THE VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 13 



It is far from being utter failure; and yet how far it is also from 

 being satisfactory success! Allow me to take, as an example of the 

 way in which these works are constructed, my own experience in 

 writing a chapter for the volume of the Cambridge Modern History 

 which is devoted to the United States. In doing so I am far from 

 meaning even to imply any criticism upon the editors of that admir- 

 able series, to whom we are all so much indebted. I do not see how, 

 without incredible labor, they could have managed the delicate 

 and difficult business intrusted to them in any other way; and I am 

 adducing my experience in their service only for the sake of illus- 

 trating what must, no doubt, inevitably be the limitations and draw- 

 backs of work in this peculiar kind. I can think of no other way so 

 definite of assessing the quality and serviceability of this sort of syn- 

 thesis. I was asked by Lord Acton to write for his volume on the 

 United States the chapter which treats of the very painful and 

 important decade 18501860, and I undertook the commission with 

 a good deal of willingness. There are several things concerning that 

 critical period which I like to have an opportunity to say. But I had 

 hardly embarked upon the interesting enterprise, which I was bidden 

 compass within thirty of the ample pages of the Cambridge royal 

 octavos, before I was beset by embarrassments with regard to the 

 manner and scope of treatment. The years 1850-1860 do not, of 

 course, either in our own history or in any other, constitute a decade 

 severed from its fellows. The rootages of all the critical matters 

 which then began to bear their bitter fruitage are many and complex 

 and run far, very far, back into soil which I knew very well other 

 writers were farming. I did not know what they would say or leave 

 unsaid, explain or leave doubtful. I could take nothing for granted-; 

 for every man's point of view needs its special elucidation, and he can 

 depend upon no other man to light his path for him. I therefore 

 wrote a narrative essay, in my best philosophical vein, on the events 

 of the decade assigned me, in which I gave myself a very free hand 

 and took care to allow my eye a wide and sweeping view upon every 

 side. I spoke of any matter I pleased, harked back to any transaction 

 that concerned me, recking nothing of how long before the limiting 

 date 1850 it might have occurred, and so flung myself very freely, - 

 should I say very insolently? through many a reach of country 

 that clearly and of my own certain knowledge belonged to others, 

 by recorded Cambridge title. How was I to avoid it? My co-laborers 

 were not at my elbow in my study. Some of them were on the other 

 side of the sea. The editors themselves could not tell me what these 

 gentlemen were to say, for they did not know. The other essays 

 intended for the volume were on the stocks being put together, as 

 mine was. 



I must conjecture that the other writers for that volume fared as 



