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 hi 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.

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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, s, 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

the estimate of Napoleon's greatness based upon the violent revolution which he accomplished, and exposes in his usual harsh way the idolatry of which he was the subject, perhaps the victim. For saving France, and with it Europe, from the dark shadow of that fearful anarchy which threatened it, Schlosser felt a certain gratitude to Napoleon. If he looked too favorably upon him, it was because he remembered too gloomily the French Revolution. The collections of Buchez and Roux, however, have supplied us in these days with a basis of documentary evidence which was in part wanting to the history of Schlosser, and wholly to the romance of Thiers.

His History of the Eighteenth Century, of which we now come to speak, was the legitimate conclusion of his former labors. Study, observation, and experience, in the midst of a tumultuous time, had revealed to him practically and distinctly the controlling influence of a people's culture upon the course of political affairs. Hitherto those affairs had constituted the chief burden of history; and the coming time will hardly discover a more decisive instance of the imbecility to which a long submission to tradition, false at the outset, will reduce any branch of literature, than is manifest in the prevailing treatment of history hitherto. Mr. Buckle's great work deserves at least our recognition, whatever we may think of his philosophy, -as an honest effort to emancipate an important, perhaps after religion the most important, subject of human contemplation - for it is our total result, our final explanation of all facts, our last marshalling of all causes -from the slavery of inherited falsehood and the perversions of theological prejudice. Schlosser undertook to show the influence of literature upon the progress of events;-how it is that the thinkers and the writers change the course of men's opinions, and so control men's actions; how the outward striving is but the expression of the inward craving which proceeds from the few to the many; how political events are results not less than causes, and how in the writings of an age you read the thoughts which govern it. Yet it was not his purpose to write a great literary history, like that of Wachler. With the artistic merit of writings he had nothing to do, only with the effect of them upon the age. The temper of his mind

and the course of his thinking wholly unfitted him, even if he had been disposed, to enter upon the sterile and thorny fields of literary criticism. His measure of a writer had always been, not to what degree he was a classic, but to what degree he was a power in the world. The inner beauty of the thought, the outward grace of the words, the harmony and the skill of the grouping, these things were of no account with him, who did not look into the work, but outside of it, to trace its course as a firebrand in setting the smouldering wrath of a nation in a blaze, or as a voice of admonition to still its fevered hopes, or of cheer to console its weary suffering.

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Schlosser had reached the age of sixty when he began the publication of the work by which he will ever be best known, or indeed practically known at all to us; we mean, of course, his "History of the Eighteenth Century, and of the Nineteenth to the Overthrow of the French Empire," published, in eight volumes, from 1836 to 1848. In Germany it met with vast success, unsurpassed, if ever equalled, in that country by any historical work of such extent. Schlosser, we have said, was the representative of the last age, in this work especially so. It stands in striking contrast with the tendencies of the present. Since the Congress of Vienna there has prevailed a spirit of reaction. The struggles of that stern period in which Schlosser ripened into manhood have given place to a certain indifference, even of doubt as to the good of it all. The great aims of the eighteenth seem to pall upon the nineteenth century, and Schlosser thought he saw the corruption extending from practical life to the silent domain of history, lamenting that the style of to-day was not the style of Schlözer or Müller or Schiller. So representing the fact to himself, and failing to understand it, Schlosser fought it, with all his strength and all his harshness not softened by the years. The tides of history, as of life, ebb and flow, each flood sweeping us farther on. Schlosser was borne into middle life on the flood, and stood gazing, heart-stricken and weary, as the waves retreated. He could not lift himself above his age and out of it; and so, while he hated, he was not consoled. His strong prejudices also made him unjust to contemporary talent. He clung to his own conceits as much as to the past. The power