Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/77

 the early life of our fathers. And so I come round to the point where I digressed.

We may take pattern by the Germans in collecting these relics, but when we have done so we shall have to bring them to comparison with the similar German collections before we can extract the whole lesson that they would convey. I would not be too sanguine, but I honestly believe that such a comparison would reveal to us points of contact and divergency as yet unsuspected even by the most careful investigators, and would enable us to reproduce the ancient society of our common ancestry in a way that would speedily set at rest some of the most controverted questions of institutional history. In such an investigation we might rely on the help of the greatest foreign scholars; and it is a task to the performance of which every intelligent country gentleman could contribute an appreciable share without stirring from his own muniment room.

If we turn to Pi-ance and Belgium, we shall find work of the same kind going on, which is only second, if it be indeed second, to the historical industry of Germany. The re-issue of the Recuell des Historiens de France, of the Gallia Christiana, and the Acta Sanctorum, proves that the revival is begun at the right end, from the ecclesiastical side. The reproduction, in the great Patrologia of Migne, of the early medieval historians, as well as the theologians, is an almost portentous fact; one wonders where the readers and students of such collections are to be found, and fears that, after all, such monuments must find their resting-places chiefly on the shelves of the public libraries rather than on the desks of close students. The intermission or retarded issue of the series of Documents inédits is perhaps not to be wondered at, when we consider the uncertain tenure of power and the enormous demands made for other purposes on the resources of the recent governments of France; but private enterprise and scholastic co-operation have done much to supply the void caused in this way. The collection of the historians of the Crusade, published under the direction of the Institute, increases and flourishes. The publications of the ' é cole des Chartes' and of the officers of the National Library, supply in their fine