264 A Century of Science 



on the next Wednesday, the 8th, he passed quietly 

 away. Thus he departed from a world which will 

 evermore be the richer and better for having once 

 had him as its denizen. The memory of a life so 

 strong and beautiful is a precious possession for 

 us all. 



As for the book on which he laboured with such 

 marvellous heroism, a word may be said in conclu- 

 sion. Great in his natural powers and great in the 

 use he made of them, Parkman was no less great 

 in his occasion and in his theme. Of all American 

 historians he is the most deeply and peculiarly 

 American, yet he is at the same time the broadest 

 and most cosmopolitan. The book which depicts 

 at once the social life of the Stone Age, and the 

 victory of the English political ideal over the ideal 

 which France inherited from imperial Rome, is a 

 book for all mankind and for all time. The more 

 adequately men's historic perspective gets adjusted, 

 the greater will it seem. Strong in its individ- 

 uality, and like to nothing else, it clearly belongs, 

 I think, among the world's few masterpieces of 

 the highest rank, along with the works of Hero- 

 dotus, Thucydides, and Gibbon. 



February, 1897. 



