ment of the ribbon hung out of one of her sleeves, just as she was finishing, and caught Miss Ophelia's attention. Instantly she pounced upon it. "What's this? You naughty, wicked child, you've been stealing this!"

The ribbon was pulled out of Topsy's own sleeve, yet was she not in the least disconcerted; she only looked at it with an air of the most surprised and unconscious innocence.

"Laws! why, that ar's Miss Feely's ribbon, an't it? How could it a got caught in my sleeve?"

"Topsy, you naughty girl, don't you tell me a lie, you stole that ribbon!"

"Missis, I declar for't, I didn't; never seed it till dis yer blessed minnit."

"Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "don't you know it's wicked to tell lies?

"I never tells no lies, Miss Feely," said Topsy, with virtuous gravity; "it's jist the truth I've been a tellin' now, and an't nothin' else."

"Topsy, I shall have to whip you, if you tell lies so."

"Laws, Missis, if you's to whip all day, couldn't say no other way," said Topsy, beginning to blubber. "I never seed dat ar, it must a got caught in my sleeve. Miss Feely must have left it on the bed, and it got caught in the clothes, and so got in my sleeve."

Miss Ophelia was so indignant at the barefaced lie, that she caught the child, and shook her.

The shake brought the gloves on the floor, from the other sleeve. "There, you!" said Miss Ophelia, "will you tell me now, you didn't steal the ribbon?"

Topsy now confessed to the gloves, but still persisted in denying the ribbon.

66

'Now, Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "if you'll confess all about it, I won't whip you this time."

Thus adjured, Topsy confessed to the ribbon and gloves, with woful protestations of penitence.

"Well, now, tell me. I know you must have taken other things you have been in the house, for I let you run about all day

since

Y

yesterday. Now, tell me if you took anything, and I shan't whip you."

"Laws, Missis! I took Miss Eva's red thing she wars on her neck."

"You did, you naughty child! Well, what else?"

"I took Rosa's yer-rings, — them red ones.

"Go bring them to me this minute, both of 'em." "Laws, Missis! I can't, they's burnt up!"

"Burnt up! - what a story! Go get 'em, or I'll whip you." Topsy, with loud protestations, and tears, and groans, declared that she could not. "They's burnt up, they was."

you

66 'What did burn 'em up for?" said Miss Ophelia. "Cause I's wicked, I is. I's mighty wicked, any how. I can't help it."

Just at this moment, Eva came innocently into the room, with the identical coral necklace on her neck.

"Why, Eva, where did you get your necklace?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Get it? Why, I've had it on all day," said Eva.

"Did you have it on yesterday?"

"Yes; and what is funny, Aunty, I had it on all night. I forgot to take it off when I went to bed."

Miss Ophelia looked perfectly bewildered; the more so, as Rosa, at that instant, came into the room, with a basket of newly ironed linen poised on her head, and the coral ear-drops shaking in her ears!

"I'm sure I can't tell anything what to do with such a child!" she said, in despair. "What in the world did you tell me you took those things for, Topsy?"

"Why, Missis said I must 'fess; and I couldn't think of nothin' else to 'fess," said Topsy, rubbing her eyes.

"But, of course, I didn't want you to confess things you didn't do," said Miss Ophelia; "that's telling a lie, just as much as the other."

"Laws, now, is it?" said Topsy, with an air of innocent wonder.

[From Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, 1852, chapter 20. The text is that of the first edition.]

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

[John Lothrop Motley was born at Dorchester, now a part of Boston, April 15, 1814, and died near Dorchester, in England, May 29, 1877. His life was passed in dealing with the affairs of nations, either of the past, as historian, or of the present, as diplomatist; he therefore lived much of his life abroad. He was first a student of law at Göttingen and Berlin, and later minister to Austria and then to England. He was also, however, led to Europe by the necessities of his studies on the history of Holland and of Europe in the sixteenth century. He published: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, in 1856, History of the United Netherlands, in 1861-8, and The Life and Death of John of Barneveld (1874). Before settling down to the historical work which has made him famous, he wrote two novels, Morton's Hope (1839) and Merry Mount (1849). He was a man of charming personality, as may be gathered from his Correspondence (1889), or from the Memoir (1879), by Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

It is not unnatural at first to compare Motley with Prescott. Indeed, the comparison forced itself upon the mind of the younger man at the very beginning of his career as a historian, when, being already heart and soul committed to the Revolt of the Netherlands, he learned that Prescott had already collected materials for a history of Philip the Second. The elder scholar behaved in the most liberal and sympathetic manner, encouraged the younger student most earnestly to go on, and assured him that “ no two books ever injured each other.” He was not wrong, in this case at least. A comparison of these two great historians serves chiefly to emphasize the strong points of each.

Both are distinguished by immense thoroughness in dealing with their materials, both by the challenging care of their style. With their characteristics as historians we are here not closely concerned, but we certainly cannot neglect the matter. As a historian there can be no doubt of Motley's hard work, breadth of knowledge, sound accuracy, sincerity. The same thing can be said of Prescott, who has a most engaging and disinterested impartiality, besides. But Motley could not have been disinterestedly impar

tial. He was writing, not of Spaniards and Moors, Incas and Aztecs, but of the rise of a republic, of a father of his country, of the growth of religious toleration. He was just, but he could not be disinterested. Indeed, by his very nature Motley was not a disinterested observer. No novelist can afford to be disinterested: it is too catching. Motley did not become famous as a novelist, certainly, but he had many of the gifts of a novelist. He was a man of temperament for one thing, and a man of belief for another. Sympathy for his subject led him to the eighty years' war, and his position was necessarily taken beforehand. It is then with allowance for the personal equation that Motley is impartial.

It is this very personal equation, however, which gives him his great charm as a man of letters, and which enables him to tell a story and to describe a thing so remarkably. It is true that this is not all. Patient industry and hard work counted for more than we of the laity can well understand. Prescott wrote to him of the vivid details of the sack of Saint Quentin, which Motley had found in a dry Documentos Ineditos, into which Prescott had never thought to look. And any one who reads the account of the fireships at the Prince of Parma's bridge, comes near being chilled at the list of authorities at the end, which Motley fortunately did not think necessary “to cite step by step.”

But all this mass of material is fused by his spirit into a living reality, and that is the first thing that makes Motley noteworthy for everybody. If it be one of the tests of an author's power that he can make real in his reader's mind the thoughts and feelings which are real to him, Motley stands the test well. It is true that he has an advantage, as did Prescott, in his subject-matter, but certainly a great part of that advantage was discovered by himself. Everybody knew that Don John, of Austria, and Sir Philip Sidney were romantic figures, but how about the men of Haarlem, who sallied forth on skates and chased the Spaniards about on the ice, or the sea beggars who raised the siege of Leyden by sailing their fleet up to the city walls? These things had been, but had not taken the mind. Motley had the sympathy to see life in the facts this was the first thing needful to enable us to see the facts as life. He was not a close student he was a man of the world. Indeed, his non-scholastic character comes near interference with

his peculiar power. One of the charming characteristics of the man was gentle humor, delicate satire, sedate epigram, courteous irony. Everybody will remember how this lights up the Dutch Republic; in his later work we are sometimes distracted a little by it from a matter we wish to engross us.

But Motley not only saw life in the facts, he had a very sane feeling for dramatic and narrative propriety; in fact, he sometimes had even an ultra-scenic feeling. Rarely carried too far, this feeling helped him to a remarkable epic unity in his whole work, a unity of which the remarkable thing was that it seems so natural. Proportion and relation in time and space, these matters are as much a part of his literary manner as picturesqueness and life. And although the former are most noticeable in his way of looking at things, the latter are the most noteworthy in his way of dealing with them.

Motley continued the honorable succession of American historians and surpassed all who had preceded him because he gained from their work. He avoided their mistakes and either imitated or naturally had their qualities. Irving had been romantic and Sparks had been laborious. Bancroft was an analyst, but he gave his work the unity of a great idea; and Prescott, an analyst too, had moulded his material into a unity of form. Motley had something of all these things, but in him they were fused and modified into a remarkable literary power that has never been surpassed by an American historian. He had certain minor faults. In some directions, notably in ease and power of narrative, he is surpassed by Parkman. But for the large powers of a historian, as history was understood in his day, he has no superior.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE, JR.