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It seemed to James Russell Lowell "the highest art" to typify, "in the revived likeness of Judge Pyncheon to his ancestor the colonel, that intimate relationship between the present and the past in the way of ancestry and descent, which historians so carefully overlook."
The sublime fortitude of hospitals, the bravery shown in infected cities, the fearlessness of firemen and of sailors, these belong to those times of peace which have as yet few historians. But we have sought to exhibit the deep foundations and instincts of courage, and it matters little whence the illustrations come.
Ex-Burgomaster Hooft, a man of seventy-two-father of the illustrious Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, one of the greatest historians of the Netherlands or of any country, then a man of thirty-seven-shocked at the humiliating silence, asked his colleagues if they had none of them a word to say in defence of their laws and privileges. They answered with one accord "No."
If Brantome's anecdote is true, as one is inclined to believe, though several historians have cast doubts upon it, Anne de Beaujeu had, in their prickings of jealousy, love, and ambition, a great advantage over Louis of Orleans. They were both young, and exactly of the same age; but Louis had all the defects of youth, whilst Anne had all the qualities of mature age.
Though this story was very circumstantially told, and with a sufficient detail of particulars, it did not pass unquestioned. Each man maintained the justness of his own statement, and the dispute was long and obstinately pursued. Historians and commentators at length withdrew together. The terrors with which I was seized when this conversation began, were extreme.
The recusant minority have been heavily censured by our recent historians for consenting to these attainders.
Meanwhile the religious hatred these false historians had of civilization, that is, of Roman tradition and the Church, showed itself in a hundred other ways: the conquest of Spain by the Mohammedans was represented by them as the victory of a superior people over a degraded and contemptible one: the Reconquest of Spain by our race over the Asiatics as a disaster: its final triumphant instrument, the Inquisition, which saved Spain from a Moorish ravage was made out a monstrosity.
These historians, recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms, differ wholly from that other description of historians, who never assign any act of politicians to a good motive. These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their pens in nothing but the milk of human kindness. They seek no further for merit than the preamble of a patent, or the inscription of a tomb.
And Schilter informs us, it was about this period that most of them attained such rather unblessed consummation; Rupert of himself not able to help it, with all his willingness. From Historians of the REICH he deserves honorable regretful mention.
Very few positive facts are known on the subject; but we have data enough to show what they were not; and in such cases negative proofs are amply sufficient. It was for a long time the fashion with Irish historians to attribute to their ancestors the wildest forms of ancient idolatry.
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