178 Later Historians first realizes academic success. It was in this work for his- torical study and in the organization of the American Histori- cal Association that Adams's best service was done. He wrote many monographs on subjects of occasional importance. His one large book, The Life and Writings 0} Jared Sparks (2 vols., 1893) , was received with disfavour by a public whom Adams and men like him had already taught to condemn Sparks's uncritical methods. Other directors of historical research have been keener critics of their students and have given them a larger portion of the divine doubts that makes the historian proof against credulity; but no other has sent them forth with a stronger desire to become historians. One of the effects of the development of graduate instruc- tion is that teachers of history write most of the history now being written in the United States. The historian who is merely a historian is rarely encountered. Whether the result be good or bad is not a part of this discussion ; but the process promotes the separation of the writer from his readers, which may or may not be fortunate. The professor-historian, having his subsistence in his college salary, may defy the bad taste of his public and write history in accordance with the best canons of the schools : he may come to despise the just demand that history be so written that it may maintain its place in the litera- ture that appeals to serious and intelligent people who are not specialists. Minor Historians of the Old School. When the writing of history began to undergo the change that has been described, a number of men were doing creditable work in the old way. Although they worked in limited fields, they produced books which are still respected by persons interested in those fields, and their names are essentially connected with the history of our historians. A "minor" historian is not necessarily an un- important historian. One of the striking things in this connection is the rise of New York as a centre for such historians. While Boston gloried in the possession of Sparks, Palfrey, Hildreth, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman, New York produced a group of smaller men who made the vocation of historian both pleasant and respectable in the metropolis of wealth. Among them was Dr. John Wake-
