Motley is, indeed, the most "literary" of all the so-called "literary historians". In the glow and fervour of his narrative he is unsurpassed. He feels all the passion of the times whereof he writes, and he makes the reader feel it too. He has, moreover, a power of drawing character which Prescott seldom shows and which, when he shows it, he shows in less degree. Motley writes with the magnetism of a great pleader and with something also of the imagination of a poet. Unlike Prescott, he understands the philosophy of history and delves beneath the surface to search out and reveal the hidden causes of events. Yet first and last and all the time, he is a partisan. He is pleading for a cause far more than he is seeking for impartial truth. In this respect he resembles Mommsen, whose _Römische Geschichte_ is likewise in its later books a splendid piece of partisanship. Motley is an American and a Protestant, and therefore he is eloquent for liberty and harsh toward what he views as superstition. William the Silent is his hero just as Cæsar is Mommsen's, and he hates tyranny as Mommsen hated the insolence of the Roman _Junkerthum_. This vivid feeling springing from intensity of conviction makes both books true masterpieces, nor to the critical scholar does it greatly lessen their value as historical compositions. Yet in each, one has continually to check the writer, to modify his statements, and to make allowance for his very individual point of view. In reading Prescott, on the other hand, nothing of the sort is necessary. He is free from the passion of politics, his judgment is impartial, and those who read him feel, as an eminent scholar has remarked, that they are listening to a wise and learned judge rather than to a skilful advocate. Even in the sphere of characterisation, Prescott is more sound than Motley, even though he be not half so forceful. Re-reading many of the portraits which the latter has drawn for us in glowing colours, the student of human nature will perceive that they are quite impossible. Take, for instance Motley's Philip and compare it with the Philip whom Prescott has described for us. The former is not a man at all. He is either a devil, or a lunatic, or it may be a blend of each. Indeed, Motley himself in conversation used to describe him as a devil, though he once remarked, "He is not my head devil." Everywhere Philip is depicted in the same sable hues, without a touch of light to relieve the blackness of his character. On the other hand, Prescott shows us one who, with all his cruelty, his hypocrisy, and his superstition, is still quite comprehensible because, after all, he remains a human being. Prescott discovers and records in him some qualities of which Motley in his sweeping condemnation takes no heed. We see a Philip scrupulously faithful to his duty as he understands it, bearing toil and loneliness, patient to his secretaries, gracious to his petitioners, whom he tries to set at ease, generous in his patronage of