208 A Century of Science 



magic finds no heart to dissolve the spell, and re- 

 mains a wanderer and an Ishmaelite to the hour 

 of his death." 1 



No one can doubt that the man who could write 

 like this had the kind of temperament that could 

 look into the Indian's mind and portray him cor- 

 rectly. But for this inborn temperament all his 

 microscopic industry would have availed him but 

 little. To use his own words : " Faithfulness to 

 the truth of history involves far more than a 

 research, however patient and scrupulous, into spe- 

 cial facts. Such facts may be detailed with the 

 most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken 

 as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue." These 

 are golden words for the student of the historical 

 art to ponder. To make a truthful record of a 

 vanished age patient scholarship is needed, and 

 something more. Into the making of a historian 

 there should enter something of the philosopher, 

 something of the naturalist, something of the poet. 

 In Parkman this rare union of qualities was real- 

 ized in a greater degree than in any other Ameri- 

 can historian. Indeed, I doubt if the nineteenth 

 century can show in any part of the world another 

 historian quite his equal in respect of such a union. 



There is one thing which lends to Parkman's 



1 Pontiac, iii. 112. 



