Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/633

 Lanciajii : The Renaissance in Rome 623 the soul." Such a history was to be written by the best men obtainable, and so written as to serve no cause but that of truth. Nothing of per- sonal, national, religious, or party bias was to show in this summary of the most recent scholarship for layman and student. The lectures on European history will be read with interest by the specialist in any period between 1300 and 1789 and by the tyro of the historical department who is teaching the introductory course. The specialist will find in a sentence a flash of light that illumines his field, that unifies the complex, and gives meaning to the meaningless. He will find curious bits of out-of-the-way information that even his research has not unearthed, or, if it has, that he has not thought of using {cf. p. 257). He will marvel that Lord Acton sees only a fourteenth-century Renaissance unrelated to the accomplishments of the two preceding cen- turies, and that a sketch of the rise of Prussia occupies only one-third as much as the chapter on Frederick the Great. Most of us will be comforted by the fact that when Lord Acton had to put Luther, the Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, or Louis XIV. into one lecture, he said what we have always thought a college class ought to be told. And like every compressed account there are statements which would mislead you if this were the only account you read {cf. the method of adopting the Declaration of Independence, p. 312). Occa- sionally there are paragraphs packed dangerously full of names and facts. To some students these may be, as the editors suggest, an in- spiration to further reading. There is an equally large class of students who would be repelled by such general history. Possibly this feature of the master's work would not strike one if he had not been antagonized by its manifestations in his disciples. Finest and best of all is the noble and ennobling fairness in his treatment of all men and all ages. The young man to whom the doors of Cambridge were closed because of his faith comes back at sixty to tell her sons the story of Modern Europe so that they must have felt as he did that the greatest achievement of those centuries was the growth of toleration and of liberty. And the voice that speaks is not that of the moralist nor the political reformer, but the voice of History itself. To all who sat under Lord Acton this publication will come as " an act of piety ". To many it will only emphasize the defect in Lord Acton which the editors point out, " that he overestimated the respon- sibility of his task, and that, with him as with Hort, the very sense of the value of knowledge diminished his additions to its store." G. S. F. The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome. From the Pontificate of Julius II to that of Paul III. By Rodolfo Lanciani. (Bos- ton : Houghton, Mifflin, and Company. 1906. Pp. xii, 340.) Not long since there still could be seen in the Via Rasella an in- scription which spoke volumes regarding the state of Rome in the