consequent precautions breed, we have made out for our opponents a
stronger and more impressive case than they present themselves #65.
Excepting one to which we are coming before I release you, there is
no precept less faithfully observed by historians.

Ranke is the representative of the age which instituted the
modern study of History. He taught it to be critical, to be
colourless, and to be new. We meet him at every step, and he
has done more for us than any other man. There are stronger
books than any one of his, and some may have surpassed him in
political, religious, philosophic insight, in vividness of the
creative imagination, in originality, elevation, and depth of
thought; but by the extent of important work well executed, by
his influence on able men, and by the amount of knowledge which
mankind receives and employs with the stamp of his mind upon it,
he stands without a rival. I saw him last in 1877, when he was
feeble, sunken, and almost blind, and scarcely able to read or
write. He uttered his farewell with kindly emotion, and I feared
that the next I should hear of him would be the news of his
death. Two years later he began a Universal History, which is
not without traces of weakness, but which, composed after the age
of 83, and carried, in seventeen volumes, far into the Middle
Ages, brings to a close the most astonishing career in literature.

His course had been determined, in early life, by Quentin
Durward. The shock of the discovery that Scott's Lewis the
Eleventh was inconsistent with the original in Commynes made him
resolve that his object thenceforth should be above all things to
follow, without swerving, and in stern subordination and
surrender, the lead of his authorities. He decided effectually