Even one who confines his reading solely to biographies of
thinkers, writers, inventors, poets of the spirit or poets of
science, will in a short time have acquired an understanding
of the whole History of Humanity.

And what novel or what drama could be compared to such a
history? Accurate biographies record narratives which no
romancer's imagination could hope to rival. Researches,
sufferings, labors, triumphs, agonies and disasters, the
defeats of destiny, glory, which is the "sunlight of the
dead," illuminating the past, whether fortunate or
tragic,--such is what the lives of Great Men reveal to us,
or, if the phrase be allowed, paint for us in a series of
fascinating and dramatic pictures.

This series of biographies is accordingly intended to form a
sort of gallery, a museum of the great servants of Art,
Science, Thought and Action.

It was Emerson who wrote a volume devoted to the
Representatives of Humanity. Here we have still another
collection of "Representative Men." This collection of
profoundly interesting studies is entrusted to the care of
two writers, Mr. Albert Keim and Mr. Louis Lumet, both of
whom have already earned their laurels, the former as poet,
novelist, playwright, historian and philosopher, and author
of a definitive work upon Helvetius which deserves to become
a classic, and the latter as publicist, art critic and
scholar of rare and profound erudition. An acquaintance with