Whatever their faults and however misguided the ambition of these faithful beasts of burden, they knew how to work. The whole world looked on with admiration. Here, at last, in this country of scientific precision, history had been elevated to the rank of a “_Wissenschaft_.” Carrying high their banners, “For God, for Country, _und wie es eigentlich dagewesen_,” all good historians went upon a crusade to save the Holy Land of the Past from the Ignorance of the Present. That was in the blessed days when a first-class passage to Hamburg and Bremen cost forty-six dollars and seventy-five cents. Henry Adams and John Lothrop Motley were among the first of the pilgrims. They drank a good deal of beer, listened to many excellent concerts, and assisted, “privatissime and gratis,” at the colloquia docta of many highly learned _Geheimräte_, and departed before they had suffered serious damage. Others did not fare as well. Three--four--five years they spent in the company of the Carolingians and the Hohenstaufens. After they had soaked themselves sufficiently in Ploetz and Bernheim to survive the _Examen Rigorosum_ of the _Hochgelehrte Facultät_, they returned to their native shore to spread the gospel of true _Wissenschaftlichkeit_. There was nothing typically American in this. It happened to the students of every country of the globe. Of course, in making this point, we feel that we expose ourselves to the accusation of a slight exaggeration. “How now,” the industrious reader exclaims, “would you advocate a return to the uncritical days of the Middle Ages?” To which we answer, “By no means.” But history, like cooking or fiddling, is primarily an art. It embellishes life. It broadens our tolerance. It makes us patient of bores and fools. It is without the slightest utilitarian value. A handbook of chemistry or higher mathematics has a right to be dull. A history, never. And the professional product of the Teutonic school resembled those later-day divines who tried to console the dying by a recital of the Hebrew verb _abhar_. This system of preaching the gospel of the past filled the pulpits but it emptied the pews. The congregation went elsewhere for its historical enlightenment. Those who were seriously interested turned to the works of a few laymen (hardware manufacturers, diplomats, coal-dealers, engineers) who devoted their leisure hours to the writing of history, or imported the necessary intellectual pabulum from abroad. Others took to the movies and since those temples of democratic delight do not open before the hour of noon, they spent the early morning perusing the endless volumes of reminiscences, memoirs, intimate biographies, and recollections which flood the land with the energy of an intellectual _cloaca maxima_.