ENGLISH AND GERMAN HISTORIANS
When I went to England in 1886 to collect materials for a life of Young Sir Henry Vane, John Fiske gave me a letter to Dr. Richard Garnett, then Superintendent of the Reading Room in the British Museum. He afterwards became Sir Richard Garnett and was promoted to be Keeper of Printed Books, perhaps the highest position among the librarians of the world, a post to which he did honour. Dr. Garnett, slender and alert, the heaped-up litter of volumes and manuscripts in his study telling at a glance where his tastes lay, was nevertheless as he needed to be most practical and business-like. Though an accomplished littérateur touching with versatility poetry, criticism, history, philosophy, and still other fields, this was his hobby only, his main work being when I knew him to make available for readers crowding from all lands seeking information of all kinds, the treasures of this wonderful store-house. He treated me with the kindest courtesy, but I have no reason to feel that I was an exception. He stood on that threshold, a welcomer of all scholars, for his good nature was no more marked than the comprehensiveness of his information and the dexterity with which without the least delay, he put into the hands of each searcher the needed books. Perhaps it was an unusual favour that, influenced no doubt, by my good introduction, he took a half-hour out of his busy morning to conduct me himself through the Egyptian collection. We passed rapidly among statues and hieroglyphics, his abundant knowledge appearing transiently as he touched upon object after object while at the same time in an incisive and witty vein he spoke of America and the events of the day. Pausing at last before the great scarabaeus of polished syenite whose huge size required a place in the centre of the corridor, he said with a twinkle, "I must tell you a story about this of which one of your countrymen is the hero. I was walking with him here in the collection and expected from him some expression of awe, but like so many of you Americans, he wouldn't admit that he saw anything that couldn't be paralleled in the United States until we stood before the scarabaeus. Here his mood changed; his face fell, he slowly walked around the scarabaeus three times and then exclaimed, 'It's the all-firedest, biggest bug I ever saw in all my born days'"! I palliated patriotically the over-breezy nonchalance of my countryman and thought I had got at the bottom of the joke, but that evening at a little tea I was undeceived. A small company were present of men and women, talk flowed easily and when it came my turn I told the story of the Yankee and the scarabaeus which I had heard that day. As I brought out with emphasis the "all-firedest, biggest bug," I noticed that a frost fell on the mirth, silence reigned for a moment interrupted only by gasps from the ladies. What impropriety had I committed? Presently a little man behind the coffee-urn at the far end of the table, whom I had heard was a bit of a scientist, piped up: "Perhaps the Professor doesn't know that in England, when we talk about bugs, we mean that cimex which makes intolerable even the most comfortable bed." At last I had Dr. Garnett's story in its full force.
When I explained to Dr. Garnett my errand, an elaborate investigation of an historic figure, said he: "You must know Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the best living authority for the period of the English Civil War. Now Dr. Gardiner is peculiar. His great history of that period as yet takes in nothing later than 1642. Up to that date he will have all the information and help you generously. Of the time beyond that date he will have nothing to say, be mute as a dumb man. He has not finished his investigations and has a morbid caution about making any suggestion based on incomplete data." A day or two afterward I was in the Public Record Office in Fetter Lane, the roomy fire-proof structure which holds the archives of England. You sit in the Search Room, a most interesting place. Rolls and dusty tomes lie heaped about you, the attendants go back and forth with long strips of parchment knotted together by thongs, hanging down to the floor before and behind, written-over by the fingers of scribes in the mediaeval days and sometimes in the Dark Ages. The past becomes very real to you as you scan Domes Day Book which once was constantly under the eye of William the Conqueror, or the documents of kings who reigned before the Plantagenets. As I sat busy with some original letters of Henry Vane, written by him when a boy in Germany in the heart of the Thirty Years' War, a vigorous brown-haired man came up to me with a pleasant smile and introduced himself as Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Dr. Garnett had told him about me and about my especial quest, and with rare kindness, he offered to give me hints. It was for me a fortunate encounter, for no other man knew, as Gardiner did, the ground I desired to cover. He put into my hands old books, unprinted diaries, scraps of paper inscribed by great figures in historic moments, the solid sources, and also the waifs and strays from which proper history must be built up. He would look in upon me time after time in the Search Room; in the Reading Room of the British Museum we sat side by side under the great dome. We were working in the same field and the experienced master passed over to the neophyte the yellow papers and mildewed volumes in, which he was digging, with suggestions as to how I might get out of the chaff the wheat that I wanted. He invited me to his home at Bromley in Kent, where he allowed me to read the proofs of the volume in his own great series which was just then in press. It related to matters that were vital to my purpose and I had the rare pleasure of reading a masterly work and seeing how the workman built, inserting into his draft countless marginal emendations, the application of sober second thought to the original conception. I spent the best part of the night in review and it was for me a training well worth the sacrifice of sleep. In the pleasant July afternoon we sat down to tea in the little shaded garden where I met the son and daughter of my host and also Mrs. Gardiner, an accomplished writer and his associate in his labours. The interval between tea and dinner we filled up with a long walk over the fields of Kent during which appeared the social side of the man. He told me with modesty that he was descended from Cromwell through Ireton, and the vigour of his stride, with which I found it sometimes hard to keep up, made it plain that he was of stalwart stock and might have marched with the Ironsides. A day or two later he bade me good-bye; he and his wife departing for the continent for a long bicycle tour. The indefatigable scholar was no less capable in the fields and on the high road than in alcoves and the Search Room.
Lecky was not in England at the time of my visit and I can only claim to have had with him an epistolary acquaintance. To some extent I have worked on the same themes with him, and preserve among my treasures certain letters in which he made me feel that he regarded my accomplishment as not unworthy. Sir Charles Dilke and the Bishop of Oxford, William Stubbs, author of the great Constitutional History, I also never met, but I have letters from them which I keep with those of Lecky as things which my children will prize. With Edward A. Freeman, however, I came into cordial relations, a character well worthy of a sketch. He once came to America where with his fine English distinction behind him he met a good reception. He deported himself after the fashion of many another great Englishman, somewhat clumsily. At St. Louis he amusingly misapprehended conditions. Remembering the origin of the city he took it for granted that the audience which greeted him was for the most part of French descent, whereas probably not a dozen persons present had a trace of French blood in their veins. Because backwoodsmen a few generations before had possessed that region he took it for granted that we were backwoodsmen still. He addressed us under these misconceptions, the result being a "talking down" to a company of supposedly Latin extraction and quite illiterate. The fact was that the crowd, Anglo-Saxon with a strong infusion of German, was made up of people of high intelligence, the best whom the city could furnish, a city at the time noted for its interest in philosophical pursuits and the home of a highly educated class. Freeman's well-meant remarks would have seemed elementary to an audience of school-children. The address was quite inadequate and the unfortunate visitor had a rather cool reception. Freeman was only one of many in all this. The astronomer R.A. Proctor came to similar grief for a similar gaucherie, and even so famous a man as Lord Kelvin suffered in like manner. I have been told that at Yale University when addressing a college audience zealous for their own institution, he stumbled badly on the threshold by enlarging on the great privilege he was enjoying in speaking to the students of Cornell, proceeding blandly under the conviction that he was at Ithaca instead of under the elms of New Haven. But this clumsiness in Freeman and in others was only a surface blemish. He was a great writer treating with profound learning the story of Greece and Rome and South-western Europe in general, and illuminating as probably no other man has done the distant Saxon and early Norman dimnesses that lie in the background of our own past. I held him in thorough respect and when, following an article I had prepared in London for the Pall Mall Gazette, I received a polite note from him inviting me to come to see him at Somerleaze near Wells, I was much rejoiced. I went thither, passing through the beautiful green heart of England. In Wiltshire from the car-window I caught sight of a distant down on which, the substratum of chalk showing through the turf skilfully cut away, appeared the figure of a gigantic white horse, the memorial of an old Saxon battle; thence passing near Glastonbury and skirting the haunts of ancient Druids in the Mendip Hills, I was attuned for a meeting with a scholar who more than any other man of the time had aroused interest in the old life of England. I alighted at Wells where a trap was waiting, and drove between hedgerows for two miles to the secluded mansion. It lay back from the road, a roomy manor house thickly surrounded by groves and gardens. I was put at ease at once by the friendly welcome of Mrs. Freeman, a charming hostess who met me at the door. Freeman soon entered, a veteran of sixty, his florid English face set off by a long beard, and hair rather dishevelled, tawny, and streaked with gray. Like Gardiner he was of vigorous mould and we presently strode off together through the lanes of the estate with the sweet landscape all about us. His talk was animated and related for the most part to the objects which we passed and the points that came into view on the more distant hills. It was rather the talk of a local antiquary than of a historian in a comprehensive sense, though now and then a quickly uttered phrase linked a trifling detail with the great world movement; the spirit was most kindly. Returning to the house he stooped to the ground and picked up a handsome peacock's feather which he gave with a bow as a souvenir of the walk. At dinner we met Miss Freeman, an accomplished daughter. There was only one guest besides myself, a man whom I felt it was good fortune to meet. It was the Rev. William Hunt, since that time well known as a large contributor to Leslie Stephen's great Dictionary of National Biography, President of the English Historical Society, and author of many valuable works. It so happened that a few weeks before, my Life of Samuel Adams had come under his notice and gained his approval, which he had expressed in a cordial fashion in the Saturday Review by an article which had caused me much satisfaction. An evening followed full of interesting things. Miss Freeman played the piano for us with much skill, and then came a most animated talk which, though genial, was critically pungent. The United States was often sharply attacked and I was put to all my resources to parry the prods that were directed at our weak places. I did not escape some personal banter. Feeling that I was in a congenial atmosphere I announced with warmth my persistent love for England, though my stock had been fixed in America since 1635. I spoke of a cherished tradition of my family. The chronicler, Florence of Worcester, describes an ancient battle in the year of 1016 between Edmond Ironside and the Danes. The battle was close and the Danes at one point had taken captive a Saxon champion who looked very much like the king. By cutting off his head and holding it up before the Saxon army they well-nigh produced a panic, for the Saxons believed that their king was slain, and Edmond had a lively quarter of an hour in correcting the error and restoring order. He finally did so and won victory at last. The chronicler gave the name of the Saxon who thus suffered untimely decapitation as Hosmer. I told the story and Freeman at once insisted that it should be confirmed. He sent his daughter to the library, who returned bearing a huge tome containing the chronicle of Florence of Worcester. Freeman turned at once to the date, 1016, and there was the passage in the quaint mediaeval Latin. It was indeed a Hosmer who unwittingly had so nearly brought Edmond Ironside to grief. "Was I descended from the man?" queried Freeman. Quite proud that my story had been substantiated and perhaps a bit vainglorious over the fact that a man of my name had looked like a king, I was not slow in saying that I probably was, that my line for six hundred years after that date, honest yeomen, had lived near the spot, in the fields of Kent. Freeman assented to the probability, but it was suggested by others present that there was a further tradition. The Hosmer of 1016 had lost his head, the Hosmers since that day had been constantly losing theirs, in fact, there had been no man of that name since that time in England who had any head worth speaking of, indeed they were said to be born without heads. Had this curious heredity been transmitted to the American line? I was forced to admit with confusion that I could cite no circumstances to rebut the suspicion, but all was good-natured though pungent, and when we broke up I retired to the guest chamber in a pleasant excitement. Freeman, who conducted me himself, brought the guest-book, calling my attention to the fact that the chamber had shortly before been occupied by Gladstone. The next morning we drove to Wells where, under the guidance of Freeman and Mr. Hunt, I studied for some hours the beautiful cathedral. It is not so large as many cathedrals, but few of them are more interesting. The front is finely impressive; a curious, inverted arch in the choir which descends from the ceiling to meet an arch rising from the floor at a point midway between the roof and pavement is a unique thing in architecture, a master-stroke of the mediaeval builder who solved a problem of construction and at the same time produced a thing of beauty. I remember, too, in a chapel, an example of a central column rising like a slender stem of a lily and foliating at the top into a graceful tracery, springing from the columns which surround and enclose the space. All this is elaborated with exquisite detail in the white stone. My guides, who were full of feeling for the architectural perfection, knew well the story of the builders and the interesting events with which through the centuries a masterpiece had been associated. It was a charming visit closed, appropriately, by this inspection under Freeman's guidance, of the cathedral of Wells.
Goldwin Smith was a cosmopolite; a citizen as much of Canada and the United States as of England; a man indeed who would have preferred to call himself a citizen of the world. But in England he was born and bred and began his career; under the Union Jack he died, and he may rightly be classed as an English historian. My acquaintance with Goldwin Smith began a quarter of a century back, in the interchange of notes and books. I was interested in the same fields which he had illustrated. I looked upon him as more than any other writer, perhaps, my master. I was in love with his spirit from the first and thought that no other man had considered so well topics connected with the unity of English-speaking men in a broad bond of brotherhood. I did not set eyes on him until 1903, being for that year President of the American Library Association which was to meet at Niagara Falls. I invited Goldwin Smith to give the principal address. The librarians of Canada, as well as the United States, were to assemble on the frontier between the two countries, and it seemed desirable that a man standing under two flags should be spokesman and this character fitted Goldwin Smith precisely. But that year he became eighty years old. In the spring he was ill and did not dare to undertake in June an elaborate address. When we assembled at Niagara Falls, however, I found him there. He had come from Toronto to show his good-will and he spoke several times in our meetings; deliverances which, while neither long nor formal, were well worth hearing. He was a stately presence, tall, slender, and erect even at eighty, with a commanding face and head which had every trait of dignity. I had several opportunities for private talk and it appeared that his natural force was by no means abated. It would no doubt be more just to class him as a critic in politics, literature, and philosophy rather than an historian, but in the latter capacity, too, his service was great. His talk was fluent, incisive, and put forward without reference to what might be the prejudices or indeed the well-based principles of his listeners. He lashed bitterly the Congress of the United States for refusing through fear of Irish disapproval to do honour to John Bright. His tongue was a sword and cut sharply, and while he won respect always, often excited opposition and sometimes hatred. Napoleon in particular was a bête noire, to whom he denied even the possession of military genius. His courage was serene and he was quite indifferent as to whether he were hissed or applauded. He moved in a lofty atmosphere and the praise and blame of men counted for little with him, as on his high plane he discussed and judged. But it was impossible to entertain for Goldwin Smith any other feeling than profound respect, his accomplishments were vast, his memory unfailing, his ideals the highest, his sense of justice the keenest. His was a nature perhaps to evoke veneration rather than affection, and yet to men worthy of it he could be heartily cordial and friendly. The inscription on the stone erected to his memory at Cornell University is "Above all nations is humanity." In his thought any limitation of the sympathies within the comparatively narrow bounds of one country was a vice rather than a virtue, and no nation was worthy to endure which did not stand for the good of the world at large; into love for all humanity narrower affections should emerge. He invited me to spend some days at the Grange at Toronto in his beautiful home, but circumstances made it impossible. I am glad to have seen Goldwin Smith at Niagara; that majestic environment befitted the subduing stateliness of his presence, his intellect, power, and elevation of view. He was one of the most exalted men I have ever known.
Of my friend Bishop Phillips Brooks, I hope to say something by-and-by. I only mention now that when I asked him in 1886 for a letter or two to friends in England, whither I was going to collect material for a life of the colonial governor, he heartily said, "I will give you a letter to the best Englishman I know, and that is James Bryce."
Arriving one July day in London, I posted my letter and received at once an invitation from Mr. Bryce to call upon him in Downing Street, where, as Under Secretary of State, he then made his official home.
Mark Twain's tears over the grave of Adam, a relative buried in a strange land, all will recall. On a basis as good perhaps, I walked through Downing Street with a certain sense of proprietorship, for did it not bear the name and had it not been the home of my brother in the pleasant Harvard bond, Sir George Downing, of the class of 1642? In the ante-room with its upholstery of dark-green leather I mused for a few minutes alone, over diplomatic conferences of which it had probably been the scene, but Mr. Bryce quickly entered, slight and sinewy, in his best years, kindly, courteous to the man sent by a friend whom he held among the closest. Bryce at that time was on the threshold of his fame. He had written The Holy Roman Empire which I knew well. He had been Regius Professor at Oxford, whose shades he had not long before forsaken for politics. That he had a special interest in and knowledge of America, the world did not know. He apologised for turning me off briefly then, but "Come to dinner," said he, "at my house to-night in Bryanstone Square." I was prompt to keep the appointment. A drizzle filtered through the night as the cab arrived at the door, but there was a cheery light in the windows and a warm welcome to the entering guest. There were three or four besides myself; a young officer just home from the campaign in the Soudan, Dr. Richter the authority in music and art, and the brother and sister of the host. I felt it a high distinction that I handed out to dinner the stately lady, the mother of my host. The conversation was general. Bits of African experience from the young soldier, glimpses into Richter's special fields, and a contribution or two from the Mississippi Valley, from me. In the talk that followed the dinner Mr. Bryce showed himself at home in German as much as in English, but what surprised me most was his puzzling curiosity about minutiae of our own politics. Why did the Mayor of Oshkosh on such and such dates veto the propositions of the aldermen as to the gas supply? And why did the supervisors of Pike County, Missouri, pass such and such ordinances as regards the keeping of dogs? These, or similar questions were fired at me rapidly, uttered with a keen attention as to my reply. I was quite confused and lame on what was supposedly my own ground. How queer, I thought, was the interest and the knowledge of this stranger. But in a few months I felt better. The American Commonwealth appeared, revealing Bryce as a man who had set foot in almost our every State and Territory, and who had an intimacy with America such as no American even possessed.
I am speaking here of historians, but may appropriately give a little space to an account of that wonderful acre or two of ground at Westminster, where for so many centuries the history of the English-speaking race has been to such an extent focused.
In looking up Young Sir Henry Vane, it seemed fitting to have some knowledge of Parliament, and I welcomed the chance when, on the 19th of August, 1886, Parliament convened. It was a time of agitation. At the election just previous the Liberals, with Gladstone at the head of the Cabinet, had undergone defeat and the Conservatives had come in with Lord Randolph Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The first night was sure to be full of turmoil and excitement. Through Mr. Bryce's good offices I had a seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The student of history must always tread the precincts of Westminster with awe. There attached to the Abbey is the Chapter House. The central column divides overhead into the groins that form the arched ceiling, the stones at its base still bearing a stain from the rubbing elbows of mediaeval legislators, the floor worn by their hurrying feet, for from the time of Edward I. the Chapter House remained for centuries the legislative meeting-place. The old St. Stephen's Chapel to which Parliament at length removed was burned some eighty years since, but Westminster Hall, its attachment—the great hall of William Rufus, escaped and the new buildings of Parliament stand on the site of its former home. The present House of Commons occupies the ground of the old Chapel and in size and arrangement differs little from it. The Hall is small. The seven hundred members seated on the benches which slope up from the centre, crowd the floor space, while the galleries for the press at one end, for strangers at the other, and for the use of the Lords and the Diplomatic corps at the sides give only meagre accommodation. I passed into the building at nightfall, getting soul-stirring glimpses into the great area of Westminster Hall, in which burned only one far-away light. Its grandeur was more impressive in the dimness than in the glare. The lofty associations of the spot, coronations of kings, the reverberations of eloquence, the illustrious victims that had gone out from its tribunal to the scaffold thronged in my thought as I momentarily paused. But time pressed and I passed on to the central Hall where I stood in a jostling crowd, absorbed in the present with little thought of the fine frescoes that lined the walls or of the history that had been made in that environment. I was to send in my card to Mr. Bryce and while I stood puzzled as to what course to take, a good friend came to my side in the person of Sir Henry Norman. He had not then received his knightly title but was simply assistant to W.T. Stead on the Pall Mall Gazette, pushing his way, but already marked for a distinguished and eccentric career. He came to America as a youth and entered the Harvard Theological School. Inverting his pyramid, after beginning with the cone, he put in the base, taking up the work of undergraduate, and studying for an A.B. At Harvard he is best remembered as Creon in the Oedipus Tyrannus, where his handsome face and figure and mellifluous Greek won much admiration. Soon after, he cast to the winds both his Greek and theology and was in London fighting his way in the Press. Since then he has become famous for Oriental travel and observation, in which field he is an authority, and also as a member of Parliament. A friendship with him had been conciliated for me by a good letter from Edwin D. Mead, and I was glad to have him by my side that night. Through his help I soon was in the hands of Mr. Bryce and under his guidance found the way to my appointed seat. The House was in an uproar as I entered and from my point of vantage I looked down upon the scene, undignified, but full of most virile life. At the opposite end of the Hall sat Speaker Peel, in gown and wig, his sonorous cries of "Order! order!" availing little it seemed, to quiet the assembly. In the centre of the Chamber stood the famous table, the mace reposing at the end, the symbol that the House was in formal session. On one side sat the members of the new Cabinet, the foremost and most interesting figure, Lord Randolph Churchill. Opposite to them across the width of the table were the leaders of the opposition, Gladstone at the fore. The benches were densely crowded with members. Under my feet where I could not see them were the Irish members, not visible but noisily audible. Many men of note were in their seats that night. A powerful voice was ringing through the Chamber as I took my seat, which I soon found was that of Bradlaugh. His utterance was a sustained declamation. But there were ejaculations, sometimes mere hoots and cat-calls, sometimes crisply-shouted sentences rose into the air. "I belong to a society for the abolition of the House of Lords," came thundering up. It was from Sir Wilfred Lawson, the radical from Carlisle, whose statue now stands on the Thames Embankment. Lord Randolph Churchill made that night what I suppose was the great speech of his life, for some two hours facing the Irish members waging a forensic battle, memorable for even the House of Commons. From my perch I looked directly into his face at a distance of not many feet as he confronted the Irish crowd. Rather short of stature, he was a compact figure, and his face had in it combative energy as the marked characteristic. He outlined the policy of the new government with serene indifference to the stormy disapproval which almost every sentence evoked. When the outcry became deafening, he paused with a grim smile on his bull-dog face until the interruption wore itself out. "This disturbance makes no difference to me," he would quietly say, "I am only sorry to have the time of the House wasted in such unreasonable fashion." Then would come another prod and a new chorus of howls rolling thunderously from the cavern under my feet. It is not in line with my present plan to describe this speech; that may be found in Hansard under the date. I touch only on the outside manner as he fought his fight. It was a fine example of cool, imperturbable, unshrinking assault, and I thought that in some such way his ancestor, the great Duke of Marlboro, might have ruled the hour at Blenheim and Malplaquet. Many years after it fell to me to introduce to an audience his son Winston Churchill who, when his father was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a schoolboy at Harrow. I took occasion to describe briefly the battle I had seen his father wage at Westminster. It pleased Winston Churchill then fresh from the fields of South Africa. "That was indeed a great speech of my father's," he said. Since then the son has developed into a combatant probably not less formidable than his forebears.
This was well worth while for me, desiring to see the Parliament of England in its most interesting moods, but something came later which I treasure more. While the conflict proceeded, in his place near the mace but a yard or two distant from the conspicuous figure sat Gladstone. I had seen him enter the House, a massive frame dressed in a dark frock-coat which hung handsomely upon his broad shoulders, with the strong head and face above, set in a lion-like mane of disordered hair. He sat unmoved and quiet throughout the conflict as he might have done at a ladies' tea-party, but now he rose to speak. At once complete silence pervaded the Chamber. I believe I have never seen so impressive an exhibition of the power of a great personality. Foes as well as friends waited almost breathless for the words that were to come. It was a time of crisis. He had just met defeat. What could the discredited leader say?
He began in a voice scarcely above a whisper, though in the silence it was distinctly audible, but the tones strengthened and deepened as he proceeded. His audience hung upon his every word, and so he discoursed for half an hour. It was not a great speech,—a series of calm, unimpassioned statements in which clearness of phrase and absolute abstention from aggressive attack upon his opponents were the most marked characteristics. It was courteous toward friend and foe, and foes no less than friends received each clear-cut sentence with attention most respectful. I was a bit disappointed not to see the old lion aroused and in his grandeur. But it is a thing to prize that I witnessed a manifestation made in his full strength and in the acme of his dominance. It was worth while to see that even in no great mood, the force of his leadership was recognised and reserve power of the man fully felt. Like every Achilles, Gladstone was held by the heel when dipped. One may well feel that he came short as a theologian. The scholars slight his Homeric disquisitions. Consistency was a virtue which he probably too often scouted, but his high purpose, his spotlessness of spirit, and strong control of men no one can gainsay. In the slang of the street of that time he was the "G.O.M.," the Grand Old Man as well to those who fought him as to those who loved him. An impressive incident of the session occurred in the address of the "Mover of the Queen's Speech." The orator in brilliant court attire, a suit of plum-coloured velvet with full wig and small-clothes which seemed almost the only bit of colour in the soberly, sometimes rather shabbily, dressed assemblage, a costume which through long tradition attaches to the function which he discharged, prefaced his remarks with this tribute: "However we may differ from the honourable member for Midlothian, we are all willing to admit that he is the most illustrious of living Englishmen." In spite of the general bitterness of the tumultuous controversy, one felt that there lay beneath it all a certain fine magnanimity. Both Liberal and Tory believed in the substantial patriotism and good purpose of the adversary as a fundamental concession and that all were seeking the best welfare of England. The differences regarded only the expedients which were proper for the moment. One could see that foes furious in the arena might at the same time be closest personal friends. It was not a riddle that in the tea-rooms and the smoking-rooms Greek and Trojan could sit together in friendly tête-à-tête, or that such incidents could occur as the genial congratulations extended by Gladstone to Joseph Chamberlain over the fine promise of his son Austin Chamberlain making his début in Parliament; congratulations extended when the two statesmen were at swords' points,—a friendly talk as it were, through helmet bars when the slash was at the sharpest.
As I went home that night, through the streets of London, my mind and heart were full. My special studies at the moment were familiarising me with what lay behind the scene which I had just beheld. In similar fashion in the days of Edward I. and Simon De Montfort, the Commons of England, then struggling up, had wrestled in the narrow Chapter House. And so they had fought in the Lancastrian time; and after the Tudor incubus had been lifted off. So under the Stuarts had the wrangling proceeded from which came at length the "Petition of Right." Substituting the doublet and the steeple hat for their modern equivalents, the spectacle of the Long Parliament must have been very similar. Speaker Lenthall no doubt shouted "Order! Order!" as did his successor Speaker Peel, while Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and Vane passionately inveighed against Prelacy and the "Man of Blood," as I had just heard the Radicals of the Victorian era overwhelm with diatribe the obstructors of the popular will. Then, during the subsoiling which the land, growing arid and worthless through mediaeval blight, underwent in 1832 and after, when the Reform Bill and its successors, like deeply penetrating plows, threw to the surface much that was unsightly, yet full of potentialities for good, the spot was the same. The conditions and the environment looking at it in the large were not widely different, the ancient Anglo-Saxon freedom struggling ever for its foothold as the centuries lapse, now precariously uncertain as Privilege and Prerogative push hotly, now fixed and strong in great moments of triumph; and the end is not yet. In the earlier time the destinies of America were closely interlocked with England and came up no less for decision in the great arena at Westminster. The destinies of the two peoples are scarcely less interlocked at the present moment. We are gravitating toward closer brotherhood, and the thoughtful American sees reason to study with the deepest interest each passage of arms in the ancient memorable arena.
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I saw in Germany in 1870, usually through the good offices of Bancroft, our minister, the most eminent historians of that day. Giesebrecht and von Raumur were no longer living, but men were still in the foreground to the full as illustrious. Heidelberg in those days was relatively a more conspicuous university than at present. Its great men remain to it, though the process of absorption was beginning which at last carried the more distinguished lights to Berlin. The lovely little town, whose streets for nearly six hundred years have throbbed with the often boisterous life of the student population, is at its best in the spring and early summer. The Neckar ripples tumultuously into the broad Rhine plain, from which towers to the height of two thousand feet the romantic Odenwald. From some ruin of ancient watch-tower or cloister on the height, entrancing views spread out, the landscape holding the venerable towns of Worms and Speyer, each with its cathedral dominating the clustered dwellings, while the lordly Rhine pours its flood northward—a stream of gold when in the late afternoon it glows in the sunset. The old castle stands on its height, more beautiful in its decay, with ivy clinging about the broken arches, and the towers wrecked by the powder-bursts of ancient wars, than it could ever have been when unshaken.
Among the professors at Heidelberg, von Treitschke was one of the most eminent, and it was my privilege one day to hear him lecture on a theme which stirred him—the battle of Leipsic, the great Völkerschlacht of 1813, when Germany cruelly clipped the pinions of the Napoleonic eagle. The hall was crowded with young men, corps-studenten being especially numerous, robust youths in caps and badges, and many of the faces were patched and scarred from duels in the Hirsch-Gasse. Von Treitschke, a dark, energetic figure, was received with great respect. Deafness, from which he suffered, affected somewhat his delivery. He told the story of the great battle, the frantic effort against combined Europe of the crippled French, the defection of the Saxons in the midst of the fight, the final driving of Napoleon across the Elster, the death of Poniatowski and the retreat to France. His voice was a deep, sonorous monotone and every syllable was caught eagerly by his auditors. They and the speaker were thoroughly at one in their intense German feeling. It was a celebration of triumph of the Fatherland. The significance of it all was not apparent, that sunny spring morning, but we were on the eve of a catastrophe which apparently no one foreboded; Metz, Gravelotte, and Sedan were only a few months away. The fire which I saw burning so hot in the souls of both speaker and hearers was part of the conflagration destined to consume widely and thoroughly before the summer closed.
Ernst Curtius was probably the most distinguished Hellenist of his time. He had studied the Greeks on their own soil and gone with German thoroughness into their literature, history, and art. He had excellent powers of presentment, wrote exhaustively and yet attractively and won early recognition. He was selected for the post of tutor to the Crown Prince, an honour of the highest. The Crown Prince, afterwards Emperor Frederick, held him in high regard and in 1870 his position in the world of scholars was of the best. I had the honour to pay him a visit in his home one pleasant Sunday afternoon in company with Bancroft. I remember Bancroft's crisp German enunciation as he presented me; "Ich stelle Ihnen einen Amerikaner vor," and he mentioned my name. I bowed and felt my hand grasped cordially in a warm, well-conditioned palm, while a round, genial face beamed good-naturedly. The interview was in the Professor's handsome garden, his accomplished wife and daughters were of the party, and I remember Maiwein with pretzels on a lawn with rose-bushes close beside and music coming through the open windows of the house. The hospitality was graceful, there was no profound talk but only pleasant chatter. The daughters were glad to have a chance to try their English and I was glad for the moment to slip out of the foreign bond and disport myself for their benefit in my vernacular, but the Professor needed no practice. His English was quite adequate, as, on the other hand, the German of Bancroft was well in hand.
"What other university people would you like to see?" said Bancroft to me one day. I mentioned von Ranke, Lepsius, and Mommsen as men whose names were familiar, whose faces I should like to look upon.
"Find out the sprech-stunden of these men," said Bancroft to his secretary, and presently a slip was put into my hand containing the hours at which I could be conveniently received. Following the direction, I was one day admitted to the library of von Ranke, a plain apartment walled by books from floor to ceiling, with a desk well-worn by days and nights of work. As I awaited his entrance the facts of his career were vivid in my mind. He was a man of seventy-five and had been a scholar almost from his cradle. He was known to me particularly through his history of the popes, which was and perhaps is still the judicial authority with regard to the line of pontiffs, but that was only one book among many. He belonged to a class of which Germany has been prolific, whose consciences assault them if they let their pens lie idle, and who have no recourse in self-defence but building about themselves a barricade of books. After researches in various fields, von Ranke now was undertaking a history of the world, with no thought apparently of a probable touch from the dart of death in the near future; and he did indeed live until nearly ninety and long produced a volume a year.
He entered presently from an inner room, rather a short, well-rounded figure with a face marked by a clear eye and much vivacity. He conversed well in English and was curious about American education and offered, rather ludicrously, I remember, to exchange the publications of the University of Berlin with those of the little fresh-water college in which I was at that time a young teacher. Could the scholar be aiming a sly sarcastic hit at the bareness of our educational outposts in the West? But no, his frank look and voice showed that he was unaware of the real conditions. The talk was not long, there was a hearty expression of regard for Mr. Bancroft who was fully accepted by the German learned world as one of their Gelehrten, trained as he had been in youth in their schools, and in that day our best-known historian. I bowed myself out respectfully from the presence of the little man and sincerely hope that the merit of his great history is in no way abated because I took a half-hour of his time.
I met Lepsius, the great Egyptian scholar, one afternoon in his garden, a hale, straight man of sixty with abundant grey hair surmounting a fine forehead, with blue eyes full of penetration behind his spectacles. I had little knowledge of the subject he had studied so profoundly and almost laughed outright when his pretty daughter asked me if I had read her father's translation of the Book of the Dead. Of von Ranke's themes I thought I knew something and was more at ease with him, as with Mommsen whom I met about the same time.
Theodor Mommsen, more than any other, forty years ago, was the leading historian of Germany. He began his career as a student of law, in the antiquities of which he became thoroughly versed. In particular Justinian and the Roman authorities, among whom he stands as chief, were the objects of Mommsen's research. From jurisprudence he passed to the study of general history, and of the most interesting period of Rome he absorbed into his mind all the lore that has survived. This he digested and set forth in a monumental work, which, translated into English, has been, in the English-speaking world of scholars at least, as familiar as household words. At a still later time he was an active striver in the political agitations of his day.
I sent in my card to Mommsen with some trepidation and was at once admitted. I found him sitting at leisure among his books and Bancroft's introduction brought to pass for me a genial welcome. He was a man not large in frame with dark eyes, and black hair streaked with grey. No doubt but that like German scholars in general he could talk English, but he stuck to German and I was rather glad he did so; I could take him in better as he discoursed fluently in his mother-tongue. Mommsen was a man of sharp corners who often in his political career brought grief to adversaries who tried to handle him without gloves. I was fortunate in catching him in a softer mood and witnessed an amiability with which he was not usually credited. His little daughters were in the room, pretty children with whom the father played with evident pride and joy, interrupting the conversation to caress the curly pates, and trotting them on his knee. He put keen questions to me as regards America, showing that while busy with Caesar and the on-goings of the ancient forum he had been wide awake also to modern happenings. He expressed much regard for Bancroft and praised Grant for selecting as minister to Germany a personality so agreeable to European scholars. He told me of the jubilee of Bancroft which was about to be celebrated with marked honours. Fifty years before Bancroft had "made his doctor" at Göttingen, one of the earliest Americans to achieve that distinction, and the German universities meant to show emphatically their recognition of his merit. The celebration afterwards took place, not interrupted by the warlike uproar in which the land was about to be involved. A proud honour indeed for the American minister. It was a noteworthy occasion to talk thus familiarly with one of the most illustrious scholars of the time, and I recall fondly the pleasant details of the picture.
At Heidelberg the February before I had had an interview with Schenkel, then the leading theologian of that university. Him I found in his Studir-Zimmer without fire on a cold day. He seemed to scorn the use of the Kachelofen, the great porcelain stove, and was wrapped from head to foot in a heavy woollen robe which enveloped him and was prolonged about his head into a kind of cowl. He presented a figure closely like the portraits of some old reformers heavily mantled in a garb approaching the monkish Tracht which they had forsaken. It seemed out of character for Schenkel, for he was an avowed liberal and particularly far away from old standards, but the sharp winter drove a champion of heterodoxy into this outer conformity with the old. In the case of the Berlin Gelehrten, however, the mediaeval dress was quite discarded. I chanced to see them in the spring with their windows wide open to the perfume of gardens and songs of nightingales, and in the case of Mommsen, my picture of his environment has traits of geniality, for he sat in light summer attire, his face aglow with fatherly impulses as he played in the soft air with his children.
One of the most interesting men whom I met in Berlin was Hermann Grimm, then just rising among the characters of mark, but best known at that time as the son of the famous Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm,—the "Brothers Grimm," whose names through their connection with the fairy tales are stamped in the memories not only of men and women, but of children throughout the civilised world. The "Brothers Grimm," it must be remembered, were scholars of the profoundest. The Teutonic folk-lore engaged them not simply or mainly as a source of amusement, but as a subject proper for deep investigation. They painfully gathered in out-of-the-way nooks from the lips of old grandames in chimney corners and wandering singers in obscure villages, the survivals of the primitive superstitions of the people. These they subjected to scientific study as illustrating the evolution of society, a deep persistent search with results elaborately systematised, of which the delightful tales so widely circulated are only a by-product. Aside from their service in the field of folk-lore they grappled with many another mighty task. The vast dictionary, in which German words are not only set down in their present meaning but followed throughout every stage of their etymology with their relations to their congeners in other tongues indefatigably traced out, is a marvel of erudition. Theirs also was the great Deutsche Grammatik, a philosophical setting forth of the German tongue in its connection with its far-spreading Aryan affinities. The "Brothers Grimm" were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they are not divided. Jakob was never married. Wilhelm was married, the child of the union being the distinguished man with whom it was my fortune to talk.
They worked together affectionately until far into old age, and I have described their graves in the Matthai Kirchhof where they lie side by side.
I found Hermann Grimm in the study which had been the workshop through long years of his father and uncle. He was a handsome man in his vigorous years and had married the daughter of Bettine von Arnim, the Bettine of Goethe. It is not strictly right to class him as a historian. He was poet, playwright, critic, and novelist, perhaps mainly these, but soon after, in his position as a professor in the university, he was to produce his well-known Vorlesungen über Göthe, a work which though mainly critical, at the present time is a biography of conspicuous merit, which envisages the events of a famous epoch. I may, therefore, properly include him here, though the wide range of his activities makes it difficult to place him accurately. It paved the way for our interview that I knew Ralph Waldo Emerson, of whom he was, in Germany, the special admirer and student. He had just translated Emerson into German and sat at the feet of the Concord sage, infused by his inspiration. Hermann Grimm had never seen Emerson, and listened eagerly to such details as I could give him of his personality. He dwelt with enthusiasm upon passages in poems and essays by which he had been especially kindled, and hung upon my account of the voice and refined outward traits of the teacher whom he so reverenced. I afterwards procured a fine photograph of Hermann Grimm which I sent to Emerson. A kind letter from him, which I still treasure, let me know that I had put Emerson deeply in my debt; up to that time he had never seen a portrait of his German disciple, though the two men had been in affectionate correspondence. At a later time they met and cemented a friendship which was very dear to both. Hermann Grimm showed me with pride the relics of his father and uncle; the rows of well-thumbed volumes; the wellscored Heften over which their hands had moved; their inkstands and pens; the rough arm-chairs and tables where they had sat. I think a trace from the smoke of their pipes and midnight lamp still adhered to the ceiling, and possibly cobwebs still hung in the corners of the bookcases which had been there from an ancient day.
Quaint portraits of the "Brothers Grimm" at work in their caps and rough dressing-gowns were at hand, but Hermann Grimm had rather the appearance of a well-groomed man of the world. His coat was fashionable, his abundant hair and flowing beard were carefully trimmed. He was not a recluse, though faithful to his heredity and devoted mainly to scholarly research. He was at ease in the clubs and also at Court and enjoyed the give and take of a social hour with friends.