History may be considered either as a department of human knowledge and intellectual exercise, or as a form of literary composition. In the observations that follow, we shall consider it under both these aspects.

1. HISTORY CONSIDERED AS A DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND INTELLECTUAL EXERCISE.

1. Bacon's famous division of human knowledge or "learning," recognises it as consisting of three parts:—History, relating itself chiefly to the memory; philosophy, relating itself chiefly to the reason or understanding; and poetry, relating itself chiefly to the imagination. This distribution, though sometimes objected to, and perhaps not theoretically perfect, is substantially a good one; and it has the advantage of a massive foundation in our popular and well-understood psychology. It is not, of course, meant that in history no other faculty than the memory is called into exercise, any more than it is meant that philosophy can dispense with the memory and the imagination, or that poetry can dispense with the memory and the reason. What is meant is, that precisely as the mind may, while still acting as a whole, cast itself at one time by preference into what may be called the remembering mood, at another into what may be called the judging or reasoning mood, and at a third into what be called the imagining or creating mood, so to each of these moods of the total mind there corresponds a department of possible intellectual acquisition. History, then, according to this interpretation of Bacon's words, is that department of knowledge or intellectual exercise which lies open to the total mind when it assumes more especially the remembering or recollecting mood. In other words, it is the business of history to record or remember the past events or transactions of the world of whatever kind, and, in remembering them, to let them produce whatever further effect on the mind is consistent with the continuance of the mood named memory. This latter part of the definition is of some importance. The mind may be strictly and properly in what we have called the remembering mood; it may be recalling a past incident and dwelling on it; and yet, even while the main act is still that of remembering, the impression of the incident is not exhausted in that act, but there is a certain contemporaneous effect on the whole mind, including the feelings, the fancy, and the reason. One may remember with a purpose, or, in remembering, some feeling, or reasoning, or generalization may suggest itself; and still the act, as a whole, may be essentially that of remembering. And so in history. To record or bring to recollection past events is its characteristic function; but past events cannot be adequately recorded or brought to recollection, without at the same time affecting the feelings and the imagination, and without receiving at the same time some sort of interpretation according to the constitution of the person remembering, his acquired ideas and modes of thinking, or his immediate circumstances and purpose. No man can exercise an act of memory in common life without doing something more; nor can it be different with history, which is recollection, so to speak, on the great scale.

2. The adequate recollection of any past event or transaction, or of any series of past events and transactions is, in this sense, history. Hence the forms that history may assume are infinite. There may be a history of the transactions of a single individual during twenty-four hours; there may be a history of a club; there may be a history of a parliamentary measure or of one notable passage in the career of a nation; there may be a history of a king's reign, or of the rise, growth, and decay of some political party. Thus also we have histories of painting, histories of the steam-engine, histories of commerce, histories of cookery, histories of literature, histories of philosophy; and there is no reason why we should not have a history of history. These histories, in which certain orders of past facts are purposely selected for record and interpretation to the exclusion of the rest, are called special histories. One variety of special history—that which concerns itself with the lives of distinguished individual men—is constituted into a great department by itself under the name of biography. In all these varieties of history the purpose is the same—the recollection of facts exactly as they happened, and in their chronological order, so as to bring out their full impression and significance.

3. But though the adequate record of any series of past facts of whatever kind is, in this wide sense, history, we understand something different by history proper. By history proper, and especially when we distinguish it, as we generally do, from biography, we understand that kind of record which has reference to the acts and circumstances of men, as collected into communities or social masses. On this point Dr Arnold, in his Lectures on History, has some pertinent remarks: "The general idea of history," he says, "seems to me to be that it is the biography of a society; it does not appear to me to be history at all, but simply biography, unless it finds in the persons who are its subject something of a common purpose, the accomplishment of which is the object of their common life. History is to the common life of many what biography is to the life of an individual. Take for instance any common family, and its..." members are soon so scattered from one another, and are engaged in such different pursuits, that, although it is possible to write the biography of each individual, yet there can be no such thing, properly speaking, as the history of the family. But suppose all the members of the family to be thrown together in one place, amidst strangers or savages, then there immediately arises a common life, a unity of action, interest, and purpose, distinct from others around them, which renders them at once a fit subject for history. Whether consciously or not, every society must have in it something of community; and so far as the members of it are members, so far as they are each incomplete parts, but taken together, form the whole, so far it appears to me their joint life is the proper subject of history." According to this description, history, in its specific sense, is the adequate record of the collective acts and experiences of men when they are grouped together into societies. The societies may be large or small. A club is, to some extent, a society; a political party acting together in a state in opposition to other parties is a society; a beleaguered garrison is a society; a colony of a hundred individuals or so, engaged in settling themselves on a distant shore, is a society. In all these cases there would be the phenomenon of a common or collective life, resulting from the scattered actions of the individual atoms composing the society; and it would be the business of history to trace this common life, and to exhibit the course or career of the society as such. In general, however, the kind of society which is considered a fit object of history, is that organized society which we call a state, i.e., a society having a certain political unity within itself, determining its own laws, and leading so far a distinct existence from other and surrounding communities, though related to them more or less. Here, again, the dimensions of the society which is made the object of study may differ. The entire ancient state of Athens, the history of which is so splendid, did not, at its highest prosperity, comprise a population of above 400,000 persons, slaves included; and mere cities were often states in the ancient world, with all that character of political unity and independence which is implied in the notion of a state. The same has been the case in modern Italy—as in the republican days of Venice, Florence, Genoa, &c. But at all times there have been political unities of much wider extent. Thus the Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans, and others, though really political unities in themselves, and so having separate histories, became merged, even in their own fancy to some extent, in that more comprehensive unity called the Greek or Hellenic nation, the history of which collectively would be a higher undertaking. Again, even more comprehensive than the political unity called a nation, have been those vast unities, known both in ancient and modern times, called empires; consisting of aggregates of nations factiously grasped together by conquest, intermarriages of sovereign houses, and the like. Such empires, whether so constituted as to preserve to a certain extent the inferior unities of their component parts, or so constituted as to obliterate these unities and centralize all the functions of government in one spot, become subjects of history. In short, what history demands as its appropriate object is any collective mass of human beings, of whatever size, presenting the characteristics of political unity, and consequently of common political life. For most purposes, in the present state of the world, the typical form of history may be considered to be the history of a nation. The nation—whether consisting, as in the cases of Great Britain and France, of twenty or thirty millions of people, or, as in the case of the modern kingdom of Greece, of only one or two millions—such is the form of political unity with which now, and indeed for some ages past, we are most familiar. Austria, indeed, is an empire or cluster of nations; Germany, as such, is a confederacy; and Russia, with a large national core, possesses imperial appendages. The histories of these states, accordingly, must have a corresponding character. On the whole, however, we may think of the nation as being the type, at this stage of the world, of those social aggregates of men whose common life it is the business of history to observe and relate.

4. The life of a nation, however, may be recorded either in parts or as a whole. We possess histories of both these kinds. By the record or history of a nation's life as a whole, we mean a record or history which, beginning at the first moment of the nation's recognizable existence, follows it through all its stages of growth, energy, and power, and does not quit it, until, by absorption into other nations, or by the entire breaking up of its organization, it may be considered to have lost its political identity and perished. In a retrospect of the past duration of the world, we see a wave-like series of such completed national lives. Far back in primeval time, a country or nation called Egypt looms into view; for ages it has a visible career peculiar to itself; but at a certain point, its peculiar organization is dissolved, or nearly so, before the touch of Greek or Greco-Macedonian rule; at that point, therefore, original Egypt may be assumed as having come to an end; and though other Egypts succeed, they are new Egypts rather than modifications of the old one, and must have separate histories. So also the Greek people ran their course, and though the name remained, the thing disappeared. So, on a still more extensive scale with the Romans, the successive stages of whose existence—first as a community of Central Italy, then as masters of Italy, then as rulers of a Mediterranean empire, which fell into ruin by degrees—are so well marked. In such instances we can have complete histories, corresponding to the complete biography of an individual man from his birth, through his youth and manhood, to his old age and death. But in the case of nations not yet dead, but flourishing and going on, it is different. The most complete history we can have in such cases is a history starting from the commencement, or, as one may say, birth of the nation so far as that can be ascertained, and carrying the nation on to its present state, whatever that may be. Thus the most complete French history would be one beginning with Druidical and Roman Gaul, and exhibiting the successive modifications of this society through which it has shaped itself into existing France. Similarly, the most complete English history would be one commencing with the Druidical Britain into which Caesar tried to push himself, and ending with Britain, as it is now figuring in the world. Such complete histories of nations still running their course we do have, but they are not numerous. The histories of such nations are generally presented to us in portions. Thus, we have histories of France during the reigns of the Bourbons, histories of France from 1789 to 1815, histories of England from the Norman conquest till the accession of James I., histories of England during the reign of George III., and the like. Some point in the national history is selected, and the narrative is carried on a certain distance forward from that point.

5. Whichever of these forms is adopted, the true notion of history still is, that it is the biography of a nation—in the one case complete, and giving the whole life; in the other, representing some portion of the life. The question then occurs, What constitutes this common or collective life of the nation, which it is the duty of the historian to trace; where is it to be sought for; in what facts does it lie involved?

6. The answer to this question is as important as it is difficult. Generally speaking, one may say that, since the common or collective life of the nation is the resultant of all the acts and all the experiences of all the separate individuals that have lived in the nation, the larger one's knowledge of all these acts and experiences, and, in fact, of everything however minute in any way relating to any and all of the individuals of the nation singly, the better will History. the purposes of history be served. No fact is too mean to be of use—a collection of facts would be too extensive for the ends of the historian. An adequate recollection, according to our definition of what that means, of all that has been thought, said, done, or suffered, by all that have lived in a community from first to last, in proper order—this would be the absolute ideal of a history of the community. The perception of the common life would be involved in such a recollection of all that went to constitute it. But necessity here imposes a limitation. We cannot, by any amount of research, know all that all the successive millions forming a community have thought, said, done, suffered, or seemed; the facts that we can know, or that, knowing, we can visibly take into account, are, at best, in every case, but a miserable percentage of this ideal aggregate. But, though this consideration impairs the perfection of history, it impairs it only to the same extent that every form of intellectual practice must be impaired by the limited nature of the human faculties. The real question is, Since all cannot be known and remembered, what is it best to know and remember? Since the facts out of which we must construct our histories in idea are but a small proportion, a mere remaining shred of that enormous, intertwined infinity of facts which actually went into the histories while the web was being woven, are there any kinds or orders of facts which, more than others, it is desirable, for the purposes of history, to secure and keep hold of? Seeing that we cannot take account of all, but may take account of some things, what things may we take account of, with the greatest likelihood of fulfilling the essential requirements of history?

7. The answer is suggested by the definition of history. If history is the account of the collective life of a nation, and if we cannot know all the facts that entered into the constitution of that life, we ought to inquire whether there are any kinds or orders of facts in which, more than in the others, the collective vitality of a nation is represented and embodied. If there are, then, whatever facts we neglect, it should not be these. But such orders of facts—vital facts they may be called—there obviously are. In every community, for example, though all contribute to the common life, all do not contribute in an equal degree. Some individuals, in every age, either from their endowments or their circumstances, or from both combined, exert a more powerful influence than the rest—contain in themselves, so to speak, a larger portion of the general life. Hence it is one of the rules of history to attend in a particular manner to the lives and actions of powerful individual men; and it is always felt that by fastening the regards on such men, describing their physiognomies and characters, and relating their movements, the problem of history is simplified, and its true end is to a considerable extent attained. The universal instinct of writers of history recognizes this fact. Again, besides the agency of powerful individuals, there is the agency in every society of what may be called powerful physical accidents, such as famines, epidemics, earthquakes, and the like; and also the agency of occasional accidents more properly social, such as great inventions and discoveries made unawares, or almost so. All events of this kind, producing as they do large effects on the whole community at once, are felt to have special claims on the notice of the historian, and are therefore always commemorated in histories. Farther, all societies are so constituted that, in the nature of things, the common vitality is not equally distributed through all parts of their mass, but the higher functions of the general life are lodged necessarily more in one part than in the others. For example, in the ancient communities, a large portion of the population always consisted of slaves, upon whom were devolved the lower industrial functions, while the higher or directing functions were exercised by an upper order of freemen, and more especially, within that order, by certain portions of it. Now, though any history of the Athenians would be defective, which did not contain a suggestion of the existence and the habits of the slave-population, which did not in fact keep continually present in the reader's imagination the thousands of slaves who were toiling daily underneath that platform of public life which was occupied by the free demos and its orators, yet every one knows that the real history of Athens, the actions which made it illustrious, came out of the votes and deliberations of this demos. And so, with modifications, in modern societies. Not only do certain scattered individuals contain in them such a share of the general vitality that they may be taken to some extent as representing the whole; but the arrangements of all communities are such that, for historical purposes, the attention need not be equally distributed over all parts, but, provided all parts are suggested and kept in view, may be most concentrated on some parts, where the higher functions are localized.

In extension of this remark we may note, that in all histories it is considered important to have correct lists of the rulers or chief magistrates, and to have the physiognomy and character of each in succession pretty distinctly sketched. This is considered necessary, even when the rulers are men personally of no particular mark, or goodness, or energy; and the reason is that, since these men were the principal personages in their communities while they lived, the most conspicuous social objects, the centres of general regard, it is like reviving part of the consciousness of the generations which looked at them, to set them up again one after another in their order. Apart altogether from any effect that George IV. may have exercised personally on British history during his reign, it is to be remembered that, by the fact of his position, he was during that period an object much present in the thoughts of the British people; and hence that, by keeping him in view, we recover, as it were, so much of the mental habit of his contemporaries. Indeed, this is the principle on which the practice of dating events by the reigns of kings and the like is founded.

8. Among the various other ways in which the problem of history is simplified, none is more important than that which is afforded by the power of studying the progressive life of a nation in its art, its literature, and its philosophy or systematic speculation. In the works of art (whether in music, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture) which a nation produces, its thoughts, its tendencies, all that is most general and characteristic in its intellectual, emotional, and moral life, is symbolized and embodied; and the due interpretation of any such series of works of art will reveal much to the historian. So with literature. The body of literature bequeathed by a nation is a living abstract of its moods, its passions, its likings, its aspirations; and a due acquaintance with a nation's literature, and, above all, with its highest national poetry, is essential to one who would write its history. Farther, and perhaps still more profoundly, the innermost life of a nation, the very principle of its life (i.e., its mode of thinking), is to be gathered from the history of its philosophy and religion. What is speculation to-day becomes action to-morrow; and hence the true thread of a nation's life is to be found above all in the succession of its thoughts and maxims on those subjects which are of the greatest generality and importance to the human race. There has been a perception of this among historians, but not so distinct as there might be.

9. After all, however, history would be in a somewhat uncertain predicament, unless it could prescribe to itself a more definite and rigid path of inquiry than we have yet indicated. Although the life of a nation is to be studied in the characters and actions of its great men individually, in the traditions of great physical occurrences which have affected it, in the records of its inventions and discoveries, in accounts of the social habits and movements of its direct- History.

ing classes; in the portraits and dates of its successive sovereigns, in its art, its literature, and its philosophy, it is to be studied most authentically and surely in the recorded series of its public acts. The public acts of a nation accurately recorded, are the true backbone of every history; and whatever other information there is, must be arranged round that. But what are the public acts of a nation? They are the acts performed by the nation expressly as a nation. Any general movement of a nation, even when not formal, may be considered as such an act; but, for all real purposes, the acts of a nation are to be regarded as those done in the name of the nation by its government. In every society that has yet existed on the face of the earth, there has been a government of some kind or other—a certain organ or apparatus located somewhere in the body-politic, and charged, in an express manner, with the performance of the functions appertaining to the common life. It matters not whether the apparatus is a despotic sovereignty lodged in a single person, or a popular assembly, or an oligarchical council, or a system of combined powers and checks. Nor does it matter whether the apparatus remains uniformly the same, or is changed from time to time. So long as a government officiates for a nation, the nation acts through it; and hence the attention of the historian must always be fixed on the government of the nation whose life he is representing, and he must take its acts as the corporate acts of the nation.

10. Now, a nation, through its government, is capable of two distinct kinds of political action,—action referring solely to itself; and action referring to other nations. In other words, the public acts of any nation are either acts of home policy, or acts of foreign or international policy. The distinction is a simple and popular one, but it is not the less true and comprehensive. The historian must never lose sight of it. He must always keep distinct in his mind these two series of acts,—the acts of a nation, through its government, relating to its own internal affairs; and the acts of the same nation, also through its government, having reference to other nations. (1.) The acts of a nation relating to its own internal affairs are of various kinds—popular agitations, public discussions, parliamentary debates, deliberations in council by those who exercise the government, consultations between the sovereign and his advisers, and the like; but the ultimate form which all such acts assume in every nation is that of decrees, orders, and laws. Wherever we can find a decree, an order, or a law, there we have in the most solid and authentic form an exhibition of the collective life of the nation; for every such decree, order, or law, represents the decision come to by the nation through its rulers upon some point of social necessity arising at that moment and occupying more or less the national thought. Every law represents the nation applying, at some particular moment, its collective energy and ingenuity, or even folly and prejudice, according to the forms in use, to the determination of some felt social need or emergency of the moment; and what more intimate exhibition of the collective life can there be than this? The history of every nation, therefore, is most authentically preserved in its statute-books, i.e., using the word statute-book in its widest sense, in the continuous series of its written laws, edicts, regulations, &c., about the entire miscellany of its domestic matters, such as trade, taxation, crime, education, and the like, including, of course, the provisions relating to its own constitutional system or mechanism. Here the historian treads, as it were, on adamant. In other matters there may be mistakes and misconceptions; but when the historian announces the fact, that in such and such a year, a nation passed such and such an enactment, or repealed such and such an enactment, he can be sure that he is on firm ground; and if he can step from one fact of this kind to another throughout his whole narrative, he has a solid road-way. (2.) Precisely so it is in matters of international activity. The international activity of countries takes various forms. War is one form, and it has hitherto been the form predominant in the history of the world. "The history of mankind," Napoleon III. is reported to have said, "is the history of armies." But commerce is another form; and diplomacy has in all times found some scope in arrangements unconnected with war. Just, however, as all domestic political activity takes its solid issue ultimately in laws, enactments, or institutions, so all international political activity may be considered as registering itself in what are called treaties. The treaties of a nation, using that word in its largest sense, as including all kinds of mutual agreements among nations, are, in its external history, what the body of its written laws is in its internal. Here also the historian feels his ground firm. A treaty like that of Utrecht or that of Vienna, is like the balancing of accounts after a long term of energetic and confused action. One sees the actual result at last, and can compare it with the aims and the means.

11. Historians have always attended with some care to treaties; and, indeed, accounts of great battles and great campaigns, and of the treaties in which they ended, have always constituted a large proportion of the matter of our histories. Perhaps less attention has been paid to the internal history of countries as preserved in their statute-books; and Mr Proude has recently done good service by calling attention to this fact, with especial reference to English history, in one of the Oxford Essays. But there may be exaggeration even on this side. The end of history is to realize and exhibit the whole collective life of a nation; and though the main acts of this collective life are most authentically registered in enactments and treaties, much of this life, and even of what is most interesting and significant in it, would elude us, if we did not trace it through other and more subtle manifestations. For example, the collective mind and energy of Britain at the present time would be gathered but meagrely from the current series of our parliamentary enactments and diplomatic arrangements; nor does the whole river of the national life run even in the procedure which gives rise to these solid results. Hence the necessity of falling back on all those kinds of matter which we have already indicated as belonging to history; the art, literature, and philosophy of a country, the lives of its great men, &c. Hence the necessity also of neglecting nothing that can serve to make the historical recollection more true, deep, and vivid. A casual anecdote or reported saying, a glimpse of some old social custom, may often irradiate a whole tract of past time. The rule, as regards the preliminary investigation of the facts, is that by all means one ought to strive to get as close to the transaction itself as possible; the rule as regards the proportionate value of the facts so ascertained, is that the "interest" of a fact is the measure of its historical importance. This last rule may appear questionable; but duly understood, it will be found to be just. What interests one man may not interest another; but for every individual severally, true history may be defined to be whatever of the actual past he recollects with interest.

12. In order to see what are the chief sources of history, we have only to express in another form the substance of what we have been saying. The main sources of history may be arranged, in the order of their importance, as follows:—1. Written or otherwise registered laws and treaties, in which are embodied, in their order, the deliberate determinations of nations with respect to the successive exigencies, internal and external, through which they passed. This source is available chiefly for the history of modern nations; only scraps of the laws and treaties of the ancient nations remaining to us in their original form. 2. Public contemporary registers of notable occurrences. These, in History, the express documentary form, are also most numerous for modern nations; but, for ancient times, facts may be often ascertained, and dates may be fixed, from monumental inscriptions, coins, medals, &c. 3. More general accounts of national transactions, given by those who have recorded them, and especially by contemporaries and eye-witnesses. A large proportion of what are called the "original materials" of all histories consists of such accounts, which are to be examined and checked by each other. 4. Authentic accounts of the physiognomies, lives, and characters of eminent men, and especially of eminent public men, visibly connected with national transactions. 5. Remaining works of art, and the whole surviving literature of a nation, for the period concerned, both as exhibiting the national tendencies and modes of thinking, and also as embodying incidentally particles of historical fact. 6. All miscellaneous sources of information respecting customs, costumes, food, furniture, occupations, &c. &c.; under which head, if not under some of the preceding, might be included busts, portraits, topographical views, engravings, and the like. One may also note here the occasional possibility that is of rendering a narrative of past actions more vivid by actually visiting remarkable localities, buildings, &c., or museums of antiquities. Here the historian can communicate through his senses with actual remnants of the past. A battle-field is a portion of the earth's surface, retaining, as it were, the scar of the action which passed over it; an old castle or street is, as it were, the shell once filled with an old form of life; a suit of armour with a bullet-hole in it suggests more accurately the warrior who moved and fought within it. The most extensive use of this help to history is in travelling over countries which were the scenes of great events, so as to realize the permanent features of their scenery, whether geological, botanical, or artificial.

13. Nothing has yet been said of the distinction, recognised by Bacon, and very generally kept up since, between the civil and the ecclesiastical history of a nation. That distinction, however, though convenient, is not fundamental; and much harm may be done by regarding it as such. Obviously it is inapplicable to the history of ancient communities; and though, with regard to modern Christian nations, there are good practical reasons for attending to it, they are purely reasons of practice, and not of theory. The history of the church is a splendid subject, and may well be undertaken apart; but not because of any real isolation of the facts included in the series thus chosen for special treatment. The best history of England would also necessarily be the best history of the Church of England.

14. Hitherto we have spoken of history, in its typical form, as the account of the life of one of those organized social masses called nations; frequently, however, we use the word history in its larger and more generic sense, as involving an account of the aggregate transactions of many nations, or indeed, of the whole known world, during a certain portion of past time. Thus, Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is virtually a mediæval history—a history of all the chief nations of the world during a thousand years. And thus we rise to the very highest conception of history—that implied in such phrases as "the teaching of history," "no other instance of this is to be found in history," and the like. History, in this supreme sense, is sometimes called universal history; and the object-matter of history, so understood, is the whole past course of humanity from the first moment of its existence to the present hour. This is true history, in the sense we have in view when we consider it as one of the great divisions of human knowledge and intellectual exercise. The historian, in this high sense, as distinct from the philosopher and the poet, is the man who makes it his aim to have an accurate continuous knowledge of all that has taken place on this earth since it contained human beings, and, along with that knowledge, an adequate sense of its whole significance. Hypothetically, indeed, one might go farther, and say that the aim of the historian, as such, is to be able to frame to himself an adequate continuous recollection of all that has passed in time, not restricting himself to time as connected with the existence of our species, nor even to time as connected with our world only. Except, however, in as far as geology might be made to yield a history of our earth anterior to the appearance of humanity, such an extension of history is purely ideal; and history can be nothing else for us than that vast collective life of humanity as a whole, to which all national histories are but tributaries. Let us glance at the conditions and divisions of history in this aspect.

15. The first and most difficult problem of universal history, as just defined, is to fix the point of its beginning—i.e., the time of the first appearance and activity of man on this planet. The unsolved condition of the human race now, as regards this problem, is analogous to that of a man trying to fix the date of his own birth by his own recollection. He cannot do so. He may work his memory backwards more or less distinctly to within a few years of his birth; but the date of his birth, and the circumstances of his infant years he can know only from external information. Very much so it is with the race as a whole. Regarding the commencement of the existence of humanity on the earth, and the subsequent period of what may be called its infancy, the mere memory of humanity is necessarily at fault. Two kinds of external information are depended on for filling up the blank—the information contained in the Biblical records of the creation and beginnings of the race; and any collateral information to be derived from geological researches. In short, history, at this its first stage, is merged in theology and geology; and the historian must have his conclusions given to him from beyond the field of his own science. Even so supplied, the conclusions are not numerous. Hitherto scientific geology has not even professed to be able to determine anything precise respecting the epoch at which the earth was first inhabited by man, or respecting the conditions of its first human inhabitants. And though the Hebrew Scriptures narrate the story of the creation of mankind, and of the fortunes of its first generations, with an exactness not offered by any other record—telling of the creation of an original pair on one part of the earth's surface, tracing the descent of successive generations from that pair, and describing a great catastrophe or deluge which destroyed all these generations, with the exception of a single family, who were left to re-people the world—commentators have found the utmost difficulty in settling the dates of these events, and in casting the whole narration into a chronological form. No fewer than two or three hundred different chronological schemes have been proposed, all based on calculations from the durations of the lives of the patriarchs and other numerical data furnished by the Biblical text. The shortest of these fixes the date of the creation of man at the year B.C. 3483; the longest at the year B.C. 6984—a discrepancy of more than 3000 years. The cause of these differences is the difference existing in the passages supplying the data, between the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Samaritan text and the Septuagint version. The chronological scheme commonly adopted in British tables of history, during the last two centuries, is that of Archbishop Usher, which fixes the epoch of the creation at B.C. 4004, and that of the deluge at B.C. 2348.

16. Even after passing beyond this first stage in the history of the world, and assuming whatever date for the deluge he considers most probable, the historian still encounters a large tract of time respecting which, unless he proceeds implicitly on the information given in the Hebrew Scriptures, he must remain totally silent. Availing himself, however, of those parts of the Mosaic record which relate to the re-peopling of the world after the deluge, he is able to impart a specific character to this portion of universal history which would otherwise be wanting. He can conceive it as the period of the dispersion of mankind over the earth, and of their division into nations, tongues, and peoples. And here, whatever collateral light elucidating the Mosaic account he can bring to his assistance so as to vivify his idea of human activity during this tract of time, must be derived, not, as before, from the science of geology, but from the so-called science of ethnology. The object of this science is to trace the affinities of existing nations and tribes on the earth, by the study of their physiognomical and physiological analogies and differences, the analogies and differences of their habits and mental characteristics, and the analogies and differences of their languages—so as to exhibit their genealogical descent, and, if possible, refer them back to several original stocks, springing from one root. So far as the science has yet gone, its great doctrine is that, whatever independent reasons there are for believing in the original unity of the race, yet, for historical purposes, we must conceive to ourselves humanity at the dawn of the remotest age to which its own unaided memory can penetrate, as consisting, not of one perfectly homogeneous mass aggregated on one spot, but of several distinct masses already distributed more or less densely over the various quarters of the earth, and each broken into minor subdivisions. In accordance with this general doctrine of ethnology, various schemes have been proposed. One of the most distinct and convenient is that which avers that, as far back as ordinary records carry us, we find the earth, as now, divided out among three great stocks or varieties of mankind—the Negro variety, having the African continent, or the greater part of it, for their home; the Mongolian variety, spread over Northern, Central, and Eastern Asia, and possibly also expatiating in America; and the Caucasian variety (this is an absurd and misleading name, but no proper equivalent has yet been proposed), possessing Western Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean margin of Africa, and subdivided conspicuously into—(1) the Semitic or Syro-Arabian family, clustered together in the Western region of Asia between the Tigris and the Mediterranean, and in the adjacent parts of Africa; and (2) the Japetic or Indo-European family, more widely distributed in the remaining Caucasian parts of Asia and Africa, and over all Europe. According, then, to ethnology, the business of the historian proper commences at that point of past time at which, so far as we have information, the whole or the greater part of the earth's surface can be conceived as overspread by human inhabitants of one or other of the three main types still existing—Negroes, Mongolians, or Caucasians—that these human inhabitants thinly dispersed perhaps in some parts as mere loose and roaming tribes, but in others showing a tendency to aggregate themselves into those larger consolidations which we call nations. Accepting the common chronology, he may fix this point, if he pleases, at about B.C. 2000. At that far-distant period it does appear as if the earth had been tolerably well overspread by human beings arranged very much as they now are—Negroes in Africa, south of Mount Atlas; Mongolians in Central, Northern, and Eastern Asia; and Caucasians in Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe; and as if already at various points these human beings had begun to form themselves into compact national masses.

17. Coming down from this point, it is the business of the historian to keep his eye roving, as it were, round the globe, on the watch for the first authentic appearances of activity on the part of any of those national masses which, he has already concluded, have been silently and obscurely forming themselves at different points on its surface. It is with communities and nations that the historian has to deal; and not till the earth furnishes him with at least one such community or nation on which he can fasten his attention, does his work properly commence. Now, here again, there are differences among historians. Some believe that, by means of records and monuments, we can carry back the histories of certain ancient nations as far as B.C. 2000, if not farther; others, more sceptical, doubt if we can go as far back as B.C. 1000, or even B.C. 800, and regard the traditions of events and the lists of kings, &c., by means of which certain of the ancient nations pushed the retrospect of their own respective histories beyond that point, as nothing more than mythology and legend. Of late this historical scepticism has certainly been exaggerated; and the researches of archaeologists seem gradually to be verifying the belief that, though on the whole the period between B.C. 2000 and B.C. 800 is the domain of mythology, yet even in that period we can lay down, as it were, a causeway of solid fact respecting certain individual nations. Without entering on this controversy (which, indeed, can only be conducted satisfactorily by discussing the antiquity of each nation apart), let us enumerate those nations which, by general consent hitherto, have been reckoned as the most ancient in the world, and, as such, the first objects of the historian's solicitude—1. In the great expanse of Negro humanity, conceived as possessing Southern and Central Africa from time immemorial, the only native consolidation that presents itself in early times with even a possible claim on the separate attention of the historian is that of the so-called Ethiopians, of whom we hear as a very ancient nation lying far inland beyond Upper Egypt. 2. Glancing over the vast Mongolian tracts of Asia and America, the historian encounters glimpses here and there at an early period of nations or aggregates of tribes under the vague names of Scythians and the like; but the only permanent and important consolidation whose antiquity, as maintained by itself, he feels bound to investigate, is that of the Chinese. The Mexicans and Peruvians of America do not come into view till comparatively modern times; so that, to all intents and purposes, America is excluded from ancient history. 3. Passing to the Caucasian regions of Western and Southern Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe, the historian is struck by the difference which these regions present. Here, instead of one nation looming into his view, he finds a considerable number of distinct nations contemporaneously or in swift succession competing for his notice. First, far to the east, and to a great extent isolated from the rest, are the Indians, a primeval mass of the Japetic or Indo-European race, at least claiming a high antiquity, which, like that of the Chinese, requires to be investigated. Next, clustered together in what we have defined as the Semitic or Syro-Arabian portion of the general Caucasian area—i.e., in Western Asia, between the Mediterranean and the Tigris, and in the adjacent parts of Africa—are a group of Semitic nations, among which the most conspicuous are the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, and the Assyrians and Babylonians. Lastly, in the remaining Indo-European portions of Asia, a little later in point of time, Japetic nations, such as the Medes and Persians of the Iranian table-land, and the Lydians of Asia Minor, are discerned rising into importance; while, if the attention is extended into Europe, the beginnings of such nations as the Greeks, the Etruscans, &c., are at the same time visible.

18. The first portion or division of universal history, therefore, is that which collects and narrates all that can be ascertained respecting the origin and early transactions of these primeval consolidations of mankind on our earth's surface, up to that point at which their histories cease to be separate, and appear to become involved, to some extent at least, in one general movement, the tracing of which may more properly be made the business of the remaining parts of history. Now there can be no difference of opinion as to the geographical region in which this general movement presented itself—the first heavings, as it were, of humanity in its efforts to assume that common course which it was to maintain through- out all time. It was not in Negro Africa, it was not in Mongolian Asia, it was not in Japetic Europe; it was, beyond all question, in that portion of Western Asia (adjacent Africa included); and, indeed, the Nile was always accounted an Asiatic river by the ancient geographers) which we still think of most when we speak of "the Oriental nations," and in which, as we have just stated, a cluster of distinguished Semitic nations was in contact with one or two Japetic ones, or rather with the elements of such. Every schoolboy knows that the Indians and the Chinese, whatever their antiquity and importance, stand apart and isolated to a great extent from the regular course of ancient history, so far as we can trace it; and that the true beginnings of "world-history," as such, are to be sought for among the mutual conflicts of those famous nations clustered together in smaller masses on that portion of the East beyond or near the Levant, where, as Napoleon alleged, the human soul had ever thrummed most powerfully—the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the Medes and Persians. When we try to fix, however, the date or epoch at which we are to account the mere separate histories of these nations to have ended, and the general movement to have begun, there is greater room for difference. From the earliest times of which we have any glimpse, these nations, or at least the Semitic ones, were warring with each other, and making conquests. We hear of early Egyptian conquests, of early Assyrian conquests, and even of early Ethiopian conquests. The Assyrians, in particular, stand forth in our schemes of universal history as the first people who pursued a regular and known career, aiming at the subjugation and political combination of the elements that lay around them. In our traditional schemes of universal history we have presented to us three successive Assyrian monarchies—the first, beginning shortly after the period assigned to the deluge, and ending somewhere about B.C. 2000, when a conqueror, Nimus, extended it immensely so as to form a great empire, with Nineveh for its capital; the second, beginning at the date of this Nimus, and lasting till the death of a luxurious monarch called Sardanapalus, B.C. 876, when the empire was dismembered; and the third, a monarchy of lesser dimensions, founded amid the ruins of the second, and lasting till the destruction of Nineveh, B.C. 606, by its subjects the Medes and Babylonians, under the Babylonian viceroy Nabopolassar. After this event, according to the same schemes of history, the unity of historic interest is centred in the so-called Babylonian monarchy, founded by Nabopolassar, and maintained and extended by his son Nebuchadnezzar and other successors, till the year B.C. 538, when the Medes and Persians, who had in the meantime risen to a position of some importance, captured Babylon, and began a new Oriental rule. Now the historian, after due investigation, may, if he chooses, date the commencement of world-history as such either from the last Assyrian monarchy, or from the Babylonian monarchy which superseded it. For many reasons, however, in the present state of our knowledge, it seems to us that it would be better to regard the general political movement of the human race, as beginning rather at the point where for the first time the mastery is seen transferred to a nation of the Japetic or Indo-European race—i.e., at the overthrow of the Babylonian empire by the Medes and Persians, B.C. 538—and the establishment of that Medo-Persian empire, which, in the hands of Cyrus the Great (died B.C. 529) and his successors Cambyses (B.C. 529-521), and Darius (B.C. 521-485), became organized by farther conquests, in which the Lydians were included, into the vast combination known as the Persian empire. According to this view, Cyrus is the first hero of universal history, as such; and the Persians are the first to lead the march of the general historic evolution. The best arrangement, then, as we think, for the purposes of universal history would be one which would constitute in the first place a great division by itself, under the name of Primæval Ancient History; assigning to this division the duty of collecting all that can be ascertained respecting the beginnings of those early consolidations of the race which we have enumerated, and of narrating their several histories, either in parallel lines where they keep separate, or otherwise where they commingle, on to that point (say the reign of Darius) where they merge in the authentic unity of the Persian empire.

19. Beyond this, the historian's course is so clear that it may be indicated briefly. The Persian monarchy, including all Asia from the Indus to the Ægean, precipitated itself upon Europe, thus determining that the world's pedigree should be continued through the Japetic nations of the West. When Darius (B.C. 490) attempted to conquer the Greeks, the earth changed its historic centre. The Greek and Hellenic race, already so nobly prepared for its honourable office (and, for the purposes of the universal historian, all Grecian history anterior to B.C. 490 would here come in by way of retrospect, including any authentic matter that might be ascertained respecting the Trojans and other Pelasgian nations of Asia Minor and Southern Europe), was inaugurated into that office at the battle of Marathon; and for a considerable period onward the main thread of universal history has to be traced in the History of Greece. This history, of which the Greco-Macedonian dominion of Alexander the Great and his successors may be viewed as a prolongation under different conditions from those which existed while the Athenians, the Lacedæmonians, the Thesians, &c., acted as separate or as confederate states, closes with the appearance of the Romans as a conquering people out of Italy. Transferring his regards to this imperial people (and here again the anterior of Italy itself, while the Romans were being cradled in it, as well as the by-past histories of the Carthaginians and other Mediterranean nations left out of the Persian empire, and of that of the Macedonians, but about to be included in that of the Romans, will be best managed by way of retrospect), the universal historian has a clear path in Roman History, as far as the fourth or fifth century of our era; at which point, by general consent, Ancient History closes, in the disintegration of the Roman empire by the northern races, and the commencement of a new order of things.

20. Onwards from this point there is no theoretical difficulty, though the complexity of the movement, arising from the multitude of the nations taking part in it, may occasion a practical one to the historian. Modern History, commencing say at the year 395 of the Christian era, when the Roman empire, on the death of Theodosius, was permanently divided into the two empires of the West and East, consists, as all know, of two parts,—Medieval History, which carries on the general movement from A.D. 395, at which time the empire of the West was already tottering before the attacks of the Goths and other Germanic peoples, to A.D. 1453, when the taking of Constantinople by the Turks put an end to the long-surviving empire of the East; and Recent Modern History, carrying on the movement from A.D. 1453 to the present time. Under both these heads, by keeping up with due skill the distinction between the "History of the West" and the "History of the East," the historian is able to include everything in its proper place. Thus, under Medieval History, the "History of the West," commencing with a survey of the Roman empire of the West at the period of its decay, then passes on to an account of the Germanic peoples who were to be its destroyers, details the actions of these peoples in disrupting the empire, and forming the new societies of France, Italy, Spain, Britain, Germany, &c., and conducts the conjoint story of these societies through the eras of Charlemagne, Hildebrand, &c., to the eve of the Reformation; while the History. "History of the East" (the necessary connections being exhibited throughout) includes the history during the same period of the Byzantine empire, the related histories of the Arabs, Tartars, and Turks, and to some extent that of the Slavonian nations. So, under Recent Modern History, there may be assigned to the department of "the West" all the transactions, national and international, of the occidental nations of Europe since 1453, including, as an important part of the story, an account of their colonizing energies as exhibited in Africa, Asia, and, above all, in America—now for the first time added to the theatre of history; while to the department of "the East," may be assigned the narrative of Turkish domination, and of interrupting Persian conquests, together with the necessary survey up to the present hour of the rest of native Asia.

21. It may be well to exhibit in a tabular form the divisions of universal history as they have been sketched in the foregoing paragraphs.

I. PRIMEVAL ANCIENT HISTORY, including, after a sufficient ethnographical survey of the globe at the earliest possible date, the several histories of the most ancient known nations, such as the Ethiopians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Lydians, the Medes and Persians, together with an account of the mutual actions of some of these upon each other, which resulted, after a preliminary era of Assyrian and Babylonian domination, in the formation of the Persian empire (B.C. 538-485).

II. CLASSICAL ANCIENT HISTORY; subdivided into

1. Grecian History, beginning with the necessary retrospect of the history of the Grecian lands, and of the lands related to them prior to B.C. 490, and then carrying on the general movement, first through the true Hellenic, and then through the Greco-Macedonian era, as far as B.C. 168 or thereby.

2. Roman History, involving a like retrospect of Italy and of the parts of the Mediterranean world related to it (Carthage, Spain, &c.), as far as B.C. 168, and then carrying all the historic world on, directly or by implication, as far as A.D. 395.

I. MEDIAEVAL HISTORY; from A.D. 395 till A.D. 1453, divisible into

II. MODERN HISTORY, consisting of

II. RECENT MODERN HISTORY; from A.D. 1453 till the present time, also divisible into

Of course far more minute subdivisions than are indicated in this table would be necessary to make it perfect. Thus Roman History is divisible into the periods of the Commonwealth and the Empire; Western Medieval History is divisible into the Frankish Period and the Feudal Period; and the History of the United States and of other American formations stands out as something more than a mere appendix to the recent history of the West—a kind of new development of humanity in its course towards the future.

22. The historian, then, as distinct from the poet or the philosopher, is the man who, having some such scheme of the whole past course of humanity in his mind, can fill it up with a minute and accurate knowledge of all the facts constituting its separate parts, so as to embrace the whole career of the world, from the primeval period of darkness onwards through classical, medieval, and modern times, in one vast continuous recollection. Such men there have been and are, though naturally, as the world goes on, their number must become smaller and smaller. Niebuhr was such a man; and indeed all great scholars of ancient or modern times have been men of this class. The terms "learning" or "erudition," as we now use them, are, in this sense, but synonyms for historical knowledge, or rather for parts of that knowledge; for what are our philologists but men of colossal memories for certain orders of those facts which universal history includes?

23. But is the historian merely a man of overloaded memory? All that enormous store of facts having been slowly acquired and treasured up, do they lie in his mind with no more of cohesion than is involved in the mere order of place and time in which they came into being? Certainly they ought not to do so; and it is to the discredit of the person pretending to be a historian if they do. Memory, as we have said, is but the name for a certain mood of the total mind; and, unless therefore the facts of universal history are themselves such as to be positively incapable of any other organization than that implied in the accidental order of their individual juxtaposition and succession, there is no reason why history should not be something more than a mere vast register of dates and particulars. We invariably assume that it is something more. We speak of "the lessons" of history. Washington, when the future organization of the United States was being discussed, drew up a list of all the most notable confederacies of states known in the world, in order that, by studying the constitution and history of each, he might assist his conclusion as to the best constitution for the thirteen American colonies. And so every day we appeal to precedents, and draw inferences from the past as to the proper course in existing social and political emergencies. We even define history as "philosophy teaching by example." And what does all this indicate but the universality of the belief that, as there is a certain invariable order of nature in the physical world, so there is in the historical or social world; that in this world also like effects must follow like causes, so that, when circumstances are the same, we have a right to infer that results will be the same! Generalizing this belief, we speak of the "course of humanity," of "the career of the race," of "the movement of human affairs," and the like; all which phrases imply that certain conclusions as to the nature and connexions of the facts recollected are involved in the recollection.

24. Speculations having reference to the mutual connections and the general bearing of the facts of past history as a whole, form what is called The Philosophy of History. There has always been some such philosophy. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, for example, not only relates facts, but reasons about them; that is, he is fond of referring historical effects to what he considers their causes, and of drawing general conclusions from the story which he is telling. On this account he is often called a philosophical historian. But all the ancient historians, not mere annalists, are to some extent philosophical, in the same sense; that is, they mix reflections with their narrative, and recognise connections between causes and effects. Every one of them proceeds on the notion that, where social circumstances are similar, social results will be similar. Such men as Aristotle went much further, and tried, by studying the constitutions of different communities, and their effects on their prosperity, to establish general principles as to the best forms of government for a body-politic, and the probable destinies of this or that state. Moreover, the religious mind in all ages has always recognised a certain order in the affairs of nations, a certain course and tendency in the lives of communities as well as in the lives of individuals. Every ancient community fancied its fortunes to be under the guardianship of some deity or deities, the action of whose will and purpose might be discerned in everything that befell it. In modern times the notion of a Providence regulating human affairs, and guiding the destinies of nations, has been familiar to all noble and great minds. "What are all our histories, and records of actions of past times," said Cromwell, "but God manifesting himself that he hath shaken, and tumbled down, and trampled under foot whatsoever He hath not planted?" And in the Christian view of Providence this notion takes a much more specific form; so that all history is viewed as the gradual unfolding of that Divine scheme of which Christianity is the essence.

25. But while a philosophy of history in this sense has always existed, the idea of history as an inductive science—the idea of regarding the phenomena of society as happening according to certain fixed laws, which may be ascertained to some extent by observation, like the laws of physical nature—is comparatively recent. The honour of first distinctly expounding this idea is generally assigned to an Italian thinker, Vico (1688-1744), who in the year 1725 published a work entitled Scienza Nuova, or "Principles of a new Science." In this work, which, with much that was obscure and vague, contained many brilliant perceptions, Vico developed the notion of the possibility of arriving at fixed laws of social growth and decay by observing the actual course of communities. He was very sanguine in his hopes of the extent to which this science might be carried. Making it his fundamental maxim that when circumstances are the same results will be the same, he believed that after a sufficient study of the past we might be able to predict the future so certainly that we might even calculate the duration of a nation's existence. He believed that by an examination of the histories of past states it would be possible to find out the necessary and eternal career through which, with certain variations, all states must pass; and he believed that in the same way the law of the movement of humanity as a whole might be ascertained. Subsequent philosophers, both in France and in Germany, some of them without any knowledge of Vico's speculations, pursued a similar train of thought. Montesquieu, for example, did much by his inquiries into the effects of climate and the like upon the social forms and habits of nations (1748), to accustom people to a scientific manner of looking at history. Herder also, in his Ideas towards a Philosophy of History (1774), helped forward the same speculation. But perhaps the broadest and deepest assertion during last century of the possibility of reducing the phenomena of society and history, as well as any other kind of phenomena, within the scope of a science, was that made by Kant in his Essay entitled Idea of a Universal History in a Cosmopolitical Point of View (1784). The following are one or two sentences from this Essay:—"Whatever be the conception of the liberty of the will which one may form in a metaphysical point of view, its phenomena—human actions—are determined, just as well as every other kind of natural events, according to universal laws of nature. It is to be hoped that history, which is occupied with the narration of these phenomena, will, when it contemplates the play of the liberty of the human will on the large scale, discover a regular course in it; so that what seems irregular and capricious in individual cases shall appear, as regards the whole species, as a continually progressive though slow unfolding of its original tendencies. Thus marriages, births, and deaths, seem—as the free-will of man has so great an influence on them—to be subject to no rule according to which their number can be previously determined by reckoning; and yet the yearly tables of them in great nations evince that they happen just as much according to constant laws of nature as the equally inconstant rains whose happening cannot be determined singly, but which on the whole do not fail to maintain the growth of plants, the flow of rivers, and other dispositions of nature, in a uniform, uninterrupted course. One cannot forbear a certain indignation at seeing the actions of men represented on the theatre of the great world; and, notwithstanding the wisdom of individuals appearing here and there, at finding at last everything in the gross composed of madness, of child- ish vanity, and frequently of childish wickedness and rage of destruction. There is here no expedient for the philosopher but that of endeavouring to discover a design of nature in this nonsensical course of human affairs; so that a history of creatures who proceed without a plan may nevertheless be possible, according to such a determinate plan of nature."

26. The idea thus propounded by a few of the most ori- ginal minds of last century has since passed into the general belief of all thinkers, so that all are now prepared to regard the term history as including not merely the vast miscellany of the individual facts of the past, but also whatever body of truths or principles relative to the action of men in societies can be obtained by a sound study and fair generalization of these facts. Hitherto, however, notwithstanding the pre- valence through Europe, and more especially in France, of a spirit of historical generalization arising from this new view of history, the body of such ascertained historical truths or principles is very small. The cause of this is the vast complexity of the facts which are the objects of social science. If in the science of chemistry we are still only in the process of arriving at laws and principles, how can we expect to be far advanced in the task of discovering the laws and principles of phenomena so much more complex than those of chemistry as are presented by human society.

27. Certain conclusions more or less certain respecting the laws of social equilibrium and social movement we have nevertheless arrived at. The principles of political eco- nomy, for example, so far as they have been established by those who have prosecuted this department of inquiry dur- ing the last century, may be regarded as inductions or generalized expressions of social facts of a particular order —those relating to social wealth—and, as such, may rank as a solid contribution to our future body of historical truths. Some conclusions of other kinds from national statistics may also be included in the same body. Nor are we without some generalizations of a more extensive nature respecting the course of human history as a whole. For example, on referring to the sketch given above of the leading divisions of universal history, certain conclusions are so obviously im- plied in the facts themselves that they cannot fail to suggest themselves as facts too. One such fact is, that whereas the first theatre of true historical action was limited to a small portion of the earth's surface, the whole tendency of events has been to widen that theatre, so that now the whole globe of the earth almost presents the characteristics of social or- ganization, and is capable of a certain approach to simul- taneous consciousness and simultaneous purpose. Connected with this fact is the circumstance that the agency by which this gradual social conquest and tillage, so to speak, of the globe has been effected, has hitherto been chiefly in the hands of the so-called Caucasian portion of humanity, and, within that portion, perhaps chiefly in the hands of the Japetic or Indo-European nations. Connected with the same fact is the interesting circumstance that the geographical order of the process has been on the whole from East to West. First the primeval Oriental fermentation affected Western Asia as far as the shores of the Mediterranean; then the Persian dynasty extended the historic stage to the Ægean; after that the Greek or Græco-Macedonian supremacy ex- tended it to the Adriatic; next the Romans extended it to the Atlantic. Against this barrier human energy, as it were, kept dashing itself for fifteen centuries, till at last the pent-up, westward-striving force found vent, and, like the flash from a surcharged cloud, the spirit of Columbus shot to a new hemisphere. Nor does the process seem yet at an end. The westward tendency of the Americans on their continent, and the Anglo-Saxon colonizations going on in the Pacific Islands, point to the ultimate completion by history of the great circle of the earth's circumference.

28. These, however, are but generalizations from the facts of the history of the race in its obvious external aspect: Our notions as to the nature of the internal movement or course of humanity are much more vague and conjectural. Many speculative minds have propounded what they have called a "formula" of history. Vico imagined that the course of humanity was cyclical—i.e., that the world, after going through a certain number of stages returned to the same point or the same set of conditions as at first; and then went through the same stages over again; and he was dis- posed to regard all modern history, from the date of the dis- solution of the Roman empire, as a repetition, Phoenix-like, of the history of the world up to that date. Abandoning this cyclical theory, most thinkers since have adopted, as more natural, the theory of continuous evolution or de- velopment, until all the elements of humanity shall have been finally harmonized and co-ordinated. The popular form of this theory is that which expresses itself in the word "progress"—a term which, in so far as it implies a progress from worse to better, has come into use only since the French Revolution. Less exceptionable in some re- spects than this term, as it is generally understood, as not so much begging the question of the absolute character of the evolution, is the equally popular term "civilization." The historic process, it is said, has been one of the gradual "civilization" of the race. But in what does this "civiliza- tion" consist? In a gradual change in the mode of human thought, and consequently in the mode of human activity, say some—i.e., in the gradual exchange of the superstitious mode of thought for the rational or scientific, and in a gradual exchange of the occupations of war and bloodshed for those of peaceful industry! In the gradual destruction of all that interferes with individual freedom, in a gradual tendency to civil and political, if not to social equality, say others! In the gradual preparation of the human species externally and internally, said Kant, for a certain cosmopolitical organization of state which shall sup- ersede that of nations, empires, &c., and embrace them all! In all these speculations and prognostications we can discern at least fragments of the truth. We do recognize a certain change in the mental habits of the race, depend- ing on the growth of scientific knowledge, during the past career of the world; and along with this a change of ex- ternal manners and occupations. Peaceful industry does seem on the whole to be superseding war. We do see also a gradual diffusion of privileges of all kinds; a gradual ten- dency to the equalization of civil and political rights; a gradual evolution of freedom for the individual human being. The abolition of personal slavery is one form in this process; the extension of the rights of citizenship in modern states is another. Lastly, we do see, with Kant, a certain tendency of humanity within, keeping pace with its geographical extension and the increase of its means of locomotion and intercommunication externally, to a pos- sible organization which may include the whole of it. But, on the whole, the body of such conclusions which we can rank among the ascertained and positive truths of history is very small; and though all the best minds of the world are now agreed that sound politics as an art can be founded only on the scientific study of history—in other words that politics is but applied history—the confusion of political doctrines and creeds which the present state of the world presents, proves how far we are from being able to turn this maxim to any efficient account.

II. HISTORY CONSIDERED AS A FORM OF LITERARY COMPOSITION.

Our remarks under this head, necessarily very brief, may be best presented in the shape of a view of some of the leading requisites of a historian, as distinct from a practi- tioner of other kinds of literature:

1. First then, to success in historical literature, it is ne- cessary that the writer should be a man of the historical cast of mind. This is, in some sort, a truism, but it is a truism worth attending to. We all know that there is such a thing as a poetical cast of mind, and that there is such a thing as a philosophical cast of mind; but we do not so often take account of the fact that there is also a historical cast of mind, and that, just as we speak generically of "the poet" and "the philosopher," so, in the same generic sense, we may speak of "the historian," as a being intellectually distinct from either. And what is the characteristic mental habit of the historian, as distinct from the philosopher and the poet? We have already conveyed the answer to this question in our preliminary definition of history. The historian is the man who tends by preference to fall into that mood of the total mind which we call memory or recollection, as distinct from that mood which we call reasoning, or that mood which we call imagination. Such men there are. There are men to whom it is a positive constitutional pleasure to recall the memory of concrete facts and circumstances amid which they have once been—to remember persons, places, incidents, costumes, physiognomies, and physical and social particulars of every description. They delight in reminiscence and anecdote absolutely for their own sake, and amuse themselves when alone, and others when in company, by rehearsing anecdotes and reminiscences. Generally, if there are opportunities, this taste, where it exists, is extended and heightened into a liking for the antique—a passion not only for the contemporary, but also for the past concrete. It becomes a delight to gaze at an old bridge or an old building, or a spot on a heath marked by a great stone, and to know that, at such and such a time, such and such an event occurred there. Sir Walter Scott was pre-eminently such a man; Herodotus also was pre-eminently such a man. Scott and Herodotus, therefore, may stand as types of the historical cast of mind; and it is all the better to take Scott as such a type, because in him the important fact is exhibited, that a man may have the historical habit of mind strongly developed, and yet may not be a man exclusively of this habit. In Scott, the historian and the poet existed in remarkable combination; he imagined while he remembered, and he remembered while he imagined; he has left us both histories and poems. A combination sometimes found, and no less interesting, is that of the philosopher or speculative thinker with the historian. Sir William Hamilton, for example, is a man of colossal erudition in the history of opinion, as well as of extraordinary power as an original philosopher; and no man is so fond of casting his disquisitions into the historical form, or of appending to his disquisitions their historical elucidations. Not a few cases, also, may be found in which men, though not primarily or specifically thinkers—not themselves inclined to propound or to advocate systems of doctrine—have yet such an interest in old modes of thinking simply as facts, that they will exercise their speculative faculties to any extent in mastering the most abstruse parts of Plato, or Aristotle, or Leibnitz, or Berkeley. Sometimes, indeed, a man's historical taste chiefly shows itself in his liking for facts of this order, and neglects such concrete antiquarian details as those of costume, physiognomy, and the like. And here, of course, it is to be noted that, though a relish for all orders of antique facts is desirable in the historian, yet it is well for his completeness as a historian that his relish for certain orders of facts should be in proportion to their degrees of historic value. History, in its typical sense, being the record of the public life of a community, the historian will be the more perfect, in proportion as the facts and circumstances in which his memory delights are those in which the public life of communities is best represented and embodied. What these are we have attempted to indicate. The typical historian ought at least to have a certain interest in political forms, and in the recollection of political events.

2. The historian ought, in the second place, to be a man of the strictest veracity. But there are two kinds of veracity. There is what may be called passive veracity, or that honourable disposition of mind which makes a man himself refrain from falsehood. This, of course, the historian, as well as every man, whatever be his calling, ought to possess; and whosoever does not possess it ought to be chased and hooted from the field of history. Misrepresentation for a purpose, or for the sake of effect, when at all conscious, is but a variety of the same deliberate lying. But many men who are passively veracious are not equally conspicuous for active veracity—that is, for the disposition to spare no labour of research in order to clear out falsehood from whatever story they are dealing with, and arrive at the truth. This disposition the historian must also possess. The very word ἱστορία implies active research. Writers of history differ very much in this respect. Some men, rather than set down a date falsely, will spend weeks in trying to ascertain it, and, if they fail, will say so; others are far less scrupulous. David Hume, with all his merits as a historian, is accused of extreme indolence in the matter of research; and a story is told of the French historical writer, Father Daniel, to the effect that he "declared the study of state papers to be a task more of fatigue than of use," and that, "being shewn in the Royal Library at Paris a vast collection of original manuscripts relating to the history of France from the reign of Louis XI., he spent a single hour in turning over the volumes, and then declared that he was fully satisfied." Perhaps the French sin, in this respect, more than the Germans; though there are many splendid exceptions. As regards our own historical literature, no one who has not a large acquaintance with it can know on what a small basis of truly original research the vast pile rests, and how many works there are enjoying some celebrity (and that not as honest compilations, but really as histories), which, if examined, would turn out to be but the fourth or fifth dilutions of previous works, themselves successive dilutions of some one work, the author of which did go to original authorities. But even in using what are called original authorities, the historian has room for the exercise of research. He has to guard against two sources of error—the wilful falsification of dishonest men near the fountain-head; and the operation in all states of society and in all companies and communities, but especially in early times, of what is called the mythical or legendary tendency in human nature—i.e., the tendency to imagine incidents corresponding to feelings, and then to confound the incidents so imagined with actual fact. The practised historical sense or understanding, accustomed always to weigh evidence, is on its guard against both sources of falsehood. It is only in comparatively recent times, however, that the immense importance of attending to the second source of falsehood has been appreciated. Every one knows what a revolution in the accounts of the early histories of all nations has taken place since Niebuhr first applied the theory of the Mythos to the early history of Rome as believed by the Romans themselves and recorded by all their writers.

3. The value of any history will be in proportion to the general depth and greatness and nobility of the historian's own nature as a whole. This ought never to be forgotten, but it is very apt to be forgotten. Seeing that the business of the historian is to recover and narrate actual facts, it is sometimes hastily concluded that it is indifferent by what kind of mind, provided sufficient diligence is used, the process of recovery and narration is gone through. We have already virtually opposed this idea. Memory or recollection, we have said, is but a mood of the total mind; and hence the character of the memory or recollection will vary according to the entire constitution of the mind which remembers or recollects. As the imagination of the poet, as the understanding of the philosopher, follows in some subtil way the law of the total personality—so that there are poets of grand, and poets of mean imaginations, thinkers of high, and thinkers of grovelling understandings, in like manner also the memory follows the law of the personality, and there are historians of superb and historians of petty memories. It depends on the total character of the historian, in the first place, what kinds of past facts will adhere to his memory, or interest him in his researches; and, in the second place, what intensity of meaning he can find in these facts, what breadth of significance he can impart to them. Even contemporary facts, respecting which no research is necessary, are not the same things to different minds. The death of the Russian Emperor, Nicholas, for example, was externally or per se the same identical event to all; and yet, as that intelligence was swept abroad over Europe, it became, so to speak, a thousand different "facts" simultaneously to the thousand different minds which it touched. And so, under more complex conditions, with the facts of past history. "The greatness of the historical literature of any period therefore" (if we may here repeat what we have said elsewhere), "or the greatness of any individual as a historical writer, depends ultimately on the general richness of the human nature which that period or that individual brings to the investigation of the past. A mass of facts, in themselves unalterable, is the material of every history, but it depends on the spirit which the historian breathes through the mass what the history shall be. Not only may history be, but necessarily every history is, saturated with the spirit of the historian in all its peculiarity. History is, and can be nothing else, than the past represented by the present; what the representation, therefore, in any case shall be, depends, no doubt, partly on the actual matters represented, but at the same time also on the power which represents them. History, accordingly, is a form of literature affording scope for genius, for high moral purpose, for original and inventive power, equally with any other. Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Voltaire, Gibbon, Hume, Robertson—do we not feel that in the hands of such men historical writing became, as much as any other could, a medium through which they could perform the whole function of their being, both in so far as it was good and in so far as it might be bad? Shut up a hundred different historians in as many different rooms, each with the same materials for an account of the same selected transaction; and then, necessarily, the hundred narratives that will be produced at the end of any given period, although all so far identical in substance, will each bear the stamp of the author's individuality—or of his acquired knowledge, his prevalent habits of feeling, his whole philosophy of life." Applying these remarks, one might classify known historians according to certain broad differences of the human constitution generally. Some historians are poetic and pictorial, others are speculative and philosophical, others are stern and severely judicial; some are grave and earnest, others are light and satirical, in their manner. On the whole, the historical cast of mind may be associated with almost any conceivable combination of other mental habits and faculties; and almost all varieties of character and intellect may find congenial scope in history. The persons perhaps whom it would be most desirable to exclude from this department of literary exercise are men labouring under the influence of special polemical crotchets. Such men ought to write pamphlets, and take their illustrations from history, but ought not to write formal histories.

4. The historian is bound to be acquainted with all those general conclusions or inductions relating either to social life as it may be now observed, or to the order of social events in the past, which may be considered so far established as to constitute historical or political truths. The body of such truths, we have said, cannot yet be said to be numerous; but so far as they exist, they ought to be known to the historian, and to form part, so to speak, of his historical creed. Thus, if there are any generalizations that can be esteemed sound and valid as to the invariable course of nations, or as to the successive phases of human thought in the past, or as to the tendency of humanity as a whole, or as to the influence of climate and other physical causes on social and political conditions, these ought indubitably to be carried by the historian along with him, as so much fixed science, in his own particular researches. It is needless to point out how this applies to the truths of political economy, as one branch of social science, so far as these are accepted and agreed upon.

5. The historian, over and above the foregoing requisites, must have acquired for himself by study and practice a certain very complex art of historical writing and arrangement. The full illustration of this important matter is beyond our present limits. Suffice it to say, that, though there are many varieties of historical art—though the art of a Gibbon, for example, is very different from that of a Macaulay—yet the essence of all good historical art, in the case of what we have called the typical form of history, seems to lie in a distinct recognition by the historian of the fact that, in writing a history, he is writing the life of a nation. Just as, in biography, the essential notion is that of an original organism moved through certain sets of circumstances which act upon it and modify it, and just as the biographer has always to keep in mind this distinction between the man as he is at any moment, and the circumstances through which he is passing at that moment, so it is in history. Here, also, there is always a certain already existing organism—i.e., the total social being and constitution of the nation up to the moment under notice; and there is, then, farther, the set of new conditions through which that organism is about to pass. Translate this into the language of practical art, and it may be said that the historian has at every point to keep the balance fair between the two processes of description and narration—description being the process which takes account of facts as they exist contemporaneously, and narration the process which follows facts in their sequence. In other words, good historical art consists of a judicious blending of descriptive surveys of social states with narrative accounts of social transactions. (1.) Historical description.—It has always been accounted part of the business of a historian to give broad descriptive surveys of what are called "states of society," "states of civilization," and the like. Perhaps, however, it might be to the advantage of history if a greater proportion of the whole duty of the historian were accomplished by means of this art of contemporaneous surveys. For example, there is no method according to which, as we conceive, the history of England could be better written, than some method by which a great part of the vast work might be achieved in a series of "cross-sections," or broad contemporaneous surveys of the whole life and civilization of the English nation at important and well-selected epochs of its progressive existence; the intervening periods between these "cross-sections" being filled up by the plan of narration. In general, historians confine themselves too much, and especially when treating of remote periods, to the narrative plan. As examples of the other plan of contemporaneous description, we may refer to Mr James Mill's elaborate account of the civilization of the Hindus in his History of British India; and to Mr Macaulay's well-known survey, on such different principles, of the state of British society prior to the Revolution of 1688. In such cases as these, historians, of course, proceed on a certain instinct, teaching them what orders of facts ought to be included in such a survey to render it complete. Mr Mill's instinct in this case was founded on his previous habits of political criticism and analysis; Mr Macaulay's was more purely artistic. Science, however, might here come to the assistance of art. It would be possible, we think, once for all, to draw up, so to speak, a schedule of the essential particulars that ought to be known about any nation, in order to complete the survey of its civilization, and to arrange these particulars in their proper order, commencing say with the geographical and geological features of the country which the nation inhabited, and proceeding on to the most intricate parts of the national polity; and then, the best historical artist would be the one that, purposely or instinctively, should best fill up the schedule, or comply with its requisitions. (2.) Historical Narration.—Not to mention other matters under this head, we would only point to the importance in every narration of regularly beating time—i.e., not only accurately inserting dates, but distinctly keeping the flight of time, day by day, month by month, and year by year, present in the imagination of the reader. Historians differ very much in this respect. Some are so lax that the reader hardly knows, until he makes the calculation for himself, how long the war he is reading about has already lasted, or what is the age of the general.

6. It only remains now to pass our eye along the course of universal literature, so as to enumerate those who, according to the general judgment of their own and of other nations, have distinguished themselves most in the department of history, and may therefore take their places in the list of the chief historians of the world:

I. PRIMEVAL HISTORIANS.—Here the sacred historians of the Old Testament stand alone; and it is from them, in conjunction with the retrospective narratives of some of the Greek historians, especially Herodotus, and in conjunction also with archæological research, as in the investigation of the monuments of Egypt, and of those recently discovered at Nineveh (and probably the same process may be yet applied to many others of the famous sites of ancient oriental civilization), that all our historical knowledge of primeval times is to be derived.

II. CLASSICAL HISTORIANS.—(1.) Greek Historical Writers.—This list is headed by Herodotus, the "Father of History," and a man whose name the whole human race is bound to hold in reverence, as that of one of the truest men of genius that ever lived. Then come, in order, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus Siculus, Arrian, and Plutarch; to whom may be added the Jewish historian Josephus, and the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius. (2.) Latin Historical Writers.—The most illustrious names in this list are those of Sallust, Julius Caesar, Livy, Suetonius, and Tacitus; but other minor names might be added. Livy and Tacitus are pre-eminently the Roman historians.

III. MEDIAEVAL HISTORIANS.—(1.) Latin Historians of the Western Nations.—A vast proportion of the mediæval history of the western nations is buried in the legends or lives of the saints; but each nation had its independent chroniclers of political and ecclesiastical events, some of whom rose to the dignity of historians. Among these Gregory of Tours, who lived in the Merovingian times of the Frankish monarchy, and wrote an Ecclesiastical History of the Franks, deserves mention. There were also some notable chroniclers and biographical writers in the age of Charlemagne; and France produced some good contemporary historians of the Crusades. No country, however, was richer in historical writers during the middle ages than England. The venerable Bede, in the eighth century, was a man of true historical genius; and to the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, belonged a series of able Latin chroniclers, of whom the most distinguished are Geoffrey of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, Matthew Paris, Higden, Knighton, and Walsingham. The Scottish historian Fordun belongs to the fifteenth century. (2.) Byzantine Historians.—Under this name is included a considerable series of rather petty writers, natives of the Greek or Eastern Empire, from its separation from the West to its final destruction by the Turks. Among these were Procopius, Agathius, Menander, John of Ephiphania, Theophylactus Simocatta, and the well-known Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. (3.) Oriental Historians.—In the remarkable development of the literary genius of the Arabs, consequent upon the impulse given to the race by Mohammed, history was not neglected. The Spanish Arabs had their special historians; and Turkish and Persian historians of the middle ages are also mentioned. Of Indian and Chinese historians we can say nothing, though these were not wanting.

IV. MODERN HISTORIANS.—Since the rise of the vernacular literatures of the various modern nations of Europe, we are able to count a number of distinguished men in each, who have devoted themselves, some exclusively, others in part, to historical writing, and have there won their literary laurels. (1.) English Historical Writers.—Among these, passing over such valuable early chroniclers as Holinshed and Stow, and such metrical historians as Barbour and Wyntoun, may be mentioned—Knollys; Sir Walter Raleigh, in virtue of his History of the World; Bacon, in virtue of his History of the Reign of Henry VII.; and Shakspeare himself, in virtue of his historical plays, called, by himself and his contemporaries, Histories. Next (passing over minor names) may be mentioned the party-historians Clarendon and Burnet; succeeded by the splendid series of British historical writers of the eighteenth century—Swift, Defoe, Hume, Smollett, Warton, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Halifax, Dr Henry, Dr Robertson, and Edward Gibbon. All in all, Gibbon, in virtue both of the immensity of his task, and of the admirable industry and art with which it was executed, has the highest place assigned to him among British writers of history; and he is in many respects, though not in all, the type of a great historian. After the time of Gibbon no man had a more powerful influence on the historical literature, not of Britain alone but of all Europe, than Sir Walter Scott; all the efforts of whose genius were, in a sense, historical, and some of whose works, though not his best, were expressly histories. Historical writers contemporary with Scott, and each having characteristic excellences, were James Mill, and Mackintosh; and, coming down to our own generation, what a constellation in our historical literature (we shall not attempt to classify the stars according to their magnitudes) is represented by the names of Tytler, and Arnold, and Alison, and Napier, and Macaulay, and Carlyle, and Thirlwall, and Grote. Belonging to the same constellation, in virtue of the language in which they write, are the American historians, Washington Irving, Bancroft, and Prescott. (2.) French Historical Writers.—In this list, which may be considered to begin with De Ville Hardouin and De Jonville in the thirteenth century, the greatest names in times anterior to the Revolution are those of the vivid and picturesque Froissart, Philip De Comines, Thuanus (who, however, wrote in Latin), D'Aubigné, Brantome, Pérefixe, Sully, the Jesuit Daniel, Vertor, Rollin, the illustrious Bossuet, Basnage, Fleury, Rapin, St Simon, Du Cange, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Raynal, and Rulhières; to whom, since the Revolution, have been added, besides many of inferior note, such men as Sismondi, Barante, Guizot, Capéique, the two Thierrys, Miguet, Michaud, Thiers, Michelet, Merimee, Lamartine, and Louis Blanc. In no department of literature has France recently been so prolific as in history; and perhaps, on the whole, no other country has such a cluster of eminent living historians. At the head of what is perhaps the most characteristic school of French historians—i.e., those who are distinguished by their passion for historical generalization, as well as their mere powers of narration—stands M. Guizot. (3.) Italian Historical Writers.—Of these the chief are, in the sixteenth century, Macchiavelli and Guicciardini, with some lesser men, such as Varchi, Bembo, Sarpi, and Davanzati; and in more recent times, Davila, Maffei, Muratori, Tiraboschi, Botta, Micali, Bossi, Colletta, and Pignotti.

(4.) German Historical Writers.—Passing the Magdeburg centurions and other ecclesiastical historians of the sixteenth century, who wrote in Latin, we have to come down to the eighteenth century for any German historical writers of importance. To that century belong Heyne, Schwekh, and other contributors to a Universal History then published; to whom have succeeded such men as Eichhorn, Müller, the great Niebuhr, Heeren, Schlosser, Rotteke, Menzel, Lappenberg, Von Hammer, Raumer, Neander, Ranke, and Bunsen. In "learned" history, and in patient research, the Germans are unparalleled.

(5.) Spanish Historical Writers.—Among their chief historians the Spaniards reckon Palencia, Bernal Diaz, Pedro Martyr, and Valera, in the sixteenth century; Morales, Mendosa, Mariana, Herrera, La Puente, and De Solis, in the seventeenth; since which time Spain has produced as little in history as in other kinds of literature.

(6.) Historical Writers of the Scandinavian Countries.—The Danes count among their eminent historians Gram, Holberg, Malling, Moller, and Grundtvig; the Swedes count among theirs Tegel, Dalin, Botin, and Sillersstolpe.

(7.) Slavonian Historical Writers.—Among the most celebrated Russian historians, after Nestor, a monk of the twelfth century, are Tatishcheff and Karamsin. The Poles have had not a few eminent historians; and Palacky is the greatest historian of the Bohemians.

(8.) Greek Historical Writers.—Of modern Greek historical writers the most distinguished is Tricoupé.

(P. X—X.)