15 7 P6 •py 1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap. JLlS Copyright No ShellvklAi:' UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2011 witin funding from Tine Library of Congress littp://www.arcliive.org/details/artistliistorianOOarms Hn Hrtist Ibistonan An Essay WILLIAM JACKSON ARMSTRONG With an Introduction BY CHARLES B. GALBREATH state Libra7-ian of Ohio President, National Association of State Librarians COLUMBUS, OHIO S. F. HARRIMAN i8qq L TVv^O COPIES RECEiVao Ubrary Of eaigg,^^ Office of 11^ ^ ^'^'^^^^ of CopyHgfrf^. 54855 Copyright, in iSgg, bv WILLIAM JACKSON ARMSTRONG a«C OND COPY, INTRODUCTION. By Charles B. Gai. breath, State Librarian of Ohio ; Pre side )it of tJu National Association of State Librarians. In an age of " man}' books " the general reader finds it convenient, and in a meas- ure necessary, to depend upon the critique or book review as a guide to the literature that, according to liis standard, will be found worth reading. Especially is this true in regard to history and its related branches, geography, travel, and biog- raphy. One desires first to know, before reading a voluminous work, that it has a substantial basis in fact, that it exhibits, on the whole, a consistent fidelity to truth, that it is not shaped by policy, or dis- torted by fear, or marred by narrowness, or warped by prejudice. Fortunate is he if he does not have to unlearn, not only wdiat he "learns amiss," but what others have learned amiss. In this department of 3 4 INTRODUCTION. literature many books have been written for the sole purpose of correcting error. As suggested in the following pages, it is often only through a long perspective that we get the true measure of men and events. After the flight of twenty-five centuries, history does justice to *' the divine Sappho," the calumny of the Greek comedians falls before impartial investiga- tion, and the Lesbian queen of letters stands forth as queen of her kind in that far-off day when the world was young. In the light of modern research, Constan- tine is diminished, Charlemagne is exalted, and even the domestic virtues of Moham- med are recognized. Coming down to the Colonial period of our own history, we behold in Nathaniel Bacon, the leader of rebellion in the Old Dominion, tlie patriot and martyr. It is only in the closing days of the century that we are learning to survey dispassionately our own Revolution, and to acknowledge to its full extent the debt of gratitude we owe France IN TRODUL TION. 5 for the aid that made success possible in that unequal struggle. Writers and tlie reading public are generally rising to a genuine appreciation of impartial history. This is as it should he. Why should the muse withhold her reward through the centuries ? She will not do so if her vo- taries are diligent to seek and bold to speak the truth. Next to the essential of authenticity is literary style. Judged by either standard, the works of Doctor John Lord must be ac- corded a high rank. In tlie following pages full justice is ch^ne them in the dis- criminating essay by William Jackson Armstrong. Without his knowledge, and at the request ol his publisher alone, it is my privilege to write this Introduction. Mr. Armstrong is qualified in niany ways to write such a review. He was for years personally acquainted with Doctor Lord, and has critically lead almost everything that the eminent historian has written. A man of culture and a platform orator him- INTRODUCTION. self, his reading and studies have taken a ^ide range. A number of printed lec- tures, magazine articles, and poems, bear testimony to the fact that he is a literary artist of no mean ability. For years a newspaper correspondent at the national capital, and afterward, under the Admin- istration of President Grant, Inspector of United States Consulates for Europe, his opportunities have been exceptional for that comprehensive survey of the world's history that he praises in Dr. Lord. It ds to be hoped that this literary venture, which ranks well with the essays it gener- ously and justly commends, may meet with such a reception as to encourage its somewhat diffident author to further effort in a field where his studies and ob- servation have fitted him to speak " as one having authority." AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. H\ William Jackson Armstrong. It is not vet five years since the death »;f Doctor John Lord, a man pecnliar in physical attributes, insignificant in per- son, awkward in bearing, and a stam- merer in s|)eech, vet informed with an intelligence and aspiration so lofty that he died leaving behind Irim accomplish- ment equaled by that of but few Amer- icans. For the last forty years of his life Dr. Lord made his home at the village of Stamford, Connecticut, from which point he passed out on his nnceasing lecture tours, addressing tens of thou- From T/ie' Methodist Re^'ie^v, New York, Novem- ber, 1899. 7 8 /iN ARTIST HISTORIAN. sands of his countrymen, making his figure and his literary work familiar throughout the length and breadth of the land. He was nearly equally well known in England. Attention to his work, temporarily diverted for a brief interval succeeding his death, through the absence of his unique personality, is beginning to he recalled in full meas- ure by the solidity and worth as well as by the brilliancy of his literary remains. His works, published in completed form and showing the man in his real intellectual proportions, are now being sought for by thousands of readers on both sides of the Atlantic. The fact is gratifying to the lovers of elevating lit- erature everywhere. Next to the poet and essayist, who deal with elemental ideas and human emotions, may be ranked as literary benefactors the artist historians, the writers who, like Thucydides and Taci- JOHN LORD. 9 tus and Hume and Gibbon and Macaii- la}', present the facts of the past in such attractive robes of speech that their narratives remain lasting- possessions to our kind. Though the interval which has elapsed since his death and the ap- pearance of the full body of his works has not been suf^cient to give his achievement the benefit of this perma- nent perspective, there can hardl}' be a doubt that Dr. Lv)rd is destined to take high rank even among these greater gods of his literary class. And this will appear true whether he is judged by the volume of his contribution to historical Avriting or by the riches of thought and the quality of the diction in which he has embalmed his work. In this latter regard of a luminous and fascinating literary style, he is certainly exceeded by no American^ writer of history, whether it be Prescott, or Parkman, or Irving himself — or even our latest lumi- lo AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. nary, John Fiske ; and if Bancroft and Motley may be considered to take pre- cedence of him bv virtne of snstained efforts, covering whole periods of national history, the admirers of Dr. Lord may fairly claim that, in the sur- passing range of his historical studies, he has an advantage of even these acknowledged masters. In this respect, indeed, of extended investigation and varietv of themes, Dr. Lord stands alone, without a peer or competitor in the entire list of historical essayists. It is safe to believe, in fact, that with the exceptions only of jNIacaulay and the late Spanish Castelar, no other modern literary student has looked so familiarly as he over the long perspective of the world's events. Dr. LcM'd's earlv discipline for his life- work as a literary man was of the loose and desultory sort which is the frequent antecedent of the career of genius. It JOHN LORD. II is the instinct of winged talent to soar to its purpose even after many falls from attempted flight. Such was the expe- rience of the young historian in his school and college years. Born in the old town of Portsmouth, New Hamp- shire, in the year 1810, he received his flrst rudiments of education under the severe and somewhat repugnant meth- ods of the old-fashioned private school of that gloomy half Calvinistic period of New Eno^land histor\'. He confesses in the partially Avritten account of his own life that his school days were not happy, and that, being addicted to shirking his tasks, he rarely escaped one whipping a day, and sometimes got two, until his hand became " as hard as a sailor's." His experiences at home were hardly more exhilarating, under the tutelage of his pious Calvinistic mother, who, he records, brought up her chil- dren in the old-fashioned orthodox way 12 AN y^RTlST HISTORIAN. to " attend meeting three times on Sun- day besides going- to Sunday-school," and, as that day " was supposed to begin on Saturday at sundown, no books could be read until Monday except such works as Baxter's ' Saint's Rest,' Bunyan's ' Pilofrim's Pros^ress,' Taylor's ' Holy Living,' with the ' Boston Recorder ' for lio^hter readino^." Removhig with his parents in his tenth year to the little town of Ber- wick, in the neighborhood of Ports- mouth, young Lord continued his studies in the village academy under instructors who were described by him as having *' pedantry without learning" and " yigor without discipline," until, at the end of six years, he left the institu- tion, as he acknowledofes, without bav- ing made any acquisitions except a repugnance to the stud}^ of Latin and Greek and a kn(Avledge of mythology obtained from Lempriere's Dictionary. JOHN LORD. 13 A year or two later, in 1829, he was sent by his parents to Dartmouth Col- lege, the great northern seat of New England learning, presided over, at that time, by his distinguished uncle, Nathan Lord, erudite in his generation, but who has been pictured as, after the manner of college presidents of the period, a " disciplinarian rather than a teacher," and as a '' rigid Calvinist who accepted all the deductions to which that system logically led." Calvinism, indeed, ap- pears to have been the creed under whose shadow and influence the future historian was destined to begin and end his intellectual novitiate. And never did a somber theological mantle fall upon a more joyous and magnanimous spirit than in the case of this artist- chronicler of the world's events; for, while accepting, to the last, in theology, like his distinguished uncle and instruct tor, the postulates and deductions of a 14 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. rigid and time-worn theology, Doctor Lord, as the mature essayist and philoso- pher, treated all systems of faith and the followers of all creeds with a charity and tolerance as catholic as the needs of historical judgment. And only per- haps in the direction of impatience of rationalistic criticism, impairing the authority of Revelation itself, did his peculiar theology narrow him. But who will venture to den}- that, as a professed believer in that Revelation upon whose integrity the whole body of historical theology must stand, or through whose even partial discredit it must fall, he was rigidly consistent? It is surely not the swarm of modern doctors of theology, who weakly consent to the compromise of rationalism with faith, that can assume the role of his critics here. Four years at Dartmouth and three years additional spent at Andover Theo- JOHN LORD. 15 logical Seminar}^ whither he rcp^iircd at the end of his literary course to pre- pare himself for the ministry, which he had chosen as his vocation, completed young Lord's formal education for en- trance into the world. But even these yearSp to his lasting regret, as he con- fesses in his autobiography, were not devoted to the steady discipline of aca- demic training. Tliey had been broken with frequent and alternating episodes of school-teaching and experimental and vagrant lecture-tours; while, with the waywardness and indolence of his perverse genius in these younger years, he had, during the intervening period in college, systematically shirked all uncongenial studies and occupied him- self in the college libraries with omniv- orous reading, especially along the line of history and historical criticism, which, in spite of his predilection tow- ard theology as a profession, seemed t6 an artist historian. from the beginnins^ to be his native bent. But who shall dictate the disci- pline or the method through which that extraordinary intellectual endowment which we call genius shall arrive at its triumphant end ? Emerging- from the Andover Divinity School with the credentials of his chosen calling in his possession, in spite of his "ignorance of liebrew," young Lord, for the period of three years, experi- mented with his career, partly as a travelinor ao:ent and lecturer of the American Peace Society, and partly in trying to establish himself in the pro- fession of the ministrv. The experiment in both directions was attended with harassing and often comical vicissi- tudes. Success was qualified with too frequent disappointments to make his selected vocation satisfactory. The cast of his talents was distinctly moral and didactic, but the career of a theological JOHN LORD. 17 teacher along conventional lines was evidently not in accord with the funda- mental bent of his intellect. In his school years, neglecting whatever other studies, he had persistently cultivated rhetoric and the arts of expression. His instincts w^erc literary and for historical investigation. It was his genius, his destiny. Fully conscious of this at last, he "decided about this period," says his formal biographer, " to adopt the pro- fessi(^n of historical lecturer as his life- work." Writing retrospectively of this reso- lution in later years, he says : '' I felt that in some important res[)ects thus far I v\'as a failure and never could do any- thing or be anything so long as I pur- sued an uncon^^enial callinc: for wdiich I wasnot iitted. I then took the advice of some of my Andover friends and re- solved to labor in some other way wdiere duty and pleasure ran in the same 1 8 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. line. I did not turn my back on the ministr}^ For forty }'ears afterwards, I preached wherever I was invited. I continued to revere a calling for which I was not adapted. 1 have always sought the society and friendship of ministers as the most learned, most use- ful, most sympathetic and most interest- ing class in the community. I resolved not to enter a strictly secular life, but to work in harmony with the profession in which I had been educated. As a lecturer on history I could bring to bear all my knowledge in defense of the truths of the Christian faith which I had never rejected nor even doubted. I thought I could be more useful to the church by advocating great fundamental truths in the lecture-room than in the pulpit; that I would thus be more free, untrammeled and bold, inasmuch as his- tory covers everything — rehgious dog- mas as well as science, politics, and art," JOHN LORD. 19 From the time of takino- this resolu- tion, about the year 1840, his career was fixed. And never was a career more steadih^ and consistently followed ; and j-arely has one been extended through so long a range of brilliant usefulness to our kind. During a period of more than half a century succeedinir the adoption of his new work, Doctor Lord was not only a teacher of history, but a luminous expositor of its profoundest lessons, as the}^ were examined and portrayed by him under the search- light of a keen philosoph}^ and a strin- gent moral purpose. With the excep- tion of the time spent in his library in the necessary preparation of his mate- rials and his occasional visits to Europe to further the same end — to make his work solid and accurate — his life, during this entire period, covering more than a generation, was spent on the lecture- platform. In all the great cities of our 20 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. continent, as well as in many of those of Great Britain, and in hundreds of our institutions of learning, larger and smaller, over the breadth of the land, he became in his yearly tours the recog- nized ap)Ostle and oracle of his great themes. For, to hear him speak was, for young and old, to catch his own hre and to receive lasting impressions and inspiration in connection with the char- acters and scenes of history which his eloquence pictured. And it is worthy of note that with Doctor Lord eloquence was a paradox of almost all its formal rules ; for, producing at times upon his audiences the effects of the great mas- ters of oratory, it was itself produced through a physical human instrument apparently the most inadequate and hopeless that ever essayed the difficult art of the platform. Under the teach- ings of a lecturer whose person was diminutive, whose o-estures were erratic JOHN LORD. 21 movements of the arms ignoring all co-ordination with liis thought, and who read his notes in a frayed, unmusical voice interru.pted with a periodic tho- I'acic sneeze, audiences sat spell-bound. It was the genius, the intensity of the orator himself, the intellectual face, the luminous, humorous yet earnest eyes, the power of concentrated feeling, sur- mounting all the conventional formulas of attractive speech, and carrying the inspiration of his message straight to the brains and hearts of his listeners. It was not until the closing years of his life, which ended in December 1894, that Doctor Lord desisted from this half a century strain of platform oratory and retired to his always delightful Stam- ford home, to embodv in permanent and finished literary form the results of his life-work. When this was accomplished he had still a remaining year or two of enjoyable existence, passed with his 2 2 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. family and in agreeable correspondence with his appreciative publishers, who had been from the beo:inninof his admir- ing" and devoted friends. Then, charac- teristicallv of the loftv spirit and phi- losophy which had always sustained him, he serenelv, almost cheerfully, turned his face toward what to him was the sunrise of real existence. It w^as the tranquil close of a rounded life in char- acter and accomplishment. Besides his one notable work, to which longer attention will be called. Doctor Lord's publications were his '' Modern Historv," " Ancient States and Empires," '' History of the United States," " The Old Roman World," and one or two text-books of history for schools and colleges. These all have their specific value and place in our cur- rent historical literature, but they are subordinate in importance, as they were in a sense preparatory to the one great JOHN LORD. .23 achievement, his " Beacon Lii2:lits of History," the publication gathering into its compass the substantial fruits of his life, and destined, as it was by him de- signed, to be his literary monument. Of this splendid work it will be of in- terest to speak succinctly. "Beacon Lights" was the felicitous ascriptive phrase chosen by Doctor Lord when he came to the task of giving final embodiment to his entire series of historical lectures as they had been de- livered in his half-centur\' of platform experience. This task when finished filled the ten volumes of '* Beacon Lights " as they now appear, with about five hundred pages each of large and attractive print ; the respective volumes containing distinct and characteristic -groups of twelve lectures of the series whose themes, dating from the earliest annals of our race and ending with events of the current time, make the 24 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. completed work of one hundred and twelve lectures a panoramic retrospect of human history. In these essays every period of the world's past is re- garded and epitomized, its own salient feature, or philosoph}-, being- in turn made luminous ; so that, fi'om the stand- point of the reader, histor}^ becomes, as in some wondrous transformation scene, a perspective of gleaming points lost to view only in the remote gloom of primi- tive ages ; the title of the volume being thus vindicated. In this phase the " Beacon Lights " series is unique, since, as has been already intimated, no other essa3^ist, remote or recent, has attempted at once so wide a survev or so complete an analysis of the spirit of historic epochs. There is still another feature peculiar to these volumes and commending them to the acceptance of the reader. Each epoch is delineated under the name of ',«mv'\>- v^tWf. DK. .lOIIN LORD AT 45 YEAKS. JOHN LORD. 25 its foremost character, or representa- tive ; as for example, " Life in the Four- teenth Century " is pictured in an essay on '' Geoff ry Chaucer"; the period of " Maritime Discoveries," under the Ijeading ''Christopher Columbus"; ' Unsuccessful Reforms," under " Sa- ^anarola"; and the "Revival of Art," under " Michael Angelo." The fascinat- ing quality of personal narrative is thus ient from first to last to what, in fact, arc almost unequaled treatises on the philosophy of history. As has been ;',aid not inaptly ; " The charm of Doc- tor Lord's writing is that, while the reader unconsciously takes distinct im- pression of the growths and changes of great eras, his attention is consciously fixed by the stirring recitals, the char- acter-painting, the innumerable personal touches — the foibles, the failings, as well as the grand qualities — of illustrious men and women." 2.6 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. It is this biographical method of treating" history, of grouping the events of a period nnder the shadow of the name representative of its distinctive tendency, or philosophy, that has drawn unusual attention to Doctor Lord's literary acomplishment. In the use of this method he has enjoyed the distinc- tion of being among American writers the pioneer ; and, combined with the exquisite pictorial art with which he has set forth his themes, it is the method which has secured the author's just fame. It is onlv necessary to note the contents of a single volume of these master studies to indicate the nearly phenomenal range over which the au- thor's \'ision swept and his genius illu- mined in their preparation. The initial volume ol the series, for instance, bear- ing the general title, *' Jewish Heroes and Prophets," includes the treatment of the following themes : '' Abraham, JOHN LORD. 27 the Father of Religious Faith"; "Jo- seph, Israel in Egyptian Bondage"; ** Moses, the Social and Moral Law " ; " Samuel, the Judges and Prophets "; '' David, Israelitish Conquests" ; "■ Solo- mon, the Glory of the Monarchy " ; *' Elijah, the Division of the Kingdom " ; " Isaiah, National Degeneracy " ; '' Jere- miah, the Fall of Jerusalem"; ''Esther and Mordecai, Hebrew Statesmen Abroad " ; " The Maccabees, the Heroic Age of Judaism " ; " Saint Paul, the Spread of Christianity." Succeeding this is the volume on '' Pagan Antiquit}^" containing essays on Cyrus, Socrates,' Phidias, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Con- stantine, Chrysostom, Saint Ambrose, Saint x\ugustine, and other representa- tive characters of the ancient world, made to stand for such phases of the general subject as " Asiatic Supremacy," " Greek Philosophy," " Greek Art," 28 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. " Imperialism," *' Roman Literature," et cetera. And let it be noted that every one of these more than one hundred essays is a masterly treatise or, more than that, a profound and comprehensive stud}^ of its subject, made from an exhaustive investigation of its literature, — an ii/- vestigatic^n which would have enabled the author to write volumes instead of a single essa^ on the theme. Doctor Lord tells us that in the preparation of a single lecture he not infrequently read and consulted as many as three hundred books. This being the quality and measure of his work, two or, at most;, three such volumes as have been de- scribed might of themselves well be considered a respectable contribution to our literature from a single brain. But the " Beacon Lights " series, with its almost boundless motive and scope, pro- ceeds through its nearly six thousand JOHN LORD. 29 pages to unfold its panoramic riches; the eight vohiines succeeding those just mentioned presenting, under their ap- propriate titles, from Mohammed and Charlemagne to Hildebrand and Wy- clif, the mighty figures of the '' Middle Ages"; from Dante and Angelo to Calvin and Galileo, the poets, the theologians and discoverers of the '' Renaissance and the Reformation " ; from Cleopatra to George Eliot, the " Great Women " of history ; from Richelieu and Cromwell to Mirabeau and Napoleon and Webster, the modern orators, warriors, and mas- ters of diplomacy ; and, under the titles of '' Modern European Statesmen," " American Statesmen," and " Nine- teenth Century Writers," the whole galaxy of great names in statesmanship, diplomacy, and letters, from Chateau- briand, Metternich, Washino^ton, and Franklin to Cavonr, Bismarck, Clay, Lincoln, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, and 30 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. Macaulay. These ten volumes are, in truth, what they have been eloquently described to be : " An epitome of human achievement in religion, government, philosophy, science, art, architecture, society, reforms, politics, war, education, and literature — the whole forming a philosophically connected view of the world's life and progress for five thou- sand vears, marking the currents that have directed the movements of race? swayed empires, shown the force o ideas, and controlled the destinies g mankind." Professor C. B. Galbreath, the elc quent State Librarian for Ohio, ha aptly said : '' No one enjoys the oppoi tunitv to read the best literature of his time who has not access to ' Lord's Beacon Lights of History.' " It is, however, the suo:orestivcness of these volumes equally with their treasures of historic information which constitutes JOHN LORD. 31 their signal value to students and lit- erary readers, — through opening vast and varied perspectives of human action and thus offering new fields to the im- aQ-ination. As a literary artist, Doctor Lord has not taken the exalted rank which he is unquestionably destined to occupy ; al- though a constantly growing number of the most critical English and Ameri- can scholars is being added to the list of his advocates — becoming, indeed, his enthusiastic admirers. Among these former was the eminent historian, the late Professor James Anthony Froude, while, on this side of the Atlantic, edu- cators as distinguished as the diplo- matist, Andrew D. White, formerly of Cornell, and President Francis I. Pat- ton of Princeton, are foremost among those paying tribute to his literary talent ; indorsing in substance the ver- dict of their professional associate, 32 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. Professor Mowry, of the Salem (Mass.) public schools, who, in characterizing the work of the author of '' Beacon Lights," ventures the superlative eu- logy that " no mortal man ever threw such learning, s^uch wide reading, such graphic delineation into his discourse on a historical theme." " His lectures," he adds, " are a series cf paintings." It is possible that Doctor Lord's life- occupation as an itinerant lecturer, breeding the accustomed " contempt " of '' familiarity," may have temporarily retarded his recognition as one of the greatest lights of his literary class. However this ma}' be, it is apparent that ample amends are about to be of- fered for this somewhat belated appre- ciation. As with the critics and scholars, an increasingly large section of our most intelligent reading public is now turning towards his works — and with an increas- ing approval and admiration. The JOHN LORD. 33 cause is not far to seek. Doctor Lord had within himself all the elements which make literary work endure — the complete equipment of the literary \V(;rkman, the mental and spiritual ma- chinery that impresses the classic stamp. He had scope, philosophy, and imagi- nation. To these he added industry, tireless and relentless. He had the artistic sense in its highest perfection. He writes histor)- like Plutarch : his character-studies are portraits. Of these it has been pertinently said that, " being the study of real heroes, they yield all the delights of fiction while imparting real information" ; as it has again been affirmed of these delineations by a dis- tiiiguished American jurist and diplo- mat, " the writer clothes the bones of history with fiesh and blood, and moulds its lessons with human form, color, and expression." vSometimes the author of " Beacon 34 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. Lights " completes the sum mar}' of an epoch or a hero with an epigram or a single flashing phrase, as when, compar- ing the Fetidal period with our own -times, he distinguishes that the " Middle Ages recognized the majesty of God, the nineteenth century the majesty of Man " ; and again, he avers of Cardinal Richelieu that he was " cunnino; as a fox, brave as a lion, supple as a dog, all things to all men— an Alcibiades, a Jesuit." These piquant tcmches he em- ploys sparingly, hovrevci', as no writer steers wider than he of the merely loud and sensational in cc^niposition. On the contrar}', the very purity and symmetry of his diction may produce with the un- discriminating the effect of symmetr}' in natural objects — that of diminishing the grandeur of real proportions. No error could be greater than one in this direc- tion with reference to the vigor of his expression. He is a writer of first-class JOHN LORD. 35 power and intensitA\ It is simply true that he combines with force a grace and facility not elsewhere exceeded. From the point of \\q\v of literarA' manner alone, such essays as those of the " Bea- con Lights " series rise to the dignity of true art- works as really as do any corresponding papers by Froude or Carlyle or INIacaulay ; there being only this discrimination, that the method of the American writer is wholly without affectation — which to many will appear the finer art of literary treatment, in that it leayes the mind of the reader entirely with the objectiye theme imder exami- nation. Placing his work page by page by the side of eyen such picturescpie art-studies as those of John Ruskin, esteemed a quarter of a century ago the exemplar in English composition, the craft of the American does not suffer by the com- parison, while it enjoys the adyantage of 36 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. being applied to the illustration of veri- ties which do not fade when considered apart from their literar}- treatment. Such is the quality of Doctor Lord's work, the "art that conceals art " — illus- trating also the open secret that the rare and final achievement in everA' art is nature's own simplicit}'. He tells 3'ou his story Avith the directness and fervor Avith Avhich he might recite it in ani- mated conversation sitting with a'ou through a summer evening on his hos- pitable veranda. But there is always economy of statement — always reserved poAverand imaginative intensity, the per- fection of true artistic composition. The discrimination of a character or an era of Avhich Macaulay would make an epi- gram and Carh'le a series of interjec- tions, he places before you in direct vivid phrase. Of Carlyle himself, for instance, he says: ''This hyperborean literary giant, speaking a Babylonian dialect, JOHN LORD. 37 smiting- meixilessly all pretenders and quacks, and even honest fools, was him- self personally a bundle of contradic- tions, tierce and sad by turns. He was a compound of Diogenes, Jeremiah, and Doctor Johnson ; like the Grecian cynic in his contempt and scorn, like the Jewish prophet in his melancholy lamentations, like the English moralist in his grim humor and overbearing dog- matism." No more comprehensive or graphic delineation has been presented of the dyspeptic Scotch essayist. Again, characterizing Bonaparte, he says : '' His egotism was almost super- human, his selfishness most unscrupu- lous, his ambition absolutely boundless. He claimed a monopoly in perfidy and lying ; he had no idea of moral respon- sibility. He had no sympath}^ with misfortune, no conscience, no fear of God. He was cold, hard, ironical, and scornful. He was insolent in his treat- 38 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN, ment of women, brusque in his manners, severe on all who thwarted or opposed him. He committed great crimes in his ascent to supreme dominion, and mocked the reason, the conscience, and the rights of mankind." ' : To Doctor Lord's style has been ap- plied the epithet "luminous." The ascription is defective in its failure to convey the full conception of its true quality of light. His diction is a limpid stream of simple eloquent speech run- ning in the broad sunlight itself, and flashing to the reader's mind every tint and hue of the mental region through which it is directed. Whether he dis- courses upon the lofty mission and supernal visions of the Hebrew Judges and Prophets, the scholastic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the conquests of Charlemagne, or the stimulating social diversions of the salon of Madame de Recamier, you are with him at every JOHN LORD. 39 turn and instant of the proceeding, ab- sorbed, eager, and, at times, entranced. No quip of fanciful or oblique speech, no trick of posing on the part of the author, for a moment diverts conscious- ness Irom the central point of attention, Everything is direct, forward, intense, powerful. It is only at tlie end that the reader realizes the refinement of the art by whicbx he has been captivated. Any account of Doctor John Lord which failed to note liis surpassing qual- ifications for his vocation as a critical historian would be curiously deficient. His aptitude for his calling was partlj^a gift and jiartly an acquisition. He had the historical instinct, or genius, para- mount. But to this he added labor. Beginning his career with a little spe- cial training in theology and arefi'eshing absence of solid or accurate information along every other line of inyestigation, (except history), through the necessity 40 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. of becoming himself a teacher of his fellows he gradual)}^ extended his ac- quirements until his command of the whole range of knowledge which con- cerns the history of human common- wealths was little less than amazing. As he review^s the rise and progress of states, intricate questions are dissected and touched upon by him with the firm hand of the specialist in each depart- ment — questions of the constitutions of governments, diplomacy, finance, reve- nues, tariffs, coinage, and the subtlest problems of political economy. No writer, indeed, has surpassed him in this catholic mastery of the components of history. The land regulations and the distribution of wealth under the Caesars, the legal codes of Justinian and Con- stantine, the devices for revenue by the English sovereigns, the financial expedi- ents of Law and Talleyrand and Neckar, the tariff provisions of Henry Clay, and JOHN LORD. 41 the National Banking scheme made notorious by the enmity of Jackson, are all described and passed' upon by this divinity student turned historian, as familiarly as he pictures the policy of the mig-hty papal Hildebrand or the spiritual conceptions of Saint Ambrose and Chrj'sostom. That, however, which is even more remarked by the student of Lord is the element which has been called the " historical imagination," — that clement which is the creation at once of aptitude and of learning. In these days of i-apid book-making, when knowledge is too frequently the result of cramming, when the complex data of historv are swiftl)^ overhauled and historical characters recast in a night, to meet the demands for a short-cut process to information, even reputable essayists are content to make brief special studies of single his- toric periods or characters and to lay 42 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. the result of their hasty investigation, dressed in more or less meretricious rhet- oric, before the public. Not such were the conception and methods of the au- thor of " Beacon Lights of History." Doctor Lord's knowledg^e of history is fundamental. Each separate essay from his pen rests upon, as it is illumined by, a familiarity with the entire story of the world's past, whose events appear as the common furniture of his mind, and whose literature, for convenient illustration, is at his instant command. His survey of the historic domain is as with a far-flash- ing search-light from a hilltop ; or it may be said that his study of the past has been so comprehensive, so detailed, so elaborate, that its events lie before him as in a bird's-eve view on a single shining field of vision— every period related to its antecedents and successors, every incident and character with their abounding analogies through the ages. JOHN LORD. 43 By such immense conceptions of his mission, by such tireless studies, is the imagination of the historian formed. And it is safe, and not extravagant, to say that no expositor of the past has equaled Doctor Lorci in this quality of comprehension. His perception of resemblances, his groupings of characters and incidents, separated from each other by the re- motest periods and the most diverse environments in time, form for the reader a constant succession of startling and agreeable surprises, while throwing abundant light on the subjects under examination. Thus, while reviewinof the story of the Hebrew Mordecai and Esther, his mind turns toward Richelieu and Madame de Maintenon in modern France ; the horrors of St. Bartholomew suggest their parallels in those inflicted in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and of Magdeburg by Tilly ; the char- 44 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. acter of Catharine de Medicis recalls the savage Fredegunda and even Mary of Scotland ; Csesar, the Roman patrician, like the French aristocrat, Mirabeau, appeals to the masses against his own order; Cato in his narrow-mindedness and conservatism finds his analogue in the modern Wellington ; the Roman Constantine is described to be as politic as the French Henry IV., and Sully, the minister of Henry, as faithful a servitor to his prince as was Burleigh to Eliza- beth ; the wise Aristotle is the fore- runner of the modern many-sided Hum- boldt; the peculant Verres arraigned by Cicero is the fitting historic com- panion-piece of the spoliator, Hastings, under the invective of Burke ; the names of Charlemagne and Peter the Great of Russia are linked together in their labors to establish an empire, while the Jewish David is associated with Washington and Alfred the Great ; the sage Con- JOHN LORD. 45 fucius is joined in comparison with Solomon ; and St. Augnstinc, in giving shape to the new doctrines of the Church, is likened as a benefactor to Alexander Hamilton who fixed the prin- ciples and financial policy of the great Republic ; Cicero is observed to have won his legal reputation in the defense of Roscius, and Daniel Webster in the Dartmouth College case ; the learned and spiritual Arius of the early Church is described to be as reproachless in character as our modern Parker or Channing ; and the name of Oliver Cromwell is associated with that of Abraham Lincoln in respect of the solemnity of his burdens and his enjoy- ment of a joke. These and hundreds of similar paral- lels glow like gems on the pages of Doctor Lord's works, casting their searching side-lights into every corner and crevice of historv. 46 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. But it is not as a specialist, or chron* icier of the mere details of the past, that the author of "Beacon Lights" is in his prime. He is essentially and above all an expounder of the iiicamng of the world's transactions, the artist philoso- pher, who projects the X-ray of his analysis through the very body of his- toric epochs and detects the pith and core of their significance. Read his essay on the " Feudal System " and the identical structure of the Middle Ages rises before you — the causes and origin, the central thought and purpose of those somber, suppressed centuries made clear as the noontide of a modern era. Read his " Saint Bernard," and the be- ginnings and philosophy of that yast and complex scheme of monasticism, which for centuries covered human society, are pictured and realized as dis. tinctly as the character-casts in a mod- ern novel. - - . JOHN LORD. 47 As an expounder of the philosophy of history, indeed, the author of " Beacon Lights" must be given a high place among the select feAv who have at« tempted the difih cult role of interpreters of the past. His investigations do not assume the formal pretensions of the es^ says of Guizot or the German Hegel, though possessing the merit of equal profundity, while his conclusions are placed before the reader with a direct- ness and lucidity to which those more famous continental expositors can lay but slight claim. But stepping out of the past, Doctor Lord has met and recognized the prob- lems of his own time. He has antici- pated the anarchies and despotism of an age of concentrated wealth — the threatened impoverishment and enslave- ment of men under the reign of the billionaire: and he boldly challenges the fallibility of that political economy 48 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. under which such a consummation of human history is made possible. These great and just praises having- been accorded, it remains to be ad- mitted that there is an aspect in which Doctor Lord's claims as an historical critic are to be received with a more qualified approbation. The reference is to his peculiar theological bias. It is the single limitation of his great en- dowment as a philosophical reviewer of the world's past — the fly in the amber of his literary reputation, judged from literature's standpoint. Abandoning the profession of the ministry for the pursuits of the historical essayist, he did not sufficiently gain his own consent to abdicate the functions of the theolo- gian, and is tempted at times to apply the rules of dogma to phenomena, im- patient of their measurement. Amid the splendors of dissertation on the most momentous events there falls at inter- JOHN LORD. 49 vals oil his pages the shadow of a too narrow theological creed. He wavers for an instant before according full praise to Thomas Jefferson, because Jefferson, as he confesses, had largely imbibed his sentiments of liberty from the study of Voltaire and the sneering deist, Rousseau. While picturing with intense colors the darkness and degen- eracy of the Middle Ages, he is still moved to idealize that hopeless epoch by reason of its being an age oi faith, as against the more materialistic even if more humane character of modern cen- turies ; forgetting that neither the hard- ness of the Feudal times nor the hu- manity of the present can be justly attributed to the greater or less amount of reHgious belief in the two periods. Influenced by the same mental antece- dents, he inclines to rehabilitate the Biblical David after the murder of Uriah, while holding Napoleon to the 50 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. full measure of responsibility for the assassination of D'Engliien; ignoring the identical quality of their respective crimes against humanity. It is clearly the case of the old-school Calvinistic New England Andover of his student days holding at the end of half a century the rein over her gifted son as he appeals to his modern audi- tors. Recognizing the essential sanity and liberality of his nature, it is easy to credit that fifty years' delay in the date of his birth, or the difference of a de- gree of latitude in the locality of his theological training, might have con- tributed to Doctor Lord's literary fame. But strangely enough, the fault, or defect, here pointed out has in no mate-' rial sense affected the solidity of his conclusions as a historian. It is per- ceived rather as a tendency, or moral bias, which his i"eason combats, than as a flaw warping the integrity of his final \ni. JOHN LORD AT 75 YEARS. JOHN LORD. 51 judgments. It is a subjective rather than an objective entity, — a cast of thought which may qualify, for a time only, the estimate of his work at the severe bar of literary tribunals, but which cannot conceal from that wider republic of in- telligence to which he appeals his splendid contribution to historical criti- cism and knowledge. Everywhere on his pages there is evidence of the noblest qualities of heart and brain — tolerance, breadth, candor, and just discrimination. But as the expounder of history it is in ethical quality that Doctor Lord is supreme. It is here that he is seen to tower into a region where he is easily among the foremost interpreters of the past. He is, in a word, the ethical his- torian par excellence. It was, indeed, with this purpose, as he confesses, of applying the moral touchstone to the widest possible compass of facts, of 5--2 /IN ARTIST HISTORIAN. drawing lessons from the entire field of human experience, and of becoming an ethical teacher in the broadest sense that he obtained his own consent to abandon the profession of the ministry. His inherited instincts from his New England ancestrv, as well as his theo- logical training — which, if in those yet early times it prescribed abnormal rigidities of creed, still inculcated the imposing sanctities of moral obligation — left him no other choice than that of being a moral instructor. And loyally did he pursue his mission. Every problem of history became to him a problem of righteousness. In this aspect and quality his writings possess their especial and pre-eminent value. Against the tendenc}^ of every epoch, against every confused and puzzling transaction of histor}', whether of states or individuals, he presses the ethical question until he has forced from it the JOHN LORD. 53 lesson of Right. Whether he analyzes the conduct of Cassar in the overthrow of the Repubhc, the motives of Crom- well in becoming- the dictator of the Commonwealth, the zeal of Becket in defending ecclesiastical prerogative, or the morality of Frederick and Napoleon in their wars against states, the inquiry pursued is still for the fundamental good of humanity. And when the in- quiry is ended, the answer is rendered, not in the rhetoric of the casuist, not in the distorted phrasings and megalo- phonous sophistications of Carlyle, con- fusing power with right and success with justice, but in tones clear and certain as the strokes of an evening bell, and appealing to the common sense and conscience of mankind. Writing of Cromwell and the execu- tion of Charles, he says: '' Cromwell was at the bottom of the affair as much as John Calvin was responsible for the ^4 yiN ARTIST HISTORIAN. bvirning of Servetus. There never has a great crime or blunder been com- mitted on this earth which bigoted, or narrow, or zealous partisans have not attempted to Justify. Bigoted Catho- lics have justified the slaughter of St. Bartholomew. Partisans have no law but expediencv. All Jesuits— political, religious, and social, in the Catholic and Protestant churches alike — seem to thmk that the end justifies the means, even in the most beneficial reforms ; and when pushed to the wall b}" the logic of opponents will fall back on the examples of the Old Testament. In de- fense of lying and cheating they will quote Abraham at the court of Pharaoh. There is no insult to human understand- inor more flas^rant than the doctrine that we may do evil that good may come." Writing of the Conquest of Silesia and the aggressions of Frederick the JOHN LORD. 55 Great, he saws : " S(j lar as a lilc de- vested to the military and political ag- graiidizeiiient of a country makes a man a patriot, Frederick the Great will re- ceive the plaudits of those men who worship success, and who forget the enormitv of unscrupulous crimes in the outward glorv which immediately re- sulted, — \ea. possibly of contemplative statesmen who see in the rise of a new power an instrument of the Almight}^ for some inscrutable end. To me his character and deeds have no fascination ,iny more than the fortunate career of our modern millionaires would have to one who took no interest in finance. It was doubtless grateful to the dying king of Prussia to hear the plaudits of his idolaters, as he stood on the hither shore of eternity; but his view of the spectators as they lined those shores must have been soon lost sight of and their cheering and triumphant voices 56 /iN ARTIST HISTORIAN. unheard and disregarded, as the bark in which he sailed alone put forth in the unknown ocean to meet the Eternal Judge of the living and the dead." Once more, referring to the partition of Poland^ in which Frederick partici- pated, he writes : *' Might does not make right by the eternal decrees of God Almighty written in the Bible and on the consciences of mankind. Politi- cians whose prime law is expediency may justify such acts as public rob- bery, for the}^ are political Jesuits — always were, always will be : and even calm statesmen, looking on the over- ruling event, may palliate ; but to en- lightened Christians there is only one law : ' Do unto others as yc would that they should do unto you.' Nor can Christian civilization reach an exalted plane until it is in harmony with the eternal laws of God." Of the great minds illuminating JOHN LORD. 57 France in the era succeeding the Revo- lution, he says : '* These kings and queens of society represented not mate- rial interests, — not commerce, not man- ufactures, not stocks, not capital, not railways, not trade, not industrial exhi- bitions, not armies and navies, but ideas, those invisible agencies which shake thrones and make revolutions and lift Ihe soul above that which is transient to that which is permanent, — to religion, to philosophy, to art, to poetry, to the glories of home, to the certitudes of friendship, to the benedictions of Heaven." These and hundreds of other similar reflections profusely current in every volume of Doctor Lord's writings mark the standard of a morality such as has been rarely applied to the measure- ments of history, — a morality which is that of neither the casuist nor the ascetic, but which is as loftv as it is clear, and 58 AN ARTIST HISTORIAN. which is fit for the instruction and in- spiration of all ages. In an epoch like the present, soreh' tempted by the glit- ter of material riches and power, it is the qualit}' which pre-eminentl}' com- mends his work to the rising: oreneration of students, and which forms the price- less jewel in the crown of his fame. To such translators of the past the debt of intelligent gratitude is an ever-filling cup, since, neither dazzled by power nor warped in reason bv the conventions of mankind, they are our beneficent instruc- tors, keeping their vision clear and single to that eternal law of Right which we name justice, that sleeps not nor changes through the changing centuries, but keeps its righteous and loyal reck- oning with the in-stitutions and deeds of men. DEC 29 1S39