Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/874

864 spread. Many a liberal Protestant historian betrays a pessimistic judgment of the blending of Greek thought with the Palestinian movement, but M. Guignebert's undogmatic mind notes with approval the gain thereby of an extraordinary power of adaptability and universality, while he also reflects with approval on the limits set to this process as a safeguard against the limitless and dispersive speculation inherent in Hellenism. A good illustration of sound judgment is afforded by the discussion of the Christianity of Domitian's victims, Flavins Clemens, Domitilla, Acilius Glabrio. In Guignebert's view they were Jewish proselytes inclined toward the Christian church but remaining at its border, while their descendants entered fully into the Christian faith. Such a judgment comports with the data of Dion Cassius and Suetonius and with the facts of archaeology.

and Ukert's Geschichte der Europäischcn Staaten, begun almost a century ago and continued latterly under the vigorous guidance of Professor Karl Lamprecht as Allgemeine Staatengeschichte, experiences an increase with the present volume which falls in no respect below the high level of the series. Dr. Kretschmayr brings an admirable combination of scholarly training and intellectual vigor to the service of his undertaking. He writes from the sources, treating them with carefully balanced reserve and daring; with all due respect for the hoary traditions of a famous city he is not blinded to their habitual misrepresentation of historical facts; and he studies Venice not merely as a government but as a people, mounting step by step from the primitive conditions of a sparsely disseminated group of fishermen to the material splendor and moral energy of one of the most fascinating civilizations of all time. Only the generous scale of the book, permitting a very ample treatment of every phase of Venetian development, can prevent this work from replacing every previous history of the Republic in the library of the general reader; on the shelves of the student it will take immediately a pre-eminent position. It is apparent throughout that the author has been filled with the desire not to sacrifice the fair bride of the Adriatic to the Moloch of dry scholarship: he has given his page a more literary look by relentlessly confining the foot-notes within the limbo of an appendix; and he never relaxes his effort to interest as well as to instruct his readers, and to keep unimpaired before their eyes the image of the whole unobscured by a too luxuriant detail. Nevertheless when we ask ourselves if the vast mass of raw material in this book has been leavened to the lightness of a genuinely artistic product, we are obliged to give at best a qualified