rd, early and nobly earned, had given to the boy at
seventeen the privileges and dignity of manhood. He was destined to
become a scholar, eminent, even among the rarely and richly cultured
minds of his own New England, for his universal knowledge, clearness of
intellect, prompt energy, and indomitable perseverance. Inspired by
these gifts and attainments, it was only natural, almost inevitable,
that his first appearance upon the literary stage should have been in
the _role_ of a novelist. The active young intellect was pliant and
strong, but had not yet learned its power. Before him lay the broad
fields of romance, fascinating with their royal _fleurs de lis_, rich
with the contributions of every age, some quaint and laughter-moving,
some pompous and exaggerated, some soul-stirring and grand. Impelled,
perhaps, less by a thirst for fame than a desire to satisfy the
resistless impulses of an energetic nature, and lay those fair ghosts of
enterprises dimly recognized that beckoned him onward, he followed the
first path that lay before him, and became a romance writer. His first
work, _Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial_, was published in
1839, and subsequently appeared _Merry Mount, a Romance of
Massachusetts_. It is curious to trace in these first flights of a
genius that has since learned its legitimate field, a tendency to the
breadth of Motley's later efforts, an instinctive and evidently
unconscious passion for the descriptive, an admirably curbed yet still
powerful impatience of the light fetters, the toy regulations of the
realm of Fiction, and an earnestness that has since bloomed in the world
of Fact and History. The very imperfections of the novelist have become
the charms of the historian. His student-life in Germany, his after-plot
in the stirring Revolutionary times, strongly as they are drawn,
animated as they are with dashes of that vivid power that stamps every
page of the histories of their author, yet lack the proof of that
unquestioned yet unobtrusive consciousness of genius that harden the
telling sentences of the _Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and the _United
Netherlands_ into blocks of adamant, polished by friction with each
other to a diamond brightness, and reflecting only the noblest
sentiments, the most profound principles. The dice had been thrown a
second time, and Motley had not won a victory. The applause of the press
was insufficient to the man, who felt that he had not yet struck the