Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/509

Rh such that he succeeded in reconstructing a lost chronicle from its derivatives, and the discovery of the forgotten text afterwards proved the fidelity of his work. He depended, perhaps, more on chronicles and biographies than on acts and letters, and was more entirely familiar with the German and Italian publications than with French and English. In those early days, when no great reliance could be placed on editions and collections, it behoved the serious explorer to hew his own material, to decide upon texts and dates, authors and authorities, for himself. As national studies succeeded classical, this work has been taken up by a swarm of zealous students ; essays and dissertations have poured down from every quarter ; and the reigns of the earlier emperors have been examined, year by year, by the most solid historians in the land. Giesebrecht accomplished this, the first part of his duty, so well that Böhmer, in his day, considered him the soundest of mediaeval scholars, and Steindorff, coming after him, declares that he leaves little to glean. The preparation was so thorough, the gestation so prolonged, that his account of Frederic of Hohenstaufen, where he is a pioneer, and few preceding micrographers have broken the clods and sifted the sands, is scarcely inferior to the Gregorian volume, commodiously composed by the light of countless rivals. His tried methods and vast experience made him slow to follow the lead of enterprising juniors. In his youth he had witnessed the crash of falling fables and credulities, and had learnt the ways of the new learning ; but he was guarded against historical iconoclasm, and belonged, as a critic, to an epoch of reconstruction. Criticism, in his hands, was an instrument not of scepticism but of certainty. For plain reasons, the newest surprises the farthest innovations, have been connected with religion Giesebrecht, though no theologian, was a deeply religious Lutheran, an enthusiast in his royalism of so strict a temper that he would never visit Paris, the seat of revolution and corruption. He was not a man to be attracted by audacity in negation and rejection. All the doubt which is cast on statements and documents by the desire