The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History

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ESSAYS AND QUESTIONS IN HISTORY
A. MARY F. ROBINSON
( Madame James Darmesteter )
London
T FISHER UNWIN
26 Paternoster Square
MDCCCLXXXIX
My dear Mr. Symonds,— I send you a little book; different from the many volumes, plump with documents and the dignity of History, which I intended for you long ago. But, since I have no better thing to offer, take—dear Master—these rough and scattered pages. For to whom, if not to you, should I dedicate the book? When I look back, I see you at my side in all my studies; for the last ten years, there is not one of them which has not been confided to you, and, most of all, my dreams of History. So that whatever I write belongs in some sort to you; but especially this little volume of which we talked so much in your study at Davos two years ago. Do you remember how you guided me through the innumerable pages of Litta and of Muratori in quest of the secret of the French Claim to Milan? We did not find much of that, but we found so many better things; and, best of all, the happy hours which you illuminated! Hours in which you evoked for me, as we plunged deeper and deeper into your Chronicles, the great figures of the Past. At first they rose before me, pale and mute—silent and immaculate as the white recesses of your Alps; but, at the touch of your wand, they assumed their ancient colour and consistence—the very smile, the gait, the accent, the passions, that had moved them once beneath this sun that has survived them; their voices magically issued out of the silent yellow pages; the sound of their battles clashed anew along your windless valleys and eagle-haunted mountain tops. And, once alive, they remained alive for me.