Greek thought, it is
said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The
Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was
adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short
cut to the goal make us averse to the patient and elaborate method of
the ancients. In manner of expression, however, we have improved. The
Fourth of July spread-eagle oration, not uncommon even in New England in
former days, would now be listened to hardly anywhere without merriment.
In a Lowell Institute lecture in 1855 Lowell said, "In modern times, the
desire for startling expression is so strong that people hardly think a
thought is good for anything unless it goes off with a _pop_, like a
ginger-beer cork." No one would thus characterize our present writing.
Between reserve in expression and reserve in thought there must be
interaction. We may hope, therefore, that the trend in the one will
become the trend in the other, and that we may look for as great
historians in the future as in the past. The Thucydides or Tacitus of
the future will write his history from the original materials, knowing
that there only will he find the living spirit; but he will have the
helps of the modern world. He will have at his hand monographs of
students whom the professors of history in our colleges are teaching
with diligence and wisdom, and he will accept these aids with
thankfulness in his laborious search. He will have grasped the
generalizations and methods of physical science, but he must know to the
bottom his Thucydides and Tacitus. He will recognize in Homer and
Shakespeare the great historians of human nature, and he will ever
attempt, although feeling that failure is certain, to wrest from them
their secret of narration, to acquire their art of portrayal of
character. He must be a man of the world, but equally well a man of the
academy. If, like Thucydides and Tacitus, the American historian chooses
the history of his own country as his field, he may infuse his
patriotism into his narrative. He will speak of the broad acres and
their products, the splendid industrial development due to the capacity
and energy of the captains of industry; but he will like to dwell on the
universities and colleges, on the great numbers seeking a higher
education, on the morality of the people, their purity of life, their
domestic happiness. He will never be weary of referring to Washington
and Lincoln, feeling that