ng _Mystik_, in order to amuse him with ropes of sand: and the
severest censure of Doellinger's art as an historian was pronounced by
Goerres when he said, "I always see analogies, and you always see
differences."

At all times, but in his early studies especially, he owed much to the
Italians, whose ecclesiastical literature was the first that he
mastered, and predominates in his Church history. Several of his
countrymen, such as Savigny and Raumer, had composed history on the
shoulders of Bolognese and Lombard scholars, and some of their most
conspicuous successors to the present day have lived under heavy
obligations to Modena and San Marino. During the tranquil century
before the Revolution, Italians studied the history of their country
with diligence and success. Even such places as Parma, Verona, Brescia,
became centres of obscure but faithful work. Osimo possessed annals as
bulky as Rome. The story of the province of Treviso was told in twenty
volumes. The antiquities of Picenum filled thirty-two folios. The best
of all this national and municipal patriotism was given to the service
of religion. Popes and cardinals, dioceses and parish churches became
the theme of untiring enthusiasts. There too were the stupendous records
of the religious orders, their bulls and charters, their biography and
their bibliography. In this immense world of patient, accurate, devoted
research, Doellinger laid the deep foundations of his historical
knowledge. Beginning like everybody with Baronius and Muratori, he gave
a large portion of his life to Noris, and to the solid and enlightened
scholarship that surrounded Benedict XIV., down to the compilers,
Borgia, Fantuzzi, Marini, with whom, in the evil days of regeneration by
the French, the grand tradition died away. He has put on record his
judgment that Orsi and Saccarelli were the best writers on the general
history of the Church. Afterwards, when other layers had been
superposed, and the course he took was his own, he relied much on the
canonists, Ballerini and Berardi; and he commended Bianchi, De
Bennettis, and the author of the anonymous _Confutazione_, as the
strongest Roman antidote to Blondel, Buckeridge, and Barrow. Italy
possessed the largest extant body of Catholic learning; the whole sphere
of Church government was within its range, and it enjoyed something of
the official prerogative.

Next to the Italians he gave systematic attention to the French. The
conspicuous Ga