eteenth century who had exercised the most profound
influence were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Auguste Comte.[37]
I have already recommended Balzac, who portrays the life of the
nineteenth century; and Sainte-Beuve, in developing the thought of the
same period, gives us a history of French literature and society.
Moreover, his volumes are valuable to one who is studying human
character by the means of books. "Sainte-Beuve had," wrote Henry James,
"two passions which are commonly assumed to exclude each other, the
passion for scholarship and the passion for life. He valued life and
literature equally for the light they threw on each other; to his mind,
one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart."[38]

Supposing the student to have devoted five years to this general
preparation and to have arrived at the age of thirty, which Motley, in
similar advice to an aspiring historian, fixed as the earliest age at
which one should devote himself to his special work, he is ready to
choose a period and write a history, if indeed his period has not
already suggested itself during his years of general preparation. At all
events it is doubtless that his own predilection will fix his country
and epoch and the only counsel I have to offer is to select an
interesting period. As to this, opinions will differ; but I would say
for example that the attractive parts of German history are the
Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, the epoch of Frederick the Great,
and the unification of Germany which we have witnessed in our own day.
The French Revolution is to me the most striking period in modern
annals, whilst the history of the Directory is dull, relieved only by
the exploits of Napoleon; but when Napoleon becomes the chief officer of
state, interest revives and we follow with unflagging attention the
story of this master of men, for which there is a superabundance of
material, in striking contrast with the little that is known about his
Titanic predecessors, Alexander and Caesar, in the accounts of whose
careers conjecture must so frequently come to the aid of facts to
construct a continuous story. The Restoration and the reign of Louis
Philippe would for me be dull periods were they not illumined by the
novels of Balzac; but from the Revolution of 1848 to the fall of the
Second Empire and the Commune, a wonderful drama was enacted. In our own
history the Revolutionary War, the framing of the Constitution, and
Wa