Such a work has Niebuhr performed
for early Roman history, and Michelet for the confused epochs of
mediaeval France. The spirit, instead of escaping in the process, was
for the first time made visible. The historian did not merely anatomize
the body of the Past, but with magic power summoned up its ghost.
It cannot be said that the claims of history have ever been disallowed
by the reading public. There is, indeed, no class of literature so
secure of receiving the attention which it demands. While the novelist
modestly confines himself to a brace of spare duodecimos, and, if his
story be somewhat extended, endeavors to conceal its length in the
smallness of the print, the historian unblushingly presents himself
with three, six, a dozen, nay, if he be a Frenchman or a German, with
forty huge tomes, and is more often taken to task for his omissions
than censured for the fulness of his narrative. It is respectable to
buy his volumes, and respectable to read them. We don't put them away
in corners, but give them the most conspicuous places on our shelves.
Strange to say, that kind of reading to which we were once driven as to
a task, which our fathers thought must be useful because it was so
dull, has of late outstripped every other branch in its attractiveness
to the mass.
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