occurrence, we had long been more or less prepared for it by his
failing health. It must, indeed, have been quite too evident to
those who had seen him, during the last two or three years, that his
life-work was finished. I think he so regarded it himself.

"Hopes may have been occasionally revived in the hearts of his
friends, and even in his own heart, that his long-cherished purpose
of completing a History of the Thirty Years' War, as the grand
consummation of his historical labors,--for which all his other
volumes seemed to him to have been but the preludes and overtures,--
might still be accomplished. But such hopes, faint and flickering
from his first attack, had well-nigh died away. They were like
Prescott's hopes of completing his 'Philip the Second,' or like
Macaulay's hopes of finishing his brilliant 'History of England.'

"But great as may be the loss to literature of such a crowning work
from Motley's pen, it was by no means necessary to the completeness
of his own fame. His 'Rise of the Dutch Republic,' his 'History of
the United Netherlands,' and his 'Life of John of Barneveld,' had
abundantly established his reputation, and given him a fixed place
among the most eminent historians of our country and of our age.

"No American writer, certainly, has secured a wider recognition or a
higher appreciation from the scholars of the Old World. The
universities of England and the learned societies of Europe have
bestowed upon him their largest honors. It happened to me to be in
Paris when he was first chosen a corresponding member of the
Institute, and when his claims were canvassed with the freedom and
earnestness which peculiarly characterize such a candidacy in
France. There was no mistaking the profound impression which his