ABSTRACT
Robertson's History of Scotland, with which he ushered in his celebrated series of masterpieces, burst upon the reading public with the clat of a prodigy. It was hardly to be expected that another post of honour in the English Parnassus of history would fall to a compatriot of David Hume. But the surprise soon passed into admiration when the virtues of the new historian became apparent. The extension of Robertson's activities as a historian from Scotland to Europe, and from Europe to American extension that rendered his reputation abroad more distinguished than Hume's widened his grasp of history and deepened his perception of the manifold inquiries a historian must include in his investigations. His power of adaptability, however, was great, and his mind responded to the studies devolved upon it without the slightest difficulty or apparent strain. Of Robertson's three great histories the Scotland, the Charles V, and the America critics have fixed upon the second as the most meritorious.
