Thirty Years' War, much of the American Revolution and the French
Restoration, the early years of Richelieu and Mazarin, and a few
volumes of Mr. Gardiner, show here and there like Pacific islands
in the ocean. I should not even venture to claim for Ranke, the
real originator of the heroic study of records, and the most
prompt and fortunate of European pathfinders, that there is one
of his seventy volumes that has not been overtaken and in part
surpassed. It is through his accelerating influence mainly that
our branch of study has become progressive, so that the best
master is quickly distanced by the better pupil #24. The Vatican
archives alone, now made accessible to the world, filled 3239
cases when they were sent to France; and they are not the
richest. We are still at the beginning of the documentary age,
which will tend to make history independent of historians, to
develop learning at the expense of writing, and to accomplish a
revolution in other sciences as well.

To men in general I would justify the stress I am laying on
Modern History, neither by urging its varied wealth, nor the
rupture with precedent, nor the perpetuity of change and increase
of pace, nor the growing predominance of opinion over belief, and
of knowledge over opinion, but by the argument that it is a
narrative told of ourselves, the record of a life which is our
own, of efforts not yet abandoned to repose, of problems that
still entangle the feet and vex the hearts of men. Every part of
it is weighty with inestimable lessons that we must learn by
experience and at a great price, if we know not how to profit by
the example and teaching of those who have gone before us, in a
society largely resembling the one we live in #25. Its study fulfils
its purpose even if it only makes us wiser, without producing