in the
main mere chroniclers or annalists. Clarendon elaborated the picture of
which these annalists had merely supplied the materials; and the
eighteenth century saw the development of this new method in the
brilliant triad of contemporaries, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Our own
age has witnessed a further advance in the school of philosophical
historians, who, without aiming at any connected narrative of events,
present to us the profound lessons which history teaches; pointing out
the far-reaching causes which have influenced and are influencing
events occurring in widely distant countries; causes and events which to
the superficial observer seem totally disconnected. This philosophical
category would form one of the most interesting, and in these days, when
political empiricism shows a growing tendency to supplant statesmanlike
research, not the least important portion of our historical list. If to
this main stem of History there be added the due complement of branches
and leaves--memoirs and biographies--the Plutarchs and Pepyses, the
Walpoles and St. Simons, the Crokers and Grevilles of each
generation--we shall have a tree of knowledge which would yield to none
in point of interest and utility.

We have dwelt at some length on this part of the subject, first, because
of its almost unlimited extent; and secondly, because, owing to this
extent, there is such difficulty in making a genuine and trustworthy
selection. There is, besides, an apparently constant antagonism in
history between the qualities of strict accuracy and literary
brilliancy. The two are not incompatible, but the striving after
literary merit is as great a snare to the writer as its attainment by
the writer is, in too many cases, to the student.

Of voyages and travels, 'I would also have good store, especially the
earlier, when the world was fresh and unhackneyed, and men saw things
invisible to the modern eye: They are fast-sailing ships to waft away
from present troubles to the Fortunate Islands.'[101] Grouped under each
quarter of the globe, we should have selections of the works of those
travellers, who, from Herodotus to Mr. Stanley, and from Marco Polo or
Captain Cook down to Miss Bird, have made us who stay at home familiar
with the remotest corners of the earth. Much of the romance of travel
has of necessity perished in these matter-of-fact days; but as the
writing of history has developed from a mere chronicle of events into a
scientif