to make the acquaintance of such an associate in my sympathies and my labors may be well imagined.  But how shall I picture my surprise, in presently discovering that this unknown and indefatigable fellow-worker has really read, I say read and reread, our Quartos, our Folios, the enormous volumes of Bor, of van Meteren, besides a multitude of books, of pamphlets, and even of unedited documents.  Already he is familiar with the events, the changes of condition, the characteristic details of the life of his and my hero.  Not only is he acquainted with my Archives, but it seems as if there was nothing in this voluminous collection of which he was ignorant. . . .

“In sending me the last volume of his ’History of the Foundation of the Republic of the Netherlands,’ Mr. Motley wrote to me:  ’Without the help of the Archives I could never have undertaken the difficult task I had set myself, and you will have seen at least from my numerous citations that I have made a sincere and conscientious study of them.’  Certainly in reading such a testimonial I congratulated myself on the excellent fruit of my labors, but the gratitude expressed to me by Mr. Motley was sincerely reciprocated.  The Archives are a scientific collection, and my ’Manual of National History,’ written in Dutch, hardly gets beyond the limits of my own country.  And here is a stranger, become our compatriot in virtue of the warmth of his sympathies, who has accomplished what was not in my power.  By the detail and the charm of his narrative, by the matter and form of a work which the universality of the English language and numerous translations were to render cosmopolitan, Mr. Motley, like that other illustrious historian, Prescott, lost to science by too early death, has popularized in both hemispheres the sublime devotion of the Prince of Orange, the exceptional and providential destinies of my country, and the benedictions of the Eternal for all those who trust in Him and tremble only at his Word.”

The old Dutch scholar differs in many important points from Mr. Motley, as might be expected from his creed and his life-long pursuits.  This I shall refer to in connection with Motley’s last work, “John of Barneveld.”  An historian among archivists and annalists reminds one of Sir John Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills.  Undoubtedly he disturbs the ants in their praiseworthy industry, much as his attentions may flatter them.  Unquestionably the ants (if their means of expressing themselves were equal to their apparent intellectual ability) could teach him many things that he has overlooked and correct him in many mistakes.  But the ants will labor ingloriously without an observer to chronicle their doings, and the archivists and annalists will pile up facts forever like so many articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the vertebrate historian comes with his generalizing ideas, his beliefs, his prejudices, his idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less imperfect, but still organic series of relations.  The history which is not open to adverse criticism is worth little, except as material, for it is written without taking cognizance of those higher facts about which men must differ; of which Guizot writes as follows, as quoted in the work of M. Groen van Prinsterer himself.