511 
of Edinburgh, Session 1877-78. 
live, as the historian of the Dutch Bepublic. It was his distinction 
to have seized the great subject in the prime of his manhood, to 
have clung to it tenaciously through five and twenty years, and to 
have laboured assiduously all that while among archives and original 
authorities for the attainment of the adequate knowledge. It was 
no less his distinction to have infused into his treatment of the 
subject the glow and energy of his own personal convictions, the 
passionate and eloquent expression of his sympathies with the men 
and the principles that he believed to be in the right, and his 
detestation of those that he believed to be in the wrong, on a noted 
theatre of human action eight or ten generations ago. So far as 
there are differences of critical opinion about his writings, they 
chiefly depend indeed on the views that may be taken as to the 
limits of a historian’s right to interweave his own moral and poli- 
tical approbations and censures with his narratives of the past. M. 
Guizot, who was an admirer of Mr Motley, thought that he went 
beyond bounds in this respect, and that his “ alternations of extreme 
aversion and strong predilection ” were irritating. The criticism has 
been repeated in England since Mr Motley’s death. He had pro- 
bably his own theory on the matter, and could have defended it 
well. It seems to have been an axiom with him that a historian, 
of competent knowledge and power of imagination, may trust him- 
self to feel as accurately about the persons and transactions of three 
hundred years back as about those immediately around him, inas- 
much as there are certain principles and tendencies of things that 
ought to be dear to all humanity, while their opposites are into- 
lerable, — inasmuch as everywhere and in all times a Philip II. and 
all his belongings must be execrable, while a William of Orange or 
a Barneveld is to be honoured and revered. By acting on this view 
of a historian’s duty, Mr Motley certainly increased the effect and 
popularity of his writings, and it does not appear that he subtracted 
from their permanent worth. 
Shortly after the appearance of his first historical work, Mr Motley 
was elected a corresponding member of the Institute of France. He 
was also D.C.L. of Oxford, and LL.D. of Cambridge, Leyden, Harvard, 
and other Universities, Continental and American. He was elected 
an Honorary Fellow of the Boyal Society of Edinburgh on the 1st 
of March 1875. We have lost him after a too biief connection. 
3 Y 
VOL. IX. 
