original; Green, that another was dull. Macaulay ended by resenting the threatened invasion of his prerogative, and was less favourably disposed than in the glowing days of the purple New Zealander. There was a brief opposition from the Catholics. Höfler attacked the Popes; a garbled manuscript of the sixteenth century was sent to press for the diminution of his credit; and Theiner assured the King of Bavaria that he had done less than justice to Gregory XIII. Grand talent, petit esprit, was the adverse verdict of the Correspondant. The Frenchman might have defended his point if it was a distant allusion to stature. When Lord John Russell was on his way to Vienna, it was reported that Frederic William IV., by a refinement of flattery, invited four eminent men to meet him who were all smaller than himself; and Ranke was one of them.
He outlived all rivalry, and well-nigh all antagonism. He lived to hear Arneth declare, before the assembled historians of the South, that he alone among writers of prose had furnished a masterpiece to every country. He was hailed by Döllinger as praeceptor Germaniae. In his own home the dissent of militant patriotism was expressed in the words of Dove, that pure history cannot satisfy the need of a struggling and travailing nation; and when Mommsen says that the only ascertained maxim of research is that hearsay evidence is as good as the source it comes from, I understand him to mean that genius is better than schooling.
In very early days it seemed that philosophy possessed an adept who would surpass Ranke, and bridge the afflicting chasm between fact and law. Leo had belonged to the most turbulent set of students in the time of Sand, when he came to Berlin, obtained the friendship of Hegel, and disparaged Ranke by reviews, and by encroaching on his domain. With other men the question is, how they came to succeed: the wonder in the case of Leo is, how such abilities contrived to miss not only the first place but the first rank. He scorned the tame spirit, the obscure labours, the negative results of fleshless scholars
