LEOPOLD VON RANKE 249
German Migration.^ In an old library he found other col- lections of the mediseval historians, and came to know the mediseval empire. ^ Thence he passed on with the old French chroniclers till the fifteenth century, when his greatest in- terest was aroused. In this field, at the age of twenty-six, he must tarry and begin to write.
What parallel to that course can be mentioned? That ardent, penetrating spirit, saturating itself with all the rich- ness of ancient life and thought and then following the ages down, gaining everywhere first-hand impressions, and then pausing in the age when the seeds planted by antiquity were beginning to sprout, to enter upon a career destined to be one of the most remarkable in the whole range of historical literature I
These six years at Frankfort are the critical period of his life. Here he began his systematic studies, laying a broad and solid foundation for his work at Berlin. Here he real- ized his calling, and the pages of his letters glow at times with a fairly religious enthusiasm for history.^ Here he did the critical work which opened a new epoch in historical study.
During this period, Ranke tells us, Scott's novels were contributing powerfully toward awakening historic feeling and sympathy with the past. On himself the effect was striking; he was interested in them, but his historic sense was offended by Scott' s romantic libertie s with the f acts in Quentin Durwara. ±ie believed tnat the Jiistorical narrative as nanded down by Comines was finer and more interesting than the fiction. He turned away from it and resolved in his works to avoid all imaginary and fictitious elements and to stick strictly to the facts.* The words of the preface of his first book record this purpose with classic simplicity: "To history has been attributed the function to judge the past, to instruct ourselves for the advantage of the future.
1 Page 61. 2 Page 32.
8 See the letter to his brother Henry, February 18, 1824, p. 121.
