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 The Sifted Grain and tlic Grain Sifters 223 There is still something to be taken into consideration. I have as yet dealt only with the writers ; the readers remain. During the century now ending, what changes have here come about ? For one, I frankly confess myself a strong advocate of what is sometimes rather contemptuously referred to as the popularization of history. I have but a limited sympathy with those who, from the ethereal- ized atmosphere of the cloister, whether monkish or collegiate, seek truth's essence and pure learning only, regardless of utility, of sym- pathy or of applause. The great historical writer, fully to accom- plish his mission, must, I hold, be in very close touch with the gen- eration he addresses. In other words, to do its most useful work, historical thought must be made to permeate what we are pleased to call the mass ; it must be infiltrated through that great body of the community which, moving slowly and subject to all sorts ol influ- ences, in the end shapes national destinies. The true historian, — he who most sympathetically, as well as correctly, reads to the present the lessons to be derived from the experience of the past, — I hold to be the only latter-day prophet. That man has a message to deliver ; but, to deliver it effectively, he must, like every success- ful preacher, understand his audience ; and, to understand it, he must either be instinctively in sympathy with it, or he must have made a study of it. Of those instinctively in sympathy, I do not speak. That constitutes genius, and genius is a law unto itself; but I do maintain that instructors in history and historical writers who ignore the prevailing literary and educational conditions, therein make a great mistake. He fails fatally who fails to conform to his environment ; and this is no less true of the historian than of the novelist or politician. In other words, what have we to say of those who read ? What do we know of them ? Not much, I fancy. In spite of our public libraries, and in spite of the immensely increased diffusion of printed autre au monde, enfermant dans des dimensions si restreintes (3 volumes in 8°) tant de choses et de si bonnes choses. Mommsen raconle d'uiie maniere si attrayante que des les premieres lignes vous etes entraine. Ses grands tableaux sur les premieres migrations des peuples en Italic, sur les debuts de Rome, sur les Etrusques, sur la domination des Hel- lenes en Italie ; ses chapitres sur les institutions romaines, le droit, la religion, I'arm^e et art; sur la vie ^conomique, 1' agriculture, I'industrie et le commerce ; sur le developpe- ment intirieur de la politique romaine ; sur les Celtes et sur Carthage ; sur les perip^ties de la Revolution romaine depuis les Gracques a Jules Cesar; sur I'Orient grec, la Mac6- doine ; sur lasoumission de la Gaule : tout cela forme un ensemble admirable. " Comme peintre de grands tableaux historiques, je ne vois parmi les historiens con- temporains qu'un homme qui puisse etre compare a Mommsen, c'est Ernest Renan : c'est la meme touche large, le meme sens des proportions, le meme art de faire voir et de faire comprendre, de rendre vivantes les choses par les details typiques qui se graven! pour toujours dans la memoire." Guilland, U Allemagne Nouvelle et ses Historiens (1900), pp. 121-122.