_Yet the great historians are not being widely read_. The ablest and
most convincing stories of his own development seem closed against the
ordinary man. Why? In the first place, the works of the masters are too
voluminous. Grote's unrivalled history of Greece fills ten large and
forbidding volumes. Guizot takes thirty-one to tell a portion of the
story of France. Freeman won credit in the professorial world by
devoting five to the detailing of a single episode, the Norman Conquest.
Surely no busy man can gather a general historic knowledge, if he must
read such works as these! We are told that the great library of Paris
contains over four hundred thousand volumes and pamphlets on French
history alone. The output of historic works in all languages approaches
ten thousand volumes every year. No scholar, even, can peruse more than
the smallest fraction of this enormously increasing mass. Herodotus is
forgotten, Livy remains to most of us but a recollection of our
school-days, and Thucydides has become an exercise in Greek.

There is yet another difficulty. Even the honest man who tries, who
takes down his Grote or Freeman, heroically resolved to struggle through
it at all speed, fails often in his purpose. He discovers that the
greatest masters nod. Sometimes in their slow advance they come upon a
point that rouses their enthusiasm; they become vigorous, passionate,
sarcastic, fascinating, they are masters indeed. But the fire soon dies,
the inspiration flags, "no man can be always on the heights," and the
unhappy reader drowses in the company of his guide.

This leads us then to one clear point. From these justly famous works a
selection should be made. Their length should be avoided, their prosy
passages eliminated; the one picture, or perhaps the many pictures,
which each master has painted better than any rival before or since,
that and that alone should be preserved.