If I relinquish this one of my old historic notions, I feel that I must do it for the reason that Lord Auckland agreed with Macaulay after reading the first volume of his history. “I had also hated Cromwell more than I now do,” he said; “for I always agree with Tom Macaulay; and it saves trouble to agree with him at once, because he is sure to make you do so at last.”
I asked Professor Edward Channing of Harvard College, who teaches English History of the Tudor and Stuart periods, his opinion of Gardiner. “I firmly believe,” he told me, “that Mr. Gardiner is the greatest English historical writer who has appeared since Gibbon. He has the instinct of the truth-seeker as no other English student I know of has shown it since the end of the last century.”
General J. D. Cox, a statesman and a lawyer, a student of history and of law, writes to me: “In reading Gardiner, I feel that I am sitting at the feet of an historical chief justice, a sort of John Marshall in his genius for putting the final results of learning in the garb of simple common sense.”
[p325]
INDEX
Adams, C. F., and E. G. Bourne, [200].
Adams, J. Q., as President, [207], [209].
Adams, John, as President, [207].
Adelaide, Australia, Froude’s description, [42].
Alabama claims, arbitration, [218].
Alexander Severus, homage to history, [4].