Even our own brief annals suggest
how large must be the historian's faith in time: only within a year or
two has it been possible to demonstrate the justice of Washington's
estimate of Lee, and how completely the sagacious provision of Schuyler
secured the capture of Burgoyne. Since the American Revolution, one of
these men has been as much overrated as the other has failed of
just appreciation--because the documentary wisdom requisite for an
enlightened judgment has not until now been patent.[C]
[Footnote C: See Lossing's _Life and Correspondence of General
Schuyler_, and Professor Moore's paper on Charles Lee.]
With the imposing array of professed histories and historians in view,
it is curious to revert to the actual sources of our own historic
ideas,--those which are definite and pervasive. The vast number of
intelligent readers, who have made no special study of this kind
of literature, probably derive their most distinct and attractive
impressions of the past from poetry, travel, and the choicest works of
the novelist; local association and imaginative sympathy, rather than
formal chronicles, have enlightened and inspired them in regard to
Antiquity and the great events and characters of modern Europe. This
fact alone suggests how inadequate for popular effect have been the
average labors of historians; and so fixed is the opinion among scholars
that it is impossible for the annalist to be profound and interesting,
authentic and animated, at the same time, that a large class of the
learned repudiate as spurious the renown of Macaulay,--although his
research and his minuteness cannot be questioned, and only in a few
instances has his accuracy been successfully impugned.
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