72 A. D. GODLEY 



field of possibilities within the sphere of the 

 greatest classics was certainly diminished. To 

 speak in the language of an Alpinist, the 

 great peaks had been won: the routes to them 

 were clear, as regards their main lines: suc- 

 ceeding climbers must go farther afield, or 

 invent new routes, — just as the De Saussures 

 and the Leslie Stephens have made it neces- 

 sary for the modern mountaineer, who wants 

 to associate something memorable with his 

 name to try how near he can go to breaking 

 his neck. And the direction of new lines was 

 indicated. 



Whatever judgments the twentieth century 

 may pass on the nineteenth — and it seems 

 that they are pretty severe, at least in Eng- 

 land — even the ardent spirits of to-day will 

 not deny that ever since the Romantic move- 

 ment one guiding motive was to get right 

 away from cant and convention, and see things 

 as they are, steadily and whole. One sees that 

 in fiction, in Dickens and Thackeray and 

 George Eliot. One sees it in the changed spirit 

 which has come over historical research in the 

 last forty years, and has made history so 



