be reproduced is the general impression of Acton's many
contributions to the _Rambler_, the _Home and Foreign_, and the _North
British Review_. Perhaps none of his longer and more ceremonious
writings can give to the reader so vivid a sense at once of the range of
Acton's erudition and the strength of his critical faculty as does the
perusal of these short notices. Any one who wished to understand the
personality of Acton could not do better than take the published
Bibliography and read a few of the articles on "contemporary literature"
furnished by him to the three Reviews. In no other way could the reader
so clearly realise the complexity of his mind or the vast number of
subjects which he could touch with the hand of a master. In a single
number there are twenty-eight such notices. His writing before he was
thirty years of age shows an intimate and detailed knowledge of
documents and authorities which with most students is the "hard won and
hardly won" achievement of a lifetime of labour. He always writes as the
student, never as the _litterateur_. Even the memorable phrases which
give point to his briefest articles are judicial, not journalistic. Yet
he treats of matters which range from the dawn of history through the
ancient empires down to subjects so essentially modern as the vast
literature of revolutionary France or the leaders of the romantic
movement which replaced it. In all these writings of Acton those
qualities manifest themselves, which only grew stronger with time, and
gave him a distinct and unique place among his contemporaries. Here is
the same austere love of truth, the same resolve to dig to the bed-rock
of fact, and to exhaust all sources of possible illumination, the same
breadth of view and intensity of inquiring ardour, which stimulated his
studies and limited his productive power. Above all, there is the same
unwavering faith in principles, as affording the only criterion of
judgment amid the ever-fluctuating welter of human passions, political
manoeuvring, and ecclesiastical intrigue. But this is not all. We note
the same value for great books as the source of wisdom, combined with
the same enthusiasm for immediate justice which made Acton the despair
of the mere academic student, an enigma among men of the world, and a
stumbling-block to the politician of the clubs. Beyond this, we find
that certainty and decision of judgment, that crisp concentration of
phrase, that grave and deliberate iron