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Of history, that reproduces the unity and drift of events by the motion and chain of ideas, exhibiting the orderly progress of society and the nature of man, Raleigh's History of the World (1641), though full of that sort of learning which now provokes only an incredulous smile, may be said to signalize the beginning.

Under the shaping genius of Hume, Gibbon, and Macaulay, history became more exact and organic, as well as more humane and democratic. The fortunes of princes and the issues of campaigns became of less moment than a knowledge of how the people actually lived - the external picture of objects and the internal picture of soul—the summing up of facts in general ideas for the guidance of the legislator, the political economist, and the student of human destiny.

The present age discloses, with more or less distinctness, three schools of historians- the imaginative or romantic, which makes the most lavish effort to resuscitate the past, to depict it vividly, dramatically; the realistic, which, simpler and severer, aims to exhibit men and things merely as they were; and the philosophic, which, using particulars for generalization, seeks to show that historical phenomena have a system and a sequence, determined by natural laws. To the first belong the sinister and furious Carlyle,' the more popular and paradoxical Froude;2 to the second, the calm and scholarly Freeman,' the spirited and artistic Green; to the third, the learned and ambitious Buckle,' the careful and comprehensive Lecky."

From all this, it appears that history is to be considered

1 Cromwel'. The French Revolution.

2 England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.

3 The Norman Conquest. Conquest of the Saracens. Federal Government.

Old English History.

4 A Short History of the English People. The Making of England.

5 Civilization in England.

6 Rationalism. European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. England in the Eighteenth Century.

under two aspects, the scientific and the poetic. Under the first, commencing with the environment, it delineates the industrial, political, domestic, social, moral, religious, literary, and æsthetic existence; observing the chronological order subordinately, the logical principally; displaying events in their causal connection and dependence; setting forth by iteration, example, and illustration, general views concerning men, nations, institutions, and movements of parties, judge as well as witness, distributing praise and blame; addressing itself to the higher emotions not less than to the understanding. Says Froude, alluding to its vocation:

The history of this, as of all nations (or so much of it as there is occasion for any of us to know), is the history of the battles which it has fought and won with evil; not with political evil merely, or spiritual evil; but with all manifestations whatsoever of the devil's power.

We learn in it to sympathize with what is great and good; we learn to hate what is base. In the anomalies of fortune we feel the mystery of our mortal existence; and in the companionship of the illustrious natures who have shaped the fortunes of the world, we escape from the littlenesses which cling to the round of common life, and our minds are tuned in a higher and nobler key.

Under the second, it is constructed with a view to local color, dramatic situations, effective contrasts; and is marked by a stirring, elevated diction. Thus has the reader the pleasure of foreseeing somewhat of the sequel without confusion; he observes always one event rising out of another, and longs to see the winding up of the whole, which is artfully concealed from him, to hasten him on to it with the greater impatience. When he has perused the whole history, he looks back like a curious traveler, who, having got to the top of a mountain, observes all around him, and takes a delight in viewing from this situation the way he came and all the pleasant

places through which he passed." The historian's qualifications may be summed up in the words of Bayle: 'His learning should be greater than his genius, and his judgment stronger than his imagination. In private life he should have the character of being free from party; and his former writings ought always to have shown the sincerest attachment to truth. I ask several questions: who the historian is? of what country? of what principles? For it is impossible but that his private opinions will almost involuntarily work themselves into his public performances. His style, also, should be clear, elegant, and nervous.'

Evidently, much of what has been said is applicable to that branch of history which deals with the characters and important events in the lives of individuals-biography. 'A Biography professes to give the experience of a life, and may therefore bring to view and illustrate important truths respecting man's physical and mental nature. The examples presented to us in the lives of prominent men and women may have various bearings. They may instruct us how to preserve health (see, for instance, George Combe's Life of Andrew Combe), to attain knowledge and culture (the Lives of Philosophers, Scholars, Poets, etc.), to play a part in public affairs, to prosper in business, to regulate our families, or to do good in our generation. Most commonly, Biography gratifies our interest in some distinguished person, and is the more acceptable, the more it is invested with the colors and touches of poetry.'

Othello's request before his suicide is the just rule of the biographer:

I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice.

1 Fénélon.

CHAPTER XIX.

DEPARTMENTS OF EXPRESSION-SCIENCE.

Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common sense.HUXLEY.

Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses.--EMERSON.

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F history be defined, in the narrower sense, as the narration of a consecutive series of phenomena in time, or the description of a coexistent series of phenomena in space, the information thus received,—that certain phenomena are or have been, may be called historical or empiricalthe latter because given by experience or observation, and not obtained as the result of inference or reasoning. But the knowledge of a phenomenon as a mere fact, as a mere isolated event, does not content us. The constitution of our mind compels us to suppose a cause -to connect the objects of our experience with others which afford the reasons of their existence, and (because we are lost in the multitude of details) to assort them in classes, to reduce the many to the one, the infinity of nature to the finitude of mind, to tend ever upward from particular facts to general laws, from general laws to universal principles. This knowledge of the why or how, this generalized knowledge, is called scientific, philosophical, or rational.

As generalities, current maxims have something of the reality of science, though too little tested and too loosely worded to deserve its name. They are reached by the same process, but less rigorously; and receive the same

expository handling as the most precise doctrines of physics or metaphysics. Says Professor Huxley:

The vast results obtained by science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practiced by every one of us in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a particular kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way from that by which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet. The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness the methods which we all habitually and at every moment use carelessly.

Scientific discourse being addressed principally to the understanding, its formal requirements are clearness, completeness, certainty, and method.

Obviously, the power shrewdly and competently to take to pieces or to observe parts, and the power to group together and see how all the parts are related to one great whole, are possessed by comparatively few, and cannot be expected from the first efforts of intelligence, either of individuals or of nations. As late as the fifteenth century, an Oxford Catechism asked, 'What is the substance of which Adam, the first man, was made?' and the answer

was:

I tell thee of eight pounds by weight.

Tell me what they are called.

I tell thee the first was a pound of earth, of which his flesh was made; the second was a pound of fire, whence his blood came, red and hot; the third was a pound of wind, and thence his breathing was given to him; the fourth was a pound of welkin, thence was his unsteadiness of mood given him; the fifth was a pound of grace, whence was given him his growth; the sixth was a pound of blossoms, whence was given him the variety of his eyes; and seventh was a pound of dew, whence he got his sweat; the eighth was a pound of salt, and thence were his tears salt.

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