Page:Lectures on Modern History.djvu/17

Rh was only six years, we ought to be amazed alike at the quantity of his achievement and the quality of his activity.

There are three fields which form the province of a University Professor—teaching, the organisation of his department, and research. Under present conditions a professor of history who does nothing but research leaves unfulfilled half the duties of his office. As Mill said of the House of Commons, his business is not so much to do things as to get things done. He must take his place as head of a school and strive to guide the thought and work of younger students, besides inspiring a larger public by means of lectures. The latter are, indeed, now an imperative duty, and no future occupant of the chair is likely to imitate the enthusiasm of Gray, Regius Professor in the mid-eighteenth century, who was thought to have shown unwonted conscientiousness in spending four years gathering material for an Inaugural, although he died without delivering or even writing it. On the other hand, the Professor should not limit his efforts to preparing undergraduates for a coming tripos. Acton fulfilled his task to perfection. His Lectures were not either in delivery or substance adapted to the assiduous note-taker; they might suggest, they would never diminish, the need of reading. They were not so much a mine of instruction as a revelation of the speaker's personality. Despite all his impartiality, his ideals were plainly evident, both in the matter and in the form of what he said; and not merely his ideals, but the intensity with which they possessed him. One of his hearers has recorded these impressions:—

"There was a magnetic quality in the tones of his voice, and a light in his eye, that compelled obedience from the mind. Never before had a young man come into the presence of such intensity of conviction as was shown by every word Lord Acton spoke. It took possession of the whole being, and seemed to enfold it in its own"