212 C. F. Adams made, and, in making my selection, I go back to the fact that, rep- resenting one historical society, I am here at the behest of another historical society ; and matters relating to what we call " history " are, therefore, those most germane to the day. Coming, then, here from the East to a point which, in the great future of our American development, — a century, or, ' perchance, two or three centuries hence, — may not unreasonably look forward to being the seat of other methods and a higher learning, I propose to pass over the more obvious, and, possibly, the more useful, even if more modest, subjects of discussion, and to try my hand at one which, even if it challenges controversy, is indisputably suggestive. I refer to cer- tain of the more marked of those tendencies which characterize the historical work of the day. Having dealt with the sifted grain, I naturally come to speak of those who have told the tale of the sift- ing. Looking back, from the standpoint of 1900, over the harvested sheaves which stud the fields we have traversed, the retrospect is not to me altogether satisfactory. In fact, taken as a whole, our histories — I speak of those written by the dead only — have not, I submit, so far as we are concerned, fully met the requirements of time and place. Literaiy masterpieces, scientific treatises, philo- sophical disquisitions, sometimes one element predominates, some- times another ; but in them all something is wanting. That some- thing I take to be an adequately developed literary sense. In dealing with this subject, I am well aware my criticism might take a wider range. I need not confine myself to histoiy, inasmuch as, in the matter of literary^ sense, the shortcomings, or the ex- cesses, rather, of the American writer are manifest. In the Greek, and in the Greek alone, this sense seems to have been instinctive. He revealed it, and he revealed it at once, in poetry, in architecture and in art, as he revealed it in the composition of history. Of Homer we cannot speak ; but Herodotus and Phidias died within six years of each other, each a father in his calling. With us Amer- icans that intuitive literary sense, resulting in the perfection of liter- ary form seems not less conspicuous for its absence than it was conspicuous for its presence among the Greeks. In Hterature the American seems to exist in a medium of stenographers and type- writers, and with a public printer at his beck and call. To such a degree is this the case that the expression I have just used — literary form — has, to many, and those not the least cultured, ceased to cany a meaning. Literary form they take to mean what they know as style ; while style is, with them, but another term for word- painting. Accordingly, with altogether too many of our American writers, to be voluminous and verbose is to be great. They would
