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every trace of the conquered was swept away. Who can now re-produce the age of the Gracchi or of Augustus in its full features? The literature which remains is the voice of the conquerors, and carries only their distorted feelings and views; and we look in vain for any record of the hopes and feelings which strung the nerves of their antagonists. They were crushed, and their watchwords perished with them; and we can only gather faint traces of what they were by the casual hints or unconscious expressions which may drop from their enemies and maligners. To this class also belongs Mohammedan history even at its best; -we have only the records of Islam, not of the nationalities which Islam crushed. Thus the great blank in the history of Mohammedan India is the utter absence of any Hindu accounts of the struggle; we have only the annals of the invader. Not one voice from the millions that were conquered has dared to tell us his countrymen's struggles or despair. Even when a Hindu has written, he only writes as a Mohammedan. "From one of that nation we might have expected to learn what were the feelings, hopes, faiths, fears and yearnings of his subject race,— but unfortunately he rarely writes unless according to order or dictation, and every phrase is studiously and servilely turned to flatter the vanity of an imperious Mohammedan patron. There is nothing to betray his religion or his nation, except perhaps a certain stiffness and affectation of style, which show how ill the foreign garb befits him."*

One period yet remains-the only one to which the historian can really turn with comfort and hope; and even this will reveal sufficient ground for caution and care, to make us feel how difficult it is to recover the past from oblivion at all. In this we have every resource at our disposal, to recall the bye-gone age, so far as books and writings can recall it; those features only are absent, which the litera scripta' is powerless to pourtray. Most modern history is of this kind; and it is to the discovery of such literary and antiquarian treasures as the documents relating to early English history, published under the direction of the Record Commission, "the Close and Patent Rolls," the "Parliamentary writs," &c., the sixteen volumes of letters, relating to the times of Thomas à Becket, published by Dr. Giles, and many similar works, that modern history chiefly owes its success in its treatment of the later medieval times.† For the later periods of modern European history, we are amply supplied with contemporary narratives, written with all shades of opinions

Sir H. Elliot's Bibliographical Index, Introd. p. xviii.

Similarly for French history, we have the "Collection des Memoires relatifs à l'histoire de France" in 31 volumes, and the various volumes of "Documens Inédits," published by the ministry of Public Instruction.

Here if

to bias them and with every degree of partiality; and from these, by comparison and mutual correction, we may re-produce a tolerably exact picture as the events appeared to the various contemporaries. But much is still undone, while we are dependent on written narratives only, no contemporary is present at one-tenth of what he describes, and is necessarily dependent on others for his information, and is limited by their accuracy and honesty. It is to those stores of letters and despatches, which reveal the actors themselves in their unguarded moments, the publication of which has formed a new feature of literature in our day, that history looks as her final resource. anywhere will the real truth be found; if the confidential communications of private intercourse reveal it not, the search is hopeless indeed. Such publications as the letters of Oliver Cromwell, or the Stanhope correspondence, are not like the letters of Cicero and Pliny in old times,-inestimable as the letters to Atticus are to the historical student,-for those were written with an eye to publication, and we feel that the writer never entirely unbosoms himself,-he is thinking of a future reader, besides Atticus, and checks his outpouring confidence, as at the entrance of an intruder. The pre-eminent value of the publications of our day, over all the ancient collections of letters, lies in their perfect genuineness and spontaneity,-they were written with no thought of after publication, for no third eye to see; and when we read them, it often seems a half sacrilege to intrude into such a sanctuary of private feeling. These are some of the highest kinds of historical evidence, and it is only in modern times that such have been rendered available; so that we have some good reason for hoping that modern history will be more truthful and valuable, from the better means placed at her disposal.

Such then being a progressive view of the several phases of history, as we pass from the absolute uncertainty of popular tradition, through a gradually increasing clearness to the daylight of modern times,-our next question is, what are the rules of historical evidence, to be applied with more or less severity to all these periods in turn?

The historian sits as the judge of an epoch, and he summons to his bar all the actors in its busy drama. His verdict is their future fame,-praise or blame may be said to hang on his voice. The rules of evidence therefore will be such as the upright judge demands; but a degree of laxity is necessarily allowed to the historian, which we deny in the court of law. The historian is a private individual, and he is armed with no powers to enforce the production of testimony; he is necessarily obliged to be content with the best that his researches can discover. Hence SEPT., 1857.

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arise two important differences between his court and that of the judge. In the first place, he regards all evidence as admissible, he excludes no deposition; he only reserves to himself to discriminate between their relative merits. In the second place, evidence which would be hearsay in a court of law, may be in his eyes original, if he can but satisfy himself as to the accuracy of the copy or repetition. The rules of evidence established in our courts of justice, are too strict to bind the student in his library, but they may always furnish him hints in the examination of any doubtful authority. "He must be guided, not, indeed, by their rules, but by the reasons of their rules."*

To constitute the highest testimony, it must be original and contemporaneous; unless both these conditions be fulfilled, it is uncertain and of inferior value.

It must be original,-i. e., the narrative must rest on the authority of an eye-witness to the fact. The writer himself on whom the historian relies, or some person† with whom that writer has spoken, and whose testimony that writer has taken down, must depose to the relation, or we introduce an element of uncertainty, whose subtle poison, like quicksilver in gold, will loosen the cohesion of the whole. There is no limit to the uncertainty, if this witness' evidence is derived from hearsay. In all evidence, where our own senses did not inform us, we are necessarily dependent on another's word; and of the truthfulness of that word we must ourselves determine by his bearing and character, if we are personally examining him, and by the internal evidence (which is a book's bearing and character) if it be only his written testimony. In either of these two ways, we come in direct contact with the witness. We saw not the event ourselves, but we have seen and tested one who did. But when the evidence is on hearsay, we lose this personal control altogether; we are dependent on the testimony of a man, who is not produced in court, and of whose trustworthiness we have no means of judging. It is this which forms one main element of uncertainty in the boasted authorities of Arabian tradition: the historian who gives the chain and hangs his narrative thereon, has no means of testing the separate links. In evidence especially does the maxim hold that nothing is stronger than its weakest part; and here we have no means of determining where the flaw, if any, may lie. When Herodotus tells us of that famous dinner party at Thebes, which Attaginus gave to Mar

Sir G. C. Lewis, 'Method of Observation in Politics,' vol. i., p. 196.

Strictly speaking, this is hearsay to the historian,-but the writer must be considered as the magistrate who has taken the deposition of a person not produced in court. In a court of law, this may not be admissible, but in that of history we are forced to receive it.

donius and the other Persian nobles,-when one of the Persians prophetically with tears told the Greek who reclined with him on the same couch, that of all those nobles, and the army which then lay encamped on the river, hardly a man was fated to escape the coming crisis, he tells it on the personal authority of that very Greek to whom it happened," the sequel which 'I am about to relate, I myself heard from Thersander, a native ' of Orchomenos, and one of the first men in that city." Herodotus himself was not present, but he had talked face to face with one who was; and Herodotus has sufficiently proved his own truthful character by the internal and external evidence of his book, to carry conviction to the reader that he has faithfully reported the deposition. It rests on the trustworthiness of Thersander; and that we must take on the authority of Herodotus, as we must every thing else in his book.

Where the original documents are preserved, or as long as the witnesses themselves live, we can test the historian or writer's accuracy; but in the historical court, time is continually removing both these sources, especially the latter; and hence we are obliged to consider as our original authority, the writer who records the deposition. Thersander in the narrative of Herodotus has been dead for more than 2,200 years, and the tablets in the Capitol, from which Polybius made his translation of the Roman treaties with Carthage, have long since perished, so that we cannot test their accuracy; this must rest on the general character which they possess for diligence and care. Diodorus Siculus, on the contrary, is a hasty writer, and we can often prove his inaccuracy; hence suspicion attaches to him throughout, because we can never feel sure that his quotations and repetitions are to be relied on.

But the Arabian evidence, as we said, is of a totally inferior kind, and can carry no conviction at all to the reader. We read of the care which the compilers exercised in rejecting spurious traditions; thus Abu Dáúd, out of 500,000 traditions respecting the Prophet, selected only 4,800; but this criticism was only guided by the character of the names of the witnesses. If the character of each link in the chain was deemed unimpeachable, the tradition was received, whatever its inherent improbability. Thus, "I have been informed by Mohammed b. Bashshár, that he had been informed by Yahya b. Sayd, who said that he had been informed by Hishám b. Hassan, who said that he had it from Al Hasan Baçriy, who said that he heard from Abdallah b. Moghaffal, that the Prophet had been forbidden by God to comb more frequently than every

*

* See the Calcutta Review, No. xxxvii. "Sources for the biography of Mohammed."

other day.'"* The same system is pursued every where in all Arabian history; every author gives us these chains of names, as if they were demonstrative evidence.

As we said before, the historian rejects no evidence, however far removed from the original authority; a mere popular rumour may possess a certain weight and credibility; but it is important that he should fully realise to himself and impress on his readers the uncertain character of such testimony when received. Some of it may be true, but much of it is certainly false; and it is the impossibility of testing how much that renders it so suspicious and dangerous.

The evidence must also be contemporary; it must be written down at the time, before the impression has been suffered to grow faint or be effaced. Life is like a long procession, and new faces and objects are continually appearing, while the old vanish from our sight; and the claims and interests of the present must inevitably confuse and alter our recollections of the past. If any long interval has been suffered to intervene before the facts are committed to writing, and stamped in a lasting form, so far is an element of inaccuracy and uncertainty admitted; new events and combinations have risen meanwhile to influence and modify our recollections, and we are insensibly colouring the past by the prevailing hues of to-day. Here again the historian does not reject any evidence, however suspicious; he may receive it all for its worth, and test it by other and better kinds. We are speaking now of the highest evidence, which the historian is bound to find if possible, and if such be not forthcoming, the age is defective in one main ingredient of history, and its record therefore in the page of the historian is thus far defective also.

Tried by this test, again, the Arabian traditions do not stand. Far from being committed to writing from the first, the great mass of tradition remained for generations only oral, transmitted from year to year, and inevitably growing as time went on, so that we cannot, with confidence, or even with show of likelihood, affirm of any tradition that it was recorded till nearly the end of the first century of the Hegira.†

We may here mention two of the principal sources of error, which may influence even the best kinds of evidence, the counteracting forces, for whose effects we must make continual allowance and correction; and of course it will be understood that with the inferior kinds these influences will be still more pernicious.

Contemporary evidence is liable to be partial and prejudiced.

* Dr. Sprenger's Life of Mohammed.

+ Calcutta Review, No. xxxvii, p. 27.

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