and Mr. S. C. Cockrell, I owe my best thanks for their friendly help." So far as it goes, this represents ideally favorable conditions, as regards the materials of the work, but this is not all. We know, from other sources, that the author of this biography is a scholarly writer, a careful student, one who is accustomed to weigh historical evidence, a man of sane and well-balanced judgment, a man who is not swayed by strong prejudices in either direction, but one who is prepared to judge sympathetically the various episodes of Morris's career. In fact, after an exhaustive examination of the hundreds of biographies of the Englishmen of Morris's time, we might perhaps safely place Mackail's Life of Morris almost at the head of the list, as representing the maximum of favorable conditions, so far as accuracy is concerned. From this as a maximum, we may find the lives of various other Englishmen ranging, by almost imperceptible gradations, down to the minimum of favorable conditions. A distinctly less favorable condition is found when the biographer, although belonging to the same century with the subject of the biography, is of a different nationality, and when he speaks a different language. Thereby will result, even if not always perceptible to the biographer, a very decided veil of obscurity, in not a few instances, between the writer and his facts. But suppose that this veil of obscurity is one of time, rather than of place, and that the biography of one of the main actors in the events of the eighteenth century is to be written by a writer living in the Twentieth Century. A very decided handicap is inevitably occasioned by this separation in time, owing to the gradual disappearance of the data needed by the biographer. What says Ulysses, in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida"? 'Mackail's Life of William Morris, v. 1, p. vii. "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, In few things is this tribute to oblivion so palpably in evidence as in the details which one needs in constructing a biography, and which, little by little, disappear from the knowledge of living men. Almost every succeeding year, in such a case, witnesses the dropping into this ever hungry "wallet," of some dearly prized item of information. The papers of the subject of the biography are in the possession, we will suppose, of some one of his descendants, who decides to remove to another state, and who, being unable to add this to the other burdens of removal, sells the whole to the junk-dealer. Or the papers may be consigned to the furnace by some servant with a genius for cleaning up, -such a one as the ingenuous maid who could not read and who, when taxed with having thrown away certain papers, frankly confessed that she had done so, but, she triumphantly explained, "I kept all the clean papers. Them as I throwed away had ink-marks all over them." Lastly, there is a decided difference of conditions under which the task of the biographer or historian is undertaken, so far as the writer's temperament or mood are concerned. Instead of being entered on in a calm and dispassionate mood, it is taken up, rather, as a polemical movement, by some writer warped by prejudice, wholly out of sympathy with the subject of his biography, and desiring only to "tread him under," so to speak. A case in point is the volume entitled "The character of Thomas Jefferson, as exhibited in his own writings," by Theodore Dwight, published in Boston, by Weeks, Jordan & Co., in 1839. Or, on the other hand, the "prejudice," or pre-judgment, embodied in the book is a blind and unreasoning feeling in favor of the hero of the book, instead of against him. Nevertheless, it is prejudice, in the one case as in the other, and serves to nullify the value of the work. "Troilus and Cressida," act 3, scene 3, lines 145-46. Besides these differences in condition, based upon personal and individual considerations, there may be differences which vary with successive decades, or even centuries. It would be interesting to know whether the conditions are more favorable at present, for the production of the ideal history, than they were in former times, as regards adequate materials, accuracy, freedom from prejudice, etc. MATERIALS FOR THE HISTORIAN. If the question be raised as to materials, it seems plain that, in mere mass, they are certainly greater, both as a whole and on any given subject, than one hundred years ago. One need not go from home to find an illustration, not only of mass, but of extreme value, in the case of the John Carter Brown Library, with its thousands of titles of Americana, merely,-all of them antedating the year 1800. The invention of printing has had its bearing on the field of historical literature, as elsewhere, swelling the mass in an almost cumulative manner. Scarcely less influential in this direction has been the tendency towards the cheapening of printing processes. One hundred years ago, a man who had something to say on a historical subject might well hesitate before incurring the expense of committing it to print. Now, if the bulk of our historical literature be any guide, he hesitates no longer,-unfortunately for the public, or in so few instances that they may be regarded as negligible. Moreover, besides the individual and fragmentary contributions to the subject, there has now for a long time been a systematic organization of historical publication. Scattered throughout this country, and also throughout the European countries,-are hundreds of "historical societies." nearly all of which are started on a career of publishing, with at least one annual volume to their credit. From a considerable number of universities and colleges also, there is now issuing a steady stream of "publications" or "contributions," devoted to history. There has been a noteworthy increase, during the past fifty years, in the printed volumes of records, issued by the various record commissions, or "rolls commissions," or document commissions, of this and other countries, and including those of state or provincial, and municipal governments, as well as of national governments. The present condition of the originals of these records is even more gratifying. Within the period referred to, the art of fire-proof construction has made important advances, so that these manuscript records are everywhere coming to be housed in safe and durable quarters, where they can be readily consulted. To feel that we have a reasonable assurance of the indefinite preservation of these records is one of the most substantial gains of the last half-century. It is of course true that, the greater the mass of materials, the greater is the need of sifting it, to discover that which is really serviceable. Year by year, the processes of minuting, indexing, and cataloguing these stores of documents have made it possible to refer to some given document with less loss of time than ever before; and yet there is an enormous mass which these indexing processes have not yet touched. While the mass of historical materials has thus been increasing, there has everywhere been an unparalleled activity in developing and improving methods of historical study. An extraordinary amount of attention has been bestowed not only on the best methods of teaching history to childdren in the secondary schools, but to those who are studying these subjects in colleges and universities, especially when they are planning to devote the subsequent years of their life to the teaching or writing of history. Methods like these have long been very vigorously prosecuted on the other side of the water, and especially in Germany. It was some time, however, before this country felt the full force of this noteworthy development. There are few more instructive volumes, as throwing light on this very development, than the one entitled "Methods of teaching history," edited by our associate, President G. Stanley Hall, with papers by a number of separate writers. This work has passed through two editions, namely, that of 1884, and that of 1886.1 A later volume, of much interest and significance, is the one entitled "Essays on the teaching of history", written by nine English teachers of history, for the most part at Oxford and Cambridge,— including, among others, so eminent names as those of Maitland, Poole, Cunningham, and Ashley. This work, projected by the late Lord Acton, was published in 1901, after his death. It is easy to see that, during the period referred to, there has been gradually incorporated into the every-day routine of the colleges and universities, not only the "seminary" method, so-called, but also the "laboratory" point of view, as it may well be called. This is indeed at the present time the normal and obvious view of historical study, instead of being the exceptional view. It is widely, or rather, universally, recognized that the historian's labor, in the gathering of data, must be comprehensive, long, patient, and welldirected. These data must then be carefully grouped and classified, since an undigested mass of unrelated facts is an offence to any true historian. And, finally, these data must be subjected to rigid analyses and tests, before being accepted; and this is taken to be quite as much a matter of course as if it were an instance of substances for analysis in a chemical laboratory. Within recent years also, those who have occupied important chairs of history, both in this country and in Great Britain, have taken occasion to publish their views, for the enlightenment not merely of their own pupils, but "Methods of teaching history," by Andrew D. White, and others. Vol. 1 of the "Pedagogical library," edited by G. Stanley Hall. 2d ed., Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1886. "Essays on the teaching of history," edited by W. A. J. Archbold, Cambridge, at the University Press, 1901. |
