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The primary cause of it was some trifling business connected with the exchange of publications the 'Edinburgh Review' and Sybel's 'Historische Zeitschrift; but, having settled that, the course of events tempted him, as a German and an historian, to continue. From Professor von Sybel Bonn, January 9th.
They fell short of those who were to come, because they were wanting in official information. Sybel was Ranke's pupil, and he had learnt in the study of the Middle Ages, which he disliked, to root out the legend and the fable and the lie, and to bring history within the limits of evidence.
Four years have passed since Sybèl was a bride -her cheek has lost the bloom of girlhood, and has already assumed the hollow form of New Brunswick matrons; her dress is home-spun, of her own manufacture, carded and spun by her own hands, coloured with dye stuffs gathered in the woods, woven in a pretty plaid, and neatly made by herself.
In the trial of the king adverse points are slurred over, as if a historian could hold a brief. A more powerful writer of conservative history appeared about the same time in Heinrich von Sybel. About the middle of the fifties, when Sybel's earlier volumes were coming out, the deeper studies began in France with Tocqueville.
No excuse would be listened to, I must stay dinner my bonnet is untied, and placed upon the bed Sybèl has churned in the early cool of the morning, and she has now been working over the golden produce of her labours with a wooden ladle in a tray.
Sybel puts it beyond question that he had been forced to it by the situation in Europe, not by threats or the compulsion of a conflict in the streets. Nevertheless it came to a street fight, for the enemies of order were skillful enough to start a fresh conflagration with the charred beams of the house whose fire had been put out.
On a small shelf is laid the library, which consists but of the bible, a new almanac, and Humbert's Union Harmony, the province manual of sacred music, of which they are most particularly fond; but the air of the country is not favourable to song, and their melody always seemed to me "harmony not understood," Meanwhile, for the last half-hour, Sybèl has been busily engaged in cooking, at which the natives are most expeditious and expert.
Of the darkness of the earlier Middle Ages Von Sybel gives a graphic picture: "Monarchies sank into impotence; petty lawless tyrants trampled all social order under foot, and all attempts after scientific instruction and artistic pleasures were as effectually crushed by this state of general insecurity as the external well-being and material life of the people.
Nor would my own youthful impressions justify me in forming an independent opinion as to the motives of that remarkable and somewhat incomprehensible event; but, with the assistance of friends more intimately acquainted with the circumstances, I have of late obtained a not wholly superficial knowledge of them, which, with my own recollections, leads me to adopt the opinion of Heinrich von Sybel concerning the much discussed and still unanswered question, whether the Berlin revolution was the result of a long-prepared conspiracy or the spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for liberty among the citizens.
Perhaps some one will then compose a history as far beyond the latest that we possess as Sorel, Aulard, Rambaud, Flammermont are in advance of Taine and Sybel, or Taine and Sybel of Michelet and Louis Blanc; or of the best that we have in English, the three chapters in the second volume of Buckle, or the two chapters in the fifth volume of Lecky.
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