t when
seventeen years old and have continually re-read it; and, while I fail
to comprehend it wholly, and, although it does not give me the same kind
of knowledge of human character that I derive from Shakespeare's plays,
I carry away from it abiding impressions from the contact that it
affords with one of the greatest of human minds.

All this counsel of mine, as to the reading of the embryo historian is,
of course, merely supplementary, and does not pretend to be exhaustive.
I am assuming that during his undergraduate and graduate course the
student has been advised to read, either wholly or in part, most of the
English, German, and French scientific historians of the past fifty
years, and that he has become acquainted in a greater or less degree
with all the eminent American historians. My own experience has been
that a thorough knowledge of one book of an author is better than a
superficial acquaintance with all of his works. The only book of Francis
Parkman's which I have read is his "Montcalm and Wolfe," parts of which
I have gone over again and again. One chapter, pervaded with the scenery
of the place, I have read on Lake George, three others more than once at
Quebec, and I feel that I know Parkman's method as well as if I had
skimmed all his volumes. But I believe I was careful in my selection,
for in his own estimation, and in that of the general public, "Montcalm
and Wolfe" is his best work. So with Motley, I have read nothing but
the "Dutch Republic," but that I have read through twice carefully. I
will not say that it is the most accurate of his works, but it is
probably the most interesting and shows his graphic and dashing style at
its best. An admirer of Stubbs told me that his "Lectures and Addresses
on Mediaeval and Modern History" would give me a good idea of his
scholarship and literary manner and that I need not tackle his magnum
opus. But those lectures gave me a taste for more and, undeterred by the
remark of still another admirer that nobody ever read his
"Constitutional History" through, I did read one volume with interest
and profit, and I hope at some future time to read the other two. On the
other hand, I have read everything that Samuel R. Gardiner has written
except "What Gunpowder Plot Was." Readers differ. There are fast readers
who have the faculty of getting just what they want out of a book in a
brief time and they retain the thing which they have sought. Assuredly I
envy men that pow