accomplished,--how little, indeed, comparatively speaking, it will ever be possible to accomplish. Not the less, on this account, are the laborers deserving of the honors bestowed upon them. Every fresh contribution is a permanent gain. Even in the same field the results of one exploration do not interfere with or supersede those of another. Robertson has, in many respects, been surpassed, but he has not been supplanted, by Prescott; Froude and Motley may traverse the same ground without impairing our interest in the researches of either. These four distinguished writers have all devoted their efforts to the illustration of the period of which we have before spoken,--the grand and fruitful sixteenth century. With the men and with the events of that age we have thus become singularly familiar. We have been made acquainted, not only with the deeds, but with the thoughts, of Charles V., Philip II., Elizabeth Tudor, Cortes, Alva, Farnese, William the Silent, and a host of other actors in some of the most striking scenes of history. But we have also been tempted into forgetting that those were not isolated scenes, that they belonged to a drama which had long been in progress, and that the very energy they displayed, the power put forth, the conquests won, were indicative of previous struggles and a long accumulation of resources. Of what are called the Middle Ages the general notion might, perhaps, be comprised in the statement that they were ages of barbarism and ignorance, of picturesque customs and aimless adventure. "I desire to know nothing of those who knew nothing," was the saying, in reference to them, of the French _philosophe_. "Classical antiquity is nearer to us than the intervening darkness," said Hazlitt. And Hume and Robertson both consider that the interest of European history begins with the revival of letters, the invention of printing, the colonization of America, and the great contests between consolidated monarchies and between antagonistic principles and creeds.