440 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 



it were destined to fall dead from the press. ... It was not that I 

 cared about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable impulse to 

 write one particular history." After beginning the work, he found 

 that he must seek its sources in Europe, and thither he went, not 

 merely to travel, but to reside during much the greater part of his 

 subsequent life. He made long and thorough investigations, especially 

 at' the Hague, Brussels, and Dresden ; wrote with vigorous persever- 

 ance, and in 1856 brought out three large volumes on " The Rise of the 

 Dutch Republic." " To all who speak the English language," he says 

 in the preface, " the history of the great agony through which the 

 Republic of Holland was ushered into life must have peculiar interest; 

 for it is a portion of the Anglo-Saxon race, essentially the same, 

 whether in Friesland, England, or Massachusetts. . . . The lessons 

 of history and the fate of free States can never be sufficiently pon- 

 dered," he adds, with more special reference to his own countrymen, 

 " by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the 

 maintenance of rational human freedom rests." The feeling for his 

 subject, with which he began upon it, deepened and widened as he 

 went forward ; and, when he appeared as a historian, it was of move- 

 ments affecting, as he had reason to think, the whole civilized world. 

 We must appreciate this, if we would appreciate either the strong or 

 the weak points of his work : on the one hand, its brilliancy, its fire, and 

 its sweeping range ; on the other, its want of balance or of peaetra- 

 tion, its almost partisan character as it deals with those he passion- 

 ately admired or as passionately abhorred. The success of the history 

 was immense. It sold by thousands in the United States and in 

 England, and was translated into Dutch, German, and French. All 

 sorts of honors were bestowed upon the author, none greater than his 

 election to the French Institute as Prescott's successor, in 1860. In 

 that year, he published two volumes of the History of the United 

 Netherlands, and in 1867 two more, completing the work. He closed 

 it with these words : " The writer now takes an affectionate farewell 

 of those who have followed him with an indulgent sympathy, as he 

 has attempted to trace the origin and the eventful course of the Dutch 

 Commonwealth. If by his labors a generous love has been fostered 

 for that blessing, without which every thing that this earth can afford 

 is worthless, — freedom of thought, of speech, and of life — his highest 

 wish has been fulfilled." His most striking occasional production was 

 one in entire harmony with the key-note of his histories. It was on 

 the causes of the American Civil War, and appeared in the " London 

 Times" in 1861. That same year, he was appointed United States 



