Revolution, and to account for it by the natural working of historic
causes. The Conservative line of writers, under the name of the
Romantic or Historical School, had its seat in Germany, looked upon
the Revolution as an alien episode, the error of an age, a disease to
be treated by the investigation of its origin, and strove to unite the
broken threads and to restore the normal conditions of organic
evolution. The Liberal School, whose home was France, explained and
justified the Revolution as a true development, and the ripened fruit
of all history #56. These are the two main arguments of the generation to
which we owe the notion and the scientific methods that make history
so unlike what it was to the survivors of the last century.
Severally, the innovators were not superior to the men of old.
Muratori was as widely read, Tillemont as accurate, Liebnitz as able,
Freret as acute, Gibbon as masterly in the craft of composite
construction. Nevertheless, in the second quarter of this century, a
new era began for historians.

I would point to three things in particular, out of many, which
constitute the amended order. Of the incessant deluge of new and
unsuspected matter I need say little. For some years, the secret
archives of the papacy were accessible at Paris; but the time was
not ripe, and almost the only man whom they availed was the
archivist himself #57. Towards 1830 the documentary studies began on
a large scale, Austria leading the way. Michelet, who claims,
towards 1836, to have been the pioneer #58, was preceded by such
rivals as Mackintosh, Bucholtz, and Mignet. A new and more
productive period began thirty years later, when the war of 1859
laid open the spoils of Italy. Every country in succession has
now been allowed the exploration of its records, and there is
more fear of drowning than of drought. The result has been that
a lifetime spent in the largest collection of printed books would
not suffice to train a real master of modern history. After he
had turned from literature to sources, from Burner to Pocock,
from Macaulay to Madame Campana, from Thiers to the interminable
correspondence of the Bonapartes, he would still feel instant
need of inquiry at Venice or Naples, in the Ossuna library or at
the Hermitage #59.

These matters do not now concern us. For our purpose, the main thing
to learn is not the art of accumulating material, but the sublimer art
of investigating it, of discerni