Letters Of Lord Acton

"Letters of Lord Acton" from John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton. English historian (1834-1902).

Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO (1834-1902), commonly known as simply Lord Acton, was an English historian, the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet and grandson of the Neapolitan admiral, Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet. He was a master of the principal foreign languages and began at an early age to collect a magnificent historical library, with the object - which, however, he never realized - of writing a great aHistory of Liberty. a In politics, he was always an ardent Liberal. Acton took a great interest in America, considering its Federal structure the perfect guarantor of individual liberties. Acton became the editor of the Roman Catholic monthly paper, The Rambler, in 1859, on John Henry (later Cardinal) Newmanas retirement from the editorship. In 1862, he merged this periodical into the Home and Foreign Review. His works include: A Lecture on the Study of History (1895), The Life of Mandell Creighton (1904), Lectures on Modern History (1906), Historical Essays and Studies (1907), The History of Freedom and Other Essays (1907) and Lectures on the French Revolution (1910).

"[...]to put the Church before Christianity, and will end by putting himself before the Church." The time came both to Dollinger and to Acton, when the voice of the Church said one thing, and the voice of truth another. They did not hesitate. But the results to the priest were different from the results to the layman. At Munich, meanwhile, Sir John Acton laboured prodigiously. Latin and Greek he never mastered as he would have mastered them under Munro and Kennedy. But he learned them well enough for the purposes of an historian, with more help than Gibbon had, though not with the same innate genius. Of French, German, Italian, and Spanish, he became a master. At any subsequent period he would just as soon have written or spoken in French or German as in English. About this time he began to collect the splendid library which he formed in his[...].""