f^istorians anti flistorical Societies 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE OPENING OF THE FENWAY BUILDING OF 
 THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 April 13, 1899 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D. 
 
 President of the Society 
 
fE^istovtans anti Historical ^otittm 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE OPENING OF THE FENWAY BmLDING OF 
 THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 April 13, 1899 
 
 BY / 
 
 / 
 
 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D. 
 
 President of the Society 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON 
 
 Sliubcvsttg li3rcss 
 1899 
 
M 
 
 30256 
 
HISTORIANS 
 
 AND 
 
 HISTORICAL SOCIETIES, 
 
 In 1791, — eight years more than a century ago, — the site 
 upon which this, building stands was an indistinguishable por- 
 tion of the " Roxbury flats," as the region hereabouts had im- 
 memorially been called, — the neck-ward side of Boston's 
 Back Bay. It was a remote, unfrequented locality ; while 
 Court Street, as the ancient Queen Street of provincial times 
 had three years before been renamed, was still a place of resi- 
 dence. On the 21st day of January, of that year, eight Boston 
 gentlemen met by appointment in the house of one of their 
 number, William Tudor, — the house then standing on the 
 corner of Court Street and what was still known as Prison 
 Lane, now Court Square, — the present familiar site of the 
 northerly portion of Young's Hotel. Four of the eight were 
 ministers, — divines of the provincial period : all were men 
 of middle life, the oldest, James Sullivan, being in his forty- 
 eighth year, while Thomas Wallcut, the youngest, was only 
 thirty-three. The constitution of Massachusetts had at that 
 time been adopted only ten years before. John Hancock was, 
 for the eighth time. Governor of the Commonwealth ; it was 
 but the second year of the first administration of Washington. 
 The eight gentlemen, all born British subjects and only re- 
 cently become citizens of the young republic, had met for the 
 purpose of forming an historical society, — certainly the first 
 organization of its kind in America, possibly the first in the 
 world. They called it simply " The Historical Society," a 
 name which, three years later, when a formal act of incorpo- 
 ration was obtained from the Legislature, became " The Mas- 
 sachusetts Historical Society," — the name the organization 
 has ever since borne, and now inscribed over the entrance to 
 this, its third building and sixth abiding-place. 
 
As one thinks of those eight gentlemen gathered in the par- 
 lor of the Court Street dwelling on that January day, 1791, 
 and the purpose for which they were there met, one of the 
 great rhetorical passages of English literature suggests itself, 
 especially to an American, — Buike's much quoted vision of 
 Lord Bathurst, — then, it may be added, not yet become a 
 classic, seeing that it was uttered only fifteen years before, 
 and Burke was still living, a man of sixty-two. In that mem- 
 orable passage, you will recall, Burke pictures to the House of 
 Commons an angel as drawing aside from before the eyes of 
 him whom he describes as "the auspicious youth," the curtain 
 which veils futurity, and revealing the wonders he was des- 
 tined to see. Had the Genius of History, invoked that day in 
 the comfortable, four-square Boston dwelling by those eight 
 gentlemen, — four of them divines of the earlier Massachu- 
 setts stock, — raised for them in like manner that curtain 
 veiling futurity, it is curious to reflect on the range of feelings 
 he would have excited, — astonishment, wonder, admiration, 
 disgust, apprehension, fear. Their future is our past ; what 
 they would have apprehended darkly we have seen face to 
 face. Let us look at it for a moment, if we can, through their 
 eyes, and in Edmund Burke's mirror. 
 
 The angel of Lord Bathurst, you remember, enhanced the 
 rising glories and commercial grandeur of England, b}^ first 
 unfolding bright and happy scenes of household prosperity and 
 domestic honor; then, presently, pointing out in the larger 
 and grander panorama which gradually opened, a little speck, 
 scarce visible in the mass of national interest, a small seminal 
 principle rather than a formed body, he went on : " Young 
 man, there is America, — which at this day [1704] serves for 
 little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and 
 uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show 
 itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts 
 the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing 
 to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by 
 varieties of people, by succession of civilized conquests and 
 civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, 
 you shall see as much added to her by America in a single 
 life ! " 
 
 Burke, I am well enough aware, is a dangerous spirit to in- 
 voke. His imagination and his rhetoric suggest a standard 
 
with which no one cares to challenge comparison ; nor is it 
 altogether easy to drop at once from his lofty sustained ex- 
 pression to our simpler modes of speech. I will try to do so. 
 When the founders met, the town of Boston numbered, it 
 is supposed, some 20,000 inhabitants ; and its original topog- 
 raphy, as well as its forms of political life, were almost 
 unimpaired, — ^the town-meeting and its board of selectmen 
 still ruling the little peninsula, which a single bridge only 
 connected witli the mainland. Physically it was thus in all 
 essential respects the Tri-mount on which one hundred and 
 sixty years before Winthrop found Blackstone dwelling, — a 
 hermit in a wilderness. Intellectually, and politically even, 
 it did not greatly differ from the Boston of Cotton Mather, 
 Zabdiel Boylston and Samuel Sewall, — the Boston in which 
 Franklin was born and Samuel Adams agitated, — the same 
 Boston whose affairs Thomas Hutchinson administered so well. 
 But one physical aspect of the Boston and its immediate vicin- 
 ity of 1791 has peculiar interest for us here now and on this 
 occasion. The Common, an unenclosed pasture stretching 
 down to the easterly beach of the Back Bay, was on the out- 
 skirts of the town ; and beyond it lay a broad tidal estuary, 
 fringed by reaches of salt marsh through which creeks and 
 channels wound a sinuous way, along whose edges, the haunt 
 and the home of curlew and wild fowl, the eel and the 
 bivalve, tall sedge grass waved. The single traditional road, 
 with rude structures here and there along its sides, still led 
 from near the foot of the Common, across the Neck, to the 
 neighboring town of Roxbury ; and this building stands on an 
 extension of what was then known as Frog Lane, within the 
 limits of Roxbury, and in the midst of what would have seemed 
 to those eight gentlemen in Court Street a dreamy exhalation 
 from the familiar " Flats." 
 
 Such was the situation in the fast-aging eighteenth century. 
 The nineteenth has now already drawn yet nearer to its close. 
 Now imagine the Genius of History raising, that January day, 
 the curtain which covered futurity from before the eyes of our 
 founders, as Burke's angel raised it before those of Bathurst. 
 The thought, even at this time, suggests a shiver. What, it 
 might almost be asked, did not that century, then about to 
 begin, now closing, have in store, — -what ingredient for sur- 
 prise, whether that of admiration or of horror ? Pursuing the 
 
6 
 
 course suggested by Burke, the eyes of the founders would 
 first have rested on scenes of domestic honor and prosperity 
 not less alluring than those which would have made glad the 
 heart of young Bathurst. True, in the Boston of to-day the 
 founders would have sought in vain to recognize some familiar 
 feature of their home. Its very profile is changed ; for two of 
 Trimount's three hills are gone. If they looked long enough, 
 and with a scrutiny sufficiently close, they might, among the 
 towering monuments of modern trade, detect a few familiar 
 buildings, — King's Chapel, their State House, the "Old 
 South," Faneuil Hall ; but Boston, reaching out over its busy 
 thoroughfares to one half the points of the compass, — Boston, 
 absorbing adjacent territory, creating new territory, would 
 have ceased to be a peninsula, while in what they knew as 
 the Back Bay marshes, — now dotted with trees and shrubbery, 
 and become a region of watercourses, driveways and parks, — 
 in this by them least-suspected quarter would be pointed out 
 the home of the Society they had that day met to create. 
 
 It was at tliis stage in the vision that the angel called 
 Bathurst's attention to America, — the scared}^ visible speck — 
 the "seminal principle rather than a formed body." History, 
 not territory, was the domain our founders were gathered 
 there to enter upon. And it would seem as if it could not 
 have been without a gleam of Satanic mischief in his face 
 that the genius of the occasion now unrolled the record of 
 those then living or but lately dead, who, tested by the com- 
 ing century's judgment, had by their writings most con- 
 tributed to historic thought and historic methods ; for it is 
 not easy, though it assuredly verges on the ludicrous, to 
 imagine the dismay with which those four divines at least 
 would have read, blazoned on the roll in letters of a resplen- 
 dency which obscured and even obliterated the rest, the 
 names of Gibbon and Voltaire. Voltaii-e, the scoffing French 
 infidel, — at once the loathing and the terror of the orthodox ; 
 — Gibbon, the free-thinker, whose history its president was 
 that very year about publicly to announce, was not tolerated 
 as part of the curriculum of the neighboring university. Mil- 
 lot's " Elements," whatever that may be, was, as a text-book, 
 preferred, while " Gibbon's history was never thought of." 
 
 And from this point forward it is greatly to be feared the 
 heretofore beneficent Genius would have assumed an ever- 
 
increasing Mephistophelian aspect in the eyes of those newly 
 emancipated colonists, — the eight liistorical Fausts of Boston, 
 — while the vision would have become altogether painful in 
 its interest and its surprises. Again it changed. And now 
 the very foundations, the accepted primal facts, the basic 
 syenite, as it were, not only of human history but of religious 
 belief, one by one crumbled away, and Adam, even, had not 
 waked and walked in Eden. No longer descended from 
 angels, man had been evolved from an ape. And worse yet was 
 to come ; a world in which the principles of historical criti- 
 cism, applied to the books of Herodotus, were also applied to 
 those of Moses ; and, in no irreverent spirit be it said, the 
 Saviour even was discussed and weighed as a young Jewish 
 philosopher, — the son of a Nazarene carpenter. They little 
 dreamed it, those eight gentlemen, — for at best they were 
 not of the imaginative kind ; though, for that matter, had 
 they been of imagination all compact, they would hardly 
 have dreamed it the more, — they little dreamed that the 
 world, their world, even then stood on the very brink of 
 the French revolution, — that chasm yawning between the 
 centuries. 
 
 But it is time to have done with Burke and with visions, 
 and come to the matter in hand. Hard upon sixty years have 
 now elapsed since Thomas Wallcutt, the last survivor of that 
 little party of 1791, was borne to his grave. The life of the 
 Society they organized includes within a mere span the entire 
 development of modern historical processes and philosophy ; 
 and it is at worst not more than a pardonable exaggeration to 
 say that our organization goes back to the movement which, 
 as respects historical method, thought and expression, was the 
 equivalent of that other movement of two centuries before in 
 art and letters, which we call the Renaissance. Of the later 
 movement our Society has been a part. It has in a greater or 
 less degree sympathized in its spirit ; sooner or later, it has 
 accepted its resuhs. That spirit and those results are the 
 th-eme for to-day ; and, in measuring what has been already 
 accomplished, I shall endeavor in some degree to forecast what 
 remains immediately to be done : for in the great process of 
 evolution the last step ever leads to the next. There is no 
 finality in results. 
 
 The lines along which the process of thought and study 
 
directed to history were in future to be pursued had ah'eady, 
 in 1791, assumed definite shape. Coming at once to the con- 
 crete, our fathers — and by the phrase " our fathers " in this 
 connection I refer to the generation which intervened between 
 us and the founders — looked upon Hume, Robertson and 
 Gibbon as the three great modern historians, — that incom- 
 parable English triumvirate through whose example and pre- 
 cepts the classic traditions had been revived. No better 
 method of reaching a correct understanding of the progress 
 up to this time made in what we would fain believe to be the 
 science of history can, therefore, be devised, than by taking 
 these three writers as a landmark, — a starting-point, as it 
 were, — to estimate their work from the standpoint we occupy. 
 It is only necessary further to premise that they all antedate 
 our Society ; for, though Robertson and Gibbon did not die 
 until 1793 and 1794, their work had in 1791 been done. The 
 jjublication of Hume's history, begun in 1754, was completed 
 in 1761 ; Robertson's Charles V.', on which his reputation 
 to-day mainly rests, appeared in 1769 ; while the first volume 
 of " The Decline and Fall," which included tlie famous 
 fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, came out in 1776, and the 
 last volume in 1788. Between the publication of the earliest 
 English historical work of the modern school and the organi- 
 zation of this Societ}^ thirty-six years had, therefore, elapsed. 
 Looking back through the perspective of an additional cen- 
 tur}^, there can be no manner of question that those histories 
 marked, for the years between 1750 and 1790, a distinct step 
 in advance. Through them historical work was at last differ- 
 entiated from other literary pursuits, and the day was forever 
 gone when polite and elegant writers of the Goldsmith and 
 Smollett type could make a living from booksellers by alter- 
 nating a history of Greece with one of Animated Nature, a 
 history of Rome with a comedy or a novel, and a history of 
 England with a poem, a volume of essays, or a book of travels. 
 From that time forth historians were to constitute a class by 
 themselves. Accordingly, all other historical writers in the 
 English tongue before 1791 may, in comparison with these 
 three, — Hume, Robertson and Gibbon, — be dismissed from 
 consideration. These three were workers, though not the first 
 worker.s- in a new field ; for Bossuet, Condorcet, Montesquieu 
 and Voltaire had, though in another tongue, already preceded 
 
9 
 
 them. The difficulty with their method, briefly stated, was 
 that in it history was divorced from philosophy. They had 
 not, so to speak, picked up the true scent, and they coursed 
 wildly. But nowhere have I found this subject treated with 
 such learniug and subtle insight as in Leslie Stephen's " His- 
 tory of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century" ; and, as 
 what I have to say of these writers is, to use an architectural 
 expression, the motive of my discourse, I propose to use Mr. 
 Stephen's work freely, adopting his conclusions and, at times, 
 even his language as my own. Speaking then of the his- 
 tories of the triumvirate, he says they " have a common weak- 
 ness, though Gibbon's profound knowledge has enabled his 
 great work to survive the more flimsy productions of his col- 
 leagues. The fault, briefly stated, seems to be an incapacity 
 to recognize the great forces by which history is moulded, and 
 the continuity which gives to it a real unity. We have but 
 a superficial view, — a superficiality, in the cases of Hume and 
 Robertson, implying inadequate research ; and both in their 
 place and Gibbon's implying a complete acquiescence in the 
 external aspects of events, and the accidental links of connec- 
 tion, without any attempt to penetrate to the underlying and 
 ultimately determining conditions." This defect was, how- 
 ever, the inevitable result and concomitant of the stage to 
 which human knowledge had then advanced ; and it mattered 
 little if at all whether any particular historical problem was 
 approached from the rationalistic or the theological point of 
 view, infidel or catholic, by Bossuet or Voltaire, by Warbur- 
 ton or Hume, the result was the same ; and, in the absence of 
 a more correct philosophy of the universe, the globe and man- 
 kind, it had of necessity to be the same. If Bossuet or War- 
 burton took up the theme, a Divine Agency, working through 
 Special Providences and in ways unknown and unknowable 
 to man, set sequence at defiance ; if Hume or Voltaire tried 
 their hands at the problem, their formula was that, in the 
 range of possibilities, " an3^thing may be the cause of anything 
 else," and combinations, in reality, as we have since come to 
 see, quite superficial and of only passing influence, — mere 
 disturbing factors, like comets among heaveul}^ bodies, — 
 might produce results entirely incommensurate with their ap- 
 parent importance ; — what in the one case was the volition of 
 an irresponsible deity became in the other a contingency of 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 chance. Thus the slightest accidents might change, not only 
 a dynasty or a form of government, but the whole social con- 
 stitution or the beliefs of the human race. In other words, 
 from Bossuet to Voltaire and from Warburton to Gibbon 
 these attempts at history, however learned or pious, witty or 
 astute, were but the first crude interrogations of human ex- 
 perience, and in this field, as in geology, chemistry and biol- 
 ogy, revealed only varieties of external conformation, without 
 exhibiting the governing forces which mould the internal 
 constitution. So completelj^, indeed, did those writers fail to 
 appreciate the unseen and the deep-seated, whether influences 
 or tendencies, and, consequently, what we regard as the phi- 
 losophy of human development, — that, as the result of their 
 historical studies, Hume, on the verge of the French revolu- 
 tion, set down representative government as a mere passing 
 stage of disturbance, and pictured the despotism of the Bour- 
 bons as the Euthanasia of the British constitution ; while 
 Gibbon fixed upon the incipient decadence of the age of the 
 Antonines as that period of the world's history in which an 
 intelligent man, endowed with the power of choice, would 
 most have wished his lot to have been cast. 
 
 But a simile may here be of use. So far as true historical 
 methods are concerned, the situation during the second half 
 of the last century is suggestive of the meet and the hunting- 
 field ; — the pack was there, — the dogs, good, bad and in- 
 different, were sniffing and yelping, crossing and recrossing 
 each other's tracks, now and again starting off in some wrong- 
 direction and on a false cry, but ever circling to better pur- 
 pose, and hot on the chase ; then, suddenly, a deep-voiced call 
 is heard, some animal more sagacious or more experienced or 
 with keener senses than the rest has struck the true scent, and 
 raised the cry, — the game 's afoot, and at once serious work 
 begins, the whole hunt swinging into line behind the baying 
 hounds. When, however, it comes to extorting its great secrets 
 from reluctant nature, the true scent is not easily or quickly 
 found ; it is no morning fox-hunt or day's rapid run : but 
 the process is tentative and slow, and, even when at last the 
 problem is solved, its solution is apt to come indirectly and in 
 some unanticipated way. It was so in the case of history. 
 
 During tlie last half of the eighteenth century and the first 
 half of the nineteenth, it was with thought and the historical 
 
11 
 
 metliods as with maritime disco^'ery three centuries before ; 
 the world was fast ripening for the great discoverer and his 
 great discover}^ The human mind was steadily and persistently 
 groping its way. The " Esprit des Lois " was published in 
 1750, and Montesquieu has been pronounced by authority than 
 which I know none higher the founder of the modern his- 
 torical method. The same year also Turgot read to the Sor- 
 bonne his discourse on the " Successive Advances of the 
 Human Mind " ; and, onlj'- six years later, in 1756, Voltaire's 
 " Essai sur les Moeurs " appeared, the first disclosing, by a 
 flash of thought almost prophetic, the future philosophy of 
 history, while the last applied to historical evidence the true 
 critical spirit. At almost the same time in England great in- 
 vestigators, — men far greater than Robertson, greater than 
 Hume in other respects, if not greater in his special line of 
 inquiry, — men as great even as Gibbon, were patiently feeling 
 after the true historical method, and results of the first im- 
 portance were obtained in one direction by Adam Smith, and 
 in another by Burke. 
 
 This Society was, however, destined to have passed by 
 several years its first semi-centennial, and two whole genera- 
 tions of mankind had, since 1791, been gathered to their 
 fathers, before the riddle was rightly read, and the true scent 
 struck. Even then the riddle was read on another page of the 
 book, and the scent struck in a field close to that of history, 
 but no^ history itself. On the 1st day of October, 1859, a few 
 months only less than forty years ago, a book, essentially scien- 
 tific and yet not beyond easy popular comprehension, was 
 quietly published, entitled "The Origin of Species"; and from 
 that first day of October, 1859, a new epoch in the study of his- 
 tory dates.^ The true scent was struck,- — the long-threatened, 
 
 1 While these pages were passing through the press I chanced upon a more 
 scientific statement of the influence exercised by Darwin on liistorical tliouglit 
 and methods. It is in J. M. Robertson's " Buckle and his Critics " (1895, pp. 14, 
 15) : " [Buckle] wrote, it must always be remembered, before Darwin published 
 the ' Origin of Species.' Now, in logical course, a complete grasp of law in 
 social life can only be conceived as following on a grasp of law in animal life. 
 During three hundred years, step after step has been taken by educated Europe 
 towards a completely scientific view of tiie cosmos ; and each step in turn has 
 been vehemently resisted hy religious feeling, which specially embodies the 
 principle of fixation in ideas. The Copernican astronomy and the Newtonian 
 physics were in their day of propaganda utterly repugnant to prevailing opinion. 
 AVhen, after generations of confused progress, they had been assimilated by 
 
12 
 
 the fiercely assailed Mosaic co'Smogony, including its origin of 
 man, with all that it implied of celestial or providential inter- 
 ference in his process of development, was displaced, and 
 relegated, though with no unreverential touch, to its final 
 resting-place. It now stands there side by side with the 
 Ptolemaic astronomy, among those great discarded theories, 
 the stepping-stones on which man has slowly risen through 
 error to truth, — out of darkness into light. 
 
 Since then what had before seemed chaos has become order 
 and law. No longer descended from angels, — a son fallen 
 from grace, — the race of man upon earth has become, like 
 other kindred developments, matter for classification and sys- 
 tematic study. Before, he was the plaything of fate, when 
 he was not either favored or frowned upon through those 
 supernatural interferences the last faint suggestions of which 
 as agencies in the outcome of human affairs have not yet 
 ceased to be heard ; for within half a century a grave his- 
 torian of our own land has not been ashamed to refer to a fog, 
 which opportunely covered from sight certain militar}^ opera- 
 tions, as " providential," just as the artists of two centuries 
 earlier portrayed in their frescos the forces of Heaven con- 
 tending on the side of the Cross. It is safe, however, now to 
 say that before many more years have elapsed unmeaning 
 language of this sort will be as much out of date, and sound 
 as curiously, as the old folk-lore talk, once taken seriously 
 enough, of gnomes, genii and fairies. Already men and 
 human events are studied as the logical outcome of a long and 
 complicated natural process in which the two leading factors 
 are environment and continuity, and the result, evolution. 
 Under this new impetus the historical conception and histori- 
 cal methods have undergone rapid and noticeable changes. 
 Human history has become part of a comprehensible cos- 
 mogony, and its area vastly extended. No longer a mere 
 
 orthodoxy, there was little resistance — save that of professional routine — to a 
 scientific treatment of chemistry', since that dealt with a set of ideas altogether 
 outside ordinary religious thinking ; but the scientific method in geology was 
 angrily resented, because that plainly clashed witli the theological habit of 
 thought and speech, as well as with the sacred books. And scarcely had the 
 educated world adjusted itself to geology as unquestionable science, when Buckle 
 came forward with his challenge on tiie field of social history ; while just on his 
 heels came Darwin, with the biology that horrified a sanhedrim which had sup- 
 posed itself settled for life in an incomplete geology." 
 
13 
 
 succession of traditions and annals, it is closely allied to 
 astronomy, geology, biology ; and the rise and fall of dynasties 
 are merely episodes and phases of a continuous whole, — that 
 whole being the slow development of man and his institutions 
 from the family to the clan, and from the clan to the nation, — 
 from the kraal to the cathedral-town. From this has followed 
 another corollary of deepest significance ; both history and 
 biography, for "great men are the guide-posts and land- 
 marks in the State," and so biography is but another form 
 of history, ceased to be mere narratives of more or less dra- 
 matic possibilities, episodes which lent themselves to the 
 purpose of the word-painter, the literary artist, of hardly 
 more significance than a novel, and meant only to amuse, or, 
 at most, to instruct, — losing this characteristic, they assumed 
 a deeper significance. They acquired a scientific value. 
 Each life, each episode, each epoch fell into its place as part 
 of a consecutive whole, and became of import only as it was 
 shown to bear on, and in some way contribute to, that whole, 
 — the development of man from what he once was to what he 
 now is. Take for an instance our own particular field, the 
 vineyard peculiar to us. 
 
 Ours is the Massachusetts Historical Society. In a sense, 
 all history is our province, as all knowledge was Bacon's, for 
 the history of Massachusetts is of value not merely as a story 
 of adventure and settlement, slow growth and dramatic action, 
 something in itself curious, individual and interesting, if only 
 well and skilfully told, matter for a romance, an oi'ation, or a 
 poem ; in this aspect it has, indeed, its use for the literary 
 artist, as Hawthorne long since showed, but for the scientific 
 modern historical investigator all that is mere surplusage, — a 
 tale of little meaning ; the true significance of the history of 
 Massachusetts, like that of every other community, whether 
 Holland or Caffreland, lies in its place in the whole, — in its 
 contribution to the sum of human possessions, its part in the 
 slow process of human evolution. Is mankind richer or better, 
 nearer the ultimate goal, — whatever or wherever that may 
 be, — because of it ; and, if so, why or how? If such is the 
 case, and in just so far as it is the case, the record of Massa- 
 chusetts, as of any other community, is worthy of, and will 
 repay, careful study and scientific analysis ; beyond that, it is 
 of no historic value. 
 
14 
 
 The answer to this question is obviously to us matter of 
 moment, — for it involves nothing less than a justification, or 
 otherwise, of our being. After all, have we a right to be here ? 
 And that for us important preliminary question, also, I pro- 
 pose now to discuss for a moment. A mere incident, the dis- 
 cussion may furnish an illustration of my general proposition 
 relative to the history of our day as contrasted with history 
 as it was understood in the day of our founders. On this 
 point I am already on record.^ I have long held that the 
 history of Massachusetts is the history of the gradual and 
 practical development of certain social and politic;^ truths of 
 the first and most far-reaching importance ; that the passage 
 of the Red Sea was, from this point of view, not a more 
 momentous event than the voyage of the Mayflower, and that 
 the founding of Boston was fraught with consequences hardly 
 less important than those which resulted from the founding of 
 Rome. But I am a prejudiced witness; and such utterances 
 coming from the President of this Society on this occasion 
 might be set down as an exaggeration, — under the circum- 
 stances pardonable perliaps, but not the less to be taken with 
 more than the customary grain of allowance. I propose, there- 
 fore, to cite corroborative testimony, — testimony also which 
 no one will be disposed lightly to set aside as lacking weight in 
 the scientific scale. I have already referred to one of Mr. 
 Darwin's works as marking in its publication a dividing line 
 in the methods of historical research ; and I now quote these 
 words from another work of Mr. Darwin's published twelve 
 years after the " Origin of Species." He there wrote : " Look- 
 ing to the distant future, I do not think that the Rev. Mr. 
 Zincke takes an exaggerated view when he sa3'S : 'AH 
 other series of events — as that which resulted in the culture 
 of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the empire of 
 Rome — only appear to have purpose and value when viewed 
 in connection with, or rather as subsidiai-y to . . . the great 
 stream of Anglo-Saxon emigration to the West.' " ^ The 
 reference here is not, you will observe, to the discovery 
 of Columbus or to the settlement of America, but " to the 
 great stream of Anglo-Saxon emigration," — in other words, 
 the voyage of tlie "Mayflower" and the foundation of Boston. 
 
 ^ Massaoliusetts, its Historians and its History, pp. 9, 10. 
 2 Descent of Man, vol. i. pp. 218-219. 
 
15 
 
 Further corroborative evidence of my original proj^osition 
 would be superfluous. 
 
 What, then, are the contributions of Massachusetts towards 
 the evolution of man ? I liold them to be, not certain settle- 
 ments in the wilderness, and a gi'eater or less number of life 
 and death struggles with savage aborigines, — not conflicts on 
 land and sea, — not even the spirit of adventure and gain 
 which Jkirke has immortalized in that well-known passage 
 which in literarj'- splendor equals his vision of Bathurst ; — I 
 pass over, too, the memorable agitation which culminated in 
 that most dramatic episode, the Confederate Rebellion, our 
 Great Civil War; — all these are mere episodes, the material 
 out of which history is made tempting to the so-called general 
 reader. The contributions of Massachusetts towards the evolu- 
 tion of mankind are, as I see it, of quite another character and 
 three in number ; or, perhaps, I might better say, one only great 
 contribution, with two corollaries therefrom. The one great 
 contribution is the establishment of the principle of the equality 
 of man before the law ; and the institutions corollary thereto, 
 and essential to it as practical working machinery, are the 
 town-meeting and the common school, — the Citizens' Parlia- 
 ment and the Peoples' University. Herein, as I take it, is 
 the distilled and concentrated essence of the history of 
 Massachusetts, — here the justification of our existence as a 
 Society. 
 
 But I cannot linger to discuss this thesis further here, and 
 defend my claim on belialf of our Commonwealth and our 
 Society from possible assault. The significance of the contri- 
 bution may not be understood ; or it may well be the validity 
 of our Massachusetts letters patent of discovery in all and 
 each of these fields will be denied ; or our agency in human 
 development minimized in favor of others. I must pass on to 
 the wider field. History then, I will briefly say, is a many- 
 sided subject, and during long periods, stretching sometimes 
 to the millennial, one result, or phase rather, of development, 
 essential to the process of unending evolution, will, so to 
 speak, hold the stage. It is the scene in that act of the 
 drama, — the matter then to be passed upon and settled. It 
 is a great mistake also to assume that progress is the law ; 
 that the world is always and everywhere growing gradually 
 better, as it grows older. Optimistic and pleasant, this theory 
 
16 
 
 may also be Christian to a degree ; but, unfortunately, it is 
 not true. On the contrary, progress is the rare exception : 
 races may remain in the lowest barbarism, or their develop- 
 ment be arrested at some more advanced stage during periods 
 far surpassing that of recorded history ; actual decay may 
 alternate with progress, and even true progress implies some 
 admixture of decay. Great forces work slowly ; and it is 
 only after many disturbances and long-continued oscillations 
 that the world is moved from one position to another. Man- 
 kind, in the higher as in the lower stages of development, 
 though more in the lower than in the higher, resents nothing 
 so much as the intrusion upon them of a new and disturbing 
 truth. The huge dead-weight of stupidity and indolence is 
 always ready to smother audacious inquiries. Thus looking 
 back over forty centuries, we find that, though countless na- 
 tions have been in existence in ever}^ possible phase of develop- 
 ment, struggling in advance or retrogression, all contributing 
 something, could we only find it out, of value or significance 
 in the grand result, — whether hint of encouragement, or 
 warning of danger, — yet, during all that long period, — prac- 
 tically the whole of recorded history, — the upward destiny 
 of the race has rested in the hands of some half-dozen races 
 or nations; — so few indeed are the}', that they can be num- 
 bered on the fingers, those people incarnate with an idea. 
 Let us enumerate them ; so doing will not take long : the 
 Assyrians, with astronomy, the dawn of science, and the 
 written symbol, the origin of letters ; the Egyptian, with 
 mechanics and internal improvements ; the Israelite, with 
 poetry, history and the one God ; the Greek, with art, 
 letters and philosophy ; the Roman, with organization and 
 empire ; the Papacy, with spiritual dominion ; the English- 
 man, with colonization and representative government ; the 
 American, with equality before the law and democracy; — 
 eight nationalities in all, from the dawn of history to the pres- 
 ent day, and each one of the eight carrying that species of 
 development for which the race somehow possessed a special, 
 so to speak an inborn, aptitude to heights of perfection never 
 attained before ; and, in so far, extending the permanent 
 dominion of mankind. Not for an instant be it suggested that 
 other races or nations had not achieved results in the same 
 lines, at the same or even at earlier times ; merely these were 
 
17 
 
 in their particular fields supreme. They had the scientific 
 equivalent, whatever that may be, of the old theological 
 " mission." 
 
 Furthermore, under the influence of some law of evolution 
 the nature and operation of which is not yet fully understood, 
 each period of development seems to present some particular 
 phase, the essential battle-ground as it were of pi'ogress at the 
 stage it has then reached. It assumes different issues in differ- 
 ent countries, and the conflict is sometimes secular in dura- 
 tion ; but the central thought is always there, and, soon or late, 
 directly or indirectly, the progress of events works back to it. 
 This particular phase, this central force or thought, this all- 
 subordinating issue has, I submit, for the last four centuries 
 been religious and political liberty. This, so far as mankind 
 is concerned, is the last stage reached in that slow process 
 which began when man first became an articulating and tool- 
 using animal, and the end and result of which is the great 
 enigma ; — 
 
 " For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil." 
 
 But it is with the period antecedent to the now that history 
 has to deal, and the value of any scrap or bit, be it more or 
 less, comes from its proper placing in the entire scheme, and 
 "its accurate adaptation to the whole design as, so far, worked 
 out. Thus it has been said of the poet Browning that he 
 wrought " with the searching and unerring power of mind to 
 which the one thing of importance is, ' What is the value of 
 this character or incident in the history of human progress or 
 ]-eaction ? ' " i 
 
 Why is not this a concise, fair statement, from an unex- 
 pected quarter, of the crucial question every modern historian 
 or biographer must put to himself, and answer, if he proposes 
 to do really valuable and philosophical work: Where and 
 how does his particular subject — be it a nation, be it a period, 
 be it an incident, or be it a man — fit into the general scheme 
 of human evolution, and contribute to the grand result ? In 
 so far as it does this it is of philosophic historical value, — like 
 a geological study, or observations in botany or biology ; in 
 so far as it fails to do this, it may be a charming literary pro- 
 duction, an absorbing narrative, a vivid picture of life, man- 
 
 1 Robert Browning, " Essays and Thoughts," by J. T. Nettleship, p. 284. 
 
 3 
 
ners or adventure, or it may be a mere book of annals as 
 faithful as it is tiresome ; but history, in the modern sense, it 
 is not. 
 
 For instance, taking the field of biography in which to seek 
 for illustrations, the two most interesting men of the last hun- 
 dred years as I see them, — the two whose work was most 
 far-reaching in its connection with what went before and is to 
 come after, were Charles Darwin and Napoleon Bonaparte, — 
 men so different and so wholly dissimilar that the mere men- 
 tion of their names in the same connection cannot but cause 
 surprise, and, perhaps, a sense even of amusement ; — the one 
 a quiet, unassuming English naturalist and observer ; the 
 other a noisy, self-assertive Corsican military adventurer. 
 Their work and the results they brought about may be con- 
 sidered in either of two waj^s, — as that of individuals, or in 
 connection with their environment and the great sequence of 
 human evolution. Regarded from the first point of view, no 
 comparison can be made between them ; the life of Darwin was 
 devoid of incident, that of Napoleon full of dramatic action. 
 Viewed, however, in connection with man's development, 
 Darwin's place is the more interesting of the two, for it takes 
 us straight back to the Pharaohs. Napoleon, after all, was 
 but a blind iconoclast, — a tremendous instrument of far- 
 reacliing change under the conditions of his being. To under- 
 stand him and to appreciate the work wrought through him, 
 it is necessary to understand the history of Europe and eastern 
 civilization during the four centuries which preceded. They 
 made him possible, and gave him his significance. He is a 
 bit, and a central bit, in the mosaic. Darwin also was a bit, 
 but the historical mosaic of which he is a part covers thirty 
 centuries ; for the figure next opposed to him, and to be stud- 
 ied in connection with him, was an Israelite poet, soldier, law- 
 giver and philosopher, — the one man who had dared to say 
 he saw God. To understand Darwin and the conditions which 
 made Darwin possible, — which prevented his being burnt or 
 crucified, or, what is more probable, which caused his teachings 
 not to pass b}'' as mere idle words, — it is necessary to assign 
 him his exact place in the scheme of development, and to view 
 him in his connection with that scheme. It is impossible to 
 understand Darwin, and Darwin's English world, without con- 
 tinually bearing in mind Moses and that Hebrew philosophy. 
 
19 
 
 hoary with its three thousand years of antiquity, with which 
 the English naturalist came in such impressive contact. Dar- 
 win confronted Moses. Whatever comes between is one great 
 sequence, one immense continuity ; so the sequence is of yester- 
 day and the continuity small in the case of Napoleon compared 
 with what they were in the case of that other. 
 
 One more example ; and this time brought not from biog- 
 raphy, but from liistory. I have referred to the place Massa- 
 chusetts holds in the general scheme. Were I asked what 
 I considered the most interesting and dramatic episode in 
 modern development, I should reply at once the great six- 
 teenth-century grapple between Spain and Holland, when, as 
 middle-age feudalism went down and modern nationalism arose, 
 Philip the Second and William of Orange stood forth typify- 
 ing in thought and method and action the two opposing forces, 
 — the reactionary and the progressive. You cannot study or 
 write the history of Massachusetts intelligently without bear- 
 ing that struggle continually in mind. It is the key to all 
 which makes the long subsequent experience here valuable, 
 and gives it its correct "place and significance in the grand 
 result, — the States of Holland, the Commonwealth of Eng- 
 land, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ; William of Orange, 
 Oliver Cromwell, John Winthrop. The idea of the rights of 
 man — civil liberty, religious liberty — for which William of 
 Orange fought single-handed, and against which Philip the 
 Second struggled, with all the might of Rome and all the 
 gold of America to aid him, was merely the earlier phase 
 of that doctrine of the equality of man before the law 
 which was its logical sequence under the conditions of our 
 Massachusetts environment. Thus, whichever way you turn, 
 the garment hangs together ; and, as the law of continuity 
 asserts itself, one phase of evolution cannot be properly under- 
 stood if the others are disregarded. But it is with history as 
 it is with geology, — the science is still too young. Both are 
 products of the century now closing. 
 
 This new and enlarged conception, once it forced its way 
 into acceptance, could not but greatly modify the methods of 
 historical treatment. It has already done so to a very consider- 
 able extent, and it is safe to predict it will do so still more as 
 the generations of investigators succeed each other upon the 
 stage and in this, the laboratory. Even now it is not risking 
 
20 
 
 much to assert that the day of the general historian of the old 
 school is over. Experience has demonstrated the utter 
 impossibility of accomplishing satisfactory results in that 
 way ; the task set exceeds human individual capacity. 
 Take, for instance, two familiar examples which at once suggest 
 themselves, — Macaulay and Bancroft. Macaulay, in fact, 
 though it is questionable whether he ever realized it, or, 
 indeed, thought of it in that way, set for himself the task of 
 dealing with one of the interesting, though minor, episodes or 
 phases in the more recent stage of human evolution, — that is, 
 the final organization of parliamentary, or representative, gov- 
 ernment as the outcome of the struggle which, at the date 
 when his narrative opened, had been going on for two centuries. 
 His plan was to trace the process of this phase of development 
 until it assumed its catastrophic shape in the assembly of the 
 States General of France in 1789. Whether designed or 
 not, this was the scope and purpose of his task if properly 
 subordinated to any general scheme in the philosophy of his- 
 tory. His first chapter begins with this well-remembered 
 sentence — "I puipose to write the history of England from 
 the accession of King James the Second down to a time which 
 is within the memory of men still living " ; in other words, he 
 purposed to tell England's stor}^ during a little more than a 
 century, or from 1685 to 1789, for he could hardly have 
 written the words I have quoted later than 1845. This 
 period could be considered and treated either as a monograph 
 contribution to a general scheme, or as a complete history in 
 itself. Following the classic precedents, as well as the ex- 
 ample of the great English historical triumvirate, Macaulay 
 proceeded to treat it as a complete history in itself; and from 
 the very necessities of the case, it resulted in neither a gen- 
 eral history complete in itself nor in a monograph, but in a 
 fragment, a superb historical torso. It was the same with 
 Bancroft. He set out to write a history of the United States. 
 The first volume he published in 1832 ; the last in 1882. 
 Thus he devoted more than fifty years to his theme, — Gibbon 
 devoted but twenty, — and when, because of increasing years, 
 Bancroft's pen fell from his hand, he had not yet got to the 
 inauguration of Washington, nor had the United States come 
 into its organized form. In other words, he failed to subor- 
 dinate his work to any general scheme, or, consequently, to 
 reduce it within reasonable proportions. 
 
21 
 
 What, then, from the modern point of view is the object or 
 value of histories of this sort, combining wide original research 
 with a method of treatment at once general and detailed ? 
 What useful purpose do they serve? Are they meant to 
 afford instruction and entertainment to what is known as 
 the reading public ? If so, they are much too long and 
 ponderous. It was Macaulay's boast that he would make his- 
 tory so interesting that his volumes should displace the last 
 novel from the young lady's work-table. And he did it ; for 
 Macaulay, whatever else he may or may not have been, was 
 unquestionably the greatest and most fascinating of historical 
 raconteurs. Let us regard his history, then, as a literary monu- 
 ment, a work designed for the reading public. As such, it 
 was a great historical novel, and — in how many volumes? 
 His fragment begins with 1665, and does not bring the year 
 1701 to an end. Under his method of treatment he allows on 
 an average two hundred pages to a year ; and he worked at a 
 rate which produced about one volume in two years. Had he 
 lived, therefore, to complete it, this literary monument — this 
 unapproached, and we might add, this unapproachable histori- 
 cal fragment covering five years over a single century — would 
 have filled a few more than thirty volumes, and, requiring 
 sixty years for completion, would have furnished light and 
 instructive reading for a lifetime. Many will recall Macau- 
 lay's own criticism under similar circumstances on the unfor- 
 tunate Dr. Nares, and his "Life and Times of Burleigh." 
 The bitter chalice is now returned to the reviewer's own lips. 
 After numbering, measuring and weighing Dr. Nares's 
 volumes, Macaulay concluded in these words : " Such a 
 book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light 
 reading by Hilpa and Shalum. But, unhappily, the life of 
 man is now threescore years and ten ; and we cannot but 
 think it somewhat unfair in [a single author] to demand from 
 us so large a portion of so short an existence." 
 
 It is the same with Bancroft, — he, too, lacks design, 
 proportion and adaptation. His work is fragmentary ; fits into 
 no general scheme. It is neither literature nor history ; for, 
 as a literary narrative, the twelve volumes are too long ; 
 while, as history, containing as they do the st5ries of thirteen 
 several colonies, every student and investigator knows that, 
 if he wishes to be informed as to any particular person or 
 
22 
 
 event, he seeks his information, not in the volumes of Bancroft, 
 but in some monograph or history specially devoted to the 
 place, the individual, or the subject in question. Each of 
 these monumental works therefoi-e necessarily lacks what 
 can only be secured through a better considered process of 
 differentiation. In them the attempt is made to combine at 
 once, on a large scale, literary narrative with historical philos- 
 ophy and indiscriminate detail. Accordingly, they are too long 
 for a narrative, defective in philosophy, and incomplete, as 
 well as probabl}' inaccurate, in detail. 
 
 The same criticism may be passed on all the historians of the 
 old school who were contemporaries with or followed the two 
 I have named. Their methods were not adapted to the ends 
 they had in view. Art is long, and life is fleeting ; and the 
 taste of the reading world changes. The modern man does 
 not seem to have the patience, he certainly has not the leisure, of 
 the former generations. It would be very interesting to 
 know how many young persons now read Gibbon through as he 
 was read by our fathers, or even by ourselves who grew up in 
 " the fifties." Accurate information on such a point is not 
 attainable ; but in the case of one public library in a 
 considerable Massachusetts city I have been led to conclude 
 as the result of examination and somewhat careful inquiry, 
 that the cop}^ of the " Decline and Fall " on its shelves has, 
 in over thirty years, not once been consecutively read through 
 by a single individual. That it is bought as one of those 
 " books no gentleman's library should be without," I know, 
 not only from personal acquaintance with many such, but 
 because new editions from time to time appear, and the book- 
 sellers always have it " in stock" ; that it is dipped into here 
 and there, and more or less, I do not doubt; but that it is now 
 largely or systematically read by young people of the coming 
 generation, I greatl}^ question. 
 
 In history, as in every other branch of study, specialization 
 is the rule of the day. It may have been conceivable for 
 Lord Bacon to take all knowledge to be his province at a time 
 when the whole legal lore of England could, it is asserted, 
 have been loaded into one wheelbarrow ; but were a modern 
 Lord Bacon to proclaim such a purpose, the announcement 
 would excite ridicule, and very justly be accepted as con- 
 clusive evidence of tliat inordinate conceit which is the 
 
23 
 
 not unusual concomitant of a defective intellectual make-up. 
 But leaving Bacon's "all knowledge" out of the question, 
 and confining ourselves to some one small province in the vast 
 domain of history, a change simply amazing has taken place in 
 the requirements of an historian since that memorable even- 
 ing in October, 1764, when, as Gibbon sat musing amidst the 
 ruins of Rome's capital, while the barefooted friars were 
 singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing 
 the decline and fall of the city first started in his mind. Here 
 again, however, I sl)all have recourse to our foreign associate 
 already referred to ; for this matter also he has treated, and 
 treated it, I need scarcely add, with that combination of serious 
 thought and quiet humor peculiarly his own, and which causes, 
 in those doomed as I now am to follow him, a sense of pleased 
 despair. In his last publication Mr. Stephen says : — 
 
 "A century or two ago we were content with histories after the 
 fashion of Hume. In a couple of years he was apparently not only 
 to write, but to accumulate the necessary knowledge for writing, a 
 history stretching from the time of Julius Csesar to the time of Henry 
 VII. A historian who now does his work conscientiously has to take 
 about the same time to narrate events as the events themselves occu- 
 pied in happening. Innumerable sources of knowledge have been 
 opened, and he will be regarded as superficial if he does not more 
 or less avail himself of every conceivable means of information. He 
 caimot be content simply with the old chroniclers or with the later 
 writers who summarized them. Ancient charters, official records of 
 legal proceedings, manor rolls, and the archives of towns have thrown 
 light upon the underlying conditions of history. Local historians have 
 unearthed curious facts, whose significance is only beginning to be 
 perceived. Calendars of State papers enable us to trace the opinions 
 of the great men who were most intimately concerned in the making 
 of history. The despatches of ambassadors occupied in keenly watch- 
 ing contemporary events have been partly printed, and still lie in vast 
 masses at Simancas and Venice and the Vatican. The Historical 
 Manuscripts Commission has made known to us something of the vast 
 stores of old letters and papers which had been accumulating dust in 
 the libraries of old country mansions. When we go to the library of 
 the British Museum, and look at the gigantic catalogue of printed 
 books, and remember the huge mass of materials which can be inspected 
 in the manuscript department, we — I can speak for myself at least — 
 have a kind of nightmare sensation. A merciful veil of oblivion has 
 no doubt covered a great deal. ... It may be doubted whether this huge 
 
24 
 
 accumulation of materials has been an unmixed benefit to history. 
 Undoubtedly we know many things much more thoroughly than our 
 ancestors. Still, in reading, for example, the later volumes of Macau- 
 lay or Froude, we feel sometimes that it is possible to have too much 
 State-paper. The main outlines, which used to be the whole of history, 
 are still the most important, and instead of being filled up and ren- 
 dered more precise and vivid, they sometimes seem to disappear behind 
 an elaborate account of what statesmen and diplomatists happened to 
 think about them at the time — and, sometimes, what such persons 
 thought implied a complete misconception of the real issues." ^ 
 
 Yet, looked at from another point of view, it is scarcely an 
 exaggeration to say that there are not many considerable 
 branches of human knowledge concerning which the his- 
 torian of the future must not in some degree inform himself. 
 Somewhere and somehow his researches will touch upon them, 
 remotely perhaps, but still as factors in his problem. Cicero, 
 I believe, observes something of the same sort in regard to 
 the great lawyer; but the modern philosophical historian, 
 who undertakes to follow out through original research every 
 line of investigation which enters into his theme, must go 
 beyond this, — he too must take all knowledge to be his 
 province. In the olden time history w^as supposed to re- 
 late merely to the superficial course of events ; but now 
 the historian finds himself forced to deal with underlying 
 causes at once subtile, intricate and remote. What we have 
 come to designate as sociology is a leading factor in the 
 problem, and implies a whole network of externally con- 
 verging conditions, each of which involves the study of a 
 literature as well as, where it is possible, a close personal 
 observation of facts and phenomena. Formerly all necessary 
 information it was supposed could be acquired from books, — 
 manuscripts were better yet, for those were, without any ques- 
 tion, what are termed " original sources." Yet the advantage 
 in dealing with Roman military operations which Gibbon de- 
 clared he had derived from a short militia experience, is one 
 of the commonplaces of history : as he phrased it, " the cap- 
 tain of the Hampshire Grenadiers has not been useless to the 
 historian of the Roman Empire." Mr. Carl Schurz has spoken 
 of the infinite aid it was to him in writing the Life of Henry 
 Clay that he had himself served a term in the United States 
 
 ' Studies of a Biograplier, vol. i. pp. 8-10. 
 
25 
 
 Senate. But, for the old-fashioned historian, all this was, and 
 still is, beside the case. Hesitating never or at all, he flies 
 boldly at every kind of game. — all are fish that come to his 
 net. For instance, history is largely made up of accounts of 
 operations and battles on land and on sea. Weary of thread- 
 ing his way through a long period of most unpicturesque 
 peace, trying to make that interesting which was at best 
 commonplace, the historian draws a breath of relief when at 
 length he comes to a tumult of war; — here are pride, pomp 
 and circumstance, — a chance for descriptive power. I once, 
 in a very subordinate capacity, though for a considerable 
 period of time, was brought into close contact with warfare, 
 and saw much of military operations from within, or, as 1 may 
 say, on the seamy side. Since then I have read in books of 
 history, and other works more avowedly of fiction, many ac- 
 counts of campaigns and battles ; and, in so doing, I have 
 been most deeply impressed with the audacity, not of soldiers, 
 but of authors. Usually bookish men who had passed their 
 lives in libraries, often clergjanen, — knowing absolutely 
 nothing of the principles of strategy or of the details of camp 
 life and military organization, never having seen a column on 
 the march, or a regiment in line, or heard a hostile shot, — 
 not taking the trouble even to visit the scene of operations or 
 to study its topography, wholly unacquainted with the national 
 characteristics of the combatants, — these " bookish theoricks " 
 substitute their imaginations for realities, and in the result 
 display much the same real acquaintance with the subject 
 which would be expected from a physician or an artist who 
 undertook to treat of difficult problems in astronomy or 
 mechanics. They are strongly suggestive of the good Dr. 
 Goldsmith and his " Animated Nature." Once or twice I 
 have had occasion to follow these authorities, — authors of 
 standard historical works, — and in so doing have familiarized 
 myself with the topography of the scenes of action they de- 
 scribed, and worked down as best I could into the chai'acters 
 of those in command, and Avhat are known as the "original 
 sources " of information as to their plans and the course of 
 operations. The result has uniformly been a distinct acces- 
 sion of historical scepticism. 
 
 That among men of the closet and the historical laboratory 
 are to be found military students of profound, detailed knowl- 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 edge and great critical acumen, no one would dispute ; 
 least of all we, with at least one brilliant and recognized 
 exemplar in our own ranks, — a man who never saw an army 
 in movement or a stricken field, and yet who I once beard 
 referred to, by one who had borne a part in fifty fights, the 
 general then commanding our ami}', as the first among living 
 military critics. I do not refer to the rare investigators of this 
 character, when I say that I know of but one writer who has 
 described military operations and battles, — those intricate 
 movements of human pawns on a chess-board of much topo- 
 graphical uncertainty, and those scientific melees in which 
 skill, luck, preparation, superiority of weapons, human endur- 
 ance and racial characteristics decide the question of mastery 
 as between two marshalled mobs, — I know, I was saying, of 
 but one writer who has described battles and military opera- 
 tions in that realistic way which impresses me with a sense of 
 both personal experience and literary skill. That one is 
 Tolstoi, the Russian philosopher and novelist; his Austerlitz 
 and Russian campaigns of Napoleon, and his Sebastopol, are 
 masterpieces. A man of imagination and consummate liter- 
 ary capacity, he had himself served ; and, curiously enough, 
 in the same way, his compatriot, Verestchagin, has put upon 
 canvas the sickening realism of war with a degree of force 
 which could come only from familiarity with the cumbered 
 field, and could by no possibility be worked up in the studio 
 through the study of photographs, no matter how numerous, 
 or the perusal of the accounts " from our special correspond- 
 ents," no matter how graphic and detailed. 
 
 But let me here illustrate from my own experience ; and, 
 to occasions such as this, nothing lends immediate interest, 
 possibly value even, so much as a bit of personal reminis- 
 cence, — a paragraph, as it were, from an autobiography. 
 As I have already mentioned, it was my fortune at one period 
 to participate in a considerable number of battles, — among 
 them none more famous, nor more fiercely contested, than 
 Antietam and Gettysburg. The mere utterance of those 
 names stirs the imagination, — visions arise at once of attack, 
 repulse, hairbreadth escape, carnage and breathless suspense. 
 There was, indeed, on those occasions enough and to spare 
 of all these ; but not, as it chanced, in my particular case. 
 Some here will doubtless remember that English fox-hunting 
 
27 
 
 squire, who has gained for himself a sort of immortality by 
 following his hounds over Naseby's field, I think it was, 
 while the epoch-marking battle was going on. More yet 
 will recall that ploughman, twice referred to so dramati- 
 cally by Zola, intent upon his uninterrupted day's work near 
 Sedan, when a dynasty was reeling to its fall. So my 
 abiding recollection, as a participant in both Antietam and 
 Gettysburg, is, not of the fierce agony of battle at its height, 
 but the enjoyment of two exceedingly refreshing naps. As 
 a statement, this, I am aware, is calculated to startle rather 
 than to excite admiration ; but, to the historian, truth is 
 sacred: and the truth is — as I have said. Neither does the 
 statement imply any exceptional nerve or indifference to 
 danger on my part : I make no claim to anything of the sort. 
 It happened in this wise. In the campaigns of both Antietam 
 and Gettysburg I was an officer in a regiment of cavalry ; a 
 mere subordinate, responsible only for obedience to orders. 
 At Antietam, in the lieight of the engagement, the division to 
 which my regiment belonged was hurried across the narrow 
 stone bridge at the point where the little river intersects the 
 Sharpsburg road, and deployed on its further side. We were 
 then directly in front of Fitz-John Porter's corps, and between 
 it and the Confederate line, covering Sharpsburg. A furious 
 artillery duel was going on, to and fro, above our heads, be- 
 tween the batteries of Porter's command and those of the 
 enemy, we being down in the valley of the river, they on the 
 higher ground. The Confederate batteries we could not 
 see ; nor could they see us. Wlien we first deployed on the 
 further side of Antietam creek, it seemed as if we were 
 doomed, — so deafening was the discharge of artillery on 
 either side, and so incessant the liurtling of projectiles as they 
 passed both ways over us. Every instant, too, we expected to 
 be ordered to advance on the Confederate batteries. The situa- 
 tion was unmistakably trying. But no orders came ; and no 
 one was hurt. By degrees it grew monotonous. Presently, 
 to relieve our tired horses, we were ordered to dismount, and, 
 without breaking the ranks, we officers sat down on the slop- 
 ing hill-side. No one was being struck ; I was very tired ; 
 the noise was deadening ; gradually it had on me a lulling 
 effect ; and so I dropped quietly asleep, — asleep in the 
 heiofht of the battle and between the contendinsf armies ! 
 
28 
 
 They woke me up presently to look after my horse, who was 
 grazing somewhat wide ; and, after a time, we were with- 
 drawn, and sent elsewhere. I believe that day our regiment 
 did not lose a man, scarcely a horse. Such is my recollection 
 of that veritable charnel-house, Antietam ; — and I was a 
 participant, — indeed in the fore-front of the battle. 
 
 Gettysburg was different; and yet, as respects somnolence, 
 in my case much the same. During the days preceding 
 that momentous struggle, my command had been frequently 
 engaged, and suffered heavy loss. We who remained were 
 but a remnant. On the 3d of July the division to which 
 we belonged occupied the high, partially wooded ground 
 on the right of the line, covering the army's flank and rear. 
 It was a bright July day ; hot, and with white clouds slowly 
 rolling across the sky, premonitory of a thunder-storm during 
 the later afternoon. From our position the eye ranged over 
 a wide expanse of uneven countr3% fields broken by woods, 
 showing nowhere an}^ signs of an army movement, much 
 less of conflict. A quiet, midsummer, cluimpaign country. 
 Neither our lines nor those of the enemy were visible to us ; 
 and the sounds of battle were hushed. Waiting for orders 
 and for action, we dismounted, out of regard for our horses 
 as well as ourselves, and sat or lay upon the turf. Inured 
 to danger by contact long and close, and thoroughly tired in 
 body as overwrought in mind, we listened for the battle to 
 begin; and, shortly after noon, the artillery opened. We 
 did not know it, we could see nothing in that direction, 
 but it covered the famous advance of Pickett's Virginia 
 division upon Meade's centre, — that wonderful, that unsur- 
 passed feat of arms ; and, just then, lulled by the incessant 
 roar of the cannon, while the fate of the army and the nation 
 trembled in the balance, at the very crisis of the great conflict, 
 I dropped quietly asleep. It was not heroic ; but it was, 
 I hold, essentially war, though by no means war as imagined 
 in the work-room of the theoretic historian. Yet, as an 
 individual experience, to him it had its value. 
 
 But this is digression. Returning to our theme, the 
 increased and ever still increasing requirements of the mod- 
 ern historian, recent experience has supplied a striking 
 illustration of the vital importance of that special training and 
 professional experience of which Gibbon got a glimpse as 
 
29 
 
 " captain of the Hampshire grenadiers." Every recent writer 
 of history has, perforce, in some way had to take into con- 
 sideration the bearing and influence of naval operations and 
 supremacy on dominion. In doing so they have achieved 
 failures, more or less considerable. At last a specialist came 
 along, — a man trained to see things from the Ocean point 
 of view, — one who knew a ship, and had sailed the deep. 
 "The Influence of the Sea Power upon the French Rev- 
 olution and Empire" then appeared, not in ten volumes, but 
 in twjo ; the word was spoken, and at once that all-important 
 phase of the problem assumed, for the first time, its proper 
 place in subordination to the whole. Captain Mahan's re- 
 markable work affords also other examples, both striking and 
 suggestive, of the need of this special training in those who 
 undertake to deal with recondite historical problems. In one 
 case he illustrates by example what he terms " the carelessness 
 with which naval affairs are too often described by general 
 historians," by " carelessness " meaning a combination of 
 ignorance and audacity ; and he then over and over calls 
 attention to the fact that Napoleon, with his intuitive military 
 instinct, " to the end of his career, was never able to appreciate 
 the conditions of naval warfare." ^ Thus Napoleon himself 
 had not, nor could he acquire, what one of his acute French 
 critics terras that '■'' senthyient exact des difficultcs de la 
 marine^'''' the possession of which in his own case the average 
 historical writer assumes as a matter of course. And again, 
 the immensely interesting and curiously recondite period dis- 
 cussed by Mahan in his second work, the period of the Berlin 
 and Milan decrees and of the British Order in Council, has 
 likewise recently been treated by another American historian, 
 to whom Mahan takes occasion once for all to acknowledge 
 his "great indebtedness in threading the diplomatic intrica- 
 cies" of the narrative.^ Mr. Henry Adams wrote his account 
 from the diplomatic point of view; as Captain Mahan has 
 written his from the naval point of view. Both views are 
 essential to a correct understanding of what then occurred ; 
 and yet, I submit, separately nor together, do they give a full 
 insight into the situation. Neither Mr. Adams nor Captain 
 Mahan had a commercial experience, or could look at the 
 
 1 Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, vol. i. 
 p. 160 ; ibid. p. 325 ; ii. p. 27. 
 ■2 Ibid. p. 292. 
 
30 
 
 problem with the trained ej^e of a merchant or economist. 
 In this respect the works of both are distinctly defective ; 
 for, in those 5'ears,the whole struggle was over trade and trade 
 channels ; and, as a merchant or banker knows little of naval 
 operations or diplomacy, how can a sailor or a diplomat know 
 much of finance or of commerce ? Yet the average historian, 
 going back always to what he is pleased, in professional par- 
 lance, to term the original sources of history, knows it all. 
 
 But the fields are many, and heretofore the worker has 
 been one ; and, if he follows the old formulas, the general 
 historian of the future must arrogate to himself downright 
 omniscience. Not merely a student in his own tongue, he 
 must be a linguist and a cosmopolitan, — a soldier, a sailor, 
 and, like Voltaire, a Bohemian philosopher. He must, of 
 course, be a statesman, a diplomatist, a parliamentarian, 
 a lawyer, a physician, a theologist, an educator and a mech- 
 anician, besides being a scientist and a great traveller, with 
 a quick insight into human nature ; for there is not one of 
 these vocations wdth the results of whicli he is not soon or 
 late called upon to deal and to deal intelligently. Freeman 
 goes beyond this even, and in the first of his Oxford lectures, 
 while discussing the incidental helps to history, he concludes 
 that, though an historical student who is also a chemist will 
 clearly have an advantage over one who is not, yet this kind of 
 help is so purely incidental that he could hardly counsel the 
 ordinary historian " to make himself an accomplished chemist on 
 the chance of the occasion." But it is otherwise with geology, 
 and the group of sciences which have a close connection with 
 geology. " The physical construction of any counti-y is no 
 small part of its history ; it is the key to not a little in the 
 political destiny of the land and its folk." ^ And yet, I 
 remember to have had some years ago a conversation with 
 an historian who ranked, and still ranks, high, and deservedl}^ 
 so, as an authority on topics connected with New England and 
 Massachusetts, in the course of which he suddenly, and as a 
 matter of course, made the admission that he had never been 
 present at a town-meeting. It nuist have been from pure 
 indolence ; and I should not have been more surprised had a 
 writer on surgery calmly let me understand that he had never 
 been inside of an operating-room. 
 
 1 Metliods of Historical StuJy (ed. 188G), pp. 44-45. 
 
31 
 
 And. this brings ns to a new phase of the subject : — What 
 will be the history of the future ? Will it be the co-operative 
 history ? — The history prepared by many writers, each sup- 
 posed to be a master of the subject of which he treats, and 
 all those subjects welded together and fused into a narrative 
 by a common and competent head? I fancy not. There 
 have, as we all know, been almost numberless attempts made 
 in this direction, and two notable among them with which 
 this Society was indirectl}^ associated. But neither here nor 
 elsewhere does the outcome of the combination of literary talent 
 and special knowledge — the fusion of investigator and story- 
 teller — seem to me to have been satisfactory, or to encourage 
 repetition. The idea certainly is not new; for, since childliood, 
 I remember looking with wonder on a certain " Universal 
 History" which filled whole shelves in the library of my 
 grandfather, and the eaidy pages of which inform me now that, 
 printed in London between the years 1763 and 1766, and dedi- 
 cated to " his Grace the Duke of Marlborough," " Grandson to 
 the greatest Hero of our Age," it is compiled from " Original 
 Authors," and tells the story of man from the " Earliest Account 
 of Time to the Present." It is in sixty-four volumes, octavo, 
 and seems to have occupied at least five years in its prepara- 
 tion ; and now, I presume, it is worth just about as much 
 as an equal bulk of cord- wood. 
 
 The difficulty with works of this sort from the beginning 
 has been, now is, and ever will be, their uniformly uneven 
 character, and the obvious fact that they are neither literary 
 narratives nor philosophical disquisitions, nor yet the materials 
 of history. Too long and cumbersome, and lacking in indi- 
 viduality for the general reader, the specialist looks on them 
 with contempt ; while the student of philosophy skims through 
 them to see if perchance anything is there. Treated in this 
 way, Mr. Traill has recently given us " Social England " in six 
 volumes, as Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft is giving us a history of the 
 States bordering on the Pacific, which, though still incom- 
 plete, had at last accounts reached its thirty-fourth volume, in 
 bulk dwarfing the " Decline and Fall " to a pigmy. But the 
 one valuable lesson to be derived from all these combined and 
 co-operative efforts would seem to be that no original his- 
 torical work, no matter what the circumstances of its prepara- 
 tion, can be of lasting value unless it is the product of a single 
 
mind. Anything else is at best a succession of monographs 
 relating to the same general subject, of unequal value and 
 authority ; and, as such, would be almost as accessible, and 
 probably far more thorough and valuable, in separate form. 
 
 It now seems more probable that the differentiated treat- 
 ment of history will, in the not remote future, take quite 
 another direction, — if, indeed, considerable progress in that 
 other direction has not even now been made. In any event, 
 the tendency is apparent. The distinction will be between the 
 philosophical and literary narrative on the one side, and the 
 episode and monograph on the other, — all the work of mas- 
 ters, and all proportioned and directed to particular ends, 
 — literary, philosophical, or scientific. The monograph will 
 be the basis ; in fact, I cannot but consider the monograph 
 as the foundation and corner-stone of the historical edifice of 
 the future. I have already alluded to the bewildering multi- 
 plicity of topics and phases with which the modern historian 
 mus.t deal, and deal as a master. He must be a specialist in 
 everj^thing; and to no man is it given to combine even a dozen 
 specialties, and be a great generalizer besides. The work 
 calls indeed for mental aptitudes rarely if ever found in a 
 highly developed form in one and the same organization. He 
 who aspires to be a general historian, or to write history on a 
 large plan, can by no possibility cover all the minutise and 
 infinite details of his theme. If he would avoid error, he must 
 accept the work of otliers, often differently organized from 
 himself, almost always distinctively trained. On this point, I 
 fancy, appeal might with confidence be made to any historical 
 investigator who has ever written a monograph in which he 
 attempted an exhaustive study of an historical incident, it 
 matters not what. I have myself made several such, some of 
 which are incorporated in the Proceedings of this Society. 
 The result has been uniformly the same. No matter who the 
 author was, or how great or how well deserved his reputa- 
 tion for thoroughness and care, — George Bancroft or James 
 Savage or John Gorham Palfrey, — when it came to apply- 
 ing the microscope to his narrative it seemed replete with 
 errors, — errors of statement, errors of judgment, errors of the 
 press. It is true that in any well-considered narrative these 
 errors, when of detail, correct each other, and affect but in 
 slight degree, if at all, the general conclusions or the grand 
 
result ; but, on the other hand, there are not many eitlier 
 general conclusions or grand results in history which stand 
 unchallenged. The world has not yet definitely made up its 
 mind as to the Gracchi, or Richard III., or Mary of Scotland. 
 The topics calling for investigation, too, tend ever to increase ; 
 while the material for history is already overwhelming. The 
 monograph seems to be the one possible solution of the 
 problem. 
 
 But, just as there are histories and histories, so there are 
 monographs and monographs ; a biography is, in one sense, 
 always a monograph, and a monograph often assumes the 
 dimensions of a history. Investigators of to-day are apt, for 
 one reason or another, to select periods or pliases of develop- 
 ment, and devote the study of years if not of their lives to 
 them. In this way, indeed, some of the best historical work 
 is now done. Naming only recent English examples, take 
 Freeman's Norman Conquest, Froude's Reigns of the Tudors, 
 Gardiner's War of the Rebellion, May's Constitutional His- 
 tory, and Mahan's Sea Power, to mention no others, these 
 works all relate to episodes, or comparatively brief phases of 
 historical development. They, too, are in a way monographs. 
 On the other hand, the general historian is bringing the scope 
 and execution of his work within the limits of human life 
 and patience. Mommsen deals with the Roman Republic, 
 Green treats of the English people, each in four volumes of 
 not immoderate size ; while Goldwin Smitli has endeavored to 
 condense all that needs to be said about the United States in 
 three hundred octavo pages. This tendency it now seems prob- 
 able will continue and develop. The historian of the future 
 will thus profit by the example of Macaulay in more ways 
 than one ; and, while pursuing his methods, will avoid the 
 fatal errors into which the great I'aconteur fell. In other 
 words, bearing in mind the unity of history as a whole, and 
 the consequent subordination of its parts, he will produce his 
 results through a combination of the broad and general treat- 
 ment with the monographic and special treatment, — he will 
 not write history on a large scale as if it were a monogram, 
 nor will he, on the other hand, develop the monogram by de- 
 grees into the resemblance of a histor3^ For instance, recur- 
 ring again to the example of Macaulay, — at once a model 
 and a beacon of danger, — much of his best, most popular and 
 
 5 
 
34 
 
 most enduring work was done in the form of special studies, — 
 if not exactly monographs, yet in the nature of monographs. It 
 is through him that the average English reader of to-day knows 
 almost all he does know of Clive and of Hastings, and much 
 of what little he knows of Bacon, Dryden, Addison, Johnson, 
 Chatham, Pitt and Frederick the Great. Barere would be 
 forgotten but for him. These were all, so far as Macaulay 
 himself was concerned, preliminary studies for his more com- 
 prehensive work ; but, when he came to the comprehensive 
 work, he attempted it with the detail of a monograph. His 
 method was thus good ; unfortunately he had not thought the 
 problem out, and politics and India interfered with his execu- 
 tion. So the night came for him with a task, impossible to 
 finish, scarcely begun. The historian of the future seems now 
 likely to pursue a different method. Recognizing the fact that 
 lie probably is not at once a litterateur, a soldier, a statesman, 
 a lawyer, a theologian, a pliysician and a biologist, that he 
 certainly will not live forever, that he has not the cosmogony 
 at his fingers' ends, and that to ransack every repository of 
 information on all possible subjects transcends the powers of 
 even the most industrious, — recognizing in this degree the 
 limits of possibility, he will be content to avail himself of the 
 labors of others, better advised on many subjects than himself, 
 and, becoming the student of monographs, derive the great 
 body of his information, not, as the expression now goes, from 
 " original sources," or even from personal observation, but, as 
 we all in the end must, at second hand. His insight will be 
 largely into the knowledge and judgment of others, and the de- 
 gree of reliance to be placed in them. He will then approach 
 his task piecemeal and from different points of view ; not 
 fling himself on it altogether and at once. He will himself 
 become the writer of monographs, — put forth elaborate, pre- 
 liminary, tentative studies. He will thus for a long time soak 
 and tan, as it were, in the learning and literature of his sub- 
 ject, — approaching it now from this direction and now from 
 that, studying it in its parts and in its connection with the 
 whole, seeing it through many eyes and under the sway of 
 differing judgments, patiently endeavoring to extract from it 
 its most hidden secrets and to get at the true inwardness of 
 its soul of souls ; then, at last, throwing all his finished 
 monographs, his preliminary studies, and his matured judg- 
 
35 
 
 ments into the crucible, he will analyze, refine and condense, 
 in the end pouring out the concentrated result, not in thirty 
 volumes, but in two. So far as that writer and that subject 
 are concerned, we will then have the doubly distilled philoso- 
 phy of history, and a veritable contribution to the general 
 scheme. He will have squeezed into his solution not only the 
 essence of his own knowledge and thought, but the essence of 
 all the thought and all the knowledge that others also have 
 given to it. He will then have done what Thucydides and 
 Tacitus and Gibbon — still, when all is said and done, the 
 smaller Pleiad of the historical firmament — did in part be- 
 foi-e, and yet alone have done. Combining the historical 
 instinct with a highly developed literary faculty, he will seek 
 to produce in the blaze of modern scientific light and follow- 
 ing modern methods, not a brilliant fragment, or a bloated 
 monograph, nor yet an unimaginative book of dry annals, nor, 
 again, a library in itself, but a masterpiece, compact, self- 
 centred and philosophical, — like Shakespeare's man " looi\- 
 ing before and after." 
 
 If, then, I have rightly divined those historical methods 
 which will be in vogue in the twentieth century, — methods 
 in histor}'' based, as in science they are already based, on spe- 
 cialism and division of labor, — methods, like an edifice, having 
 the monograph for a base, the episode for walls, and the phi- 
 losophy of history for a dome, — it remains to consider what 
 part in the economy of such methods belongs to a society 
 such as ours. Has it a distinct function? — And, if it has, is 
 that function of importance ? I have often — more frequently 
 too of late than formerly — heard it intimated that the day of 
 usefulness of historical societies, even of this Society in par- 
 ticular, was over ; that it had done its work and was now 
 effete, — little moi-e, indeed, than one of the world's cast-off 
 garments, rich in material and strong in texture, it is true, 
 but quaint, old-fashioned and outgrown ; meet only for that 
 wallet time bears upon its back 
 
 " Wherein he puts alms for oblivion. 
 ... To have done is to hang 
 Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
 In monumental mockery." 
 
 And is this to be our destiny here ? Are we an organiza- 
 tion the function of which has been fulfilled ? Must this So- 
 
36 
 
 ciety hang here, on Boston's outward wall, " like a rusty mail 
 in monumental mockery " ? Distinctly, I do not think so ; 
 and that I do not think so is shown by the fact that I am 
 here to-da3^ That the Massachusetts Historical Society has 
 served, and well served, the somewhat narrow, if extremely 
 useful, purposes for which the founders designed it, I both 
 claim and admit. In this respect my only regret is that it 
 was not organized a whole century earlier, — in 1691, instead of 
 in 1791. It was at first designed to be a repository, a species of 
 general receptacle of original material for history, — ^ material 
 very liable without some such receptacle, as experience had 
 shown, to be scattered and lost. The Mather, the Prince, and 
 the Hutchinson collections, and their fate, were fresh in the 
 memories of Jeremy Belknap and his seven associates. In 1691 
 Increase Mather was fifty-two years old, and his son, the more 
 famous Cotton, although but twenty-eight, had already been 
 seven years an ordained minister. Samuel Sewall was nearly 
 forty. Joseph Dudley was forty-four. Behind tliem stood 
 Thomas Prince, a child of only four, but preparing to assume 
 the work when the others should lay it down. It is sad to 
 think what we of the sixth subsequent generation have lost, 
 because it did not occur to Increase Mather in 1691 to do that 
 which Jeremy Belknap did a century later. Involving as it 
 did the Mather, the Prince, and the Hutchinson collections, 
 that loss is valde deflendum. 
 
 Nevertheless, though much was taken, much is left ; and 
 during fifty 3'ears this Society performed a most useful func- 
 tion which, but for it, would have remained unperformed, and 
 the world now been perceptibly poorer thereby. That work, 
 however, is done, — unquestionabl}^ done ; and so far as it, 
 or work of similar character, is concerned, ample provision for 
 the future has elsewhere been made. There is, accordingly, 
 no question this Society might to-morrow be swept out of ex- 
 istence and, provided its accumulations did not go with it, no 
 scholar or investigator would be appreciably the worse. The 
 past is secure. But, on the other hand, the world is not yet 
 finished, nor indeed, so far as is yet apparent, does it even ap- 
 proximate the finished condition ; and there are many func- 
 tions of usefulness to fill, in connection with history and 
 historical methods, as in connection with most other things, 
 the essential point being always to bear freshly in mind the 
 
adage to " keep your li^ht so shining a little in front of the 
 next." We must adapt ourselves and our metliods to the new 
 conditions and the new methods. How is this to be done? 
 Through what reorganization ? Through what infusion of 
 new life ? 
 
 If I am correct in my theory, — my diagnosis of the situa- 
 tion, — if now in history, as already in other branches of 
 scientific investigation, specialism, differentiation and com- 
 bination are to be the distinguishing features of successful 
 working, — if the monograph is to play a part of ever-increas- 
 ing importance, then the future field of work and of use- 
 fulness of this Society becomes at once clear, and is to be 
 measured only by its means ; there is for it a field of devel- 
 opment unlimited. An historical society such as ours acts, it 
 is to be remembered, in two ways, performs two functions, — 
 it is a recognized receptacle, a repository, and also an agency 
 of publication. As a repository it, too, must specialize, differ- 
 entiate. The accumulation of historical matter, it is to be 
 remembered, progresses with ever-increasing rapidity. The 
 word is a strong one, but to me the futui-e is in this respect 
 appalling to contemplate. We are to be bankrupted by our 
 possessions. When Jeremy Belknap and his associates met to 
 form this Society, there was, I believe, but one public library in 
 Massachusetts, — that of Harvard College, — and it contained 
 about 12,000 volumes. Now, one hundred and eight years later, 
 that library contains 370,000 volumes, besides an equal num- 
 ber of pampldets ; while another, municipal librar\', having in 
 the mean while grown up within three miles of it, already over- 
 shadows it with 700,000 volumes. Our Society has a modest 
 collection of 40,000 books, to which must be added nearly 
 100,000 pamphlets ; but ours is only one out of over a score 
 of collections relating to specialties, — history, law, medicine, 
 science, theology, — almost every one of which now numbers 
 more volumes than Harvard College could boast in 1791. 
 Indeed, it is speaking within safe bounds to say that the 
 public collections of the Commonwealth to-day contain over 
 two and a half millions of volumes and a million of pamphlets, 
 accumulated during the lifetime of our organization. The pro- 
 gression has been, and is, geometric. At the same rate the 
 accumulation of the twentieth century defies computation in 
 advance, — • it will altogether defy any nice classification or ex- 
 
38 
 
 liaustive cataloguiug. The problem of the future, therefore, is 
 not accumulation : that is provided for. It will go on surely, 
 and only too fast. The question of the future, so far as the 
 material of historj^ is concerned, relates to getting at what has 
 been accumulated, — the ready extraction of the marrow. In 
 other words, it is a problem of differentiation, selection, arrange- 
 ment, indexing and cataloguing. To-day we are like men 
 wandering in a vast wilderness, which is springing up in every 
 direction with tropical luxuriance. The one great necessity 
 is to have paths carried through it on some intelligible plan, 
 w^hich will at once enable us to find our way whither we would 
 go, or tell us in what directions further research would be futile. 
 More than this, even, the field within which the particular 
 library is to be developed, must be defined, and its limits re- 
 spected. Within those limits the collection should be made 
 as nearh- complete as circumstances will permit, and its in- 
 dexing, while reduced to a system, must be elevated into a 
 science. 
 
 Fortunately for us, so far as the work of collection is con- 
 cerned, the future field for usefulness of this Society is in 
 great degree marked out for it in advance. In the process of 
 differentiation ours should be the Massachusetts historical 
 library, just as in this vicinity there is a specialized law li- 
 brary, theological library, medical library and scientific library, 
 — just as there will ultimately be libraries specially devoted 
 to the collection of public documents, of periodicals and of 
 newspapers. But our collection should include more espe- 
 cially the material for history and the monograph, — the 
 Massachusetts history and the Massachusetts monograph : the 
 standard historical work can be found in every public and in 
 most private libraries ; it should be a subordinate feature in 
 ours. Ours is an investigator's collection, not a general 
 reader's or a student's or a working library ; it is the resort 
 of the specialist, and the specialist on what is again a differ- 
 entiated branch of a great subject. — the history of Amer- 
 ica, of Xew England, above all of Massachusetts. And were 
 we to confine ourselves to Massachusetts alone, I fear the 
 accumulation would put severe stress on our power to receive 
 and to assimilate. It would not be profitable to enter into 
 any computation ; but one suggestion alone would in this con- 
 nection furnish food enough for thought, — the annual accu- 
 
39 
 
 mulation of single copies of all the newspapers and periodicals 
 and public documents published in Massachusetts would, I 
 apprehend, swamp us hopelessly within a lifetime. 
 
 The da}' of indiscriminate, unsystematic accumulation is, 
 therefore, past ; no receptacle will suffice for it, no power of 
 assimilation is equal to the work of ordering and digesting it. 
 It only remains for us, as for others, selecting our field, to 
 labor in it intelligently as well as strenuously, so as in it to 
 attain and hold a position of recognized superiority. If we 
 would not fail in our mission, we must then make this build- 
 ing a place where the investigator in certain specific branches 
 of history will be more likely than elsewhere to find what he 
 wants, and to find it readily. 
 
 So much for the first of our functions. But our Society has 
 always published as well as collected. We now already boast 
 over ninety printed volumes, the fruit of the century that is 
 ending. But publishing implies another branch of collection, 
 the collection of material for publication. This building 
 should in the future be a species of recognized manuscript 
 clearing-house. It should be the business of those connected 
 with it to receive, sort and examine, and destroy or preserve, 
 as the case may be, — more frequently, I hope, to destroy 
 than preserve, — unprinted material ; and to collect such it 
 should be ever on the watch. A diary — the daily record of 
 a commonjjlace life by a commonpjlace human being — is 
 probably as dreary and unprofitable a record as can be con- 
 templated b}' any e3-es except those of him or her who writes ; 
 and to those ejes it is apt to be unbearable. Hating to keep, 
 we lack the courage to destroj*. But, two centuries ago, 
 Samuel Pepys kept a diary ; and to-day in some mysterious 
 chest in an unsuspected attic of Boston there may be, there 
 probably is, hidden away some scarcely less curious record. 
 PoBsibl}- it is in process of daily formation now. If so, it is 
 our function in some way and at some time to secure it : and, 
 if we fe.il to do so, in so far we miss our destiny. 
 
 But of late, unconsciously to ourselves, the work of the 
 Society has been assuming another direction, — a direction 
 stimulated h\ the new historical methods and in close s^^mpathy 
 with them. For the first sixty-three years of its existence our 
 p: ' rs confined their efforts to accumulation, and to the 
 
 p- . -1 of the series of its so-called " Coliectioms," which. 
 
40 
 
 in 1856, numbered tliirty-three' volumes, culminating most 
 happily in Deane's edition of Bradford's " History of Plymouth 
 Plantation." It then began a new series, that of its Proceed- 
 ings, which now numbers thirty volumes ; and these volumes 
 of Proceedings are largely made up of monographs, and scraps 
 of original material of history thus placed on file, and, by the 
 help of our indexes, made conveniently accessible. In this 
 way we have already drifted imperceptibly into a channel of 
 usefulness which admits of indefinite deepening and broaden- 
 ing. The Society should become the patron of the historical 
 monograph, — it should produce them, collect them, and pre- 
 serve traces of them. Of such our volumes of Proceedings 
 may be, and should be, a file and an index; while our cata- 
 logues and our calendars should lay open the contents of our 
 unpublished manuscript collections. To accumulate was our 
 special function in the nineteenth century ; our function in 
 the twentieth will be to make all accumulations available. 
 
 Having thus moved round the circle, we have now come 
 back to the point from which we set out, ^ — or rather not, 
 perhaps, to the point from which we set out, but a point simi- 
 lar to that from which the founders set out one hundred and 
 eight years ago. Again the vision of Lord Bathurst ! As the 
 founders stood at the close of a century, so we now. They 
 then, doubtless, tried to peer behind the curtain which shrouded 
 from them what has since become our past, and, failing so to 
 do, sought in some degree to fathom the mysteries that curtain 
 veiled. In so far as they did thus attempt we can be sure of one 
 thing only ; they failed, and they failed utterly, to form a con- 
 ception even of the dramatic actualities, — the splendors and 
 the horrors that future had in store. They dreamed as little 
 that we, their successors, would, at the close of the century 
 about to open, be here amid the marshes of the Back Bay, as 
 they did that their coming century would see enacted in its 
 earlier years the most brilliant drama and the most dreadful 
 tragedy the eye of man has ever gazed on. So with us. 
 Educated by the developments of the nineteenth century to 
 appreciate every possibility of the twentieth, we strain our 
 imaginations as we try to picture to ourselves that which it 
 may have in store, not for us, but for the successors of the 
 founders in the seventh generation. Of one thing only may 
 
41 
 
 we too rest assured, — it is the unexpected which will occur. 
 In that uncertainty, our Society, as we and our descendants, 
 must take its chance. But, in addressing ourselves to the 
 problems immediately before us, — in taking the century 
 plunge we so soon must take, — we can hardly dare hope 
 that, in making up the verdict, our offspring in the fourth 
 generation will pronounce the work the doing which we now 
 have in hand not less well done nor less fruitful of results 
 than was the work the founders and our fathers did, when, 
 falling from their hands, we took it up. Let him that thinketh 
 he standeth take heed lest he fall ; let not him that girdeth 
 on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.