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Henry Charles Lea; Hubert Howe Bancroft i95 writers, but some, notably Lord Acton, have given them their approval. Lea did not hesitate to lay evils at the doors to which he thought they belonged. ' ' I have always sought, ' ' he said ' ' even though infinitesimally, to contribute to the better- ment of the world, by indicating the consequences of evil and of inconsiderate and misdirected zeal. ' ' He was accused of inter- preting his documents improperly and of showing only the dark side of the medieval church. As to the first point it is difficult to find a man who can pass upon its truth. Lea himself was, perhaps, the fairest critic in the field. That he was not nar- rowly prejudiced is shown by his treatment of the motives of Philip II in his inaugural address as president of the American Historical Association. As to the second charge, we should remember that Lea did not propose to write about the light sides of the church. He was dealing with a dark phase of his- tory, and he did not try to make it lighter than he thought it should be made. Another publisher who became a historian was Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918), of San Francisco, who gave us our most conspicuous group of local histories. Having formed a large collection of materials on the history of the Pacific coast, he decided to embody the contents in a comprehensive work. He adopted the method of the business man who has a task too large for his own efforts. He employed assistants to prepare state- ments of the facts for large sections of the proposed history. Originally he seems to have intended to use these statements as the basis of a narrative from his own hand ; but as the work pro- gressed he came to use them with slight changes. We have his own word that the assistants were capable investigators and there is independent evidence to show that some of them de- served his confidence. But his failure to give credit leaves us in a state of doubt concerning the value of any particular part. Bancroft considered himself the author of the work. We must look upon him as the director of a useful enterprise, but it is not possible to consider him its author. His Works contain thirty-nine large volumes with the fol- lowing titles : Native Races of the Pacific States (vols. 1-5, 1874), History of Central America (vols. 6-8, 1883-87), History of Mexico (vols. 9-14, 1883-87), History of the Northern Mexican States and Texas (vols, 15-16, 1884-89), History of Arizona