tion. The Liberal School, whose home was France, explained and
justified the Revolution as a true development, and the ripened fruit
of all history.[56] These are the two main arguments of the generation
to which we owe the notion and the scientific methods that make
history so unlike what it was to the survivors of the last century.
Severally, the innovators were not superior to the men of old.
Muratori was as widely read, Tillemont as accurate, Leibniz as able,
Freret as acute, Gibbon as masterly in the craft of composite
construction. Nevertheless, in the second quarter of this century, a
new era began for historians.

[Sidenote: USE OF UNPUBLISHED SOURCES]

[Sidenote: INSUFFICIENCY OF BOOKS]

I would point to three things in particular, out of many, which
constitute the amended order. Of the incessant deluge of new and
unsuspected matter I need say little. For some years, the secret
archives of the papacy were accessible at Paris; but the time was not
ripe, and almost the only man whom they availed was the archivist
himself.[57] Towards 1830 the documentary studies began on a large
scale, Austria leading the way. Michelet, who claims, towards 1836,
to have been the pioneer,[58] was preceded by such rivals as
Mackintosh, Bucholtz, and Mignet. A new and more productive period
began thirty years later, when the war of 1859 laid open the spoils of
Italy. Every country in succession has now allowed the exploration of
its records, and there is more fear of drowning than of drought. The
result has been that a lifetime spent in the largest collection of
printed books would not suffice to train a real master of modern
history. After he had turned from literature to sources, from Burnet
to Pocock, from Macaulay to Madame Campana, from Thiers to the
interminable correspondence of the Bonapartes, he would still feel
instant need of inquiry at Venice or Naples, in the Ossuna library or
at the Hermitage.[59]

[Sidenote: HISTORY RENEWED BY CRITICISM]

These matters do not now concern us. For our purpose, the main thing
to learn is not the art of accumulating material, but the sublimer art
of investigating it, of discerning truth from falsehood, and certainty
from doubt. It is by solidity of criticism more than by the plenitude
of erudition, that the study of history strengthens, and straightens,
and extends the mind.[60] And the accession of the critic in the place
of the indefatigable compiler, of the artist in coloured nar