Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/194

176 Later Historians works were edited with much care by Samuel Hazard, son of that Ebenezer Hazard' who as a friend and mentor of Jeremy Belknap had made himself one of the first collectors and pub- lishers of historical documents in this country. Many other states have followed the examples of New York and Pennsyl- vania. North Carolina, however, deserves special mention. Through the efforts of her Secretary of State, William L. Saun- ders, ten large volumes of her Colonial Records, followed by six- teen volumes of State Records, were published by the State between the years 1886 and 1905. They deal with great com- pleteness with the history of North Carolina from the earliest days to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, and they place the state in the lead among Southern states in this essential phase of historical development. The part taken by colleges and universities in promoting historical literature is equally important with the services of the historical societies and the projectors of great collections of documents. The process by which instruction shifted from the old haphazard method into the modem mode of instruc- tion which regards history as an exhibition of the life process of organized society, falls almost entirely within our present period of discussion. The transition was made gradually. It means that the older subjects, with the strictly text-book meth- ods, have for the most part been relegated to the preparatory schools and the lower college classes, while lectures by special- ists have become the means of instructing and inspiring the upper classmen among the undergraduates, and special research in seminaries has been employed to make historical scholars out of graduate students. The origin of the movement was in Germany, from whose universities many enthusiastic American students returned to infuse new life into institutions in their native land or to give direction to the instruction in newly established seats of learn- ing. In the former the change came gradually, as in Harvard, which established the first distinct chair of history when Jared Sparks was made McLean Professor in 1839. It is not believed that the "occasional examinations and lectures" he was re- quired to give greatly advanced historical instruction in the college. Distinct progress, however, was made under his suc- I See Book II, Chap. xvn.