Fruitful historical research to-day is, first and last, a study of original documents and other contemporary monuments. The successful historian must abandon the time-beaten track of artistic development and take the sterner path of exact science—inductive science. If he have any genius, it must hereafter be a genius for labor. He must leave behind him the allurements of the sunny plains, and must plunge into the great forest belt with its confusing paths, its almost insurmountable barriers, patiently struggling on, happy if some pioneer going before has blazed a road, and led on by the hope that although he himself may leave his bones in the wilderness some other toiler will break through at last to the bright uplands beyond.