his materials that his narrative of events is that of an eye-witness
rather than that of a chronicler. Reproducing the passions, without
participating in the errors of the age about which he writes, he
intensely realizes everything he recounts. The siege of Antwerp and
the defeat of the Spanish Armada are the two prominent and obvious
illustrations of his power of pictorial description: in these he has
presented facts with a vividness and coherence worthy of the great
masters of poetry and romance; and his capacity of thus giving
unmistakable reality to events is not merely exercised in harmony
with the literal truth of things, but makes that truth more clearly
appreciated. Desirous as he is to impress the imagination, he never
sacrifices accuracy to effect.

The same picturesque truthfulness characterizes his descriptions of
individuals. In the present volumes he has analyzed and represented a
wide variety of human character, separated not only by personal, but
national traits. Philip II., Farnese, and Mendoza,--Olden-Barneveld,
Paul Buys, St. Aldegonde, Hohenlo, Martin Schenk, and Maurice of
Nassau,--Henry III., Henry of Navarre, and the Duke of Guise,--Queen
Elizabeth, Burleigh, Walsingham, Buckhurst, Leicester, Davison, Raleigh,
Sidney, Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Norris,--all, as
delineated by him, have vital reality, all palpably live and move before
the eye of his mind.

The method which Mr. Motley has adopted is admirably calculated to
insure accuracy as well as reality to his representation of events and
persons. His plan is always to allow the statesmen and soldiers who
appear in his work to express themselves in their own way, and convey
their opinions and purposes in their own words. This mode is opposed to
compression, but favorable to truth. Macaulay's method is to re-state
everything in his own language, and according to his own logical forms.
He never allows the Whigs and Tories, whose opinions and policy he
exhibits, to say anything for themselves. He detests quotation-marks.
His summaries are so clear and compact that, we are tempted to forget
that they leave out the modifications which opinions receive from
individual character. The reason that his statements are so often
questioned is due to the fact that he insists on his readers viewing
everything through the medium of his own mind. Mr. Motley is more
objective in his representations; and his readers can dispute his
summaries of charac