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n 1796, and was graduated from Harvard in 1814. An accident in college destroyed the sight of one eye, and left him but a precarious use of the other. Nevertheless he resolved to emulate Gibbon, whose "Autobiography" had impressed him, and to make himself "an historian in the best sense of the term." He studied arduously in Europe, with the help of secretaries, and by 1826, after a long hesitation, decided upon a "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella." In ten years the three volumes were finished. "Pursuing the work in this quiet, leisurely way, without over-exertion or fatigue," wrote Prescott, "or any sense of obligation to complete it in a given time, I have found it a continual source of pleasure." It was published at his own expense on Christmas Day, 1837, and met with instantaneous success. "My market and my reputation rest principally with England," he wrote in 1838--a curious footnote, by the way, to Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa Address of the year before. But America joined with England, in praising the new book. Then Prescott turned to the "Conquest of Mexico," the "Conquest of Peru," and finally to his unfinished "History of the Reign of Philip II." He had, as Dean Milman wrote him, "the judgment to choose noble subjects." He wrote with serenity and dignity, with fine balance and proportion. Some of the Spanish documents upon which he relied have been proved less trustworthy than he thought, but this unsuspected defect in his materials scarcely impaired the skill with which this unhasting, unresting painter filled his great canvases. They need retouching, perhaps, but the younger historians are incompetent for the task. Prescott died in 1859, in the same year as Irving, and he already seems quite as remote from the present hour. His young friend Motley, of "Dutch Republic" fame, was another Boston Brahmin, born in the year of Prescott's graduation from college. He attended George Bancroft's school, went to Harvard in due course, where he knew Holmes, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips, and at Gottingen became a warm friend of a dog-lover and duelist named Bismarck. Young Motley wrote a couple of unsuccessful novels, dabbled in diplomacy, politics, and review-writing, and finally, encouraged by Prescott, settled down upon Dutch history, went to Europe to work up his material in 1851, and, after five years, scored an immense triumph with his "Rise of the Dutch Republic." He was a brilliant partisan, hating Spa
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