LEOPOLD VON RANKE. 555 



for studious work. Copious extracts, with critical observations by 

 Ranke, were collected in great folio volumes, which he called his 

 timber. Although for sixty years the man had devoted chief atten- 

 tion to modern history, he returned now to the classical studies of 

 his youth with almost boyish enthusiasm. He recognized with pro- 

 found gratitude his debt to that old cloister school of Schulpforte, 

 reformed by Melancthon and the German humauists. Classical cul- 

 ture was the fountain-head of Ranke's historical learning, and it now 

 came into full play. 



Ranke was eighty-five years old when the first volume of his 

 " Weltgeschichte " was published. He had begun the work in secret 

 with Dr. Winter some time before. From the appearance of the first 

 volume, the work advanced with great rapidity. " I am an old tree," 

 wrote Ranke to the Empress, " but every year I bear my fruit (ttnd 

 ich hringe dock alle Jahre meine Frucht)." Alfred Stern, writing of this 

 wonderful productivity, says, " We all remember still how every year, at 

 regular intervals, appeared one part after another of Ranke's ' Cosmos,' 

 until his narrative reached the greatest imperial personage of the 

 Saxon dynasty, — the Emperor who sprang from the very region of 

 Ranke's narrow home, by the rushing Unstrut, where the Palatinate 

 once flourished at Memleben." Thus Ranke's life-work, having com- 

 passed the history of many nations, ended where it began, in Saxon 

 Thuringia, whose stirring local history had first quickened his poetic 

 imagination when he was a boy at school. Ranke's Weltgeschichte 

 was left unfinished, but it connects with all his earlier studies in mod- 

 ern history, the beginnings of which he always sought far back in the 

 Middle Ages. An American once asked Ranke if he really expected 

 to finish his Weltgeschichte. " Lieber Freund," said Ranke, " ich 

 glaube, und wenn Gott will, dass ich mein AVerk vollende, so werde 

 ich es vollenden." To other persons he once said, " I have made a 

 compact with God ; he must still give me five or six years for the 

 work, then I will gladly go." 



Ranke's last labors upon his Weltgeschichte were heroic. Suffering 

 from old age and bodily infirmity, he resolutely subdued himself each 

 day, saying to his secretary, " Now we must forget these pains, and 

 devote ourselves entirely to the Muse." He worked night and day, 

 Sundays and holidays included. He took only one day's vacation in 

 the entire year, and that was not from choice, but simply because his 

 secretaries positively refused to work on Christmas. He wore out 

 daily the best energies of two young men in collecting materials and 

 in writing from rapid dictation. Although Ranke had what Kaulbach 



