14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



endless patience, and intense interest in the past, which make the 

 province of the antiquarian so respectable, are not unnaturally asso- 

 ciated with a microscopic and narrow vision. The discoverer, adding 

 his own zeal and toil to the inti'insic worth of his discovery, is not in 

 the best position fairly to compare it with things before known, and 

 to set it in its true place. A positive benefactor to his fellow-men, 

 he suffers in their estimation by the morbid or doting fondness with 

 which he cherishes his benefactions. Antiquarian inquiry is often 

 pursued as a relief from active cares, or as a refuge from the burden 

 of unemployed ease. Idle men overvalue the light work which they 

 really do, and busy men overvalue the by-occupation which proves 

 their capacity to do more than one thing. But the highest kind of 

 antiquarian research, that which follows the legal and political vestiges 

 of the past, and seeks to unbury the cradle of a nation's institutions, is 

 no secondary business. It tasks the energies of the best-trained mind. 

 This was the field in which Sir Francis Palgrave labored with 

 marked success ; and his services have been largely used and gratefully 

 acknowledged by writers whom it is a distinction to have pleased and 

 aided. Though his studies often led him to explore special questions, 

 and kept him more closely to English antiquity, his researches were 

 not without a wider scope. One thread runs through most of them. 

 To his mind, the ground-fact in mediaeval and modern history is the 

 perpetuation of the Roman element. The fourth empire he finds in 

 existence still, and in possession of the area of civilization. This 

 thought, which connects ancient, mediaeval, and modern history to- 

 gether, though not absolutely new, and though held and enforced of 

 late in greater or less extent by other eminent inquirers, was with him 

 an independent and unborrowed one. Not content with linking the 

 destiny of Continental Europe to the influence of the Eternal City, he 

 seeks to bridge over the channel which insulates his native island, and 

 to draw Britain also within the same great circle. In following out, 

 sometimes it may be with excessive emphasis, this comprehensive and 

 fruitful idea, he was able to turn to account the vast reading which 

 had domesticated him in the Middle Ages. His familiarity with the 

 history of art, particularly of architecture, appears in his contributions 

 to the two leading English periodicals, in which he shakes off the dust 

 of the Record Office, and sometimes rises to a strain of moral eloquence. 

 Travellers in Europe have been indebted to him, often perhaps without 

 knowing it, as the learned and able compiler of the " Handbook of 

 North Italy." 



