conscience, lay in the very grasp of death, he
interrupted the priests, busy at their work of intercession, almost
roughly, with the exclamation, 'Pray not for me.' 'Pray for Italy!'
whilst if he be one who has a turn for that ironical pastime, the
dissection of a king, the curious character, and muddle of motives,
calling itself Carlo Alberto, will afford him material for at least two
paragraphs of subtle interest. Lastly, if our historian is ambitious of
a larger canvas and of deeper colours, what is there to prevent him,
bracing himself to the task,--

'As when some mighty painter dips
His pencil in the hues of earthquake and eclipse,'

from writing the epitaph of the Napoleonic legend?

But all this time I hear Professor Seeley whispering in my ear, 'What is
this but the old literary groove leading to no trustworthy knowledge?' If
by trustworthy knowledge is meant demonstrable conclusions, capable of
being expressed in terms at once exact and final, trustworthy knowledge
is not to be gained from the witness of history, whose testimony none the
less must be received, weighed, and taken into account. Truly observes
Carlyle: 'If history is philosophy teaching by examples, the writer
fitted to compose history is hitherto an unknown man. Better were it
that mere earthly historians should lower such pretensions, and, aiming
only at some picture of the thing acted, which picture itself will be but
a poor approximation, leave the inscrutable purport of them an
acknowledged secret.' 'Some picture of the thing acted.' Here we behold
the task of the historian; nor is it an idle, fruitless task. Science is
not the only, or the chief source of knowledge. The _Iliad_,
Shakspeare's plays, have taught the world more than the _Politics_ of
Aristotle or the _Novum Organum_ of Bacon.

Facts are not the dross of history, but the true metal, and the historian
is a worker in that metal. He has nothing to do with abstract truth, or
with practical politics, or with forecasts of the future. A worker in
metal he is, and has certainly plenty of what Lord Bacon used to call
'stuff' to work upon; but if he is to be a great historian, and not a
mere chronicler, he must be an artist as well as an artisan, and have
something of the spirit which animated such a man as Francesco Francia of
Bologna, now only famous as a painter, but in his own day equally
celebrated as a worker in gold, and whose practice it was to sign his
pi