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LEOPOLD VON RANKE 261

stopped with De Wette.^ The narrative of the Persian wars faithfully follows Herodotus and the older tradition. In his old age Ranke had little sympathy with skeptical criticism. ^ Enough has been said to suggest the relation of this work to Ranke's life. The veteran lives over again his youth. His legacy to the world is to be a view of the world's history; a fusing of the results of youthful labors and youthful think- ing with the calm reflection of age ; in brief, such fruits of his life work of whatever period as were not already before the public. His life was spared until he brought his heroic work nearly to the age where sixty-four years earlier his youthful spirit tarried in its course to depict the entrance upon the stage of the great bearers of modern European cul- ture. He died at the age of ninety, having devoted over sixty years of unremitting effort to the interpretation of human life from the beginning of recorded history down to his own age.

1 Ranke studied De Wette on the Old Testament in 1825, 150. Ranke does cite a modern critic, once — Dillman on Genesis — but still he adheres to a thoroughly conservative opinion.