flowing narrative in an animated style. While
+there are not, so far as I remember, any direct references in his two
+volumes to these memories, or to memoranda of conversations which he
+had with living actors after the close of the war drama, and while his
+main authority is the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
+Armies,--which, no one appreciated better than he, were unique
+historical materials,--nevertheless this personal knowledge trained his
+judgment and gave color to his narrative.
+
+It is pretty clear that Thucydides spent a large part of a life of about
+threescore years and ten in gathering materials and writing his history.
+The mass of facts which he set down or stored away in his memory must
+have been enormous. He was a man of business, and had a home in Thrace
+as well as in Athens, traveling probably at fairly frequent intervals
+between the two places; but the main portion of the first forty years of
+his life was undoubtedly spent in Athens, where, during those glorious
+years of peace and the process of beautifying the city, he received the
+best education a man could get. To walk about the city and view the
+buildings and statues was both directly and insensibly a refining
+influence. As Thucydides himself, in the funeral oration of Pericles,
+said of the works which the Athenian saw around him, "the daily delight
+of them banishes gloom." There was the opportunity to talk with as good
+conversers as the world has ever known; and he undoubtedly saw much of
+the men who were making history. There was the great theater and the
+sublime poetry. In a word, the life of Thucydides was adapted to the
+gathering of a mass of historical materials of the best sort; and his
+daily walk, his reading, his intense thought, gave him an intellectual
+grasp of the facts he has so ably handled. Of course he was a genius,
+and he wrote in an effective literary style; but seemingly his natural
+parts and acquired talents are directed to this: a digestion of his
+materials, and a compression of his narrative without taking the vigor
+out of his story in a manner I believe to be without parallel. He
+devoted a life to writing a volume. His years after the peace was
+broken, his career as a general, his banishment and enforced residence
+in Thrace, his visit to the countries of the Peloponnesian allies with
+whom Athens was at war,--all these gave him a signal opportunity to
+gather materials, and to assimilate them in the gathering. We may fancy
+him looking at an alleged fact on all sides, and turning it over and
+over in his mind; we know that he must have meditated long on ideas,
+opinions, and events; and the result is a brief, pithy narrative.
+Tradition hath it that Demosthenes copied out this history eight times,
+or even learned it by heart. Chatham, urging the removal of the forces
+from Boston, had reason to refer to the history of Greece, and, that he
+might impress it upon the lords that he knew whereof he spoke, declared,
+"I have read Thucydides."
+
+Of Tacitus likewise is conciseness a well-known merit. Living in an age
+of books and libraries, he drew more from the written word than did
+Thucydides; and his method of working, therefore, resembled more our
+own. These are common expressions of his: "It is related by most of the
+writers of those times;" I adopt the account "in which the authors are
+agreed;" this account "agrees with those of the other writers." Relating
+a case of recklessness of vice in Messalina, he acknowledges that it
+will appear fabulous, and asserts his truthfulness thus: "But I would
+not dress up my narrative with fictions, to give it an air of marvel,
+rather than relate what has been stated to me or written by my seniors."
+He also speaks of the authority of tradition, and tells what he
+remembers "to have heard from aged men." He will not paraphrase the
+eloquence of Seneca after he had his veins opened, because the very
+words of the philosopher had been published; but when, a little later,
+Flavius the tribune came to die, the historian gives this report of his
+defiance of Nero. "I hated you," the tribune said to the emperor; "nor
+had you a soldier more true to you while you deserved to be loved. I
+began to hate you from the time you showed yourself the impious murderer
+of your mother and your wife, a charioteer, a stage-player, an
+incendiary." "I have given the very words," Tacitus adds, "because they
+were not, like those of Seneca, published, though the rough and vigorous
+sentiments of a soldier ought to be no less known." Everywhere we see in
+Tacitus, as in Thucydides, a dislike of superfluous detail, a closeness
+of thought, a compression of language. He was likewise a man of affairs,
+but his life work was his historical writings, which, had we all of
+them, would fill probably four moderate-sized octavo volumes.
+
+To sum up, then: Thucydides and Tacitus are superior to the historians
+who have written in our century, because, by long reflection and
+studious method, they have better digested their materials and
+compressed their narrative. Unity in narration has been adhered to more
+rigidly. They stick closer to their subject. They are not allured into
+the fascinating bypaths of narration, which are so tempting to men who
+have accumulated a mass of facts, incidents, and opinions. One reason
+why Macaulay is so prolix is because he could not resist the temptation
+to treat events which had a picturesque side and which were suited to
+his literary style; so that, as John Morley says, "in many portions of
+his too elaborated history of William III. he describes a large number
+of events about which, I think, no sensible man can in the least care
+either how they happened, or whether indeed they happened at all or
+not." If I am right in my supposition that Thucydides and Tacitus had a
+mass of materials, they showed reserve and discretion in throwing a
+large part of them away, as not being necessary or important to the
+posterity for which they were writing. This could only be the result of
+a careful comparison of their materials, and of long meditation on their
+relative value. I suspect that they cared little whether a set daily
+task was accomplished or not; for if you propose to write only one large
+volume or four moderate-sized volumes in a lifetime, art is not too long
+nor is life too short.
+
+Another superiority of the classical historians, as I reckon, arose from
+the fact that they wrote what was practically contemporaneous history.
+Herodotus was born 484 B.C., and the most important and accurate part of
+his history is the account of the Persian invasion which took place four
+years later. The case of Thucydides is more remarkable. Born in
+471 B.C., he relates the events which happened between 435 and 411, when
+he was between the ages of thirty-six and sixty. Tacitus, born in
+52 A.D., covered with his Annals and History the years between 14 and
+96. "Herodotus and Thucydides belong to an age in which the historian
+draws from life and for life," writes Professor Jebb. It is manifestly
+easier to describe a life you know than one you must imagine, which is
+what you must do if you aim to relate events which took place before
+your own and your father's time. In many treatises which have been
+written demanding an extraordinary equipment for the historian, it is
+generally insisted that he shall have a fine constructive imagination;
+for how can he re-create his historic period unless he live in it? In
+the same treatises it is asserted that contemporary history cannot be
+written correctly, for impartiality in the treatment of events near at
+hand is impossible. Therefore the canon requires the quality of a great
+poet, and denies that there may be had the merit of a judge in a country
+where there are no great poets, but where candid judges abound. Does
+not the common rating of Thucydides and Tacitus refute the dictum that
+history within the memory of men living cannot be written truthfully and
+fairly? Given, then, the judicial mind, how much easier to write it! The
+rare quality of a poet's imagination is no longer necessary, for your
+boyhood recollections, your youthful experiences, your successes and
+failures of manhood, the grandfather's tales, the parent's
+recollections, the conversation in society,--all these put you in vital
+touch with the life you seek to describe. These not only give color and
+freshness to the vivifying of the facts you must find in the record, but
+they are in a way materials themselves, not strictly authentic, but of
+the kind that direct you in search and verification. Not only is no
+extraordinary ability required to write contemporary history, but the
+labor of the historian is lightened, and Dryasdust is no longer his sole
+guide. The funeral oration of Pericles is pretty nearly what was
+actually spoken, or else it is the substance of the speech written out
+in the historian's own words. Its intensity of feeling and the fitting
+of it so well into the situation indicate it to be a living
+contemporaneous document, and at the same time it has that universal
+application which we note in so many speeches of Shakespeare. A few
+years after our Civil War, a lawyer in a city of the middle West, who
+had been selected to deliver the Memorial Day oration, came to a friend
+of his in despair because he could write nothing but the commonplaces
+about those who had died for the Union and for the freedom of a race
+which had been uttered many times before, and he asked for advice. "Take
+the funeral oration of Pericles for a model," was the reply. "Use his
+words where they will fit, and dress up the rest to suit our day." The
+orator was surprised to find how much of the oration could be used
+bodily, and how much, with adaptation, was germane to his subject. But
+slight alterations are necessary to make the opening sentence this:
+"Most of those who have spoken here have commended the law-giver who
+added this oration to our other customs; it seemed to them a worthy
+thing that such an honor should be given to the dead who have fallen on
+the field of battle." In many places you may let the speech run on with
+hardly a change. "In the face of death [these men] resolved to rely upon
+themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist
+and suffer rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from
+the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast; and
+while for a moment they were in the hands of fortune, at the height, not
+of terror, but of glory, they passed away. Such was the end of these
+men; they were worthy of their country."
+
+Consider for a moment, as the work of a contemporary, the book which
+continues the account of the Sicilian expedition, and ends with the
+disaster at Syracuse. "In the describing and reporting whereof,"
+Plutarch writes, "Thucydides hath gone beyond himself, both for variety
+and liveliness of narration, as also in choice and excellent words."
+"There is no prose composition in the world," wrote Macaulay, "which I
+place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides.... I was delighted to
+find in Gray's letters, the other day, this query to Wharton: 'The
+retreat from Syracuse,--is it or is it not the finest thing you ever
+read in your life?'" In the Annals of Tacitus we have an account of part
+of the reign of Emperor Nero, which is intense in its interest as the
+picture of a state of society that would be incredible, did we not know
+that our guide was a truthful man. One rises from a perusal of this with
+the trite expression, "Truth is stranger than fiction;" and one need
+only compare the account of Tacitus with the romance of Quo Vadis to be
+convinced that true history is more interesting than a novel. One of
+the most vivid impressions I ever had came immediately after reading the
+story of Nero and Agrippina in Tacitus, from a view of the statue of
+Agrippina in the National Museum at Naples.[2]
+
+It will be worth our while now to sum up what I think may be established
+with sufficient time and care. Natural ability being presupposed, the
+qualities necessary for a historian are diligence, accuracy, love of
+truth, impartiality, the thorough digestion of his materials by careful
+selection and long meditating, and the compression of his narrative into
+the smallest compass consistent with the life of his story. He must also
+have a power of expression suitable for his purpose. All these
+qualities, we have seen, were possessed by Thucydides and Tacitus; and
+we have seen furthermore that, by bringing to bear these endowments and
+acquirements upon contemporary history, their success has been greater
+than it would have been had they treated a more distant period. Applying
+these considerations to the writing of history in America, it would seem
+that all we have to gain in method, in order that when the genius
+appears he shall rival the great Greek and the great Roman, is thorough
+assimilation of materials and rigorous conciseness in relation. I admit
+that the two things we lack are difficult to get as our own. In the
+collection of materials, in criticism and detailed analysis, in the
+study of cause and effect, in applying the principle of growth, of
+evolution, we certainly surpass the ancients. But if we live in the age
+of Darwin, we also live in an age of newspapers and magazines, when, as
+Lowell said, not only great events, but a vast "number of trivial
+incidents, are now recorded, and this dust of time gets in our eyes";
+when distractions are manifold; when the desire "to see one's name in
+print" and make books takes possession of us all. If one has something
+like an original idea or a fresh combination of truisms, one obtains
+easily a hearing. The hearing once had, something of a success being
+made, the writer is urged by magazine editors and by publishers for
+more. The good side of this is apparent. It is certainly a wholesome
+indication that a demand exists for many serious books, but the evil is
+that one is pressed to publish his thoughts before he has them fully
+matured. The periods of fruitful meditation out of which emerged the
+works of Thucydides and Tacitus seem not to be a natural incident of our
+time. To change slightly the meaning of Lowell, "the bustle of our lives
+keeps breaking the thread of that attention which is the material of
+memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of
+thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am
+struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and
+Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is
+said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The
+Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was
+adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short
+cut to the goal make us averse to the patient and elaborate method of
+the ancients. In manner of expression, however, we have improved. The
+Fourth of July spread-eagle oration, not uncommon even in New England in
+former days, would now be listened to hardly anywhere without merriment.
+In a Lowell Institute lecture in 1855 Lowell said, "In modern times, the
+desire for startling expression is so strong that people hardly think a
+thought is good for anything unless it goes off with a _pop_, like a
+ginger-beer cork." No one would thus characterize our present writing.
+Between reserve in expression and reserve in thought there must be
+interaction. We may hope, therefore, that the trend in the one will
+become the trend in the other, and that we may look for as great
+historians in the future as in the past. The Thucydides or Tacitus of
+the future will write his history from the original materials, knowing
+that there only will he find the living spirit; but he will have the
+helps of the modern world. He will have at his hand monographs of
+students whom the professors of history in our colleges are teaching
+with diligence and wisdom, and he will accept these aids with
+thankfulness in his laborious search. He will have grasped the
+generalizations and methods of physical science, but he must know to the
+bottom his Thucydides and Tacitus. He will recognize in Homer and
+Shakespeare the great historians of human nature, and he will ever
+attempt, although feeling that failure is certain, to wrest from them
+their secret of narration, to acquire their art of portrayal of
+character. He must be a man of the world, but equally well a man of the
+academy. If, like Thucydides and Tacitus, the American historian chooses
+the history of his own country as his field, he may infuse his
+patriotism into his narrative. He will speak of the broad acres and
+their products, the splendid industrial development due to the capacity
+and energy of the captains of industry; but he will like to dwell on the
+universities and colleges, on the great numbers seeking a higher
+education, on the morality of the people, their purity of life, their
+domestic happiness. He will never be weary of referring to Washington
+and Lincoln, feeling that a country with such exemplars is indeed one to
+awaken envy, and he will not forget the brave souls who followed where
+they led. I like to think of the Memorial Day orator, speaking thirty
+years ago with his mind full of the Civil War and our Revolution, giving
+utterance to these noble words of Pericles: "I would have you day by
+day fix your eyes upon the greatness of your country, until you become
+filled with love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of
+her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew
+their duty and had the courage to do it; who in the hour of conflict had
+the fear of dishonor always present to them; and who, if ever they
+failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to
+their country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest
+offering which they could present at her feast. They received each one
+for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all
+sepulchers. For the whole earth is the sepulcher of illustrious men; not
+only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own
+country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of
+them, graven not on stone, but in the hearts of men."
+
+
+    [1] President's Inaugural Address, American Historical Association,
+        Boston, December 27, 1899; printed in the Atlantic Monthly of
+        February, 1900.
+
+    [2] Since this essay was first printed I have seen the authenticity
+        of this portrait statue questioned.
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE WRITING OF HISTORY
+
+Address delivered at the Meeting of the American Historical Association
+in Detroit, December, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE WRITING OF HISTORY
+
+
+Called on at the last moment, owing to the illness of Mr. Eggleston, to
+take the place of one whose absence can never be fully compensated, I
+present to you a paper on the writing of history. It is in a way a
+continuance of my inaugural address before this association one year
+ago, and despite the continuity of the thought I have endeavored to
+treat the same subject from a different point of view. While going over
+the same ground and drawing my lessons from the same historians, it is
+new matter so far as I have had the honor to present it to the American
+Historical Association.
+
+A historian, to make a mark, must show some originality somewhere in his
+work. The originality may be in a method of investigation; it may be in
+the use of some hitherto inaccessible or unprinted material; it may be
+in the employment of some sources of information open to everybody, but
+not before used, or it may be in a fresh combination of well-known and
+well-elaborated facts. It is this last-named feature that leads Mr.
+Winsor to say, in speaking of the different views that may be honestly
+maintained from working over the same material, "The study of history is
+perennial." I think I can make my meaning clearer as to the originality
+one should try to infuse into historical work by drawing an illustration
+from the advice of a literary man as to the art of writing. Charles
+Dudley Warner once said to me, "Every one who writes should have
+something to add to the world's stock of knowledge or literary
+expression. If he falls unconsciously into imitation or quotation, he
+takes away from his originality. No matter if some great writer has
+expressed the thought in better language than you can use, if you take
+his words you detract from your own originality. Express your thought
+feebly in your own way rather than with strength by borrowing the words
+of another."
+
+This same principle in the art of authorship may be applied to the art
+of writing history. "Follow your own star," said Emerson, "and it will
+lead you to that which none other can attain. Imitation is suicide. You
+must take yourself for better or worse as your own portion." Any one who
+is bent upon writing history, may be sure that there is in him some
+originality, that he can add something to the knowledge of some period.
+Let him give himself to meditation, to searching out what epoch and what
+kind of treatment of that epoch is best adapted to his powers and to his
+training. I mean not only the collegiate training, but the sort of
+training one gets consciously or unconsciously from the very
+circumstances of one's life. In the persistence of thinking, his subject
+will flash upon him. Parkman, said Lowell, showed genius in the choice
+of his subject. The recent biography of Parkman emphasizes the idea
+which we get from his works--that only a man who lived in the virgin
+forests of this country and loved them, and who had traveled in the far
+West as a pioneer, with Indians for companions, could have done that
+work. Parkman's experience cannot be had by any one again, and he
+brought to bear the wealth of it in that fifty years' occupation of his.
+Critics of exact knowledge--such as Justin Winsor, for instance--find
+limitations in Parkman's books that may impair the permanence of his
+fame, but I suspect that his is the only work in American history that
+cannot and will not be written over again. The reason of it is that he
+had a unique life which has permeated his narrative, giving it the stamp
+of originality. No man whose training had been gained wholly in the best
+schools of Germany, France, or England could have written those books. A
+training racy of the soil was needed. "A practical knowledge," wrote
+Niebuhr, "must support historical jurisprudence, and if any one has got
+that he can easily master all scholastic speculations." A man's
+knowledge of everyday life in some way fits him for a certain field of
+historical study--in that field lies success. In seeking a period, no
+American need confine himself to his own country. "European history for
+Americans," said Motley, "has to be almost entirely rewritten."
+
+I shall touch upon only two of the headings of historical originality
+which I have mentioned. The first that I shall speak of is the
+employment of some sources of information open to everybody, but not
+before used. A significant case of this in American history is the use
+which Doctor von Holst made of newspaper material. _Niles's Register_, a
+lot of newspaper cuttings, as well as speeches and state papers in a
+compact form, had, of course, been referred to by many writers who dealt
+with the period they covered, but in the part of his history covering
+the ten years from 1850 to 1860 von Holst made an extensive and varied
+employment of newspapers by studying the newspaper files themselves. As
+the aim of history is truth, and as newspapers fail sadly in accuracy,
+it is not surprising that many historical students believe that the
+examination of newspapers for any given period will not pay for the
+labor and drudgery involved; but the fact that a trained German
+historical scholar and teacher at a German university should have found
+some truth in our newspaper files when he came to write the history of
+our own country, gives to their use for that period the seal of
+scientific approval. Doctor von Holst used this material with pertinence
+and effect; his touch was nice. I used to wonder at his knowledge of the
+newspaper world, of the men who made and wrote our journals, until he
+told me that when he first came to this country one of his methods in
+gaining a knowledge of English was to read the advertisements in the
+newspapers. Reflection will show one what a picture of the life of a
+people this must be, in addition to the news columns.
+
+No one, of course, will go to newspapers for facts if he can find those
+facts in better-attested documents. The haste with which the daily
+records of the world's doings are made up precludes sifting and
+revision. Yet in the decade between 1850 and 1860 you will find facts in
+the newspapers which are nowhere else set down. Public men of commanding
+position were fond of writing letters to the journals with a view to
+influencing public sentiment. These letters in the newspapers are as
+valuable historical material as if they were carefully collected,
+edited, and published in the form of books. Speeches were made which
+must be read, and which will be found nowhere but in the journals. The
+immortal debates of Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 were never put into a
+book until 1860, existing previously only in newspaper print. Newspapers
+are sometimes important in fixing a date and in establishing the
+whereabouts of a man. If, for example, a writer draws a fruitful
+inference from the alleged fact that President Lincoln went to see Edwin
+Booth play Hamlet in Washington in February, 1863, and if one finds by a
+consultation of the newspaper theatrical advertisements that Edwin Booth
+did not visit Washington during that month, the significance of the
+inference is destroyed. Lincoln paid General Scott a memorable visit at
+West Point in June, 1862. You may, if I remember correctly, search the
+books in vain to get at the exact date of this visit; but turn to the
+newspaper files and you find that the President left Washington at such
+an hour on such a day, arrived at Jersey City at a stated time, and made
+the transfer to the other railroad which took him to the station
+opposite West Point. The time of his leaving West Point and the hour of
+his return to Washington are also given.
+
+The value of newspapers as an indication of public sentiment is
+sometimes questioned, but it can hardly be doubted that the average man
+will read the newspaper with the sentiments of which he agrees. "I
+inquired about newspaper opinion," said Joseph Chamberlain in the House
+of Commons last May. "I knew no other way of getting at popular
+opinion." During the years between 1854 and 1860 the daily journals were
+a pretty good reflection of public sentiment in the United States.
+Wherever, for instance, you found the _New York Weekly Tribune_ largely
+read, Republican majorities were sure to be had when election day came.
+For fact and for opinion, if you knew the contributors, statements and
+editorials by them were entitled to as much weight as similar public
+expressions in any other form. You get to know Greeley and you learn to
+recognize his style. Now, an editorial from him is proper historical
+material, taking into account always the circumstances under which he
+wrote. The same may be said of Dana and of Hildreth, both editorial
+writers for the _Tribune_, and of the Washington despatches of J. S.
+Pike. It is interesting to compare the public letters of Greeley to the
+_Tribune_ from Washington in 1856 with his private letters written at
+the same time to Dana. There are no misstatements in the public letters,
+but there is a suppression of the truth. The explanations in the private
+correspondence are clearer, and you need them to know fully how affairs
+looked in Washington to Greeley at the time; but this fact by no means
+detracts from the value of the public letters as historical material. I
+have found newspapers of greater value both for fact and opinion during
+the decade of 1850 to 1860 than for the period of the Civil War. A
+comparison of the newspaper accounts of battles with the history of them
+which may be drawn from the correspondence and reports in the Official
+Records of the War of the Rebellion will show how inaccurate and
+misleading was the war correspondence of the daily journals. It could
+not well be otherwise. The correspondent was obliged in haste to write
+the story of a battle of which he saw but a small section, and instead
+of telling the little part which he knew actually, he had to give to a
+public greedy for news a complete survey of the whole battlefield. This
+story was too often colored by his liking or aversion for the generals
+in command. A study of the confidential historical material of the Civil
+War, apart from the military operations, in comparison with the
+journalistic accounts, gives one a higher idea of the accuracy and
+shrewdness of the newspaper correspondents. Few important things were
+brewing at Washington of which they did not get an inkling. But I always
+like to think of two signal exceptions. Nothing ever leaked out in
+regard to the famous "Thoughts for the President's consideration," which
+Seward submitted to Lincoln in March, 1861, and only very incorrect
+guesses of the President's first emancipation proclamation, brought
+before his Cabinet in July, 1862, got into newspaper print.
+
+Beware of hasty, strained, and imperfect generalizations. A historian
+should always remember that he is a sort of trustee for his readers. No
+matter how copious may be his notes, he cannot fully explain his
+processes or the reason of his confidence in one witness and not in
+another, his belief in one honest man against a half dozen untrustworthy
+men, without such prolixity as to make a general history unreadable.
+Now, in this position as trustee he is bound to assert nothing for which
+he has not evidence, as much as an executor of a will or the trustee for
+widows and orphans is obligated to render a correct account of the
+moneys in his possession. For this reason Grote has said, "An historian
+is bound to produce the materials upon which he builds, be they never so
+fantastic, absurd, or incredible." Hence the necessity for footnotes.
+While mere illustrative and interesting footnotes are perhaps to be
+avoided, on account of their redundancy, those which give authority for
+the statements in the text can never be in excess. Many good histories
+have undoubtedly been published where the authors have not printed their
+footnotes; but they must have had, nevertheless, precise records for
+their authorities. The advantage and necessity of printing the notes is
+that you furnish your critic an opportunity of finding you out if you
+have mistaken or strained your authorities. Bancroft's example is
+peculiar. In his earlier volumes he used footnotes, but in volume vii he
+changed his plan and omitted notes, whether of reference or explanation.
+Nor do you find them in either of his carefully revised editions. "This
+is done," Bancroft wrote in the preface to his seventh volume, "not from
+an unwillingness to subject every statement of fact, even in its
+minutest details, to the severest scrutiny; but from the variety and the
+multitude of the papers which have been used and which could not be
+intelligently cited without a disproportionate commentary." Again,
+Blaine's "Twenty Years of Congress," a work which, properly weighed, is
+not without historical value, is only to be read with great care on
+account of his hasty and inaccurate generalizations. There are evidences
+of good, honest labor in those two volumes, much of which must have been
+done by himself. There is an aim at truth and impartiality, but many of
+his general statements will seem, to any one who has gone over the
+original material, to rest on a slight basis. If Blaine had felt the
+necessity of giving authorities in a footnote for every statement about
+which there might have been a question, he certainly would have written
+an entirely different sort of a book.
+
+My other head is the originality which comes from a fresh combination of
+known historical facts.
+
+I do not now call to mind any more notable chapter which illustrates
+this than the chapter of Curtius, "The years of peace." One is perhaps
+better adapted for the keen enjoyment of it if he does not know the
+original material, for his suspicion that some of the inferences are
+strained and unwarranted might become a certainty. But accepting it as a
+mature and honest elaboration by one of the greatest historians of
+Greece of our day, it is a sample of the vivifying of dry bones and of a
+dovetailing of facts and ideas that makes a narrative to charm and
+instruct. You feel that the spirit of that age we all like to think and
+dream about is there, and if you have been so fortunate as to visit the
+Athens of to-day, that chapter, so great is the author's constructive
+imagination, carries you back and makes you for the moment live in the
+Athens of Pericles, of Sophocles, of Phidias and Herodotus.
+
+With the abundance of materials for modern history, and, for that
+reason, our tendency to diffuseness, nothing is so important as a
+thorough acquaintance with the best classic models, such as Herodotus,
+Thucydides, and Tacitus. In Herodotus you have an example of an
+interesting story with the unity of the narrative well sustained in
+spite of certain unnecessary digressions. His book is obviously a life
+work and the work of a man who had an extensive knowledge gained by
+reading, social intercourse, and travel, and who brought his knowledge
+to bear upon his chosen task. That the history is interesting all admit,
+but in different periods of criticism stress is sometimes laid on the
+untrustworthy character of the narrative, with the result that there has
+been danger of striking Herodotus from the list of historical models;
+but such is the merit of his work that the Herodotus cult again revives,
+and, I take it, is now at its height. I received, six years ago, while
+in Egypt, a vivid impression of him whom we used to style the Father of
+History. Spending one day at the great Pyramids, when, after I had
+satisfied my first curiosity, after I had filled my eyes and mind with
+the novelty of the spectacle, I found nothing so gratifying to the
+historic sense as to gaze on those most wonderful monuments of human
+industry, constructed certainly 5000 years ago, and to read at the same
+time the account that Herodotus gave of his visit there about 2350 years
+before the date of my own. That same night I read in a modern and garish
+Cairo hotel the current number of the _London Times_. In it was an
+account of an annual meeting of the Royal Historical Society and a
+report of a formal and carefully prepared address of its president,
+whose subject was "Herodotus," whose aim was to point out the value of
+the Greek writer as a model to modern historians. The _Times_, for the
+moment laying aside its habitual attack on the then Liberal government,
+devoted its main leader to Herodotus--to his merits and the lessons he
+conveyed to the European writers. The article was a remarkable blending
+of scholarship and good sense, and I ended the day with the reflection
+of what a space in the world's history Herodotus filled, himself
+describing the work of twenty-six hundred years before his own time and
+being dilated on in 1894 by one of the most modern of nineteenth-century
+newspapers.
+
+It is generally agreed, I think, that Thucydides is first in order of
+time of philosophic historians, but it does not seem to me that we have
+most to learn from him in the philosophic quality. The tracing of cause
+and effect, the orderly sequence of events, is certainly better
+developed by moderns than it has been by ancients. The influence of
+Darwin and the support and proof which he gives to the doctrine of
+evolution furnish a training of thought which was impossible to the
+ancients; but Thucydides has digested his material and compressed his
+narrative without taking the life out of his story in a manner to make
+us despair, and this does not, I take it, come from paucity of
+materials. A test which I began to make as a study in style has helped
+me in estimating the solidity of a writer. Washington Irving formed his
+style by reading attentively from time to time a page of Addison and
+then, closing the book, endeavored to write out the same ideas in his
+own words. In this way his style became assimilated to that of the great
+English essayist. I have tried the same mode with several writers. I
+found that the plan succeeded with Macaulay and with Lecky. I tried it
+again and again with Shakespeare and Hawthorne, but if I succeeded in
+writing out the paragraph I found that it was because I memorized their
+very words. To write out their ideas in my own language I found
+impossible. I have had the same result with Thucydides in trying to do
+this with his description of the plague in Athens. Now, I reason from
+this in the case of Shakespeare and Thucydides that their thought was so
+concise they themselves got rid of all redundancies; hence to effect the
+reproduction of their ideas in any but their own language is practically
+impossible.
+
+It is related of Macaulay somewhere in his "Life and Letters," that in a
+moment of despair, when he instituted a comparison between his
+manuscript and the work of Thucydides, he thought of throwing his into
+the fire. I suspect that Macaulay had not the knack of discarding
+material on which he had spent time and effort, seeing how easily such
+events glowed under his graphic pen. This is one reason why he is prolix
+in the last three volumes. The first two, which begin with the famous
+introductory chapter and continue the story through the revolution of
+1688 to the accession of William and Mary, seem to me models of
+historical composition so far as arrangement, orderly method, and
+liveliness of narration go. Another defect of Macaulay is that, while he
+was an omnivorous reader and had a prodigious memory, he was not given
+to long-continued and profound reflection. He read and rehearsed his
+reading in memory, but he did not give himself to "deep, abstract
+meditation" and did not surrender himself to "the fruitful leisures of
+the spirit." Take this instance of Macaulay's account of a journey: "The
+express train reached Hollyhead about 7 in the evening. I read between
+London and Bangor the lives of the emperors from Maximin to Carinus,
+inclusive, in the Augustine history, and was greatly amused and
+interested." On board the steamer: "I put on my greatcoat and sat on
+deck during the whole voyage. As I could not read, I used an excellent
+substitute for reading. I went through 'Paradise Lost' in my head. I
+could still repeat half of it, and that the best half. I really never
+enjoyed it so much." In Dublin: "The rain was so heavy that I was forced
+to come back in a covered car. While in this detestable vehicle I looked
+rapidly through the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan and thought
+that Trajan made a most creditable figure." It may be that Macaulay did
+not always digest his knowledge well. Yet in reading his "Life and
+Letters" you know that you are in company with a man who read many
+books and you give faith to Thackeray's remark, "Macaulay reads twenty
+books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of
+description." It is a matter of regret that the progress of historical
+criticism and the scientific teaching of history have had the tendency
+to drive Macaulay out of the fashion with students, and I know not
+whether the good we used to get out of him thirty-five years ago can now
+be got from other sources. For I seem to miss something that we
+historical students had a generation ago--and that is enthusiasm for the
+subject. The enthusiasm that we had then had--the desire to compass all
+knowledge, the wish to gather the fruits of learning and lay them
+devoutly at the feet of our chosen muse--this enthusiasm we owed to
+Macaulay and to Buckle. Quite properly, no one reads Buckle now, and I
+cannot gainsay what John Morley said of Macaulay: "Macaulay seeks truth,
+not as she should be sought, devoutly, tentatively, with the air of one
+touching the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by the hair of
+the head and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous triumph, a
+prisoner of war and not a goddess." It is, nevertheless, true that
+Macaulay and Buckle imparted a new interest to history.
+
+I have spoken of the impression we get of Macaulay through reading his
+"Life and Letters." Of Carlyle, in reading the remarkable biography of
+him, we get the notion of a great thinker as well as a great reader. He
+was not as keen and diligent in the pursuit of material as Macaulay. He
+did not like to work in libraries; he wanted every book he used in his
+own study--padded as it was against the noises which drove him wild. H.
+Morse Stephens relates that Carlyle would not use a collection of
+documents relating to the French Revolution in the British Museum for
+the reason that the museum authorities would not have a private room
+reserved for him where he might study. Rather than work in a room with
+other people, he neglected this valuable material. But Carlyle has
+certainly digested and used his material well. His "French Revolution"
+seems to approach the historical works of the classics in there being so
+much in a little space. "With the gift of song," Lowell said, "Carlyle
+would have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer;" and he also
+wrote, Carlyle's historical compositions are no more history than the
+historical plays of Shakespeare.
+
+The contention between the scientific historians and those who hold to
+the old models is interesting and profitable. One may enjoy the
+controversy and derive benefit from it without taking sides. I suspect
+that there is truth in the view of both. We may be sure that the
+long-continued study and approval by scholars of many ages of the works
+of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus implies historical merit on their
+part in addition to literary art. It is, however, interesting to note
+the profound difference between President Woolsey's opinion of
+Thucydides and that of some of his late German critics. Woolsey said, "I
+have such confidence in the absolute truthfulness of Thucydides that
+were he really chargeable with folly, as Grote alleges [in the affair of
+Amphipolis], I believe he would have avowed it." On the other hand, a
+German critic, cited by Holm, says that Thucydides is a poet who invents
+facts partly in order to teach people how things ought to be done and
+partly because he liked to depict certain scenes of horror. He says
+further, a narrative of certain occurrences is so full of
+impossibilities that it must be pure invention on the part of the
+historian. Another German maintains that Thucydides has indulged in "a
+fanciful and half-romantic picture of events." But Holm, whom the
+scientific historians claim as one of their own, says, "Thucydides
+still remains a trustworthy historical authority;" and, "On the whole,
+therefore, the old view that he is a truthful writer is not in the least
+shaken." Again Holm writes: "Attempts have been made to convict
+Thucydides of serious inaccuracies, but without success. On the other
+hand, the writer of this work [that is, the scientific historian, Holm]
+is able to state that he has followed him topographically for the
+greater part of the sixth and seventh books--and consequently for nearly
+one fourth of the whole history--and has found that the more carefully
+his words are weighed and the more accurately the ground is studied the
+clearer both the text and events become, and this is certainly high
+praise." Holm and Percy Gardner, both of whom have the modern method and
+have studied diligently the historical evidence from coins and
+inscriptions, placed great reliance on Herodotus, who, as well as
+Thucydides and Tacitus, is taken by scholars as a model of historical
+composition.
+
+The sifting of time settles the reputations of historians. Of the
+English of the eighteenth century only one historian has come down to us
+as worthy of serious study. Time is wasted in reading Hume and Robertson
+as models, and no one goes to them for facts. But thirty years ago no
+course of historical reading was complete without Hume. In this century
+the sifting process still goes on. One loses little by not reading
+Alison's "History of Europe." But he was much in vogue in the '50's.
+_Harper's Magazine_ published a part of his history as a serial. His
+rounded periods and bombastic utterances were quoted with delight by
+those who thought that history was not history unless it was bombastic.
+Emerson says somewhere, "Avoid adjectives; let your nouns do the work."
+There was hardly a sentence in Alison which did not traverse this rule.
+One of his admirers told me that the great merit of his style was his
+choiceness and aptness in his use of adjectives. It is a style which now
+provokes merriment, and even had Alison been learned and impartial, and
+had he possessed a good method, his style for the present taste would
+have killed his book. Gibbon is sometimes called pompous, but place him
+by the side of Alison and what one may have previously called
+pompousness one now calls dignity.
+
+Two of the literary historians of our century survive--Carlyle and
+Macaulay. They may be read with care. We may do as Cassius said Brutus
+did to him, observe all their faults, set them in a note-book, learn and
+con them by rote; nevertheless we shall get good from them. Oscar
+Browning said--I am quoting H. Morse Stephens again--of Carlyle's
+description of the flight of the king to Varennes, that in every one of
+his details where a writer could go wrong, Carlyle had gone wrong; but
+added that, although all the details were wrong, Carlyle's account is
+essentially accurate. No defense, I think, can be made of Carlyle's
+statement that Marat was a "blear-eyed dog leach," nor of those
+statements from which you get the distinct impression that the
+complexion of Robespierre was green; nevertheless, every one who studies
+the French Revolution reads Carlyle, and he is read because the reading
+is profitable. The battle descriptions in Carlyle's "Frederick the
+Great" are well worth reading. How refreshing they are after technical
+descriptions! Carlyle said once, "Battles since Homer's time, when they
+were nothing but fighting mobs, have ceased to be worth reading about,"
+but he made the modern battle interesting.
+
+Macaulay is an honest partisan. You learn very soon how to take him, and
+when distrust begins one has correctives in Gardiner and Ranke. Froude
+is much more dangerous. His splendid narrative style does not compensate
+for his inaccuracies. Langlois makes an apt quotation from Froude. "We
+saw," says Froude, of the city of Adelaide, in Australia, "below us in a
+basin, with the river winding through it, a city of 150,000 inhabitants,
+none of whom has ever known or ever will know one moment's anxiety as to
+the recurring regularity of three meals a day." Now for the facts.
+Langlois says: "Adelaide is built on an eminence; no river runs through
+it. When Froude visited it the population did not exceed 75,000, and it
+was suffering from a famine at the time." Froude was curious in his
+inaccuracies. He furnished the data which convict him of error. He
+quoted inaccurately the Simancas manuscripts and deposited correct
+copies in the British Museum. Carlyle and Macaulay are honest partisans
+and you know how to take them, but for constitutional inaccuracy such as
+Froude's no allowance can be made.
+
+Perhaps it may be said of Green that he combines the merits of the
+scientific and literary historian. He has written an honest and artistic
+piece of work. But he is not infallible. I have been told on good
+authority that in his reference to the Thirty Years' War he has hardly
+stated a single fact correctly, yet the general impression you get from
+his account is correct. Saintsbury writes that Green has "out-Macaulayed
+Macaulay in reckless abuse" of Dryden. Stubbs and Gardiner are
+preeminently the scientific historians of England. Of Stubbs, from
+actual knowledge, I regret that I cannot speak, but the reputation he
+has among historical experts is positive proof of his great value. Of
+Gardiner I can speak with knowledge. Any one who desires to write
+history will do well to read every line Gardiner has written--not the
+text alone, but also the notes. It is an admirable study in method which
+will bear important fruit. But because Gibbon, Gardiner, and Stubbs
+should be one's chief reliance, it does not follow that one may neglect
+Macaulay, Carlyle, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Herodotus. Gardiner himself
+has learned much from Macaulay and Carlyle. All of them may be
+criticised on one point or another, but they all have lessons for us.
+
+We shall all agree that the aim of history is to get at the truth and
+express it as clearly as possible. The differences crop out when we
+begin to elaborate our meaning. "This I regard as the historian's
+highest function," writes Tacitus, "to let no worthy action be
+uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror
+to evil words and deeds;" while Langlois and the majority of the
+scholars of Oxford are of the opinion that the formation and expression
+of ethical judgments, the approval or condemnation of Julius Caesar or of
+Caesar Borgia is not a thing within the historian's province. Let the
+controversy go on! It is well worth one's while to read the
+presentations of the subject from the different points of view. But
+infallibility will nowhere be found. Mommsen and Curtius in their
+detailed investigations received applause from those who adhered rigidly
+to the scientific view of history, but when they addressed the public in
+their endeavor, it is said, to produce an effect upon it, they relaxed
+their scientific rigor; hence such a chapter as Curtius's "The years of
+peace," and in another place his transmuting a conjecture of Grote into
+an assertion; hence Mommsen's effusive panegyric of Caesar. If Mommsen
+did depart from the scientific rules, I suspect that it came from no
+desire of a popular success, but rather from the enthusiasm of much
+learning. The examples of Curtius and Mommsen show probably that such a
+departure from strict impartiality is inherent in the writing of general
+history, and it comes, I take it, naturally and unconsciously. Holm is a
+scientific historian, but on the Persian Invasion he writes: "I have
+followed Herodotus in many passages which are unauthenticated and
+probably even untrue, because he reproduces the popular traditions of
+the Greeks." And again: "History in the main ought only to be a record
+of facts, but now and then the historian may be allowed to display a
+certain interest in his subject." These expressions traverse the canons
+of scientific history as much as the sayings of the ancient
+historiographers themselves. But because men have warm sympathies that
+cause them to color their narratives, shall no more general histories be
+written? Shall history be confined to the printing of original documents
+and to the publication of learned monographs in which the discussion of
+authorities is mixed up with the relation of events? The proper mental
+attitude of the general historian is to take no thought of popularity.
+The remark of Macaulay that he would make his history take the place of
+the last novel on my lady's table is not scientific. The audience which
+the general historian should have in mind is that of historical
+experts--men who are devoting their lives to the study of history. Words
+of approval from them are worth more than any popular recognition, for
+theirs is the enduring praise. Their criticism should be respected;
+there should be unceasing effort to avoid giving them cause for
+fault-finding. No labor should be despised which shall enable one to
+present things just as they are. Our endeavor should be to think
+straight and see clear. An incident should not be related on
+insufficient evidence because it is interesting, but an affair well
+attested should not be discarded because it happens to have a human
+interest. I feel quite sure that the cardinal aim of Gardiner was to be
+accurate and to proportion his story well. In this he has succeeded; but
+it is no drawback that he has made his volumes interesting. Jacob D.
+Cox, who added to other accomplishments that of being learned in the
+law, and who looked upon Gardiner with such reverence that he called him
+the Chief Justice, said there was no reason why he should read novels,
+as he found Gardiner's history more interesting than any romance. The
+scientific historians have not revolutionized historical methods, but
+they have added much. The process of accretion has been going on since,
+at any rate, the time of Herodotus, and the canons for weighing evidence
+and the synthesis of materials are better understood now than ever
+before, for they have been reduced from many models. I feel sure that
+there has been a growth in candor. Compare the critical note to a later
+edition which Macaulay wrote in 1857, maintaining the truth of his
+charge against William Penn, with the manly way in which Gardiner owns
+up when an error or insufficient evidence for a statement is pointed
+out. It is the ethics of the profession to be forward in correcting
+errors. The difference between the old and the new lies in the desire to
+have men think you are infallible and the desire to be accurate.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSION OF HISTORIAN
+
+Lecture read before the History Club of Harvard University, April 27,
+1908, and at Yale, Columbia, and Western Reserve Universities.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSION OF HISTORIAN
+
+
+I am assuming that among my audience there are some students who aspire
+to become historians. To these especially my discourse is addressed.
+
+It is not to be expected that I should speak positively and in detail on
+matters of education. Nevertheless, a man of sixty who has devoted the
+better part of his life to reading, observation, and reflection must
+have gained, if only through a perception of his own deficiencies, some
+ideas that should be useful to those who have, life's experience before
+them. Hence, if a Freshman should say to me, I wish to be a historian,
+tell me what preliminary studies you would advise, I should welcome the
+opportunity. From the nature of the case, the history courses will be
+sought and studied in their logical order and my advice will have to do
+only with collateral branches of learning.
+
+In the first place, I esteem a knowledge of Latin and French of the
+highest importance. By a knowledge of French, I mean that you should be
+able to read it substantially as well as you read English, so that when
+you have recourse to a dictionary it will be a French dictionary and not
+one of the French-English kind. The historical and other literature that
+is thus opened up to you enables you to live in another world, with a
+point of view impossible to one who reads for pleasure only in his own
+tongue. To take two instances: Moliere is a complement to Shakespeare,
+and the man who knows his Moliere as he does his Shakespeare has made a
+propitious beginning in that study of human character which must be
+understood if he desires to write a history that shall gain readers. "I
+have known and loved Moliere," said Goethe, "from my youth and have
+learned from him during my whole life. I never fail to read some of his
+plays every year, that I may keep up a constant intercourse with what is
+excellent. It is not merely the perfectly artistic treatment which
+delights me; but particularly the amiable nature, the highly formed mind
+of the poet. There is in him a grace and a feeling for the decorous, and
+a tone of good society, which his innate beautiful nature could only
+attain by daily intercourse with the most eminent men of his age."[3]
+
+My other instance is Balzac. In reading him for pleasure, as you read
+Dickens and Thackeray, you are absorbing an exact and fruitful knowledge
+of French society of the Restoration and of Louis Philippe. Moreover you
+are still pursuing your study of human character under one of the acute
+critics of the nineteenth century. Balzac has always seemed to me
+peculiarly French, his characters belong essentially to Paris or to the
+provinces. I associate Eugenie Grandet with Saumur in the Touraine and
+Cesar Birotteau with the Rue St. Honore in Paris; and all his other men
+and women move naturally in the great city or in the provinces which he
+has given them for their home. A devoted admirer however tells me that
+in his opinion Balzac has created universal types; the counterpart of
+some of his men may be seen in the business and social world of Boston,
+and the peculiarly sharp and dishonest transaction which brought Cesar
+Birotteau to financial ruin was here exactly reproduced.
+
+The French language and literature seem to possess the merits which ours
+lack; and the writer of history cannot afford to miss the lessons he
+will receive by a constant reading of the best French prose.
+
+I do not ask the Freshman who is going to be a historian to realize
+Macaulay's ideal of a scholar, to "read Plato with his feet on the
+fender,"[4] but he should at least acquire a pretty thorough knowledge
+of classical Latin, so that he can read Latin, let me say, as many of us
+read German, that is with the use of a lexicon and the occasional
+translation of a sentence or a paragraph into English to arrive at its
+exact meaning. Of this, I can speak from the point of view of one who is
+deficient. The reading of Latin has been for me a grinding labor and I
+would have liked to read with pleasure in the original, the History and
+Annals of Tacitus, Caesar's Gallic and Civil wars and Cicero's Orations
+and Private Letters even to the point of following Macaulay's advice,
+"Soak your mind with Cicero."[4] These would have given me, I fancy, a
+more vivid impression of two periods of Roman history than I now
+possess. Ferrero, who is imparting a fresh interest to the last period
+of the Roman republic, owes a part of his success, I think, to his
+thorough digestion and effective use of Cicero's letters, which have the
+faculty of making one acquainted with Cicero just as if he were a modern
+man. During a sojourn on the shores of Lake Geneva, I read two volumes
+of Voltaire's private correspondence, and later, while passing the
+winter in Rome, the four volumes of Cicero's letters in French. I could
+not help thinking that in the republic of letters one was not in time at
+a far greater distance from Cicero than from Voltaire. While the
+impression of nearness may have come from reading both series of letters
+in French, or because, to use John Morley's words, "two of the most
+perfect masters of the art of letter writing were Cicero and
+Voltaire,"[5] there is a decided flavor of the nineteenth century in
+Cicero's words to a good liver whom he is going to visit. "You must not
+reckon," he wrote, "on my eating your hors d'oeuvre. I have given them
+up entirely. The time has gone by when I can abuse my stomach with your
+olives and your Lucanian sausages."[6]
+
+To repeat then, if the student, who is going to be a historian, uses his
+acquisitive years in obtaining a thorough knowledge of French and Latin,
+he will afterwards be spared useless regrets. He will naturally add
+German for the purpose of general culture and, if languages come easy,
+perhaps Greek. "Who is not acquainted with another language," said
+Goethe, "knows not his own." A thorough knowledge of Latin and French is
+a long stride towards an efficient mastery of English. In the matter of
+diction, the English writer is rarely in doubt as to words of
+Anglo-Saxon origin, for these are deep-rooted in his childhood and his
+choice is generally instinctive. The difficulties most persistently
+besetting him concern words that come from the Latin or the French; and
+here he must use reason or the dictionary or both. The author who has a
+thorough knowledge of Latin and French will argue with himself as to the
+correct diction, will follow Emerson's advice, "Know words
+etymologically; pull them apart; see how they are made; and use them
+only where they fit."[7] As it is in action through life, so it is in
+writing; the conclusions arrived at by reason are apt to be more
+valuable than those which we accept on authority. The reasoned literary
+style is more virile than that based on the dictionary. A judgment
+arrived at by argument sticks in the memory, while it is necessary for
+the user of the dictionary constantly to invoke authority, so that the
+writer who reasons out the meaning of words may constantly accelerate
+his pace, for the doubt and decision of yesterday is to-day a solid
+acquirement, ingrained in his mental being. I have lately been reading a
+good deal of Gibbon and I cannot imagine his having had frequent
+recourse to a dictionary. I do not remember even an allusion either in
+his autobiographies or in his private letters to any such aid.
+Undoubtedly his thorough knowledge of Latin and French, his vast reading
+of Latin, French, and English books, enabled him to dispense with the
+thumbing of a dictionary and there was probably a reasoning process at
+the back of every important word. It is difficult, if not impossible, to
+improve on Gibbon by the substitution of one word for another.
+
+A rather large reading of Sainte-Beuve gives me the same impression.
+Indeed his literary fecundity, the necessity of having the Causerie
+ready for each Monday's issue of the _Constitutionnel_ or the
+_Moniteur_, precluded a study of words while composing, and his rapid
+and correct writing was undoubtedly due to the training obtained by the
+process of reasoning. Charles Sumner seems to be an exception to my
+general rule. Although presumably he knew Latin well, he was a slave to
+dictionaries. He generally had five at his elbow (Johnson, Webster,
+Worcester, Walker, and Pickering) and when in doubt as to the use of a
+word he consulted all five and let the matter be decided on the American
+democratic principle of majority rule.[8] Perhaps this is one cause of
+the stilted and artificial character of Sumner's speeches which, unlike
+Daniel Webster's, are not to be thought of as literature. One does not
+associate dictionaries with Webster. Thus had I written the sentence
+without thinking of a not infrequent confusion between Noah and Daniel
+Webster, and this confusion reminded me of a story which John Fiske
+used to tell with gusto and which some of you may not have heard. An
+English gentleman remarked to an American: "What a giant intellect that
+Webster of yours had! To think of so great an orator and statesman
+writing that dictionary! But I felt sure that one who towered so much
+above his fellows would come to a bad end and I was not a bit surprised
+to learn that he had been hanged for the murder of Dr. Parkman."
+
+To return to my theme: One does not associate dictionaries with Daniel
+Webster. He was given to preparing his speeches in the solitudes of
+nature, and his first Bunker Hill oration, delivered in 1825, was mainly
+composed while wading in a trout stream and desultorily fishing for
+trout.[9] Joe Jefferson, who loved fishing as well as Webster, used to
+say, "The trout is a gentleman and must be treated as such." Webster's
+companion might have believed that some such thought as this was passing
+through the mind of the great Daniel as, standing middle deep in the
+stream, he uttered these sonorous words: "Venerable men! You have come
+down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened
+out your lives that you might behold this joyous day." I think Daniel
+Webster for the most part reasoned out his choice of words; he left the
+dictionary work to others. After delivery, he threw down the manuscript
+of his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson and said to a student in his law
+office, "There, Tom, please to take that discourse and weed out the
+Latin words."[10]
+
+When doubtful as to the use of words, I should have been helped by a
+better knowledge of Latin and enabled very often to write with a surer
+touch. Though compelled to resort frequently to the dictionary, I early
+learned to pay little attention to the definition but to regard with
+care the illustrative meaning in the citations from standard authors.
+When I began writing I used the Imperial Dictionary, an improvement over
+Webster in this respect. Soon the Century Dictionary began to appear,
+and best of all the New English Dictionary on historical principles
+edited by Murray and Bradley and published by the Clarendon Press at
+Oxford. A study of the mass of quotations in these two dictionaries
+undoubtedly does much to atone for the lack of linguistic knowledge; and
+the tracing of the history of words, as it is done in the Oxford
+dictionary, makes any inquiry as to the meaning of a word fascinating
+work for the historian. Amongst the multiplicity of aids for the student
+and the writer no single one is so serviceable as this product of labor
+and self-sacrifice, fostered by the Clarendon Press, to whom, all
+writers in the English language owe a debt of gratitude.
+
+Macaulay had a large fund of knowledge on which he might base his
+reasoning, and his indefatigable mind welcomed any outside assistance.
+He knew Greek and Latin thoroughly and a number of other languages, but
+it is related of him that he so thumbed his copy of Johnson's Dictionary
+that he was continually sending it to the binder. In return for his
+mastery of the languages, the dictionaries are fond of quoting Macaulay.
+If I may depend upon a rough mental computation, no prose writer of the
+nineteenth century is so frequently cited. "He never wrote an obscure
+sentence in his life," said John Morley;[11] and this is partly due to
+his exact use of words. There is never any doubt about his meaning.
+Macaulay began the use of Latin words at an early age. When four and a
+half years old he was asked if he had got over the toothache, to which
+question came this reply, "The agony is abated."
+
+Mathematics beyond arithmetic are of no use to the historian and may be
+entirely discarded. I do not ignore John Stuart Mill's able plea for
+them, some words of which are worth quoting. "Mathematical studies," he
+said, "are of immense benefit to the student's education by habituating
+him to precision. It is one of the peculiar excellences of mathematical
+discipline that the mathematician is never satisfied with an _a peu
+pres_. He requires the _exact_ truth.... The practice of mathematical
+reasoning gives wariness of the mind; it accustoms us to demand a sure
+footing."[12] Mill, however, is no guide except for exceptionally gifted
+youth. He began to learn Greek when he was three years old, and by the
+time he had reached the age of twelve had read a good part of Latin and
+Greek literature and knew elementary geometry and algebra thoroughly.
+
+The three English historians who have most influenced thought from 1776
+to 1900 are those whom John Morley called "great born men of
+letters"[13]--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle; and two of these despised
+mathematics. "As soon as I understood the principles," wrote Gibbon in
+his "Autobiography," "I relinquished forever the pursuit of the
+Mathematics; nor can I lament that I desisted before my mind was
+hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the
+finer feelings of moral evidence, which must however determine the
+actions and opinions of our lives."[14] Macaulay, while a student at
+Cambridge, wrote to his mother: "Oh, for words to express my abomination
+of mathematics ... 'Discipline' of the mind! Say rather starvation,
+confinement, torture, annihilation!... I feel myself becoming a
+personification of Algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking
+table of logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or
+at least going.... Farewell then Homer and Sophocles and Cicero."[15] I
+must in fairness state that in after life Macaulay regretted his lack of
+knowledge of mathematics and physics, but his career and Gibbon's
+demonstrate that mathematics need have no place on the list of the
+historian's studies. Carlyle, however, showed mathematical ability which
+attracted the attention of Legendre and deemed himself sufficiently
+qualified to apply, when he was thirty-nine years old, for the
+professorship of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. He did not
+succeed in obtaining the post but, had he done so, he "would have made,"
+so Froude his biographer thinks, "the school of Astronomy at Edinburgh
+famous throughout Europe."[16] When fifty-two, Carlyle said that "the
+man who had mastered the first forty-seven propositions of Euclid stood
+nearer to God than he had done before."[17] I may cap this with some
+words of Emerson, who in much of his thought resembled Carlyle: "What
+hours of melancholy my mathematical works cost! It was long before I
+learned that there is something wrong with a man's brain who loves
+them."[18]
+
+Mathematics are of course the basis of many studies, trades, and
+professions and are sometimes of benefit as a recreation for men of
+affairs. Devotion to Euclid undoubtedly added to Lincoln's strength, but
+the necessary range of knowledge for the historian is so vast that he
+cannot spend his evenings and restless nights in the solution of
+mathematical problems. In short, mathematics are of no more use to him
+than is Greek to the civil or mechanical engineer.
+
+In the category with mathematics must be placed a detailed study of any
+of the physical or natural sciences. I think that a student during his
+college course should have a year's work in a chemical laboratory or
+else, if his taste inclines him to botany, geology, or zoology, a year's
+training of his observing powers in some one of these studies. For he
+ought to get, while at an impressible age, a superficial knowledge of
+the methods of scientific men, as a basis for his future reading. We all
+know that science is moving the world and to keep abreast with the
+movement is a necessity for every educated man. Happily, there are
+scientific men who popularize their knowledge. John Fiske, Huxley, and
+Tyndall presented to us the theories and demonstrations of science in a
+literary style that makes learning attractive. Huxley and Tyndall were
+workers in laboratories and gave us the results of their patient and
+long-continued experiments. It is too much to expect that every
+generation will produce men of the remarkable power of expression of
+Huxley and John Fiske, but there will always be clear writers who will
+delight in instructing the general public in language easily understood.
+In an address which I delivered eight or nine years ago before the
+American Historical Association, I cheerfully conceded that, in the
+realm of intellectual endeavor, the natural and physical sciences should
+have the precedence of history. The question with us now is not which is
+the nobler pursuit, but how is the greatest economy of time to be
+compassed for the historian. My advice is in the line of concentration.
+Failure in life arises frequently from intellectual scattering; hence I
+like to see the historical student getting his physical and natural
+science at second-hand.
+
+The religious and political revolutions of the last four hundred years
+have weakened authority; but in intellectual development I believe that
+in general an important advantage lies in accepting the dicta of
+specialists. In this respect our scientific men may teach us a lesson.
+One not infrequently meets a naturalist or a physician, who possesses
+an excellent knowledge of history, acquired by reading the works of
+general historians who have told an interesting story. He would laugh at
+the idea that he must verify the notes of his author and read the
+original documents, for he has confidence that the interpretation is
+accurate and truthful. This is all that I ask of the would-be historian.
+For the sake of going to the bottom of things in his own special study,
+let him take his physical and natural science on trust and he may well
+begin to do this during his college course. As a manner of doing this,
+there occur to me three interesting biographies, the Life of Darwin, the
+Life of Huxley, and the Life of Pasteur, which give the important part
+of the story of scientific development during the last half of the
+nineteenth century. Now I believe that a thorough mastery of these three
+books will be worth more to the historical student than any driblets of
+science that he may pick up in an unsystematic college course.
+
+With this elimination of undesirable studies--undesirable because of
+lack of time--there remains ample time for those studies which are
+necessary for the equipment of a historian; to wit, languages,
+histories, English, French, and Latin literature, and as much of
+economics as his experienced teachers advise. Let him also study the
+fine arts as well as he can in America, fitting himself for an
+appreciation of the great works of architecture, sculpture, and painting
+in Europe which he will recognize as landmarks of history in their
+potent influence on the civilization of mankind. Let us suppose that our
+hypothetical student has marked out on these lines his college course of
+four years, and his graduate course of three. At the age of twenty-five
+he will then have received an excellent college education. The
+university with its learned and hard-working teachers, its wealth, its
+varied and wholesome traditions has done for him the utmost possible.
+Henceforward his education must depend upon himself and, unless he has
+an insatiable love of reading, he had better abandon the idea of
+becoming a historian; for books, pamphlets, old newspapers, and
+manuscripts are the stock of his profession and to them he must show a
+single-minded devotion. He must love his library as Pasteur did his
+laboratory and must fill with delight most of the hours of the day in
+reading or writing. To this necessity there is no alternative. Whether
+it be in general preparation or in the detailed study of a special
+period, there is no end to the material which may be read with
+advantage. The young man of twenty-five can do no better than to devote
+five years of his life to general preparation. And what enjoyment he has
+before him! He may draw upon a large mass of histories and biographies,
+of books of correspondence, of poems, plays, and novels; it is then for
+him to select with discrimination, choosing the most valuable, as they
+afford him facts, augment his knowledge of human nature, and teach him
+method and expression. "A good book," said Milton, "is the precious life
+blood of a master spirit," and every good book which wins our student's
+interest and which he reads carefully will help him directly or
+indirectly in his career. And there are some books which he will wish to
+master, as if he were to be subjected to an examination on them. As to
+these he will be guided by strong inclination and possibly with a view
+to the subject of his magnum opus; but if these considerations be absent
+and if the work has not been done in the university, I cannot too
+strongly recommend the mastery of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" and
+Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire." Gibbon merits close study because his is
+undoubtedly the greatest history of modern times and because it is, in
+the words of Carlyle, a splendid bridge from the old world to the new.
+He should be read in the edition of Bury, whose scholarly introduction
+gives a careful and just estimate of Gibbon and whose notes show the
+results of the latest researches. This edition does not include Guizot's
+and Milman's notes, which seem to an old-fashioned reader of Gibbon like
+myself worthy of attention, especially those on the famous Fifteenth and
+Sixteenth Chapters. Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire" is a fitting complement
+to Gibbon, and the intellectual possession of the two is an education in
+itself which will be useful in the study of any period of history that
+may be chosen.
+
+The student who reads Gibbon will doubtless be influenced by his many
+tributes to Tacitus and will master the Roman historian. I shall let
+Macaulay furnish the warrant for a close study of Thucydides. "This
+day," Macaulay said, when in his thirty-fifth year, "I finished
+Thucydides after reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration.
+He is the greatest historian that ever lived." Again during the same
+year he wrote: "What are all the Roman historians to the great Athenian?
+I do assure you there is no prose composition in the world, not even the
+oration on the Crown, which I place so high as the seventh book of
+Thucydides. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of human art. I was delighted to
+find in Gray's letters the other day this query to Wharton: 'The retreat
+from Syracuse--is or is it not the finest thing you ever read in your
+life?' ... Most people read all the Greek they ever read before they are
+five and twenty. They never find time for such studies afterwards until
+they are in the decline of life; and then their knowledge of the
+language is in great measure lost, and cannot easily be recovered.
+Accordingly, almost all the ideas that people have of Greek literature
+are ideas formed while they were still very young. A young man,
+whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides.
+I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him
+with a mind accustomed to historical researches and to political affairs
+and I am astonished at my own former blindness and at his
+greatness."[19]
+
+I have borrowed John Morley's words, speaking of Gibbon, Macaulay, and
+Carlyle as "three great born men of letters." Our student cannot
+therefore afford to miss a knowledge of Macaulay's History, but the
+Essays, except perhaps three or four of the latest ones, need not be
+read. In a preface to the authorized edition of the Essays, Macaulay
+wrote that he was "sensible of their defects," deemed them "imperfect
+pieces," and did not think that they were "worthy of a permanent place
+in English literature." For instance, his essay on Milton contained
+scarcely a paragraph which his matured judgment approved. Macaulay's
+peculiar faults are emphasized in his Essays and much of the harsh
+criticism which he has received comes from the glaring defects of these
+earlier productions. His history, however, is a great book, shows
+extensive research, a sane method and an excellent power of narration;
+and when he is a partisan, he is so honest and transparent that the
+effect of his partiality is neither enduring nor mischievous.
+
+I must say further to the student: read either Carlyle's "French
+Revolution" or his "Frederick the Great," I care not which, although it
+is well worth one's while to read both. If your friends who maintain
+that history is a science convince you that the "French Revolution" is
+not history, as perhaps they may, read it as a narrative poem. Truly
+Carlyle spoke rather like a poet than a historian when he wrote to his
+wife (in his forty-first year): "A hundred pages more and this cursed
+book is flung out of me. I mean to write with force of fire till that
+consummation; above all with the speed of fire.... It all stands pretty
+fair in my head, nor do I mean to investigate much more about it, but to
+splash down what I know in large masses of colors, that it may look like
+a smoke-and-flame conflagration in the distance, which it is."[20] It
+was Carlyle's custom to work all of the morning and take a solitary walk
+in Hyde Park in the afternoon, when looking upon the gay scene, the
+display of wealth and fashion, "seeing," as he said, "all the carriages
+dash hither and thither and so many human bipeds cheerily hurrying
+along," he said to himself: "There you go, brothers, in your gilt
+carriages and prosperities, better or worse, and make an extreme bother
+and confusion, the devil very largely in it.... Not one of you could do
+what I am doing, and it concerns you too, if you did but know it."[21]
+When the book was done he wrote to his brother, "It is a wild, savage
+book, itself a kind of French Revolution."[22] From its somewhat obscure
+style it requires a slow perusal and careful study, but this serves all
+the more to fix it in the memory causing it to remain an abiding
+influence.
+
+There are eight volumes of "Frederick the Great," containing, according
+to Barrett Wendell's computation, over one million words; and this
+eighteenth-century tale, with its large number of great and little
+characters, its "mass of living facts" impressed Wendell chiefly with
+its unity. "Whatever else Carlyle was," he wrote, "the unity of this
+enormous book proves him, when he chose to be, a Titanic artist."[23]
+Only those who have striven for unity in a narrative can appreciate the
+tribute contained in these words. It was a struggle, too, for Carlyle.
+Fifty-six years old when he conceived the idea of Frederick, his
+nervousness and irritability were a constant torment to himself and his
+devoted wife. Many entries in his journal tell of his "dismal continual
+wrestle with Friedrich,"[24] perhaps the most characteristic of which is
+this: "My Frederick looks as if it would never take shape in me; in fact
+the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the eighteenth
+century, with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties,
+and _inanity_ now fallen _putrid_, rotting inevitably towards
+annihilation; to destroy and extinguish all that, having got to know it,
+and to know that it must be rejected for evermore; after which the
+perennial portion, pretty much Friedrich and Voltaire so far as I can
+see, may remain conspicuous and capable of being delineated."[25]
+
+The student, who has become acquainted with the works of Gibbon,
+Macaulay, and Carlyle, will wish to know something of the men themselves
+and this curiosity may be easily and delightfully gratified. The
+autobiographies of Gibbon, the Life of Macaulay by Sir George Trevelyan,
+the History of Carlyle's Life by Froude, present the personality of
+these historians in a vivid manner. Gibbon has himself told of all his
+own faults and Froude has omitted none of Carlyle's, so that these two
+books are useful aids in a study of human nature, in which respect they
+are real adjuncts of Boswell's Johnson. Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay
+had an insatiable love of reading; in their solitary hours they were
+seldom without books in their hands. Valuable instruction may be derived
+from a study of their lives from their suggestions of books, helpful in
+the development of a historian. They knew how to employ their odd
+moments, and Gibbon and Macaulay were adepts in the art of desultory
+reading. Sainte-Beuve makes a plea for desultory reading in instancing
+Tocqueville's lack of it, so that he failed to illustrate and animate
+his pages with its fruits, the result being, in the long run, great
+monotony.[26] As a relief to the tired brain, without a complete loss of
+time, the reading at hazard, even browsing in a library, has its place
+in the equipment of a historian. One of the most striking examples of
+self-education in literature is Carlyle's seven years, from the age of
+thirty-two to thirty-nine, passed at Craigenputtock where his native
+inclination was enforced by his physical surroundings. Craigenputtock,
+wrote Froude, is "the dreariest spot in all the British dominions. The
+nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, 700 feet
+above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden produce to the
+hardiest vegetables. The house is gaunt and hungry-looking."[27] The
+place realized Tennyson's words, "O, the dreary, dreary moorland." Here
+Carlyle read books, gave himself over to silent meditation, and wrote
+for his bread, although a man who possessed an adequate income could not
+have been more independent in thought than he was, or more averse to
+writing to the order of editors of reviews and magazines. With no
+outside distractions, books were his companions as well as his friends.
+As you read Froude's intimate biography, it comes upon you, as you
+consider Carlyle's life in London, what a tremendous intellectual stride
+he had made while living in this dreary solitude of Craigenputtock. It
+was there that he continued his development under the intellectual
+influence of Goethe, wrote "Sartor Resartus" and conceived the idea of
+writing the story of the French Revolution. Those seven years, as you
+trace their influence during the rest of his life, will ever be a
+tribute to the concentrated, bookish labors of bookish men.
+
+It is often said that some practical experience in life is necessary for
+the training of a historian; that only thus can he arrive at a knowledge
+of human nature and become a judge of character; that, while the theory
+is occasionally advanced that history is a series of movements which may
+be described without taking individuals into account, as a matter of
+fact, one cannot go far on this hypothesis without running up against
+the truth that movements have motors and the motors are men. Hence we
+are to believe the dictum that the historian needs that knowledge of men
+which is to be obtained only by practical dealings with them. It is true
+that Gibbon's service in the Hampshire militia and his membership in the
+House of Commons were of benefit to the historian of the Roman Empire.
+Grote's business life, Macaulay's administrative work in India, and the
+parliamentary experience of both were undoubtedly of value to their work
+as historians, but there are excellent historians who have never had any
+such training. Carlyle is an example, and Samuel R. Gardiner is another.
+Curiously enough, Gardiner, who was a pure product of the university and
+the library, has expressed sounder judgments on many of the prominent
+men of the seventeenth century than Macaulay. I am not aware that there
+is in historical literature any other such striking contrast as this,
+for it is difficult to draw the line closely between the historian and
+the man of affairs, but Gardiner's example is strengthened in other
+historians' lives sufficiently to warrant the statement that the
+historian need not be a man of the world. Books are written by men and
+treat of the thoughts and actions of men and a good study may be made of
+human character without going beyond the walls of a library.
+
+Drawing upon my individual experience again I feel that the two authors
+who have helped me most in this study of human character are
+Shakespeare and Homer. I do not mean that in the modern world we meet
+Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth, and Shylock, but when we perceive "the native hue
+of resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," when we come
+in contact with the treachery of a seeming friend, with unholy ambition
+and insensate greed, we are better able to interpret them on the page of
+history from having grasped the lessons of Shakespeare to mankind. A
+constant reading of Shakespeare will show us unchanging passions and
+feelings; and we need not make literal contrasts, as did the British
+matron who remarked of "Antony and Cleopatra" that it was "so unlike the
+home life of our beloved queen." Bernard Shaw, who has said much in
+detraction of Shakespeare, writes in one of his admiring moods, "that
+the imaginary scenes and people he has created become more real to us
+than our actual life--at least until our knowledge and grip of actual
+life begins to deepen and glow beyond the common. When I was twenty,"
+Shaw continues, "I knew everybody in Shakespeare from Hamlet to
+Abhorson, much more intimately than I knew my living contemporaries; and
+to this day, if the name of Pistol or Polonius catches my eye in a
+newspaper, I turn to the passage with curiosity."[28]
+
+Homer's character of Ulysses is a link between the ancient and the
+modern world. One feels that Ulysses would be at home in the twentieth
+century and would adapt himself to the conditions of modern political
+life. Perhaps, indeed, he would have preferred to his militant age our
+industrial one where prizes are often won by craft and persuasive
+eloquence rather than by strength of arm. The story of Ulysses is a
+signal lesson in the study of human character, and receives a luminous
+commentary in Shakespeare's adaptation of it. The advice which Ulysses
+gives to Achilles[29] is a piece of worldly wisdom and may well be acted
+on by those who desire advancement in life and are little scrupulous in
+regard to means. The first part of Goethe's "Faust" is another book
+which has profoundly affected my view of life. I read it first when
+seventeen years old and have continually re-read it; and, while I fail
+to comprehend it wholly, and, although it does not give me the same kind
+of knowledge of human character that I derive from Shakespeare's plays,
+I carry away from it abiding impressions from the contact that it
+affords with one of the greatest of human minds.
+
+All this counsel of mine, as to the reading of the embryo historian is,
+of course, merely supplementary, and does not pretend to be exhaustive.
+I am assuming that during his undergraduate and graduate course the
+student has been advised to read, either wholly or in part, most of the
+English, German, and French scientific historians of the past fifty
+years, and that he has become acquainted in a greater or less degree
+with all the eminent American historians. My own experience has been
+that a thorough knowledge of one book of an author is better than a
+superficial acquaintance with all of his works. The only book of Francis
+Parkman's which I have read is his "Montcalm and Wolfe," parts of which
+I have gone over again and again. One chapter, pervaded with the scenery
+of the place, I have read on Lake George, three others more than once at
+Quebec, and I feel that I know Parkman's method as well as if I had
+skimmed all his volumes. But I believe I was careful in my selection,
+for in his own estimation, and in that of the general public, "Montcalm
+and Wolfe" is his best work. So with Motley, I have read nothing but
+the "Dutch Republic," but that I have read through twice carefully. I
+will not say that it is the most accurate of his works, but it is
+probably the most interesting and shows his graphic and dashing style at
+its best. An admirer of Stubbs told me that his "Lectures and Addresses
+on Mediaeval and Modern History" would give me a good idea of his
+scholarship and literary manner and that I need not tackle his magnum
+opus. But those lectures gave me a taste for more and, undeterred by the
+remark of still another admirer that nobody ever read his
+"Constitutional History" through, I did read one volume with interest
+and profit, and I hope at some future time to read the other two. On the
+other hand, I have read everything that Samuel R. Gardiner has written
+except "What Gunpowder Plot Was." Readers differ. There are fast readers
+who have the faculty of getting just what they want out of a book in a
+brief time and they retain the thing which they have sought. Assuredly I
+envy men that power. For myself, I have never found any royal road to
+learning, have been a slow reader, and needed a re-reading, sometimes
+more than one, to acquire any degree of mastery of a book. Macaulay used
+to read his favorite Greek and Latin classics over and over again and
+presumably always with care, but modern books he turned off with
+extraordinary speed. Of Buckle's large volume of the "History of
+Civilization" Macaulay wrote in his journal: "I read Buckle's book all
+day, and got to the end, skipping, of course. A man of talent and of a
+good deal of reading, but paradoxical and incoherent."[30] John Fiske, I
+believe, was a slow reader, but he had such a remarkable power of
+concentration that what he read once was his own. Of this I can give a
+notable instance. At a meeting in Boston a number of years ago of the
+Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, Colonel William R.
+Livermore read a learned and interesting paper on Napoleon's Campaigns
+in Northern Italy, and a few men, among whom were Fiske and John C.
+Ropes, remained after supper to discuss the paper. The discussion went
+well into details and was technical. Fiske had as much to say as any one
+and met the military critics on their own ground, holding his own in
+this interchange of expert opinions. As we returned to Cambridge
+together, I expressed my surprise at his wide technical knowledge. "It
+is all due to one book," he said. "A few summers ago I had occasion to
+read Sir Edward Hamley's 'Operations of War' and for some reason or
+other everything in it seemed to sink into my mind and to be there
+retained, ready for use, as was the case to-night with his references to
+the Northern Italian campaigns."
+
+Outside of ordinary historical reading, a book occurs to me which is
+well worth a historian's mastery. I am assuming that our hypothetical
+student has read Goethe's "Faust," "Werther," and "Wilhelm Meister," and
+desires to know something of the personality of this great writer. He
+should, therefore, read Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe," in
+which he will find a body of profitable literary criticism, given out in
+a familiar way by the most celebrated man then living. The talks began
+when he was seventy-three and continued until near his death, ten years
+later; they reveal his maturity of judgment. Greek, Roman, German,
+English, French, Spanish, and Italian authors are taken up from time to
+time and discussed with clearness and appreciation, running sometimes to
+enthusiasm. As a guide to the best reading extant up to 1832 I know
+nothing better. Eckermann is inferior as a biographer to Boswell, and
+his book is neither so interesting nor amusing; but Goethe was far
+greater than Johnson, and his talk is cosmopolitan and broad, while
+Johnson's is apt to be insular and narrow. "One should not study
+contemporaries and competitors," Goethe said, "but the great men of
+antiquity, whose works have for centuries received equal homage and
+consideration.... Let us study Moliere, let us study Shakespeare, but
+above all things, the old Greeks and always the Greeks."[31] Here is an
+opinion I like to dwell upon: "He who will work aright must never rail,
+must not trouble himself at all about what is ill done, but only to do
+well himself. For the great point is, not to pull down, but to build up
+and in this humanity finds pure joy."[32] It is well worth our while to
+listen to a man so great as to be free from envy and jealousy, but this
+was a lesson Carlyle could not learn from his revered master. It is
+undoubtedly his broad mind in connection with his wide knowledge which
+induced Sainte-Beuve to write that Goethe is "the greatest of modern
+critics and of critics of all time."[33]
+
+All of the conversations did not run upon literature and writers.
+Although Goethe never visited either Paris or London, and resided for a
+good part of his life in the little city of Weimar, he kept abreast of
+the world's progress through books, newspapers, and conversations with
+visiting strangers. No statesman or man of business could have had a
+wider outlook than Goethe, when on February 21, 1827, he thus spoke: "I
+should wish to see England in possession of a canal through the Isthmus
+of Suez.... And it may be foreseen that the United States, with its
+decided predilection to the West will, in thirty or forty years, have
+occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains.
+It may furthermore be foreseen that along the whole coast of the Pacific
+Ocean where nature has already formed the most capacious and secure
+harbors, important commercial towns will gradually arise, for the
+furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the East Indies and
+the United States. In such a case, it would not only be desirable, but
+almost necessary, that a more rapid communication should be maintained
+between the eastern and western shores of North America, both by
+merchant ships and men-of-war than has hitherto been possible with the
+tedious, disagreeable, and expensive voyage around Cape Horn.... It is
+absolutely indispensable for the United States to effect a passage from
+the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, and I am certain that they will
+do it. Would that I might live to see it!"[34]
+
+"Eckermann's book," wrote Sainte-Beuve, "is the best biography of
+Goethe; that of Lewes, for the facts; that of Eckermann, for the
+portrait from the inside and the physiognomy. The soul of a great man
+breathes in it."[35]
+
+I have had frequent occasion to speak of Sainte-Beuve and I cannot
+recommend our student too strongly to read from time to time some of his
+critical essays. His best work is contained in the fifteen volumes of
+"Causeries du Lundi" and in the thirteen volumes of "Nouveaux Lundis"
+which were articles written for the daily newspapers, the
+_Constitutionnel_, the _Moniteur_, and the _Temps_, when, between the
+ages of forty-five and sixty-five, he was at the maturity of his powers.
+Considering the very high quality of the work, the quantity is enormous,
+and makes us call to mind the remark of Goethe that "genius and
+fecundity are very closely allied." Excluding Goethe, we may safely, I
+think, call Sainte-Beuve the greatest of modern critics, and there is
+enough of resemblance between historical and literary criticism to
+warrant a study by the historian of these remarkable essays. "The root
+of everything in his criticism," wrote Matthew Arnold, "is his
+single-hearted devotion to truth. What he called 'fictions' in
+literature, in politics, in religion, were not allowed to influence
+him." And Sainte-Beuve himself has said, "I am accustomed incessantly to
+call my judgments in question anew and to recast my opinions the moment
+I suspect them to be without validity."[36] The writer who conforms to
+such a high standard is an excellent guide for the historian and no one
+who has made a study of these Causeries can help feeling their spirit of
+candor and being inspired to the attempt to realize so high an ideal.
+
+Sainte-Beuve's essays deal almost entirely with French literature and
+history, which were the subjects he knew best. It is very desirable for
+us Anglo-Saxons to broaden our minds and soften our prejudices by
+excursions outside of our own literature and history, and with Goethe
+for our guide in Germany, we can do no better than to accept
+Sainte-Beuve for France. Brunetiere wrote that the four literary men of
+France in the nineteenth century who had exercised the most profound
+influence were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Auguste Comte.[37]
+I have already recommended Balzac, who portrays the life of the
+nineteenth century; and Sainte-Beuve, in developing the thought of the
+same period, gives us a history of French literature and society.
+Moreover, his volumes are valuable to one who is studying human
+character by the means of books. "Sainte-Beuve had," wrote Henry James,
+"two passions which are commonly assumed to exclude each other, the
+passion for scholarship and the passion for life. He valued life and
+literature equally for the light they threw on each other; to his mind,
+one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart."[38]
+
+Supposing the student to have devoted five years to this general
+preparation and to have arrived at the age of thirty, which Motley, in
+similar advice to an aspiring historian, fixed as the earliest age at
+which one should devote himself to his special work, he is ready to
+choose a period and write a history, if indeed his period has not
+already suggested itself during his years of general preparation. At all
+events it is doubtless that his own predilection will fix his country
+and epoch and the only counsel I have to offer is to select an
+interesting period. As to this, opinions will differ; but I would say
+for example that the attractive parts of German history are the
+Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, the epoch of Frederick the Great,
+and the unification of Germany which we have witnessed in our own day.
+The French Revolution is to me the most striking period in modern
+annals, whilst the history of the Directory is dull, relieved only by
+the exploits of Napoleon; but when Napoleon becomes the chief officer of
+state, interest revives and we follow with unflagging attention the
+story of this master of men, for which there is a superabundance of
+material, in striking contrast with the little that is known about his
+Titanic predecessors, Alexander and Caesar, in the accounts of whose
+careers conjecture must so frequently come to the aid of facts to
+construct a continuous story. The Restoration and the reign of Louis
+Philippe would for me be dull periods were they not illumined by the
+novels of Balzac; but from the Revolution of 1848 to the fall of the
+Second Empire and the Commune, a wonderful drama was enacted. In our own
+history the Revolutionary War, the framing of the Constitution, and
+Washington's administrations seem to me replete with interest which is
+somewhat lacking for the period between Washington and the slavery
+conflict. "As to special history," wrote Motley to the aspiring
+historian, "I should be inclined rather to direct your attention to
+that of the last three and a half centuries."[39] Discussing the subject
+before the advanced historical students of Harvard a number of years
+ago, I gave an extension to Motley's counsel by saying that ancient
+history had better be left to the Germans. I was fresh from reading
+Holm's History of Greece and was impressed with his vast learning,
+elaboration of detail, and exhaustive treatment of every subject which
+seemed to me to require a steady application and patience, hardly
+consonant with the American character. But within the past five years
+Ferrero, an Italian, has demonstrated that others besides Germans are
+equal to the work by writing an interesting history of Rome, which
+intelligent men and scholars discuss in the same breath with Mommsen's.
+Courageously adopting the title "Grandeur and Decadence of Rome" which
+suggests that of Montesquieu, Ferrero has gleaned the well-reaped field
+from the appearance of Julius Caesar to the reign of Augustus[40] in a
+manner to attract the attention of the reading public in Italy, France,
+England, and the United States. There is no reason why an American
+should not have done the same. "All history is public property," wrote
+Motley in the letter previously referred to. "All history may be
+rewritten and it is impossible that with exhaustive research and deep
+reflection you should not be able to produce something new and valuable
+on almost any subject."[41]
+
+After the student has chosen his period I have little advice to offer
+him beyond what I have previously given in two formal addresses before
+the American Historical Association, but a few additional words may be
+useful. You will evolve your own method by practice and by comparison
+with the methods of other historians. "Follow your own star." If you
+feel impelled to praise or blame as do the older historians, if it is
+forced upon you that your subject demands such treatment, proceed
+fearlessly, so that you do nothing for effect, so that you do not
+sacrifice the least particle of truth for a telling statement. If,
+however, you fall naturally into the rigorously judicial method of
+Gardiner you may feel your position sure. It is well, as the scientific
+historians warn you, to be suspicious of interesting things, but, on the
+other hand, every interesting incident is not necessarily untrue. If you
+have made a conscientious search for historical material and use it with
+scrupulous honesty, have no fear that you will transgress any reasonable
+canon of historical writing.
+
+An obvious question to be put to a historian is, What plan do you follow
+in making notes of your reading? Langlois, an experienced teacher and
+tried scholar, in his introduction to the "Study of History," condemns
+the natural impulse to set them down in notebooks in the order in which
+one's authorities are studied, and says, "Every one admits nowadays that
+it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of
+paper,"[42] arranging them by a systematic classification of subjects.
+This is a case in point where writers will, I think, learn best from
+their own experience. I have made my notes mainly in notebooks on the
+plan which Langlois condemns, but by colored pencil-marks of emphasis
+and summary, I keep before me the prominent facts which I wish to
+combine; and I have found this, on the whole, better than the card
+system. For I have aimed to study my authorities in a logical
+succession. First I go over the period in some general history, if one
+is to be had; then I read very carefully my original authorities in the
+order of their estimated importance, making copious excerpts.
+Afterwards I skim my second-hand materials. Now I maintain that it is
+logical and natural to have the extracts before me in the order of my
+study. When unusually careful and critical treatment has been required,
+I have drawn off my memoranda from the notebooks to cards, classifying
+them according to subjects. Such a method enables me to digest
+thoroughly my materials, but in the main I find that a frequent
+re-perusal of my notes answers fully as well and is an economy of time.
+
+Carlyle, in answer to an inquiry regarding his own procedure, has gone
+to the heart of the matter. "I go into the business," he said, "with all
+the intelligence, patience, silence, and other gifts and virtues that I
+have ... and on the whole try to keep the whole matter simmering in the
+_living_ mind and memory rather than laid up in paper bundles or
+otherwise laid up in the inert way. For this certainly turns out to be a
+truth; only what you at last _have living_ in your own memory and heart
+is worth putting down to be printed; this alone has much chance to get
+into the living heart and memory of other men. And here indeed, I
+believe, is the essence of all the rules I have ever been able to devise
+for myself. I have tried various schemes of arrangement and artificial
+helps to remembrance," but the gist of the matter is, "to keep the thing
+you are elaborating as much as possible actually _in_ your own living
+mind; in order that this same mind, as much awake as possible, may have
+a chance to make something of it!"[43]
+
+The objection may be made to my discourse that I have considered our
+student as possessing the purse of Fortunatus and have lost sight of
+Herbert Spencer's doctrine that a very important part of education is to
+fit a man to acquire the means of living. I may reply that there are a
+number of Harvard students who will not have to work for their bread
+and whose parents would be glad to have them follow the course that I
+have recommended. It is not too much to hope, therefore, that among
+these there are, to use Huxley's words, "glorious sports of nature" who
+will not be "corrupted by luxury" but will become industrious
+historians. To others who are not so fortunately situated, I cannot
+recommend the profession of historian as a means of gaining a
+livelihood. Bancroft and Parkman, who had a good deal of popularity,
+spent more money in the collection and copying of documents than they
+ever received as income from their histories. A young friend of mine, at
+the outset of his career and with his living in part to be earned, went
+for advice to Carl Schurz, who was very fond of him. "What is your aim?"
+asked Mr. Schurz. "I purpose being a historian," was the reply. "Aha!"
+laughed Schurz, "you are adopting an aristocratic profession, one which
+requires a rent-roll." Every aspiring historian has, I suppose, dreamed
+of that check of L20,000, which Macaulay received as royalty on his
+history for its sale during the year 1856,[44] but no such dream has
+since been realized.
+
+Teaching and writing are allied pursuits. And the teacher helps the
+writer, especially in history, through the necessary elaboration and
+digestion of materials. Much excellent history is given to the world by
+college professors. Law and medicine are too exacting professions with
+too large a literature of their own to leave any leisure for historical
+investigation. If one has the opportunity to get a good start, or, in
+the talk of the day, the right sort of a "pull," I can recommend
+business as a means of gaining a competence which shall enable one to
+devote one's whole time to a favorite pursuit. Grote was a banker until
+he reached the age of forty-nine when he retired from the banking house
+and began the composition of the first volume of his history. Henry C.
+Lea was in the active publishing business until he was fifty-five, and
+as I have already frequently referred to my own personal experience, I
+may add that I was immersed in business between the ages of twenty-two
+and thirty-seven. After three years of general and special preparation I
+began my writing at forty. The business man has many free evenings and
+many journeys by rail, as well as a summer vacation, when devotion to a
+line of study may constitute a valuable recreation. Much may be done in
+odd hours in the way of preparation for historical work, and a business
+life is an excellent school for the study of human character.
+
+
+    [3] Conversations of Goethe, Eng. trans., 230.
+
+    [4] Trevelyan, I, 86.
+
+    [5] Life of Gladstone, II, 181.
+
+    [6] III, 51.
+
+    [7] Talks with Emerson, 23.
+
+    [8] My Vol. II, 142, n. 2.
+
+    [9] Curtis, I, 250.
+
+   [10] _Ibid._, I, 252.
+
+   [11] Miscellanies, I, 275.
+
+   [12] Exam. of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, II, 310, 311.
+
+   [13] Gladstone, I, 195.
+
+   [14] p. 142.
+
+   [15] Trevelyan, I, 91.
+
+   [16] Froude, II, 317.
+
+   [17] Nichol, 20.
+
+   [18] Talks with Emerson, 162.
+
+   [19] Trevelyan, I, 379, 387, 409.
+
+   [20] Froude, III, 64, 65.
+
+   [21] _Ibid._, II, 385; III, 59.
+
+   [22] _Ibid._, III, 73.
+
+   [23] English Composition, 158.
+
+   [24] Letters of Jane Carlyle, II, 31.
+
+   [25] Froude's Carlyle, IV, 125.
+
+   [26] Causeries du Lundi, XV, 95.
+
+   [27] Froude, II, 19.
+
+   [28] Dramatic Opinions, II, 53.
+
+   [29] "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
+         Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
+         A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:" etc.
+
+   [30] Trevelyan, II, 388, n.
+
+   [31] Eng. trans., 236.
+
+   [32] _Ibid._, 115.
+
+   [33] Nouveaux Lundis, III, 265.
+
+   [34] Eng. trans., 222.
+
+   [35] Nouveaux Lundis, III, 328.
+
+   [36] Enc. Brit.
+
+   [37] Balzac, 309.
+
+   [38] Brander Matthews, _Cent. Mag._, 1901.
+
+   [39] Letter of April 4, 1864, _Harper's Mag._, June, 1889.
+
+   [40] I speak of the first four volumes.
+
+   [41] _L.c._
+
+   [42] p. 103.
+
+   [43] New Letters, II, 11.
+
+   [44] Life, II, 345.
+
+
+
+
+NEWSPAPERS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES
+
+A paper read before the American Historical Association in Washington on
+December 29, 1908; printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+NEWSPAPERS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES
+
+
+The impulse of an American writer in justifying the use of newspapers as
+historical materials is to adopt an apologetic tone. It is somewhat
+curious that such should be the case, for newspapers satisfy so many
+canons of historical evidence. They are contemporary, and, being written
+without knowledge of the end, cannot bolster any cause without making a
+plain showing of their intent. Their object is the relation of daily
+events; and if their relation is colored by honest or dishonest
+partisanship, this is easily discernible by the critic from the internal
+evidence and from an easily acquired knowledge of a few external facts.
+As the journals themselves say, their aim is to print the news; and much
+of the news is present politics. Moreover, the newspaper itself, its
+news and editorial columns, its advertisements, is a graphic picture of
+society.
+
+When Aulard, in his illuminating criticism of Taine, writes that the
+journals are a very important source of the history of the French
+Revolution, provided they are revised and checked by one another, the
+statement seems in accordance with the canons of historical writing; and
+when he blames Taine for using two journals only and neglecting ten
+others which he names, the impression on the mind is the same as if
+Taine were charged with the neglect of evidence of another class. One
+would hardly attempt to justify Taine by declaring that all journals are
+inaccurate, partisan, and dishonest, and that the omission was a merit,
+not a defect. Leaving out of account the greater size and diffuseness of
+the modern journal, the dictum of Aulard would seem to apply to any
+period of history.
+
+Why is it then that some American students fall consciously or
+unconsciously into an apologetic tone when they attempt to justify the
+use of newspapers as historical sources? I suppose it is because of the
+attitude of cultivated society to the newspaper of to-day. Society calls
+the ordinary newspaper sensational and unreliable; and, if neither, its
+accounts are so diffuse and badly proportioned as to weary the seeker
+after the facts of any given transaction. Despite the disfavor into
+which the American newspaper has fallen in certain circles, I suspect
+that it has only exaggerated these defects, and that the journals of
+different democracies have more resemblances than diversities. The
+newspaper that caters to the "masses" will never suit the "classes," and
+the necessity for a large circulation induces it to furnish the sheet
+which the greatest number of readers desire.
+
+But this does not concern the historian. He does not make his materials.
+He has to take them as they are. It would undoubtedly render his task
+easier if all men spoke and wrote everywhere with accuracy and
+sincerity; but his work would lose much of its interest. Take the
+newspaper for what it is, a hasty gatherer of facts, a hurried
+commentator on the same, and it may well constitute a part of historical
+evidence.
+
+When, in 1887, I began the critical study of the History of the United
+States from 1850 to 1860, I was struck with the paucity of material
+which would serve the purpose of an animated narrative. The main facts
+were to be had in the state papers, the Statutes, the _Congressional
+Globe_ and documents, the records of national conventions and platforms,
+and the tabulated results of elections. But there was much less private
+correspondence than is available for the early history of our country;
+and, compared with the period of the Civil War and later, a scarcity of
+biographies and reminiscences, containing personal letters of high
+historical value. Since I wrote my first two volumes, much new matter
+concerning the decade of 1850 to 1860 has been published. The work of
+the American Historical Association, and of many historical societies,
+the monographs of advanced university students, have thrown light upon
+this, as they have upon other periods, with the result that future
+delvers in this field can hardly be so much struck with the paucity of
+material as I was twenty-one years ago.
+
+Boy though I was during the decade of 1850 to 1860, I had a vivid
+remembrance of the part that the newspaper played in politics, and the
+thought came to me that the best way to arrive at the spirit of the
+times was to steep my mind in journalistic material; that there was the
+secret of living over again that decade, as the Abolitionist, the
+Republican, the Whig, and the Democrat had actually lived in it. In the
+critical use of such sources, I was helped by the example of von Holst,
+who employed them freely in his volumes covering the same period, and by
+the counsel and collaboration of my friend Edward G. Bourne, whose
+training was in the modern school. For whatever training I had beyond
+that of self came from the mastery, under the guidance of teachers, of
+certain general historians belonging to an epoch when power of
+expression was as much studied as the collecting and sifting of
+evidence.
+
+While considering my materials, I was struck with a statement cited by
+Herbert Spencer as an illustration in his "Philosophy of Style": "A
+modern newspaper statement, though probably true, if quoted in a book as
+testimony, would be laughed at; but the letter of a court gossip, if
+written some centuries ago, is thought good historical evidence." At
+about the same time, I noticed that Motley used as one of his main
+authorities for the battle of St. Quentin the manuscript of an anonymous
+writer. From these two circumstances, it was a logical reflection that
+some historians might make an exaggerated estimate of the value of
+manuscript material because it reposed in dusty archives and could be
+utilized only by severe labor and long patience; and that, imbued with
+this idea, other historians for other periods might neglect the
+newspaper because of its ready accessibility.
+
+These several considerations justified a belief, arrived at from my
+preliminary survey of the field, that the use of newspapers as sources
+for the decade of 1850 to 1860 was desirable. At each step of my pretty
+thorough study of them, I became more and more convinced that I was on
+the right track. I found facts in them which I could have found nowhere
+else. The public meeting is a great factor in the political life of this
+decade, and is most fully and graphically reported in the press. The
+newspaper, too, was a vehicle for personal accounts of a
+quasi-confidential nature, of which I can give a significant example. In
+an investigation that Edward Bourne made for me during the summer of
+1889, he came across in the _Boston Courier_ an inside account of the
+Whig convention of 1852, showing, more conclusively than I have seen
+elsewhere, the reason of the failure to unite the conservative Whigs,
+who were apparently in a majority, on Webster. From collateral evidence
+we were convinced that it was written by a Massachusetts delegate; and
+the _Springfield Republican_, which copied the account, furnished a
+confirmation of it. It was an interesting story, and I incorporated it
+in my narrative.
+
+I am well aware that Dr. Dryasdust may ask, What of it? The report of
+the convention shows that Webster received a very small vote and that
+Scott was nominated. Why waste time and words over the "might have
+been"? I can plead only the human interest in the great Daniel Webster
+ardently desiring that nomination, Rufus Choate advocating it in sublime
+oratory, the two antislavery delegates from Massachusetts refusing their
+votes for Webster, thus preventing a unanimous Massachusetts, and the
+delegates from Maine, among whom was Webster's godson William P.
+Fessenden, coldly refusing their much-needed aid.
+
+General Scott, having received the nomination, made a stumping tour in
+the autumn through some of the Western States. No accurate account of it
+is possible without the newspapers, yet it was esteemed a factor in his
+overwhelming defeat, and the story of it is well worth preserving as
+data for a discussion of the question, Is it wise for a presidential
+candidate to make a stumping tour during his electoral campaign?
+
+The story of the formation of the Republican party, and the rise of the
+Know-nothings, may possibly be written without recourse to the
+newspapers, but thorough steeping in such material cannot fail to add to
+the animation and accuracy of the story. In detailed history and
+biographical books, dates, through mistakes of the writer or printer,
+are frequently wrong; and when the date was an affair of supreme
+importance, I have sometimes found a doubt resolved by a reference to
+the newspaper, which, from its strictly contemporary character, cannot
+in such a matter lead one astray.
+
+I found the newspapers of value in the correction of logical
+assumptions, which frequently appear in American historical and
+biographical books, especially in those written by men who bore a part
+in public affairs. By a logical assumption, I mean the statement of a
+seemingly necessary consequence which apparently ought to follow some
+well-attested fact or condition. A striking instance of this occurred
+during the political campaign of 1856, when "bleeding Kansas" was a
+thrilling catchword used by the Republicans, whose candidate for
+president was Fremont. In a year and a half seven free-state men had
+been killed in Kansas by the border ruffians, and these outrages,
+thoroughly ventilated, made excellent campaign ammunition. But the
+Democrats had a _tu quoque_ argument which ought to have done much
+towards eliminating this question from the canvass.
+
+On the night of May 24, 1856, five pro-slavery men, living on the
+Pottawatomie Creek, were deliberately and foully murdered by John Brown
+and seven of his disciples; and, while this massacre caused profound
+excitement in Kansas and Missouri, it seems to have had no influence
+east of the Mississippi River, although the fact was well attested. A
+Kansas journalist of 1856, writing in 1879, made this logical
+assumption: "The opposition press both North and South took up the
+damning tale ... of that midnight butchery on the Pottawatomie.... Whole
+columns of leaders from week to week, with startling headlines,
+liberally distributed capitals, and frightful exclamation points, filled
+all the newspapers." And it was his opinion that, had it not been for
+this massacre, Fremont would have been elected.
+
+But I could not discover that the massacre had any influence on the
+voters in the pivotal states. I examined, or had examined, the files of
+the _New York Journal of Commerce_, _New York Herald_, _Philadelphia
+Pennsylvanian_, _Washington Union_, and _Cleveland Plain Dealer_, all
+Democratic papers except the _New York Herald_, and I was struck with
+the fact that substantially no use was made of the massacre as a
+campaign argument. Yet could anything have been more logical than the
+assumption that the Democrats would have been equal to their opportunity
+and spread far and wide such a story? The facts in the case show
+therefore that cause and effect in actual American history are not
+always the same as the statesman may conceive them in his cabinet or the
+historian in his study.
+
+In the newspapers of 1850 to 1860 many speeches, and many public, and
+some private, letters of conspicuous public men are printed; these are
+valuable material for the history of the decade, and their use is in
+entire accordance with modern historical canons.
+
+I have so far considered the press in its character of a register of
+facts; but it has a further use for historical purposes, since it is
+both a representative and guide of public sentiment. Kinglake shows that
+the _Times_ was the potent influence which induced England to invade the
+Crimea; Bismarck said in 1877 that the press "was the cause of the last
+three wars"; Lord Cromer writes, "The people of England as represented
+by the press insisted on sending General Gordon to the Soudan, and
+accordingly to the Soudan he was sent;" and it is current talk that the
+yellow journals brought on the Spanish-American War. Giving these
+statements due weight, can a historian be justified in neglecting the
+important influence of the press on public opinion?
+
+As reflecting and leading popular sentiment during the decade of 1850 to
+1860, the newspapers of the Northern States were potent. I own that many
+times one needs no further index to public sentiment than our frequent
+elections, but in 1854 conditions were peculiar. The repeal of the
+Missouri Compromise had outraged the North and indicated that a new
+party must be formed to resist the extension of slavery. In the
+disorganization of the Democratic party, and the effacement of the Whig,
+nowhere may the new movement so well be traced as in the news and
+editorial columns of the newspapers, and in the speeches of the
+Northern leaders, many of these indeed being printed nowhere else than
+in the press. What journals and what journalists there were in those
+days! Greeley and Dana of the _New York Tribune_; Bryant and Bigelow of
+the _Evening Post_; Raymond of the _Times_; Webb of the _Courier_ and
+_Enquirer_; Bowles of the _Springfield Republican_; Thurlow Weed of the
+_Albany Journal_; Schouler of the _Cincinnati Gazette_,--all inspired by
+their opposition to the spread of slavery, wrote with vigor and
+enthusiasm, representing the ideas of men who had burning thoughts
+without power of expression, and guiding others who needed the constant
+iteration of positive opinions to determine their political action.
+
+The main and cross currents which resulted in the formation of the
+compact Republican party of 1856 have their principal record in the
+press, and from it, directly or indirectly, must the story be told.
+Unquestionably the newspapers had greater influence than in an ordinary
+time, because the question was a moral one and could be concretely put.
+Was slavery right or wrong? If wrong, should not its extension be
+stopped? That was the issue, and all the arguments, constitutional and
+social, turned on that point.
+
+The greatest single journalistic influence was the _New York Weekly
+Tribune_ which had in 1854 a circulation of 112,000, and many times that
+number of readers. These readers were of the thorough kind, reading all
+the news, all the printed speeches and addresses, and all the
+editorials, and pondering as they read. The questions were discussed in
+their family circles and with their neighbors, and, as differences
+arose, the _Tribune_, always at hand, was consulted and re-read. There
+being few popular magazines during this decade, the weekly newspaper, in
+some degree, took their place; and, through this medium, Greeley and
+his able coadjutors spoke to the people of New York and of the West,
+where New England ideas predominated, with a power never before or since
+known in this country. When Motley was studying the old letters and
+documents of the sixteenth century in the archives of Brussels, he
+wrote: "It is something to read the real _bona fide_ signs manual of
+such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander Farnese,
+Philip the Second, Cardinal Granville and the rest of them. It gives a
+'realizing sense,' as the Americans have it." I had somewhat of the same
+feeling as I turned over the pages of the bound volumes of the _Weekly
+Tribune_, reading the editorials and letters of Greeley, the articles of
+Dana and Hildreth. I could recall enough of the time to feel the
+influence of this political bible, as it was termed, and I can
+emphatically say that if you want to penetrate into the thoughts,
+feelings, and ground of decision of the 1,866,000 men who voted for
+Lincoln in 1860, you should study with care the _New York Weekly
+Tribune_.
+
+One reason why the press was a better representative of opinion during
+the years from 1854 to 1860 than now is that there were few, if any,
+independent journals. The party man read his own newspaper and no other;
+in that, he found an expression of his own views. And the party
+newspaper in the main printed only the speeches and arguments of its own
+side. Greeley on one occasion was asked by John Russell Young, an
+associate, for permission to reprint a speech of Horatio Seymour in full
+as a matter of news. "Yes," Greeley said, "I will print Seymour's speech
+when the _World_ will print those of our side."
+
+Before the war, Charleston was one of the most interesting cities of the
+country. It was a small aristocratic community, with an air of
+refinement and distinction. The story of Athens proclaims that a large
+population is not necessary to exercise a powerful influence on the
+world; and, after the election of Lincoln in 1860, the 40,000 people of
+Charleston, or rather the few patricians who controlled its fate and
+that of South Carolina, attracted the attention of the whole country.
+The story of the secession movement of November and December, 1860,
+cannot be told with correctness and life without frequent references to
+the _Charleston Mercury_ and the _Charleston Courier_. The _Mercury_
+especially was an index of opinion, and so vivid is its daily chronicle
+of events that the historian is able to put himself in the place of
+those ardent South Carolinians and understand their point of view.
+
+For the history of the Civil War, newspapers are not so important. The
+other material is superabundant, and in choosing from the mass of it,
+the newspapers, so-far as affairs at the North are concerned, need only
+be used in special cases, and rarely for matters of fact. The accounts
+of campaigns and battles, which filled so much of their space, may be
+ignored, as the best possible authorities for these are the one hundred
+and twenty-eight volumes of the United States government publication,
+the "Official Records of the Union and Confederate armies." The faithful
+study of the correspondence and the reports in these unique volumes is
+absolutely essential to a comprehension of the war; and it is a labor of
+love. When one thinks of the mass of manuscripts students of certain
+periods of European history have been obliged to read, the American
+historian is profoundly grateful to his government, that at a cost to
+itself of nearly three million dollars,[45] it has furnished him this
+priceless material in neatly printed volumes with excellent indexes. The
+serious student can generally procure these volumes gratis through the
+favor of his congressman; or, failing in this, may purchase the set at a
+moderate price, so that he is not obliged to go to a public library to
+consult them.
+
+Next to manuscript material, the physical and mental labor of turning
+over and reading bound volumes of newspapers is the most severe, and I
+remember my feeling of relief at being able to divert my attention from
+what Edward L. Pierce called this back-breaking and eye-destroying
+labor, much of it in public libraries, to these convenient books in my
+own private library. A mass of other materials, notably Nicolay and
+Hay's contributions, military narratives, biographies, private
+correspondence, to say nothing of the Congressional publications, render
+the student fairly independent of the newspapers. But I did myself make,
+for certain periods, special researches among them to ascertain their
+influence on public sentiment; and I also found them very useful in my
+account of the New York draft riots of 1863. It is true the press did
+not accurately reflect the gloom and sickness of heart at the North
+after the battle of Chancellorsville, for the reason that many editors
+wrote for the purpose of keeping up the hopes of their readers. In sum,
+the student may congratulate himself that a continuous study of the
+Northern newspapers for the period of the Civil War is unnecessary, for
+their size and diffuseness are appalling.
+
+But what I have said about the press of the North will not apply to that
+of the South. Though strenuous efforts have been made, with the diligent
+cooperation of Southern men, to secure the utmost possible amount of
+Confederate material for the "Official Records," it actually forms only
+about twenty-nine per cent of the whole matter. Other historical
+material is also less copious. For example, there is no record of the
+proceedings of the Confederate Congress, like the _Globe_; there are no
+reports of committees, like that of the Committee on the Conduct of the
+War; and even the journal of the Congress was kept on loose memoranda,
+and not written up until after the close of the war. With the exception
+of this journal, which has been printed by our government, and the
+"Statutes at Large," our information of the work of the Confederate
+Congress comes from the newspapers and some books of biography and
+recollections. The case of the Southern States was peculiar, because
+they were so long cut off from intercourse with the outer world, owing
+to the efficient Federal blockade; and the newspaper in its local news,
+editorials, and advertisements, is important material for portraying
+life in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Fortunately for the
+student, the Southern newspaper was not the same voluminous issue as the
+Northern, and, if it had not been badly printed, its use would be
+attended with little difficulty. Owing to the scarcity of paper, many of
+the newspapers were gradually reduced in size, and in the end were
+printed on half-sheets, occasionally one on brown paper, and another on
+wall paper; even the white paper was frequently coarse, and this, with
+poor type, made the news-sheet itself a daily record of the waning
+fortunes of the Confederacy.
+
+In the history of Reconstruction the historian may be to a large extent
+independent of the daily newspaper. For the work of reconstruction was
+done by Congress, and Congress had the full support of the Northern
+people, as was shown by the continuous large Republican majority which
+was maintained. The debates, the reports, and the acts of Congress are
+essential, and little else is required except whatever private
+correspondence may be accessible. Congress represented public sentiment
+of the North, and if one desires newspaper opinion, one may find it in
+many pithy expressions on the floor of the House or the Senate. For the
+congressman and the senator are industrious newspaper readers. They are
+apt to read some able New York journal which speaks for their party, and
+the congressman will read the daily and weekly newspapers of his
+district, and the senator the prominent ones of his state which belong
+to his party.
+
+For the period which covered Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, I used
+the _Nation_ to a large extent. Its bound volumes are convenient to
+handle in one's own library, and its summary of events is useful in
+itself, and as giving leads to the investigation of other material.
+Frequently its editorials have spoken for the sober sense of the people
+with amazing success. As a constant reader of the _Nation_ since 1866, I
+have felt the fascination of Godkin, and have been consciously on guard
+against it. I tried not to be led away by his incisive statements and
+sometimes uncharitable judgments. But whatever may be thought of his
+bias, he had an honest mind, and was incapable of knowingly making a
+false statement; and this, with his other qualities, makes his journal
+excellent historical material. After considering with great care some
+friendly criticism, I can truly say that I have no apology to make for
+the extent to which I used the _Nation_.
+
+Recurring now to the point with which I began this discussion,--that
+learned prejudice against employing newspapers as historical
+material,--I wish to add that, like all other evidence, they must be
+used with care and skepticism, as one good authority is undoubtedly
+better than a dozen poor ones. An anecdote I heard years ago has been
+useful to me in weighing different historical evidence. A
+Pennsylvania-Dutch justice of the peace in one of the interior townships
+of Ohio had a man arraigned before him for stealing a pig. One witness
+swore that he distinctly saw the theft committed; eight swore that they
+never saw the accused steal a pig, and the verdict was worthy of
+Dogberry. "I discharge the accused," said the justice. "The testimony of
+eight men is certainly worth more than the testimony of one."
+
+Private and confidential correspondence is highly valuable historical
+material, for such utterances are less constrained and more sincere than
+public declarations; but all men cannot be rated alike. Some men have
+lied as freely in private letters as in public speeches; therefore the
+historian must get at the character of the man who has written the
+letter and the influences surrounding him; these factors must count in
+any satisfactory estimate of his accuracy and truth. The newspaper must
+be subjected to similar tests. For example, to test an article or public
+letter written by Greeley or Godkin, the general situation, the
+surrounding influences, and the individual bias must be taken into
+account, and, when allowance is made for these circumstances, as well as
+for the public character of the utterance, it may be used for historical
+evidence. For the history of the last half of the nineteenth century
+just such material--the material of the fourth estate--must be used.
+Neglect of it would be like neglect of the third estate in the history
+of France for the eighteenth century.
+
+In the United States we have not, politically speaking, either the first
+or second estates, but we have the third and fourth estates with an
+intimate connection between the two. Lord Cromer said, when writing of
+the sending of Gordon to the Soudan, "Newspaper government has certain
+disadvantages;" and this he emphasized by quoting a wise remark of Sir
+George Cornewall Lewis, "Anonymous authorship places the public under
+the direction of guides who have no sense of personal responsibility."
+Nevertheless this newspaper government must be reckoned with. The duty
+of the historian is, not to decide if the newspapers are as good as they
+ought to be, but to measure their influence on the present, and to
+recognize their importance as an ample and contemporary record of the
+past.
+
+
+   [45] $2,858,514, without including the pay of army officers detailed
+        from time to time for duty in connection with the work. Official
+        Records, 130, V.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE COMMENCEMENT
+DINNER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
+
+June 26, 1901 (not delivered).
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE COMMENCEMENT
+DINNER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
+
+
+Thanking heartily the governing boards of Harvard College for the honor
+conferred upon me, I shall say, on this my first admission to the circle
+of the Harvard alumni, a word on the University as it appears to one
+whose work has lain outside of it. The spirit of the academy in general
+and especially of this University impels men to get to the bottom of
+things, to strive after exact knowledge; and this spirit permeates my
+own study of history in a remarkable degree. "The first of all Gospels
+is this," said Carlyle, "that a lie cannot endure forever." This is the
+gospel of historical students. A part of their work has been to expose
+popular fallacies, and to show up errors which have been made through
+partiality and misguided patriotism or because of incomplete
+investigation. Men of my age are obliged to unlearn much. The youthful
+student of history has a distinct advantage over us in that he begins
+with a correct knowledge of the main historical facts. He does not for
+example learn what we all used to learn--that in the year 1000 the
+appearance of a fiery comet caused a panic of terror to fall upon
+Christendom and gave rise to the belief that the end of the world was at
+hand. Nor is he taught that the followers of Peter the Hermit in the
+first crusade were a number of spiritually minded men and women of
+austere morality. It is to the University that we owe it that we are
+seeing things as they are in history, that the fables, the fallacies,
+and the exaggerations are disappearing from the books.
+
+To regard the past with accuracy and truth is a preparation for
+envisaging the present in the same way. For this attitude towards the
+past and the present gained by college students of history, and for
+other reasons which it is not necessary here to detail, the man of
+University training has, other things being equal, this advantage over
+him who lacks it, that in life in the world he will get at things more
+certainly and state them more accurately.
+
+"A university," said Lowell, "is a place where nothing useful is
+taught." By utility Lowell undoubtedly meant, to use the definition
+which Huxley puts into the average Englishman's mouth, "that by which we
+get pudding or praise or both." A natural reply to the statement of
+Lowell is that great numbers of fathers every year, at a pecuniary
+sacrifice, send their sons to college with the idea of fitting them
+better to earn their living, in obedience to the general sentiment of
+men of this country that there is a money value to college training. But
+the remark of Lowell suggests another object of the University which, to
+use the words of Huxley again, is "to catch the exceptional people, the
+glorious sports of nature, and turn them to account for the good of
+society." This appeals to those imbued with the spirit of the academy
+who frankly acknowledge, in the main, our inferiority in the
+scholarship, which produces great works of literature and science, to
+England, Germany, and France, and who with patriotic eagerness wish that
+we may reach the height attained in the older countries. To recur to my
+own study again, should we produce a historian or historical writer the
+equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay there would be a feeling
+of pride in our historical genius which would make itself felt at every
+academical and historical gathering. We have something of that sentiment
+in regard to Francis Parkman, our most original historian. But it may
+be that the historical field of Parkman is too narrow to awaken a
+world-wide interest and I suspect that the American who will be
+recognized as the equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay must
+secure that recognition by writing of some period of European history
+better than the Englishman, German, or Frenchman has written of it. He
+must do it not only in the way of scientific history, in which in his
+field Henry Charles Lea has won so much honor for himself and his
+country, but he must bring to bear on his history that quality which has
+made the historical writings of Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GIBBON
+
+Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and printed in
+_Scribner's Magazine_, June, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GIBBON
+
+
+No English or American lover of history visits Rome without bending
+reverent footsteps to the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. Two visits
+are necessary, as on the first you are at once seized by the sacristan,
+who can conceive of no other motive for entering this church on the
+Capitol Hill than to see the miraculous Bambino--the painted doll
+swaddled in gold and silver tissue and "crusted over with magnificent
+diamonds, emeralds, and rubies." When you have heard the tale of what
+has been called "the oldest medical practitioner in Rome," of his
+miraculous cures, of these votive offerings, the imaginary picture you
+had conjured up is effaced; and it is better to go away and come a
+second time when the sacristan will recognize you and leave you to
+yourself. Then you may open your Gibbon's Autobiography and read that it
+was the subtle influence of Italy and Rome that determined the choice,
+from amongst many contemplated subjects of historical writing, of "The
+Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." "In my Journal," wrote Gibbon,
+"the place and moment of conception are recorded; the 15th of October,
+1764, in the close of the evening, as I sat musing in the Church of the
+Franciscan friars while they were singing vespers in the Temple of
+Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol."[46] Gibbon was twenty-seven when
+he made this fruitful visit of eighteen weeks to Rome, and his first
+impression, though often quoted, never loses interest, showing, as it
+does, the enthusiasm of an unemotional man. "At the distance of
+twenty-five years," he wrote, "I can neither forget nor express the
+strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered
+the _Eternal City_. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step
+the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus _stood_ or
+Cicero spoke or Caesar fell was at once present to my eye."
+
+The admirer of Gibbon as he travels northward will stop at Lausanne and
+visit the hotel which bears the historian's name. Twice have I taken
+luncheon in the garden where he wrote the last words of his history; and
+on a third visit, after lunching at another inn, I could not fail to
+admire the penetration of the Swiss concierge. As I alighted, he seemed
+to divine at once the object of my visit, and before I had half the
+words of explanation out of my mouth, he said, "Oh, yes. It is this way.
+But I cannot show you anything but a spot." I have quoted from Gibbon's
+Autobiography the expression of his inspiration of twenty-seven; a
+fitting companion-piece is the reflection of the man of fifty. "I have
+presumed to mark the moment of conception," he wrote; "I shall now
+commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or
+rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven
+and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a
+summer-house in my garden.... I will not dissemble the first emotions of
+joy on the recovery of my freedom and perhaps the establishment of my
+fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread
+over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old
+and agreeable companion."[47]
+
+Although the idea was conceived when Gibbon was twenty-seven, he was
+thirty-one before he set himself seriously at work to study his
+material. At thirty-six he began the composition, and he was
+thirty-nine, when, in February, 1776, the first quarto volume was
+published. The history had an immediate success. "My book," he wrote,
+"was on every table and almost on every toilette; the historian was
+crowned by the taste or fashion of the day."[48] The first edition was
+exhausted in a few days, a second was printed in 1776, and next year a
+third. The second and third volumes, which ended the history of the
+Western empire, were published in 1781, and seven years later the three
+volumes devoted to the Eastern empire saw the light. The last sentence
+of the work, written in the summer-house at Lausanne, is, "It was among
+the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which
+has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which,
+however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity
+and candor of the public."
+
+This is a brief account of one of the greatest historical works, if
+indeed it is not the greatest, ever written. Let us imagine an
+assemblage of English, German, and American historical scholars called
+upon to answer the question, Who is the greatest modern historian? No
+doubt can exist that Gibbon would have a large majority of the voices;
+and I think a like meeting of French and Italian scholars would indorse
+the verdict. "Gibbon's work will never be excelled," declared
+Niebuhr.[49] "That great master of us all," said Freeman, "whose
+immortal tale none of us can hope to displace."[50] Bury, the latest
+editor of Gibbon, who has acutely criticised and carefully weighed "The
+Decline and Fall," concludes "that Gibbon is behind date in many
+details. But in the main things he is still our master, above and beyond
+date."[51] His work wins plaudits from those who believe that history
+in its highest form should be literature and from those who hold that it
+should be nothing more than a scientific narrative. The disciples of
+Macaulay and Carlyle, of Stubbs and Gardiner, would be found voting in
+unison in my imaginary Congress. Gibbon, writes Bury, is "the historian
+and the man of letters," thus ranking with Thucydides and Tacitus. These
+three are put in the highest class, exemplifying that "brilliance of
+style and accuracy of statement are perfectly compatible in an
+historian."[52] Accepting this authoritative classification it is well
+worth while to point out the salient differences between the ancient
+historians and the modern. From Thucydides we have twenty-four years of
+contemporary history of his own country. If the whole of the Annals and
+History of Tacitus had come down to us, we should have had eighty-three
+years; as it is, we actually have forty-one of nearly contemporary
+history of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's tale covers 1240 years. He went
+far beyond his own country for his subject, and the date of his
+termination is three centuries before he was born. Milman spoke of "the
+amplitude, the magnificence, and the harmony of Gibbon's design,"[53]
+and Bury writes, "If we take into account the vast range of his work,
+his accuracy is amazing."[54] Men have wondered and will long wonder at
+the brain with such a grasp and with the power to execute skillfully so
+mighty a conception. "The public is seldom wrong" in their judgment of a
+book, wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography,[55] and, if that be true at the
+time of actual publication to which Gibbon intended to apply the remark,
+how much truer it is in the long run of years. "The Decline and Fall of
+the Roman Empire" has had a life of over one hundred and thirty years,
+and there is no indication that it will not endure as long as any
+interest is taken in the study of history. "I have never presumed to
+accept a place in the triumvirate of British historians," said Gibbon,
+referring to Hume and Robertson. But in our day Hume and Robertson
+gather dust on the shelf, while Gibbon is continually studied by
+students and read by serious men.
+
+A work covering Gibbon's vast range of time would have been impossible
+for Thucydides or Tacitus. Historical skepticism had not been fully
+enough developed. There had not been a sufficient sifting and criticism
+of historical materials for a master's work of synthesis. And it is
+probable that Thucydides lacked a model. Tacitus could indeed have drawn
+inspiration from the Greek, while Gibbon had lessons from both, showing
+a profound study of Tacitus and a thorough acquaintance with Thucydides.
+
+If circumstances then made it impossible for the Greek or the Roman to
+attempt history on the grand scale of Gibbon, could Gibbon have written
+contemporary history with accuracy and impartiality equal to his great
+predecessors? This is one of those delightful questions that may be ever
+discussed and never resolved. When twenty-three years old, arguing
+against the desire of his father that he should go into Parliament,
+Gibbon assigned, as one of the reasons, that he lacked "necessary
+prejudices of party and of nation";[56] and when in middle life he
+embraced the fortunate opportunity of becoming a member of the House of
+Commons, he thus summed up his experience, "The eight sessions that I
+sat in Parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most
+essential virtue of an historian."[57] At the end of this political
+career, Gibbon, in a private letter to an intimate Swiss friend, gave
+the reason why he had embraced it. "I entered Parliament," he said,
+"without patriotism, and without ambition, and I had no other aim than
+to secure the comfortable and honest place of a _Lord of Trade_. I
+obtained this place at last. I held it for three years, from 1779 to
+1782, and the net annual product of it, being L750 sterling, increased
+my revenue to the level of my wants and desires."[58] His retirement
+from Parliament was followed by ten years' residence at Lausanne, in the
+first four of which he completed his history. A year and a half after
+his removal to Lausanne, he referred, in a letter to his closest friend,
+Lord Sheffield, to the "abyss of your cursed politics," and added: "I
+never was a very warm patriot and I grow every day a citizen of the
+world. The scramble for power and profit at Westminster or St. James's,
+and the names of Pitt and Fox become less interesting to me than those
+of Caesar and Pompey."[59]
+
+These expressions would seem to indicate that Gibbon might have written
+contemporary history well and that the candor displayed in "The Decline
+and Fall" might not have been lacking had he written of England in his
+own time. But that subject he never contemplated. When twenty-four years
+old he had however considered a number of English periods and finally
+fixed upon Sir Walter Raleigh for his hero; but a year later, he wrote
+in his journal: "I shrink with terror from the modern history of
+England, where every character is a problem, and every reader a friend
+or an enemy; where a writer is supposed to hoist a flag of party and is
+devoted to damnation by the adverse faction.... I must embrace a safer
+and more extensive theme."[60]
+
+How well Gibbon knew himself! Despite his coolness and candor, war and
+revolution revealed his strong Tory prejudices, which he undoubtedly
+feared might color any history of England that he might undertake. "I
+took my seat," in the House of Commons, he wrote, "at the beginning of
+the memorable contest between Great Britain and America; and supported
+with many a sincere and _silent_ vote the rights though perhaps not the
+interests of the mother country."[61] In 1782 he recorded the
+conclusion: "The American war had once been the favorite of the country,
+the pride of England was irritated by the resistance of her colonies,
+and the executive power was driven by national clamor into the most
+vigorous and coercive measures." But it was a fruitless contest. Armies
+were lost; the debt and taxes were increased; the hostile confederacy of
+France, Spain and Holland was disquieting. As a result the war became
+unpopular and Lord North's ministry fell. Dr. Johnson thought that no
+nation not absolutely conquered had declined so much in so short a time.
+"We seem to be sinking," he said. "I am afraid of a civil war." Dr.
+Franklin, according to Horace Walpole, said "he would furnish Mr. Gibbon
+with materials for writing the History of the Decline of the British
+Empire." With his country tottering, the self-centered but truthful
+Gibbon could not avoid mention of his personal loss, due to the fall of
+his patron, Lord North. "I was stripped of a convenient salary," he
+said, "after having enjoyed it about three years."[62]
+
+The outbreak of the French Revolution intensified his conservatism. He
+was then at Lausanne, the tranquillity of which was broken up by the
+dissolution of the neighboring kingdom. Many Lausanne families were
+terrified by the menace of bankruptcy. "This town and country," Gibbon
+wrote, "are crowded with noble exiles, and we sometimes count in an
+assembly a dozen princesses and duchesses."[63] Bitter disputes between
+them and the triumphant Democrats disturbed the harmony of social
+circles. Gibbon espoused the cause of the royalists. "I beg leave to
+subscribe my assent to Mr. Burke's creed on the Revolution of France,"
+he wrote. "I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his
+chivalry, and I can almost excuse his reverence for Church
+establishments."[64] Thirteen days after the massacre of the Swiss guard
+in the attack on the Tuileries in August, 1792, Gibbon wrote to Lord
+Sheffield, "The last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced
+almost everybody of the fatal consequences of Democratical principles
+which lead by a path of flowers into the abyss of hell."[65] Gibbon, who
+was astonished by so few things in history, wrote Sainte-Beuve, was
+amazed by the French Revolution.[66] Nothing could be more natural. The
+historian in his study may consider the fall of dynasties, social
+upheavals, violent revolutions, and the destruction of order without a
+tremor. The things have passed away. The events furnish food for his
+reflections and subjects for his pen, while sanguine uprisings at home
+or in a neighboring country in his own time inspire him with terror lest
+the oft-prophesied dissolution of society is at hand. It is the
+difference between the earthquake in your own city and the one 3000
+miles away. As Gibbon's pocket-nerve was sensitive, it may be he was
+also thinking of the L1300 he had invested in 1784 in the new loan of
+the King of France, deeming the French funds as solid as the
+English.[67]
+
+It is well now to repeat our dictum that Gibbon is the greatest modern
+historian, but, in reasserting this, it is no more than fair to cite the
+opinions of two dissentients--the great literary historians of the
+nineteenth century, Macaulay and Carlyle. "The truth is," wrote Macaulay
+in his diary, "that I admire no historians much except Herodotus,
+Thucydides, and Tacitus.... There is merit no doubt in Hume, Robertson,
+Voltaire, and Gibbon. Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of
+history more just, I am confident, than theirs."[68] "Gibbon," said
+Carlyle in a public lecture, is "a greater historian than Robertson but
+not so great as Hume. With all his swagger and bombast, no man ever gave
+a more futile account of human things than he has done of the decline
+and fall of the Roman Empire; assigning no profound cause for these
+phenomena, nothing but diseased nerves, and all sorts of miserable
+motives, to the actors in them."[69] Carlyle's statement shows envious
+criticism as well as a prejudice in favor of his brother Scotchman. It
+was made in 1838, since when opinion has raised Gibbon to the top, for
+he actually lives while Hume is read perfunctorily, if at all. Moreover
+among the three--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle--whose works are
+literature as well as history, modern criticism has no hesitation in
+awarding the palm to Gibbon.
+
+Before finally deciding upon his subject Gibbon thought of "The History
+of the Liberty of the Swiss" and "The History of the Republic of
+Florence under the House of Medicis,"[70] but in the end, as we have
+seen, he settled on the later history of the Roman Empire, showing, as
+Lowell said of Parkman, his genius in the choice of his subject. His
+history really begins with the death of Marcus Aurelius, 180 A.D., but
+the main narrative is preceded by three excellent introductory chapters,
+covering in Bury's edition eighty-two pages. After the completion of his
+work, he regretted that he had not begun it at an earlier period. On
+the first page of his own printed copy of his book where he announces
+his design, he has entered this marginal note: "Should I not have given
+the _history_ of that fortunate period which was interposed between two
+iron ages? Should I not have deduced the decline of the Empire from the
+Civil Wars that ensued after the Fall of Nero or even from the tyranny
+which succeeded the reign of Augustus? Alas! I should; but of what avail
+is this tardy knowledge?"[71] We may echo Gibbon's regret that he had
+not commenced his history with the reign of Tiberius, as, in his
+necessary use of Tacitus, we should have had the running comment of one
+great historian on another, of which we have a significant example in
+Gibbon's famous sixteenth chapter wherein he discusses Tacitus's account
+of the persecution of the Christians by Nero. With his power of historic
+divination, he would have so absorbed Tacitus and his time that the
+history would almost have seemed a collaboration between two great and
+sympathetic minds. "Tacitus," he wrote, "very frequently trusts to the
+curiosity or reflection of his readers to supply those intermediate
+circumstances and ideas, which, in his extreme conciseness, he has
+thought proper to suppress."[72] How Gibbon would have filled those
+gaps! Though he was seldom swayed by enthusiasm, his admiration of the
+Roman historian fell little short of idolatry. His references in "The
+Decline and Fall" are many, and some of them are here worth recalling to
+mind. "In their primitive state of simplicity and independence," he
+wrote, "the Germans were surveyed by the discerning eye and delineated
+by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first of historians who applied
+the science of philosophy to the study of facts."[73] Again he speaks of
+him as "the philosophic historian whose writings will instruct the last
+generation of mankind."[74] And in Chapter XVI he devoted five pages to
+citation from, and comment on, Tacitus, and paid him one of the most
+splendid tributes one historian ever paid another. "To collect, to
+dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore years in an immortal work,
+every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and
+the most lively images, was an undertaking sufficient to exercise the
+genius of Tacitus himself during the greatest part of his life."[75] So
+much for admiration. That, nevertheless, Gibbon could wield the critical
+pen at the expense of the historian he rated so highly, is shown by a
+marginal note in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall." It will
+be remembered that Tacitus published his History and wrote his Annals
+during the reign of Trajan, whom he undoubtedly respected and admired.
+He referred to the reigns of Nerva and Trajan in suggested contrast to
+that of Domitian as "times when men were blessed with the rare privilege
+of thinking with freedom, and uttering what they thought."[76] It fell
+to both Tacitus and Gibbon to speak of the testament of Augustus which,
+after his death, was read in the Senate: and Tacitus wrote, Augustus
+"added a recommendation to keep the empire within fixed limits," on
+which he thus commented, "but whether from apprehension for its safety,
+or jealousy of future rivals, is uncertain."[77] Gibbon thus criticised
+this comment: "Why must rational advice be imputed to a base or foolish
+motive? To what cause, error, malevolence, or flattery, shall I ascribe
+the unworthy alternative? Was the historian dazzled by Trajan's
+conquests?"[78]
+
+The intellectual training of the greatest modern historian is a matter
+of great interest. "From my early youth," wrote Gibbon in his
+Autobiography, "I aspired to the character of an historian."[79] He had
+"an early and invincible love of reading" which he said he "would not
+exchange for the treasures of India" and which led him to a "vague and
+multifarious" perusal of books. Before he reached the age of fifteen he
+was matriculated at Magdalen College, giving this account of his
+preparation. "I arrived at Oxford," he said, "with a stock of erudition
+that might have puzzled a Doctor and a degree of ignorance of which a
+schoolboy would have been ashamed."[80] He did not adapt himself to the
+life or the method of Oxford, and from them apparently derived no
+benefit. "I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College," he wrote; "they
+proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole
+life."[81] He became a Roman Catholic. It was quite characteristic of
+this bookish man that his conversion was effected, not by the emotional
+influence of some proselytizer, but by the reading of books. English
+translations of two famous works of Bossuet fell into his hands. "I
+read," he said, "I applauded, I believed ... and I surely fell by a
+noble hand." Before a priest in London, on June 8, 1753, he privately
+"abjured the errors of heresy" and was admitted into the "pale of the
+church." But at that time this was a serious business for both priest
+and proselyte. For the rule laid down by Blackstone was this, "Where a
+person is reconciled to the see of Rome, or procures others to be
+reconciled, the offence amounts to High-Treason." This severe rule was
+not enforced, but there were milder laws under which a priest might
+suffer perpetual imprisonment and the proselyte's estate be transferred
+to his nearest relations. Under such laws prosecutions were had and
+convictions obtained. Little wonder was it when Gibbon apprised his
+father in an "elaborate controversial epistle" of the serious step
+which he had taken, that the elder Gibbon should be astonished and
+indignant. In his passion he divulged the secret which effectually
+closed the gates of Magdalen College to his son,[82] who was packed off
+to Lausanne and "settled under the roof and tuition" of a Calvinist
+minister.[83] Edward Gibbon passed nearly five years at Lausanne, from
+the age of sixteen to that of twenty-one, and they were fruitful years
+for his education. It was almost entirely an affair of self-training, as
+his tutor soon perceived that the student had gone beyond the teacher
+and allowed him to pursue his own special bent. After his history was
+published and his fame won, he recorded this opinion: "In the life of
+every man of letters there is an aera, from a level, from whence he soars
+with his own wings to his proper height, and the most important part of
+his education is that which he bestows on himself."[84] This was
+certainly true in Gibbon's case. On his arrival at Lausanne he hardly
+knew any French, but before he returned to England he thought
+spontaneously in French and understood, spoke, and wrote it better than
+he did his mother tongue.[85] He read Montesquieu frequently and was
+struck with his "energy of style and boldness of hypothesis." Among the
+books which "may have remotely contributed to form the historian of the
+Roman Empire" were the Provincial Letters of Pascal, which he read "with
+a new pleasure" almost every year. From them he said, "I learned to
+manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of
+ecclesiastical solemnity." As one thinks of his chapters in "The Decline
+and Fall" on Julian, one is interested to know that during this period
+he was introduced to the life and times of this Roman emperor by a book
+written by a French abbe. He read Locke, Grotius, and Puffendorf, but
+unquestionably his greatest knowledge, mental discipline, and peculiar
+mastery of his own tongue came from his diligent and systematic study of
+the Latin classics. He read nearly all of the historians, poets,
+orators, and philosophers, going over for a second or even a third time
+Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Tacitus. He mastered Cicero's Orations and
+Letters so that they became ingrained in his mental fiber, and he termed
+these and his other works, "a library of eloquence and reason." "As I
+read Cicero," he wrote, "I applauded the observation of Quintilian, that
+every student may judge of his own proficiency by the satisfaction which
+he receives from the Roman orator." And again, "Cicero's epistles may in
+particular afford the models of every form of correspondence from the
+careless effusions of tenderness and friendship to the well-guarded
+declaration of discreet and dignified resentment."[86] Gibbon never
+mastered Greek as he did Latin; and Dr. Smith, one of his editors,
+points out where he has fallen into three errors from the use of the
+French or Latin translation of Procopius instead of consulting the
+original.[87] Indeed he himself has disclosed one defect of
+self-training. Referring to his youthful residence at Lausanne, he
+wrote: "I worked my way through about half the Iliad, and afterwards
+interpreted alone a large portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my
+ardor, destitute of aid and emulation, was gradually cooled and, from
+the barren task of searching words in a lexicon, I withdrew to the free
+and familiar conversation of Virgil and Tacitus."[88]
+
+All things considered, however, it was an excellent training for a
+historian of the Roman Empire. But all except the living knowledge of
+French he might have had in his "elegant apartment in Magdalen College"
+just as well as in his "ill-contrived and ill-furnished small chamber"
+in "an old inconvenient house," situated in a "narrow gloomy street, the
+most unfrequented of an unhandsome town";[89] and in Oxford he would
+have had the "aid and emulation" of which at Lausanne he sadly felt the
+lack.
+
+The Calvinist minister, his tutor, was a more useful guide for Gibbon in
+the matter of religion than in his intellectual training. Through his
+efforts and Gibbon's "private reflections," Christmas Day, 1754, one
+year and a half after his arrival at Lausanne, was witness to his
+reconversion, as he then received the sacrament in the Calvinistic
+Church. "The articles of the Romish creed," he said, had "disappeared
+like a dream"; and he wrote home to his aunt, "I am now a good
+Protestant and am extremely glad of it."[90]
+
+An intellectual and social experience of value was his meeting with
+Voltaire, who had set up a theater in the neighborhood of Lausanne for
+the performance mainly of his own plays. Gibbon seldom failed to procure
+a ticket to these representations. Voltaire played the parts suited to
+his years; his declamation, Gibbon thought, was old-fashioned, and "he
+expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of nature."
+"The parts of the young and fair," he said, "were distorted by
+Voltaire's fat and ugly niece." Despite this criticism, these
+performances fostered a taste for the French theater, to the abatement
+of his idolatry for Shakespeare, which seemed to him to be "inculcated
+from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman."[91] Personally,
+Voltaire and Gibbon did not get on well together. Dr. Hill suggests that
+Voltaire may have slighted the "English youth," and if this is correct,
+Gibbon was somewhat spiteful to carry the feeling more than thirty
+years. Besides the criticism of the acting, he called Voltaire "the
+envious bard" because it was only with much reluctance and ill-humor
+that he permitted the performance of Iphigenie of Racine. Nevertheless,
+Gibbon is impressed with the social influence of the great Frenchman.
+"The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre," he wrote,
+"refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne, and however
+addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the amusements of society.
+After the theatrical representations, I sometimes supped with the
+actors: I was now familiar in some, and acquainted in many, houses; and
+my evenings were generally devoted to cards and conversation, either in
+private parties or numerous assemblies."[92]
+
+Gibbon was twenty-one when he returned to England. Dividing his time
+between London and the country, he continued his self-culture. He read
+English, French, and Latin, and took up the study of Greek. "Every day,
+every hour," he wrote, "was agreeably filled"; and "I was never less
+alone than when by myself."[93] He read repeatedly Robertson and Hume,
+and has in the words of Sainte-Beuve left a testimony so spirited and so
+delicately expressed as could have come only from a man of taste who
+appreciated Xenophon.[94] "The perfect composition, the nervous
+language," wrote Gibbon, "the well-turned periods of Dr. Robertson
+inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his
+footsteps; the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties of his
+friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume with a mixed
+sensation of delight and despair."[95] He made little progress in London
+society and his solitary evenings were passed with his books, but he
+consoled himself by thinking that he lost nothing by a withdrawal from a
+"noisy and expensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation
+without pleasure." At twenty-four he published his "Essay on the Study
+of Literature," begun at Lausanne and written entirely in French. This
+possesses no interest for the historical student except to know the bare
+fact of the writing and publication as a step in the intellectual
+development of the historian. Sainte-Beuve in his two essays on Gibbon
+devoted three pages to an abstract and criticism of it, perhaps because
+it had a greater success in France than in England; and his opinion of
+Gibbon's language is interesting. "The French" Sainte-Beuve wrote, "is
+that of one who has read Montesquieu much and imitates him; it is
+correct, but artificial French."[96]
+
+Then followed two and a half years' service in the Hampshire militia.
+But he did not neglect his reading. He mastered Homer, whom he termed
+"the Bible of the ancients," and in the militia he acquired "a just and
+indelible knowledge" of what he called "the first of languages." And his
+love for Latin abided also: "On every march, in every journey, Horace
+was always in my pocket and often in my hand."[97] Practical knowledge
+he absorbed almost insensibly. "The daily occupations of the militia,"
+he wrote, "introduced me to the science of Tactics" and led to the study
+of "the precepts of Polybius and Caesar." In this connection occurs the
+remark which admirers of Gibbon will never tire of citing: "A familiar
+view of the discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a
+clearer notion of the Phalanx and the Legion; and the Captain of the
+Hampshire Grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the
+historian of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire."[98] The grand
+tour followed his militia service. Three and a half months in Paris, and
+a revisit to Lausanne preceded the year that he passed in Italy. Of the
+conception of the History of the Decline and Fall, during his stay in
+Rome, I have already spoken.
+
+On his return to England, contemplating "the decline and fall of Rome at
+an awful distance," he began, in collaboration with the Swiss Deyverdun,
+his bosom friend, a history of Switzerland written in French. During the
+winter of 1767, the first book of it was submitted to a literary society
+of foreigners in London. As the author was unknown the strictures were
+free and the verdict unfavorable. Gibbon was present at the meeting and
+related that "the momentary sensation was painful," but, on cooler
+reflection, he agreed with his judges and intended to consign his
+manuscript to the flames. But this, as Lord Sheffield, his literary
+executor and first editor, shows conclusively, he neglected to do.[99]
+This essay of Gibbon's possesses interest for us, inasmuch as David Hume
+read it, and wrote to Gibbon a friendly letter, in which he said: "I
+have perused your manuscript with great pleasure and satisfaction. I
+have only one objection, derived from the language in which it is
+written. Why do you compose in French, and carry faggots into the wood,
+as Horace says with regard to Romans who wrote in Greek?"[100] This
+critical query of Hume must have profoundly influenced Gibbon. Next year
+he began to work seriously on "The Decline and Fall" and five years
+later began the composition of it in English. It does not appear that he
+had any idea of writing his magnum opus in French.
+
+In this rambling discourse, in which I have purposely avoided relating
+the life of Gibbon in anything like a chronological order, we return
+again and again to the great History. And it could not well be
+otherwise. For if Edward Gibbon could not have proudly said, I am the
+author of "six volumes in quartos"[101] he would have had no interest
+for us. Dr. Hill writes, "For one reader who has read his 'Decline and
+Fall,' there are at least a score who have read his Autobiography, and
+who know him, not as the great historian, but as a man of a most
+original and interesting nature."[102] But these twenty people would
+never have looked into the Autobiography had it not been the life of a
+great historian; indeed the Autobiography would never have been written
+except to give an account of a great life work. "The Decline and Fall,"
+therefore, is the thing about which all the other incidents of his life
+revolve. The longer this history is read and studied, the greater is the
+appreciation of it. Dean Milman followed Gibbon's track through many
+portions of his work, and read his authorities, ending with a deliberate
+judgment in favor of his "general accuracy." "Many of his seeming
+errors," he wrote, "are almost inevitable from the close condensation of
+his matter."[103] Guizot had three different opinions based on three
+various readings. After the first rapid perusal, the dominant feeling
+was one of interest in a narrative, always animated in spite of its
+extent, always clear and limpid in spite of the variety of objects.
+During the second reading, when he examined particularly certain points,
+he was somewhat disappointed; he encountered some errors either in the
+citations or in the facts and especially shades and strokes of
+partiality which led him to a comparatively rigorous judgment. In the
+ensuing complete third reading, the first impression, doubtless
+corrected by the second, but not destroyed, survived and was
+maintained; and with some restrictions and reservations, Guizot declared
+that, concerning that vast and able work, there remained with him an
+appreciation of the immensity of research, the variety of knowledge, the
+sagacious breadth and especially that truly philosophical rectitude of a
+mind which judges the past as it would judge the present.[104] Mommsen
+said in 1894: "Amid all the changes that have come over the study of the
+history of the Roman Empire, in spite of all the rush of the new
+evidence that has poured in upon us and almost overwhelmed us, in spite
+of changes which must be made, in spite of alterations of view, or
+alterations even in the aspect of great characters, no one would in the
+future be able to read the history of the Roman Empire unless he read,
+possibly with a fuller knowledge, but with the broad views, the clear
+insight, the strong grasp of Edward Gibbon."[105]
+
+It is difficult for an admirer of Gibbon to refrain from quoting some of
+his favorite passages. The opinion of a great historian on history
+always possesses interest. History, wrote Gibbon, is "little more than
+the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Again,
+"Wars and the administration of public affairs are the principal
+subjects of history." And the following cannot fail to recall a similar
+thought in Tacitus, "History undertakes to record the transactions of
+the past for the instruction of future ages."[106] Two references to
+religion under the Pagan empire are always worth repeating. "The various
+modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world," he wrote, "were
+all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as
+equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful." "The fashion of
+incredulity was communicated from the philosopher to the man of
+pleasure or business, from the noble to the plebeian, and from the
+master to the menial slave who waited at his table and who equally
+listened to the freedom of his conversation."[107] Gibbon's idea of the
+happiest period of mankind is interesting and characteristic. "If," he
+wrote, "a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world
+during which the condition of the human race was most happy and
+prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from
+the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus."[108] This period
+was from A.D. 96 to 180, covering the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,
+Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. Professor Carter, in a lecture in
+Rome in 1907, drew, by a modern comparison, a characterization of the
+first three named. When we were studying in Germany, he said, we were
+accustomed to sum up the three emperors, William I, Frederick III, and
+William II, as der greise Kaiser, der weise Kaiser, und der reise
+Kaiser. The characterizations will fit well Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.
+Gibbon speaks of the "restless activity" of Hadrian, whose life "was
+almost a perpetual journey," and who during his reign visited every
+province of his empire.[109]
+
+A casual remark of Gibbon's, "Corruption [is] the most infallible
+symptom of constitutional liberty,"[110] shows the sentiment of the
+eighteenth century. The generality of the history becomes specific in a
+letter to his father, who has given him hopes of a seat in Parliament.
+"This seat," so Edward Gibbon wrote, "according to the custom of our
+venal country was to be bought, and fifteen hundred pounds were
+mentioned as the price of purchase."[111]
+
+Gibbon anticipated Captain Mahan. In speaking of a naval battle between
+the fleet of Justinian and that of the Goths in which the galleys of the
+Eastern empire gained a signal victory, he wrote, "The Goths affected to
+depreciate an element in which they were unskilled; but their own
+experience confirmed the truth of a maxim, that the master of the sea
+will always acquire the dominion of the land."[112] But Gibbon's
+anticipation was one of the frequent cases where the same idea has
+occurred to a number of men of genius, as doubtless Captain Mahan was
+not aware of this sentence any more than he was of Bacon's and Raleigh's
+epitomes of the theme which he has so originally and brilliantly
+treated.[113]
+
+No modern historian has been the subject of so much critical comment as
+Gibbon. I do not know how it will compare in volume with either of the
+similar examinations of Thucydides and Tacitus; but the criticism is of
+a different sort. The only guarantee of the honesty of Tacitus, wrote
+Sainte-Beuve, is Tacitus himself;[114] and a like remark will apply to
+Thucydides. But a fierce light beats on Gibbon. His voluminous notes
+furnish the critics the materials on which he built his history, which,
+in the case of the ancient historians, must be largely a matter of
+conjecture. With all the searching examination of "The Decline and
+Fall," it is surprising how few errors have been found and, of the
+errors which have been noted, how few are really important. Guizot,
+Milman, Dr. Smith, Cotter Morison, Bury, and a number of lesser lights
+have raked his text and his notes with few momentous results. We have,
+writes Bury, improved methods over Gibbon and "much new material of
+various kinds," but "Gibbon's historical sense kept him constantly right
+in dealing with his sources"; and "in the main things he is still our
+master."[115] The man is generally reflected in his book. That Gibbon
+has been weighed and not found wanting is because he was as honest and
+truthful as any man who ever wrote history. The autobiographies and
+letters exhibit to us a transparent man, which indeed some of the
+personal allusions in the history might have foreshadowed. "I have often
+fluctuated and shall _tamely_ follow the Colbert Ms.," he wrote, where
+the authenticity of a book was in question.[116] In another case "the
+scarcity of facts and the uncertainty of dates" opposed his attempt to
+describe the first invasion of Italy by Alaric.[117] In the beginning of
+the famous Chapter XLIV which is "admired by jurists as a brief and
+brilliant exposition of the principles of Roman law,"[118] Gibbon wrote,
+"Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and candor of
+history, and directed by the most temperate and skillful guides, I enter
+with just diffidence on the subject of civil law."[119] In speaking of
+the state of Britain between 409 and 449, he said, "I owe it to myself
+and to historic truth to declare that some _circumstances_ in this
+paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy."[120] Throughout
+his whole work the scarcity of materials forces Gibbon to the frequent
+use of conjecture, but I believe that for the most part his conjectures
+seem reasonable to the critics. Impressed with the correctness of his
+account of the Eastern empire a student of the subject once told me that
+Gibbon certainly possessed the power of wise divination.
+
+Gibbon's striving after precision and accuracy is shown in some marginal
+corrections he made in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall."
+On the first page in his first printed edition and as it now stands, he
+said, "To deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and
+fall: a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still felt by
+the nations of the earth." For this the following is substituted: "To
+prosecute the decline and fall of the empire of Rome: of whose language,
+religion, and laws the impression will be long preserved in our own and
+the neighboring countries of Europe." He thus explains the change: "Mr.
+Hume told me that, in correcting his history, he always labored to
+reduce superlatives and soften positives. Have Asia and Africa, from
+Japan to Morocco, any feeling or memory of the Roman Empire?"
+
+On page 6, Bury's edition, the text is, "The praises of Alexander,
+transmitted by a succession of poets and historians, had kindled a
+dangerous emulation in the mind of Trajan." We can imagine that Gibbon
+reflected, What evidence have I that Trajan had read these poets and
+historians? Therefore he made this change: "Late generations and far
+distant climates may impute their calamities to the immortal author of
+the Iliad. The spirit of Alexander was inflamed by the praises of
+Achilles; and succeeding heroes have been ambitious to tread in the
+footsteps of Alexander. Like him, the Emperor Trajan aspired to the
+conquest of the East."[121]
+
+The "advertisement" to the first octavo edition published in 1783 is an
+instance of Gibbon's truthfulness. He wrote, "Some alterations and
+improvements had presented themselves to my mind, but I was unwilling to
+injure or offend the purchasers of the preceding editions." Then he
+seems to reflect that this is not quite the whole truth and adds,
+"Perhaps I may stand excused if, amidst the avocations of a busy winter,
+I have preferred the pleasures of composition and study to the minute
+diligence of revising a former publication."[122]
+
+The severest criticism that Gibbon has received is on his famous
+chapters XV and XVI which conclude his first volume in the original
+quarto edition of 1776. We may disregard the flood of contemporary
+criticism from certain people who were excited by what they deemed an
+attack on the Christian religion. Dean Milman, who objected seriously to
+much in these chapters, consulted these various answers to Gibbon on the
+first appearance of his work with, according to his own confession,
+little profit.[123] "Against his celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth
+chapters," wrote Buckle, "all the devices of controversy have been
+exhausted; but the only result has been, that while the fame of the
+historian is untarnished, the attacks of his enemies are falling into
+complete oblivion. The work of Gibbon remains; but who is there who
+feels any interest in what was written against him?"[124] During the
+last generation, however, criticism has taken another form and
+scientific men now do not exactly share Buckle's gleeful opinion. Both
+Bury and Cotter Morison state or imply that well-grounded exceptions may
+be taken to Gibbon's treatment of the early Christian church. He ignored
+some facts; his combination of others, his inferences, his opinions are
+not fair and unprejudiced. A further grave objection may be made to the
+tone of these two chapters: sarcasm pervades them and the Gibbon sneer
+has become an apt characterization.
+
+Francis Parkman admitted that he was a reverent agnostic, and if Gibbon
+had been a reverent free-thinker these two chapters would have been far
+different in tone. Lecky regarded the Christian church as a great
+institution worthy of reverence and respect although he stated the
+central thesis of Gibbon with emphasis just as great. Of the conversion
+of the Roman Empire to Christianity, Lecky wrote, "it may be boldly
+asserted that the assumption of a moral or intellectual miracle is
+utterly gratuitous. Never before was a religious transformation so
+manifestly inevitable."[125] Gibbon's sneering tone was a characteristic
+of his time. There existed during the latter part of the eighteenth
+century, wrote Sir James Mackintosh, "an unphilosophical and indeed
+fanatical animosity against Christianity." But Gibbon's private defense
+is entitled to consideration as placing him in a better light. "The
+primitive church, which I have treated with some freedom," he wrote to
+Lord Sheffield in 1791, "was itself at that time an innovation, and I
+was attached to the old Pagan establishment."[126] "Had I believed," he
+said in his Autobiography, "that the majority of English readers were so
+fondly attached to the name and shadow of Christianity, had I foreseen
+that the pious, the timid, and the prudent would feel, or affect to
+feel, with such exquisite sensibility, I might perhaps have softened the
+two invidious chapters."[127]
+
+On the other hand Gibbon's treatment of Julian the Apostate is in
+accordance with the best modern standard. It might have been supposed
+that a quasi-Pagan, as he avowed himself, would have emphasized Julian's
+virtues and ignored his weaknesses as did Voltaire, who invested him
+with all the good qualities of Trajan, Cato, and Julius Caesar, without
+their defects.[128] Robertson indeed feared that he might fail in this
+part of the history;[129] but Gibbon weighed Julian in the balance, duly
+estimating his strength and his weakness, with the result that he has
+given a clear and just account in his best and most dignified
+style.[130]
+
+Gibbon's treatment of Theodora, the wife of Justinian, is certainly open
+to objection. Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has
+incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its
+salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's
+love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical
+criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. "I am justified," he
+wrote, "in painting the manners of the times; the vices of Theodora form
+an essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian.... My
+English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the
+obscurity of a learned language."[131] This explanation satisfies
+neither Cotter Morison nor Bury, nor would it hold for a moment as a
+justification of a historian of our own day. Gibbon is really so
+scientific, so much like a late nineteenth-century man, that we do right
+to subject him to our present-day rigid tests.
+
+There has been much discussion about Gibbon's style, which we all know
+is pompous and Latinized. On a long reading his rounded and sonorous
+periods become wearisome, and one wishes that occasionally a sentence
+would terminate with a small word, even a preposition. One feels as did
+Dickens after walking for an hour or two about the handsome but
+"distractingly regular" city of Philadelphia. "I felt," he wrote, "that
+I would have given the world for a crooked street."[132] Despite the
+pomposity, Gibbon's style is correct, and the exact use of words is a
+marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or change of words
+will improve upon the precision of the text. His compression and
+selection of salient points are remarkable. Amid some commonplace
+philosophy he frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is
+truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of history; one
+feels that Gibbon looked upon his work as very serious, and thought with
+Thucydides, "My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize
+composition which is heard and forgotten."
+
+To a writer of history few things are more interesting than a great
+historian's autobiographical remarks which relate to the composition of
+his work. "Had I been more indigent or more wealthy," wrote Gibbon in
+his Autobiography, "I should not have possessed the leisure or the
+perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous history."[133]
+"Notwithstanding the hurry of business and pleasure," he wrote from
+London in 1778, "I steal some moments for the Roman Empire."[134]
+Between the writing of the first three and the last three volumes, he
+took a rest of "near a twelvemonth" and gave expression to a thought
+which may be echoed by every studious writer, "Yet in the luxury of
+freedom, I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit which
+gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry."[135] Every
+one who has written a historical book will sympathize with the following
+expression of personal experience as he approached the completion of
+"The Decline and Fall": "Let no man who builds a house or writes a book
+presume to say when he will have finished. When he imagines that he is
+drawing near to his journey's end, Alps rise on Alps, and he continually
+finds something to add and something to correct."[136]
+
+Plain truthful tales are Gibbon's autobiographies. The style is that of
+the history, and he writes of himself as frankly as he does of any of
+his historical characters. His failings--what he has somewhere termed
+"the amiable weaknesses of human nature"--are disclosed with the
+openness of a Frenchman. All but one of the ten years between 1783 and
+1793, between the ages of 46 and 56, he passed at Lausanne. There he
+completed "The Decline and Fall," and of that period he spent from
+August, 1787, to July, 1788, in England to look after the publication of
+the last three volumes. His life in Lausanne was one of study, writing,
+and agreeable society, of which his correspondence with his English
+friends gives an animated account. The two things one is most impressed
+with are his love for books and his love for Madeira. "Though a lover of
+society," he wrote, "my library is the room to which I am most
+attached."[137] While getting settled at Lausanne, he complains that his
+boxes of books "loiter on the road."[138] And then he harps on another
+string. "Good Madeira," he writes, "is now become essential to my health
+and reputation;"[139] yet again, "If I do not receive a supply of
+Madeira in the course of the summer, I shall be in great shame and
+distress."[140] His good friend in England, Lord Sheffield, regarded his
+prayer and sent him a hogshead of "best old Madeira" and a tierce,
+containing six dozen bottles of "finest Malmsey," and at the same time
+wrote: "You will remember that a hogshead is on his travels through the
+torrid zone for you.... No wine is meliorated to a greater degree by
+keeping than Madeira, and you latterly appeared so ravenous for it, that
+I must conceive you wish to have a stock."[141] Gibbon's devotion to
+Madeira bore its penalty. At the age of forty-eight he sent this account
+to his stepmother: "I was in hopes that my old Enemy the Gout had given
+over the attack, but the Villain, with his ally the winter, convinced
+me of my error, and about the latter end of March I found myself a
+prisoner in my library and my great chair. I attempted twice to rise, he
+twice knocked me down again and kept possession of both my feet and
+knees longer (I must confess) than he ever had done before."[142] Eager
+to finish his history, he lamented that his "long gout" lost him "three
+months in the spring." Thus as you go through his correspondence, you
+find that orders for Madeira and attacks of gout alternate with
+regularity. Gibbon apparently did not connect the two as cause and
+effect, as in his autobiography he charged his malady to his service in
+the Hampshire militia, when "the daily practice of hard and even
+excessive drinking" had sown in his constitution "the seeds of the
+gout."[143]
+
+Gibbon has never been a favorite with women, owing largely to his
+account of his early love affair. While at Lausanne, he had heard much
+of "the wit and beauty and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod" and when
+he first met her, he had reached the age of twenty. "I saw and loved,"
+he wrote. "I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation,
+pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners.... She listened to the voice
+of truth and passion.... At Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity";
+and indeed he appeared to be an ardent lover. "He was seen," said a
+contemporary, "stopping country people near Lausanne and demanding at
+the point of a naked dagger whether a more adorable creature existed
+than Suzanne Curchod."[144] On his return to England, however, he soon
+discovered that his father would not hear of this alliance, and he thus
+related the sequence: "After a painful struggle, I yielded to my
+fate.... I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son."[145] From England he
+wrote to Mademoiselle Curchod breaking off the engagement. Perhaps it is
+because of feminine criticism that Cotter Morison indulges in an
+elaborate defense of Gibbon, which indeed hardly seems necessary.
+Rousseau, who was privy to the love affair, said that "Gibbon was too
+cold-blooded a young man for his taste or for Mademoiselle Curchod's
+happiness."[146] Mademoiselle Curchod a few years later married Necker,
+a rich Paris banker, who under Louis XVI held the office of
+director-general of the finances. She was the mother of Madame de Stael,
+was a leader of the literary society in Paris and, despite the troublous
+times, must have led a happy life. One delightful aspect of the story is
+the warm friendship that existed between Madame Necker and Edward
+Gibbon. This began less than a year after her marriage. "The Curchod
+(Madame Necker) I saw at Paris," he wrote to his friend Holroyd. "She
+was very fond of me and the husband particularly civil. Could they
+insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to supper; go to bed, and
+leave me alone with his wife--what an impertinent security!"[147]
+
+If women read the Correspondence as they do the Autobiography, I think
+that their aversion to the great historian would be increased by these
+confiding words to his stepmother, written when he was forty-nine: "The
+habits of female conversation have sometimes tempted me to acquire the
+piece of furniture, a wife, and could I unite in a single Woman the
+virtues and accomplishments of half a dozen of my acquaintance, I would
+instantly pay my addresses to the Constellation."[148]
+
+I have always been impressed with Gibbon's pride at being the author of
+"six volumes in quartos"; but as nearly all histories now are published
+in octavo, I had not a distinct idea of the appearance of a quarto
+volume until the preparation of this essay led me to look at different
+editions of Gibbon in the Boston Athenaeum. There I found the quartos,
+the first volume of which is the third edition, published in 1777 [it
+will be remembered that the original publication of the first volume was
+in February, 1776]. The volume is 11 1/4 inches long by 9 inches wide and
+is much heavier than our very heavy octavo volumes. With this volume in
+my hand I could appreciate the remark of the Duke of Gloucester when
+Gibbon brought him the second volume of the "Decline and Fall." Laying
+the quarto on the table he said, "Another d--d thick square book! Always
+scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"[149]
+
+During my researches at the Athenaeum, I found an octavo edition, the
+first volume of which was published in 1791, and on the cover was
+written, "Given to the Athenaeum by Charles Cabot. Received December 10,
+1807." This was the year of the foundation of the Athenaeum. On the
+quarto of 1777 there was no indication, but the scholarly cataloguer
+informed me that it was probably also received in 1807. Three later
+editions than these two are in this library, the last of which is Bury's
+of 1900 to which I have constantly referred. Meditating in the quiet
+alcove, with the two early editions of Gibbon before me, I found an
+answer to the comment of H. G. Wells in his book "The Future in America"
+which I confess had somewhat irritated me. Thus wrote Wells: "Frankly I
+grieve over Boston as a great waste of leisure and energy, as a
+frittering away of moral and intellectual possibilities. We give too
+much to the past.... We are obsessed by the scholastic prestige of mere
+knowledge and genteel remoteness."[150] Pondering this iconoclastic
+utterance, how delightful it is to light upon evidence in the way of
+well-worn volumes that, since 1807, men and women here have been
+carefully reading Gibbon, who, as Dean Milman said, "has bridged the
+abyss between ancient and modern times and connected together the two
+worlds of history."[151] A knowledge of "The Decline and Fall" is a
+basis for the study of all other history; it is a mental discipline, and
+a training for the problems of modern life. These Athenaeum readers did
+not waste their leisure, did not give too much to the past. They were
+supremely right to take account of the scholastic prestige of Gibbon,
+and to endeavor to make part of their mental fiber this greatest history
+of modern times.
+
+I will close with a quotation from the Autobiography, which in its
+sincerity and absolute freedom from literary cant will be cherished by
+all whose desire is to behold "the bright countenance of truth in the
+quiet and still air of delightful studies." "I have drawn a high prize
+in the lottery of life," wrote Gibbon. "I am disgusted with the
+affectation of men of letters, who complain that they have renounced a
+substance for a shadow and that their fame affords a poor compensation
+for envy, censure, and persecution. My own experience at least has
+taught me a very different lesson: twenty happy years have been animated
+by the labor of my history; and its success has given me a name, a rank,
+a character in the world, to which I should not otherwise have been
+entitled.... D'Alembert relates that as he was walking in the gardens of
+Sans-souci with the King of Prussia, Frederick said to him, 'Do you see
+that old woman, a poor weeder, asleep on that sunny bank? She is
+probably a more happy Being than either of us.'" Now the comment of
+Gibbon: "The King and the Philosopher may speak for themselves; for my
+part I do not envy the old woman."[152]
+
+
+   [46] Autobiography, 270.
+
+   [47] Autobiography, 333.
+
+   [48] Autobiography, 311.
+
+   [49] Lectures, 763.
+
+   [50] Chief Periods European Hist., 75.
+
+   [51] Introduction, lxvii.
+
+   [52] Introduction, xxxi.
+
+   [53] Preface, ix.
+
+   [54] Introduction, xli.
+
+   [55] p. 324.
+
+   [56] Letters, I, 23.
+
+   [57] Autobiography, 310.
+
+   [58] Letters, II, 36.
+
+   [59] _Ibid._, 127.
+
+   [60] Autobiography, 196.
+
+   [61] Autobiography, 310. "I am more and more convinced that we have
+        both the right and power on our side." Letters, I, 248.
+
+   [62] Hill's ed. Gibbon Autobiography, 212, 213, 314.
+
+   [63] Letters, II, 249.
+
+   [64] Autobiography, 342.
+
+   [65] Letters, II, 310.
+
+   [66] Causeries du Lundi, viii, 469.
+
+   [67] Letters, II, 98.
+
+   [68] Trevelyan, II, 232.
+
+   [69] Lectures on the Hist. of Literature, 185.
+
+   [70] Autobiography, 196.
+
+   [71] Bury's ed., xxxv.
+
+   [72] Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., 236.
+
+   [73] _Ibid._, I, 349.
+
+   [74] Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., II, 35.
+
+   [75] II, 235.
+
+   [76] History, I, 1.
+
+   [77] Annals, I, 11.
+
+   [78] Bury's introduction, xxxv.
+
+   [79] Autobiography, 193.
+
+   [80] _Ibid._, 48, 59.
+
+   [81] _Ibid._, 67.
+
+   [82] Autobiography, 86 _et seq._; Hill's ed., 69, 291.
+
+   [83] Autobiography, 131.
+
+   [84] _Ibid._, 137.
+
+   [85] _Ibid._, 134.
+
+   [86] Autobiography, 139-142.
+
+   [87] V, 108, 130, 231.
+
+   [88] Autobiography, 141.
+
+   [89] Autobiography, 133.
+
+   [90] Hill's ed., 89, 293.
+
+   [91] Autobiography, 149.
+
+   [92] Autobiography, 149.
+
+   [93] _Ibid._, 161.
+
+   [94] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 445.
+
+   [95] Autobiography, 167.
+
+   [96] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 446.
+
+   [97] Autobiography, Hill's ed., 142.
+
+   [98] Autobiography, 258.
+
+   [99] _Ibid._, 277.
+
+  [100] _Ibid._
+
+  [101] Letters, II, 279.
+
+  [102] Preface, x.
+
+  [103] Smith's ed., I, xi.
+
+  [104] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 453.
+
+  [105] _London Times_, November 16, 1894.
+
+  [106] Smith's ed., I, 215, 371; II, 230.
+
+  [107] Smith's ed., I, 165; II, 205.
+
+  [108] _Ibid._, I, 216.
+
+  [109] _Ibid._, I, 144.
+
+  [110] _Ibid._, III, 78.
+
+  [111] Letters, I, 23.
+
+  [112] Smith's ed., V, 230.
+
+  [113] See Mahan's From Sail to Steam, 276.
+
+  [114] Causeries du Lundi, I, 153.
+
+  [115] Introduction, xlv, l, lxvii.
+
+  [116] Smith's ed., III, 14.
+
+  [117] _Ibid._, IV, 31.
+
+  [118] Bury, lii.
+
+  [119] Smith's ed., V, 258.
+
+  [120] _Ibid._, IV, 132 n.
+
+  [121] Bury's ed., xxxv, xxxvi.
+
+  [122] Smith's ed., I, xxi.
+
+  [123] Smith's ed., I, xvii.
+
+  [124] History of Civilization, II, 308 n.
+
+  [125] Morals, I, 419.
+
+  [126] Letters, II, 237.
+
+  [127] Autobiography, 316.
+
+  [128] Cotter Morison, 118.
+
+  [129] Sainte-Beuve, 458.
+
+  [130] Cotter Morison, 120.
+
+  [131] Autobiography, 337 n.
+
+  [132] American Notes, Chap. VII.
+
+  [133] p. 155.
+
+  [134] Letters, I, 331.
+
+  [135] Autobiography, 325.
+
+  [136] Letters, II, 143.
+
+  [137] Letters, II, 130.
+
+  [138] _Ibid._, 89.
+
+  [139] _Ibid._, 211.
+
+  [140] _Ibid._, 217.
+
+  [141] _Ibid._, II, 232.
+
+  [142] Letters, II, 129.
+
+  [143] _Ibid._, 189.
+
+  [144] _Ibid._, I, 40.
+
+  [145] Autobiography, pp. 151, 239.
+
+  [146] Letters, I, 41.
+
+  [147] Letters, I, 81. In 1790 Madame de Stael, then at Coppet, wrote:
+        "Nous possedons dans ce chateau M. Gibbon, l'ancien amoreux de
+        ma mere, celui qui voulait l'epouser. Quand je le vois, je me
+        demande si je serais nee de son union avec ma mere: je me
+        reponds que non et qu'il suffisait de mon pere seul pour que je
+        vinsse au monde."--Hill's ed., 107, n. 2.
+
+  [148] Letters, II, 143.
+
+  [149] Birkbeck Hill's ed., 127.
+
+  [150] p. 235.
+
+  [151] Smith's ed., I, vii.
+
+  [152] Autobiography, 343, 346.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the March
+meeting of 1902, and printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER
+
+
+It is my purpose to say a word of Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the English
+historian, who died February 23, 1902, and who in his research and
+manner of statement represents fitly the scientific school of historical
+writers. He was thorough in his investigation, sparing neither labor nor
+pains to get at the truth. It may well enough be true that the
+designedly untruthful historian, like the undevout astronomer, is an
+anomaly, for inaccuracy comes not from purpose, but from neglect. Now
+Gardiner went to the bottom of things, and was not satisfied until he
+had compassed all the material within his reach. As a matter of course
+he read many languages. Whether his facts were in Spanish, Italian,
+French, German, Dutch, Swedish, or English made apparently no
+difference. Nor did he stop at what was in plain language. He read a
+diary written chiefly in symbols, and many letters in cipher. A large
+part of his material was in manuscript, which entailed greater labor
+than if it had been in print. As one reads the prefaces to his various
+volumes and his footnotes, amazement is the word to express the feeling
+that a man could have accomplished so much in forty-seven years. One
+feels that there is no one-sided use of any material. The Spanish, the
+Venetian, the French, the Dutch nowhere displaces the English. In
+Froude's Elizabeth one gets the impression that the Simancas manuscripts
+furnish a disproportionate basis of the narrative; in Ranke's England,
+that the story is made up too much from the Venetian archives. Gardiner
+himself copied many Simancas manuscripts in Spain, and he studied the
+archives in Venice, Paris, Brussels, and Rome, but these, and all the
+other great mass of foreign material, are kept adjunctive to that found
+in his own land. My impression from a study of his volumes is that more
+than half of his material is in manuscript, but because he has matter
+which no one else had ever used, he does not neglect the printed pages
+open to every one. To form "a judgment on the character and aims of
+Cromwell," he writes, "it is absolutely necessary to take Carlyle's
+monumental work as a starting point;"[153] yet, distrusting Carlyle's
+printed transcripts, he goes back to the original speeches and letters
+themselves. Carlyle, he says, "amends the text without warning" in many
+places; these emendations Gardiner corrects, and out of the abundance of
+his learning he stops a moment to show how Carlyle has misled the
+learned Dr. Murray in attributing to Cromwell the use of the word
+"communicative" in its modern meaning, when it was on the contrary
+employed in what is now an obsolete sense.[154]
+
+Gardiner's great work is the History of England from 1603 to 1656. In
+the revised editions there are ten volumes called the "History of
+England, from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil
+War," and four volumes on the Great Civil War. Since this revision he
+has published three volumes on the History of the Commonwealth and the
+Protectorate. He was also the author of a number of smaller volumes, a
+contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Dictionary of
+National Biography, and for ten years editor-in-chief of the _English
+Historical Review_.
+
+I know not which is the more remarkable, the learning, accuracy, and
+diligence of the man, or withal his modesty. With his great store of
+knowledge, the very truthfulness of his soul impels him to be forward
+in admitting his own mistakes. Lowell said in 1878 that Darwin was
+"almost the only perfectly disinterested lover of truth" he had ever
+encountered. Had Lowell known the historian as we know him, he would
+have placed Gardiner upon the same elevation. In the preface to the
+revised ten-volume edition he alludes to the "defects" of his work.
+"Much material," he wrote, "has accumulated since the early volumes were
+published, and my own point of view is not quite the same as it was when
+I started with the first years of James I."[155] The most important
+contribution to this portion of his period had been Spedding's edition
+of Bacon's Letters and Life. In a note to page 208 of his second volume
+he tells how Spedding's arguments have caused him to modify some of his
+statements, although the two regard the history of the seventeenth
+century differently. Writing this soon after the death of Spedding, to
+which he refers as "the loss of one whose mind was so acute and whose
+nature was so patient and kindly," he adds, "It was a true pleasure to
+have one's statements and arguments exposed to the testing fire of his
+hostile criticism." Having pointed out later some inaccuracies in the
+work of Professor Masson, he accuses himself. "I have little doubt," he
+writes, "that if my work were subjected to as careful a revision, it
+would yield a far greater crop of errors."[156]
+
+Gardiner was born in 1829. Soon after he was twenty-six years old he
+conceived the idea of writing the history of England from the accession
+of James I to the restoration of Charles II. It was a noble conception,
+but his means were small. Having married, as his first wife, the
+youngest daughter of Edward Irving, the enthusiastic founder of the
+Catholic Apostolic Church, he became an Irvingite. Because he was an
+Irvingite, his university,--he was a son of Oxford,--so it is commonly
+said, would give him no position whereby he might gain his living.
+Nevertheless, Gardiner studied and toiled, and in 1863 published two
+volumes entitled "A History of England from the Accession of James I to
+the Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke." Of this work only one hundred and
+forty copies were sold. Still he struggled on. In 1869 two volumes
+called "Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage" were published and sold
+five hundred copies. Six years later appeared two volumes entitled "A
+History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I." This
+installment paid expenses, but no profit. One is reminded of what
+Carlyle said about the pecuniary rewards of literary men in England:
+"Homer's Iliad would have brought the author, had he offered it to Mr.
+Murray on the half-profit system, say five-and-twenty guineas. The
+Prophecies of Isaiah would have made a small article in a review which
+... could cheerfully enough have remunerated him with a five-pound
+note." The first book from which Gardiner received any money was a
+little volume for the Epochs of Modern History Series on the Thirty
+Years' War, published in 1874. Two more installments of the history
+appearing in 1877 and 1881 made up the first edition of what is now our
+ten-volume history, but in the meantime some of the volumes went out of
+print. It was not until 1883, the year of the publication of the revised
+edition, that the value of his labors was generally recognized. During
+this twenty-eight years, from the age of twenty-six to fifty-four,
+Gardiner had his living to earn. He might have recalled the remark made,
+I think, by either Goldsmith or Lamb, that the books which will live are
+not those by which we ourselves can live. Therefore Gardiner got his
+bread by teaching. He became a professor in King's College, London, and
+he lectured on history for the London Society for the Extension of
+University Teaching, having large audiences all over London, and being
+well appreciated in the East End. He wrote schoolbooks on history.
+Finally success came twenty-eight years after his glorious conception,
+twenty years after the publication of his first volume. He had had a
+hard struggle for a living with money coming in by driblets. Bread won
+in such a way is come by hard, yet he remained true to his ideal. His
+potboilers were good and honest books; his brief history on the Thirty
+Years' War has received the praise of scholars. Recognition brought him
+money rewards. In 1882 Mr. Gladstone bestowed upon him a civil list
+pension of L150 a year. Two years later All Souls College, Oxford,
+elected him to a research fellowship; when this expired Merton made him
+a fellow. Academic honors came late. Not until 1884, when he was
+fifty-five, did he take his degree of M.A. Edinburgh conferred upon him
+an LL.D., and Goettingen a Ph.D.; but he was sixty-six when he received
+the coveted D.C.L. from his own university. The year previous Lord
+Rosebery offered him the Regius Professorship of History at Oxford, but
+he declined it because the prosecution of his great work required him to
+be near the British Museum. It is worthy of mention that in 1874, nine
+years before he was generally appreciated in England, the Massachusetts
+Historical Society elected him a corresponding member.[157]
+
+During the latter part of his life Gardiner resided in the country near
+London, whence it took him about an hour to reach the British Museum,
+where he did his work. He labored on his history from eleven o'clock to
+half-past four, with an intermission of half an hour for luncheon. He
+did not dictate to a stenographer, but wrote everything out. Totally
+unaccustomed to collaboration, he never employed a secretary or
+assistant of any kind. In his evenings he did no serious labor; he spent
+them with his family, attended to his correspondence, or read a novel.
+Thus he wrought five hours daily. What a brain, and what a splendid
+training he had given himself to accomplish such results in so short a
+working day!
+
+In the preface to his first volume of the "History of the Commonwealth,"
+published in 1894, Gardiner said that he was "entering upon the third
+and last stage of a task the accomplishment of which seemed to me many
+years ago to be within the bounds of possibility." One more volume
+bringing the history down to the death of Cromwell would have completed
+the work, and then Mr. Charles H. Firth, a fellow of All Souls College,
+Oxford, was to take up the story. Firth now purposes to begin his
+narrative with the year 1656. Gardiner's mantle has fallen on worthy
+shoulders.
+
+Where historical scholars congregate in England and America, Gardiner is
+highly esteemed. But the critics must have their day. They cannot attack
+him for lack of diligence and accuracy, which according to Gibbon, the
+master of us all, are the prime requisites of a historian, so they
+assert that he was deficient in literary style, he had no dramatic
+power, his work is not interesting and will not live. Gardiner is the
+product solely of the university and the library. You may visualize him
+at Oxford, in the British Museum, or at work in the archives on the
+Continent, but of affairs and of society by personal contact he knew
+nothing. In short, he was not a man of the world, and the histories must
+be written, so these critics aver, by those who have an actual knowledge
+by experience of their fellow-men. It is profitable to examine these
+dicta by the light of concrete examples. Froude saw much of society, and
+was a man of the world. He wrote six volumes on the reign of Elizabeth,
+from which we get the distinct impression that the dominant
+characteristics of Elizabeth were meanness, vacillation, selfishness,
+and cruelty. Gardiner in an introductory chapter of forty-three pages
+restores to us the great queen of Shakespeare, who brought upon her land
+"a thousand, thousand blessings." She loved her people well, he writes,
+and ruled them wisely. She "cleared the way for liberty, though she
+understood it not."[158] Elsewhere he speaks of "her high spirit and
+enlightened judgment."[159] The writer who has spent his life in the
+library among dusty archives estimates the great ruler more correctly
+than the man of the world. We all know Macaulay, a member of Parliament,
+a member of the Supreme Council of India, a cabinet minister, a
+historian of great merit, a brilliant man of letters. In such a one,
+according to the principles laid down by these critics, we should expect
+to find a supreme judge of men. Macaulay in his essays and the first
+chapter of the History painted Wentworth and Laud in the very blackest
+of colors, which "had burned themselves into the heart of the people of
+England." Gardiner came. Wentworth and Laud, he wrote, were controlled
+by a "noble ambition," which was "not stained with personal selfishness
+or greed."[160] "England may well be proud of possessing in Wentworth a
+nobler if a less practical statesman than Richelieu, of the type to
+which the great cardinal belonged."[161] Again Wentworth was "the
+high-minded, masterful statesman, erring gravely through defects of
+temper and knowledge."[162] From Macaulay we carry away the impression
+that Wentworth was very wicked and that Cromwell was very good. Gardiner
+loved Cromwell not less than did Macaulay, but thus he speaks of his
+government: "Step by step the government of the Commonwealth was
+compelled ... to rule by means which every one of its members would have
+condemned if they had been employed by Charles or Wentworth." Is it not
+a triumph for the bookish man that in his estimate of Wentworth and Laud
+he has with him the consensus of the historical scholars of England?
+
+What a change there has been in English opinion of Cromwell in the last
+half century! Unquestionably that is due to Carlyle more than to any
+other one man, but there might have been a reaction from the conception
+of the hero worshiper had it not been supported and somewhat modified by
+so careful and impartial a student as Gardiner.
+
+The alteration of sentiment toward Wentworth and Laud is principally due
+to Gardiner, that toward Cromwell is due to him in part. These are two
+of the striking results, but they are only two of many things we see
+differently because of the single-minded devotion of this great
+historian. We know the history in England from 1603 to 1656 better than
+we do that of any other period of the world; and for this we are
+indebted mainly to Samuel Rawson Gardiner.
+
+
+  [153] History of the Great Civil War, I, viii.
+
+  [154] History of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, III, 27.
+
+  [155] History, I, v.
+
+  [156] _Ibid._, IX, viii.
+
+  [157] He was transferred to the roll of honorary members in October,
+        1896.
+
+  [158] History, I, 43.
+
+  [159] _Ibid._, VIII, 36.
+
+  [160] _Ibid._, 67.
+
+  [161] _Ibid._, 215.
+
+  [162] _Ibid._, IX, 229.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM E. H. LECKY
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November
+meeting of 1903.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM E. H. LECKY
+
+
+Amazement was the feeling of the reading world on learning that the
+author of the History of Rationalism was only twenty-seven, and the
+writer of the History of European Morals only thirty-one. The sentiment
+was that a prodigy of learning had appeared, and a perusal of these
+works now renders comprehensible the contemporary astonishment. The
+Morals (published in 1869) is the better book of the two, and, if I may
+judge from my own personal experience, it may be read with delight when
+young, and re-read with respect and advantage at an age when the
+enthusiasms of youth have given way to the critical attitude of
+experience. Grant all the critics say of it, that the reasoning by which
+Lecky attempts to demolish the utilitarian theory of morals is no longer
+of value, and that it lacks the consistency of either the orthodox or
+the agnostic, that there is no new historical light, and that much of
+the treatise is commonplace, nevertheless the historical illustrations
+and disquisitions, the fresh combination of well-known facts are
+valuable for instruction and for a new point of view. His analysis of
+the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is drawn, of
+course, from Gibbon, but I have met those who prefer the interesting
+story of Lecky to the majestic sweep of the great master. Much less
+brilliant than Buckle's "History of Civilization," the first volume of
+which appeared twelve years earlier, the Morals has stood better the
+test of time.
+
+The intellectual biography of so precocious a writer is interesting, and
+fortunately it has been related by Lecky himself. When he entered
+Trinity College, Dublin, in 1856, "Mill was in the zenith of his fame
+and influence"; Hugh Miller was attempting to reconcile the recent
+discoveries of geology with the Mosaic cosmogony. "In poetry," wrote
+Lecky, "Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I think with an approach to
+equality which has not continued." In government the orthodox political
+economists furnished the theory and the Manchester school the practice.
+All this intellectual fermentation affected this inquiring young
+student; but at first Bishop Butler's Analogy and sermons, which were
+then much studied at Dublin, had the paramount influence. Of the living
+men, Archbishop Whately, then at Dublin, held sway. Other writers whom
+he mastered were Coleridge, Newman, and Emerson, Pascal, Bossuet,
+Rousseau, and Voltaire, Dugald Stewart, and Mill. In 1857 Buckle burst
+upon the world, and proved a stimulus to Lecky as well as to most
+serious historical students. The result of these studies, Lecky relates,
+was his History of Rationalism, published in the early part of 1865.
+
+The claim made by many of Lecky's admirers, that he was a philosophic
+historian, as distinct from literary historians like Carlyle and
+Macaulay, and scientific like Stubbs and Gardiner, has injured him in
+the eyes of many historical students who believe that if there be such a
+thing as the philosophy of history the narrative ought to carry it
+naturally. To interrupt the relation of events or the delineation of
+character with parading of trite reflections or with rashly broad
+generalizations is neither science nor art. Lecky has sometimes been
+condemned by students who, revolting at the term "philosophy" in
+connection with history, have failed to read his greatest work, the
+"History of England in the Eighteenth Century." This is a decided
+advance on the History of Morals, and shows honest investigation in
+original material, much of it manuscript, and an excellent power of
+generalization widely different from that which exhibits itself in a
+paltry philosophy. These volumes are a real contribution to historical
+knowledge. Parts of them which I like often to recur to are the account
+of the ministry of Walpole, the treatment of "parliamentary corruption,"
+of the condition of London, and of "national tastes and manners." His
+Chapter IX, which relates the rise of Methodism, has a peculiarly
+attractive swing and go, and his use of anecdote is effective.
+
+Chapter XX, on the "Causes of the French Revolution," covering one
+hundred and forty-one pages, is an ambitious effort, but it shows a
+thorough digestion of his material, profound reflection, and a lively
+presentation of his view. Mr. Morse Stephens believes that it is idle to
+attempt to inquire into the causes of this political and social
+overturn. If a historian tells the _how_, he asserts he should not be
+asked to tell the _why_. This is an epigrammatic statement of a tenet of
+the scientific historical school of Oxford, but men will always be
+interested in inquiring why the French Revolution happened, and such
+chapters as this of Lecky, a blending of speculation and narrative, will
+hold their place. These volumes have much well and impartially written
+Irish history, and being published between 1878 and 1890, at the time
+when the Irish question in its various forms became acute, they
+attracted considerable attention from the political world. Gladstone was
+an admirer of Lecky, and said in a chat with John Morley: "Lecky has
+real insight into the motives of statesmen. Now Carlyle, so mighty as he
+is in flash and penetration, has no eye for motives. Macaulay, too, is
+so caught by a picture, by color, by surface, that he is seldom to be
+counted on for just account of motive." The Irish chapters furnished
+arguments for the Liberals, but did not convert Lecky himself to the
+policy of home rule. When Gladstone and his party adopted it, he became
+a Liberal Unionist, and as such was elected in 1895 a member of the
+House of Commons by Dublin University. In view of the many comments that
+he was not successful in parliamentary life, I may say that the election
+not only came to him unsought, but that he recognized that he was too
+old to adapt himself to the atmosphere of the House of Commons; he
+accepted the position in the belief which was pressed upon him by many
+friends that he could in Parliament be useful to the University.
+
+Within less than three years have we commemorated in this hall three
+great English historians--Stubbs, Gardiner, and Lecky. The one we honor
+to-day was the most popular of the three. Not studied so much at the
+seats of learning, he is better known to journalists, to statesmen, to
+men of affairs, in short to general readers. Even our Society made him
+an honorary member fourteen years before it so honored Gardiner,
+although Gardiner was the older man and two volumes of his history had
+been published before Lecky's Rationalism, and two volumes more in the
+same year as the Morals. One year after it was published, Rationalism
+went into a third edition. Gardiner's first volumes sold one hundred and
+forty copies. It must, however, be stated that the Society recognized
+Gardiner's work as early as 1874 by electing him a corresponding member.
+
+It is difficult to guess how long Lecky will be read. His popularity is
+distinct. He was the rare combination of a scholar and a man of the
+world, made so by his own peculiar talent and by lucky opportunities. He
+was not obliged to earn his living. In early life, by intimate personal
+intercourse, he drew intellectual inspiration from Dean Milman, and
+later he learned practical politics through his friendship with Lord
+Russell. He knew well Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall. In private
+conversation he was a very interesting man. His discourse ran on books
+and on men; he turned from one to the other and mixed up the two with a
+ready familiarity. He went much into London society, and though entirely
+serious and without having, so far as I know, a gleam of humor, he was a
+fluent and entertaining talker.
+
+Mr. Lecky was vitally interested in the affairs of this country, and
+sympathized with the North during our Civil War. He once wrote to me: "I
+am old enough to remember vividly your great war, and was then much with
+an American friend--a very clever lawyer named George Bemis--whom I came
+to know very well at Rome.... I was myself a decided Northerner, but the
+'right of revolution' was always rather a stumbling block." Talking with
+Mr. Lecky in 1895, not long after the judgment of the United States
+Supreme Court that the income tax was unconstitutional, he expressed the
+opinion that it was a grand decision, evidencing a high respect for
+private property, but in the next breath came the question, "How are you
+ever to manage continuing the payment of those enormous pensions of
+yours?"
+
+It is not, I think, difficult to explain why Stubbs and Gardiner are
+more precious possessions for students than Lecky. Gardiner devoted his
+life to the seventeenth century. If we may reckon the previous
+preparation and the ceaseless revision, Stubbs devoted a good part of
+his life to the constitutional history from the beginnings of it to
+Henry VII. Lecky's eight volumes on the eighteenth century were
+published in thirteen years. A mastery of such an amount of original
+material as Stubbs and Gardiner mastered was impossible within that
+time. Lecky had the faculty of historic divination which compensated to
+some extent for the lack of a more thorough study of the sources. Genius
+stood in the place of painstaking engrossment in a single task.
+
+The last important work of Lecky, "Democracy and Liberty," was a brave
+undertaking. Many years ago he wrote: "When I was deeply immersed in the
+'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' I remember being struck
+by the saying of an old and illustrious friend that he could not
+understand the state of mind of a man who, when so many questions of
+burning and absorbing interest were rising around him, could devote the
+best years of his life to the study of a vanished past." Hence the book
+which considered present issues of practical politics and party
+controversies, and a result that satisfied no party and hardly any
+faction. It is an interesting question who chose the better part,--he or
+Stubbs and Gardiner--they who devoted themselves entirely to the past or
+he who made a conscientious endeavor to bring to bear his study of
+history upon the questions of the present.
+
+
+
+
+SIR SPENCER WALPOLE
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November
+meeting of 1907.
+
+
+
+
+SIR SPENCER WALPOLE
+
+
+Sir Spencer Walpole was an excellent historian and industrious writer.
+His first important work, entitled "The History of England from 1815,"
+was published at intervals from 1878 to 1886; the first installment
+appeared when he was thirty-nine years old. This in six volumes carried
+the history to 1858 in an interesting, accurate, and impartial
+narrative. Four of the five chapters of the first volume are entitled
+"The Material Condition of England in 1815," "Society in England,"
+"Opinion in 1815," "The Last of the Ebb Tide," and they are masterly in
+their description and relation. During the Napoleonic wars business was
+good. The development of English manufactures, due largely to the
+introduction of steam as a motive power, was marked. "Twenty years of
+war," he wrote, "had concentrated the trade of the world in the British
+Empire." Wheat was dear; in consequence the country gentlemen received
+high rents. The clergy, being largely dependent on tithes,--the tenth of
+the produce,--found their incomes increased as the price of corn
+advanced. But the laboring classes, both those engaged in manufactures
+and agriculture, did not share in the general prosperity. Either their
+wages did not rise at all or did not advance commensurately with the
+increase of the cost of living and the decline in the value of the
+currency. Walpole's detailed and thorough treatment of this subject is
+historic work of high value.
+
+In the third volume I was much impressed with his account of the Reform
+Act of 1832. We all have read that wonderful story over and over again,
+but I doubt whether its salient points have been better combined and
+presented than in Walpole's chapter. I had not remembered the reason of
+the selection of Lord John Russell to present the bill in the House of
+Commons when he was only Paymaster of the Forces, without a seat in the
+Cabinet. It will, of course, be recalled that Lord Grey, the Prime
+Minister, was in the House of Lords, and, not so readily I think, that
+Althorp was Chancellor of the Exchequer and the leader of the House of
+Commons. On Althorp, under ordinary circumstances, it would have been
+incumbent to take charge of this highly important measure, which had
+been agreed upon by the Cabinet after counsel with the King. Russell was
+the youngest son of the Duke of Bedford; and the Duke was one of the
+large territorial magnates and a proprietor of rotten boroughs. "A bill
+recommended by his son's authority," wrote Walpole, "was likely to
+reassure timid or wavering politicians." "Russell," Walpole continued,
+"told his tale in the plainest language. But the tale which he had to
+tell required no extraordinary language to adorn it. The Radicals had
+not dared to expect, the Tories, in their wildest fears, had not
+apprehended, so complete a measure. Enthusiasm was visible on one side
+of the House; consternation and dismay on the other. At last, when
+Russell read the list of boroughs which were doomed to extinction, the
+Tories hoped that the completeness of the measure would insure its
+defeat. Forgetting their fears, they began to be amused and burst into
+peals of derisive laughter" (III, 208).
+
+Walpole's next book was the "Life of Lord John Russell," two volumes
+published in 1889. This was undertaken at the request of Lady Russell,
+who placed at his disposal a mass of private and official papers and
+"diaries and letters of a much more private nature." She also acceded to
+his request that she was not to see the biography until it was ready
+for publication, so that the whole responsibility of it would be
+Walpole's alone. The Queen gave him access to three bound volumes of
+Russell's letters to herself, and sanctioned the publication of certain
+letters of King William IV. Walpole wrote the biography in about two
+years and a half; and this, considering that at the time he held an
+active office, displayed unusual industry. If I may judge the work by a
+careful study of the chapter on "The American Civil War," it is a
+valuable contribution to political history.
+
+Passing over three minor publications, we come to Walpole's "History of
+Twenty-five Years," two volumes of which were published in 1904. A brief
+extract from his preface is noteworthy, written as it is by a man of
+keen intelligence, with great power of investigation and continuous
+labor, and possessed of a sound judgment. After a reference to his
+"History of England from 1815," he said: "The time has consequently
+arrived when it ought to be as possible to write the History of England
+from 1857 to 1880, as it was twenty years ago to bring down the
+narrative of that History to 1856 or 1857.... So far as I am able to
+judge, most of the material which is likely to be available for British
+history in the period with which these two volumes are concerned
+[1856-1870] is already accessible. It is not probable that much which is
+wholly new remains unavailable." I read carefully these two volumes when
+they first appeared, and found them exceedingly fascinating. Palmerston
+and Russell, Gladstone and Disraeli, are made so real that we follow
+their contests as if we ourselves had a hand in them. A half dozen or
+more years ago an Englishman told me that Palmerston and Russell were no
+longer considered of account in England. But I do not believe one can
+rise from reading these volumes without being glad of a knowledge of
+these two men whose patriotism was of a high order. Walpole's several
+characterizations, in a summing up of Palmerston, display his knowledge
+of men. "Men pronounced Lord Melbourne indifferent," he wrote, "Sir
+Robert Peel cold, Lord John Russell uncertain, Lord Aberdeen weak, Lord
+Derby haughty, Mr. Gladstone subtle, Lord Beaconsfield unscrupulous. But
+they had no such epithet for Lord Palmerston. He was as earnest as Lord
+Melbourne was indifferent, as strong as Lord Aberdeen was weak, as
+honest as Lord Beaconsfield was unscrupulous. Sir Robert Peel repelled
+men by his temper; Lord John Russell, by his coldness; Lord Derby
+offended them by his pride; Mr. Gladstone distracted them by his
+subtlety. But Lord Palmerston drew both friends and foes together by the
+warmth of his manners and the excellence of his heart" (I, 525).
+
+Walpole's knowledge of continental politics was apparently thorough. At
+all events, any one who desires two entrancing tales, should read the
+chapter on "The Union of Italy," of which Cavour and Napoleon III are
+the heroes; and the two chapters entitled "The Growth of Prussia and the
+Decline of France" and "The Fall of the Second Empire." In these two
+chapters Napoleon III again appears, but Bismarck is the hero. Walpole's
+chapter on "The American Civil War" is the writing of a broad-minded,
+intelligent man, who could look on two sides.
+
+Of Walpole's last book, "Studies in Biography," published in 1907, I
+have left myself no time to speak. Those who are interested in it should
+read the review of it in the _Nation_ early this year, which awards it
+high and unusual commendation.
+
+The readers of Walpole's histories may easily detect in them a treatment
+not possible from a mere closet student of books and manuscripts. A
+knowledge of the science of government and of practical politics is
+there. For Walpole was of a political family. He was of the same house
+as the great Whig Prime Minister, Sir Robert; and his father was Home
+Secretary in the Lord Derby ministry of 1858, and again in 1866, when he
+had to deal with the famous Hyde Park meeting of July 23. On his
+mother's side he was a grandson of Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister
+who in 1812 was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons.
+Walpole's earliest publication was a biography of Perceval.
+
+And Spencer Walpole himself was a man of affairs. A clerk in the War
+Office in 1858, private secretary to his father in 1866, next year
+Inspector of Fisheries, later Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man,
+and from 1893 to 1899 Secretary to the Post-office. In spite of all this
+administrative work his books show that he was a wide, general reader,
+apart from his special historical studies. He wrote in an agreeable
+literary style, with Macaulay undoubtedly as his model, although he was
+by no means a slavish imitator. His "History of Twenty-five Years" seems
+to me to be written with a freer hand than the earlier history. He is
+here animated by the spirit rather than the letter of Macaulay. I no
+longer noticed certain tricks of expression which one catches so easily
+in a study of the great historian, and which seem so well to suit
+Macaulay's own work, but nobody else's.
+
+An article by Walpole on my first four volumes, in the _Edinburgh
+Review_ of January, 1901, led to a correspondence which resulted in my
+receiving an invitation last May to pass Sunday with him at Hartfield
+Grove, his Sussex country place. We were to meet at Victoria station and
+take an early morning train. Seeing Mr. Frederic Harrison the day
+previous, I asked for a personal description of his friend Walpole in
+order that I might easily recognize him. "Well," says Harrison, "perhaps
+I can guide you. A while ago I sat next to a lady during a dinner who
+took me for Walpole and never discovered her mistake until, when she
+addressed me as Sir Spencer, I undeceived her just as the ladies were
+retiring from the table. Now I am the elder by eight years and I don't
+think I look like Walpole, but that good lady had another opinion."
+Walpole and Harrison met that Saturday evening at the Academy dinner,
+and Walpole obtained a personal description of myself. This caution on
+both our parts was unnecessary. We were the only historians traveling
+down on the train and could not possibly have missed one another. I
+found him a thoroughly genial man, and after fifteen minutes in the
+railway carriage we were well acquainted. The preface to his "History of
+Twenty-five Years" told that the two volumes were the work of five
+years. I asked him how he was getting on with the succeeding volumes. He
+replied that he had done a good deal of work on them, and now that he
+was no longer in an administrative position he could concentrate his
+efforts, and he expected to have the work finished before long. I
+inquired if the prominence of his family in politics hampered him at all
+in writing so nearly contemporary history, and he said, "Not a bit." An
+hour of the railroad and a half-hour's drive brought us to his home. It
+was not an ancestral place, but a purchase not many years back. An old
+house had been remodeled with modern improvements, and comfort and ease
+were the predominant aspects. Sir Spencer proposed a "turn" before
+luncheon, which meant a short walk, and after luncheon we had a real
+walk. I am aware that the English mile and our own are alike 5280 feet,
+but I am always impressed with the fact that the English mile seems
+longer, and so I was on this Sunday. For after a good two hours'
+exertion over hills and meadows my host told me that we had gone only
+five miles. Only by direct question did I elicit the fact that had he
+been alone he would have done seven miles in the same time.
+
+There were no other guests, and Lady Walpole, Sir Spencer, and I had all
+of the conversation at luncheon and dinner and during the evening. We
+talked about history and literature, English and American politics, and
+public men. He was singularly well informed about our country, although
+he had only made one brief visit and then in an official capacity.
+English expressions of friendship are now so common that I will not
+quote even one of the many scattered through his volumes, but he
+displayed everywhere a candid appreciation of our good traits and
+creditable doings. I was struck with his knowledge and love of lyric
+poetry. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Lowell were
+thoroughly familiar to him. He would repeat some favorite passage of
+Keats, and at once turn to a discussion of the administrative details of
+his work in the post-office. Of course the day and evening passed very
+quickly,--it was one of the days to be marked with a white stone,--and
+when I bade Walpole good-by on the Monday morning I felt as if I were
+parting from a warm friend. I found him broad-minded, intelligent,
+sympathetic, affable, and he seemed as strong physically as he was sound
+intellectually. His death on Sunday, July 7, of cerebral hemorrhage was
+alike a shock and a grief.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+Address at a gathering of historians on June 5, 1909, to mark the
+placing of a tablet in the inner quadrangle of Jesus College, Oxford, to
+the memory of John Richard Green.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+
+I wish indeed that I had the tongues of men and of angels to express the
+admiration of the reading public of America for the History of John
+Richard Green. I suppose that he has had more readers in our country
+than any other historian except Macaulay, and he has shaped the opinions
+of men who read, more than any writers of history except those whom John
+Morley called the great born men of letters,--Gibbon, Macaulay, and
+Carlyle.
+
+I think it is the earlier volumes rather than the last volume of his
+more extended work which have taken hold of us. Of course we thrill at
+his tribute to Washington, where he has summed up our reverence, trust,
+and faith in him in one single sentence which shows true appreciation
+and deep feeling; and it flatters our national vanity, of which we have
+a goodly stock, to read in his fourth volume that the creation of the
+United States was one of the turning points in the history of the world.
+
+No saying is more trite, at any rate to an educated American audience,
+than that the development of the English nation is one of the most
+wonderful things, if not the most wonderful thing, which history
+records. That history before James I is our own, and, to our general
+readers, it has never been so well presented as in Green's first two
+volumes. The victories of war are our own. It was our ancestors who
+preserved liberty, maintained order, set the train moving toward
+religious toleration, and wrought out that language and literature which
+we are proud of, as well as you.
+
+For my own part, I should not have liked to miss reading and re-reading
+the five chapters on Elizabeth in the second volume. What eloquence in
+simply the title of the last,--The England of Shakespeare! And in fact
+my conception of Elizabeth, derived from Shakespeare, is confirmed by
+Green. As I think how much was at stake in the last half of the
+sixteenth century, and how well the troubles were met by that great
+monarch and the wise statesman whom she called to her aid, I feel that
+we could not be what we are, had a weak, irresolute sovereign been at
+the head of the state.
+
+With the power of a master Green manifests what was accomplished. At the
+accession of Elizabeth--"Never" so he wrote--"had the fortunes of
+England sunk to a lower ebb. The loss of Calais gave France the mastery
+of the Channel. The French King in fact 'bestrode the realm, having one
+foot in Calais, and the other in Scotland.'"
+
+And at the death of Elizabeth, thus Green tells the story: "The danger
+which had hitherto threatened our national existence and our national
+unity had disappeared: France clung to the friendship of England, Spain
+trembled beneath its blows."
+
+With the wide range of years of his subject, with a grasp of an extended
+period akin to Gibbon's, complete accuracy was, of course, not
+attainable, but Samuel R. Gardiner once told me that Green, although
+sometimes inaccurate in details, gave a general impression that was
+justifiable and correct; and that is in substance the published opinion
+of Stubbs.
+
+Goethe said that in reading Moliere you perceive that he possessed the
+charm of an amiable nature in habitual contact with good society. So we,
+who had not the advantage of personal intercourse, divined was the case
+of Green; and when the volume of Letters appeared, we saw that we had
+guessed correctly. But not until then did we know of his devotion to his
+work, and his heroic struggle, which renders the story of his short and
+brilliant career a touching and fascinating biography of a historian who
+made his mark upon his time.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD L. PIERCE
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the October
+meeting of 1897.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD L. PIERCE
+
+
+I shall first speak of Mr. Pierce as an author. His Life of Sumner it
+seems to me is an excellent biography, and the third and fourth volumes
+of it are an important contribution to the history of our country. Any
+one who has gone through the original material of the period he embraces
+must be struck not only with the picture of Sumner, but with the skill
+of the biographer in the use of his data to present a general historical
+view. The injunction of Cicero, "Choose with discretion out of the
+plenty that lies before you," Mr. Pierce observed. To those who know how
+extensive was his reading of books, letters, newspaper files, how much
+he had conversed with the actors in those stirring scenes--and who will
+take into account the mass of memories that crowd upon the mind of one
+who has lived through such an era--this biography will seem not too long
+but rather admirable in its relative brevity. In a talk that I had with
+Mr. Pierce I referred to the notice in an English literary weekly of his
+third and fourth volumes which maintained that the biography was twice
+too long, and I took occasion to say that in comparison with other
+American works of the kind the criticism seemed unjust. "Moreover," I
+went on, "I think you showed restraint in not making use of much of your
+valuable material,--of the interesting and even important unprinted
+letters of Cobden, the Duke of Argyll, and of John Bright." "Yes,"
+replied Mr. Pierce, with a twinkle in his eye, "I can say with Lord
+Clive, 'Great Heavens, at this moment I stand astonished at my own
+moderation.'"
+
+Any one who has studied public sentiment in this country for any period
+knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the
+subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how
+unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are
+essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the
+truth. If a student should ask me in what one book he would find the
+best statement of popular opinion at the North during the Civil War, I
+should say, Read Sumner's letters as cited in Mr. Pierce's biography
+with the author's comments. The speeches of Sumner may smell too much of
+the lamp to be admirable, but the off-hand letters written to his
+English and to a few American friends during our great struggle are
+worthy of the highest esteem. From his conversations with the President,
+the Cabinet ministers, his fellow-senators and congressmen, his
+newspaper reading,--in short, from the many impressions that go to make
+up the daily life of an influential public man,--there has resulted an
+accurate statement of the popular feeling from day to day. In spite of
+his intense desire to have Englishmen of power and position espouse the
+right side, he would not misrepresent anything by the suppression of
+facts, any more than he would make a misleading statement. In the
+selection of these letters Mr. Pierce has shown a nice discrimination.
+
+Sumner, whom I take to have been one of the most truthful of men, was
+fortunate in having one of the most honest of biographers. Mr. Pierce
+would not, I think, have wittingly suppressed anything that told against
+him. I love to think of one citation which would never have been made by
+an idolizing biographer, so sharply did it bring out the folly of the
+opinion expressed. Sumner wrote, May 3, 1863: "There is no doubt here
+about Hooker. He told Judge Bates ... that he 'did not mean to drive the
+enemy but to bag him.' It is thought he is now doing it." The
+biographer's comment is brief, "The letter was written on the day of
+Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville."
+
+It seems to me that Mr. Pierce was as impartial in his writing as is
+possible for a man who has taken an active part in political affairs,
+who is thoroughly in earnest, and who has a positive manner of
+expression. It is not so difficult as some imagine for a student of
+history whose work is done in the library to be impartial, provided he
+has inherited or acquired the desire to be fair and honest, and provided
+he has the diligence and patience to go through the mass of evidence.
+His historical material will show him that to every question there are
+two sides. But what of the man who has been in the heat of the conflict,
+and who, when the fight was on, believed with Sumner that there was no
+other side? If such a man displays candor, how much greater his merit
+than the impartiality of the scholar who shuns political activity and
+has given himself up to a life of speculation!
+
+I had the good fortune to have three long conversations with the Hon.
+Robert C. Winthrop, the last of which occurred shortly after the
+publication of the third and fourth volumes of the Life of Sumner.
+"What," said Mr. Winthrop to me, "do you think of the chapter on the
+Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War?" "I think," was my reply, "that
+Mr. Pierce has treated a delicate subject like a gentleman." "From what
+I have heard of it," responded Mr. Winthrop, earnestly, "and from so
+much as I have read of it, that is also my own opinion." Such a private
+conversation I could, of course, repeat, and, somewhat later the
+occasion presenting itself, I did so to Mr. Pierce. "That is more
+grateful to me," he said, almost with tears in his eyes, "than all the
+praise I have received for these volumes."
+
+Mr. Pierce had, I think, the historic sense. I consulted him several
+times on the treatment of historical matters, taking care not to trench
+on questions where, so different was our point of view, we could not
+possibly agree, and I always received from him advice that was
+suggestive, even if I did not always follow it to the letter. I sent to
+him, while he was in London, my account of Secretary Cameron's report
+proposing to arm the slaves and of his removal from office by President
+Lincoln. Mr. Pierce thought my inferences were far-fetched, and wrote:
+"I prefer the natural explanation. Horace says we must not introduce a
+god into a play unless it is necessary."
+
+As a friend, he was warm-hearted and true. He brought cheer and
+animation into your house. His talk was fresh; his zeal for whatever was
+uppermost in his mind was contagious, and he inspired you with
+enthusiasm. He was not good at conversation, in the French sense of the
+term, for he was given to monologue; but he was never dull. His
+artlessness was charming. He gave you confidences that you would have
+shrunk from hearing out of the mouth of any other man, in the fear that
+you intruded on a privacy where you had no right; but this openness of
+mind was so natural in Mr. Pierce that you listened with concern and
+sympathized warmly. He took interest in everything; he had infinite
+resources, and until his health began to fail, enjoyed life thoroughly.
+He loved society, conversation, travel; and while he had no passion for
+books, he listened to you attentively while you gave an abstract or
+criticism of some book that was attracting attention. In all intercourse
+with him you felt that you were in a healthy moral atmosphere. I never
+knew a man who went out of his way oftener to do good works in which
+there was absolutely no reward, and at a great sacrifice of his time--to
+him a most precious commodity. He was in the true sense of the word a
+philanthropist, and yet no one would have approved more heartily than
+he this remark of Emerson: "The professed philanthropists are an
+altogether odious set of people, whom one would shun as the worst of
+bores and canters."
+
+His interest in this Society the published Proceedings will show in some
+measure, but they cannot reflect the tone of devotion in which he spoke
+of it in conversation, or exhibit his loyalty to it as set forth in the
+personal letter. It was a real privation that his legislative duties
+prevented his attending these meetings last winter.
+
+Of Mr. Pierce as a citizen most of you, gentlemen, can speak better than
+I, but it does appear to me an instance of rare civic virtue that a man
+of his age, political experience, ability, and mental resources could
+take pride and pleasure in his service in the House of Representatives
+of his Commonwealth. He was sixty-eight years old, suffering from
+disease, yet in his service last winter he did not miss one legislative
+session nor a day meeting of his committee. His love for his town was a
+mark of local attachment both praiseworthy and useful. "I would rather
+be moderator of the Milton town-meeting," he said, "than hold any other
+office in the United States."
+
+
+
+
+JACOB D. COX
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the October
+meeting of 1900.
+
+
+
+
+JACOB D. COX
+
+
+A useful member of the legislature of his state, a general in the army
+during the Civil War, governor of his state, Secretary of the Interior
+in President Grant's Cabinet, a member of Congress, the president of a
+large railroad, a writer of books, dean and teacher in a law school, and
+a reviewer of books in the _Nation_,--such were the varied activities of
+General Cox. All this work was done with credit. He bore a prominent
+part in the battle of Antietam, where Ropes speaks of his "brilliant
+success"; he was the second in command at the battle of Franklin, and
+bore the brunt of the battle. "Brigadier-General J. D. Cox," wrote
+Schofield, the commanding general, in his report, "deserves a very large
+share of credit for the brilliant victory at Franklin."
+
+The governor of the state of Ohio did not then have a great opportunity
+of impressing himself upon the minds of the people of his state, but Cox
+made his mark in the canvass for that office. We must call to mind that
+in the year 1865, when he was the Republican candidate for governor,
+President Johnson had initiated his policy of reconstruction, but had
+not yet made a formal break with his party. Negro suffrage, which only a
+few had favored during the last year of the war, was now advocated by
+the radical Republicans, and the popular sentiment of the party was
+tending in that direction. Cox had been a strong antislavery man before
+the war, a supporter of President Lincoln in his emancipation measures,
+but soon after his nomination for governor he wrote a letter to his
+radical friends at Oberlin in opposition to negro suffrage. "You
+assume," he said, "that the extension of the right of suffrage to the
+blacks, leaving them intermixed with the whites, will cure all the
+trouble. I believe it would rather be like the decision in that outer
+darkness of which Milton speaks where
+
+          "'chaos umpire sits,
+  And by decision more embroils the fray.'"
+
+While governor, he said in a private conversation that he had come to
+the conclusion "that so large bodies of black men and white as were in
+presence in the Southern States never could share political power, and
+that the insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would lead
+to their ruin."
+
+President Grant appointed General Cox Secretary of the Interior, and he
+remained for nearly two years in the Cabinet. James Russell Lowell, on a
+visit to Washington in 1870, gave expression to the feeling among
+independent Republicans. "Judge Hoar," he wrote, "and Mr. Cox struck me
+as the only really strong men in the Cabinet." This was long before the
+Civil Service Reform Act had passed Congress, but Secretary Cox put the
+Interior Department on a merit basis, and he was ever afterwards an
+advocate of civil service reform by word of mouth and with his pen.
+Differences with the President, in which I feel pretty sure that the
+Secretary was in the right, caused him to resign the office.
+
+Elected to Congress in 1876, he was a useful member for one term. He has
+always been known to men in public life, and when President McKinley
+offered him the position of Minister to Spain something over three years
+ago, it was felt that a well-known and capable man had been selected.
+For various reasons he did not accept the appointment, but if he had
+done so, no one could doubt that he would have shown tact and judgment
+in the difficult position.
+
+As president of the Wabash Railroad, one of the large railroads in the
+West, he gained a name among business men, and five or six years ago was
+offered the place of Railroad Commissioner in New York City. This was
+practically the position of arbitrator between the trunk lines, but he
+was then Dean of the Cincinnati Law School and interested in a work
+which he did not care to relinquish.
+
+Besides a controversial monograph, he wrote three books on military
+campaigns: "Atlanta"; "The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville";
+"The Battle of Franklin"; and he wrote four excellent chapters for
+Force's "Life of General Sherman." In these he showed qualities of a
+military historian of a high order. Before his death he had finished his
+Reminiscences, which will be brought out by the Scribners this autumn.
+
+His differences with President Grant while in his Cabinet left a wound,
+and in private conversation he was quite severe in his strictures of
+many of the President's acts, but he never let this feeling influence
+him in the slightest degree in the consideration of Grant the General.
+He had a very high idea of Grant's military talents, which he has in
+many ways emphatically stated.
+
+Since 1874 he had been a constant contributor to the literary department
+of the _Nation_. In his book reviews he showed a fine critical faculty
+and large general information, and some of his obituary
+notices--especially those of Generals Buell, Grant, Sherman, Joseph E.
+Johnston, and Jefferson Davis--showed that power of impartial
+characterization which is so great a merit in a historian. He was an
+omnivorous reader of serious books. It was difficult to name any
+noteworthy work of history or biography or any popular book on natural
+science with which he was not acquainted.
+
+As I saw him two years ago, when he was seventy years old, he was in the
+best of health and vigor, which seemed to promise many years of life. He
+was tall, erect, with a frame denoting great physical strength, and he
+had distinctively a military bearing. He was an agreeable companion, an
+excellent talker, a scrupulously honest and truthful man, and a
+gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the March
+meeting of 1908.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE
+
+
+When an associate dies who was not yet forty-eight years old, whom most
+of us knew as a strong enduring man, who was capable of an immense
+amount of intellectual work, it is a real calamity,--a calamity which in
+this case History mourns, as Edward Gaylord Bourne was an excellent
+teacher and a thorough historical scholar. The physical details of any
+illness are apt to be repulsive, but the malady in Bourne's case was
+somehow so bound up in his life that an inquiry into it comes from no
+morbid curiosity. When ten years old he was attacked with tubercular
+disease of the hip, and for some weeks his life was despaired of; but he
+was saved by the loving care of his parents, receiving particular
+devotion from his father, who was a Congregational minister in charge of
+a parish in Connecticut. As the left leg had out-grown the other, Bourne
+was obliged to use crutches for three years, when his father took him to
+a specialist in Boston, and the result was that he was able to abandon
+crutches and in the end to get about by an appliance to adjust the
+lengths of the different legs, such as his friends were familiar with.
+Despite this disability he developed great physical strength, especially
+in the chest and arms, but his lameness prevented his accompanying his
+college companions on long tramps, so that the bicycle was for him a
+most welcome invention. He became expert in the use of it, riding on it
+down Pike's Peak at the time of his visit to Colorado; and he performed
+a similar feat of endurance on another occasion when stopping with me at
+Jefferson in the White Mountains. Starting early in the morning, he
+traveled by rail to the terminus of the mountain railroad, went up Mount
+Washington on the railroad, and rode down the carriage road on his wheel
+to the Glen House, which ought to have been enough of fatigue and
+exertion for one day, but he then had about ten miles to make on his
+bicycle over a somewhat rough mountain road to reach Jefferson.
+Jefferson he did make, but not until after midnight.
+
+During an acquaintance of over nineteen years with Bourne, I was always
+impressed with his physical strength and endurance; and I was therefore
+much surprised to learn, in a letter received from him last winter while
+I was in Rome, that his youthful malady had attacked him, that he was
+again on crutches and had been obliged to give up his work at Yale. In
+truth ever since the autumn of 1906 he has had a painful, hopeless
+struggle. He has had the benefit of all the resources of medicine and
+surgery, and he and his wife were buoyed up by hope until the last; but
+as the sequel of one of a series of operations death came to his relief
+on February 24.
+
+Only less remarkable than his struggle for life and physical strength
+was his energy in acquiring an education. The sacrifices that parents in
+New England and the rest of the country make in order to send their boys
+to school and college is a common enough circumstance, but not always is
+the return so satisfactory as it was in the case of Edward Bourne, and
+his brother. Edward went to the Norwich Academy, where his studious
+disposition and diligent purpose gained him the favor of the principal.
+Thence to Yale, where he attracted the attention of Professor William G.
+Sumner, who became to him a guide and a friend. Until his senior year at
+Yale his favorite studies were Latin and Greek; and his brother, who was
+in his class, informs me that ever since his preparatory school days, it
+was his custom to read the whole of any author in hand as well as the
+part set for the class. During recitations he recalls seeing him again
+and again reading ahead in additional books of the author, keeping at
+the same time "a finger on the page where the class was translating, in
+order not to be caught off his guard." In his senior year at Yale, under
+the influence of Professor Sumner, he became interested in economics and
+won the Cobden medal. After graduation he wrote his first historical
+book, "The History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837," published in 1885 in
+Putnam's "Questions of the Day" series. For this and his other graduate
+work his university later conferred upon him the degree of Ph.D. Since I
+have learned the story of his boyhood and youth, it is with peculiar
+appreciation that I read the dedication of this first book: "To my
+Father and Mother." I may add in this connection that while pursuing his
+indefatigable labors for the support of his large family, his father's
+sickness and death overtaxed his strength, and the breakdown followed.
+
+At Yale during his graduate work he won the Foote scholarship; he was
+instructor in history there from 1886 to 1888, then took a similar
+position at Adelbert College, Cleveland, becoming Professor of History
+in 1890. This post he held until 1895, when he was called to Yale
+University as Professor of History, a position that he held at the time
+of his death.
+
+Besides the doctor's thesis, Bourne published two books, the first of
+which was "Essays in Historical Criticism," one of the Yale bicentennial
+publications, the most notable essay in which is that on Marcus Whitman.
+A paper read at the Ann Arbor session of the American Historical meeting
+in Detroit and later published in the _American Historical Review_ is
+here amplified into a long and exhaustive treatment of the subject. The
+original paper gained Bourne some celebrity and subjected him to some
+harsh criticism, both of which, I think, he thoroughly enjoyed. Feeling
+sure of his facts and ground, he delighted in his final word to support
+the contention which he had read with emphasis and pleasure to an
+attentive audience in one of the halls of the University of Michigan.
+The final paragraph sums up what he set out to prove with undoubted
+success:
+
+    That Marcus Whitman was a devoted and heroic missionary who braved
+    every hardship and imperilled his life for the cause of Christian
+    missions and Christian civilization in the far Northwest and finally
+    died at his post, a sacrifice to the cause, will not be gainsaid.
+    That he deserves grateful commemoration in Oregon and Washington is
+    beyond dispute. But that he is a national figure in American
+    history, or that he "saved" Oregon, must be rejected as a fiction
+    [p. 100].
+
+Bourne had a good knowledge of American history, and he specialized on
+the Discoveries period, to which he gave close and continuous attention.
+He was indebted to Professor Hart's ambitious and excellent cooperative
+history, "The American Nation," for the opportunity to obtain a hearing
+on his favorite subject. His "Spain in America," his third published
+book, is the book of a scholar. While the conditions of his narrative
+allowed only forty-six pages to the story of Columbus, he had
+undoubtedly material enough well arranged and digested to fill the
+volume on this topic alone. I desire to quote a signal example of
+compression:
+
+    It was November, 1504, when Columbus arrived in Seville, a broken
+    man, something over twelve years from the time he first set sail
+    from Palos. Each successive voyage since his first had left him at a
+    lower point. On his return from the second he was on the defensive;
+    after his third he was deprived of his viceroyalty; on his fourth he
+    was shipwrecked.... The last blow, the death of his patron Isabella,
+    soon followed. It was months before he was able to attend court.
+    His strength gradually failed, he sank from public view, and on the
+    eve of Ascension Day, May 20, 1506, he passed away in obscurity
+    [p. 81].
+
+And I am very fond of this final characterization:
+
+    Columbus ... has revealed himself in his writings as few men of
+    action have been revealed. His hopes, his illusions, his vanity, and
+    love of money, his devotion to by-gone ideals, his keen and
+    sensitive observation of the natural world, his credulity and utter
+    lack of critical power in dealing with literary evidence, his
+    practical abilities as a navigator, his tenacity of purpose and
+    boldness of execution, his lack of fidelity as a husband and a
+    lover,... all stand out in clear relief.... Of all the self-made men
+    that America has produced, none has had a more dazzling success, a
+    more pathetic sinking to obscurity, or achieved a more universal
+    celebrity [p. 82].
+
+His chapter on Magellan is thoroughly interesting. The treatment of
+Columbus and Magellan shows what Bourne might have achieved in
+historical work if he could have had leisure to select his own subjects
+and elaborate them at will.
+
+Before "Spain in America" appeared, he wrote a scholarly introduction to
+the vast work on the "Philippine Islands" published by the Arthur H.
+Clark Company, of Cleveland, of which fifty-one volumes are already out.
+The study of this subject gave Bourne a chance for the exhibition of his
+dry wit at one of the gatherings of the American Historical Association.
+It was asserted that in the acquisition of the Philippine Islands our
+country had violated the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, which properly
+confined our indulgence of the land hunger that is preying upon the
+world to the Western hemisphere. Bourne took issue with this statement.
+He said that it might well be a question whether the Philippine Islands
+did not belong to the Western hemisphere and that--
+
+    for the first three centuries of their recorded history, they were
+    in a sense a dependency of America. As a dependency of New Spain
+    they constituted the extreme western verge of the Spanish dominions
+    and were commonly known as the Western Islands. When the sun rose in
+    Madrid it was still early afternoon of the preceding day in Manila.
+    Down to the end of the year 1844 the Manilan calendar was reckoned
+    after that of Spain, that is, Manila time was about sixteen hours
+    slower than Madrid time.
+
+Bourne undertook to write the Life of Motley for Houghton, Mifflin and
+Company's American Men of Letters series, and he had done considerable
+work in the investigation of material. He was editor of a number of
+publications, one of which was John Fiske's posthumous volume, "New
+France and New England," and he wrote critical notices for the _Nation_,
+_New York Tribune_, and the _New York Times_. As I have said, he had a
+large family to support, and he sought work of the potboiling order; but
+in this necessary labor he never sacrificed his ideal of thoroughness. A
+remark that he made to me some while ago has come back with pathetic
+interest. After telling me what he was doing, how much time his teaching
+left for outside work, why he did this and that because it brought him
+money, he said: "I can get along all right. I can support my family,
+educate my children, and get a little needed recreation, if only my
+health does not break down."
+
+Bourne took great interest in the American Historical Association, and
+rarely if ever missed an annual meeting. He frequently read papers,
+which were carefully prepared, and a number of them are printed in the
+volume of Essays to which I have referred. He was the efficient chairman
+of the programme committee at the meeting in New Haven in 1898; and as
+chairman of an important committee, or as member of the Council, he
+attended the November dinners and meetings in New York, so that he came
+to be looked upon as one of the chief supporters of the Association.
+Interested also in the _American Historical Review_, he was a frequent
+contributor of critical book notices.
+
+My acquaintance with Bourne began in 1888, the year in which I commenced
+the composition of my history. We were both living in Cleveland, and, as
+it was his custom to dine with me once or twice a month, acquaintance
+grew into friendship, and I came to have a great respect for his
+training and knowledge as a historical scholar. The vastness of
+historical inquiry impressed me, as it has all writers of history.
+Recognizing in Bourne a kindred spirit, it occurred to me whether I
+could not hasten my work if he would employ part of his summer vacation
+in collecting material. I imparted the idea to Bourne, who received it
+favorably, and he spent a month of the summer of 1889 at work for me in
+the Boston Athenaeum on my general specifications, laboring with industry
+and discrimination over the newspapers of the early '50's to which we
+had agreed to confine his work. His task completed, he made me a visit
+of a few days at Bar Harbor, affording an opportunity for us to discuss
+the period and his material. I was so impressed with the value of his
+assistance that, when the manuscript of my first two volumes was
+completed in 1891, I asked him to spend a month with me and work jointly
+on its revision. We used to devote four or five hours a day to this
+labor, and in 1894, when I had finished my third volume, we had a
+similar collaboration.[163] I have never known a better test of general
+knowledge and intellectual temper.
+
+Bourne was a slow thinker and worker, but he was sure, and, when he knew
+a thing, his exposition was clear and pointed. The chance of reflection
+over night and the occasional discussion at meal times, outside of our
+set hours, gave him the opportunity to recall all his knowledge bearing
+on the subject in hand, to digest and classify it thoroughly, so that,
+when he tackled a question, he talked, so to speak, like a book. Two
+chapters especially attracted him,--the one on Slavery in my first
+volume, and the one on general financial and social conditions at the
+beginning of the third; and I think that I may say that not only every
+paragraph and sentence, but every important word in these two chapters
+was discussed and weighed. Bourne was a good critic, and, to set him
+entirely at ease, as he was twelve years younger, I told him to lay
+aside any respect on account of age, and to speak out frankly, no matter
+how hard it hit, adding that I had better hear disagreeable things from
+him than to have them said by critics after the volumes were printed.
+
+The intelligent note on page 51 of my third volume was written by
+Bourne, as I state in the note itself, but I did not speak of the large
+amount of study he gave to it. I never knew a man take keener interest
+in anything, and as we had all the necessary authorities at hand, he
+worked over them for two days, coming down on the morning of the third
+day with the triumphant air of one who had wrestled successfully with a
+mathematical problem all night. He sat down and, as I remember it, wrote
+the note substantially as it now stands in the volume. He was very
+strong on all economic and sociological questions, displaying in a
+marked degree the intellectual stimulus he had derived from his
+association with Professor Sumner. He was a born controversialist and
+liked to argue. "The appetite comes in eating" is a French saying, and
+with Bourne his knowledge seemed to be best evolved by the actual joint
+working and collision with another mind.
+
+I remember one felicitous suggestion of Bourne's which after much
+working over we incorporated into a paragraph to our common
+satisfaction; and this paragraph received commendation in some critical
+notice. Showing this to Bourne, I said: "That is the way of the world.
+You did the thinking, I got the credit." Bourne had, however, forgotten
+his part in the paragraph. His mind was really so full of knowledge,
+when one could get at it, that he did not remember giving off any part
+of it. In addition to his quality of close concentration, he acquired a
+good deal of knowledge in a desultory way. In my library when
+conversation lagged he would go to the shelves and take down book after
+book, reading a little here or there, lighting especially upon any books
+that had been acquired since his previous visit, and with reading he
+would comment. This love of browsing in a library he acquired when a
+boy, so his brother informs me, and when at Yale it was said that he
+knew the library as well as the librarian himself.
+
+It will be remembered that last spring our accomplished editor, Mr.
+Smith, decided that he could no longer bear the burden of this highly
+important work; and the question of a fit successor came up at once in
+the mind of our President. Writing to me while I was in Europe, he
+expressed the desire of consulting with me on the subject as soon as I
+returned. I was unfortunately unable to get back in time for the June
+meeting of the Society; and afterwards when I reached Boston the
+President had gone West, and when he got home I was at Seal Harbor. To
+spare me the trip to Boston and Lincoln, he courteously offered to come
+to see me at Seal Harbor, where we had the opportunity to discuss the
+subject in all its bearings. It will be quite evident from this
+narrative that my choice for editor would be no other than Professor
+Bourne, and I was much gratified to learn that the President from his
+own observation and reflection had determined on the same man. Mr. Adams
+had been accustomed to see Bourne at meetings of the American
+Historical Association and at dinners of their Council; but, so he
+informed me, he was not specially impressed by him until he read the
+essay on Marcus Whitman, which gave him a high idea of Bourne's power of
+working over material, and his faculty of trenchant criticism. We
+arrived readily at the conclusion that Bourne would be an ideal editor
+and that the position would suit him perfectly. Relieved of the drudgery
+of teaching, he could give full swing to his love of books and to his
+desire of running down through all the authorities some fact or
+reference bearing upon the subject in hand. The work would be a labor of
+love on which he could bring to bear his knowledge, conscientious
+endeavor, and historical training. It would have been a case of mutual
+benefit. He would be fortunate in securing such a position, and the
+Society might be congratulated on being able to get a man so peculiarly
+qualified for editorial work. But there was the question of Bourne's
+health. We both knew that he had been failing, but we were not aware
+that his case was hopeless. The President did not wish to present his
+recommendation to the Council until there was a reasonable chance of his
+recovery, and I undertook from time to time to get information from a
+common friend in New Haven of his progress. But there was no good news.
+While Bourne, with the help of his devoted wife, made an energetic fight
+for life, it was unavailing. In his death Yale lost an excellent teacher
+of history and this Society a candidate who, if he had been chosen,
+would have made an accomplished editor.
+
+
+  [163] Bourne also revised the manuscript of my fourth volume, but the
+        conditions did not admit of our being together more than two
+        days, and the revision was not so satisfactory to either of us
+        as that of the first three volumes.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE
+
+Printed in _Scribner's Magazine_, of February, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE
+
+
+The English Constitution, as it existed between 1760 and 1787, was the
+model of the American, but parts of it were inapplicable to the
+conditions in which the thirteen Colonies found themselves, and where
+the model failed the Convention struck out anew. The sagacity of the
+American statesmen in this creative work may well fill Englishmen, so
+Sir Henry Maine wrote, "with wonder and envy." Mr. Bryce's
+classification of constitutions as flexible and rigid is apt: of our
+Constitution it may be said that in the main it is rigid in those
+matters which should not be submitted to the decision of a legislature
+or to a popular vote without checks which secure reflection and a chance
+for the sober second thought, and that it has proved flexible in its
+adaptation to the growth of the country and to the development of the
+nineteenth century. Sometimes, though, it is flexible to the extent of
+lacking precision. An instance of this is the proviso for the counting
+of the electoral vote. "The votes shall then be counted" are the words.
+Thus, when in 1876 it was doubtful whether Tilden or Hayes had been
+chosen President, a fierce controversy arose as to who should count the
+votes, the President of the Senate or Congress. While many regretted the
+absence of an incontrovertible provision, it was fortunate for the
+country that the Constitution did not provide that the vote should be
+counted by the President of the Senate, who, the Vice President having
+died in office, was in 1877 a creature of the partisan majority. It is
+doubtful, too, if the decision of such an officer would have been
+acquiesced in by the mass of Democrats, who thought that they had fairly
+elected their candidate. There being no express declaration of the
+Constitution, it devolved upon Congress to settle the dispute; the
+ability and patriotism of that body was equal to the crisis. By a
+well-devised plan of arbitration, Congress relieved the strain and
+provided for a peaceful settlement of a difficulty which in most
+countries would have led to civil war.
+
+In the provisions conferring the powers and defining the duties of the
+executive the flexible character of the Constitution is shown in another
+way. Everything is clearly stated, but the statements go not beyond the
+elementary. The Convention knew what it wanted to say, and Gouverneur
+Morris, who in the end drew up the document, wrote this part of it, as
+indeed all other parts, in clear and effective words. It is due to him,
+wrote Laboulaye, that the Constitution has a "distinctness entirely
+French, in happy contrast to the complicated language of the English
+laws." Yet on account of the elementary character of the article of the
+Constitution on the powers of the President, there is room for
+inference, a chance for development, and an opportunity for a strong man
+to imprint his character upon the office. The Convention, writes Mr.
+Bryce, made its executive a George III "shorn of a part of his
+prerogative," his influence and dignity diminished by a reduction of the
+term of office to four years. The English writer was thoroughly familiar
+with the _Federalist_, and appreciated Hamilton's politic efforts to
+demonstrate that the executive of the Constitution was modeled after the
+governors of the states, and not after the British monarch; but "an
+enlarged copy of the state governor," Mr. Bryce asserts, is one and the
+same thing as "a reduced and improved copy of the English king." But, on
+the other hand, Bagehot did not believe that the Americans comprehended
+the English Constitution. "Living across the Atlantic," he wrote, "and
+misled by accepted doctrines, the acute framers of the Federal
+Constitution, even after the keenest attention, did not perceive the
+Prime Minister to be the principal executive of the British
+Constitution, and the sovereign a cog in the mechanism;" and he seems to
+think that if this had been understood the executive power would have
+been differently constituted.
+
+It is a pertinent suggestion of Mr. Bryce's that the members of the
+Convention must have been thinking of their presiding officer, George
+Washington, as the first man who would exercise the powers of the
+executive office they were creating. So it turned out. Never did a
+country begin a new enterprise with so wise a ruler. An admirable polity
+had been adopted, but much depended upon getting it to work, and the man
+who was selected to start the government was the man of all men for the
+task. Histories many and from different points of view have been written
+of Washington's administration; all are interesting, and the subject
+seems to ennoble the writers. Statesmen meeting with students to discuss
+the character and political acts of Washington marvel at his wisdom in
+great things and his patience in small things, at the dignity and good
+sense with which he established the etiquette of his office, at the tact
+which retained in his service two such irreconcilable men as Jefferson
+and Hamilton. The importance of a good start for an infant government is
+well understood. But for our little state of four million people such a
+start was difficult to secure. The contentions which grew out of the
+ratification of the Constitution in the different states had left bitter
+feelings behind them, and these domestic troubles were heightened by our
+intimate relations with foreign countries. We touched England, France,
+and Spain at delicate points, and the infancy of our nation was passed
+during the turmoil of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. In
+our midst there was an English and a French party. Moreover, in the
+judgment of the world the experiment of the new government was
+foredoomed to failure. Wrote Sir Henry Maine, "It is not at all easy to
+bring home to the men of the present day how low the credit of republics
+had sunk before the establishment of the United States." Hardly were
+success to be won had we fallen upon quiet times; but with free
+governments discredited, and the word "liberty" made a reproach by the
+course of the French Revolution, it would seem impossible.
+
+Washington's prescience is remarkable. Recognizing, in October, 1789,
+that France had "gone triumphantly through the first paroxysm," he felt
+that she must encounter others, that more blood must be shed, that she
+might run from one extreme to another, and that "a higher-toned
+despotism" might replace "the one which existed before." Mentally
+prepared as he was, he met with skill the difficulties as they arose, so
+that the conduct of our foreign relations during the eight years of his
+administration was marked by discretion and furnished a good pattern to
+follow. During his foreign negotiations he determined a constitutional
+question of importance. When the Senate had ratified and Washington,
+after some delay, had signed the Jay treaty, the House of
+Representatives, standing for the popular clamor against it, asked the
+President for all the papers relating to the negotiation, on the ground
+that the House of Representatives must give its concurrence. This demand
+he resisted, maintaining that it struck at "the fundamental principles
+of the Constitution," which conferred upon the President and the Senate
+the power of making treaties, and provided that these treaties when made
+and ratified were the supreme law of the land. In domestic affairs he
+showed discernment in selecting as his confidential adviser, Alexander
+Hamilton, a man who had great constructive talent; and he gave a
+demonstration of the physical strength of the government by putting
+down the whisky rebellion in Pennsylvania. During his eight years he
+construed the powers conferred upon the executive by the Constitution
+with wisdom, and exercised them with firmness and vigor. Washington was
+a man of exquisite manners and his conduct of the office gave it a
+dignity and prestige which, with the exception of a part of one term, it
+has never lost.
+
+Four of the five Presidents who followed Washington were men of
+education and ability, and all of them had large political training and
+experience; they reached their position by the process of a natural
+selection in politics, being entitled fitly to the places for which they
+were chosen. The three first fell upon stormy times and did their work
+during periods of intense partisan excitement; they were also subject to
+personal detraction, but the result in the aggregate of their
+administrations was good, inasmuch as they either maintained the power
+of the executive or increased its influence. Despite their many mistakes
+they somehow overcame the great difficulties. Each one did something of
+merit and the country made a distinct gain from John Adams to Monroe.
+Any one of them suffers by comparison with Washington: the "era of good
+feeling" was due to Congress and the people as well as to the executive.
+Nevertheless, the three turbulent administrations and the two quiet ones
+which succeeded Washington's may at this distance from them be
+contemplated with a feeling of gratulation. The Presidents surrounded
+themselves for the most part with men of ability, experience, and
+refinement, who carried on the government with dignity and a sense of
+proportion, building well upon the foundations which Washington had
+laid.
+
+A contrast between France and the United States leads to curious
+reflections. The one has a past rich in art, literature, and
+architecture, which the other almost entirely lacks. But politically the
+older country has broken with the past, while we have political
+traditions peculiar to ourselves of the highest value. For the man
+American-born they may be summed up in Washington, the rest of the
+"Fathers," and the Constitution; and those who leave England, Scotland,
+Ireland, Wales, Germany, and Scandinavia to make their home in America
+soon come to share in these possessions. While the immigrants from
+southern Europe do not comprehend the Constitution, they know
+Washington. An object lesson may be had almost any pleasant Sunday or
+holiday in the public garden in Boston from the group of Italians who
+gather about the statue of Washington, showing, by their mobile faces
+and animated talk, that they revere him who is the father of their
+adopted country.
+
+During these five administrations, at least two important extensions or
+assertions of executive power were made. In 1803 Jefferson bought
+Louisiana, doing, he said, "an act beyond the Constitution." He was a
+strict constructionist, and was deeply concerned at the variance between
+his constitutional principles and a desire for the material advantage of
+his country. In an effort to preserve his consistency he suggested to
+his Cabinet and political friends an amendment to the Constitution
+approving and confirming the cession of this territory, but they,
+deeming such an amendment entirely unnecessary, received his suggestion
+coldly. In the debate on the Louisiana treaty in the Senate and the
+House, all speakers of both parties agreed that "the United States
+government had the power to acquire new territory either by conquest or
+by treaty."[164] Louisiana, "without its consent and against its will,"
+was annexed to the United States, and Jefferson "made himself monarch of
+the new territory, and wielded over it, against its protests, the
+powers of its old kings."[165]
+
+The assertion by the President in 1823 of the Monroe Doctrine (which Mr.
+Worthington C. Ford has shown to be the John Quincy Adams doctrine) is
+an important circumstance in the development of the executive power.
+
+President John Quincy Adams was succeeded by Andrew Jackson, a man of
+entirely different character from those who had preceded him in the
+office, and he represented different aims. Adams deserved another term.
+His sturdy Americanism, tempered by the cautiousness in procedure which
+was due to his rare training, made him an excellent public servant, and
+the country erred in not availing itself of his further service. The
+change from the _regime_ of the first six Presidents to that of Jackson
+was probably inevitable. A high-toned democracy, based on a qualified
+suffrage, believing in the value of training for public life and
+administrative office, setting a value on refinement and good manners,
+was in the end sure to give way to a pure democracy based on universal
+suffrage whenever it could find a leader to give it force and direction.
+Jackson was such a leader. His followers felt: "He is one of us. He is
+not proud and does not care for style."[166] The era of vulgarity in
+national politics was ushered in by Jackson, who as President introduced
+the custom of rewarding political workers with offices, an innovation
+entirely indefensible; he ought to have continued the practice of his
+six predecessors. The interaction between government and politics on the
+one hand and the life of the people on the other is persistent, and it
+may be doubted whether the United States would have seemed as it did to
+Dickens had not Jackson played such an important part in the
+vulgarization of politics. Yet it was a happy country, as the pages of
+Tocqueville bear witness.
+
+Jackson was a strong executive and placed in his Cabinet men who would
+do his will, and who, from his own point of view, were good advisers,
+since they counseled him to pursue the course he had marked out for
+himself. Comparing his Cabinet officers to those of the Presidents
+preceding him, one realizes that another plan of governing was set on
+foot, based on the theory that any American citizen is fit for any
+position to which he is called. It was an era when special training for
+administrative work began to be slighted, when education beyond the
+rudiments was considered unnecessary except in the three professions,
+when the practical man was apotheosized and the bookish man despised.
+Jackson, uneducated and with little experience in civil life, showed
+what power might be exercised by an arbitrary, unreasonable man who had
+the people at his back. The brilliant three--Webster, Clay, and
+Calhoun--were unable to prevail against his power.
+
+Jackson's financial policy may be defended; yet had it not been for his
+course during the nullification trouble, his declaration, "Our Federal
+Union: It must be preserved," and his consistent and vigorous action in
+accordance with that sentiment it would be difficult to affirm that the
+influence of his two terms of office was good. It cannot be said that he
+increased permanently the power of the executive, but he showed its
+capabilities. It is somewhat curious, however, that Tocqueville, whose
+observations were made under Jackson, should have written: "The
+President possesses almost royal prerogatives, which he never has an
+opportunity of using.... The laws permit him to be strong; circumstances
+keep him weak."
+
+The eight Presidents from Jackson to Lincoln did not raise the character
+of the presidential office. Van Buren was the heir of Jackson. Of the
+others, five owed their nominations to their availability. The evil
+which Jackson did lived after him; indeed, only a man as powerful for
+the good as he had been for the bad could have restored the civil
+service to the merit system which had prevailed before he occupied the
+White House. The offices were at stake in every election, and the
+scramble for them after the determination of the result was great and
+pressing. The chief business of a President for many months after his
+inauguration was the dealing out of the offices to his followers and
+henchmen. It was a bad scheme, from the political point of view, for
+every President except him who inaugurated it. Richelieu is reported to
+have said, on making an appointment, "I have made a hundred enemies and
+one ingrate." So might have said many times the Presidents who succeeded
+Jackson.
+
+The Whig, a very respectable party, having in its ranks the majority of
+the men of wealth and education, fell a victim to the doctrine of
+availability when it nominated Harrison on account of his military
+reputation. He lived only one month after his inauguration, and Tyler,
+the Vice President, who succeeded him, reverted to his old political
+principles, which were Democratic, and broke with the Whigs. By an
+adroit and steady use of the executive power he effected the annexation
+of Texas, but the master spirit in this enterprise was Calhoun, his
+Secretary of State. Polk, his Democratic successor, coveted California
+and New Mexico, tried to purchase them, and not being able to do this,
+determined on war. In fact, he had decided to send in a war message to
+Congress before the news came that the Mexicans, goaded to it by the
+action of General Taylor, under direct orders of the President, had
+attacked an American force and killed sixteen of our dragoons. This
+gave a different complexion to his message, and enabled him to get a
+strong backing from Congress for his war policy. The actions of Tyler
+and of Polk illustrate the power inherent in the executive office. It
+might seem that the exercise of this authority, securing for us at small
+material cost the magnificent domains of Texas, California, and New
+Mexico, would have given these Presidents a fame somewhat like that
+which Jefferson won by the purchase of Louisiana. But such has not been
+the case. The main reason is that the extension of slavery was involved
+in both enterprises, and the histories of these times, which have molded
+historical sentiment, have been written from the antislavery point of
+view. It seems hardly probable that this sentiment will be changed in
+any time that we can forecast, but there is an undoubted tendency in the
+younger historical students to look upon the expansion of the country as
+the important consideration, and the slavery question as incidental.
+Professor von Holst thought this changing historical sentiment entirely
+natural, but he felt sure that in the end men would come round to the
+antislavery view, of which he was so powerful an advocate.
+
+From Taylor to Lincoln slavery dominated all other questions. Taylor was
+a Southern man and a slaveholder, and by his course on the Compromise
+measures attracted the favor of antislavery men; while Fillmore of New
+York, who succeeded this second President to die in office, and who
+exerted the power of the Administration to secure the passage of Clay's
+Compromise and signed the Fugitive Slave Law, had but a small political
+following at the North. Pierce and Buchanan were weak, the more positive
+men in their Cabinets and in the Senate swayed them. For a part of both
+of their terms the House of Representatives was controlled by the
+opposition, the Senate remaining Democratic. These circumstances are
+evidence both of the length of time required to change the political
+complexion of the Senate and of the increasing power of the North, which
+was dominant in the popular House. For the decade before the Civil War
+we should study the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme
+Court, the action of the states, and popular sentiment. The executive is
+still powerful, but he is powerful because he is the representative of a
+party or faction which dictates the use that shall be made of his
+constitutional powers. The presidential office loses interest:
+irresolute men are in the White House, strong men everywhere else.
+
+Lincoln is inaugurated President; the Civil War ensues, and with it an
+extraordinary development of the executive power. It is an interesting
+fact that the ruler of a republic which sprang from a resistance to the
+English king and Parliament should exercise more arbitrary power than
+any Englishman since Oliver Cromwell, and that many of his acts should
+be worthy of a Tudor. Lincoln was a good lawyer who reverenced the
+Constitution and the laws, and only through necessity assumed and
+exercised extra-legal powers, trying at the same time to give to these
+actions the color of legality. Hence his theory of the war power of the
+Constitution, which may be construed to permit everything necessary to
+carry on the war. Yet his dictatorship was different from Caesar's and
+different from the absolute authority of Napoleon. He acted under the
+restraints imposed by his own legal conscience and patriotic soul, whose
+influence was revealed in his confidential letters and talks. We know
+furthermore that he often took counsel of his Cabinet officers before
+deciding matters of moment. Certain it is that in arbitrary arrests
+Seward and Stanton were disposed to go further than Lincoln. The spirit
+of arbitrary power was in the air, and unwise and unjust acts were done
+by subordinates, which, although Lincoln would not have done them
+himself, he deemed it better to ratify than to undo. This was notably
+the case in the arrest of Vallandigham. Again, Congress did not always
+do what Lincoln wished, and certain men of his own party in Congress
+were strong enough to influence his actions in various ways. But, after
+all, he was himself a strong man exercising comprehensive authority; and
+it is an example of the flexibility of the Constitution that, while it
+surely did not authorize certain of Lincoln's acts, it did not expressly
+forbid them. It was, for example, an open question whether the
+Constitution authorized Congress or the President to suspend the writ of
+_habeas corpus_.
+
+It seems to be pretty well settled by the common sense of mankind that
+when a nation is fighting for its existence it cannot be fettered by all
+the legal technicalities which obtain in the time of peace. Happy the
+country whose dictatorship, if dictator there must be, falls into wise
+and honest hands! The honesty, magnanimity, and wisdom of Lincoln guided
+him aright, and no harm has come to the great principles of liberty from
+the arbitrary acts which he did or suffered to be done. On the other
+hand he has so impressed himself upon the Commonwealth that he has made
+a precedent for future rulers in a time of national peril, and what he
+excused and defended will be assumed as a matter of course because it
+will be according to the Constitution as interpreted by Abraham Lincoln.
+This the Supreme Court foresaw when it rendered its judgment in the
+Milligan case, saying: "Wicked men ambitious of power, with hatred of
+liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by
+Washington and Lincoln, and if this right is conceded [that of a
+commander in a time of war to declare martial law within the lines of
+his military district and subject citizens as well as soldiers to the
+rule of _his will_] and the calamities of war again befall us, the
+dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate." No one can deny
+that a danger here exists, but it is not so great as the solemn words of
+the Supreme Court might lead one to believe. For Lincoln could not have
+persisted in his arbitrary acts had a majority of Congress definitely
+opposed them, and his real strength lay in the fact that he had the
+people at his back. This may be said of the period from the first call
+of troops in April, 1861, until the summer of 1862. McClellan's failure
+on the Peninsula, Pope's disaster at the second battle of Bull Run, the
+defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville lost Lincoln the
+confidence of many; and while the emancipation proclamation of
+September, 1862, intensified the support of others, it nevertheless
+alienated some Republicans and gave to the opposition of the Democrats a
+new vigor. But after Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July, 1863, Lincoln had
+the support of the mass of the Northern people. Whatever he did the
+people believed was right because he had done it. The trust each placed
+in the other is one of the inspiring examples of free government and
+democracy. Lincoln did not betray their confidence: they did not falter
+save possibly for brief moments during the gloomy summer of 1864. The
+people who gave their unreserved support to Lincoln were endued with
+intelligence and common sense; not attracted by any personal magnetism
+of the man, they had, by a process of homely reasoning, attained their
+convictions and from these they were not to be shaken. This is the
+safety of a dictatorship as long as the same intelligence obtains among
+the voters as now; for the people will not support a ruler in the
+exercise of extra-legal powers unless he be honest and patriotic. The
+danger may come in a time of trouble from either an irresolute or an
+unduly obstinate executive. The irresolute man would baffle the best
+intentions of the voters; the obstinate man might quarrel with Congress
+and the people. Either event in time of war would be serious and might
+be disastrous. But the chances are against another Buchanan or Johnson
+in the presidential office.
+
+If the Civil War showed the flexibility of the Constitution in that the
+executive by the general agreement of Congress and the people was able
+to assume unwarranted powers, the course of affairs under Johnson
+demonstrated the strength that Congress derived from the organic act.
+The story is told in a sentence by Blaine: "Two thirds of each House
+united and stimulated to one end can practically neutralize the
+executive power of the government and lay down its policy in defiance of
+the efforts and opposition of the President."[167] What a contrast
+between the two administrations! Under Lincoln Congress, for the most
+part, simply registered the will of the President; under Johnson the
+President became a mere executive clerk of Congress. In the one case the
+people supported the President, in the other they sustained Congress.
+Nothing could better illustrate the flexibility of the Constitution than
+the contrast between these administrations; but it needs no argument to
+show that to pass from one such extreme to another is not healthy for
+the body politic. The violent antagonisms aroused during Johnson's
+administration, when the difficult questions to be settled needed the
+best statesmanship of the country, and when the President and Congress
+should have cooperated wisely and sympathetically, did incalculable
+harm. Johnson, by habits, manners, mind, and character, was unfit for
+the presidential office, and whatever may have been the merit of his
+policy, a policy devised by angels could never have been carried on by
+such an advocate. The American people love order and decency; they have
+a high regard for the presidential office, and they desire to see its
+occupant conduct himself with dignity. Jackson and Lincoln lacked many
+of the external graces of a gentleman, but both had native qualities
+which enabled them to bear themselves with dignity on public occasions.
+Johnson degraded the office, and he is the only one of our Presidents of
+whom this can be said. Bagehot, writing in 1872, drew an illustration
+from one of the darkest periods of our republic to show the superiority
+of the English Constitution. If we have a Prime Minister who does not
+suit Parliament and the people, he argued, we remove him by a simple
+vote of the House of Commons. The United States can only get rid of its
+undesirable executive by a cumbrous and tedious process which can only
+be brought to bear during a period of revolutionary excitement; and even
+this failed because a legal case was not made against the President. The
+criticism was pregnant, but the remedy was not Cabinet responsibility.
+Whatever may be the merits or demerits of our polity, it has grown as
+has the English; it has fitted itself to the people, and cabinet
+government cannot be had without a complete change of the organic act,
+which is neither possible nor desirable. The lesson was that the
+national conventions should exercise more care in naming their
+vice-presidential candidates; and these bodies have heeded it. When
+Grant, popular throughout the country, nominated by the unanimous vote
+of the Republican convention, became President, Congress restored to the
+executive a large portion of the powers of which it had been shorn
+during Johnson's administration. Grant had splendid opportunities which
+he did not improve, and he left no especial impression on the office. In
+the opinion of one of his warm friends and supporters he made "a pretty
+poor President." An able opposition to him developed in his own party;
+and as he was a sensitive man he felt keenly their attacks. Colonel John
+Hay told me that, when on a visit to Washington during Grant's
+administration, he had arrived at the Arlington Hotel at an early hour
+and started out for a walk; in front of the White House he was surprised
+to meet the President, who was out for the same purpose. The two walked
+together to the Capitol and back, Grant showing himself to be anything
+but a silent man. Manifesting a keen sensitiveness to the attacks upon
+him, he talked all of the time in a voluble manner, and the burden of
+his talk was a defense of his administrative acts. It is impossible in
+our minds to dissociate Grant the President from Grant the General, and
+for this reason American historical criticism will deal kindly with him.
+The brilliant victor of Donelson, the bold strategist of Vicksburg, the
+compeller of men at Chattanooga, the vanquisher of Robert E. Lee in
+March and April, 1865, the magnanimous conqueror at Appomattox, will be
+treated with charity by those who write about his presidential terms,
+because he meant well although he did not know how to do well. Moreover,
+the good which Grant did is of that salient kind which will not be
+forgotten. The victorious general, with two trusted military
+subordinates in the prime of life and a personnel for a strong navy,
+persisted, under the guidance of his wise Secretary of State, Hamilton
+Fish, in negotiating a treaty which provided for arbitration and
+preserved the peace with Great Britain; although, in the opinion of the
+majority, the country had a just cause of war in the escape of the
+Florida and the Alabama. After the panic of 1873, when financiers and
+capitalists lost their heads, and Congress with the approval of public
+sentiment passed an act increasing the amount of United States notes in
+circulation, Grant, by a manly and bold veto, prevented this inflation
+of the currency. The wisdom of the framers of the Constitution in giving
+the President the veto power was exemplified. Congress did not pass the
+act over the veto, and Grant has been justified by the later judgment of
+the nation. His action demonstrated what a President may do in resisting
+by his constitutional authority some transitory wave of popular opinion,
+and it has proved a precedent of no mean value. Johnson's vetoes became
+ridiculous. Grant's veto compensates for many of his mistakes.
+
+Said Chancellor Kent in 1826: "If ever the tranquillity of this nation
+is to be disturbed and its liberties endangered by a struggle for power,
+it will be upon this very subject of the choice of a President. This is
+the question that is eventually to test the goodness and try the
+strength of the Constitution, and if we shall be able for half a century
+hereafter to continue to elect the chief magistrate of the Union with
+discretion, moderation, and integrity we shall undoubtedly stamp the
+highest value on our national character." Just fifty years later came a
+more dangerous test than Kent could have imagined. Somewhat more than
+half of the country believed that the states of Florida and Louisiana
+should be counted for Tilden, and that he was therefore elected. On the
+other hand, nearly one half of the voters were of the opinion that those
+electoral votes should be given to Hayes, which would elect him by the
+majority of one electoral vote. Each of the parties had apparently a
+good case, and after an angry controversy became only the more firmly
+and sincerely convinced that its own point of view was unassailable. The
+Senate was Republican, the House Democratic. The great Civil War had
+been ended only eleven years before, and the country was full of
+fighting men. The Southern people were embittered against the dominant
+party for the reason that Reconstruction had gone otherwise than they
+had expected in 1865 when they laid down their arms. The country was on
+the verge of a civil war over the disputed Presidency--a war that might
+have begun with an armed encounter on the floor of the Senate or the
+House. This was averted by a carefully prepared congressional act, which
+in effect left the dispute to a board of arbitration. To the statesmen
+of both parties who devised this plan and who cooperated in carrying the
+measure through Congress; to the members of the Electoral Commission,
+who in the bitterest strife conducted themselves with dignity; to the
+Democratic Speaker of the House and the Democrats who followed his lead,
+the eternal gratitude of the country is due. "He that ruleth his spirit
+is better than he that taketh a city." The victories of Manila and
+Santiago are as nothing compared with the victorious restraint of the
+American people in 1876 and 1877 and the acquiescence of one half of the
+country in what they believed to be an unrighteous decision. Hayes was
+inaugurated peacefully, but had to conduct his administration in the
+view of 4,300,000 voters who believed that, whatever might be his legal
+claim, he had no moral right to the place he occupied. The Democrats
+controlled the House of Representatives during the whole of his term,
+and the Senate for a part of it, and at the outset he encountered the
+opposition of the stalwart faction of his own party. Nevertheless he
+made a successful President, and under him the office gained in force
+and dignity. Hayes was not a man of brilliant parts or wide
+intelligence, but he had common sense and decision of character.
+Surrounding himself with a strong Cabinet, three members of which were
+really remarkable for their ability, he entered upon a distinct policy
+from which flowed good results. He withdrew the Federal troops from the
+states of South Carolina and Louisiana, inaugurating in these states an
+era of comparative peace and tranquillity. Something was done in the
+interest of Civil Service Reform. In opposition to the view of his
+Secretary of the Treasury and confidential friend, John Sherman, he
+vetoed the act of 1878 for the remonetization of silver by the coinage
+of a certain amount of silver dollars--the first of those measures which
+almost brought us to the monetary basis of silver. His guiding principle
+was embodied in a remark he made in his inaugural address, "He serves
+his party best who serves the country best." He and his accomplished
+wife had a social and moral influence in Washington of no mean value.
+The Civil War had been followed by a period of corruption, profligacy,
+and personal immorality. In politics, if a man were sound on the main
+question, which meant if he were a thorough-going Republican, all else
+was forgiven. Under Hayes account was again taken of character and
+fitness. The standard of political administration was high. While Mrs.
+Hayes undoubtedly carried her total abstinence principles to an extreme
+not warranted by the usage of good society, the moral atmosphere of the
+White House was that of most American homes. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes belonged
+to that large class who are neither rich nor poor, neither learned nor
+ignorant, but who are led both by their native common sense and by their
+upbringing to have a high respect for learning, a belief in education,
+morality, and religion, and a lofty ideal for their own personal
+conduct.
+
+The salient feature of Garfield's few months of administration was a
+quarrel between him and the senators from New York State about an
+important appointment. Into this discussion, which ended in a tragedy,
+entered so many factors that it is impossible to determine exactly the
+influence on the power of the President and the growing power of the
+Senate. One important result of it shall be mentioned. The Civil Service
+Reform Bill, introduced into the Senate by a Democrat, was enacted
+during Arthur's administration by a large and non-partisan majority. It
+provided for a non-partisan civil service commission, and established
+open competitive examinations for applicants for certain offices, making
+a commencement by law of the merit system, which before had depended
+entirely upon executive favor. It was a victory for reformers who had
+been advocating legislation of such a character from a period shortly
+after the close of the Civil War; for it was at that time that a few
+began the work of educating public sentiment, which had acquiesced in
+the rotation of offices as an American principle well worthy of
+maintenance. Consequences far-reaching and wholesome followed the
+passage of this important act. Grant had attempted and Hayes had
+accomplished a measure of reform, but to really fix the merit system in
+the civil service a law was needed.
+
+Regarded by the lovers of good government as a machine politician,
+Arthur happily disappointed them by breaking loose from his old
+associations and pursuing a manly course. He gave the country a
+dignified administration; but, even had he been a man to impress his
+character upon the office, conditions were against him. His party was
+torn by internal dissensions and suffered many defeats, of which the
+most notable was in his own state of New York, where his Secretary of
+the Treasury and personal friend was overwhelmingly defeated for
+governor by Grover Cleveland.
+
+The unprecedented majority which Cleveland received in this election and
+his excellent administration as Governor of New York secured for him the
+Democratic nomination for President in 1884. New York State decided the
+election, but the vote was so close that for some days the result was in
+doubt and the country was nervous lest there should be another disputed
+Presidency; in the end it was determined that Cleveland had carried that
+state by a plurality of 1149. Cleveland was the first Democratic
+President elected since 1856; the Democrats had been out of office for
+twenty-four years, and it had galled them to think that their historic
+party had so long been deprived of power and patronage. While many of
+their leaders had a good record on the question of Civil Service Reform,
+the rank and file believed in the Jacksonian doctrine of rewarding party
+workers with the offices, or, as most of them would have put it, "To the
+victors belong the spoils." With this principle so fixed in the minds of
+his supporters, it became an interesting question how Cleveland would
+meet it. No one could doubt that he would enforce fairly the statute,
+but would he content himself with this and use the offices not covered
+by the act to reward his followers in the old Democratic fashion? An
+avowed civil service reformer, and warmly supported by independents and
+some former Republicans on that account, he justified the confidence
+which they had reposed in him and refused "to make a clean sweep." In
+resisting this very powerful pressure from his party he accomplished
+much toward the establishment of the merit system in the civil service.
+It is true that he made political changes gradually, but his insistence
+on a rule which gained him time for reflection in making appointments
+was of marked importance. It would be idle to assert that in his two
+terms he lived wholly up to the ideal of the reformers; undoubtedly a
+long list of backslidings might be made up, but in striking a fair
+balance it is not too much to say that in this respect his
+administration made for righteousness. All the more credit is due him in
+that he not only resisted personal pressure, but, aspiring to be a party
+leader for the carrying out of a cherished policy on finance and the
+tariff, he made more difficult the accomplishment of these ends by
+refusing to be a mere partisan in the question of the offices. In his
+second term it is alleged, probably with truth, that he made a skillful
+use of his patronage to secure the passage by the Senate of the repeal
+of the Silver Act of 1890, which repeal had gone easily through the
+House. It seemed to him and to many financiers that unless this large
+purchase of silver bullion should be stopped the country would be forced
+on to a silver basis, the existing financial panic would be grievously
+intensified, and the road back to the sound money basis of the rest of
+the civilized world would be long and arduous. His course is defended as
+doing a little wrong in order to bring about a great right; and the
+sequence of events has justified that defense. Harm was done to the
+cause of Civil Service Reform, but probably no permanent injury. The
+repeal of the Silver Act of 1890 was the first important step in the
+direction of insuring a permanent gold standard, and Grover Cleveland is
+the hero of it.
+
+The presidential office gained in strength during Cleveland's two terms.
+As we look back upon them, the President is the central figure round
+which revolves each policy and its success or failure. At the same time,
+it is his party more than he that is to be blamed for the failures. He
+made a distinct move toward a reduction of the tariff, and while this
+failed, leaving us with the reactionary result of higher duties than
+ever before, it is not impossible that the words, actions, and
+sacrifices of Cleveland will be the foundation of a new tariff-reform
+party. Allusion has been made to his soundness on finance. His course in
+this respect was unvarying. Capitalists and financiers can take care of
+themselves, no matter what are the changes in the currency; but men and
+women of fixed incomes, professors of colleges, teachers in schools,
+clergymen and ministers, accountants and clerks in receipt of salaries,
+and farmers and laborers have had their comfort increased and their
+anxieties lessened by the adoption of the gold standard; and to
+Cleveland, as one of the pioneers in this movement for stability, their
+thanks are due.
+
+In the railroad riots of 1894 Cleveland, under the advice of his able
+Attorney-General, made a precedent in the way of interference for the
+supremacy of law and the maintenance of order. The Governor of Illinois
+would not preserve order, and the President determined that at all
+hazards riotous acts must be suppressed and law must resume its sway. In
+ordering United States troops to the scene of the disturbance without an
+application of the Legislature or Governor of Illinois he accomplished a
+fresh extension of executive power without an infraction of the
+Constitution.
+
+In his most important diplomatic action Cleveland was not so happy as in
+his domestic policy. There are able men experienced in diplomacy who
+defend his message of December 17, 1895, to Congress in regard to
+Venezuela, and the wisdom of that action is still a mooted question. Yet
+two facts placed in juxtaposition would seem to indicate that the
+message was a mistake. It contained a veiled threat of war if England
+would not arbitrate her difference with Venezuela, the implication being
+that the stronger power was trying to browbeat the weaker one. Later an
+arbitration took place, the award of which was a compromise, England
+gaining more than Venezuela, and the award demonstrated that England
+had not been as extreme and unjust in her claim as had been Venezuela.
+It is even probable that England might have accepted, as the result of
+negotiation, the line decided on by the arbitrators. But, to the credit
+of Mr. Cleveland and his Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, it must be
+remembered that they later negotiated a treaty "for the arbitration of
+all matters in difference between the United States and Great Britain,"
+which unfortunately failed of ratification by the Senate.
+
+It is a fair charge against Cleveland as a partisan leader that, while
+he led a strong following to victory in 1892, he left his party
+disorganized in 1897. But it fell to him to decide between principle and
+party, and he chose principle. He served his country at the expense of
+his party. From the point of view of Democrats it was grievous that the
+only man under whom they had secured victory since the Civil War should
+leave them in a shattered condition, and it may be a question whether a
+ruler of more tact could not have secured his ends without so great a
+schism. Those, however, to whom this party consideration does not appeal
+have no difficulty in approving Cleveland's course. It is undeniable
+that his character is stamped on the presidential office, and his
+occupancy of it is a distinct mark in the history of executive power.
+
+Harrison occupied the presidential office between the two terms of
+Cleveland, and although a positive man, left no particular impress upon
+the office. He was noted for his excellent judicial appointments, and he
+had undoubtedly a high standard of official conduct which he endeavored
+to live up to. Cold in his personal bearing he did not attract friends,
+and he was not popular with the prominent men in his own party. While
+Cleveland and McKinley were denounced by their opponents, Harrison was
+ridiculed; but the universal respect in which he was held after he
+retired to private life is evidence that the great office lost no
+dignity while he held it. During his term Congress overshadowed the
+executive and the House was more conspicuous than the Senate. Thomas B.
+Reed was speaker and developed the power of that office to an
+extraordinary extent. McKinley was the leader of the House and from long
+service in that body had become an efficient leader. The election of
+Harrison was interpreted to mean that the country needed a higher
+tariff, and McKinley carried through the House the bill which is known
+by his name. Among the other Representatives Mr. Lodge was prominent. It
+was not an uncommon saying at that time that the House was a better
+arena for the rising politician than the Senate. In addition to the
+higher tariff the country apparently wanted more silver and a determined
+struggle was made for the free coinage of silver which nearly won in
+Congress. In the end, however, a compromise was effected by Senator
+Sherman which averted free silver but committed the country to the
+purchase annually of an enormous amount of silver bullion against which
+Treasury notes redeemable in coin were issued. This was the Act of 1890
+which, as I have mentioned, was repealed under Cleveland in 1893. It is
+entirely clear from the sequence of events that the Republican party as
+a party should have opposed the purchase of more silver. It could not
+have been beaten worse than it was in 1892, but it could have preserved
+a consistency in principle which, when the tide turned, would have been
+of political value. The party which has stuck to the right principle has
+in the long run generally been rewarded with power, and as the
+Republicans, in spite of certain defections, had been the party of sound
+money since the Civil War, they should now have fought cheap money under
+the guise of unlimited silver as they had before under the guise of
+unlimited greenbacks. But the leaders thought differently, and from
+their own point of view their course was natural. The country desired
+more silver. Business was largely extended, overtrading was the rule.
+Farmers and business men were straitened for money. Economists,
+statesmen, and politicians had told them that, as their trouble had come
+largely from the demonetization of silver, their relief lay in
+bimetallism. It was easy to argue that the best form of bimetallism was
+the free coinage of gold and silver, and after the panic of 1893 this
+delusion grew, but the strength of it was hardly appreciated by
+optimistic men in the East until the Democrats made it the chief plank
+in the platform on which they fought the presidential campaign of 1896.
+Nominating an orator who had an effective manner of presenting his
+arguments to hard-working farmers whose farms were mortgaged, to
+business men who were under a continued strain to meet their
+obligations, and to laborers out of employment, it seemed for two or
+three months as if the party of silver and discontent might carry the
+day. After some hesitation the Republicans grappled with the question
+boldly, took ground against free silver, and with some modification
+declared their approval of the gold standard. On this issue they fought
+the campaign. Their able and adroit manager was quick to see, after the
+issue was joined, the force of the principle of sound money and started
+a remarkable campaign of education by issuing speeches and articles by
+the millions in a number of different languages, in providing excellent
+arguments for the country press, and in convincing those who would
+listen only to arguments of sententious brevity by a well-devised
+circulation of "nuggets" of financial wisdom. McKinley had also the
+support of the greater part of the Independent and Democratic press.
+While financial magnates and the bankers of the country were alarmed at
+the strength of the Bryan party, and felt that its defeat was necessary
+to financial surety, the strength of the Republican canvass lay in the
+fact that the speakers and writers who made it believed sincerely that
+the gold standard would conduce to the greatest good of the greatest
+number. It was an inspiring canvass. The honest advocacy of sound
+principle won.
+
+Under McKinley the Democratic tariff bill was superseded by the Dingley
+act, which on dutiable articles is, I believe, the highest tariff the
+country has known. The Republican party believes sincerely in the policy
+of protection, and the country undoubtedly has faith in it. It is
+attractive to those who allow immediate returns to obscure prospective
+advantage, and if a majority decides whether or not a political and
+economic doctrine is sound, it has a powerful backing, for every large
+country in the civilized world, I think, except England, adheres to
+protection; and some of them have returned to it after trying a measure
+of commercial freedom. McKinley and the majority of Congress were in
+full sympathy, and the Dingley act had the approval of the
+administration. But the change in business conditions which, though long
+in operation, became signally apparent after 1893, wrought in McKinley,
+during his four and a half years of office, a change of opinion. Under
+improved processes and economies in all branches of manufactures the
+United States began to make many articles cheaper than any other
+country, and sought foreign markets for its surplus, disputing
+successfully certain open marts with England and Germany. In McKinley's
+earlier utterances the home market is the dominating feature; in his
+later ones, trade with foreign countries. In his last speech at Buffalo
+he gave mature expression to his views, which for one who had been a
+leader of protectionists showed him to have taken advanced ground. "We
+find our long-time principles echoed," declared the _Nation_. McKinley's
+manner of developing foreign trade was not that of the tariff reformers,
+for he proposed to bring this about by a variety of reciprocity
+treaties; but it was important that he recognized the sound economic
+principle that if we are to sell to foreign countries we must buy from
+them also. That McKinley had a strong hold on the country is
+indisputable from the unanimous renomination by his party and his
+triumphant reelection, and it was a step toward commercial freedom that
+he who more than all other men had the ear of the country and who had
+been an arch-protectionist should advocate the exchange of commodities
+with foreign lands. Economists do not educate the mass of voters, but
+men like McKinley do, and these sentences of his were read and pondered
+by millions: "A system which provides a mutual exchange of commodities
+is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our
+export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever
+sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible
+it would not be best for us or for those with whom we deal." It is
+useless to speculate on what would have been the result had McKinley
+lived. Those who considered him a weak President aver that when he
+encountered opposition in Congress from interests which were seemingly
+menaced, he would have yielded and abandoned reciprocity. Others believe
+that he understood the question thoroughly and that his arguments would
+in the end have prevailed with Congress; yielding, perhaps, in points of
+detail he would have secured the adoption of the essential part of his
+policy.
+
+After his election McKinley became a believer in the gold standard and
+urged proper legislation upon Congress. It is to his credit and to that
+of Congress that on March 14, 1900, a bill became a law which
+establishes the gold standard and puts it out of the power of any
+President to place the country upon a silver basis by a simple direction
+to his Secretary of the Treasury, which could have been done in 1897. As
+it has turned out, it was fortunate that there was no undue haste in
+this financial legislation. A better act was obtained than would have
+been possible in the first two years of McKinley's administration. The
+reaction from the crisis following the panic of 1893 had arrived, made
+sure by the result of the election of 1896; and the prosperity had
+become a telling argument in favor of the gold standard with the people
+and with Congress.
+
+McKinley was essentially adapted for a peace minister, but under him
+came war. Opinions of him will differ, not only according to one's
+sentiments on war and imperialism, but according to one's ideal of what
+a President should be. Let us make a comparison which shall not include
+Washington, for the reason that under him the country had not become the
+pure democracy it is at the present day. Of such a democracy it seems to
+me that Lincoln is the ideal President, in that he led public sentiment,
+represented it, and followed it. "I claim not to have controlled
+events," he said, "but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
+During his term of office he was one day called "very weak," and the
+next "a tyrant"; but when his whole work was done, a careful survey of
+it could bring one only to the conclusion that he knew when to follow
+and when to lead. He was in complete touch with popular sentiment, and
+divined with nicety when he could take a step in advance. He made an
+effort to keep on good terms with Congress, and he differed with that
+body reluctantly, although, when the necessity came, decisively. While
+he had consideration for those who did not agree with him, and while he
+acted always with a regard to proportion, he was nevertheless a strong
+and self-confident executive. Now Cleveland did not comprehend popular
+opinion as did Lincoln. In him the desire to lead was paramount, to the
+exclusion at times of a proper consideration for Congress and the
+people. It has been said by one of his political friends that he used
+the same energy and force in deciding a small matter as a great one, and
+he alienated senators, congressmen, and other supporters by an
+unyielding disposition when no principle was involved. He did not
+possess the gracious quality of Lincoln, who yielded in small things
+that he might prevail in great ones. Yet for this quality of sturdy
+insistence on his own idea Cleveland has won admiration from a vast
+number of independent thinkers. Temperaments such as these are not in
+sympathy with McKinley, who represents another phase of Lincoln's
+genius. The controlling idea of McKinley probably was that as he was
+elected by the people he should represent them. He did not believe that,
+if a matter were fully and fairly presented, the people would go wrong.
+At times he felt he should wait for their sober, second thought, but if,
+after due consideration, the people spoke, it was his duty to carry out
+their will. Unquestionably if the Cleveland and McKinley qualities can
+be happily combined as they were in Lincoln, the nearest possible
+approach to the ideal ruler is the result. One Lincoln, though, in a
+century, is all that any country can expect: and there is a place in our
+polity for either the Cleveland or the McKinley type of executive. So it
+seemed to the makers of the Constitution. "The republican principle,"
+wrote Hamilton in the _Federalist_, "demands that the deliberate sense
+of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust
+the management of their affairs." "But," he said in the same essay,
+"however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance
+in the executive to the inclinations of the people, we can with no
+propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the
+legislature.... The executive should be in a situation to dare to act
+his own opinion with vigor and decision." It is frequently remarked that
+no President since Lincoln had so thorough a comprehension of public
+sentiment as McKinley. This knowledge and his theory of action, if I
+have divined it aright, are an explanation of his course in regard to
+the Spanish War and the taking of the Philippines. It does not fall to
+me to discuss in this article these two questions, nor do I feel certain
+that all the documents necessary to a fair judgment are accessible to
+the public, but I can show what was McKinley's attitude toward them by
+reporting a confidential conversation he had on May 2, 1899, with Mr.
+Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Massachusetts Institute of
+Technology, who made a record of it the day afterward. The President,
+Mr. Pritchett relates, spoke of the "war and of his own responsibility,
+and the way in which he has gradually come to have his present position
+with respect to the Philippines. The talk was started by my reminding
+him of the fact that just a year ago that morning, on May 2, 1898, I had
+come into his room with a map of Manila and Cavite on a large scale--the
+first time he had seen such a map--and from this he drifted into a most
+serious and interesting talk of his own place in the history of the past
+twelve months. He described his efforts to avert the war, how he had
+carried the effort to the point of rupture with his party, then came the
+Maine incident, and, finally, a declaration of war over all efforts to
+stem the tide. Then he spoke of Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines,
+related at some length the correspondence he had had with the Paris
+Commission, how he had been gradually made to feel in his struggling for
+the right ground that first Luzon and finally all the Philippines must
+be kept. He then went on to indicate his belief that Providence had led
+in all this matter, that to him the march of events had been so
+irresistible that nothing could turn them aside. Nobody, he said, could
+have tried harder than he to be rid of the burden of the Philippines,
+and yet the trend of events had been such that it seemed impossible to
+escape this duty. He finally came to speak with more emotion than I have
+ever seen him exhibit, and no one could doubt the sincerity of the man."
+
+Of McKinley's achievements in the field of diplomacy Secretary Hay in
+his memorial address spoke with knowledge and in words of high praise.
+Sometimes the expression of a careful foreign observer anticipates the
+judgment of posterity, and with that view the words of the
+_Spectator_,[168] in an article on the presidential election of 1900,
+are worth quoting: "We believe that Mr. McKinley and the wise statesman
+who is his Secretary of State, Colonel Hay, are administrators of a high
+order. They have learnt their business thoroughly, hold all the strings
+of policy in their hands."
+
+Opinions will differ as to the impress McKinley has left on the
+presidential office. It is the judgment of two men of large knowledge of
+American history and present affairs that no President since Jefferson
+has been so successful in getting Congress to adopt the positive
+measures he desired.
+
+Of the administration of Theodore Roosevelt it would be neither proper
+nor wise for me to speak in other terms than those of expectation and
+prophecy. But of Mr. Roosevelt himself something may be said. His birth,
+breeding, education, and social advantages have been of the best. He
+has led an industrious and useful life. As an American citizen we are
+all proud of him, and when he reached the presidential office by a
+tragedy that nobody deplored more than he, every one wished him success.
+His transparent honesty and sincerity are winning qualities, and in the
+opinion of Burke especially important in him who is the ruler of a
+nation. "Plain good intention," he wrote, "which is as easily discovered
+at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say,
+of no mean force in the government of mankind." To these qualities, and
+to a physical and moral courage that can never be questioned, Mr.
+Roosevelt adds a large intelligence and, as his books show, a power of
+combination of ideas and cohesive thought. Moreover, he has had a good
+political training, and he has the faculty of writing his political
+papers in a pregnant and forcible literary style. He is fit for what Mr.
+Bryce calls "the greatest office in the world, unless we except the
+Papacy." His ideals are Washington and Lincoln. "I like to see in my
+mind's eye," he said, "the gaunt form of Lincoln stalking through these
+halls." "To gratify the hopes, secure the reverence, and sustain the
+dignity of the nation," said Justice Story, "the presidential office
+should always be occupied by a man of elevated talents, of ripe virtues,
+of incorruptible integrity, and of tried patriotism; one who shall
+forget his own interests and remember that he represents not a party but
+the whole nation." These qualities Theodore Roosevelt has. Whether he
+shall in action carry out the other requirements of Justice Story may
+only be judged after he shall have retired to private life.
+
+Mr. Roosevelt merits the encouragement and sympathy of all lovers of
+good government, and he is entitled, as indeed is every President, to
+considerate and forbearing criticism. For, ardently desired as the
+office is, it is a hard place to fill. Through the kindness of President
+Roosevelt, I have been enabled to observe the daily routine of his work,
+and I am free to say that from the business point of view, no man better
+earns his pay than does he. Mr. Bryce remarks that a good deal of the
+President's work is like that of the manager of a railway. So far as
+concerns the consultation with heads of departments, prompt decisions,
+and the disposition of daily matters, the comparison is apt, if a great
+American railway and a manager like Thomas A. Scott are borne in mind.
+But the railway manager's labor is done in comparative privacy, he can
+be free from interruption and dispose of his own time in a systematic
+manner. That is impossible for the President during the session of
+Congress. Office-seekers themselves do not trouble the President so much
+as in former days; they may be referred to the heads of the departments;
+and, moreover, the introduction of competitive examinations and the
+merit system has operated as a relief to the President and his Cabinet
+officers. But hearing the recommendations by senators and congressmen of
+their friends for offices consumes a large amount of time. There are, as
+Senator Lodge has kindly informed me, 4818 presidential offices
+exclusive of 4000 presidential post offices; in addition there are army
+and naval officers to be appointed. The proper selection in four years
+of the number of men these figures imply is in itself no small labor; it
+would by a railway manager be considered an onerous and exacting
+business. But the railway manager may hear the claims of applicants in
+his own proper way, and to prevent encroachments on his time may give
+the candidates or their friends a curt dismissal. The President may not
+treat senators and representatives in that manner, nor would he desire
+to do so, for the intercourse between them and the executive is of great
+value. "The President," wrote John Sherman, "should 'touch elbows' with
+Congress." There are important legislative measures to be discussed in a
+frank interchange of opinion. Senators and representatives are a guide
+to the President in their estimates of public sentiment; often they
+exert an influence over him, and he is dependent on them for the
+carrying out of any policy he may have at heart. While the encroachments
+on the President's time are great, I am convinced that no plan should be
+adopted which should curtail the unconventional and frank interchange of
+views between the President and members of the National Legislature. The
+relief lies with the public. Much of the President's time is taken up
+with receptions of the friends of senators and representatives, of
+members of conventions and learned bodies meeting in Washington, of
+deputations of school-teachers and the like who have gone to the capital
+for a holiday: all desire to pay their respects to the Chief Magistrate.
+Undoubtedly, if he could have a quiet talk with most of these people, it
+would be of value, but the conventional shaking of hands and the "I am
+glad to see you" is not a satisfaction great enough to the recipients to
+pay for what it costs the President in time and the expenditure of
+nervous force. He should have time for deliberation. The railway manager
+can closet himself when he likes: that should be the privilege of the
+President; yet on a certain day last April, when he wished to have a
+long confidential talk with his Secretary of War, this was only to be
+contrived by the two taking a long horseback ride in the country. It is
+difficult for the President to refuse to see these good, patriotic, and
+learned people; and senators and representatives like to gratify their
+constituents. The remedy lies with the public in denying themselves this
+pleasant feature of a visit to Washington. One does not call on the
+president of the Pennsylvania Railroad or the president of the New York
+Central Railroad in business hours unless for business purposes; and
+this should be the rule observed by citizens of the United States toward
+the President. The weekly public receptions are no longer held. All
+these other receptions and calls simply for shaking hands and wishing
+him God-speed should no longer be asked for. For the President has
+larger and more serious work than the railway manager and should have at
+least as much time for thought and deliberation.
+
+Moreover, the work of the railway manager is done in secret. Fiercer by
+far than the light which beats upon the throne is that which beats upon
+the White House. The people are eager to know the President's thoughts
+and plans, and an insistent press endeavors to satisfy them. Considering
+the conditions under which the President does his work, the wonder is
+not that he makes so many mistakes, but that he makes so few. There is
+no railway or business manager or college president who has not more
+time to himself for the reflection necessary to the maturing of large
+and correct policies. I chanced to be in the President's room when he
+dictated the rough draft of his famous dispatch to General Chaffee
+respecting torture in the Philippines. While he was dictating, two or
+three cards were brought in, also some books with a request for the
+President's autograph, and there were some other interruptions. While
+the dispatch as it went out in its revised form could not be improved, a
+President cannot expect to be always so happy in dictating dispatches in
+the midst of distractions. Office work of far-reaching importance should
+be done in the closet. Certainly no monarch or minister in Europe does
+administrative work under such unfavorable conditions; indeed, this
+public which exacts so much of the President's time should in all
+fairness be considerate in its criticism.
+
+No one, I think, would care to have abated the fearless political
+criticism which has in this country and in England attained to the
+highest point ever reached. From the nature of things the press must
+comment promptly and without the full knowledge of conditions that might
+alter its judgments. But on account of the necessary haste of its
+expressions, the writers should avoid extravagant language and the too
+ready imputation of bad motives to the public servants. "It is strange
+that men cannot allow others to differ with them without charging
+corruption as the cause of the difference," are the plaintive words of
+Grant during a confidential conversation with his Secretary of State.
+
+The contrast between the savage criticism of Cleveland and Harrison
+while each occupied the presidential chair and the respect each enjoyed
+from political opponents after retiring to private life is an effective
+illustration of the lesson I should like to teach. At the time of
+Harrison's death people spoke from their hearts and said, "Well done,
+good and faithful servant." A fine example of political criticism in a
+time of great excitement were two articles by Mr. Carl Schurz in
+_Harper's Weekly_ during the Venezuela crisis. Mr. Schurz was a
+supporter and political friend of Cleveland, but condemned his Venezuela
+message. In the articles to which I refer he was charitable in feeling
+and moderate in tone, and though at the time I heard the term
+"wishy-washy" applied to one of them, I suspect that Mr. Schurz now
+looks back with satisfaction to his reserve; and those of us who used
+more forcible language in regard to the same incident may well wish that
+we had emulated his moderation.
+
+The presidential office differs from all other political offices in the
+world, and has justified the hopes of its creators. It has not realized
+their fears, one of which was expressed by Hamilton in the _Federalist_.
+"A man raised from the station of a private citizen to the rank of Chief
+Magistrate," he wrote, "possessed of a moderate or slender fortune, and
+looking forward to a period not very remote, when he may probably be
+obliged to return to the station from which he was taken, might
+sometimes be under temptations to sacrifice his duty to his interest,
+which it would require superlative virtue to withstand. An avaricious
+man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the
+acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man might make his own
+aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his
+treachery to his constituents."[169] From dangers of this sort the
+political virtue which we inherited from our English ancestors has
+preserved us. We may fairly maintain that the creation and
+administration of our presidential office have added something to
+political history, and when we contrast in character and ability the men
+who have filled it with the monarchs of England and of France, we may
+have a feeling of just pride. Mr. Bryce makes a suggestive comparison in
+ability of our Presidents to the prime ministers of England, awarding
+the palm to the Englishmen,[170] and from his large knowledge of both
+countries and impartial judgment we may readily accept his conclusion.
+It is, however, a merit of our Constitution that as great ability is not
+required for its chief executive office as is demanded in England. The
+prime minister must have a talent for both administration and debate,
+which is a rare combination of powers, and if he be chosen from the
+House of Commons, it may happen that too much stress will be laid upon
+oratory, or the power of making ready replies to the attacks of the
+opposition. It is impossible to conceive of Washington defending his
+policy in the House or the Senate from a fire of questions and
+cross-questions. Lincoln might have developed this quality of a prime
+minister, but his replies and sallies of wit to put to confusion his
+opponents would have lacked the dignity his state papers and
+confidential letters possess. Hayes and Cleveland were excellent
+administrators, but neither could have reached his high position had the
+debating ability of a prime minister been required. On the other hand,
+Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley would have been effective speakers in
+either the House or the Senate.
+
+An American may judge his own country best from European soil,
+impregnated as he there is with European ideas. Twice have I been in
+Europe during Cleveland's administration, twice during McKinley's, once
+during Roosevelt's. During the natural process of comparison, when one
+must recognize in many things the distinct superiority of England,
+Germany, and France, I have never had a feeling other than high respect
+for each one of these Presidents; and taking it by and large, in the
+endeavor to consider fairly the hits and misses of all, I have never had
+any reason to feel that the conduct of our national government has been
+inferior to that of any one of these highly civilized powers.
+
+
+  [164] Henry Adams, II, 113.
+
+  [165] _Ibid._, 130.
+
+  [166] Sumner's Jackson, 138.
+
+  [167] Twenty Years of Congress, II, 185.
+
+  [168] July 14, 1900.
+
+  [169] See also the _Federalist_ (Lodge's edition), 452. Bryce,
+        Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 308.
+
+  [170] American Commonwealth, I, 80.
+
+
+
+
+A REVIEW OF PRESIDENT HAYES'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+Address delivered at the annual meeting of the Graduate School of Arts
+and Sciences, and the Graduate Schools of Applied Science and Business
+Administration, Harvard University, on October 8, 1908; printed in the
+_Century Magazine_ for October, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+A REVIEW OF PRESIDENT HAYES'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+
+Many of our Presidents have been inaugurated under curious and trying
+circumstances, but no one of them except Hayes has taken the oath of
+office when there was a cloud on his title. Every man who had voted for
+Tilden,--whose popular vote exceeded that of Hayes by 264,000,--believed
+that Hayes had reached his high place by means of fraud. Indeed, some of
+the Hayes voters shared this belief, and stigmatized as monstrous the
+action of the Louisiana returning board in awarding the electoral vote
+of Louisiana to Hayes. The four men, three of them dishonest and the
+fourth incompetent, who constituted this returning board, rejected, on
+the ground of intimidation of negro voters, eleven thousand votes that
+had been cast in due form for Tilden. In the seventh volume of my
+history I have told the story of the compromise in the form of the
+Electoral Commission which passed on the conflicting claims and adjudged
+the votes of the disputed states, notably Florida and Louisiana, to
+Hayes, giving him a majority of one in the electoral college, thus
+making him President. When the count was completed and the usual
+declaration made, Hayes had no choice but to abide by the decision. Duty
+to his country and to his party, the Republican, required his acceptance
+of the office, and there is no reason for thinking that he had any
+doubts regarding his proper course. His legal title was perfect, but his
+moral title was unsound, and it added to the difficulty of his situation
+that the opposition, the Democrats, had a majority in the House of
+Representatives. None but a determined optimist could have predicted
+anything but failure for an administration beginning under such
+conditions.
+
+Hayes was an Ohio man, and we in Ohio now watched his successive steps
+with keen interest. We knew him as a man of high character, with a fine
+sense of honor, but we placed no great faith in his ability. He had
+added to his reputation by the political campaign that he had made for
+governor, in 1875, against the Democrats under William Allen, who
+demanded an inflation of the greenback currency. He took an
+uncompromising stand for sound money, although that cause was unpopular
+in Ohio, and he spoke from the stump unremittingly and fearlessly,
+although overshadowed by the greater ability and power of expression of
+Senator Sherman and of Carl Schurz, who did yeoman's service for the
+Republicans in this campaign. Senator Sherman had suggested Hayes as
+candidate for President, and the nomination by the Republican national
+convention had come to him in June, 1876. While his letter of acceptance
+may not have surprised his intimate friends, it was a revelation to most
+of us from its outspoken and common-sense advocacy of civil service
+reform, and it gave us the first glimmering that in Rutherford B. Hayes
+the Republicans had for standard bearer a man of more than respectable
+ability.
+
+His inaugural address confirmed this impression. He spoke with dignity
+and sympathy of the disputed Presidency, promised a liberal policy
+toward the Southern states, and declared that a reform in our civil
+service was a "paramount necessity." He chose for his Cabinet men in
+sympathy with his high ideals. William M. Evarts, the Secretary of
+State, was one of the ablest lawyers in the country. He had been one of
+the leading counsel in the defense of President Johnson in the
+impeachment trial, and had managed the Republican cause before the
+Electoral Commission with adroitness and zeal. John Sherman, the
+Secretary of the Treasury, was the most capable financier in public
+life. Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior, was an aggressive and
+uncompromising reformer, who had served the Republican party well in the
+campaigns of 1875 and 1876. If these three men could work together under
+Hayes, the United States need envy the governors of no other country.
+They were in the brilliant but solid class, were abreast of the best
+thought of their time, had a solemn sense of duty, and believed in
+righteous government. Devens, the Attorney-General, had served with
+credit in the army and had held the honorable position of Justice of the
+Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Thompson of Indiana, Secretary
+of the Navy, was a political appointment due to the influence of Senator
+Morton, but, all things considered, it was not a bad choice. McCrary of
+Iowa, as Secretary of War, had been a useful member of the House of
+Representatives. The Postmaster-General was Key of Tennessee, who had
+served in the Confederate army and voted for Tilden. This appointment
+was not so genuine a recognition of the South as would have been made if
+Hayes could have carried out his first intention, which was the
+appointment of General Joseph E. Johnston as Secretary of War.
+Considering that Johnston had surrendered the second great army of the
+Confederacy only twelve years before, the thought was possible only to a
+magnanimous nature, and in the inner circle of Hayes's counselors
+obvious and grave objections were urged. General Sherman doubted the
+wisdom of the proposed appointment, although he said that as General of
+the army he would be entirely content to receive the President's orders
+through his old antagonist. Although the appointment of Johnston would
+have added strength, the Cabinet as finally made up was strong, and the
+selection of such advisers created a favorable impression upon the
+intelligent sentiment of the country; it was spoken of as the ablest
+Cabinet since Washington's.
+
+A wise inaugural address and an able Cabinet made a good beginning, but
+before the harmonious cooperation of these extraordinary men could be
+developed a weighty question, which brooked no delay, had to be settled.
+The Stevens-Sumner plan of the reconstruction of the South on the basis
+of universal negro suffrage and military support of the governments thus
+constituted had failed. One by one in various ways the Southern states
+had recovered home rule until, on the inauguration of Hayes, carpet-bag
+negro governments existed in only two states, South Carolina and
+Louisiana. In both of these the Democrats maintained that their
+candidates for governor had been lawfully elected. The case of South
+Carolina presented no serious difficulty. Hayes electors had been
+rightfully chosen, and so had the Democratic governor, Hampton. But
+Chamberlain, the Republican candidate, had a claim based on the
+exclusion of the votes of two counties by the board of state canvassers.
+After conferences between each of the claimants and the President, the
+question was settled in favor of the Democrat, which was the meaning of
+the withdrawal of the United States troops from the State House in
+Columbia.
+
+The case of Louisiana was much more troublesome. Packard, the Republican
+candidate for governor, had received as many votes as Hayes, and logic
+seemed to require that, if Hayes be President, Packard should be
+governor. While the question was pending, Blaine said in the Senate:
+"You discredit Packard, and you discredit Hayes. You hold that Packard
+is not the legal governor of Louisiana, and President Hayes has no
+title." And the other leaders of the Republican party, for the most
+part, held this view. To these and their followers Blaine applied the
+name "Stalwarts," stiff partisans, who did not believe in surrendering
+the hold of the Republicans on the Southern states.
+
+Between the policies of a continuance of the support of the Republican
+party in Louisiana or its withdrawal, a weak man would have allowed
+things to drift, while a strong man of the Conkling and Chandler type
+would have sustained the Packard government with the whole force at his
+command. Hayes acted slowly and cautiously, asked for and received much
+good counsel, and in the end determined to withdraw the United States
+troops from the immediate vicinity of the State House in Louisiana. The
+Packard government fell, and the Democrats took possession. The lawyers
+could furnish cogent reasons why Packard was not entitled to the
+governorship, although the electoral vote of Louisiana had been counted
+for Hayes; but the Stalwarts maintained that no legal quibble could
+varnish over so glaring an inconsistency. Indeed, it was one of those
+illogical acts, so numerous in English and American history, that
+resolve difficulties, when a rigid adherence to logic would tend to
+foment trouble.
+
+The inaugural address and the distinctively reform Cabinet did not suit
+the party workers, and when the President declined to sustain the
+Packard government in Louisiana, disapproval was succeeded by rage. In
+six weeks after his inauguration Hayes was without a party; that is to
+say, the men who carried on the organization were bitterly opposed to
+his policy, and they made much more noise than the independent thinking
+voters who believed that a man had arisen after their own hearts. Except
+from the Southern wing, he received little sympathy from the Democratic
+party. In their parlance, fraud was written on his brow. He had the
+honor and perquisites of office which were rightfully theirs.
+
+Once the troops were withdrawn from South Carolina and Louisiana, no
+backward step was possible, and although Hayes would have liked
+congressional support and sympathy for his act, this was not necessary.
+The next most important question of his administration related to
+finance. He and his Secretary of the Treasury would have been gratified
+by an obedient majority in Congress at their back. Presidents before and
+after Hayes have made a greater or less employment of their patronage to
+secure the passage of their favorite measures, but Hayes immediately
+relinquished that power by taking a decided position for a civil service
+based on merit. In a little over a month after the withdrawal of the
+troops from the immediate vicinity of the State House in Louisiana, he
+announced his policy in a letter to his Secretary of the Treasury. "It
+is my wish," he wrote, "that the collection of the revenues should be
+free from partisan control, and organized on a strictly business basis,
+with the same guaranties for efficiency and fidelity in the selection of
+the chief and subordinate officers that would be required by a prudent
+merchant. Party leaders should have no more influence in appointments
+than other equally respectable citizens. No assessments for political
+purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed. No useless
+officer or employee should be retained. No officer should be required or
+permitted to take part in the management of political organizations,
+caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns." The mandatory parts of
+this letter he incorporated in an order to Federal office-holders,
+adding: "This rule is applicable to every department of the civil
+service. It should be understood by every officer of the general
+government that he is expected to conform his conduct to its
+requirements."
+
+It must be a source of gratification to the alumni and faculty of
+Harvard College that its president and governing boards were, in June,
+1877, in the judicious minority, and recognized their appreciation of
+Hayes by conferring upon him its highest honorary degree. Schurz, who
+had received his LL.D. the year before, accompanied Hayes to Cambridge,
+and, in his Harvard speech at Commencement, gave his forcible and
+sympathetic approval of the "famous order of the President," as it had
+now come to be called.
+
+A liberal and just Southern policy, the beginning of a genuine reform in
+the civil service and the resumption of specie payments, are measures
+which distinguish and glorify President Hayes's administration, but in
+July, 1877, public attention was diverted from all these by a movement
+which partook of the nature of a social uprising. The depression
+following the panic of 1873 had been widespread and severe. The slight
+revival of business resulting from the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and
+the consequent large passenger traffic had been succeeded by a reaction
+in 1877 that brought business men to the verge of despair. Failures of
+merchants and manufacturers, stoppage of factories, diminished traffic
+on the railroads, railroad bankruptcies and receiverships, threw a
+multitude of laborers out of employment; and those fortunate enough to
+retain their jobs were less steadily employed, and were subject to
+reductions in wages.
+
+The state of railroad transportation was deplorable. The competition of
+the trunk lines, as the railroads running from Chicago to the seaboard
+were called, was sharp, and, as there was not business enough for all,
+the cutting of through freight rates caused such business to be done at
+an actual loss, while the through passenger transportation afforded
+little profit. Any freight agent knew the remedy: an increase of freight
+rates by agreement or through a system of pooling earnings. Agreements
+were made, but not honestly kept, and, after a breach of faith, the
+fight was renewed with increased fury. As the railroad managers thought
+that they could not increase their gross earnings, they resolved on
+decreasing their expenses, and somewhat hastily and jauntily they
+announced a reduction of ten per cent in the wages of their employees.
+
+This was resisted. Trouble first began on the Baltimore and Ohio
+Railroad, where the men not only struck against the reduction, but
+prevented other men from taking their places, and stopped by force the
+running of trains. The militia of West Virginia was inadequate to cope
+with the situation, and the governor of that state called on the
+President for troops, which were sent with a beneficial effect. But the
+trouble spread to Maryland, and a conflict in Baltimore between the
+militia and rioters in sympathy with the strikers resulted in a number
+of killed and wounded. The next day, Saturday, July 21, a riot in
+Pittsburg caused the most profound sensation in the country since the
+draft riots of the Civil War. The men on the Pennsylvania and the
+Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroads, had struck, and all freight
+traffic was arrested. On this day six hundred and fifty men of the first
+division of the Pennsylvania national guard at Philadelphia arrived in
+Pittsburg, and, in the attempt to clear the Twenty-eighth Street
+crossing, they replied to the missiles thrown at them by the mob with
+volleys of musketry, killing instantly sixteen of the rioters and
+wounding many.
+
+Here was cause for exasperation, and a furious mob, composed of
+strikers, idle factory hands, and miners, tramps, communists, and
+outcasts, began its work of vengeance and plunder. Possessed of
+firearms, through breaking into a number of gun shops, they attacked the
+Philadelphia soldiers, who had withdrawn to the railroad roundhouse, and
+a fierce battle ensued. Unable to dislodge the soldiers by assault, the
+rioters attempted to roast them out by setting fire to cars of coke
+saturated with petroleum and pushing these down the track against the
+roundhouse. This eventually forced the soldiers to leave the building,
+but, though pursued by the rioters, they made a good retreat across the
+Allegheny River. The mob, completely beyond control, began the
+destruction of railroad property. The torch was applied to two
+roundhouses, to railroad sheds, shops and offices, cars and locomotives.
+Barrels of spirits, taken from the freight cars, and opened and drunk,
+made demons of the men, and the work of plunder and destruction of goods
+in transit went on with renewed fury.
+
+That Saturday night Pittsburg witnessed a reign of terror. On Sunday the
+rioting and pillage were continued, and in the afternoon the Union Depot
+and Railroad Hotel and an elevator near by were burned. Then as the
+rioters were satiated and too drunk to be longer dangerous, the riot
+died out: it was not checked. On Monday, through the action of the
+authorities, armed companies of law-abiding citizens, and some faithful
+companies of the militia, order was restored. But meanwhile the strike
+had spread to a large number of other railroads between the seaboard and
+Chicago and St. Louis. Freight traffic was entirely suspended, and
+passenger trains were run only on sufferance of the strikers. Business
+was paralyzed, and the condition of disorganization and unrest continued
+throughout the month of July. The governors of West Virginia, Maryland,
+Pennsylvania, and Illinois called upon the President for United States
+troops, which were promptly sent, and in Indiana and Missouri they were
+employed on the demand of the United States marshals. Where the regular
+soldiers appeared order was at once restored without bloodshed, and it
+was said that the rioters feared one Federal bayonet more than a whole
+company of militia. The gravity of the situation is attested by three
+proclamations of warning from President Hayes.
+
+Strikes had been common in our country, and, while serious enough in
+certain localities, had aroused no general concern, but the action of
+the mob in Baltimore, Pittsburg, and Chicago seemed like an attack on
+society itself, and it came like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky,
+startling Americans, who had hugged the delusion that such social
+uprisings belonged to Europe, and had no reason of being in a great,
+free republic where all men had an equal chance. The railroad managers
+had no idea that they were letting loose a slumbering giant when their
+edict of a ten per cent reduction went forth. It was due to the prompt
+and efficient action of the President that order was ultimately
+restored. In the profound and earnest thinking and discussion that went
+on during the rest of the year, whenever thoughtful men gathered
+together, many a grateful word was said of the quiet, unassuming man in
+the White House who saw clearly his duty and never faltered in pursuing
+it. It was seen that the Federal government, with a resolute President
+at its head, was a tower of strength in the event of a social uprising.
+
+In the reform of the civil service Hayes proceeded from words to action.
+He reappointed Thomas L. James as postmaster of New York City, who had
+conducted his office on a thorough business basis, and gave him
+sympathetic support. The New York Custom-house had long been a political
+machine in which the interests of politicians had been more considered
+than those of the public it was supposed to serve. The President began
+an investigation of it through an impartial commission, and he and
+Sherman came to the conclusion that the renovation desired, in line with
+his letter to the Secretary of the Treasury and his order to the
+Federal officers, could not be effected so long as the present
+collector, Chester A. Arthur, and the naval officer, A. B. Cornell,
+remained in office. Courteous intimations were sent to them that their
+resignations were desired on the ground that new officers could better
+carry out the reform which the President had at heart. Arthur and
+Cornell, under the influence of Senator Conkling, refused to resign, and
+a plain issue was made between the President and the New York senator.
+At the special session of Congress, in October, 1877, he sent to the
+Senate nominations of new men for these places, but the power of
+Conkling, working through the "courtesy of the Senate," was sufficient
+to procure their rejection; and this was also the result when the same
+nominations were made in December.
+
+In July, 1878, after the adjournment of Congress, Hayes removed Arthur
+and Cornell, and appointed Merritt and Burt in their places. During the
+following December these appointments came before the Senate for
+confirmation. Sherman decided to resign if they were rejected, and he
+made a strong personal appeal to Senators Allison, Windom, and Morrill
+that they should not permit "the insane hate of Conkling" to override
+the good of the service and the party. A seven hours' struggle ensued in
+the Senate, but Merritt and Burt were confirmed by a decisive majority.
+After the confirmation, Hayes wrote to Merritt: "My desire is that the
+office be conducted on strictly business principles and according to the
+rules for the civil service which were recommended by the Civil Service
+Commission in the administration of General Grant."
+
+In three of his annual messages, Hayes presented strong arguments for a
+reform in the civil service, and he begged Congress, without avail, to
+make appropriations to sustain the Civil Service Commission. He
+sympathized with and supported Schurz in his introduction into the
+Interior Department of competitive examinations for appointments and
+promotions, and he himself extended that system to the custom-houses and
+post-offices of the larger cities.
+
+All that was accomplished in this direction was due to his efforts and
+those of his Cabinet. He received neither sympathy nor help from
+Congress; indeed, he met with great opposition from his own party. A
+picture not without humor is Hayes reading, as his justification, to the
+Republican remonstrants against his policy of appointments the strong
+declaration for a civil service based on merit in the Republican
+platform, on which he had stood as candidate for President. Though his
+preaching did not secure the needed legislation from Congress, it
+produced a marked effect on public sentiment.
+
+The organization of civil service reform associations began under Hayes.
+The New York association was begun in 1877, reorganized three years
+later, and soon had a large national membership, which induced the
+formation of other state associations; and although the national civil
+service reform league was not formed until after his term of office
+expired, the origin of the society may be safely referred to his
+influence. In the melioration of the public service which has been so
+conspicuously in operation since 1877, Hayes must be rated the pioneer
+President. Some of Grant's efforts in this direction were well meant,
+but he had no fundamental appreciation of the importance of the question
+or enthusiasm for the work, and, in a general way, it may be said that
+he left the civil service in a demoralized condition. How pregnant was
+Hayes's remark in his last annual message, and what a text it has been
+for many homilies! "My views," he wrote, "concerning the dangers of
+patronage or appointments for personal or partisan considerations have
+been strengthened by my observation and experience in the executive
+office, and I believe these dangers threaten the stability of the
+government."
+
+The brightest page in the history of the Republican party since the
+Civil War tells of its work in the cause of sound finance, and no
+administration is more noteworthy than that of Hayes. Here again the
+work was done by the President and his Cabinet in the face of a
+determined opposition in Congress. During the first two years of his
+administration, the Democrats had a majority in the House, and during
+the last two a majority in both the House and the Senate. The Republican
+party was sounder than the Democratic on the resumption of specie
+payments and in the advocacy of a correct money standard, but Hayes had
+by no means all of his own party at his back. Enough Republicans,
+however, were of his way of thinking to prevent an irremediable
+inflation of either greenbacks or silver.
+
+The credit for what was accomplished in finance belongs in the main to
+John Sherman, a great financier and consummate statesman; but he had the
+constant sympathy and support of the President. It was their custom to
+take long drives together every Sunday afternoon and discuss
+systematically and thoroughly the affairs of the Treasury and the
+official functions of the President. No President ever had a better
+counselor than Sherman, no Secretary of the Treasury more sympathetic
+and earnest support than was given by Hayes. Sherman refunded 845
+millions of the public debt at a lower rate of interest, showing in his
+negotiations with bankers a remarkable combination of business and
+political ability. Cool, watchful, and confident, he grasped the point
+of view of New York and London financial syndicates, and to that
+interested and somewhat narrow vision he joined the intelligence and
+foresight of a statesman. Sherman brought about the resumption of
+specie payments on the 1st of January, 1879, the date fixed in the bill
+of which he was the chief author and which, four years before, he had
+carried through the Senate. It was once the fashion of his opponents to
+discredit his work, and, emphasizing the large crop of 1878 and the
+European demand for our breadstuffs, to declare that resumption was
+brought about by Providence and not by John Sherman. No historian of
+American finance can fail to see how important is the part often played
+by bountiful nature, but it is to the lasting merit of Sherman and Hayes
+that, in the dark years of 1877 and 1878, with cool heads and unshaken
+faith, they kept the country in the path of financial safety and honor
+despite bitter opposition and clamorous abuse.
+
+These two years formed a part of my own business career, and I can add
+my vivid recollection to my present study of the period. As values
+steadily declined and losses rather than profits in business became the
+rule, the depression and even despair of business men and manufacturers
+can hardly be exaggerated. The daily list of failures and bankruptcies
+was appalling. How often one heard that iron and coal and land were
+worth too little and money too much, that only the bondholder could be
+happy, for his interest was sure and the purchasing power of his money
+great! In August, 1878, when John Sherman went to Toledo to speak to a
+gathering three thousand strong, he was greeted with such cries as, "You
+are responsible for all the failures in the country"; "You work to the
+interest of the capitalist"; "Capitalists own you, John Sherman, and you
+rob the poor widows and orphans to make them rich."
+
+By many the resumption of specie payments was deemed impossible. The
+most charitable of Sherman's opponents looked upon him as an honest but
+visionary enthusiast who would fail in his policy and be "the deadest
+man politically" in the country. Others deemed resumption possible only
+by driving to the wall a majority of active business men. It was this
+sentiment which gave strength to the majority in the House of
+Representatives, which was opposed to any contraction of the greenback
+currency and in favor of the free coinage of silver, and of making it
+likewise a full legal tender. Most of these members of Congress were
+sincere, and thought that they were asking no more than justice for the
+trader, the manufacturer, and the laborer. The "Ohio idea" was
+originally associated with an inflation of the paper currency, but by
+extension it came to mean an abundance of cheap money, whether paper or
+silver. Proposed legislation, with this as its aim, was very popular in
+Ohio, but, despite the intense feeling against the President's and
+Secretary's policy in their own state and generally throughout the West,
+Hayes and Sherman maintained it consistently, and finally brought about
+the resumption of specie payments.
+
+In their way of meeting the insistent demand for the remonetization of
+silver Hayes and Sherman differed. In November, 1877, the House of
+Representatives, under a suspension of the rules, passed by a vote of
+163 to 34 a bill for the free coinage of the 412 1/2 grain silver dollar,
+making that dollar likewise a legal tender for all debts and dues. The
+Senate was still Republican, but the Republican senators were by no
+means unanimous for the gold standard. Sherman became convinced that,
+although the free-silver bill could not pass the Senate, something must
+nevertheless be done for silver, and, in cooperation with Senator
+Allison, he was instrumental in the adoption of the compromise which
+finally became law. This remonetized silver, providing for the purchase
+of not less than two million dollars' worth of silver bullion per month,
+nor more than four millions, and for its coinage into 412 1/2 grain silver
+dollars. Hayes vetoed this bill, sending a sound and manly message to
+the House of Representatives; but Congress passed it over his veto by a
+decided majority.
+
+The regard for John Sherman's ability in Ohio was unbounded, and it was
+generally supposed that in all financial affairs, as well as in many
+others, he dominated Hayes. I shared that opinion until I learned
+indirectly from John Hay, who was first assistant Secretary of State and
+intimate in inner administration circles, that this was not true; that
+Hayes had decided opinions of his own and did not hesitate to differ
+with his Secretary of the Treasury. Nevertheless, not until John
+Sherman's "Recollections" were published was it generally known, I
+believe, that Sherman had a share in the Allison compromise, and did not
+approve of the President's veto of the bill remonetizing silver.
+
+The Federal control of congressional and presidential elections, being a
+part of the Reconstruction legislation, was obnoxious to the Democrats,
+and they attempted to abrogate it by "riders" attached to several
+appropriation bills, especially that providing for the army. While the
+Senate remained Republican, there was chance for an accommodation
+between the President and the Senate on one side and the House on the
+other. Two useful compromises were made, the Democrats yielding in one
+case, the Republicans in the other. But in 1879, when both the House and
+the Senate were Democratic, a sharp contest began between Congress and
+the executive, the history of which is written in seven veto messages.
+For lack of appropriations to carry on the government, the President
+called an extra session of Congress in the first year of his
+administration and another in 1879, which was a remarkable record of
+extra sessions in a time of peace. The Democratic House passed a
+resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate Hayes's
+title and aroused some alarm lest an effort might be made "to oust
+President Hayes and inaugurate Tilden." Although this alarm was stilled
+less than a month later by a decisive vote of the House, the action and
+investigation were somewhat disquieting.
+
+Thus Hayes encountered sharp opposition from the Democrats, who
+frequently pointed their arguments by declaring that he held his place
+by means of fraud. He received sympathy from hardly any of the leaders
+of his own party in Congress, and met with open condemnation from the
+Stalwarts; yet he pursued his course with steadiness and equanimity, and
+was happy in his office. His serene amiability and hopefulness,
+especially in regard to affairs in the Southern states, were a source of
+irritation to the Stalwarts; but it was the serenity of a man who felt
+himself fully equal to his responsibilities.
+
+In his inaugural address, Hayes contributed an addition to our political
+idiom, "He serves his party best who serves the country best." His
+administration was a striking illustration of this maxim. When he became
+President, the Republican party was in a demoralized condition, but,
+despite the factional criticism to which he was subject, he gained in
+the first few months of his Presidency the approval of men of
+intelligence and independent thought, and, as success attended his
+different policies, he received the support of the masses. The signal
+Republican triumph in the presidential election of 1880 was due to the
+improvement in business conditions and to the clean and efficient
+administration of Hayes.
+
+In recalling his predecessor in office, we think more gladly of the
+Grant of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Appomattox than of Grant the
+President, for during his two administrations corruption was rife and
+bad government to the fore. Financial scandals were so frequent that
+despairing patriots cried out, "Is there no longer honesty in public
+life?" Our country then reached the high-water mark of corruption in
+national affairs. A striking improvement began under Hayes, who infused
+into the public service his own high ideals of honesty and efficiency.
+Hayes was much assisted in his social duties by his wife, a woman of
+character and intelligence, who carried herself with grace and dignity.
+One sometimes heard the remark that as Hayes was ruled in political
+matters by John Sherman, so in social affairs he was ruled by his wife.
+The sole foundation for this lay in his deference to her total
+abstinence principles, which she held so strongly as to exclude wine
+from the White House table except, I believe, at one official dinner,
+that to the Russian Grand Dukes.
+
+Hayes's able Cabinet was likewise a harmonious one. Its members were
+accustomed to dine together at regular intervals (fortnightly, I think),
+when affairs of state and other subjects were discussed, and the
+geniality of these occasions was enhanced by a temperate circulation of
+the wine bottle. There must have been very good talk at these social
+meetings. Evarts and Schurz were citizens of the world. Evarts was a man
+of keen intelligence and wide information, and possessed a genial as
+well as a caustic wit. Schurz could discuss present politics and past
+history. He was well versed in European history of the eighteenth
+century and the Napoleonic wars, and could talk about the power of
+Voltaire in literature and the influence of Lessing on Goethe. From
+appreciative discourse on the Wagner opera and the French drama, he
+could, if the conversation turned to the Civil War, give a lively
+account of the battles of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, in both of
+which he had borne an honorable part. Sherman was not a cosmopolitan
+like his two colleagues, but he loved dining out. His manners were those
+of the old-school gentleman; he could listen with genial appreciation,
+and he could talk of events in American history of which he had been a
+contemporaneous observer; as, for example, of the impressive oratory of
+Daniel Webster at a dinner in Plymouth; or the difference between the
+national conventions of his early political life and the huge ones of
+the present, illustrating his comparison with an account of the Whig
+convention of 1852, to which he went as a delegate.
+
+Differing in many respects, Hayes and Grover Cleveland were alike in the
+possession of executive ability and the lack of oratorical. We all know
+that it is a purely academic question which is the better form of
+government, the English or our own, as both have grown up to adapt
+themselves to peculiar conditions. But when I hear an enthusiast for
+Cabinet government and ministerial responsibility, I like to point out
+that men like Hayes and Cleveland, who made excellent Presidents, could
+never have been prime ministers. One cannot conceive of either in an
+office equivalent to that of First Lord of the Treasury, being heckled
+by members on the front opposition bench and holding his own or getting
+the better of his opponents.
+
+I have brought Hayes and Cleveland into juxtaposition, as each had a
+high personal regard for the other. Hayes died on January 17, 1893.
+Cleveland, the President-elect, was to be inaugurated on the following
+fourth of March. Despite remonstrance and criticism from bitter
+partisans of his own party, who deprecated any honor paid to one whom
+all good Democrats deemed a fraudulent President, Cleveland traveled
+from New York to Fremont, Ohio, to attend the funeral. He could only
+think of Hayes as an ex-President and a man whom he highly esteemed.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
+
+Lecture read at Harvard University, April 13, 1908; printed in the
+_Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
+
+
+Our two great journalists of the nineteenth century were Greeley and
+Godkin. Though differing in very many respects, they were alike in
+possessing a definite moral purpose. The most glorious and influential
+portion of Greeley's career lay between the passage of the
+Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and the election of Lincoln in 1860, when
+the press played an important part in the upbuilding of a political
+party which formulated in a practical manner the antislavery sentiment
+of the country. Foremost among newspapers was the _New York Tribune_;
+foremost among editors was Horace Greeley. Of Greeley in his best days
+Godkin wrote: "He has an enthusiasm which never flags, and a faith in
+principles which nothing can shake, and an English style which, for
+vigor, terseness, clearness, and simplicity, has never been surpassed,
+except perhaps by Cobbett."[171]
+
+Greeley and Godkin were alike in furnishing their readers with telling
+arguments. In northern New York and the Western Reserve of Ohio the
+_Weekly Tribune_ was a political Bible. "Why do you look so gloomy?"
+said a traveler, riding along the highway in the Western Reserve during
+the old antislavery days, to a farmer who was sitting moodily on a
+fence. "Because," replied the farmer, "my Democratic friend next door
+got the best of me in an argument last night. But when I get my _Weekly
+Tribune_ to-morrow I'll knock the foundations all out from under
+him."[172]
+
+Premising that Godkin is as closely identified with _The Nation_ and the
+_Evening Post_ as Greeley with the _Tribune_, I shall refer to a
+personal experience. Passing a part of the winter of 1886 in a hotel at
+Thomasville, Georgia, it chanced that among the hundred or more guests
+there were eight or ten of us who regularly received _The Nation_ by
+post. Ordinarily it arrived on the Friday noon train from Savannah, and
+when we came from our mid-day dinner into the hotel office, there, in
+our respective boxes, easily seen, and from their peculiar form
+recognized by every one, were our copies of _The Nation_. Occasionally
+the papers missed connection at Savannah, and our _Nations_ did not
+arrive until after supper. It used to be said by certain scoffers that
+if a discussion of political questions came up in the afternoon of one
+of those days of disappointment, we readers were mum; but in the late
+evening, after having digested our political pabulum, we were ready to
+join issue with any antagonist. Indeed, each of us might have used the
+words of James Russell Lowell, written while he was traveling on the
+Continent and visiting many places where _The Nation_ could not be
+bought: "All the time I was without it, my mind was chaos and I didn't
+feel that I had a safe opinion to swear by."[173]
+
+While the farmer of the Western Reserve and Lowell are extreme types of
+clientele, each represents fairly well the peculiar following of Greeley
+and of Godkin, which differed as much as did the personal traits of the
+two journalists. Godkin speaks of Greeley's "odd attire, shambling gait,
+simple, good-natured and hopelessly peaceable face, and long yellow
+locks."[174] His "old white hat and white coat," which in New York were
+regarded as an affectation, counted with his following west of the
+Hudson River as a winning eccentricity. When he came out upon the
+lecture platform with crumpled shirt, cravat awry, and wrinkled coat
+looking as if he had traveled for a number of nights and days, such
+disorder appeared to many of his Western audiences as nothing worse than
+the mark of a very busy man, who had paid them the compliment of
+leaving his editorial rooms to speak to them in person, and who had
+their full sympathy as he thus opened his discourse, "You mustn't, my
+friends, expect fine words from a rough busy man like me."[175]
+
+The people who read the _Tribune_ did not expect fine words; they were
+used to the coarse, abusive language in which Greeley repelled attacks,
+and to his giving the lie with heartiness and vehemence. They enjoyed
+reading that "another lie was nailed to the counter," and that an
+antagonist "was a liar, knowing himself to be a liar, and lying with
+naked intent to deceive."[176]
+
+On the contrary, the dress, the face, and the personal bearing of Godkin
+proclaimed at once the gentleman and cultivated man of the world. You
+felt that he was a man whom you would like to meet at dinner, accompany
+on a long walk, or cross the Atlantic with, were you an acquaintance or
+friend.
+
+An incident related by Godkin himself shows that at least one
+distinguished gentleman did not enjoy sitting at meat with Greeley.
+During the spring of 1864 Godkin met Greeley at breakfast at the house
+of Mr. John A. C. Gray. William Cullen Bryant, at that time editor of
+the New York _Evening Post_, was one of the guests, and, when Greeley
+entered the room, was standing near the fireplace conversing with his
+host. On observing that Bryant did not speak to Greeley, Gray asked him
+in a whisper, "Don't you know Mr. Greeley?" In a loud whisper Bryant
+replied, "No, I don't; he's a blackguard--he's a blackguard."[177]
+
+In the numbers of people whom he influenced, Greeley had the advantage
+over Godkin. In February, 1855, the circulation of the _Tribune_ was
+172,000, and its own estimate of its readers half a million, which was
+certainly not excessive. It is not a consideration beyond bounds to
+infer that the readers of the _Tribune_ in 1860 furnished a goodly part
+of the 1,866,000 votes which were received by Lincoln.
+
+At different times, while Godkin was editor, _The Nation_ stated its
+exact circulation, which, as I remember it, was about 10,000, and it
+probably had 50,000 readers. As many of its readers were in the class of
+Lowell, its indirect influence was immense. Emerson said that _The
+Nation_ had "breadth, variety, self-sustainment, and an admirable style
+of thought and expression."--"I owe much to _The Nation_," wrote Francis
+Parkman. "I regard it as the most valuable of American journals, and
+feel that the best interests of the country are doubly involved in its
+success."--"What an influence you have!" said George William Curtis to
+Godkin. "What a sanitary element in our affairs _The Nation_ is!"--"To
+my generation," wrote William James, "Godkin's was certainly the
+towering influence in all thought concerning public affairs, and
+indirectly his influence has certainly been more pervasive than that of
+any other writer of the generation, for he influenced other writers who
+never quoted him, and determined the whole current of
+discussion."--"When the work of this century is summed up," wrote
+Charles Eliot Norton to Godkin, "what you have done for the good old
+cause of civilization, the cause which is always defeated, but always
+after defeat taking more advanced position than before--what you have
+done for this cause will count for much."--"I am conscious," wrote
+President Eliot to Godkin, "that _The Nation_ has had a decided effect
+on my opinions and my action for nearly forty years; and I believe it
+has had like effect on thousands of educated Americans."[178]
+
+A string of quotations, as is well known, becomes wearisome; but the
+importance of the point that I am trying to make will probably justify
+one more. "I find myself so thoroughly agreeing with _The Nation_
+always," wrote Lowell, "that I am half persuaded that I edit it
+myself!"[179] Truly Lowell had a good company: Emerson, Parkman, Curtis,
+Norton, James, Eliot,--all teachers in various ways. Through their
+lectures, books, and speeches, they influenced college students at an
+impressible age; they appealed to young and to middle-aged men; and they
+furnished comfort and entertainment for the old. It would have been
+difficult to find anywhere in the country an educated man whose thought
+was not affected by some one of these seven; and their influence on
+editorial writers for newspapers was remarkable. These seven were all
+taught by Godkin.
+
+"Every Friday morning when _The Nation_ comes," wrote Lowell to Godkin,
+"I fill my pipe, and read it from beginning to end. Do you do it all
+yourself? Or are there really so many clever men in the country?"[180]
+Lowell's experience, with or without tobacco, was undoubtedly that of
+hundreds, perhaps of thousands, of educated men, and the query he raised
+was not an uncommon one. At one time, Godkin, I believe, wrote most of
+"The Week," which was made up of brief and pungent comments on events,
+as well as the principal editorial articles. The power of iteration,
+which the journalist possesses, is great, and, when that power is
+wielded by a man of keen intelligence and wide information, possessing a
+knowledge of the world, a sense of humor, and an effective literary
+style, it becomes tremendous. The only escape from Godkin's iteration
+was one frequently tried, and that was, to stop _The Nation_.
+
+Although Godkin published three volumes of Essays, the honors he
+received during his lifetime were due to his work as editor of _The
+Nation_ and the _Evening Post_; and this is his chief title of fame. The
+education, early experience, and aspiration of such a journalist are
+naturally matter of interest. Born in 1831, in the County of Wicklow in
+the southeastern part of Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he
+was able to say when referring to Goldwin Smith, "I am an Irishman, but
+I am as English in blood as he is."[181] Receiving his higher education
+at Queen's College, Belfast, he took a lively interest in present
+politics, his college friends being Liberals. John Stuart Mill was their
+prophet, Grote and Bentham their daily companions, and America was their
+promised land. "To the scoffs of the Tories that our schemes were
+impracticable," he has written of these days, "our answer was that in
+America, barring slavery, they were actually at work. There, the chief
+of the state and the legislators were freely elected by the people.
+There, the offices were open to everybody who had the capacity to fill
+them. There was no army or navy, two great curses of humanity in all
+ages. There was to be no war except war in self-defense.... In fact, we
+did not doubt that in America at last the triumph of humanity over its
+own weaknesses and superstitions was being achieved, and the dream of
+Christendom was at last being realized."[182]
+
+As a correspondent of the London _Daily News_ he went to the Crimea. The
+scenes at Malakoff gave him a disgust for war which thenceforth he never
+failed to express upon every opportunity. When a man of sixty-eight,
+reckoning its cost in blood and treasure, he deemed the Crimean War
+entirely unnecessary and very deplorable.[183] Godkin arrived in America
+in November, 1856, and soon afterwards, with Olmsted's "Journey in the
+Seaboard Slave States," the "Back Country," and "Texas," as guidebooks,
+took a horseback journey through the South. Following closely Olmsted's
+trail, and speaking therefore with knowledge, he has paid him one of the
+highest compliments one traveler ever paid another. "Olmsted's work," he
+wrote, "in vividness of description and in photographic minuteness far
+surpasses Arthur Young's."[184] During this journey he wrote letters to
+the London _Daily News_, and these were continued after his return to
+New York City. For the last three years of our Civil War, he was its
+regular correspondent, and, as no one denies that he was a powerful
+advocate when his heart was enlisted, he rendered efficient service to
+the cause of the North. The _News_ was strongly pro-Northern, and Godkin
+furnished the facts which rendered its leaders sound and instructive as
+well as sympathetic. All this while he was seeing socially the best
+people in New York City, and making useful and desirable acquaintances
+in Boston and Cambridge.
+
+The interesting story of the foundation of _The Nation_ has been told a
+number of times, and it will suffice for our purpose to say that there
+were forty stockholders who contributed a capital of one hundred
+thousand dollars, one half of which was raised in Boston, and one
+quarter each in Philadelphia and New York. Godkin was the editor, and
+next to him the chief promoters were James M. McKim of Philadelphia and
+Charles Eliot Norton. The first number of this "weekly journal of
+politics, literature, science, and art" appeared on July 6, 1865.
+Financial embarrassment and disagreements among the stockholders marked
+the first year of its existence, at the end of which Godkin, McKim, and
+Frederick Law Olmsted took over the property, and continued the
+publication under the proprietorship of E. L. Godkin & Co. "_The Nation_
+owed its continued existence to Charles Eliot Norton," wrote Godkin in
+1899. "It was his calm and confidence amid the shrieks of combatants ...
+which enabled me to do my work even with decency."[185]
+
+Sixteen years after _The Nation_ was started, in 1881, Godkin sold it
+out to the _Evening Post_, becoming associate editor of that journal,
+with Carl Schurz as his chief. _The Nation_ was thereafter published as
+the weekly edition of the _Evening Post_. In 1883 Schurz retired and
+Godkin was made editor-in-chief, having the aid and support of one of
+the owners, Horace White. On January 1, 1900, on account of ill health,
+he withdrew from the editorship of the _Evening Post_,[186] thus
+retiring from active journalism.
+
+For thirty-five years he had devoted himself to his work with
+extraordinary ability and singleness of purpose. Marked appreciation
+came to him: invitations to deliver courses of lectures from both
+Harvard and Yale, the degree of A.M. from Harvard, and the degree of
+D.C.L. from Oxford. What might have been a turning point in his career
+was the offer in 1870 of the professorship of history at Harvard. He was
+strongly tempted to accept it, but, before coming to a decision, he took
+counsel of a number of friends; and few men, I think, have ever received
+such wise and disinterested advice as did Godkin when he was thus
+hesitating in what way he should apply his teaching. The burden of the
+advice was not to take the professorship, if he had to give up _The
+Nation_.
+
+Frederick Law Olmsted wrote to him: "If you can't write fully half of
+'The Week' and half the leaders, and control the drift and tone of the
+whole while living at Cambridge, give up the professorship, for _The
+Nation_ is worth many professorships. It is a question of loyalty over a
+question of comfort." Lowell wrote to him in the same strain: "_Stay_ if
+the two things are incompatible. We may find another professor by and by
+... but we can't find another editor for _The Nation_." From Germany,
+John Bigelow sent a characteristic message: "Tell the University to
+require each student to take a copy of _The Nation_. Do not profess
+history for them in any other way. I dare say your lectures would be
+good, but why limit your pupils to hundreds which are now counted by
+thousands?"[187]
+
+As is well known, Godkin relinquished the idea of the college connection
+and stuck to his job, although the quiet and serenity of a professor's
+life in Cambridge contrasted with his own turbulent days appealed to him
+powerfully. "Ten years hence," he wrote to Norton, "if things go on as
+they are now I shall be the most odious man in America. Not that I shall
+not have plenty of friends, but my enemies will be far more numerous and
+active." Six years after he had founded _The Nation_, and one year after
+he had declined the Harvard professorship, when he was yet but forty
+years old, he gave this humorously exaggerated account of his physical
+failings due to his nervous strain: "I began _The Nation_ young,
+handsome, and fascinating, and am now withered and somewhat broken,
+rheumatism gaining on me rapidly, my complexion ruined, as also my
+figure, for I am growing stout."[188]
+
+But his choice between the Harvard professorship and _The Nation_ was a
+wise one. He was a born writer of paragraphs and editorials. The files
+of _The Nation_ are his monument. A crown of his laborious days is the
+tribute of James Bryce: "_The Nation_ was the best weekly not only in
+America but in the world."[189]
+
+Thirty-five years of journalism, in which Godkin was accustomed to give
+hard blows, did not, as he himself foreshadowed, call forth a unanimous
+chorus of praise; and the objections of intelligent and high-minded men
+are well worth taking into account. The most common one is that his
+criticism was always destructive; that he had an eye for the weak side
+of causes and men that he did not favor, and these he set forth with
+unremitting vigor without regard for palliating circumstances; that he
+erected a high and impossible ideal and judged all men by it; hence, if
+a public man was right eight times out of ten, he would seize upon the
+two failures and so parade them with his withering sarcasm that the
+reader could get no other idea than that the man was either weak or
+wicked. An editor of very positive opinions, he was apt to convey the
+idea that if any one differed from him on a vital question, like the
+tariff or finance or civil service reform, he was necessarily a bad man.
+He made no allowances for the weaknesses of human nature, and had no
+idea that he himself ever could be mistaken. Though a powerful critic,
+he did not realize the highest criticism, which discerns and brings out
+the good as well as the evil. He won his reputation by dealing out
+censure, which has a rare attraction for a certain class of minds, as
+Tacitus observed in his "History." "People," he wrote, "lend a ready ear
+to detraction and spite," for "malignity wears the imposing appearance
+of independence."[190]
+
+The influence of _The Nation_, therefore,--so these objectors to Godkin
+aver,--was especially unfortunate on the intelligent youth of the
+country. It was in 1870 that John Bigelow, whom I have just quoted,
+advised Harvard University to include _The Nation_ among its
+requirements; and it is true that at that time, and for a good while
+afterwards, _The Nation_ was favorite reading for serious Harvard
+students. The same practice undoubtedly prevailed at most other
+colleges. Now I have been told that the effect of reading _The Nation_
+was to prevent these young men from understanding their own country;
+that, as Godkin himself did not comprehend America, he was an unsound
+teacher and made his youthful readers see her through a false medium.
+And I am further informed that in mature life it cost an effort, a
+mental wrench, so to speak, to get rid of this influence and see things
+as they really were, which was necessary for usefulness in lives cast in
+America. The United States was our country; she was entitled to our love
+and service; and yet such a frame of mind was impossible, so this
+objection runs, if we read and believed the writing of _The Nation_. A
+man of character and ability, who had filled a number of public offices
+with credit, told me that the influence of _The Nation_ had been potent
+in keeping college graduates out of public life; that things in the
+United States were painted so black both relatively and absolutely that
+the young men naturally reasoned, "Why shall we concern ourselves about
+a country which is surely going to destruction?" Far better, they may
+have said, to pattern after Plato's philosopher who kept out of
+politics, being "like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the
+storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along."[191]
+
+Such considerations undoubtedly lost _The Nation_ valuable subscribers.
+I have been struck with three circumstances in juxtaposition. At the
+time of Judge Hoar's forced resignation from Grant's Cabinet in 1870,
+_The Nation_ said, "In peace as in war 'that is best blood which hath
+most iron in't;' and much is to be excused to the man [that is, Judge
+Hoar] who has for the first time in many years of Washington history
+given a back-handed blow to many an impudent and arrogant dispenser of
+patronage. He may well be proud of most of the enmity that he won while
+in office, and may go back contented to Massachusetts to be her most
+honored citizen."[192] Two months later Lowell wrote to Godkin, "The
+bound volumes of _The Nation_ standing on Judge Hoar's library table, as
+I saw them the other day, were a sign of the estimation in which it is
+held by solid people and it is they who in the long run decide the
+fortunes of such a journal."[193] But _The Nation_ lost Judge Hoar's
+support. When I called upon him in 1893 he was no longer taking or
+reading it.
+
+It is the sum of individual experiences that makes up the influence of a
+journal like _The Nation_, and one may therefore be pardoned the egotism
+necessarily arising from a relation of one's own contact with it. In
+1866, while a student at the University of Chicago, I remember well
+that, in a desultory talk in the English Literature class, Professor
+William Matthews spoke of _The Nation_ and advised the students to read
+it each week as a political education of high value. This was the first
+knowledge I had of it, but I was at that time, along with many other
+young men, devoted to the _Round Table_, an "Independent weekly review
+of Politics, Finance, Literature, Society, and Art," which flourished
+between the years 1864 and 1868. We asked the professor, "Do you
+consider _The Nation_ superior to the _Round Table_?"--"Decidedly," was
+his reply. "The editors of the _Round Table_ seem to write for the sake
+of writing, while the men who are expressing themselves in _The Nation_
+do so because their hearts and minds are full of their matter." This was
+a just estimate of the difference between the two journals. The _Round
+Table_, modeled after the _Saturday Review_, was a feeble imitation of
+the London weekly, then in its palmy days, while _The Nation_, which was
+patterned after the _Spectator_, did not suffer by the side of its
+model. On this hint from Professor Matthews, I began taking and reading
+_The Nation_, and with the exception of one year in Europe during my
+student days, I have read it ever since.
+
+Before I touch on certain specifications I must premise that the
+influence of this journal on a Westerner, who read it in a receptive
+spirit, was probably more potent than on one living in the East. The
+arrogance of a higher civilization in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
+than elsewhere in the United States, the term "wild and woolly West,"
+applied to the region west of the Alleghany Mountains, is somewhat
+irritating to a Westerner. Yet it remains none the less true that, other
+things being equal, a man living in the environment of Boston or New
+York would have arrived more easily and more quickly at certain sound
+political views I shall proceed to specify than he would while living in
+Cleveland or Chicago. The gospel which Godkin preached was needed much
+more in the West than in the East; and his disciples in the western
+country had for him a high degree of reverence. In the biography of
+Godkin, allusion is made to the small pecuniary return for his work, but
+in thinking of him we never considered the money question. We supposed
+that he made a living; we knew from his articles that he was a
+gentleman, and saw much of good society, and there was not one of us who
+would not rather have been in his shoes than in those of the richest man
+in New York. We placed such trust in him--which his life shows to have
+been abundantly justified--that we should have lost all confidence in
+human nature had he ever been tempted by place or profit. And his
+influence was abiding. Presidents, statesmen, senators, congressmen rose
+and fell; political administrations changed; good, bad, and weak public
+men passed away; but Godkin preached to us every week a timely and
+cogent sermon.
+
+To return now to my personal experience. I owe wholly to _The Nation_ my
+conviction in favor of civil service reform; in fact, it was from these
+columns that I first came to understand the question. The arguments
+advanced were sane and strong, and especially intelligible to men in
+business, who, in the main, chose their employees on the ground of
+fitness, and who made it a rule to retain and advance competent and
+honest men in their employ. I think that on this subject the indirect
+influence of _The Nation_ was very great, in furnishing arguments to men
+like myself, who never lost an opportunity to restate them, and to
+editorial writers for the Western newspapers, who generally read _The
+Nation_ and who were apt to reproduce its line of reasoning. When I look
+back to 1869, the year in which I became a voter, and recall the
+strenuous opposition to civil service reform on the part of the
+politicians of both parties, and the indifference of the public, I
+confess that I am amazed at the progress which has been made. Such a
+reform is of course effected only by a number of contributing causes and
+some favoring circumstances, but I feel certain that it was accelerated
+by the constant and vigorous support of _The Nation_.
+
+I owe to _The Nation_ more than to any other agency my correct ideas on
+finance in two crises. The first was the "greenback craze" from 1869 to
+1875. It was easy to be a hard-money man in Boston or New York, where
+one might imbibe the correct doctrine as one everywhere takes in the
+fundamental principles of civilization and morality. But it was not so
+in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where the severe money stringency
+before and during the panic of 1873, and the depression after it, caused
+many good and representative men to join in the cry for a larger issue
+of greenbacks by the government. It required no moral courage for the
+average citizen to resist what in 1875 seemed to be the popular move,
+but it did require the correct knowledge and the forcible arguments put
+forward weekly by _The Nation_. I do not forget my indebtedness to John
+Sherman, Carl Schurz, and Senator Thurman, but Sherman and Thurman were
+not always consistent on this question, and Schurz's voice was only
+occasionally heard; but every seven days came _The Nation_ with its
+unremitting iteration, and it was an iteration varied enough to be
+always interesting and worthy of study. As one looks back over nearly
+forty years of politics one likes to recall the occasions when one has
+done the thing one's mature judgment fully approves; and I like to think
+that in 1875 I refused to vote for my party's candidate for governor,
+the Democratic William Allen, whose platform was "that the volume of
+currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade."
+
+A severer ordeal was the silver question of 1878, because the argument
+for silver was more weighty than that for irredeemable paper, and was
+believed to be sound by business men of both parties. I remember that
+many representative business men of Cleveland used to assemble around
+the large luncheon table of the Union Club and discuss the pending
+silver-coinage bill, which received the votes of both of the senators
+from Ohio and of all her representatives except Garfield. The gold men
+were in a minority also at the luncheon table, but, fortified by _The
+Nation_, we thought that we held our own in this daily discussion.
+
+In my conversion from a belief in a protective tariff to the advocacy
+of one for revenue only, I recognize an obligation to Godkin, but his
+was only one of many influences. I owe _The Nation_ much for its
+accurate knowledge of foreign affairs, especially of English politics,
+in which its readers were enlightened by one of the most capable of
+living men, Albert V. Dicey. I am indebted to it for sound ideas on
+municipal government, and for its advocacy of many minor measures, such
+for instance as the International Copyright Bill. I owe it something for
+its later attitude on Reconstruction, and its condemnation of the negro
+carpet-bag governments in the South. In a word, _The Nation_ was on the
+side of civilization and good political morals.
+
+Confessing thus my great political indebtedness to Godkin, it is with
+some reluctance that I present a certain phase of his thought which was
+regretted by many of his best friends, and which undoubtedly limited his
+influence in the later years of his life. A knowledge of this
+shortcoming is, however, essential to a thorough comprehension of the
+man. It is frequently said that Godkin rarely, if ever, made a
+retraction or a rectification of personal charges shown to be incorrect.
+A thorough search of _The Nation's_ columns would be necessary fully to
+substantiate this statement, but my own impression, covering as it does
+thirty-three years' reading of the paper under Godkin's control,
+inclines me to believe in its truth, as I do not remember an instance of
+the kind.
+
+A grave fault of omission occurs to me as showing a regrettable bias in
+a leader of intelligent opinion. On January 5, 1897, General Francis A.
+Walker died. He had served with credit as an officer during our Civil
+War, and in two thoughtful books had made a valuable contribution to its
+military history. He was superintendent of the United States Census of
+1870, and did work that statisticians and historians refer to with
+gratitude and praise. For sixteen years he served with honor the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its president. He was a
+celebrated political economist, his books being (I think) as well known
+in England as in this country. Yale, Amherst, Harvard, Columbia, St.
+Andrews, and Dublin conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. Withal he
+served his city with public spirit. Trinity Church, "crowded and silent"
+in celebrating its last service over the dead body of Walker, witnessed
+one of the three most impressive funerals which Boston has seen for at
+least sixteen years--a funeral conspicuous for the attendance of a large
+number of delegates from colleges and learned societies.
+
+Walker was distinctly of the intellectual elite of the country. But _The
+Nation_ made not the slightest reference to his death. In the issue of
+January 7, appearing two days later, I looked for an allusion in "The
+Week," and subsequently for one of those remarkable and discriminating
+eulogies, which in smaller type follow the editorials, and for which
+_The Nation_ is justly celebrated; but there was not one word. You might
+search the 1897 volume of _The Nation_ and, but for a brief reference in
+the April "Notes" to Walker's annual report posthumously published, you
+would not learn that a great intellectual leader had passed away. I
+wrote to a valued contributor of _The Nation_, a friend of Walker, of
+Godkin, and of Wendell P. Garrison (the literary editor), inquiring if
+he knew the reason for the omission, and in answer he could only tell me
+that his amazement had been as great as mine. He at first looked
+eagerly, and, when the last number came in which a eulogy could possibly
+appear, he turned over the pages of _The Nation_ with sorrowful regret,
+hardly believing his eyes that the article he sought was not there.
+
+Now I suspect that the reason of this extraordinary omission was due to
+the irreconcilable opinions of Walker and Godkin on a question of
+finance. It was a period when the contest between the advocates of a
+single gold standard and the bimetallists raged fiercely, and the
+contest had not been fully settled by the election of McKinley in 1896.
+Godkin was emphatically for gold, Walker equally emphatic for a double
+standard. And they clashed. It is a notable example of the peculiarity
+of Godkin, to allow at the portal of death the one point of political
+policy on which he and Walker disagreed to overweigh the nine points in
+which they were at one.
+
+Most readers of _The Nation_ noticed distinctly that, from 1895 on, its
+tone became more pessimistic and its criticism was marked by greater
+acerbity. Mr. Rollo Ogden in his biography shows that Godkin's feeling
+of disappointment over the progress of the democratic experiment in
+America, and his hopelessness of our future, began at an earlier date.
+
+During his first years in the United States, he had no desire to return
+to his mother country. When the financial fortune of _The Nation_ was
+doubtful, he wrote to Norton that he should not go back to England
+except as a "last extremity. It would be going back into an atmosphere
+that I detest, and a social system that I have hated since I was
+fourteen years old."[194] In 1889, after an absence of twenty-seven
+years, he went to England. The best intellectual society of London and
+Oxford opened its doors to him and he fell under its charm as would any
+American who was the recipient of marked attentions from people of such
+distinction. He began to draw contrasts which were not favorable to his
+adopted country. "I took a walk along the wonderful Thames embankment,"
+he wrote, "a splendid work, and I sighed to think how impossible it
+would be to get such a thing done in New York. The differences in
+government and political manners are in fact awful, and for me very
+depressing. Henry James [with whom he stopped in London] and I talk over
+them sometimes 'des larmes dans la voix.'" In 1894, however, Godkin
+wrote in the _Forum_: "There is probably no government in the world
+to-day as stable as that of the United States. The chief advantage of
+democratic government is, in a country like this, the enormous force it
+can command in an emergency."[195] But next year his pessimism is
+clearly apparent. On January 12, 1895, he wrote to Norton: "You see I am
+not sanguine about the future of democracy. I think we shall have a long
+period of decline like that which followed (?) the fall of the Roman
+Empire, and then a recrudescence under some other form of society."[196]
+
+A number of things had combined to affect him profoundly. An admirer of
+Grover Cleveland and three times a warm supporter of his candidacy for
+the Presidency, he saw with regret the loss of his hold on his party,
+which was drifting into the hands of the advocates of free silver. Then
+in December, 1895, Godkin lost faith in his idol. "I was thunderstruck
+by Cleveland's message" on the Venezuela question, he wrote to Norton.
+His submission to the Jingoes "is a terrible shock."[197] Later, in a
+calm review of passing events, he called the message a "sudden
+declaration of war without notice against Great Britain."[198] The
+danger of such a proceeding he had pointed out to Norton: Our "immense
+democracy, mostly ignorant ... is constantly on the brink of some
+frightful catastrophe like that which overtook France in 1870."[199] In
+1896 he was deeply distressed at the country having to choose for
+President between the arch-protectionist McKinley and the free-silver
+advocate Bryan, for he had spent a good part of his life combating a
+protective tariff and advocating sound money. Though the _Evening Post_
+contributed powerfully to the election of McKinley, from the fact that
+its catechism, teaching financial truths in a popular form, was
+distributed throughout the West in immense quantities by the chairman of
+the Republican National Committee, Godkin himself refused to vote for
+McKinley and put in his ballot for Palmer, the gold Democrat.[200]
+
+The Spanish-American war seems to have destroyed any lingering hope that
+he had left for the future of American democracy. He spoke of it as "a
+perfectly avoidable war forced on by a band of unscrupulous politicians"
+who had behind them "a roaring mob."[201] The taking of the Philippines
+and the subsequent war in these islands confirmed him in his despair. In
+a private letter written from Paris, he said, "American ideals were the
+intellectual food of my youth, and to see America converted into a
+senseless, Old-World conqueror, embitters my age."[202] To another he
+wrote that his former "high and fond ideals about America were now all
+shattered."[203] "Sometimes he seemed to feel," said his intimate
+friend, James Bryce, "as though he had labored in vain for forty
+years."[204]
+
+Such regrets expressed by an honest and sincere man with a high ideal
+must command our respectful attention. Though due in part to old age and
+enfeebled health, they are still more attributable to his
+disappointment that the country had not developed in the way that he
+had marked out for her. For with men of Godkin's positive convictions,
+there is only one way to salvation. Sometimes such men are true
+prophets; at other times, while they see clearly certain aspects of a
+case, their narrowness of vision prevents them from taking in the whole
+range of possibilities, especially when the enthusiasm of manhood is
+gone.
+
+Godkin took a broader view in 1868, which he forcibly expressed in a
+letter to the London _Daily News_. "There is no careful and intelligent
+observer," he wrote, "whether he be a friend to democracy or not, who
+can help admiring the unbroken power with which the popular common
+sense--that shrewdness, or intelligence, or instinct of
+self-preservation, I care not what you call it, which so often makes the
+American farmer a far better politician than nine tenths of the best
+read European political philosophers--works under all this tumult and
+confusion of tongues. The newspapers and politicians fret and fume and
+shout and denounce; but the great mass, the nineteen or twenty millions,
+work away in the fields and workshops, saying little, thinking much,
+hardy, earnest, self-reliant, very tolerant, very indulgent, very
+shrewd, but ready whenever the government needs it, with musket, or
+purse, or vote, as the case may be, laughing and cheering occasionally
+at public meetings, but when you meet them individually on the highroad
+or in their own houses, very cool, then, sensible men, filled with no
+delusions, carried away by no frenzies, believing firmly in the future
+greatness and glory of the republic, but holding to no other article of
+faith as essential to political salvation."
+
+Before continuing the quotation I wish to call attention to the fact
+that Godkin's illustration was more effective in 1868 than now: then
+there was a solemn and vital meaning to the prayers offered up for
+persons going to sea that they might be preserved from the dangers of
+the deep. "Every now and then," he went on to say, "as one watches the
+political storms in the United States, one is reminded of one's feelings
+as one lies in bed on a stormy night in an ocean steamer in a head wind.
+Each blow of the sea shakes the ship from stem to stern, and every now
+and then a tremendous one seems to paralyze her. The machinery seems to
+stop work; there is a dead pause, and you think for a moment the end has
+come; but the throbbing begins once more, and if you go up on deck and
+look down in the hold, you see the firemen and engineers at their posts,
+apparently unconscious of anything but their work, and as sure of
+getting into port as if there was not a ripple on the water."
+
+This letter of Godkin's was written on January 8, 1868, when Congress
+was engaged in the reconstruction of the South on the basis of negro
+suffrage, when the quarrel between Congress and President Johnson was
+acute and his impeachment not two months off. At about this time Godkin
+set down Evarts's opinion that "we are witnessing the decline of public
+morality which usually presages revolution," and reported that Howells
+was talking "despondently like everybody else about the condition of
+morals and manners."[205] Of like tenor was the opinion of an
+arch-conservative, George Ticknor, written in 1869, which bears a
+resemblance to the lamentation of Godkin's later years. "The civil war
+of '61," wrote Ticknor, "has made a great gulf between what happened
+before it in our century and what has happened since, or what is likely
+to happen hereafter. It does not seem to me as if I were living in the
+country in which I was born, or in which I received whatever I ever got
+of political education or principles. Webster seems to have been the
+last of the Romans."[206]
+
+In 1868 Godkin was an optimist, having a cogent answer to all gloomy
+predictions; from 1895 to 1902 he was a pessimist; yet reasons just as
+strong may be adduced for considering the future of the country secure
+in the later as were urged in the earlier period. But as Godkin grew
+older, he became a moral censor, and it is characteristic of censors to
+exaggerate both the evil of the present and the good of the past. Thus
+in 1899 he wrote of the years 1857-1860: "The air was full of the real
+Americanism. The American gospel was on people's lips and was growing
+with fervor. Force was worshiped, but it was moral force: it was the
+force of reason, of humanity, of human equality, of a good example. The
+abolitionist gospel seemed to be permeating the views of the American
+people, and overturning and destroying the last remaining traditions of
+the old-world public morality. It was really what might be called the
+golden age of America."[207] These were the days of slavery. James
+Buchanan was President. The internal policy of the party in power was
+expressed in the Dred Scott decision and the attempt to force slavery on
+Kansas; the foreign policy, in the Ostend Manifesto, which declared that
+if Spain would not sell Cuba, the United States would take it by force.
+The rule in the civil service was, "to the victors belong the spoils."
+And New York City, where Godkin resided, had for its mayor Fernando
+Wood.
+
+In this somewhat rambling paper I have subjected Godkin to a severe test
+by a contrast of his public and private utterances covering many years,
+not however with the intention of accusing him of inconsistency. Ferrero
+writes that historians of our day find it easy to expose the
+contradictions of Cicero, but they forget that probably as much could
+be said of his contemporaries, if we possessed also their private
+correspondence. Similarly, it is a pertinent question how many
+journalists and how many public men would stand as well as Godkin in
+this matter of consistency if we possessed the same abundant records of
+their activity?
+
+The more careful the study of Godkin's utterances, the less will be the
+irritation felt by men who love and believe in their country. It is
+evident that he was a born critic, and his private correspondence is
+full of expressions showing that if he had been conducting a journal in
+England, his criticism of certain phases of English policy would have
+been as severe as those which he indulged in weekly at the expense of
+this country. "How Ireland sits heavy on your soul!" he wrote to James
+Bryce. "Salisbury was an utterly discredited Foreign Secretary when you
+brought up Home Rule. Now he is one of the wisest of men. Balfour and
+Chamberlain have all been lifted into eminence by opposition to Home
+Rule simply." To Professor Norton: "Chamberlain is a capital specimen of
+the rise of an unscrupulous politician." Again: "The fall of England
+into the hands of a creature like Chamberlain recalls the capture of
+Rome by Alaric." To another friend: "I do not like to talk about the
+Boer War, it is too painful.... When I do speak of the war my language
+becomes unfit for publication." On seeing the Queen and the Prince of
+Wales driving through the gardens at Windsor, his comment was "Fat,
+useless royalty;" and in 1897 he wrote from England to Arthur Sedgwick,
+"There are many things here which reconcile me to America."[208]
+
+In truth, much of his criticism of America is only an elaboration of his
+criticism of democracy. In common with many Europeans born at about the
+same time, who began their political life as radicals, he shows his keen
+disappointment that democracy has not regenerated mankind. "There is not
+a country in the world, living under parliamentary government," he
+wrote, "which has not begun to complain of the decline in the quality of
+its legislators. More and more, it is said, the work of government is
+falling into the hands of men to whom even small pay is important, and
+who are suspected of adding to their income by corruption. The
+withdrawal of the more intelligent class from legislative duties is more
+and more lamented, and the complaint is somewhat justified by the mass
+of crude, hasty, incoherent, and unnecessary laws which are poured on
+the world at every session."[209]
+
+I have thus far spoken only of the political influence of _The Nation_,
+but its literary department was equally important. Associated with
+Godkin from the beginning was Wendell P. Garrison, who became literary
+editor of the journal, and, who, Godkin wrote in 1871, "has really
+toiled for six years with the fidelity of a Christian martyr and upon
+the pay of an oysterman."[210] I have often heard the literary criticism
+of _The Nation_ called destructive like the political, but, it appears
+to me, with less reason. Books for review were sent to experts in
+different parts of the country, and the list of contributors included
+many professors from various colleges. While the editor, I believe,
+retained, and sometimes exercised, the right to omit parts of the review
+and make some additions, yet writers drawn from so many sources must
+have preserved their own individuality. I have heard it said that _The
+Nation_ gave you the impression of having been entirely written by one
+man; but whatever there is more than fanciful in that impression must
+have arisen from the general agreement between the editor and the
+contributors. Paul Leicester Ford once told me that, when he wrote a
+criticism for _The Nation_, he unconsciously took on _The Nation's_
+style, but he could write in that way for no other journal, nor did he
+ever fall into it in his books. Garrison was much more tolerant than is
+sometimes supposed. I know of his sending many books to two men, one of
+whom differed from him radically on the negro question and the other on
+socialism.
+
+It is only after hearing much detraction of the literary department of
+_The Nation_, and after considerable reflection, that I have arrived at
+the conviction that it came somewhat near to realizing criticism as
+defined by Matthew Arnold, thus: "A disinterested endeavor to learn and
+propagate the best that is known and thought in the world."[211] I am
+well aware that it was not always equal, and I remember two harsh
+reviews which ought not to have been printed; but this simply proves
+that the editor was human and _The Nation_ was not perfect. I feel safe,
+however, in saying that if the best critical reviews of _The Nation_
+were collected and printed in book form, they would show an aspiration
+after the standard erected by Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold.
+
+Again I must appeal to my individual experience. The man who lived in
+the middle West for the twenty-five years between 1865 and 1890 needed
+the literary department of _The Nation_ more than one who lived in
+Boston or New York. Most of the books written in America were by New
+England, New York, and Philadelphia authors, and in those communities
+literary criticism was evolved by social contact in clubs and other
+gatherings. We had nothing of the sort in Cleveland, where a writer of
+books walking down Euclid Avenue would have been stared at as a
+somewhat remarkable personage. The literary columns of _The Nation_ were
+therefore our most important link between our practical life and the
+literary world. I used to copy into my _Index Rerum_ long extracts from
+important reviews, in which the writers appeared to have a thorough
+grasp of their subjects; and these I read and re-read as I would a
+significant passage in a favorite book. In the days when many of us were
+profoundly influenced by Herbert Spencer's "Sociology," I was somewhat
+astonished to read one week in _The Nation_, in a review of Pollock's
+"Introduction to the Science of Politics," these words: "Herbert
+Spencer's contributions to political and historical science seem to us
+mere commonplaces, sometimes false, sometimes true, but in both cases
+trying to disguise their essential flatness and commonness in a garb of
+dogmatic formalism."[212] Such an opinion, evidencing a conflict between
+two intellectual guides, staggered me, and it was with some curiosity
+that I looked subsequently, when the _Index to Periodicals_ came out, to
+see who had the temerity thus to belittle Spencer--the greatest
+political philosopher, so some of his disciples thought, since
+Aristotle. I ascertained that the writer of the review was James Bryce,
+and whatever else might be thought, it could not be denied that the
+controversy was one between giants. I can, I think, date the beginning
+of my emancipation from Spencer from that review in 1891.
+
+In the same year I read a discriminating eulogy of George Bancroft,
+ending with an intelligent criticism of his history, which produced on
+me a marked impression. The reviewer wrote: Bancroft falls into "that
+error so common with the graphic school of historians--the exaggerated
+estimate of manuscripts or fragmentary material at the expense of what
+is printed and permanent.... But a fault far more serious than this is
+one which Mr. Bancroft shared with his historical contemporaries, but in
+which he far exceeded any of them--an utter ignoring of the very meaning
+and significance of a quotation mark."[213] Sound and scientific
+doctrine is this; and the whole article exhibited a thorough knowledge
+of our colonial and revolutionary history which inspired confidence in
+the conclusions of the writer, who, I later ascertained, was Thomas
+Wentworth Higginson.
+
+These two examples could be multiplied at length. There were many
+reviewers from Harvard and Yale; and undoubtedly other Eastern colleges
+were well represented. The University of Wisconsin furnished at least
+one contributor, as probably did the University of Michigan and other
+Western colleges. Men in Washington, New York, and Boston, not in
+academic life, were drawn upon; a soldier of the Civil War, living in
+Cincinnati, a man of affairs, sent many reviews. James Bryce was an
+occasional contributor, and at least three notable reviews came from the
+pen of Albert V. Dicey. In 1885, Godkin, in speaking of _The Nation's_
+department of Literature and Art, wrote that "the list of those who have
+contributed to the columns of the paper from the first issue to the
+present day contains a large number of the most eminent names in
+American literature, science, art, philosophy, and law."[214] With men
+so gifted, and chosen from all parts of the country, uniformly
+destructive criticism could not have prevailed. Among them were
+optimists as well as pessimists, and men as independent in thought as
+was Godkin himself.
+
+Believing that Godkin's thirty-five years of critical work was of great
+benefit to this country, I have sometimes asked myself whether the fact
+of his being a foreigner has made it more irritating to many good
+people, who term his criticism "fault-finding" or "scolding." Although
+he married in America and his home life was centered here, he confessed
+that in many essential things it was a foreign country.[215] Some
+readers who admired _The Nation_ told Mr. Bryce that they did not want
+"to be taught by a European how to run this republic." But Bryce, who in
+this matter is the most competent of judges, intimates that Godkin's
+foreign education, giving him detachment and perspective, was a distinct
+advantage. If it will help any one to a better appreciation of the man,
+let Godkin be regarded as "a chiel amang us takin' notes"; as an
+observer not so philosophic as Tocqueville, not so genial and
+sympathetic as Bryce. Yet, whether we look upon him as an Irishman, an
+Englishman, or an American, let us rejoice that he cast his lot with us,
+and that we have had the benefit of his illuminating pen. He was not
+always right; he was sometimes unjust; he often told the truth with
+"needless asperity,"[216] as Parkman put it; but his merits so
+outweighed his defects that he had a marked influence on opinion, and
+probably on history, during his thirty-five years of journalistic work,
+when, according to James Bryce, he showed a courage such as is rare
+everywhere.[217] General J. D. Cox, who had not missed a number of _The
+Nation_ from 1865 to 1899, wrote to Godkin, on hearing of his
+prospective retirement from the _Evening Post_, "I really believe that
+earnest men, all over the land, whether they agree with you or differ,
+will unite in the exclamation which Lincoln made as to Grant, 'We can't
+spare this man--he _fights_.'"[218]
+
+Our country, wrapped up in no smug complacency, listened to this man,
+respected him and supported him, and on his death a number of people
+were glad to unite to endow a lectureship in his honor in Harvard
+University.
+
+In closing, I cannot do better than quote what may be called Godkin's
+farewell words, printed forty days before the attack of cerebral
+hemorrhage which ended his active career. "The election of the chief
+officer of the state by universal suffrage," he wrote, "by a nation
+approaching one hundred millions, is not simply a novelty in the history
+of man's efforts to govern himself, but an experiment of which no one
+can foresee the result. The mass is yearly becoming more and more
+difficult to move. The old arts of persuasion are already ceasing to be
+employed on it. Presidential elections are less and less carried by
+speeches and articles. The American people is a less instructed people
+than it used to be. The necessity for drilling, organizing, and guiding
+it, in order to extract the vote from it is becoming plain; and out of
+this necessity has arisen the boss system, which is now found in
+existence everywhere, is growing more powerful, and has thus far
+resisted all attempts to overthrow it."
+
+I shall not stop to urge a qualification of some of these statements,
+but will proceed to the brighter side of our case, which Godkin, even in
+his pessimistic mood, could not fail to see distinctly. "On the other
+hand," he continued, "I think the progress made by the colleges
+throughout the country, big and little, both in the quality of the
+instruction and in the amount of money devoted to books, laboratories,
+and educational facilities of all kinds, is something unparalleled in
+the history of the civilized world. And the progress of the nation in
+all the arts, except that of government, in science, in literature, in
+commerce, in invention, is something unprecedented and becomes daily
+more astonishing. How it is that this splendid progress does not drag
+on politics with it I do not profess to know."[219]
+
+Let us be as hopeful as was Godkin in his earlier days, and rest assured
+that intellectual training will eventually exert its power in politics,
+as it has done in business and in other domains of active life.
+
+
+  [171] R. Ogden's Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin, I, 255.
+
+  [172] Rhodes's History of the United States, II, 72 (C. M. Depew).
+
+  [173] Ogden, II, 88.
+
+  [174] _Ibid._, I, 257.
+
+  [175] Parton's Greeley, 331, 576; my own recollections; Ogden, I, 255.
+
+  [176] Godkin, Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [177] Ogden, I, 168.
+
+  [178] Ogden, I, 221, 249, 251, 252; II, 222, 231.
+
+  [179] Letters of J. R. Lowell, II, 76.
+
+  [180] _Ibid._, I, 368.
+
+  [181] Ogden, I, 1.
+
+  [182] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899; Ogden, I, 11.
+
+  [183] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [184] _Ibid._; Ogden, I, 113.
+
+  [185] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899; Ogden, I, _passim_;
+        _The Nation_, June 25, 1885, May 23, 1902.
+
+  [186] Ogden, II, Chap. XVII.
+
+  [187] Ogden, II, Chap. XI.
+
+  [188] _Ibid._, II, 51.
+
+  [189] Studies in Contemporary Biography, 372.
+
+  [190] Tacitus, History, I, 1.
+
+  [191] Republic.
+
+  [192] June 23, Rhodes, VI, 382.
+
+  [193] Ogden, II, 66.
+
+  [194] Ogden, II, 140.
+
+  [195] Problems of Modern Democracy, 209.
+
+  [196] Ogden, II, 199.
+
+  [197] _Ibid._, II, 202.
+
+  [198] Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [199] Ogden, II, 202.
+
+  [200] _Ibid._, II, 214.
+
+  [201] _Ibid._, II, 238.
+
+  [202] _Ibid._, II, 219.
+
+  [203] _Ibid._, II, 237.
+
+  [204] Biographical Studies, 378.
+
+  [205] Ogden, I, 301, 307.
+
+  [206] Life and Letters, II, 485.
+
+  [207] Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+  [208] Ogden, II, 30, 136, 213, 214, 247, 253.
+
+  [209] Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, 117.
+
+  [210] Ogden, II, 51.
+
+  [211] Essays, 38.
+
+  [212] Vol. 52, p. 267.
+
+  [213] Vol. 52, p. 66.
+
+  [214] June 25, 1885.
+
+  [215] Ogden, II, 116.
+
+  [216] _Ibid._, I, 252.
+
+  [217] Biographical Studies, 370.
+
+  [218] Ogden, II, 229.
+
+  [219] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
+
+
+
+
+WHO BURNED COLUMBIA?
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November
+meeting of 1901, and printed in the _American Historical Review_ of
+April, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+WHO BURNED COLUMBIA?
+
+
+The story goes that when General Sherman lived in New York City, which
+was during the last five years of his life, he attended one night a
+dinner party at which he and an ex-Confederate general who had fought
+against him in the southwest were the chief guests; and that an
+Englishman present asked in perfect innocence the question, Who burned
+Columbia? Had bombshells struck the tents of these generals during the
+war, they would not have caused half the commotion in their breasts that
+did this question put solely with the desire of information. The
+emphatic language of Sherman interlarded with the oaths he uttered
+spontaneously, the bitter charges of the Confederate, the pounding of
+the table, the dancing of the glasses, told the Englishman that the
+bloody chasm had not been entirely filled. With a little variation and
+with some figurative meaning, he might have used the words of Iago:
+"Friends all but now, even now in peace; and then but now as if some
+planet had outwitted men, tilting at one another's breast in opposition.
+I cannot speak any beginning to this peevish odds."
+
+But the question which disturbed the New York dinner party is a delight
+to the historian. Feeling that history may be known best when there are
+most documents, he may derive the greatest pleasure from a perusal of
+the mass of evidence bearing on this disputed point; and if he is of
+Northern birth he ought to approach the subject with absolute candor. Of
+a Southerner who had himself lost property or whose parents had lost
+property, through Sherman's campaign of invasion, it would be asking too
+much to expect him to consider this subject in a judicial spirit. Even
+Trent, a moderate and impartial Southern writer whose tone is a lesson
+to us all, when referring, in his life of William Gilmore Simms, to
+"the much vexed question, Who burned Columbia," used words of the
+sternest condemnation.
+
+Sherman, with his army of 60,000, left Savannah February 1, 1865, and
+reached the neighborhood of Columbia February 16. The next day Columbia
+was evacuated by the Confederates, occupied by troops of the fifteenth
+corps of the Federal army, and by the morning of the 18th either three
+fifths or two thirds of the town lay in ashes. The facts contained in
+these two sentences are almost the only ones undisputed. We shall
+consider this episode most curiously if we take first Sherman's account,
+then Wade Hampton's, ending with what I conceive to be a true relation.
+
+The city was surrendered by the mayor and three aldermen to Colonel
+George A. Stone at the head of his brigade. Soon afterwards Sherman and
+Howard, the commander of the right wing of the army, rode into the city;
+they observed piles of cotton burning, and Union soldiers and citizens
+working to extinguish the fire, which was partially subdued. Let Sherman
+speak for himself in the first account that he wrote, which was his
+report of April 4, 1865: "Before one single public building had been
+fired by order, the smouldering fires [cotton] set by Hampton's order
+were rekindled by the wind, and communicated to the buildings around.
+[Wade Hampton commanded the Confederate cavalry.] About dark they began
+to spread, and got beyond the control of the brigade on duty within the
+city. The whole of Woods' division was brought in, but it was found
+impossible to check the flames, which, by midnight, had become
+unmanageable, and raged until about 4 A.M., when the wind subsiding,
+they were got under control.
+
+"I was up nearly all night, and saw Generals Howard, Logan, Woods, and
+others, laboring to save houses and protect families thus suddenly
+deprived of shelter, and even of bedding and wearing apparel. I disclaim
+on the part of my army any agency in this fire, but, on the contrary,
+claim that we saved what of Columbia remains unconsumed. And without
+hesitation I charge General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city
+of Columbia, not with a malicious intent or as the manifestation of a
+silly 'Roman stoicism,' but from folly, and want of sense, in filling it
+with lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty worked well
+to extinguish the flames; but others not on duty, including the officers
+who had long been imprisoned there, rescued by us, may have assisted in
+spreading the fire after it had once begun, and may have indulged in
+unconcealed joy to see the ruin of the capital of South Carolina."
+Howard, in his report, with some modification agrees with his chief, and
+the account in "The March to the Sea" of General Cox, whose experience
+and training fitted him well to weigh the evidence, gives at least a
+partial confirmation to Sherman's theory of the origin of the fire.
+
+I have not, however, discovered sufficient evidence to support the
+assertion of Sherman that Wade Hampton ordered the cotton in the streets
+of Columbia to be burned. Nor do I believe Sherman knew a single fact on
+which he might base so positive a statement.[220] It had generally been
+the custom for the Confederates in their retreat to burn cotton to
+prevent its falling into the hands of the invading army, and because
+such was the general rule Sherman assumed that it had been applied in
+this particular case. This assumption suited his interest, as he sought
+a victim to whom he might charge the burning of Columbia. His statement
+in his "Memoirs," published in 1875, is a delicious bit of historical
+naivete. "In my official report of this conflagration," he wrote, "I
+distinctly charged it to General Wade Hampton, and confess I did so
+pointedly, to shake the faith of his people in him, for he was in my
+opinion boastful and professed to be the special champion of South
+Carolina."
+
+Instead of Hampton giving an order to burn the cotton, I am satisfied
+that he urged Beauregard, the general in command, to issue an order that
+this cotton should not be burned, lest the fire might spread to the
+shops and houses, which for the most part were built of wood, and I am
+further satisfied that such an order was given. Unfortunately the
+evidence for this is not contemporary. No such order is printed in the
+"Official Records," and I am advised from the War Department that no
+such order has been found. The nearest evidence to the time which I have
+discovered is a letter of Wade Hampton of April 21, 1866, and one of
+Beauregard of May 2, 1866. Since these dates, there is an abundance of
+evidence, some of it sworn testimony, and while it is mixed up with
+inaccurate statements on another point, and all of it is of the nature
+of recollections, I cannot resist the conclusion that Beauregard and
+Hampton gave such an order. It was unquestionably the wise thing to do.
+There was absolutely no object in burning the cotton, as the Federal
+troops could not carry it with them and could not ship it to any seaport
+which was under Union control.
+
+An order of Beauregard issued two days after the burning of Columbia and
+printed in the "Official Records" shows that the policy of burning
+cotton to keep it out of the hands of Sherman's army had been abandoned.
+Sherman's charge, then, that Wade Hampton burned Columbia, falls to the
+ground. The other part of his account, in which he maintained that the
+fire spread to the buildings from the smoldering cotton rekindled by
+the wind, which was blowing a gale, deserves more respect. His report
+saying that he saw cotton afire in the streets was written April 4,
+1865, and Howard's in which the same fact is stated was written April 1,
+very soon after the event, when their recollection would be fresh. All
+of the Southern evidence (except one statement, the most important of
+all) is to the effect that no cotton was burning until after the Federal
+troops entered the city. Many Southerners in their testimony before the
+British and American mixed commission under examination and
+cross-examination swear to this; and Wade Hampton swears that he was one
+of the last Confederates to leave the city, and that, when he left, no
+cotton was afire, and he knew that it was not fired by his men. But this
+testimony was taken in 1872 and 1873, and may be balanced by the sworn
+testimony of Sherman, Howard, and other Union officers before the same
+commission in 1872.
+
+The weight of the evidence already referred to would seem to me to show
+that cotton was afire when the Federal troops entered Columbia, but a
+contemporary statement of a Confederate officer puts it beyond doubt.
+Major Chambliss, who was endeavoring to secure the means of
+transportation for the Confederate ordnance and ordnance stores, wrote,
+in a letter of February 20, that at three o'clock on the morning of
+February 17, which was a number of hours before the Union soldiers
+entered Columbia, "the city was illuminated with burning cotton." But it
+does not follow that the burning cotton in the streets of Columbia was
+the cause of the fire which destroyed the city. When we come to the
+probably correct account of the incident, we shall see that the
+preponderance of the evidence points to another cause.
+
+February 27, ten days after the fire, Wade Hampton, in a letter to
+Sherman, charged him with having permitted the burning of Columbia, if
+he did not order it directly; and this has been iterated later by many
+Southern writers. The correspondence between Halleck and Sherman is
+cited to show premeditation on the part of the general. "Should you
+capture Charleston," wrote Halleck, December 18, 1864, "I hope that by
+some accident the place may be destroyed, and if a little salt should be
+sown upon the site it may prevent the growth of future crops of
+nullification and secession." Sherman thus replied six days later: "I
+will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and don't think salt will
+be necessary. When I move, the Fifteenth Corps will be on the right of
+the Right Wing, and their position will bring them naturally into
+Charleston first; and if you have watched the history of that corps you
+will have remarked that they generally do their work up pretty well. The
+truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak
+vengeance on South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that
+she deserves all that seems in store for her.... I look upon Columbia as
+quite as bad as Charleston."
+
+The evidence from many points of view corroborating this statement of
+the feeling of the army towards South Carolina is ample. The rank and
+file of Sherman's army were men of some education and intelligence; they
+were accustomed to discuss public matters, weigh reasons, and draw
+conclusions. They thought that South Carolina had brought on the Civil
+War, was responsible for the cost and bloodshed of it, and no punishment
+for her could be too severe. That was likewise the sentiment of the
+officers. A characteristic expression of the feeling may be found in a
+home letter of Colonel Charles F. Morse, of the second Massachusetts,
+who speaks of the "miserable, rebellious State of South Carolina." "Pity
+for these inhabitants," he further writes, "I have none. In the first
+place, they are rebels, and I am almost prepared to agree with Sherman
+that a rebel has no rights, not even the right to live except by our
+permission."
+
+It is no wonder, then, that Southern writers, smarting at the loss
+caused by Sherman's campaign of invasion, should believe that Sherman
+connived at the destruction of Columbia. But they are wrong in that
+belief. The general's actions were not so bad as his words. Before his
+troops made their entrance he issued this order: "General Howard will
+... occupy Columbia, destroy the public buildings, railroad property,
+manufacturing and machine shops, but will spare libraries and asylums
+and private dwellings." That Sherman was entirely sincere when he gave
+this order, and that his general officers endeavored to carry it out
+cannot be questioned. A statement which he made under oath in 1872
+indicates that he did not connive at the destruction of Columbia. "If I
+had made up my mind to burn Columbia," he declared, "I would have burnt
+it with no more feeling than I would a common prairie dog village; but I
+did not do it."
+
+Other words of his exhibit without disguise his feelings in regard to
+the occurrence which the South has regarded as a piece of wanton
+mischief. "The ulterior and strategic advantages of the occupation of
+Columbia are seen now clearly by the result," said Sherman under oath.
+"The burning of the private dwellings, though never designed by me, was
+a trifling matter compared with the manifold results that soon followed.
+Though I never ordered it and never wished it, I have never shed many
+tears over the event, because I believe it hastened what we all fought
+for, the end of the war." It is true that he feared previous to their
+entry the burning of Columbia by his soldiers, owing to their
+"deep-seated feeling of hostility" to the town, but no general of such
+an army during such a campaign of invasion would have refused them the
+permission to occupy the capital city of South Carolina. "I could have
+had them stay in the ranks," he declared, "but I would not have done it
+under the circumstances to save Columbia."
+
+Historical and legal canons for weighing evidence are not the same. It
+is a satisfaction, however, when after the investigation of any case
+they lead to the same decision. The members of the British and American
+mixed commission (an Englishman, an American, and the Italian Minister
+at Washington), having to adjudicate upon claims for "property alleged
+to have been destroyed by the burning of Columbia, on the allegation
+that that city was wantonly fired by the army of General Sherman, either
+under his orders or with his consent and permission," disallowed all the
+claims, "all the commissioners agreeing." While they were not called
+upon to deliver a formal opinion in the case, the American agent was
+advised "that the commissioners were unanimous in the conclusion that
+the conflagration which destroyed Columbia was not to be ascribed to
+either the intention or default of either the Federal or Confederate
+officers."
+
+To recapitulate, then, what I think I have established: Sherman's
+account and that of the Union writers who follow him cannot be accepted
+as history. Neither is the version of Wade Hampton and the Southern
+writers worthy of credence. Let me now give what I am convinced is the
+true relation. My authorities are the contemporary accounts of six
+Federal officers, whose names will appear when the evidence is presented
+in detail; the report of Major Chambliss of the Confederate army; "The
+Sack and Destruction of Columbia," a series of articles in the _Columbia
+Phoenix_, written by William Gilmore Simms and printed a little over a
+month after the event; and a letter written from Charlotte, February 22,
+to the _Richmond Whig_, by F. G. de F., who remained in Columbia until
+the day before the entrance of the Union troops.
+
+Two days before the entrance of the Federal troops, Columbia was placed
+under martial law, but this did not prevent some riotous conduct after
+nightfall and a number of highway robberies; stores were also broken
+into and robbed. There was great disorder and confusion in the
+preparations of the inhabitants for flight; it was a frantic attempt to
+get themselves and their portable belongings away before the enemy
+should enter the city. "A party of Wheeler's Cavalry," wrote F. G. de F.
+to the _Richmond Whig_, "accompanied by their officers dashed into town
+[February 16], tied their horses, and as systematically as if they had
+been bred to the business, proceeded to break into the stores along Main
+Street and rob them of their contents." Early in the morning of the
+17th, the South Carolina railroad depot took fire through the reckless
+operations of a band of greedy plunderers, who while engaged in robbing
+"the stores of merchants and planters, trunks of treasure, wares and
+goods of fugitives," sent there awaiting shipment, fired, by the
+careless use of their lights, a train leading to a number of kegs of
+powder; the explosion which followed killed many of the thieves and set
+fire to the building. Major Chambliss, who was endeavoring to secure the
+means of transportation for the Confederate ordnance and ordnance
+stores, wrote: "The straggling cavalry and rabble were stripping the
+warehouses and railroad depots. The city was in the wildest terror."
+
+When the Union soldiers of Colonel Stone's brigade entered the city,
+they were at once supplied by citizens and negroes with large
+quantities of intoxicating liquor, brought to them in cups, bottles,
+demijohns, and buckets. Many had been without supper, and all of them
+without sleep the night before, and none had eaten breakfast that
+morning. They were soon drunk, excited, and unmanageable. The stragglers
+and "bummers," who had increased during the march through South
+Carolina, were now attracted by the opportunity for plunder and swelled
+the crowd. Union prisoners of war had escaped from their places of
+confinement in the city and suburbs, and joining their comrades were
+eager to avenge their real or fancied injuries. Convicts in the jail had
+in some manner been released. The pillage of shops and houses and the
+robbing of men in the streets began soon after the entrance of the army.
+The officers tried to preserve discipline. Colonel Stone ordered all the
+liquor to be destroyed, and furnished guards for the private property of
+citizens and for the public buildings; but the extent of the disorder
+and plundering during the day was probably not appreciated by Sherman
+and those high in command. Stone was hampered in his efforts to preserve
+order by the smallness of his force for patrol duty and by the
+drunkenness of his men. In fact, the condition of his men was such that
+at eight o'clock in the evening they were relieved from provost duty,
+and a brigade of the same division, who had been encamped outside of the
+city during the day, took their place. But the mob of convicts, escaped
+Union prisoners, stragglers and "bummers," drunken soldiers and negroes,
+Union soldiers who were eager to take vengeance on South Carolina, could
+not be controlled. The sack of the city went on, and when darkness came,
+the torch was applied to many houses; the high wind carried the flames
+from building to building, until the best part of Columbia--a city of
+eight thousand inhabitants--was destroyed.
+
+Colonel Stone wrote, two days afterwards: "About eight o'clock the city
+was fired in a number of places by some of our escaped prisoners and
+citizens." "I am satisfied," said General W. B. Woods, commander of the
+brigade that relieved Stone, in his report of March 26, "by statements
+made to me by respectable citizens of the town, that the fire was first
+set by the negro inhabitants." General C. R. Woods, commander of the
+first division, fifteenth corps, wrote, February 21: "The town was fired
+in several different places by the villains that had that day been
+improperly freed from their confinement in the town prison. The town
+itself was full of drunken negroes and the vilest vagabond soldiers, the
+veriest scum of the entire army being collected in the streets." The
+very night of the conflagration he spoke of the efforts "to arrest the
+countless villains of every command that were roaming over the streets."
+
+General Logan, commander of the fifteenth corps, said, in his report of
+March 31: "The citizens had so crazed our men with liquor that it was
+almost impossible to control them. The scenes in Columbia that night
+were terrible. Some fiend first applied the torch, and the wild flames
+leaped from house to house and street to street, until the lower and
+business part of the city was wrapped in flames. Frightened citizens
+rushed in every direction, and the reeling incendiaries dashed, torch in
+hand, from street to street, spreading dismay wherever they went."
+
+"Some escaped prisoners," wrote General Howard, commander of the right
+wing, April 1, "convicts from the penitentiary just broken open, army
+followers, and drunken soldiers ran through house after house, and were
+doubtless guilty of all manner of villainies, and it is these men that I
+presume set new fires farther and farther to the windward in the
+northern part of the city. Old men, women, and children, with everything
+they could get, were herded together in the streets. At some places we
+found officers and kind-hearted soldiers protecting families from the
+insults and roughness of the careless. Meanwhile the flames made fearful
+ravages, and magnificent residences and churches were consumed in a very
+few minutes." All these quotations are from Federal officers who were
+witnesses of the scene and who wrote their accounts shortly after the
+event, without collusion or dictation. They wrote too before they knew
+that the question, Who burned Columbia? would be an irritating one in
+after years. These accounts are therefore the best of evidence. Nor does
+the acceptance of any one of them imply the exclusion of the others. All
+may be believed, leading us to the conclusion that all the classes named
+had a hand in the sack and destruction of Columbia.
+
+When the fire was well under way, Sherman appeared on the scene, but
+gave no orders. Nor was it necessary, for Generals Howard, Logan, Woods,
+and others were laboring earnestly to prevent the spread of the
+conflagration. By their efforts and by the change and subsidence of
+wind, the fire in the early morning of February 18 was stayed. Columbia,
+wrote General Howard, was little "except a blackened surface peopled
+with numerous chimneys and an occasional house that had been spared as
+if by a miracle." Science, history, and art might mourn at the loss they
+sustained in the destruction of the house of Dr. Gibbes, an antiquary
+and naturalist, a scientific acquaintance, if not a friend, of Agassiz.
+His large library, portfolios of fine engravings, two hundred paintings,
+a remarkable cabinet of Southern fossils, a collection of sharks' teeth,
+"pronounced by Agassiz to be the finest in the world," relics of our
+aborigines and others from Mexico, "his collection of historical
+documents, original correspondence of the Revolution, especially that
+of South Carolina," were all burned.
+
+The story of quelling the disorder is told by General Oliver: "February
+18, at 4 A.M., the Third Brigade was called out to suppress riot; did
+so, killing 2 men, wounding 30 and arresting 370." It is worthy of note
+that, despite the reign of lawlessness during the night, very few, if
+any, outrages were committed on women.
+
+
+  [220] In a letter presented to the Senate of the United States (some
+        while before April 21, 1866) Sherman said, "I saw in your
+        Columbia newspaper the printed order of General Wade Hampton
+        that on the approach of the Yankee army all the cotton should be
+        burned" (_South. Hist. Soc. Papers_, VII, 156).
+
+
+
+
+A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL
+
+A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the January
+meeting of 1898, and printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of June, 1898.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL
+
+
+The most notable contributions to the historical literature of England
+during the year 1897 are two volumes by Samuel R. Gardiner: the Oxford
+lectures, "Cromwell's Place in History," published in the spring; and
+the second volume of "History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,"
+which appeared in the autumn. These present what is probably a new view
+of Cromwell.
+
+If one loves a country or an historic epoch, it is natural for the mind
+to seek a hero to represent it. We are fortunate in having Washington
+and Lincoln, whose characters and whose lives sum up well the periods in
+which they were our benefactors. But if we look upon our history as
+being the continuation of a branch of that of England, who is the
+political hero in the nation from which we sprang who represents a great
+principle or idea that we love to cherish? Hampden might answer if only
+we knew more about him. It occurs to me that Gray, in his poem which is
+read and conned from boyhood to old age, has done more than any one else
+to spread abroad the fame of Hampden. Included in the same stanza with
+Milton and with Cromwell, he seems to the mere reader of the poem to
+occupy the same place in history. In truth, however, as Mr. Gardiner
+writes, "it is remarkable how little can be discovered about Hampden.
+All that is known is to his credit, but his greatness appears from the
+impression he created upon others more than from the circumstances of
+his own life as they have been handed down to us."
+
+The minds of American boys educated under Puritan influences before and
+during the war of secession accordingly turned to Cromwell. Had our
+Puritan ancestors remained at home till the civil war in England, they
+would have fought under the great Oliver, and it is natural that their
+descendants should venerate him. All young men of the period of which I
+am speaking, who were interested in history, read Macaulay, the first
+volume of whose history appeared in 1848, and they found in Cromwell a
+hero to their liking. Carlyle's Cromwell was published three years
+before, and those who could digest stronger food found the great man
+therein portrayed a chosen one of God to lead his people in the right
+path. Everybody echoed the thought of Carlyle when he averred that ten
+years more of Oliver Cromwell's life would have given another history to
+all the centuries of England.
+
+In these two volumes Gardiner presents a different conception of
+Cromwell from that of Carlyle and Macaulay, and in greater detail. We
+arrive at Gardiner's notion by degrees, being prepared by the reversal
+of some of our pretty well established opinions about the Puritans.
+Macaulay's epigrammatic sentence touching their attitude towards
+amusements undoubtedly colored the opinions of men for at least a
+generation. "The Puritan hated bear-baiting," he says, "not because it
+gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."
+How coolly Gardiner disposes of this well-turned rhetorical phrase: "The
+order for the complete suppression of bear-baiting and bull-baiting at
+Southwark and elsewhere was grounded, not, as has been often repeated,
+on Puritan aversion to amusements giving 'pleasure to the spectators,'
+but upon Puritan disgust at the immorality which these exhibitions
+fostered." Again he writes: "Zealous as were the leaders of the
+Commonwealth in the suppression of vice, they displayed but little of
+that sour austerity with which they have frequently been credited. On
+his way to Dunbar, Cromwell laughed heartily at the sight of one soldier
+overturning a full cream tub and slamming it down on the head of
+another, whilst on his return from Worcester he spent a day hawking in
+the fields near Aylesbury. 'Oliver,' we hear, 'loved an innocent jest.'
+Music and song were cultivated in his family. If the graver Puritans did
+not admit what has been called 'promiscuous dancing' into their
+households, they made no attempt to prohibit it elsewhere." In the
+spring of 1651 appeared the "English Dancing Master," containing rules
+for country dances, and the tunes by which they were to be accompanied.
+
+Macaulay's description of Cromwell's army has so pervaded our literature
+as to be accepted as historic truth; and J. R. Green, acute as he was,
+seems, consciously or unconsciously, to have been affected by it, which
+is not a matter of wonderment, indeed, for such is its rhetorical force
+that it leaves an impression hard to be obliterated. Macaulay writes:
+"That which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies
+was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks.
+It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that in that singular
+camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that
+during the long dominion of the soldiery the property of the peaceable
+citizen and the honor of woman were held sacred. If outrages were
+committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of
+which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained
+of the rough gallantry of the redcoats; not an ounce of plate was taken
+from the shops of the goldsmiths; but a Pelagian sermon, or a window on
+which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks
+an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to
+quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his
+musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of
+ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not
+savory."
+
+What a different impression we get from Gardiner! "Much that has been
+said of Cromwell's army has no evidence behind it," he declares. "The
+majority of the soldiers were pressed men, selected because they had
+strong bodies, and not because of their religion. The remainder were
+taken out of the armies already in existence.... The distinctive feature
+of the army was its officers. All existing commands having been vacated,
+men of a distinctly Puritan and for the most part of an Independent type
+were appointed to their places.... The strictest discipline was
+enforced, and the soldiers, whether Puritan or not, were thus brought
+firmly under the control of officers bent upon the one object, of
+defeating the king."
+
+To those who have regarded the men who governed England, from the time
+the Long Parliament became supreme to the death of Cromwell, as saints
+in conduct as well as in name, Mr. Gardiner's facts about the members of
+the rump of the Long Parliament will be an awakening. "It was
+notorious," he records, "that many members who entered the House poor
+were now rolling in wealth." From Gardiner's references and quotations,
+it is not a strained inference that in subjection to lobbying, in
+log-rolling and corruption, this Parliament would hardly be surpassed by
+a corrupt American legislature. As to personal morality, he by
+implication confirms the truth of Cromwell's bitter speech on the
+memorable day when he forced the dissolution of the Long Parliament.
+"Some of you," he said, "are whoremasters. Others," he continued,
+pointing to one and another with his hands, "are drunkards, and some
+corrupt and unjust men, and scandalous to the profession of the gospel.
+It is not fit that you should sit as a Parliament any longer."
+
+While I am well aware that to him, who makes but a casual study of any
+historic period, matters will appear fresh that to the master of it are
+well-worn inferences and generalizations, and while therefore I can
+pretend to offer only a shallow experience, I confess that on the points
+to which I have referred I received new light, and it prepared me for
+the overturning of the view of Cromwell which I had derived from the
+Puritanical instruction of my early days and from Macaulay.
+
+In his foreign policy Cromwell was irresolute, vacillating and tricky.
+"A study of the foreign policy of the Protectorate," writes Mr.
+Gardiner, "reveals a distracting maze of fluctuations. Oliver is seen
+alternately courting France and Spain, constant only in inconstancy."
+
+Cromwell lacked constructive statesmanship. "The tragedy of his career
+lies in the inevitable result that his efforts to establish religion and
+morality melted away as the morning mist, whilst his abiding influence
+was built upon the vigor with which he promoted the material aims of his
+countrymen." In another place Mr. Gardiner says: "Cromwell's negative
+work lasted; his positive work vanished away. His constitutions perished
+with him, his Protectorate descended from the proud position to which he
+had raised it, his peace with the Dutch Republic was followed by two
+wars with the United Provinces, his alliance with the French monarchy
+only led to a succession of wars with France lasting into the nineteenth
+century. All that lasted was the support given by him to maritime
+enterprise, and in that he followed the tradition of the governments
+preceding him."
+
+What is Cromwell's place in history? Thus Mr. Gardiner answers the
+question: "He stands forth as the typical Englishman of the modern
+world.... It is in England that his fame has grown up since the
+publication of Carlyle's monumental work, and it is as an Englishman
+that he must be judged.... With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with
+ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the
+masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to
+regard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral audacity,
+with all his tenderness and spiritual yearnings, in the world of action
+what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the
+most typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring sense,
+is Cromwell's place in history."
+
+The idea most difficult for me to relinquish is that of Cromwell as a
+link in that historic chain which led to the Revolution of 1688, with
+its blessed combination of liberty and order. I have loved to think, as
+Carlyle expressed it: "'Their works follow them,' as I think this Oliver
+Cromwell's works have done and are still doing! We have had our
+'Revolution of '88' officially called 'glorious,' and other Revolutions
+not yet called glorious; and somewhat has been gained for poor mankind.
+Men's ears are not now slit off by rash Officiality. Officiality will
+for long henceforth be more cautious about men's ears. The tyrannous
+star chambers, branding irons, chimerical kings and surplices at
+Allhallowtide, they are gone or with immense velocity going. Oliver's
+works do follow him!"
+
+In these two volumes of Gardiner it is not from what is said, but from
+what is omitted, that one may deduce the author's opinion that
+Cromwell's career as Protector contributed in no wise to the Revolution
+of 1688. But touching this matter he has thus written to me: "I am
+inclined to question your view that Cromwell paved the way for the
+Revolution of 1688, except so far as his victories and the King's
+execution frightened off James II. Pym and Hampden did pave the way,
+but Cromwell's work took other lines. The Instrument of Government was
+framed on quite different principles, and the extension of the suffrage
+and reformed franchise found no place in England until 1832. It was not
+Cromwell's fault that it was so."
+
+If I relinquish this one of my old historic notions, I feel that I must
+do it for the reason that Lord Auckland agreed with Macaulay after
+reading the first volume of his history. "I had also hated Cromwell more
+than I now do," he said; "for I always agree with Tom Macaulay; and it
+saves trouble to agree with him at once, because he is sure to make you
+do so at last."
+
+I asked Professor Edward Channing of Harvard College, who teaches
+English History of the Tudor and Stuart periods, his opinion of
+Gardiner. "I firmly believe," he told me, "that Mr. Gardiner is the
+greatest English historical writer who has appeared since Gibbon. He has
+the instinct of the truth-seeker as no other English student I know of
+has shown it since the end of the last century."
+
+General J. D. Cox, a statesman and a lawyer, a student of history and of
+law, writes to me: "In reading Gardiner, I feel that I am sitting at the
+feet of an historical chief justice, a sort of John Marshall in his
+genius for putting the final results of learning in the garb of simple
+common sense."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Adams, C. F., and E. G. Bourne, 200.
+
+  Adams, J. Q., as President, 207, 209.
+
+  Adams, John, as President, 207.
+
+  Adelaide, Australia, Froude's description, 42.
+
+  Alabama claims, arbitration, 218.
+
+  Alexander Severus, homage to history, 4.
+
+  Alison, Sir Archibald, present-day reputation, 40.
+
+  Allison, W. B., and Hayes's New York Custom-house appointments, 255;
+    and Silver Bill of 1878, 260.
+
+  American historians, European recognition, 103.
+
+  American Historical Association,
+    author's addresses before, 1 _n._, 25, 81;
+    interest of E. G. Bourne, 196.
+
+  American history, qualities, 4, 20-23;
+    newspapers as sources, 29-32, 85-95;
+    and early English history, 170.
+    _See also_ Elections, History, Presidential, United States,
+      and periods by name.
+
+  American Revolution, Gibbon on, 113.
+
+  Amyot, Jacques, on Alexander Severus, 4.
+
+  Ancient history, monopoly of German historians, 75.
+    _See also_ Ferrero, Gibbon, Herodotus, Tacitus, Thucydides.
+
+  Annexations, Philippines, 195, 233, 234, 286;
+    constitutional control, Louisiana, 208, 211;
+    and slavery, Texas and California, 212.
+
+  Arbitrary arrests during Civil War, 214, 215.
+
+  Arbitration, Alabama claims, 218;
+    Cleveland and Venezuela, 225, 285;
+    English draft general treaty, 226.
+
+  Army, Federal, and suppression of rioting, 225, 253;
+    character of Cromwell's, 319, 320.
+
+  Arnold, Matthew, on Americans, 21;
+    on Sainte-Beuve, 73;
+    on criticism, 292.
+
+  Arthur, C. A., as President, 222;
+    removal by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Auckland, Lord, on agreeing with Macaulay, 323.
+
+  Aulard, F. A., on Taine, 83.
+
+
+  Bagehot, Walter, on presidential office, 204, 217.
+
+  Baltimore, railroad riot of 1877, 252.
+
+  Balzac, Honore de, importance to historians, 50, 73.
+
+  Bancroft, George, use of footnotes, 33;
+    remuneration, 78;
+    T. W. Higginson on, over-fondness for manuscript sources, inaccuracy
+      of quotations, 294.
+
+  Beauregard, P. G. T., and burning of Columbia, 304.
+
+  Bemis, George, and Lecky, 157.
+
+  Bigelow, John, as journalist, 90;
+    on importance of Godkin to _The Nation_, 275.
+
+  Bismarck, Fuerst von, on power of press, 89.
+
+  Blaine, J. G., value of "Twenty Years," 33;
+    on power of Congress over President, 216;
+    on Hayes and Packard, 248.
+
+  Boer War, Godkin on, 290.
+
+  Boston, H. G. Wells's criticism considered, 138.
+
+  Boston Athenaeum, editions of Gibbon in, 138.
+
+  Bourne, E. G., and preparation of author's history, as critic, 85, 86,
+      197-199;
+    essay on, 191-200;
+    malady, 191, 192;
+    physique, 191;
+    death, 192;
+    education, 192;
+    works, 193-195;
+    professorships, 193;
+    on Marcus Whitman, 193;
+    on Columbus, 194, 195;
+    on Philippines and Monroe Doctrine, 195;
+    unfinished biography of Motley, 196;
+    critical notices, 196, 197;
+    thoroughness, 196;
+    interest in American Historical Association, 196;
+    desultory reading, 199;
+    and editorship of publications of Massachusetts Historical
+      Society, 199.
+
+  Bowles, Samuel, as journalist, 90.
+
+  Brown, John, Pottawatomie Massacre and election of 1856, 88.
+
+  Browning, Oscar, on Carlyle, 41.
+
+  Brunetiere, Ferdinand, on French literary masters, 73.
+
+  Bryan, W. J., campaign of 1896, 228, 286.
+
+  Bryant, W. C., as journalist, 90;
+    and Greeley, 269.
+
+  Bryce, James, importance of "Holy Roman Empire," 60, 61;
+    on Federal Constitution, 203;
+    on presidential office, 204, 205, 235, 240;
+    on Godkin and _The Nation_, 276, 286, 295;
+    on Herbert Spencer, 293.
+
+  Buchanan, James, as President, 213.
+
+  Buckle, H. T., enthusiasm, 38;
+    influence on Lecky, 154.
+
+  Burt, S. W., appointment by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Bury, J. B., edition of Gibbon, 61;
+    on Gibbon, 109, 110.
+
+  Butler, Joseph, influence on Lecky, 154.
+
+
+  Cabinet, Grant's, 186, 278;
+    character of Jackson's, 210;
+    Pierce and Buchanan controlled by, 213;
+    Hayes's, 221, 246-248, 262.
+
+  Cabot, Charles, gift to Boston Athenaeum, 138.
+
+  Calhoun, J. C., and annexation of Texas, 211.
+
+  Carlyle, Thomas, as historian, 38, 41;
+    and mathematics, 56, 57;
+    importance in training of historians, "French Revolution" and
+      "Frederick," 62-64;
+    biography, 64;
+    self-education, 65;
+    lack of practical experience, 66;
+    on historical method, 77;
+    on Gibbon, 115;
+    on Cromwell, inaccuracy of quotations, 144, 318, 321;
+    on pecuniary rewards of literary men, 146;
+    Gladstone on, 155.
+
+  Chamberlain, D. H., contested election, 248.
+
+  Chamberlain, Joseph, on newspapers and public opinion, 31;
+    Godkin on, 290.
+
+  Chambliss, N. R., on burning of Columbia, 305, 309.
+
+  Channing, Edward, on Gardiner, 323.
+
+  Charleston, secession movement, 91;
+    feeling of Union army towards, 306.
+
+  _Charleston Courier_, and secession movement, 92.
+
+  _Charleston Mercury_, and secession movement, 92.
+
+  Chatham, Earl of, on Thucydides, 15.
+
+  Choate, Rufus, and Whig nominations in 1852, 87.
+
+  Christianity, Gibbon on early church, 131-133.
+
+  Cicero, homage to history, 4;
+    importance to historians, 51;
+    Gibbon on, 120;
+    contradictions, 290.
+
+  Civil service, J. D. Cox and reform, 186;
+    spoils system, 209, 211;
+    need of special training ignored, 210;
+    reform under Hayes, 221, 254-257;
+    Reform Bill, 222;
+    Cleveland and reform, 223, 224;
+    demand on President's time of appointments, number of presidential
+      offices, 236;
+    Godkin and reform, 280.
+
+  Civil War, newspapers as historical source on, 32, 92-94;
+    value of Official Records, 92;
+    attitude of Lecky, 157;
+    presidential office during, arbitrary actions, 213-216;
+    Godkin as correspondent during, 273;
+    burning of Columbia, 301-313.
+
+  Cleveland, Grover, as President, 223-226;
+    and civil service reform, 223;
+    soundness on finances, 225;
+    and railroad riots, 225;
+    foreign policy, 225;
+    and disorganization of Democracy, 226;
+    and public opinion, 231;
+    as a prime minister, 241, 263;
+    and Hayes, attends funeral of Hayes, 263;
+    attitude of Godkin, 285.
+
+  Columbia, S. C., burning of, 301-313;
+    Sherman's and Hampton's accounts discredited, 301-308;
+    feeling of Union army towards, 306-308;
+    Sherman's orders on occupation, 307;
+    verdict of mixed commission on, 308;
+    mob responsibility, 308-313.
+
+  Columbia University, lecture by author at, 47.
+
+  Commonwealth of England. _See_ Cromwell.
+
+  Comte, Auguste, influence, 73.
+
+  Conciseness in history, 11, 14, 16, 20, 36.
+
+  Congress, control of Senate over Pierce and Buchanan, 213;
+    power during Johnson's administration, 216;
+    overshadows President, power of Speaker of House, 227;
+    McKinley's control over, 234;
+    contact with President, 237;
+    and Hayes, 249, 256, 257, 261.
+
+  Conkling, Roscoe, contest with Hayes over New York Custom-house, 255.
+
+  Constitution. _See_ Federal Constitution.
+
+  Copyright, _The Nation_ and international, 282.
+
+  Cornell, A. B., removal by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Corruption, Gibbon on, 127.
+
+  Cox, J. D., on Gardiner, 44, 323;
+    essay on, 185-188;
+    varied activities, 185;
+    as general, 185;
+    as governor, 185;
+    and negro suffrage, 186;
+    as cabinet officer, 186;
+    and civil service reform, 186;
+    in Congress, 186;
+    and Spanish Mission, 186;
+    private positions, 187;
+    works, as military historian, 187;
+    and Grant, 187;
+    contributions to _The Nation_, 187;
+    as reader, 187;
+    character, 188;
+    on Godkin, 295;
+    on burning of Columbia, 303.
+
+  Crimean War, Godkin on, 273.
+
+  Cromer, Lord, on power of press, 89, 96.
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, Carlyle's biography, 144, 150;
+    Gardiner's influence on fame, 150;
+    Gardiner's estimate, 317-323;
+    character, 319;
+    character of army, 319, 320;
+    foreign policy, 321;
+    lack of constructive statesmanship, 321;
+    as typical Englishman, 322;
+    and Revolution of 1688, 322, 323.
+
+  Curchod, Suzanne, and Gibbon, 136.
+
+  Curtis, G. W., on _The Nation_, 270.
+
+  Curtius, Ernst, as historian, 34, 43.
+
+
+  Dana, C. A., as journalist, historical value of articles, 31, 90.
+
+  Darwin, C. R., biography, 59;
+    truthfulness, 145.
+
+  Dates in historical work, importance of newspapers, 87.
+
+  Democratic party, and Cleveland's administration, 223, 226.
+
+  Demosthenes, and Thucydides, 15.
+
+  Desultory reading in training of historian, 64, 65, 199.
+
+  Devens, Charles, in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  Deyverdun, Georges, collaboration with Gibbon, 124.
+
+  Dicey, A. V., as contributor to _The Nation_, 282, 294.
+
+  Dictionaries, importance of quotations in, 55.
+
+  Dingley Tariff Act, 229.
+
+  Duff, Sir M. E. Grant, on Herodotus, 5.
+
+
+  Eckermann, J. P., "Conversations with Goethe," 70-72.
+
+  Elections, 1852, Whig nominations, Scott's stumping tour, 86, 87;
+    1856, Kansas as issue, 88;
+    1876, controversy, and flexibility of Constitution, 203, 219, 245;
+    1896, bimetallism as issue, 228;
+    attitude of Godkin, 286.
+
+  Elizabeth, Froude and Gardiner on, 149;
+    and Anglo-Saxon development, 172.
+
+  Emerson, R. W., on originality, 28;
+    on mathematics, 57;
+    on philanthropists, 181;
+    on _The Nation_, 270.
+
+  England, Macaulay's history, 37, 41, 62;
+    Gardiner's history, 143-150;
+    Lecky's history, 154, 155;
+    Walpole's history, 161, 163, 164;
+    conditions in 1815, 161;
+    Green's history, 171, 172;
+    Alabama claims arbitration, 217;
+    Venezuela-Guiana boundary, 225, 285;
+    draft general arbitration treaty, 226;
+    attitude of Godkin, 272, 284, 290;
+    Cromwell and the Commonwealth, 317-323.
+
+  Evarts, W. M., Secretary of State, ability, 246;
+    social character, 262;
+    pessimism, 288.
+
+  _Evening Post_, acquires _The Nation_, Godkin as editor, 274.
+
+  Evolution, and history, 4, 36.
+
+  Executive. _See_ Civil service, Presidential office.
+
+
+  Federal Constitution, English model, 203;
+    rigidity and flexibility, 203, 216;
+    as political tradition, 208.
+    _See also_ Presidential office.
+
+  Ferrero, Guglielmo, as historian, 75;
+    on Cicero's contradictions, 290.
+
+  Fessenden, W. P., and Whig nominations in 1852, 87.
+
+  Fillmore, Martin, as President, 212.
+
+  Finances, greenback craze, 219, 246, 281;
+    silver agitation of 1878, 221, 259, 260;
+    Silver Act of 1890, 224, 227;
+    Cleveland's soundness, 225;
+    attitude of Republican party on money, 227, 257;
+    issue in campaign of 1896, 228, 286;
+    gold standard, 231;
+    depression (1877-1878), 251, 258;
+    Hayes's administration, 257-260;
+    Sherman's refunding, 257;
+    resumption of specie payments, 258, 259;
+    _The Nation_ and sound, 280-282.
+
+  Fine arts, and training of historian, 59.
+
+  Firth, C. H., to continue Gardiner's history, 148.
+
+  Fish, Hamilton, and arbitration of Alabama claims, 218.
+
+  Fiske, John, anecdote of the Websters, 54;
+    as popular scientist, 58;
+    power of concentration, 69.
+
+  Footnotes, use in histories, 33.
+
+  Ford, P. L., on writing criticisms for _The Nation_, 292.
+
+  Foreign relations, under Washington, 206;
+    under Tyler and Polk, 211;
+    under Grant, 218;
+    under Cleveland, 225, 285;
+    under McKinley, 231-234.
+    _See also_ Monroe Doctrine.
+
+  Fourth estate, newspaper as, 96.
+
+  Franklin, battle of, J. D. Cox in, 185.
+
+  Frederick the Great, Carlyle's biography, 63.
+
+  Frederick III of Germany, "wise emperor," 127.
+
+  Freeman, E. A., on Gibbon, 109.
+
+  French, importance to historians, 49-51;
+    Gibbon's knowledge, 119, 123.
+
+  French Revolution, Carlyle's history, 62;
+    Gibbon and, 113.
+
+  Froude, J. A., on Ulysses, 2;
+    inaccuracy, 41;
+    biography of Carlyle, 64;
+    on Elizabeth, 143, 149.
+
+  Gardiner, S. R., truthfulness, 7, 145;
+    as historical model, 42, 45;
+    lack of practical experience, 66, 148;
+    method, 76;
+    essay on, 143-150;
+    death, 143;
+    thoroughness of research, 143, 157;
+    as linguist, 143;
+    manuscript material, 143;
+    on Carlyle's "Cromwell," 144;
+    writings and editorial work, 144;
+    birth, 145;
+    conception of great work, 145;
+    Irvingite, 146;
+    struggles and success, 146, 147;
+    as teacher, 147;
+    honors, 147;
+    day's routine, manner of composition, 147;
+    style, 148;
+    soundness and influence of historical estimates, 149-150;
+    estimate of Cromwell, 150, 317-323;
+    on J. R. Green, 172;
+    on Hampden, 317;
+    on character of Puritans, 318;
+    on Cromwell's army, 320;
+    on character of Rump, 320;
+    rank as historian, 323.
+
+  Gardner, Percy, on Herodotus, 5, 40.
+
+  Garfield, J. A., desire for fame, 3;
+    as President, 222;
+    as speaker, 241.
+
+  Garrison, W. P., as literary editor of _The Nation_, 291-295.
+
+  Generalizations, need of care, 32, 178.
+
+  German, importance to historians, 52.
+
+  German historians, and ancient history, 75.
+
+  Gibbes, R. W., destruction of collections, 312.
+
+  Gibbon, Edward, rank and characteristics as historian, 5, 10, 109, 114;
+    on Tacitus, 10, 116;
+    style, 53, 133;
+    and mathematics, 56;
+    importance in training of historian, 60;
+    autobiographies, 64, 134;
+    essay on, 107-140;
+    conception of history, 107;
+    completion of it, 108;
+    progress and success of work, 108;
+    and classic masters, 110;
+    range of work, 110;
+    its endurance, 110;
+    as possible writer of contemporary history, 111, 112;
+    political career, 111;
+    conservatism, 112;
+    and American Revolution, 113;
+    historical subjects considered by, 115;
+    and earlier period of Roman Empire, 116;
+    intellectual training, 117-123;
+    love of reading, 118;
+    at Oxford, 118;
+    conversion and reconversion, 118, 121;
+    at Lausanne, 119;
+    self-training, 119, 122;
+    linguistic knowledge, 119, 120, 122, 123;
+    influence of Pascal, 119;
+    and Voltaire, 121;
+    on Robertson, 122;
+    "Essay on Study of Literature," 123;
+    service in militia, its influence, 123;
+    manuscript history of Switzerland, 124;
+    begins work on history, 124;
+    fame rests on it, 125;
+    Milman, Guizot, and Mommsen on it, 125;
+    quotations from, 126-128;
+    definitions of history, 126;
+    on religion under Pagan empire, 126;
+    on happiest period of mankind, 127;
+    on corruption, 127;
+    on sea-power, 127;
+    subjection to criticism, 128;
+    correctness, 128;
+    truthfulness, 129, 130;
+    use of conjecture, 129;
+    precision and accuracy, 129;
+    treatment of early Christian church, 131-133;
+    on Julian the Apostate, 132;
+    on Theodora, licentious passages, 133;
+    composition of history, 134;
+    love of books and wine, 135;
+    gout, 135;
+    and women, love affair, 136-138;
+    history in quarto edition, 138;
+    human importance of work, 139;
+    satisfaction with career, 139.
+
+  Gladstone, W. E., on Lecky, Carlyle, and Macaulay, 155.
+
+  Gloucester, William Henry, Duke of, on Gibbon's history, 138.
+
+  Godkin, E. L., power as journalist, 95;
+    essay on, 267-297;
+    rank as journalist, 267;
+    on Greeley, 267, 268;
+    illustration of influence, 268;
+    character, 269;
+    indirect influence, character of clientele, 270, 271;
+    authorship of articles in _The Nation_, 271;
+    Essays, 272;
+    early life, 272;
+    early optimism and later pessimism concerning America, 272, 284-290,
+      296;
+    as war correspondent, 272;
+    in America, journey in South, 273;
+    correspondent of London _News_, 273;
+    foundation of _The Nation_, 273;
+    editor of _Evening Post_, 274;
+    retirement, 274;
+    lectures, honors, 274;
+    and offer of professorship, 274-276;
+    nervous strain, 275;
+    accused of censorious criticism, 276;
+    of unfortunate influence on intellectual youth, 277;
+    influence on author, 278-282, 292-294;
+    influence in West, 279;
+    disinterestedness, 280;
+    and civil service reform, 280;
+    and sound finances, 280-282;
+    and tariff, 282;
+    and foreign affairs, 282;
+    other phases of influence, 282;
+    never retracted personal charges, 282;
+    implacability, ignores death of F. A. Walker, 282-284;
+    and Cleveland, 285;
+    and election of 1896, 286;
+    and Spanish War and Philippines, 286;
+    moral censor, 289;
+    criticism of England, 290;
+    disappointment in democracy, 291;
+    literary criticism in _The Nation_, 291-295;
+    on W. P. Garrison, 291;
+    influence of foreign birth, 295;
+    fame, 295;
+    lectureship as memorial to, 296;
+    farewell words, on general progress and political decline, 296, 297.
+
+  Goethe, J. W. von, on Moliere, 50;
+    on linguistic ability, 52;
+    "Faust" and study of human character, 68;
+    "Conversations," 70, 72;
+    wide outlook, 71.
+
+  Gold Standard Act, 231.
+
+  Gordon, C. G., newspapers and Soudan expedition, 89.
+
+  Gout, Gibbon on, 135.
+
+  Grant, U. S., first cabinet, 186, 278;
+    and Cox, 187;
+    as President, moral tone of administration, 217-219, 262;
+    on criticism, 218, 239.
+
+  Greek, importance to historians, 51;
+    Gibbon's knowledge, 120, 122, 123.
+
+  Greek history. _See_ Herodotus, Thucydides.
+
+  Greeley, Horace, influence as journalist,
+    historical value of articles, 31, 90, 267;
+    partisanship, 91; character, 268-270.
+
+  Green, J. R., as historian, 42;
+    address on, 171-173;
+    popularity in America, 171;
+    on Elizabeth, 172;
+    accuracy, 172;
+    character, 172;
+    on Cromwell's army, 319.
+
+  Greenbacks. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Grote, George, on Thucydides, 7;
+    on references, 33;
+    business training, 78.
+
+  Guizot, F. P. G., on Gibbon's history, 125.
+
+
+  Hadrian, "traveling emperor," 127.
+
+  Halleck, H. W., attitude towards Charleston, 306.
+
+  Hamilton, Alexander, on presidential office, 204, 233, 240;
+    as adviser of Washington, 207.
+
+  Hampden, John, as possible Anglo-Saxon hero, 317;
+    and Revolution of 1688, 323.
+
+  Hampton, Wade, and burning of Columbia, 302-305, 308.
+
+  Harrison, Benjamin, as President, 226;
+    as speaker, 241.
+
+  Harrison, Frederic, on Gibbon, 10;
+    on Spencer Walpole, 165.
+
+  Harrison, W. H., as President, 211.
+
+  Hart, A. B., on Herodotus, 6.
+
+  Harvard University, addresses of author at, 47, 101-103, 105, 243, 265;
+    striving after exact knowledge, 101;
+    honorary degree for Hayes, 251;
+    offers professorship to Godkin, 274, 275;
+    Godkin Lectureship, 296.
+
+  Hawthorne, Nathaniel, conciseness, 36.
+
+  Hay, John, anecdote of Grant, 218;
+    as Secretary of State, 234;
+    on Hayes and finances, 260.
+
+  Hayes, Lucy W., as wife of President, 221, 262.
+
+  Hayes, R. B., election controversy, 203, 219, 245;
+    administration, 219-222, 245-264;
+    as a prime minister, 241, 263;
+    righteousness of acceptance of election, 245;
+    difficulty of situation, 245, 261;
+    as governor, 246;
+    letter of acceptance, 246;
+    inaugural, 246;
+    cabinet, 246-248, 262;
+    withdrawal of troops from South, 248, 249;
+    and Congress, 249, 256, 257, 261;
+    civil service reforms, contest with Conkling, 250, 254-257;
+    honorary degree from Harvard, 251;
+    and railroad riots, 253, 254;
+    and finances, independent thinking, 257-260;
+    vetoes of repeal of Federal election laws, 260;
+    extra sessions of Congress, 261;
+    serenity, 261;
+    popular support, 261;
+    and election of 1880, 261;
+    moral tone of administration, 262;
+    and Cleveland, 263.
+
+  Herodotus, on purpose of history, 2;
+    rank as historian, 5, 34, 40;
+    as contemporary historian, 17.
+
+  Higginson, T. W., on Bancroft, 294.
+
+  Hildreth, Richard, historical value of newspaper articles, 31.
+
+  Hill, G. B., on Gibbon's history and autobiography, 125.
+
+  Historian, training, 49-79;
+    necessary linguistic knowledge, 49-52;
+    acquisition of style, 52-55;
+    knowledge of mathematics, 55-57;
+    of other sciences, 57-59;
+    of fine arts, 59;
+    general historical reading, 60-70;
+    mastery of Gibbon and Bryce, 60;
+    of Tacitus and Thucydides, 61;
+    of other historians, 62-64;
+    knowledge of lives of historians, 64;
+    desultory reading, 64-65;
+    study of human character, experimental and through books, 66-68;
+    thorough reading of characteristic works, 68;
+    speed and retention of reading, 69;
+    importance of "Conversations of Goethe," 70-72;
+    of Sainte-Beuve's criticisms, 72;
+    choice of subject, 74;
+    method, originality, 75;
+    note-making, 76;
+    Carlyle on method, 77;
+    remuneration, 77;
+    and teaching of history, 78;
+    and business training, 78.
+    _See also_ next two titles.
+
+  Historians, Shakespeare and Homer as, 1, 2, 7;
+    advantages and disadvantages of present-day, 4, 20;
+    best, 5, 11;
+    Herodotus, 5, 17, 34, 40;
+    Thucydides, 6-8, 11-15, 17-19, 35, 61, 110, 111, 128;
+    Tacitus, 8-10, 15, 17-20, 61, 110, 111, 116, 128;
+    Gibbon, 10, 60, 107-140;
+    conciseness, 11, 14, 16, 20, 36;
+    source material, 12-16, 20, 22;
+    contemporaneousness, 17-20;
+    necessary qualities, 20;
+    monographs, 22;
+    patriotism, 22;
+    necessity and kinds of originality, 27-29, 75;
+    use of newspapers, 29-32, 83-97;
+    generalizations, 32, 178;
+    use of footnotes, 33;
+    fresh combination of well-known facts, 34;
+    present-day models, 34-43;
+    reflection, 37;
+    enthusiasm, 38;
+    Macaulay, 36-38, 41, 62;
+    Carlyle, 38, 41, 62;
+    old and new schools, ethical judgments, human interest, 39, 43-45;
+    Hume, Robertson, Alison, 40;
+    Froude, 41;
+    Green, 42, 171-173;
+    Stubbs, 42, 157;
+    Gardiner, 42, 143-150, 157, 323;
+    and popularity, 44;
+    growth of candor, 45;
+    Bryce, 60, 61;
+    use of manuscript material, 85, 294;
+    gospel of exact knowledge, 101;
+    Lecky, 153-158;
+    Spencer Walpole, 161-167;
+    E. L. Pierce, 177-181;
+    J. D. Cox, 187;
+    E. G. Bourne, 191-200;
+    Bancroft, 294.
+    _See also_ titles above and below.
+
+  History, intellectual rank, 1;
+    and poetry, 1, 2;
+    and physical sciences, 2;
+    definitions, 2, 6, 43, 126;
+    homage of politicians, 3;
+    and evolution, 4, 36;
+    newspapers as source, 29-32, 83-97;
+    value of manuscript sources, 85, 294.
+    _See also_ two titles above.
+
+  Hoar, E. R., in Grant's cabinet, 186, 278;
+    and _The Nation_, 278.
+
+  Holm, Adolf, on Thucydides, 39;
+    on scientific history, 43; as historian, 75.
+
+  Holst, H. E. von, use of newspapers, 29, 85;
+    on westward expansion and slavery, 212.
+
+  Home rule, Lecky's attitude, 156.
+
+  Homer, as historian, 1, 2, 22;
+    and study of human character, 67.
+
+  House of Representatives. See Congress.
+
+  Howard, O. O., at burning of Columbia, 302, 307, 311, 312.
+
+  Howells, W. D., pessimism, 288.
+
+  Hugo, Victor, influence, 73.
+
+  Hume, David, present-day reputation, 40, 111;
+    on Gibbon's history of Switzerland, 124.
+
+  Huxley, T. H., as popular scientist, 58;
+    biography, 59;
+    on things useful, 102;
+    on college training, 102.
+
+
+  Income tax decision, Lecky on, 157.
+
+  Ireland, Lecky's history, 155.
+
+
+  Jackson, Andrew, as President, 209-211;
+    as leader of democracy, 209;
+    and spoils system, 209;
+    and training for administrative work, 210;
+    and nullification, 210.
+
+  James, Henry, on Sainte-Beuve, 73.
+
+  James, T. L., as postmaster of New York, 254.
+
+  James, William, on Godkin, 270.
+
+  Jay Treaty, as precedent for treaty-making power, 206.
+
+  Jebb, Sir R. C., on Herodotus, 6, 17;
+    on Tacitus, 10;
+    on Thucydides, 17.
+
+  Jefferson, Thomas, as President, 207, 208;
+    Louisiana Purchase, 208.
+
+  Johnson, Andrew, as President, 216.
+
+  Johnson, Samuel, on American Revolution, 113.
+
+  Johnston, J. E., Hayes desires to offer cabinet position to, 247.
+
+  Journalists, Godkin, 267-297.
+    _See also_ Newspapers.
+
+  Jowett, Benjamin, on Thucydides, 6.
+
+  Julian the Apostate, Gibbon's treatment, 132.
+
+
+  Kansas, and election of 1856, 88.
+
+  Kent, James, on danger in presidential contests, 219.
+
+  Key, D. M., in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  Kinglake, A. W., on power of press, 89.
+
+
+  Laboulaye, Edouard, on Federal Constitution, 204.
+
+  Langlois, C. V., on Froude, 41;
+    on ethical judgments, 43;
+    on note-making, 76.
+
+  Latin, importance to historians, 49, 51, 54;
+    Gibbon's knowledge, 120, 123.
+
+  Laud, William, Macaulay and Gardiner on, 149.
+
+  Lausanne, Gibbon at, 108, 113, 119, 121;
+    Voltaire's theatre, 121.
+
+  Lea, H. C., business training, 79;
+    as scientific historian, 103.
+
+  Lecky, W. E. H., and Christianity, 131;
+    essay on, 153-158;
+    precocity, 153;
+    value of "Morals," 153;
+    intellectual training, 153;
+    as philosophic historian, 154;
+    "England," 154, 155;
+    on French Revolution, 155;
+    on Irish history, 155;
+    in politics, 156;
+    popularity of history, 156;
+    social traits, 156;
+    interest in America, 157;
+    historic divination, 158;
+    "Democracy and Liberty," 158.
+
+  Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, on power of press, 96.
+
+  Lincoln, Abraham, as President, 213-216;
+    theory and action of war power, 213;
+    as a precedent, 214;
+    popular support, 215;
+    and public opinion, 231;
+    as a prime minister, 241.
+
+  Linguistic ability, importance to historians, 49-52;
+    Gibbon's, 133;
+    Gardiner's, 143.
+
+  Literary criticism in _The Nation_, 291-295.
+
+  Literary style, acquisition by historian, 52-55;
+    Macaulay's, 55;
+    Gibbon's, 133;
+    Gardiner's, 148;
+    Spencer Walpole's, 165.
+
+  Lodge, H. C., in the House, 227.
+
+  Logan, J. A., at burning of Columbia, 303, 311, 312.
+
+  London _Daily News_, Godkin as American correspondent, 273.
+
+  Long Parliament, character of rump, 320.
+
+  Louisiana, purchase as precedent, 208;
+    overthrow of carpet-bag government, 248, 249.
+
+  Lowell, J. R., on present-day life, 21;
+    on Carlyle, 39;
+    on college training, 102;
+    on Darwin, 145;
+    on Grant's cabinet, 186;
+    on _The Nation_, 268, 271, 278;
+    on importance of Godkin to it, 275.
+
+
+  Macaulay, Lord, on Shakespeare as historian, 2;
+    on Herodotus, 5;
+    prolixity, 11, 16, 36;
+    on Thucydides, 19, 61;
+    lack of reflection and digestion, 37;
+    enthusiasm, 38;
+    as partisan, 41;
+    and popularity, 44;
+    on Greek and Latin, 51;
+    style, 55;
+    on mathematics, 56;
+    importance in training of historian, 62;
+    biography, 64;
+    as reader, 69;
+    on Gibbon, 115;
+    on Wentworth and Laud, 149;
+    Gladstone on, 155;
+    on Cromwell, 318;
+    on character of Puritans, 318;
+    on Cromwell's army, 319;
+    Auckland on agreeing with, 323.
+
+  McCrary, G. W., in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  McKim, J. M., and foundation of _The Nation_, 273, 274.
+
+  McKinley, William, as leader of House, 227;
+    tariff bill, 227;
+    as President, 229-234;
+    change in tariff views, 229-231;
+    and gold standard, 231;
+    and public opinion, Spanish War and Philippines, 231-234;
+    diplomacy, 234;
+    influence on Congress, 234;
+    as speaker, 241;
+    attitude of Godkin, 286.
+
+  Mackintosh, Sir James, on irreligion of Gibbon's time, 132.
+
+  Madison, James, as President, 207.
+
+  Mahaffy, J. P., on Herodotus, 5;
+    on Thucydides, 8.
+
+  Mahan, A. T., anticipation of theory, 127.
+
+  Maine, Sir Henry, on Federal Constitution, 203, 206.
+
+  Manuscript sources, value, 85, 91, 294;
+    Gardiner's use, 143, 144.
+
+  Massachusetts Historical Society, papers by author before, 141, 151,
+      159, 175, 183, 189, 315;
+    recognition of Gardiner, 147;
+    of Lecky, 156;
+    interest of E. L. Pierce in, 181;
+    E. G. Bourne and editorship of publications, 199.
+
+  Mathematics, and training of historian, 55-57.
+
+  Matthews, William, on _The Nation_, 278, 279.
+
+  Merritt, E. A., appointment by Hayes, 255.
+
+  Mexican War, aggression, 212;
+    and slavery, 212.
+
+  Mill, J. S., and mathematics, 56;
+    prodigy, 56.
+
+  Milligan case, and arbitrary government, 215.
+
+  Milman, H. H., on Gibbon's history, 125, 139.
+
+  Milton, John, on books, 60.
+
+  Moliere, importance to historians, 49.
+
+  Mommsen, Theodor, on Gibbon, 11, 125;
+    as scientific historian, 43.
+
+  Money. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Monographs, use by general historians, 22.
+
+  Monroe, James, as President, 207, 209.
+
+  Monroe Doctrine, and Philippines, 195;
+    and development of presidential office, 209.
+
+  Montesquieu, Gibbon on, 119.
+
+  Morison, J. A. Cotter, on Gibbon, 131.
+
+  Morley, John, on Macaulay, 16, 38, 55;
+    on Cicero and Voltaire, 51.
+
+  Morrill, J. S., and Hayes's New York Custom-house appointments, 255.
+
+  Morris, Gouverneur, and framing of Constitution, 204.
+
+  Morse, C. F., on feeling in Union army towards South Carolina, 307.
+
+  Motley, J. L., best work, 68;
+    advice to historians, 74, 75;
+    and manuscript sources, 86, 91;
+    Bourne's unfinished biography, 196.
+
+
+  _Nation_, as historical source, 95;
+    J. D. Cox as contributor, 187;
+    circulation, 270;
+    foundation, 273;
+    weekly edition of _Evening Post_, 274.
+    _See also_ Godkin.
+
+  Necker, Mme. _See_ Curchod.
+
+  Negro suffrage, opposition of J. D. Cox, 186.
+
+  Nerva, as "gray emperor," 127.
+
+  "New English Dictionary," importance of quotations in, 55.
+
+  New York Custom-house, Hayes's reforms and appointments, 254.
+
+  _New York Weekly Tribune_, influence, 31, 90, 91, 267.
+    _See also_ Greeley.
+
+  Newspapers, as historical sources, 29-32, 83-97;
+    use by Von Holst, 29;
+    as registers of facts, 30, 86-89;
+    importance for dates, 30, 87;
+    as guide of public opinion, 31, 89-92;
+    power of _New York Weekly Tribune_, 31, 90, 91, 267-269;
+    qualities of evidence, 83, 84;
+    value in American history, for period 1850-1860, 85-92;
+    and correction of logical assumptions, 87-89;
+    as record of speeches and letters, 89;
+    value of partisanship, 91;
+    value of Northern, for Civil War period, 92, 93;
+    of Southern, 93;
+    laboriousness of research, 93;
+    value for Reconstruction, 94;
+    canons of use, 96;
+    as fourth estate, 96;
+    criticisms of Presidents, 239.
+    _See also Nation_.
+
+  Niebuhr, B. G., on Gibbon, 10, 109;
+    on training of historian, 29.
+
+  North, Sir Thomas, translation of Plutarch, 1.
+
+  Norton, C. E., on Godkin, 270;
+    and foundation of _The Nation_, 273, 274.
+
+  Note-making in historical work, 76.
+
+  Nullification, Jackson's course, 210.
+
+
+  "Official Records of Union and Confederate armies," value as
+    historical source, 92.
+
+  "Ohio idea," 259.
+
+  Oliver, J. M., at burning of Columbia, 313.
+
+  Olmsted, F. L., Godkin on Southern books, 273;
+    interest in _The Nation_, 274;
+    on importance of Godkin to it, 275.
+
+  Olney, Richard, draft general arbitration treaty, 226.
+
+  Originality in history, 27-29, 34, 75.
+
+  Oxford University, address of author at, 169.
+
+
+  Pacific Coast, Goethe's prophecy, 71.
+
+  Packard, S. B., overthrow of government, 248, 249.
+
+  Palmerston, Lord, Spencer Walpole's estimate, 164.
+
+  Panama Canal, Goethe's prophecy, 72.
+
+  Paper money. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Parkman, Francis, originality, 28;
+    best work, 68;
+    remuneration, 78;
+    national pride in, 102;
+    and religion, 131;
+    on _The Nation_, 270, 295.
+
+  Partisanship, historical value of newspaper, 83, 91.
+
+  Pascal, Blaise, influence on Gibbon, 119.
+
+  Pasteur, Louis, biography, 59.
+
+  Patriotism in historians, 22.
+
+  Pericles, funeral oration, 18, 23.
+
+  Philippines, annexation and Monroe Doctrine, 195;
+    McKinley's attitude, 233;
+    Godkin's attitude, 286.
+
+  Physical sciences, and history, 2;
+    and training of historian, 55-59.
+
+  Pierce, E. L., essay on, 177-181;
+    biography of Sumner, 177-179;
+    as politician and citizen, 179, 181;
+    historic sense, 179;
+    character, 180;
+    interest in Massachusetts Historical Society, 181.
+
+  Pierce, Franklin, as President, 213.
+
+  Pike, J. S., historical value of newspaper articles, 31.
+
+  Pittsburg, railroad riot of 1877, 252, 253.
+
+  Pliny the Younger, on Tacitus, 9.
+
+  Plutarch, North's translation, 1;
+    on Thucydides, 19.
+
+  Poetry, and history, 1.
+
+  Politics, Godkin on decline, 296, 297.
+  _See also_ Civil service, Congress, Elections, Newspapers,
+    Presidential office, and parties by name.
+
+  Polk, J. K., as President, 211.
+
+  Polybius, as historian, 6.
+
+  Popularity, and historical writing, 44.
+
+  Presidential office, essay on, 203-241;
+    flexibility of powers and duties, 204;
+    under Washington, control of treaties, 205-207;
+    John Adams to J. Q. Adams, extension of power, 207-209;
+    and annexations, 208;
+    and Monroe Doctrine, 209;
+    under Jackson, era of vulgarity, spoils system, 209-211;
+    Van Buren to Buchanan, annexations and slavery, 211-213;
+    period of weakness, 213;
+    under Lincoln, war power, 213-216;
+    under Johnson, nadir, 216;
+    and cabinet government, 217, 240, 263;
+    under Grant, 217-219, 262;
+    veto power, 219;
+    Kent on dangers in elections, 219;
+    contested election of 1876, 219, 254;
+    under Hayes, 220-222, 245-264;
+    under Garfield, civil service reform, 222;
+    under Arthur, 222;
+    under Cleveland, advance in power, 223-226;
+    under Harrison, 226-228;
+    under McKinley, 229-234;
+    and public opinion, 231-234;
+    character of Roosevelt, 235;
+    business, interruptions and their remedy, 236-239;
+    appointments, number of presidential offices, 236;
+    contact with Congress, 237;
+    criticisms, 238-240;
+    success of system, 240-241.
+
+  Pritchett, H. S., on McKinley and Philippines, 233.
+
+  Public opinion, newspapers as guide, 31, 89-92;
+    backing of Lincoln's extra-legal actions, 215;
+    influence on Presidents, 231-234.
+
+  Puritans, Macaulay and Gardiner on character, 318.
+
+  Pym, John, and Revolution of 1688, 323.
+
+
+  Railroad riots, 1894, Cleveland and use of Federal troops, 225;
+    1877, cause, 251;
+    strike and conflicts, 253;
+    use of Federal troops, 253;
+    social alarm, 254;
+    conduct of Hayes, 254.
+
+  Ranke, Leopold von, "England," 143.
+
+  Raymond, H. J., power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Reading, desultory, 64, 65, 199;
+    facility and retention, 69;
+    note-making, 76.
+
+  Reconstruction, newspapers as historical source, 94, 95;
+    J. D. Cox's opposition to negro suffrage, 186;
+    failure, final withdrawal of troops, 248, 249;
+    attitude of _The Nation_, 282.
+
+  Reed, T. B., and power of Speaker, 227.
+
+  Reflection in historical work, 37.
+
+  Reform act of 1832, Lord John Russell's introduction, 162.
+
+  Religion, Gibbon on, under Pagan empire, 126;
+    Gibbon's treatment of early Christian church, 131-133.
+
+  Republican party, newspapers as record of formation, 90;
+    and sound money, 227, 257.
+
+  Resumption of specie payments, opposition and success, 258, 259.
+
+  Revolution of 1688, question of Cromwell's influence, 322, 323.
+
+  Riots. _See_ Railroad.
+
+  Robertson, William, present-day reputation, 40, 111;
+    Gibbon on, 122.
+
+  Rome. _See_ Gibbon, Tacitus.
+
+  Roosevelt, Theodore, character, 235;
+    routine as President, 236, 238.
+
+  Ropes, J. C., as military historian, 13.
+
+  _Round Table_, character, 279.
+
+  Rousseau, J. J., on Gibbon as lover, 137.
+
+  Russell, Lord John, and Reform Act of 1832, 162;
+    Spencer Walpole's biography, 162.
+
+
+  Sainte-Beuve, C. A., style, 53;
+    on desultory reading, 65;
+    on biographies of Goethe, 72;
+    as critic, 72;
+    on Gibbon, 114, 123;
+    on Tacitus, 128.
+
+  Salisbury, Lord, Godkin on, 290.
+
+  Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, Bambino, 107;
+    connection with Gibbon, 107.
+
+  Schofield, J. M., on J. D. Cox, 185.
+
+  Schouler, William, power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Schurz, Carl, on history as profession, 78;
+    criticism of Cleveland's Venezuelan policy, 239;
+    in Ohio campaign of 1875, 246;
+    Secretary of Interior, ability, 247;
+    with Hayes at Harvard commencement, 251;
+    and civil service reform, 256;
+    social character, 262;
+    as editor of _Evening Post_, 274;
+    and greenback inflation, 281.
+
+  Scott, Winfield, presidential campaign, 86, 87.
+
+  Sea-power, Gibbon on, 127.
+
+  Senate. _See_ Congress.
+
+  Seward, W. H., and arbitrary arrests, 214.
+
+  Shakespeare, William, as historian, 1, 7, 22;
+    conciseness, 36;
+    and study of human character, 67.
+
+  Shaw, Bernard, on reality of Shakespeare's characters, 67.
+
+  Sheffield, Lord, sends wine to Gibbon, 135.
+
+  Sherman, John, and Silver Bill of 1878, 221, 259, 260;
+    on contact of President and Congress, 237;
+    in Ohio campaign of 1875, 246;
+    Secretary of Treasury, ability, 247, 258;
+    refunding, 258;
+    abused for depression, specie resumption, 258, 259;
+    social character, 263;
+    and greenback inflation, 281.
+
+  Sherman, W. T., and Hayes's suggestion of war portfolio for General
+      Johnston, 247;
+    and burning of Columbia, 301-313.
+
+  Sicilian expedition, Thucydides's account, 19, 61.
+
+  Silver. _See_ Finances.
+
+  Slavery, and westward expansion, 212.
+
+  Source material, use by Thucydides and Tacitus, 12-16;
+    modern, 20, 22;
+    newspapers, 29-32, 83-97;
+    manuscript, 85, 91, 143, 294.
+
+  South Carolina, overthrow of carpet-bag government, 248;
+    feeling of Union army towards, 306.
+
+  Spanish War, newspapers and cause, 89;
+    McKinley's course, 233;
+    attitude of Godkin, 286.
+
+  Speaker of House of Representatives, power, 227.
+
+  _Spectator_, on McKinley's diplomacy, 234.
+
+  Spedding, James, Gardiner on, 145.
+
+  Spencer, Herbert, on aim of education, 77;
+    on age as factor in evidence, 85;
+    Bryce on, 293.
+
+  Spoils system. _See_ Civil service.
+
+  Stael, Madame de, parents, 137;
+    on Gibbon, 137 n.
+
+  "Stalwarts," origin of name, 249.
+
+  Stanton, E. M., and arbitrary arrests, 214.
+
+  Stephens, H. M., on French Revolution, 155.
+
+  Stone, G. A., at burning of Columbia, 302, 310, 311.
+
+  Story, Joseph, on presidential character, 235.
+
+  Stubbs, William, as historian, 42, 69, 157.
+
+  Suffrage, Godkin on universal, 296.
+    _See also_ Negro.
+
+  Sumner, Charles, style, 53.
+
+  Switzerland, Gibbon's manuscript history, 124.
+
+
+  Tacitus, rank as historian, 5;
+    characteristics as historian, 8-10, 128;
+    conciseness, 11, 16;
+    use of source material, 15;
+    as contemporary historian, 17, 19, 111;
+    on history, 43;
+    importance in training of historian, 61;
+    Gibbon on, 116;
+    on censure, 276.
+
+  Taine, H. A., use of journals, 83.
+
+  Tariff, Cleveland's attitude, 225;
+    McKinley Act, 227;
+    Dingley Act, 229;
+    McKinley's change of opinion, 229-231;
+    _The Nation_ and protection, 282.
+
+  Taylor, Zachary, as President, 212.
+
+  Texan annexation, 211; and slavery, 212.
+
+  Thackeray, W. M., on Macaulay, 38.
+
+  Theodora, Gibbon's treatment, 133.
+
+  Thompson, R. W., in Hayes's cabinet, 247.
+
+  Thucydides, rank as historian, 5;
+    on history, 6;
+    characteristics as historian, 6-8, 39, 128;
+    conciseness, 11, 14, 16, 36;
+    use of personal sources material, 12-14;
+    as contemporary historian, 17, 111;
+    importance in training of historian, 61.
+
+  Thurman, A. G., and greenback inflation, 281.
+
+  Ticknor, George, pessimism, 288.
+
+  Tilden, S. J., election controversy, 203, 219, 245.
+
+  Tocqueville, Alexis de, style, 65;
+    on presidential office, 210.
+
+  Trajan, "wise emperor," 127.
+
+  Treaty-making power, Jay Treaty as precedent, 206.
+
+  Trent, W. P., on burning of Columbia, 302.
+
+  Trevelyan, Sir G. O., biography of Macaulay, 64.
+
+  Tyler, John, as President, 211, 212.
+
+  Tyndall, John, as popular scientist, 58.
+
+
+  Ulysses, and study of human character, 67.
+
+  United States, Goethe's prophecy of westward extension and Panama
+      Canal, 71;
+    political traditions, 208;
+    Godkin's early optimism and later pessimism concerning, 272,
+      284-290, 296;
+    Godkin on general progress and political decline, 296.
+    _See also_ American, Finances, Newspapers, Politics.
+
+  Universities, strife after exact knowledge, 101;
+    advantages and aim of training, 102.
+
+
+  Vallandigham case, Lincoln's attitude, 214.
+
+  Van Buren, Martin, as President, 211.
+
+  Venezuela-Guiana boundary, Cleveland's action, 225
+    Godkin's attitude, 285.
+
+  Veto power, wisdom, 219.
+
+  Voltaire, importance to historians, 51;
+    theatre at Lausanne, 121;
+    and Gibbon, 121.
+
+
+  Walker, F. A., career, 283;
+    _The Nation_ ignores death of, 283, 284.
+
+  Walpole, Sir Spencer, essay on, 161-167;
+    "England," 161, 163, 164;
+    biography of Lord John Russell, 162;
+    knowledge of men, 164;
+    of continental politics, 164;
+    "Studies in Biography," 164;
+    knowledge of practical politics, 165;
+    as man of affairs, 165;
+    style, 165;
+    visit to, character, 165-167;
+    death, 167.
+
+  War power, exemplification by Lincoln, 213-216.
+
+  Warner, C. D., on originality in style, 27.
+
+  Washington, George, as President, 205-207;
+    prescience, 206;
+    as political tradition, 208.
+
+  Webb, J. W., power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Webster, Daniel, basis of style, 53, 54;
+    and presidential nomination in 1852, 86.
+
+  Weed, Thurlow, power as journalist, 90.
+
+  Wells, H. G., on Boston, 138.
+
+  Wentworth, Thomas, Macaulay and Gardiner on, 149.
+
+  West Virginia, railroad riots of 1877, 252.
+
+  Western Reserve University, lecture by author at, 47.
+
+  Wheeler, Joseph, lootings by his cavalry at Columbia, 309.
+
+  Whig party, nominations in 1852, 86.
+
+  Whitman, Marcus, Bourne's essay on, 193.
+
+  William I of Germany, "gray emperor," 127.
+
+  William II of Germany, "traveling emperor," 127.
+
+  Windom, William, and Hayes's New York Custom-house appointments, 255.
+
+  Wine, Gibbon's love for, 135.
+
+  Winthrop, R. C., on E. L. Pierce, 179.
+
+  Woods, C. R., at burning of Columbia, 303, 311, 312.
+
+  Woods, W. B., at burning of Columbia, 311.
+
+  Woolsey, T. D., on Thucydides, 39.
+
+
+  Yale University, lecture by author at, 47.
+
+
+This Index was made for me by D. M. Matteson.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Essays, by James Ford Rhodes
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