about him, gave a direction to his thoughts upon the modern. From Altona he went to Frankfort on the Main, in 1800, where he entered, in the same capacity of tutor, the family of a wealthy merchant. The years were moving on, but as yet he had done nothing to prove his title to be more than an humble teacher. In 1807 he made his first little essay in print, entitled," Abälard and Dulcia: the Life and Opinions of a Visionary and a Philosopher." It was published in Gotha; and by the connection thus established with that place he was led to consult the papers of Beza preserved there. "The Life of Beza and Peter Martyr Vermili," which appeared in 1809, launched him upon his career as writer and scholar. With a view to obtain a position which should secure him permanent support, while it afforded him the necessary leisure, he wrote his "History of the Iconoclast Emperors of the Eastern Empire, with a History of its Earlier Rulers," which appeared in 1812.

Meanwhile, in 1808, he had received an appointment at the school in Jever, and was soon afterwards made Con-rector, with a salary of $525 and a house to live in. But not finding the leisure which to such a man is an imperative condition of existence, he abandoned these worldly advantages, to the consternation of his friends, who failed to see any more clearly than himself what was to become of him. Obtaining from Giessen the usual degree of Doctor of Philosophy, he went back on a venture to Frankfort, where it happened at the right moment that Karl Ritter was called from the Frankfort Gymnasium to enter upon his great career in the Prussian capital. Schlosser took his place, and shortly afterwards was made a professor in the newly established Lyceum, with the task of philosophizing upon history in the French way. But he soon found that generalizations upon facts were of little use when the facts themselves were not well known. He was led, therefore, to systematize the general history of the world as he had come to view it, for the use of his pupils. And the result was the publication, in 1815, of the first volume of his History of the World in a connected Narration"; but he had not emerged from ancient history when he foresaw that the political revolutions then taking place would soon sweep away his Lyceum, and with it the special object for which he wrote

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would be lost also, as was the case. Appointed, then, City Librarian at Frankfort, he altered the plan of his work, with the intention of making it a strictly scientific one. He proposed to himself to set forth the great facts of human history in their relation to one another, as he viewed both the facts and their relation. He did not investigate facts to determine their accuracy, but, admitting their existence, he sought to understand and explain them. Perhaps a better title of his work would have been "Schlosser's View of the World's History." However he may have executed his task, his purpose was one of the noblest and highest to which the human intellect can apply itself. Fitly to reproduce the epic of man's existence on earth requires a genius which Schlosser did not possess, nor pretend to possess. Nor has the individual yet. appeared to us who may rightly lay claim to it. The great historians have tacitly admitted their inability to cope with more than a limited period; and the greater the writer, the narrower, it would seem of late, the sphere to which he restricts himself. Gibbon, with a vast learning, not second-hand nor superficial, as Schlosser unjustly charges, but original and profound, has compassed a thousand years in stately narrative. But Gibbon describes, and the reader thinks. The brilliant fragment of Macaulay proves, by its being a fragment in its nature, that he was perhaps less of an historian than a masterly essayist; for history so written in detail life would not be long enough to read. Like the great masters in art, he had a marvellous power of painting what he saw; but his vision. was not wide enough to take in all causes, nor his power great enough to marshal in proper relation all events. Nobody pretends that Schlosser has achieved that success. But, so far as we know, his effort is the first strictly scientific one, and a perfectly legitimate one, as not presuming too far upon human strength. The success of such an attempt depends not less upon the degree of insight than upon the amount of labor which is brought to bear upon it. It is not an ordinary work, which ordinary men may do, but an extraordinary one, which genius of the highest order alone will at last accomplish. It is not so much new facts the world wants, as new views of the old facts. In the effort to be picturesque and rhetorical, we

have selected scenes with a view to their dramatic effect, forgetting that they are all but parts of one vast representation; and in the effort to be learned we have carried scepticism to the verge of absurdity, and faith to the verge of superstition, forgetting to go behind the particular event for the general causes which produced it, and beyond it to fix its relation in the ever-widening series of human actions. "The so-called art of rhetoric would have been sadly out of place," says Schlosser himself, in such a work as he designed. And there was nothing in history, perhaps, or in life, which he fought with more pertinacity and bitterness than all pretensions to beauty of form at the expense of substance, all attempts at advocacy, and all declamation. Doubtless, when he swept within the circle of his animosity names like those of Sismondi and Hallam, he carried it altogether too far. But at bottom there was a certain ground for his hostility. Doubtless, with the great master the thought and the form blend together, and both partake of the divinity of his genius. But when the tendency of an age is to set its highest values upon rhetorical excellence, that age is in a bad way. If history did not illustrate the fact, reason would demonstrate the danger.

With the vigor and persistency of his character, Schlosser carried his plan through to the year 1300, in the five volumes which he published between 1817 and 1824. In the continuation, published between 1839 and 1841, he developed it down to the year 1401. In a work so vast, especially upon the principles upon which Schlosser conducted it, one would necessarily become clearer as he went on. Half lost, as he says himself, in the study of his authorities, and not wholly master of his learning, the first views would not be the largest nor the justest. And as he advanced, also, he wrote less for the learned than for the people, till he enriched them at last with a history of the world such as no other age has produced, and no other people possess. His rising fame, limited as yet, however, to the circle of scholars, attracted the attention of the universities, many of which competed for his services. He gave the preference to the invitation extended to him from Heidelberg in 1817, when Wilken went to Berlin, and became Professor of History and Librarian, and in 1823 obtained the

dignity of Privy Court Councillor. He soon resigned the office of Librarian, but retained his professorship to the end of his days.

The better to fit himself for his lectures upon history, he made repeated journeys to Paris, where not only the archives of the state were accessible to him, but also, and of no less importance, the society of many of the chief actors in the stormy revolutions which had made Paris the centre and the example of the destroying, as well as of the reforming, spirit of the age. The one served to explain the other. And certainly few contemporaries have been better qualified than Schlosser, by study or opportunity, to write of the events of which they were the partakers or the witnesses. In the spirited circle of the Archduchess Stephanie of Baden he obtained an interior view, if one may say so, of the sentiments of the Bonapartists, while from Gregoire and Thibaudeau he must have heard many a valuable criticism. The result of these studies and of this experience was his "History of the Eighteenth Century, concisely viewed, with Special Reference to the entire Change, at its Close, in Opinions and Forms of Government." It was the first work of Schlosser's which won him a national reputation. Out of the circle of scholars he had hardly been known at all hitherto. The numberless periodicals devoted to criticisms of new works did not contain his name. Up to 1826, it is said that only Luden, Planck, and Wachler had given any public sign of his existence. Slowly, but not for that less surely, had Schlosser won his way to general recognition; and when success came at last to crown him, he was worthy of it.

From his lectures upon ancient history sprang his "Universal-Historical View of the History of the Ancient World and its Culture," published in nine volumes between 1826 and 1834. The great light which has been thrown upon all that relates to antiquity during the last quarter of a century will expose a certain meagreness, doubtless, in many parts of Schlosser's work, but the method of it can never become obsolete. It was a time of speculation and hypothesis in historical inquiry; ingenious conjecture supplied the want of positive fact; not in what was, but what might have been, did brilliant

writers find their subjects, thinking to force their way into the darkness which wraps the primeval ages, with their fancy only for a guide. For such things Schlosser had unmitigated contempt. To be sure, Heeren's picture of the condition of Asia in those twilight ages might be perfectly just, but how did he show it to be so? In his repudiation of all material but authentic fact, Schlosser undoubtedly went too far. The common historian, indeed, can with safety tread no other path. But the insight of a gifted mind may discern the truth shining through the darkness, the shreds of the silver cord hung out to him he may not be able to show. His greatness and his power, however, consist in the very fact that he can walk where others only stumble and fall. Genius finds its material where others see only rubbish; and out of the damps and gloom of the ages rises, simple and beautiful and pure, the vanished life, never dead, but only waiting. With that sturdy nature and that rough honesty which he inherited from his ancestors by the North Sea shores, Schlosser opposed, with an intensity of hatred worthy of the revolutionary age in which he was cradled, all attempts to make appearances pass for certainties. First and always he demanded the solemn fact, ridiculing conjecture and scoffing at invention; taking for granted, but in a narrow way, that there are periods of human existence beyond whose dark limits mortal knowledge shall not penetrate. But once upon sure ground, he advanced with confident tread, because he could speak with authority.

From 1830 to 1835, he edited, in conjunction with G. A. Bercht, in Frankfort, the "Archives of History and Literature," of which six volumes appeared, containing numerous criticisms upon contemporary works, a sort of activity very common in Germany, which he continued in the Heidelberg Jahrbücher. His Archives contain also several longer articles, among which are some valuable ones upon Latin history, and, besides the masterly disquisition upon Dante, his favorite poet another, also published separately, entitled "A Criticism upon Napoleon and his latest Adversaries and Eulogists, with Special Reference to the Period between 1800 and 1813." It comes down, however, only to 1805, and will serve at least for a guide to the numerous writings upon Napoleon. He attacks