2 22 C. F. Adams away with the traditions of the New England theological period. From the literary point of view the absence of all idea of proportiort renders the bulk of what he wrote impossible for the reader. Of those I have mentioned, Parkman alone remains ; perhaps the most individual of all our American historians, the one tasting most racily of the soil. Parkman did what Prescott failed to do, what it was not in Prescott ever to do. He wrote from the basis of a per- sonal knowledge of the localities in which what he had to narrate occurred, and the characteristics of those with whom he undertook to deal. To his theme he devoted his entire life, working under difficulties even greater than those which so cruelly hampered Pres- cott. His patience under suffering was infinite ; his research was indefatigable. In this respect, he left nothing to be desired. While his historical judgment was better than his literary taste, his appre- ciation of form was radically defective. Indeed he seemed almost devoid of any true sense of proportion. The result is that he has left behind him a succession of monographs of more or less histor- ical value or literary interest, but no complete, thoroughly designed and carefully proportioned historical unit. Like all the others, his work lacks form and finish. The historical writers of more than an hundred years have thus been passed in hasty review, nor has any nineteenth-century compeer of Thucydides, Tacitus and Gibbon been found among those who have expressed themselves in the English tongue. Nor do I think that any such could be found in other tongues ; unless, perchance, among the Germans, Theodor Mommsen might challenge consider- ation. Of Mommsen's learning there can be no question. I do not think there can be much of his insight and judgment. The sole question would be as to his literary form ; nor, in that respect, judg- ing by the recollection of thirty years, do I think that, so far as his history of Rome is concerned, judgment can be lightly passed against him. But, on this point, the verdict of time only is final. Before that verdict is in his case rendered, another half-century of proba- tion must elapse.' • " C'est sous ces deux aspects— qui sonten realitelesdeux faces del' esprit de Momm- sen, le savant et le politique — qu'il convient d'etudier cet ouvrage. " Dans I'expose scientifique de V Histoire Romaine on ne sait ce qu'on doit le plus admirer, ou de la science colossale de I'auteur ou de I'art avec laquelle elle est raise en ceuvre. " C'^tait une entreprise colossale que celle de resumer tous les travaux sur la mati^re depuis Niebuhr. Mommsen lui-meme avait contribue a ce travail par la quantity fabu- leuse de mimoires qu'il avait ecrits sur les points les plus sp^ciaux du droit romain, de I'archtologie ou de I'histoire. Or tout cela est assimile d'une manicure merveilleuse dans- une narration historique qui est un des chefs-d' ceuvre de I'historiographie. L'histoire romaine est une ceuvre extraordinaire dans sa condensation, comme il n'en existe nuUe
