The modern reader, whatever be his natural bent, finds himself impelled by the critical spirit of the times into distrusting all history which is not technical and hard to grasp. Prescott’s books are incorrigibly ‘literary’ and therefore more or less under suspicion. Because they are attractive, it is taken for granted that they are unsound. Certain unhappy beings have gone so far as to slander them outright by calling them romances. But this is mere impatience with the kind of historical writing which Prescott’s work exemplifies. He was a master of the art of narrative; and history which stops with narrative is in the minds of severe students little better than the more vicious forms of literary idleness, such as poetry and fiction. Prescott gratifies his reader’s curiosity about the past, but is not over solicitous to ‘modify his view of the present and his forecast of the future.’ In other words, he is well content to look at the surface of history, leaving it to others to look below the surface and philosophize on what they find there. Nevertheless these brilliant volumes have a value which is something more than literary even if it be a good deal less than scientific. It is perhaps not extravagant to pronounce them an indispensable propædeutic to the study of Spanish-American history. They cannot be displaced by works which ‘go much deeper into the subject.’ Depth is not what is at all times most needed. We need stimulus, and encouragement to face the discipline awaiting us in deep books. He who, having read Prescott, was content to read no farther would be an odd sort of student; but not so odd as he who labored under the impression that Prescott was a historian whom he could afford to do without. VI _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ REFERENCES: =G. W. Cooke=: _Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Life, Writings, and Philosophy_, fifth edition, 1882. =O. W. Holmes=: _Ralph Waldo Emerson_, ‘American Men of Letters,’ 1885. =J. E. Cabot=: _A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, third edition, 1888. =Richard Garnett=: _Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, ‘Great Writers,’ 1888. =E. W. Emerson=: _Emerson in Concord_, 1889. I HIS LIFE The clerical profession was in a manner hereditary in the Emerson race. With a single exception there was a minister in each of six generations descending from Thomas Emerson of Ipswich, Massachusetts. For this one lapse compensation was made; another generation furnished the colony with three ministers. For nearly a century and a half the history of the family has centred in Concord, Massachusetts. The house known as the ‘Old Manse’ was built in 1765 by William Emerson, the young minister of the First Church. Gentle in spirit, he was an ardent patriot and in Revolutionary times won the name of the ‘fighting parson.’ He came honestly by his militant temper, being a grandson of the famous Father Moody who distinguished himself at the siege of Louisburg as a preacher, fighter, and iconoclast.