HENRY CHARLES LEA. xiii 



collecting material and making notes for a " History of Witch- 

 craft," when he finally laid down his pen. 



The late period of life to which this productivity extended is of 

 much significance. Few historians have died under sixty ; much 

 historical writing has been done by men in their seventies ; Ranke 

 and Bancroft at ninety, Mommsen at eighty-six, and ]\Ir. Lea at 

 eighty-four are only some of the most conspicuous instances of 

 a considerable number of scholars who with unclouded clearness 

 of mind and unabated vigor of spirit were drawing on their long- 

 accumulated store of knowledge and applying their slowly ripened 

 judgment to the problems of history at more than eighty years 

 of age. 



The early part of Mr. Lea's life was contemporaneous with the 

 beginnings of American historical production. The historical works 

 of Irving, " Columbus " and the " Conquest of Granada," were pub- 

 lished during Air. Lea's earliest years. In 1834 appeared the first 

 volume of Bancroft's " History of the United States." In 1837 

 Prescott began his historical career by the publication of " Ferdi- 

 nand and Isabella." Parkman's first work, the " Conspiracy of 

 Pontiac," was published in 1851, and the first volume of Motley's 

 " Rise of the Dutch Republic " in 1856, when Air. Lea was collecting 

 material for his " Superstition and Force." 



A marked difference, however, is to be noted between the his- 

 torical work of these writers and that of Air. Lea. Each of the five 

 chose as a subject a period of time or a series of events or a group 

 of personalities which possessed some well-defined dramatic char- 

 acter. The almost personal struggle, gigantic in significance, how- 

 ever limited in time and space, fought out in the Netherlands between 

 William of Orange and Philip of Spain, awakened the sympathetic 

 fire and was described by the literary grace of Alotley. The ro- 

 mantic adventures of Cortez and Pizarro, and the scarcely less 

 stirring narrative of events in Spain during the same period gave a 

 subject of unexcelled interest to Prescott. Parkman from boy- 

 hood was attracted, as he tells us, by the picturesque surroundings 

 and incidents of the struggle for the Northern continent between 

 the Indian, the Frenchman and the Englishman. Bancroft selected 

 the early and heroic period of our own national life, and Irving 



b* 



