"A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."
As long as the primrose was there, he could be trusted to describe it
accurately enough. But set Peter Bell the task of describing last year's
primrose. "There aren't any last year's primroses on the river's brim,"
says Peter, "so you must be content with a description of the one in my
herbarium. Last year's primroses, you will observe, are very much
flattened out." To Mr. Peter Bell, after he has spent many years in the
universities, a document is a document, and it is nothing more. When he
has compared a great many documents, and put them together in a
mechanical way, he calls his work a history. That's where he differs
from the Gentle Reader who calls it only the crude material out of which
a man of genius may possibly make a history.
To the Gentle Reader it is a profoundly interesting reflection that
since this planet has been inhabited people have been fighting, and
working, and loving, and hating, with an intensity born of the
conviction that, if they went at it hard enough, they could finish the
whole business in one generation. He likes to get back into any one of
these generations just "to get the feel of it." He does not care so much
for the final summing up of the process, as to see it in the making.
Any one who can give him that experience is his friend.
He is interested in the stirring times of the English Revolution, and
goes to the historical expert to find what it was all about. The
historical expert starts with the Magna Charta and makes a preliminary
survey. Then he begins his march down the centuries, intrenching every
position lest he be caught unawares by the critics. His intellectual
forces lack mobility, as they must wait for their baggage trains. At
last he comes to the time of the Stuarts, and there is much talk of the
royal prerogative, and ship money, and attainders, and acts of
Parliament. There are exhaustive arguments, now on the one side and now
on the other, which exactly balance one another. There are references to
bulky volumes, where at the foot of every page the notes run along, like
little angry dogs barking at the text.
The Gentle Reader calls out: "I have had enough of this. What I want to
know is what it's all about, and which side, on the whole, has the right
of it. Which side are you on? Are you a Roundhead or a Cavalier? Are
your sympathies with the Whigs or the Tories?"
"Sympathies!" says the expert. "Who ever heard of a historian allowing
himself to sympathize? I have no opinions of my own to present. My great
aim is not to prejudice the mind of the student."
"Nonsense," says the Gentle Reader; "I am not a student, nor is this a
school-room. It's all in confidence; speak out as one gentleman to
another under a friendly roof! What do you think about it? No matter if
you make a mistake or two, I'll forget most that you say, anyway. All
that I care for is to get the gist of the matter. As for your fear of
warping my mind, there's not the least danger in the world. My mind is
like a tough bit of hickory; it will fly back into its original shape
the moment you let go. I have a hundred prejudices of my own,--one more
won't hurt me. I want to know what it was that set the people by the
ears. Why did they cut off the head of Charles I., and why did they
drive out James II.? I can't help thinking that there must have been
something more exciting than those discussions of yours about
constitutional theories. Do you know, I sometimes doubt whether most of
the people who went to the wars knew that there was such a thing as the
English Constitution; the subject hadn't been written up then. I suspect
that something happened that was not set down in your book; something
that made those people fighting mad."
Then the Gentle Reader turns to his old and much criticised friend
Macaulay, and asks,--
"What do you think about it?"
"Think about it!" says Macaulay. "I'll tell you what I think about it.
To begin with, that Charles I., though good enough as a family man, was
a consummate liar."
"That's the first light I've had on the subject," says the Gentle
Reader. "Charles lied, and that made the people mad?"
"Precisely! I perceive that you have the historic sense. We English
can't abide a liar; so at last when we could not trust the king's word
we chopped off his head. Mind you, I'm not defending the regicides, but
between ourselves I don't mind saying that I think it served him right.
At any rate our blood was up, and there was no stopping us. I wish I had
time to tell you all about Hampden, and Pym, and Cromwell, but I must
go on to the glorious year 1688, and tell you how it all came about, and
how we sent that despicable dotard, James, flying across the Channel,
and how we brought in the good and wise King William, and how the great
line of Whig statesmen began. I take for granted--as you appear to be a
sensible man--that you are a Whig?"
"I'm open to conviction," says the Gentle Reader.
In a little while he is in the very thick of it. He is an Englishman of
the seventeenth century. He has taken sides and means to fight it out.
He knows how to vote on every important question that comes before
Parliament. No Jacobite sophistry can beguile him. When William lands he
throws up his hat, and after that he stands by him, thick or thin. When
you tell him that he ought to be more dispassionate in his historical
judgments, he answers: "That would be all very well if we were not
dealing with living issues,--but with Ireland in an uproar and the
Papists ready to swarm over from France, there is a call for decision. A
man must know his own mind. You may stand off and criticise William's
policy; but the question is, What policy do you propose? You say that I
have not exhausted the subject, and that there are other points of view.
Very likely. Show me another point of view, only make it as clear to me
as Macaulay makes his. Let it be a real view, and not a smudge. Some
other day I may look at it, but I must take one thing at a time. What I
object to is the historian who takes both sides in the same paragraph.
That is what I call offensive bi-partisanship."
The Gentle Reader is interested not only in what great men actually
were, but in the way they appeared to those who loved or hated them. He
is of the opinion that the legend is often more significant than the
colorless annals. When a legend has become universally accepted and has
lived a thousand years, he feels that it should be protected in its
rights of possession by some statute of limitation. It has come to have
an independent life of its own. He has, therefore, no sympathy with
Gibbon in his identification of St. George of England with George of
Cappadocia, a dishonest army contractor who supplied the troops of the
Emperor Julian with bacon. Says Gibbon: "His employment was mean; he
rendered it infamous. He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud
and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious that George was
compelled to escape from the pursuit of his enemies.... This odious
stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the
mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George
of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of
England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter."
"That is a serious indictment," says the Gentle Reader. "I have no plea
to make for the Cappadocian; I can readily believe that his bacon was
bad. But why not let bygones be bygones? If he managed to transform
himself into a saint, and for many centuries avoid all suspicion, I
believe that it was a thorough reformation. St. George of England has
long been esteemed as a valiant gentleman,--and, at any rate, that
affair with the dragon was greatly to his credit."
Sometimes the Gentle Reader is disturbed by finding that different lines
of tradition have been mixed, and his mind becomes the battleground
whereon old blood feuds are fought out. Thus it happens that as a child
he was brought up on the tales of the Covenanters and imbibed their
stern resentment against their persecutors. He learned to hate the very
name of Graham of Claverhouse who brought desolation upon so many
innocent homes. On the other hand, his heart beats high when he hears
the martial strains of Bonnie Dundee. "There was a man for you!"
"Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street,
The bells are rung backward, the drums they are beat.
* * * * *
'Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks--
Ere I own as usurper, I'll couch with the fox!
And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee,
You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me!'
* * * * *
He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown,
The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on,
Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermeston's lee
Died away the wild war notes of Bonnie Dundee."
"When I see him wave his proud hand," says the Gentle Reader, "I am his
clansman, and I'm ready to be off with him."
"I thought you were a Whig," says the student of history.
"I thought so too,--but what's politics where the affections are
enlisted? Don't you hear those wild war notes?"
"But are you aware that the Bonnie Dundee is the same man whom you have
just been denouncing under the name of Graham of Claverhouse?"
"Are you sure they are the same?" sighs the Gentle Reader. "I cannot
make them seem the same. To me there are two of them: Graham of
Claverhouse, whom I hate, and the Bonnie Dundee, whom I love. If it's
all the same to you, I think I shall keep them separate and go on loving
and hating as aforetime."
* * * * *
But though the Gentle Reader has the defects of his qualities and is
sometimes led astray by his sympathies, do not think that he is
altogether lacking in solidity of judgment. He has a genuine love of
truth and finds it more interesting than fiction--when it is well
written. If he objects to the elimination of myth and fable it is
because he is profoundly interested in the history of human feeling. The
story that is the embodiment of an emotion is itself of the greatest
significance. In Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, before Jupiter himself
is revealed, the Phantasm of Jupiter appears and speaks. Prometheus
addresses him:--
"Tremendous Image, as thou art must be
He whom thou shadowest forth."
On the stage of history each great personage has a phantasmal
counterpart; sometimes there are many of them. Each phantasm becomes a
centre of love and hate.
The cold-blooded historian gives us what he calls the real Napoleon. He
is, he asserts, neither the Corsican Ogre of the British imagination nor
the Heroic Emperor for whom myriads of Frenchmen gladly died. Perhaps
not; but when the Napoleonic legend has been banished, what about the
Napoleonic wars? The Phantasms of Napoleon appear on every battlefield.
The men of that day saw them, and were nerved to the conflict. The
reader must, now and then, see them, or he can have no conception of
what was going on. He misses "the moving why they did it." And as for
the real Napoleon, what was the magic by which he was able to call such
phantasms from the vasty deep?
The careful historian who would trace the history of Europe in the
centuries that followed the barbarian invasion is sorely troubled by the
intrusion of legendary elements. After purging his work of all that
savors of romance, he has a very neat and connected narrative.
"But is it true?" asks the Gentle Reader. "I for one do not believe it.
The course of true history never did run so smooth. Here is a worthy
person who undertakes to furnish me with an idea of the Dark Ages, and
he forgets the principal fact, which is that it was dark. His picture
has all the sharp outlines of a noon-day street scene. I don't believe
he ever spent a night alone in a haunted house. If he had he would have
known that if you don't see ghosts, you see shapes that look like them.
At midnight mysterious forms loom large. The historian must have a
genius for depicting Chaos. He must make me dimly perceive 'the
fragments of forgotten peoples,' with their superstitions, their
formless fears, their vague desires. They were all fighting them in the
dark.
"'For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, and many a base
And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host
Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battle axes on shattered helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Looked up for heaven and only saw the mist.'"
"But, Gentle Reader," says the Historian, "that is poetry, not history."
"Perhaps it is, but it's what really happened."
* * * * *
He is of the opinion that many histories owe their quality of
unreadableness to the virtues of their authors. The kind-hearted
historians over-load their works through their desire to rescue as many
events and persons as possible from oblivion. When their better judgment
tells them that they should be off, they remain to drag in one more.
Alas, their good intention defeats itself; their frail craft cannot bear
the added burden, and all hands go to the bottom. There is no surer
oblivion than that which awaits one whose name is recorded in a book
that undertakes to tell all.
The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them. Here are
millions of happenings every day. Each one has its infinite series of
antecedents and consequents; and each takes longer in the telling than
in the doing. Evidently there must be some principle of selection.
Naturalists with a taste for mathematics tell us of the appalling
catastrophe which would impend if every codfish were to reach maturity.
It would be equaled by the state of things which would exist were every
incident duly chronicled. A foretaste of this calamity has been given in
our recent war,--and yet there were some of our military men who did not
write reminiscences.
What the principle of selection shall be depends upon the predominant
interest of the writer. But there must be a clear sequence; one can
relate only what is related to the chosen theme. The historian must
reverse the order of natural evolution and proceed from the
heterogeneous to the homogeneous. Alas for the ill-fated pundit who,
forgetting his aim, flounders in the bottomless morass of heterogeneity.
The moment he begins to tell how things are he remembers some
incongruous incident which proves that they were quite otherwise. The
genius for narrative consists in the ability to pick out the facts which
belong together and which help each other along. The company must keep
step, and the stragglers must be mercilessly cut off. One cannot say of
any fact that it is important in itself. The important thing is that
which has a direct bearing on the subject. The definition of dirt as
matter in the wrong place is suggestive. All the details that throw
light on the main action are of value. Those that obscure it are but
petty dust. It is no sufficient plea that the dust is very real and that
it took a great deal of trouble to collect it.
As vivid a bit of history as one may read is the Journal of Sally
Wister, a Quaker girl who lived near Philadelphia during the period of
the American Revolution. She gives a narrative of the things which
happened to her during those fateful years. In October, 1777, she says,
"Here, my dear, passes an interval of several weeks in which nothing
happened worth the time and paper it would take to write it."
The editor is troubled at this remark, because during that very week the
Battle of Germantown and been fought not far away. But Sally Wister had
the true historical genius. The Battle of Germantown was an event, and
so was the coming of a number of gay young officers to the hospitable
country house; and this latter event was much more important to Sally
Wister. So omitting all irrelevant incidents, she gives a circumstantial
account of what was happening on the centre of the stage.
"Cousin Prissa and myself were sitting at the door; I in my green skirt,
dark gown, etc. Two genteel men of the military order rode up to the
door. 'Your servant, ladies,' etc. Asked if they could have quarters for
General Smallwood."
"I can see just how they did it," says the Gentle Reader, "and what a
commotion the visit made. Now when a person who is just as much absorbed
in the progress of the Revolutionary War as Sally Wister was in those
young officers writes about it I will read his history gladly."
* * * * *
Some otherwise excellent histories fall into the abyss of unreadableness
because of the author's unnecessary pains to justify his heroes to the
critical intelligence of the reader. He is continually making apologies
when he should be telling a story. He is comparing the deeds of one age
with the ethical standards of another; and the result is a series of
moral anachronisms. There is a running fire of more or less irrelevant
comment.
What a delightful plan that was, which the author of the Book of Judges
hit upon to avoid this difficulty! He had a hard task. His worthies were
not persons of settled habits, and they did many things that might
appear shocking to later generations. They were called upon to do rough
work and they did it in their own way. If the author had undertaken to
justify their conduct by any conventional standard he would have made
sorry work of it. What he did was much better than that. Whenever he
came to a point where there was danger of the mind of the reader
becoming turbid with moral reflections that belonged to a later age, he
threw in the clarifying suggestion, "And there was no King in Israel,
and every man did what was right in his own eyes." This precipitated all
the disturbing elements, and the story ran on swift and clear. It was
as if when the reader was about to protest the author anticipated him
with, "What would you do, reader, if the Philistines were upon you and
there were no King in Israel?" Undoubtedly under such circumstances it
would be a great relief to catch sight of Gideon or Samson. It would not
be a time for fastidiousness about their shortcomings; they would be
hailed as strong deliverers.
"That is just the point of it," cries the Gentle Reader. "They were on
our side. The important thing is to recognize our friends. To teach us
who our friends are is the purpose of history. Here is a conflict that
has been going on for ages. The men who have done valiant service are
not all smooth-spoken gentlemen in black coats--but what of it? They
have done what they could. We can't say that each act was absolutely
right, but they were moving in the right direction. When a choice was
offered they took the better part. The historian should not only know
what they did, but what was the alternative offered them. There was the
Prophet Samuel. Some persons will have no further respect for him after
they learn that he hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord. They think he
ought to have stood up for Free Religion. They take for granted that the
alternative offered him was religious toleration as we understand it. It
was nothing of the sort. The question for a man of that age was, Shall
Samuel hew Agag in pieces, or shall Agag hew Samuel in pieces, and my
sympathies are with Samuel."
Having once made allowance for the differences of time and place, he
follows with eager interest the fortunes of the men who have made the
world what it is. What if they do have their faults? He does not care
for what he calls New England Primer style of History:--
"Young Obadias, David, Josias
All were pious."
Such monotony of excellence wearies him, and the garment of praise is
accompanied by a spirit of heaviness.
"I like saints best in the state of nature," he says; "the process of
canonization does not seem good for them. When too many of them are
placed together in a book their virtues kill one another, and at a
little distance all halos look very much alike."
There are certain histories which he finds readable, not because he
cares very much for their ostensible subject, but because of the light
they throw on the author's personality. He, good man, thinks he is
telling the story of the Carlovingian Dynasty, or the rise of the
Phoenician sea power, while in reality he is giving an intimate
account of his own state of mind. The author is like a bee which wanders
far afield and visits many flowers, but always brings back the spoil to
one hollow tree. The Gentle Reader, like a practiced bee hunter, is
careless of the outward journeys, but watches closely the direction of
the return flight.
"If you would know a person's limitations," he says, "induce him to
write on some large subject like the History of Civilization, or the
History of the Origin and Growth of the Moral Sentiment. You will find
his particular hobby writ large."
He takes up a History of the Semites. "What a pertinacious fellow he
is," alluding not to any ancient Semite but to the Author, "how closely
he sticks to his point! He has discovered a new fact about the
Amalekites,--I wonder what he will do with it. Just as I expected! there
he is back with it to that controversy he is having with his
Presbytery. I notice that he calls the children of Israel the
Beni-Israel. He knows that that sort of thing irritates the conservative
party. It suggests that he is following Renan, and yet it may only prove
that he thinks in Hebrew."
* * * * *
The Gentle Reader regards ambitious works on the Philosophy of History
with mingled suspicion and curiosity. So much depends, in such cases,
upon the philosopher. In spite of many misadventures, curiosity
generally gets the better of caution.
He opens Comte's "Positive Philosophy" and reads, "In order to
understand the true value and character of the 'Positive Philosophy' we
must take a brief, general view of the progressive course of the human
mind regarded as a whole." Then he is conducted through the three stages
of the theological or fictitious, the metaphysical or abstract, and the
scientific or positive; which last circle proves large enough only for
Comte's own opinions. He is caught in a trap and goes round and round
without finding the hole through which he came in.
"When a learned person asks one," says the Gentle Reader, "to accompany
him on a brief general survey of the progressive course of the human
mind, regarded as a whole, I am apt to be wary. I want to know what he
is up to. I fear the philosopher bearing historical gifts."
Yet where the trap is made of slighter fabric, and he feels that he can
break through at will, he enjoys watching the author and his work. How
marvelous are the powers of the human mind! How the facts of experience
can be bent to a sternly logical formula! And how the whole trend of
things seems to yield to an imperious will that is stronger than fate!
Here is a book published in Wheeling, Virginia, in 1809. It is "A
Narrative of the Introduction and Progress of Christianity in Scotland,
before the Reformation; and the Progress of Religion since in Scotland
and America." We are told that the history was read paragraph by
paragraph at a meeting of the Reformed Dissenting Presbytery at the
Three Ridge Meeting House, and unanimously approved. At the beginning we
are taken into a wide place and given a comprehensive view of early
Christianity. Then we are shown how in the sixteenth century began a
series of godly reformations. Christianity, bursting through the
barriers of Popery, began its resistless flow toward the pure theology
of the Three Ridge Meeting House. As the articles of the true faith were
increased the number of persons who were able to hold correct opinions
upon them all diminished. The history, by perfectly logical processes,
brings us down to the year 1799, when secession had done its perfect
work and the true church had attained to an apostolic purity of doctrine
and a more than apostolic paucity of membership. It is with a fearful
joy that the historians proclaim the culmination of the age-long
evolution. "O! the times we live in! There were but two of us to defend
the doctrine of the Bible and the Westminster Confession." At the time
the history of the Progress of Christianity was written there were but
two ministers who held the uncorrupted faith; namely, Robert Warwick and
Alexander McCoy. These two brethren were the joint authors of the
history, and in their capacity as church council gave it ecumenical
authority. Had McCoy disagreed with Warwick about Preterition, or had
Warwick suspected McCoy of Sublapsarianism, then we should have had two
histories of Christianity instead of one. It would have appeared that
all the previous developments of Christianity were significant only as
preparing for the Great Schism.
"There is a great deal of this Three Ridge Meeting House kind of
history," says the Gentle Reader, "and I confess I find it very
instructive. I like to find out what the writers think on the questions
of the day."
The fact is that there is a great deal of human nature even in learned
people, and they cannot escape from the spell of the present moment.
They are like the rest of us, and feel that they are living at the
terminus of the road and not at a way station. The cynical reflection on
the way in which the decisions of the Supreme Court follow the election
returns suggests the way in which historical generalizations follow the
latest telegraphic dispatches. Something happens and then we look up its
historical antecedents. It seems as if everything had been pointing to
this one event from the beginning.
"Here is a very readable History of Fans. The writer justly says that
the subject is one that has been much neglected. 'In England brief
sketches on the subject have occasionally appeared in the magazines, but
thus far a History of Fans has not been published in book form.... The
subject amply repays careful study, and will not fail to interest the
reader, provided the demands on both his patience and his time are not
too great.' I confess that it is a line of research I have never taken
up, but it is evident that there is ample material. The beginning
inspires confidence. 'The chain of tradition, followed as far as
possible into the past, carries us but to the time when the origin of
the fan is derived from tradition.' It appears that we come out upon
firm ground when we reach the Mahabharata. But the question which
arouses my curiosity is, How did it occur to any one that there should
be a history of fans? The author reveals the inciting cause,--'The Loan
Exhibition held at South Kensington in 1870 gave a great impulse to the
collection and decoration of fans.' I suspect that almost all readable
histories have some such origin."
The title of Professor Freeman's "History of Federal Government from the
Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United
States" was timely when the first volume was published in 1863. The
terminal points seemed closely connected in 1862 and the spring of 1863.
Gettysburg and Appomattox destroyed the line of communication. But there
was a time when the subject had great dramatic unity.
One May morning the Gentle Reader saw in the newspapers the account of
the victory of Admiral Dewey at Manila, and learned how the English
people rejoiced over the success of American arms. "This will remake a
great deal of history," he said, "and there will be a great revival of
interest in Hengist and Horsa. These primitive Anglo-Saxon expansionists
kept their own counsel, but it's evident that the movement they set on
foot must go on to its logical conclusion. When a competent scholar
takes hold of the history it will be seen that it couldn't stop with the
Heptarchy or the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was a foregone
conclusion that these Anglo-Saxons would eventually take the
Philippines."
When one by one the books began to come out he read them with eager
interest. That there should be histories of the triumphant progress of
Anglo-Saxondom, after the Spanish-American war, he looked upon as
something as inevitable as the history of fans, after the South
Kensington Exhibition. It was manifest destiny.
* * * * *
There is one page in the history books which the Gentle Reader looks
upon with a skeptical smile; it is that which contains the words, "The
End."
"The writer may think that the subject has been exhausted, and that he
has said the last word; but in reality there is no end."
He is well aware that at best he gets but a glimpse of what is going on.
The makers of history are for the most part unknown to the writers of
it. He loves now and then to catch sight of one of these unremembered
multitudes. For a moment the searchlight of history falls upon him, and
he stands blinking in the unaccustomed glare, and then the light shifts
and oblivion swallows him up.
He stops to meditate when he comes upon this paragraph in Bishop
Burnet's "History of his Own Times."
"When King James I. was in Scotland he erected a new Bishopric, and made
one Forbes Bishop. He was a very learned and pious man; he had a strange
faculty of preaching five or six hours at a time. His way of life and
devotion was thought monastic, and his learning lay in antiquity; he
studied to be a reconciler between Papists and Protestants, leaning
rather to the first; he was a simple-hearted man and knew little of the
world, so he fell into several errors of conduct, but died soon after
suspected of Popery."
"That man Forbes," says the Gentle Reader, "doesn't cut much of a figure
on the pages of history. Indeed, that is all that is said of him, yet I
doubt not but that he was a much more influential man in his day than
many of those bishops and reformers that I have been reading about. A
learned man who has a faculty for preaching five or six hours at a time
is a great conservative force. He keeps things from going too fast. When
one reads about the Reformation of the sixteenth century, one wonders
that it didn't make a clean sweep. We must remember the number of good
Protestants who died suspected of Popery."
But though he loves to get a glimpse of Forbes and men of his kind, he
knows that they are not of the stuff that readable histories are made
of. The retarding influences of the times must be taken into account,
but after all the historian is concerned with the people who are "in the
van of circumstance." They may be few in number, but their achievements
are the things worth telling.
"Every history," says the Gentle Reader, "should be a Book of Genesis. I
want to see things in their beginnings and in their fresh growth. I do
not care to follow the processes of decay. Fortunately there is no
period when something is not beginning. 'Sweet is the genesis of
things.' History is a perpetual spring-time. New movements are always on
foot. Even when I don't approve of them I want to know what they are
like. When the band strikes up 'See the Conquering Hero come,' it's
sheer affectation not to look up. The conquering hero is always worth
looking at, even if you do not approve of him. The historian who
undertakes to tell what men at any period were about must be quick to
detect their real enthusiasms. He must join the victorious army and not
cling to a lost cause. I have always thought that it was a mistake for
Gibbon to call his great work, 'The History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire.' The declining power of the Roman Empire was not the
great fact of those ten centuries. There were powers which were not
declining, but growing. How many things were in the
making,--Christianity, Mohammedanism, the new chivalry, the Germanic
civilization. As for the Roman Empire, one could see that _that_ game
was lost, and it wasn't worth while to play it out to the last move. I
couldn't make those shadowy Emperors at Constantinople seem like
Caesars--and, for that matter, they weren't."
On this last point I think that the Gentle Reader is correct, and that
the great historian is one who has a certain prophetic gift. He is quick
to discern the signs of the times. He identifies himself so thoroughly
with the age of which he writes that he always seems to be at the
beginning of an era peering into the yet dim future. In this way he
shares the hopes and aspirations of the men of whom he writes. For there
was a day when all our familiar institutions were new. There was a time
when the Papacy was not an established fact, but a vague dream of
spiritual power and unity, a challenge to a barbarian world. It appealed
to young idealists as the federation of the world or a socialistic
commonwealth appeals to-day. There was a time when constitutional
government was a Utopian experiment which a few brave men were willing
to try. There was a time when Calvinism was a spiritual adventure.
The historian whom we love is one who stands at the parting of the ways,
and sees ideals grow into actualities. He is not reminiscent. He is
forward-looking as he speaks to each age out of intimate acquaintance
with its new hopes, as one
"Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones
For prophecies of thee, and for the sake
Of loveliness new born."