of which we have no better examples than the prefaces of
Bishop Stubbs. An important event in this series was the attack on
Dino Compagni, which, for the sake of Dante, roused the best Italian
scholars to a not unequal contest. When we are told that England is
behind the Continent in critical faculty, we must admit that this is
true as to quantity, not as to quality of work. As they are no longer
living, I will say of two Cambridge professors, Lightfoot and Hort,
that they were critical scholars whom neither Frenchman nor German has
surpassed.

[Sidenote: DEGREES OF IMPARTIALITY]

The third distinctive note of the generation of writers who dug so
deep a trench between history as known to our grandfathers and as it
appears to us, is their dogma of impartiality. To an ordinary man the
word means no more than justice. He considers that he may proclaim the
merits of his own religion, of his prosperous and enlightened country,
of his political persuasion, whether democracy, or liberal monarchy,
or historic conservatism, without transgression or offence, so long as
he is fair to the relative, though inferior merits of others, and
never treats men as saints or as rogues for the side they take. There
is no impartiality, he would say, like that of a hanging judge. The
men who, with the compass of criticism in their hands, sailed the
uncharted sea of original research, proposed a different view.
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not
on opinions. They had their own notion of truthfulness, based on the
exceeding difficulty of finding truth, and the still greater
difficulty of impressing it when found. They thought it possible to
write, with so much scruple, and simplicity, and insight, as to carry
along with them every man of good will, and, whatever his feelings, to
compel his assent. Ideas which, in religion and in politics, are
truths, in history are forces. They must be respected; they must not
be affirmed. By dint of a supreme reserve, by much self-control, by a
timely and discreet indifference, by secrecy in the matter of the
black cap, history might be lifted above contention, and made an
accepted tribunal, and the same for all.[63] If men were truly
sincere, and delivered judgment by no canons but those of evident
morality, then Julian would be described in the same terms by
Christian and pagan, Luther by Catholic and Protestant, Washington by
Whig and Tory, Napoleon by patriotic Frenchman