the warmth of his sympathies, who has accomplished what was not in
my power. By the detail and the charm of his narrative, by the
matter and form of a work which the universality of the English
language and numerous translations were to render cosmopolitan, Mr.
Motley, like that other illustrious historian, Prescott, lost to
science by too early death, has popularized in both hemispheres the
sublime devotion of the Prince of Orange, the exceptional and
providential destinies of my country, and the benedictions of the
Eternal for all those who trust in Him and tremble only at his
Word."

The old Dutch scholar differs in many important points from Mr. Motley,
as might be expected from his creed and his life-long pursuits. This I
shall refer to in connection with Motley's last work, "John of
Barneveld." An historian among archivists and annalists reminds one of
Sir John Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills. Undoubtedly he disturbs
the ants in their praiseworthy industry, much as his attentions may
flatter them. Unquestionably the ants (if their means of expressing
themselves were equal to their apparent intellectual ability) could teach
him many things that he has overlooked and correct him in many mistakes.
But the ants will labor ingloriously without an observer to chronicle
their doings, and the archivists and annalists will pile up facts forever
like so many articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the vertebrate
historian comes with his generalizing ideas, his beliefs, his prejudices,
his idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less
imperfect, but still organic series of relations. The history which is
not open to adverse criticism is worth little, except as material, for it
is written without taking cognizance of those higher facts about which
men must differ; of which Guizot writes as follows, as quoted in the work
of M. Groen van Prinsterer himself.