ourishing. To this has to be added the very serious
drawback that when examination of documents is ranked before everything,
even the slightest questioning of that examination becomes fatal, and a
historian is discredited because some one of his critics has found a
document unknown to him, or a flaw, possibly of the slightest
importance, in his interpretation of the texts.

Nevertheless it is necessary to lay our account with this new style of
history, and it is fortunately possible to admit that the gains of it
have not been small. Thanks to its practitioners, we know infinitely
more than our fathers did, though it may not be so certain that we make
as good a use of our knowledge. And the evil of multiplication of
particulars, like other evils, brings its own cure. The work of mere
rough-hewing, of examination into the brute facts, is being done--has to
no small extent actually been done--as it never was done before. The
"inedited" has ceased to be inedited--is put on record for anybody to
examine with little trouble. The mere loss of valuable material, which
has gone on in former ages to an extent only partially compensated by
the welcome destruction of material that has no value at all, has been
stopped. The pioneers of the historical summer (to borrow a decorative
phrase from Charles of Orleans) have been very widely abroad, and there
is no particular reason why the summer itself should not come.

When it does it will perhaps discard some ways and fashions which have
been lately in vogue; but it will assuredly profit by much that has been
done during the period we survey, no less in form than in matter. The
methods have been to a certain extent improved, the examples have been
multiplied, the historical sense has certainly taken a wider and deeper
hold of mankind. Very little is wanting but some one _ausus contemnere
vana_; and when the future Thucydides or the future Carlyle sets to
work, he will be freed, by the labour of others, alike from the paucity
of materials that a little weakened Thucydides, and from the brute mass
of them that embittered the life of Carlyle.

Not so much is to be said of the remaining divisions or departments
individually. If the drama of the century is not, in so far as acting
drama is concerned, almost a blank from the point of view of literature,
the literary drama of the century is almost a blank as regards acting
qualities. It is true that there have been at times attempts to obtain