he is about to explore, and enable him, at any moment in his
exploration, to take his reckonings and verify his position.

Careful distinction should be made between Chroniclers and Historians,
between those who have provided the materials and those who have
designed and reared the complete structure. Sometimes these chroniclers
have furnished merely rough and unhewn stones, useful in themselves,
but with no pretence to artistic finish or individuality of character;
and these have been absorbed into the building. Other chronicles, again,
are perfected in form, and are not merely integral, essential portions
of the complicated structure, but become a source of endless pleasure
from the merit of their workmanship. Thucydides and Clarendon are
universally read, while Hecataeus has all but vanished; and Thomas May's
'History of the Long Parliament,' though pronounced by Lord Chatham to
be a 'much honester and more instructive book of the same period than
Lord Clarendon's,' is relegated to the shelves of the specialist or the
bookworm.

Histories are scarcely less ephemeral than books of science; and the
object of the list we are advocating is not to provide an exhaustive
catalogue, a task which in these days would overtax the capacity of
half-a-dozen Dr. Johnsons, but to select those works which will give the
best continuous narrative of the period under discussion, and represent
the most recent scholarship; omitting those which have been absorbed or
superseded.

Mitford and Gillies have given place to Thirwall and Grote; and even the
star of Hallam, outshining De Lolme, is beginning to wane before the
searching light which, by the publication of State Papers and other
archives, is being brought to bear on the History of England and of
Modern Europe. But such materials, though ruthlessly relegating much of
what we have hitherto regarded as the 'Pearls of History' to the
category of 'Mock Pearls,' cannot immediately be made available for the
ordinary student, or become absorbed into the popular histories of the
day. We can ill spare from our list the names of those writers, who,
from Livy to Lord Macaulay, have added a fascination to the study of
history; though in their works most beautiful Mock Pearls abound. But
the student should be warned against implicit reliance on their records.

To Clarendon has been ascribed the honor of being the first Englishman
who wrote History, as we regard it; his predecessors having been