LEOPOLD VON RANKE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7650, 29 May 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

LEOPOLD VON RANKE.

• Dußixu the last week we have received by cable the news of the death of the venerable historian, Leopold "Von Uanke. We publish au account of an interview which be had with the Berlin correspondent of the Times a few months ago : — To-day I had tho pleasure of a long conversation with Leopold von llauko, whoso 90th birthday was celebrated about a week ago with so much honour and circumstance. "You were quite right," he said, with a smile, ''in calling me a ' hermit , (alluding to an expression in my despatch on the celebration of hie birthday) ; but I am always glad to eeo an Englishman. Everyone knows how I admire and love your country, next, indeed, to my own" (which made me remember what Bismarck himself aUo onco wrote to his chief at Berlin during hia Frankfort days, viz, that "my sympathies fur England are livelier than for any other country aftor my own"). I could not help comparing the figure of tho nonagcaariau hietorian with a fine painting overhead, representing him in the bloom of manhood, trim, shorn, and shaven — a, very marked contrast, indeed, to the singular personality who seemed to havo actually stopped iuto one's presence out of tho Middle A£{o.i. Clad in a loose dressinggown, with carclc33 slippers " thrust upon contrary feet," his venerable beard falling on his breast, hie eyes bleared with inflaming particles of book-dust, tho forehead of his (>■!' came knotted and gnarled with tho lifelung babit of mental concentration, Leopold von Kanke looks like a perfect specimen of those medieval philosophers who spent their days and in front of huge, outspread folios, with 110 companion but a pensive cat, and no furniture or ornament to their cells save bkulls and crossbones, sand-glasses, eli sir phials, and chemical retorts. But, though outwardly resembling such a I>r. Faust, Dr. von Kanke has nothing whatever in him of morose taciturnity or surly snappishness. Oα the contrary, his uature is atill almost as sunny and simple as that of a child. It is impossible to conceive literary greatness combined with more unaffected ways, genuineness, and affability ; and in these respects he forma » happy contrast to so many of hie clafs in Garmauy, with whom the unwary foreigner cannot come into personal contact twice without having bitter cause to rue his disregard of the maxim "Care homineni unius libii." Tho historian of the Popes has nothing whatever in common with the astronomical professor who will transfix you with an icy stare if you ask him what he thinks of So-and-so's new volume of poeme, or with the great motaphysician who dreamily hands you the salt it you beg him to pass the sherry. There is a certain class of professorn in the Fatherland who only enter drawing-rooms to sit silently and be stared at like Greek busts, or to pess their hands wildly through their long hair, aud mutter strange sounds and uncanny incantations. But Leopold von Ranlio never did, and nover docs, alloct any of these disagreeable eccentricities of genius. On the contrary, everyone who converses with him must be tempted to ask himself whether it be possible that such an extremely simple little man can be so great a writer. Of his qualities as a writer one can only judge by going through the fifty odd volumes which embody his historical researches ; but a few minutes' conversation with tho author of this library will suffice to convince his visitors that he in as "skilful at entertaining with his tongue as with his pen. And even now, with ninety summers, or rather winters, on his i>row, his talk is as linn, fluent, and continuous as ever it seems to have been. His enunciation is clear aud forcible ; he requires not to stop and search for the right word ; you novor see him interrupt his story to pass hia hand across his brow, in the effort to regain some forgotten fact or flatting idea : but all goes on swimmingly, and he will occasionally emphasize a sentence by a motion of the hand, or a flash of his bright, penetrating eye, which is still the index to his mind, and the redeeming ornament of his time-worn face. He spoke to me sadly, and with a thankful reference to the will of God, of other members of the human race who had attained, or nearly so, to his own marvellous age—of Sir Moses Mouteliore, of Thomas Ciirlyio (who was born in the same year aud month as Kanke), and of Sophocles, who might havo even lived to be a centenarian but for the fabled eagle and its tortoise. " But that will never be my fatr," said the historian, " for 1 do not live so much in the open air as did Sophocles." " But your Excellency"—for, being a " Wirklicher 'Jeheimor Rath," ho is entitled to thia appellation—"but your Excellency," I observed, "still takes regular outdoor exercise." "Oh, yes," was the reply, "I still do my two hours' walking, or thereabouts, when the weacher is good. But I don't like driving ; it is too much of a bore. And this interval of exerciso enables me to go through an averagu of eight hours' hard work every day. My tkst speli is from 10 to 2, and I return to my desk at 9 till about 1 in the morning, Midnight is my most congenial hour, and this is the time, I fiud, when I can produce most." "And your Excellency can still writo with eaee '!" " JNo, my writing days are gone, but I have two secretaries, whom I keep busily engaged in reading, looking up authorities, making excerpts, and writing from my dictation. I have written little or nothing with my own hand since the appearance ot my English History, and, strange to say, some of the works 1 thus dictated have bueu better received than others. Dictation sometimes enables me to be less fastidious, and moro natural. Of course, I have to be very careful with my mode of life. I have nover been a smoker, but 1 can always enjoy a glass of good wine, and, thank God, my nights are still free from sleeplessness, or I should never get on at all. You may think this house of mine"—a second-floor flat in the Luisen Strasse, with the high-level metropolitan railway traine screaming past—" you may think this house of mine rather a humble, ill-Ruited, and unfashionable abode ; but I have lived in it now for more than the last forty years, and cannot make up my mind to leave it. One good thing about it is that the sun can never get into my workingroom ; and then I have all around me here about 30,000 volumes, which I never could get properly removed and re-arranged." " And it is tho substance of these 30,000 volumes, Herr Professor," I observed, " that you aie going to present to us in your ' YVoH-Geschichte' j'» •• Yes," eaid the kindly

old Altmeister of Gorman historians, with a well-pleased smile—" yes, it is rather a stiff bit of work, but, with God's gracious help, we shall do it—we shall do it. I intend my Universal History to be pretty complete, es far as the Renaissance at least, though from that time up to the re-establishment of the German Empire, where I mean to break off, it must necessarily bear more of the character of an aperfU. It might interest you to look into my last and lately-published volume, the sixth of my * WeltGeschichte,' as you will fiad a passage where I assign to London a conglomerate origin of races and social ranks such as formed the basis of Rome." tlere again the Altmeister professed his extreme interest in the history of England, of whose development and world-embracing power he spoke with great enthusiasm, as a phenomenon unique in the annala of the human race; and referring to Egypt, "but only, mind you, as an historian, and not as a politician," he declared his convictiou that the course of history and the development of events all pointed to the absolute necessity of the English converting Egypt into another link in the chain which binds India to England. "The force of circumstances and of facts," he said, "always proves much stronger than the aims of mere policy ; and that Mr. Gladstone has already found out." In connexion with his theory of the origin of London, 1 reminded my interlocutor of MacaulayV prophecy about the famoua New Zealander and the ruins of St. Paul's ; but he only shook his head and smiled, and began to dilate on his personal recollections of the great essayist who criticised his History of the Popes, telling me how, when he vieited England in 1543 (I think), he was invited to breakfast with Macaulay, by whom he was most favourably impressed, if not, indeed, overpowered ; how, also, on auothcr occasion, Lord Granville asked the 1 chief literary " lions" cf the day to meet him at dinner; and how also Bunsen dev';ed a meeting between him and Carlyle. Ia hie opinions of those whom he met in the course of his repeated visits to London Von Rauke was moat charitable and appreciative, for there is uothiug in his nature of that misanthropic severity which no frequently perverted the judgment of the philosopher of Chelsea. " Oh, yes," he said, "we in Germany owe au immense debt of gratitude to Carlyle ; and, above all things, we can never forget his letter to the Times during the FraucoGerman war, when he opened the eyes of hie countrymen for the first time to the true history of our relations to Alsace-Lorraine. It was I who pointed this out, in 1573, when it was proposed to confer oa Carlylo our Prussian Ordre pour le M6rite, of which you know I am Chancellor ; and certainly no one deserved this high honour better. Our Emperor, too, was sensible of this. There hangs Hia Majesty," continued the Professor, pointing proudly to the full-sized portrait of tho Kaiser which he received the other day from Ilia Majesty as a birthday present to tho writer, " who, with so much loyalty and devotion, has made the history of our Monarchy the object of speoial and exhauß« tivo research." On tho mantelpiece, too, stood a huge full-length photogruph of the Crown Prince in hiu proudest cuiratsier uniform, likewise a gift from the original. But I felt that my examination of these and other numerous offerings of honour would tako up too much of tho historian'* time, and I therefore withdrew with tho sincere hope that he would be spared to complete his " WeltGoachichte," and thus give Englishmen, no less than his own countrymen, an additional reason to think of him with reverence and gratitude.