was by nature an investigator. His learning and philosophy cannot be called sound, and his earlier manner was something to be forever avoided: but he was indefatigable as a collector, and his patience knew no bounds. He devoted his life to his subject; and his life came to a close while he was still dwelling on the preliminaries to his theme. A partisan, and writing in support of a preconceived theory, his judgment was necessarily biassed; while, as respects literary form, though he always tended to what was better, he never even approximately reached what is best. He, too, like Macaulay, failed to grasp the wide and fundamental distinction between a proportioned and complete history and a thorough historical monograph. His monumental work, therefore, is neither the one nor the other. As a collection of monographs, it is too condensed and imperfect; as a history, it is cumbersome, and enters into unnecessary detail.
From a literary point of view Motley is unquestionably the most brilliant of American historical writers. He reminds the reader of Froude. Not naturally a patient or profound investigator, he yet forced himself to make a thorough study of his great subject, and he was gifted with a remarkable descriptive power. A man of intense personality, he was, however, defective in judgment, if not devoid of the faculty. He lacked calmness and method. He could describe a siege or a battle with a vividness which, while it revealed the master, revealed also the historian's limitations. With a distinct sense of literary form, he was unable to resist the temptations of imagination and sympathy. His taste was not severe; his temper the reverse of serene. His defects as an historian were consequently as apparent as are his merits as a writer.
Of Palfrey, the historian, I would speak with the deep personal respect I entertained for the man. A typical New Englander, a victim almost of that "terrible New England conscience," he wrote the history of New England. A scholar in his way and the most patient of investigators, he had, as an historian, been brought up in a radically wrong school, that of New England theology. There was in him not a trace of the skeptic; not a suggestion of the humorist or easy-going philosopher. He wrote of New England from the inside and in close sympathy with it. Thus, as respects learning, care and accuracy, he was in no way deficient, while he was painstaking and conscientious in the extreme. His training and mental characteristics, however, impaired his judgment, and he was quite devoid of any sense of form. The investigator will always have recourse to his work; but, as a guide, its value will pass
