LEOPOLD VON RANKE 251
" later modern history. Would I might be a Moses in this desert to strike and bring forth the water which is certainly in its depths."^ His book in a few months brought him an assistant professorship at Berlin, where his work was light ^ and he could devote all his time to research. In the royal library at Berlin he discovered a collection of forty-eight folio volumes of manuscripts consisting mainly of Venetian RelazionL Nobody had ever utilized them. Johannes von MuUer, twenty years before, planned to publish extracts from them, but he had not done so. Three more volumes were un- earthed at Gotha, and Ranke bought still another. ^ Drawn on by the irresistible attractions of this mine of unworked ore, he gave up the project of continuing systematically his first book, which had stopped at the year 1514, and plunged into this bewildering mass of material, consisting of perhaps a thousand essays, covering most of the years in very un- equal detail from 1550 to 1650. The spoil appeared in his Filrsten und Volker von Sild-Europa im 16. u. 17. Jahrhun- derten^ In the preface of twenty-five pages he gave an account of the Venetian diplomatic system and of the value of the Relazioni and of their distribution. His first book had procured him the call to Berlin ; this brought him a commis- sion from the Prussian Government to go to Vienna and to Italy to explore the Archives.^ "I am headed for the Vene- tian Archives, "he writes; "here rests a still unknown history of Europe."^ The next three years and a half were devoted
1 Page 140. 2 Page 147.
- Page 147 and the preface to Fursten und Vdlker von SUd-Europa. Later
editions are entitled Die Osmanen und die spanische Monarchie. In the eighth volume of Von Miiller's collected works, published in 1810, after his death, some extracts are printed, entitled Notiz und Auszug des ersten Teils der Informazioni politiehe eines MS. auf der Kdnigl. Bihliothek zu Berlin. Cf. Eugen Guglia, Leopold von Ranke's Leben und Werke, 83.
- Translated as The Ottoman and Spanish Empires. How many could have
been satisfied to put forth a single volume of less than 500 pages as the result of so much study of new sources 1 Ranke, although a voluminous writer, was never diffuse.
6 Page 167.
« Page 169. August, 1827.
