uccession, maybe less than nothing. But
the co-operation towards a common result, or the relation backwards to a
common cause, may be so important as to make the entire difference
between a story book, on the one hand, and a philosophic history, on the
other, of man as a creature.

History is not an anarchy; man is not an accident. The very motions of
the heavenly bodies for many a century were thought blind and without
law. Now we have advanced so far into the light as to perceive the
elaborate principles of their order, the original reason of their
appearing, the stupendous equipoise of their attraction and repulsion,
the divine artifice of their compensations, the original ground of their
apparent disorder, the enormous system of their reactions, the almost
infinite intricacy of their movements. In these very anomalies lies the
principle of their order. A curve is long in showing its elements of
fluxion; we must watch long in order to compute them; we must wait in
order to know the law of their relations and the music of the deep
mathematical principles which they obey. A piece of music, again, from
the great hand of Mozart or Beethoven, which seems a mere anarchy to the
dull, material mind, to the ear which is instructed by a deep
sensibility reveals a law of controlling power, determining its
movements, its actions and reactions, such as cannot be altogether
hidden, even when as yet it is but dimly perceived.

So it is in history, though the area of its interest is yet wider, and
the depths to which it reaches more profound; all its contradictory
phenomena move under one embracing law, and all its contraries shall
finally be solved in the clear perception of this law.

* * * * *

Reading and study ill-conducted run to waste, and all reading and study
are ill-conducted which do not plant the result as well as the fact or
date in the memory. With no form of knowledge is this more frequently
the case than with history. Such is the ill-arranged way of telling all
stories, and so perfectly without organization is the record of history,
that of what is of little significance there is much, and of what is of
deep and permanent signification there is little or nothing.

The first step in breaking ground upon this almost impracticable
subject, is--to show the student a true map of the field in which his
labours are to lie. Most people have a vague preconception, peopling the
fancy with in