HENRY CHARLES LEA. xxvii 



could not discover immediately that he wrote with either a Protestant 

 or a Roman Catholic color. But it may be said of Mr. Lea that he 

 not only never suppressed evidence, but also that he always treated 

 evidence in a purely judicial spirit, endeavoring to give its due 

 weight to every item, whether or not it fell in with any theory that 

 he might have formed or any notions he had entertained. In one 

 of the last conversations I was privileged to have with him he told 

 me that he had been surprised when he investigated the subject to 

 find that the Inquisition, terrible as it was, put to death by no means 

 so many persons as was commonly believed. 



When after weighing the evidence and reviewing the facts 

 established, he had to deliver his own judgment upon them, it was 

 sure to be both a cautious and a weighty judgment. To large 

 generalizations he was not very prone, feeling the dangers that 

 lurked in them, and feeling also that if the facts are fully and care- 

 fully stated, scholars at least may generally be left to draw their 

 proper conclusions from them. Great historians may be recognized 

 hardly more by the fine quality than by the small quantity of the 

 general theories they propound. It is the untrained men who are 

 alike facile and feeble in their speculations. 



One feature of Air. Lea's judgment deserves to be noted because 

 it is one which, although apparently discarded by some among the 

 most recent school of scientific historians, was placed in the fore- 

 front of an historian's merits by a great man whom it is a pleasure 

 to name as a warm admirer of Mr. Lea's work, I mean the late 

 Lord Acton. Mr. Lea was sparing in condemnation, for he had a 

 charitable mind, and he was not copious in moralizing reflections, 

 but he carried a clear and sound moral sense into all his judgments. 

 Cruelty and perfidy and rapacity were hateful to him wherever they 

 were found. Their foulness was not to be palliated by dwelling on 

 the distinction between the standards of one age and another. 

 There are, no doubt, many offences to which we ought to give a 

 greater indulgence when we meet them in past times than we should 

 give them now, but even in the rudest communities these three sins 

 always were sins as they always will be sins, and, as Lord Acton 

 used to say, they ought not to be excused by any differences of time 

 or country. 



