HENRY CHARLES LEA. xxxi 



For an historian to attain, however, an eminence from which he 

 can sweep the horizon, he must be, with a cool head and unclouded 

 brain, omnipresent in the times whereof he writes. There must be 

 not only no point of the horizon, political, ethical, and ecclesiastical, 

 which he has not scanned ; but also the manners, the customs, the 

 complex trending of thought, the very form and pressure of the 

 age and body of the time, must be as familiar to him as are those 

 of his own. To accomplish this as thoroughly as Lea accomplished 

 it, demands exhaustive research, wide reading, digesting, collating, 

 analysis, and all held in memory to the point of saturation. In the 

 presence of such an achievement, as we find again and again in 

 Lea's works, we can only stand in mute respect and admiration, 

 tempered with what is akin to awe. To achieve this, difficult as it 

 is, is a duty imposed on every historian ; and, recognizing this duty, 

 as " the stern daughter of the voice of God." Lea obeyed it. 



John Fiske is said to have observed that " the life of the wisest 

 man is chiefly made up of lost opportunities, defeated hopes, and 

 half finished products." 



Ls this true of our friend? Ah no! In moments of quiet re- 

 flection, when to the sessions of sweet, silent thought he summoned 

 up remembrance of things past, he could not but have been con- 

 scious that instead of losing opportunities, he had created them ; 

 instead of hopes defeated, he could count hopes triumphant, instead 

 of products half finished, he had rounded full and complete the 

 work of a lifetime wherein no hour was wasted. At such seasons, 

 with his keen insight into himian nature, he could not but have been 

 conscious that he had bequeathed to the world a legacy, in com- 

 parison wherewith wealth turns to apples of Sodom and the clusters 

 of Gomorrah. Here is a legacy free to all and the more it is used 

 the wider grows its beneficence and value. It thrives by wasting. 



Surely, surely, he could have harbored never a doubt as to its 

 permanence. In dreaming over its future, well might he have mur- 

 mured to himself with haughty truth; 



" Et tunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago." 



"A man's light." says Jeremy Taylor, "burns awhile and then 

 turns blue and faint, and he goes to converse with spirits ; then he 



