FRANCIS PARKMAN[1]
In no branch of literature during the century just past have American writers secured such widely recognized distinction as in history. The confluence, early in the century, of two strong currents of intellectual activity, the critical spirit and method of Wolf and Niebuhr, and the sympathetic contemplation of the past, its monuments and life, inspired by the genius of Chateaubriand and Scott, gave a powerful impetus to historical research and invested with a romantic charm times and peoples which to the eighteenth century seemed equally devoid of interest and of instruction. In consequence of the discovery of new sources and the more penetrating and fruitful study of the old, the mass of existing historical literature rapidly became antiquated, and the whole field of history stood ready for fresh exploration. The spirit and method of the new scholarship were soon communicated to the United States by such men as Ticknor, Everett, Bancroft, and others who returned from study at Gottingen, and the new historical movement in Europe was hardly in full swing, in the second decade of the century, before the younger generation of literary men in this country fell into line and one after another offered to the world historical narratives that without misgiving could be ranked with the work of Ranke, Raumer, Thierry, or Guizot. The achievements of Irving, Prescott, Ticknor, Bancroft and Motley cannot but seem surprising if one compares our contemporary barrenness in the allied fields of philosophy and economics.
- ↑ Written as an introduction to The California and Oregon Trail. T. Y. Crowell & Co. New York, 1901.
