The editors explicitly detail their extensive use of various journals, personal letters, and a specific address for the content of Acton's essays. What does this meticulous approach reveal about the nature of historical scholarship and the construction of an author's intellectual legacy, especially when compiling posthumous works?

From the book

ily for their help and advice during the preparation of this volume and of the volume of Historical Essays and Studies . They have had the advantage of access to many of Acton's letters, especially those to Döllinger and Lady Blennerhasset. They have thus been provided with valuable material for the Introduction. At the same time they wish to take the entire responsibility for the opinions expressed therein. They are again indebted to Professor Henry Jackson for valuable suggestions. This volume consists of articles reprinted from the following journals: The Quarterly Review, The English…

ifest themselves, which only grew stronger with time, and gave him a distinct and unique place among his contemporaries. Here is the same austere love of truth, the same resolve to dig to the bed-rock of fact, and to exhaust all sources of possible illumination, the same breadth of view and intensity of inquiring ardour, which stimulated his studies and limited his productive power. Above all, there is the same unwavering faith in principles, as affording the only criterion of judgment amid the ever-fluctuating welter of human passions, political manœuvring, and ecclesiastical intrigue. But…

ed whole, im- pressive by no brilliance or outside polish, so much as by the inward intensity of which it is the symbol. Thus his writing is never fluent or easy, but it has a moral dignity rare and unfashionable. Acton, indeed, was by no means without a gift of rhetoric, and in the" Lecture on Mexico," here republished, there is ample evidence of a power of handling words which should impress a popular audience. It is in gravity of judgment and in the light he can draw from small details that his power is most plainly shown. On the other hand, he had a little of the scholar's love of…

gs that lay nearest his heart. Another cause retarded production-his determination to know all about the work of others. Acton desired to be in touch with university life all over Europe, to be a ware, if possible through personal knowledge, of the trend of investigation and thought of scholars working in ​ INTRODUCTION XXXVll all the cognate branches of his subject. To keep up thoroughly with other people's work, and do much original writing of one's own, is rarely possible. At any rate we may say that the same man could not have produced the essay on German schools of history, and written a…

learly realise the complexity of his mind or the vast number of subjects which he could touch with the hand of a master. In a single number there are twenty-eight such notices. His writing before he was thirty years of age shows an intimate and detailed knowledge of documents and authorities which with most students is the "hard won and hardly won" achievement of a lifetime of labour. He always writes as the student, never as the littérateur . Even the memorable phrases which give point to his briefest articles are judicial, not journalistic. Yet he treats of matters which range from the dawn…