Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/510

498 to remove an obstacle and promote a purpose was unknown to him. No fact was unwelcome, no proof traversed any favourite view ; for he inherited no tradition, cultivated no prejudice, cherished no legend. He felt the pathos, not the passions of the past. His profound research into the literature of history left him inclining to conservatism ; and he was tender of destroying, not from deficient acuteness but from unswerving integrity.

The revolutionary year 1848 roused him from the somewhat obscure and silent pursuit of evidence. The dream of empire was dispelled by the predestined emperor ; the German people were humbled and dispirited by failure. Giesebrecht resolved to disclose to them what the reality had been. It was the resolve of a good citizen to revive the fading faith, to remind his countrymen of the time when they were the foremost nation, when their monarch, wore the highest earthly crown, and seemed to rule the world. He called up the ages between the Othos and Frederic as a loyal Frenchman revels in the century between Vervins and Ryswick. A finer occasion, a happier inspiration, can scarcely be found in literature. Men of his standing, as able as himself, came to the front just then, taking up the Roman republic, the French revolution, the reign of Napoleon, the policy of Prussia. Some had no real contact with the topic of the day ; others were in so close a contact as to damage the serenity and security of impartial writing. Giesebrecht's subject, containing neither a Protestant church nor a Prussian state, was at a safe distance from practical politics, involved no controversy, and was legitimately popular. Before his book was half finished the empire he believed in was restored, and he doubted for a moment, under the altered conditions, whether it was worth while to continue labours made superfluous by success. He almost seemed to ask himself whether, in fact, he was a scholar making use of an incomparable opportunity, or an astute patriot applying ancient forces to arduous conjunctures of the day.

With unexampled constancy he worked for forty years