PREFACE



mann, IPushkin and Tolstoy, Alfieri and D'Annuinzio, or Cha-
teaubriand and Zola.
   The years between the men representing these two ex-
tremes of various literary developments are filled with illus-
trious names.  Well could Browning sing:

              "And did you once see Shelley plain,
                 And did he stop and speak to you,
               And did you speak to him again.'
                 How strange it seems, aud new!"

    What is trite of letters and art is true of almost every
other phase of human attainment in the nineteenth century.
Since Napoleon, Nelson, Pitt and Wellington, down to Gari-
baldi, Cavovr, Kossuth, Bismarek, Moltke, Gladstone and
Kruger, there has been a constant succession of famotis cap-
tains, sailors, statesmen, philosophers, inventors and other
great men, whose biographies alone would fill miany more
volumes than this history.
   It is the pride of Americans that their hemisphere has
contributed its share, and over, to the sum-total accomplished
by the world since the death of Washington. In the roll-call
of the great mnen of this age few names stand forth more
brightly than those of Jefferson, Bolivar, Lincoln, Grant,
Farragut, and Lee, or those of Fulton, Ericsson, Morse, Edi-
son, Diaz, and Dewey.
   Considerations such as these have entered largely into
the preparation of this -work.  To them must be ascribed the
apparent preponderance given to the part plaved by America
in the history of the world during the nineteenth century.
When a similar work was undertaken by Gervinus, the great
German historian, he laid the responsibility for modern state-
craft and ideals of government at the feet of America.  Had
he lived to complete his work, his pen -fight have traeed the
great story of the rise of nations during the last fifty years.
Since the great civil war, which established the union of the