ot been
anticipated by others. Lord Acton has laid down that 'every student
ought to know that mastery is acquired by acknowledged limitation'--he
must peg out his small holding and keep within its bounds. Histories
are now written by many and various hands--as in the case of the
Cambridge Modern History, which already counts numerous volumes--and
so the general area is divided and subdivided among experts, each of
whom dips deeply into his particular allotment, and takes heavy crops
off his ground. Yet the productiveness of the field at large seems
still inexhaustible, for there is always some new theory to be
established, some fresh vein of facts to be opened, some corrections
or additions to be made. Moreover, the experts, while they toil at
their own special work, while they attack a difficult problem from
different sides, must nevertheless co-operate with each other. Sir
William Ramsay, a noted archaeologist, tells us that for a new study
of history there is needed a group of scholars working in unison; that
the solitary historian is doomed to failure. He adds that the history
of the Roman empire has still to be re-written. The late Lord Acton,
when as Professor of Modern History at Cambridge he drew out his plan
for a modern history that would satisfy the scientific demand for
completeness and exactitude, proposed to distribute the work among
more than a hundred writers. He observed that the entire bulk of new
matter which the last forty years have supplied amounts to many
thousand volumes. When history becomes the product of many hands and
various minds the artistic element is likely to disappear.

One obvious result of this state of things is that we hear no more of
the old-fashioned histories embracing vast subjects, the work of a
single author--of histories of the world, or a history of Europe like
Alison's in thirty volumes. Indeed it is not long since Buckle found
his _History of European Civilisation_ unmanageable; he died before he
could finish it. At the present time historical subjects are divided
and subdivided by classes, periods, or even single events. Art,
literature, philosophy, war, diplomacy, receive separate treatment. We
have colonial histories in numerous thick volumes; though no English
colony has a long past. We have histories of the queens who have
reigned in their own right, like Queen Elizabeth, and of Queens
Consort: we have even a book on the bachelor kings of England, written
by a lady