Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/23

 is not Oxford alone that laments him, nor the cause of Historical study only with which he had identified himself both here and throughout the literary world. But I will not touch on questions beyond the scope of my present consideration.

Besides the very advantageous position which, without nursing, I repeat, our study has attained here, in men, books, and honours, the immense treasures of historical lore which are now being poured liberally from the great storehouses of record throughout Europe, but most especially in England, form, a feature of the present time that promises to renew the youth of the Historic Muse. The great Continental collections of Historians are growing slowly but substantially; the German collection, begun in 1826, nearly rivals the French one a century its senior; the Sardinian Government had one of its own, which we may hope will not be smothered for the sake of more ambitious plans; the Vatican itself, under the kindly influence of a German Oratorian, has begun to thaw from its old reserve. Last and greatest, our own national work under the direction of Lord Romilly has in eight years proved itself more than a worthy rival both in bulk and workmanship of the older repositories. And not to speak of the collection of Historians, of which from my own connexion with it I am obliged to speak with modesty and reserve, the extracts and abstracts of public and private documents found in our Record offices and in those of Spain and Venice are rapidly filling our libraries with cases of stout green volumes from which the history of the most eventful of our years is being rewritten, and which will soon involve the necessity of a new Macaulay as they have already brought into being a new Burnet and a new Robertson.

From this sudden breaking up of the fountains of historical refreshment I dare not augur what results may follow, or what new worlds may be opening for other generations to exercise their logical acuteness and their historical perspicacity upon. We have our work set, in a literary point of view, in arranging, and bringing into bearing on one another, the masses of information that are threatening to overwhelm us. Happily, there is