f the Roman
Empire, he had little time and space left to consider their construction
at the present day. One of the most brilliant surgeons I ever knew, the
originator of a number of important surgical methods, who, being
physician as well, was remarkable in his expedients for saving life when
called to counsel in grave and apparently hopeless cases, desired to
write a book embodying his discoveries and devices, but said that the
feeling was strong within him that he must begin his work with an
account of medicine in Egypt, and trace its development down to our own
time. As he was a busy man in his profession, he lacked the leisure to
make the preliminary historical study, and his book was never written.
Men of affairs, who, taking "the present time by the top," are looked
upon as devoted to the physical and mechanical sciences, continually pay
tribute to our art. President Garfield, on his deathbed, asked one of
his most trusted Cabinet advisers, in words that become pathetic as one
thinks of the opportunities destroyed by the assassin's bullet, "Shall I
live in history?" A clever politician, who knew more of ward meetings,
caucuses, and the machinery of conventions than he did of history
books, and who was earnest for the renomination of President Arthur in
1884, said to me, in the way of clinching his argument, "That
administration will live in history." So it was, according to Amyot, in
the olden time. "Whensoever," he wrote, "the right sage and virtuous
Emperor of Rome, Alexander Severus, was to consult of any matter of
great importance, whether it concerned war or government, he always
called such to counsel as were reported to be well seen in histories."
"What," demanded Cicero of Atticus, "will history say of me six hundred
years hence?"

Proper concessions being made to poetry and the physical sciences, our
place in the field remains secure. Moreover, we live in a fortunate age;
for was there ever so propitious a time for writing history as in the
last forty years? There has been a general acquisition of the historic
sense. The methods of teaching history have so improved that they may be
called scientific. Even as the chemist and physicist, we talk of
practice in the laboratory. Most biologists will accept Haeckel's
designation of "the last forty years as the age of Darwin," for the
theory of evolution is firmly established. The publication of the Origin
of Species, in 1859, converted it from a poet's dream an