e
is the discoverer of the twelfth century; and, in a lesser sense, the
discoverer of the real meaning of the nineteenth. He perceived the real
architecture of both the Cathedral of Chartres and of "The Song of
Roland." How useless all the tomes of the learned Teutons seem in
comparison with his volume on Chartres, and their conclusions are so
laboured and ineffective in comparison with the lightning-like glance
with which he pierces the real meaning of the twelfth century. He has
his limitations, and he is not unaware of them. But when one reflects on
the hideous self-complacency, the eighteenth-century ignorance, the
half-educated vulgarity of most of the writers in German and English
who pretend to interpret the Middle Ages, one cannot help giving
grateful thanks for having found Henry Adams.

To be sure, he does not respect Harvard, and one of his reasons seems to
be that the Harvard man, though capable of valuing the military
architecture of the walls of Constantinople, cannot sympathize with the
beauties of Chartres or Sancta Sophia. Yale, he assumes, is more
receptive. However, Henry Adams, if he were alive to-day, would have
discovered that both Yale and Harvard, both seekers after culture and
the cultivated, the hitherto prejudiced and self-opinionated, have
profited greatly by the education he has given them. It seems that Henry
Adams fancied that he had failed as an educator. He did not realize that
he would give his countrymen an education which they greatly lacked, and
which many of them are sincerely grateful for.

The man that cannot read his chapter on "Eccentricity" over and over
again is incapable of appreciating some of Pepys's best passages! Books
to be read and re-read ought to occupy only a small space on any shelf,
and not many of them, in my opinion, are among the One Hundred Best
Books listed by the late Sir John Lubbock. Each of us will make his own
shelf of books. The book for me is the book that delights, attracts,
soothes, or uplifts me. Let those critics go hang whose criticisms are
not literature! Sainte-Beuve makes literature when he exercises his
critical vocation; Bruneti[`e]re has too heavy a hand; Francisque Sarcey
has some touches of inspiration that give delight. There are no really
good French critics to-day, probably because they have so little
material to work on. Our own Mencken, with all his vagaries, is worth
while, and Brander Matthews knows his line and the value of backgro