highly successful way by our secretary at the Boston meeting
in 1887.^ I have in mind rather a brief consideration of
the formative influences of Ranke's career as revealed in his
autobiographical sketches and letters, ^ the distinctive ele-
ments in his aim and method, and the influence of his work.
If any man was a born historian it was Leopold Ranke, yet he was comparatively late in realizing his vocation. When at the age of sixty-eight he looked back over his school days, he recalled no unusual interest in history. Like many another boy of twelve, he was taken with his teacher's his- torical talks and revelled in the tales of chivalry, especially those whose scenes were laid in his native Thuringia. The boys played at Greeks and Trojans, read Schiller's Lager and Napoleon's Bulletins,^ but of all the impressions of the time those of the ancient world were the strongest. Later at the gymnasium, Schulforte, these interests are still upper- most. While there he read the Iliad and the Odyssey through three times and fairly lived in the Homeric world.* At evening prayers, instead of listening to the dry lectures, he read the Old Testament histories. All this preparation was spontaneous and unconscious.
When he went to Leipzig, at the age of eighteen, he still had no conception of history. The lectures of Wieland,^ the professor of history, failed to impress him, and from his- torical works he was repelled by the mass of undigested facts.* The lectures on church history of Tzschirner were
^ H. B. Adams in Papers of the American Historical Association, III, 101-120; also in American Academy of Arts and Sciences, XXII, part 2, 542-558.
2 As found in Zur Eigenen Lebensgeschichte, von Leopold von Ranke. Herausge- geben von Alfred Dove, Leipzig, 1890. All citations, unless otherwise indicated, are from this volume.
8 Dictation of October, 1863, page 15. Their knowledge of the Trojan War was derived from Becker's Erzahlungen.
- Page 21.
^ Ranke tells us that Wieland sputtered so that it moistened the paper of those who sat on the front seat. On one occasion these victims raised a red umbrella, so as to take notes in shelter. The kindly professor took it in good part. Page 28.
6 Pages 28, 59.
