x The Authors Preface 



influence on posterity, of works written three hundred or 

 even one hundred years ago. 



But it is a very different matter when the author of a 

 book like mine ventures, as I have done for sufficient 

 reasons but at the same time with regret, to sit in judg- 

 ment on the works of men of research and experts, who 

 belong to our own time and who exert a lively influence 

 on their generation. In this case the author can no longer 

 appeal to the consentient opinion of his contemporaries ; 

 he finds them divided into parties, and involuntarily be- 

 longs to a party himself. But it is a still more weighty 

 consideration that he may subsequently change his own 

 point of view, and may arrive at a more profound insight 

 into the value of the works which he has criticised ; con- 

 tinued study and maturer years may teach him that he 

 overestimated some things fifteen or twenty years ago 

 and perhaps undervalued others, and facts, once assumed 

 to be well established, may now be acknowledged to be 

 incorrect 



Thus it has happened in my own case also in some but 

 not in many instances, in which I have had to express an 

 opinion respecting the character of works which appeared 

 after 1860, and which to some extent influenced my judg- 

 ment on the years immediately preceding them. But this 

 was from fifteen to eighteen years ago when I was working 

 at my History. It might perhaps be expected that I should 

 remove all such expressions of opinion from the work 

 before it is translated. In some few cases, in which this 

 could be effected by simply drawing the pen through a few 

 lines, I have so done ; but it appeared to me that to alter 

 with anxious care every sentence which I should put into 

 a different form at the present day would serve no good 



