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Dissertations and Discussions: M. de Tocqueville on democracy in America
Dissertations and Discussions M de Tocqueville on democracy in America Author:John Stuart Mill Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MICHELET'S HISTORY OF FRANCE." IT has of late been a frequent remark among Continental thinkers, that the tendencies of the age set strongly in the direction ... more »of historical inquiry, and that history is destined to assume a new aspect from the genius and labours of the minds now devoted to its improvement. The anticipation must appear at least premature to an observer in England, confining his observation to his own country. Whatever may be the merits, in some subordinate respects, of such histories as the last twenty years have produced among us, they are in general distinguished by no essential character from the historical writings of the last century. No signs of a new school have been manifested in them; they will be affirmed by no one to constitute an era, or even prefigure the era which is to come: save that the ' shadow of its coming' rested for an instant on the lamented Dr. Arnold at the close of his career; while Mr. Carlyle has shown a signa example, in his ' French Revolution,' of the epic tone and pictorial colouring which may be given to literal truth, when materials are copious, and when the writer combines the laborious accuracy of a chronicler with the vivid imagination of a poet. But whoever desires to know either the best which has been accomplished, or what the most advanced minds think it possible to accomplish, for the renovation of historical studies, must look to the Continent; and by the Continent we mean, of course, in an intellectual sense, Germany and France. That there are historians in Germany, our countrymen have at last discovered. The first two volumes of Niebuhr's unfinished work, though the least attractive part to ordinary tastes, are said to have had more readers, or at least more purchasers, in English than in their native language. Of th...« less