re
brought before the reader with such different degrees of illumination
and relief that they make a wholly different impression on his mind.
In the history of Macaulay this defect may, I think, be especially
traced. The characteristic defect of that great and in most respects
admirable writer, both as historian and artist, was the singular
absence of graduation in his mind. The neutral tints which are
essential to the accurate shading of character seemed almost wanting,
and a love of strong contrasted lights and shades, coupled with his
supreme command of powerful epithets, continually misled him. But no
attentive reader can fail to observe how unequally those epithets are
distributed and how clearly this inequality discloses the strong bias
under which he wrote.

The truth of an historical picture lies mainly in its judicious and
accurate shading, and it is this art which the historian should
especially cultivate. He will scarcely do so with success unless it
becomes to him not merely a matter of duty, but also a pleasure and a
pride. The kind of interest which he takes in his narrative should be
much less that of a politician and an advocate than of a painter, who,
now darkening and now lightening the picture, seeks by many delicate
touches to catch with exact fidelity the tone and hue of the object he
represents.

The degree of certainty that it is possible to attain in history
varies greatly in different departments. The growth of institutions
and laws, military events, changes in manners and in creeds, can be
described with much confidence, and although it is more difficult to
depict the inner moral life of nations, the influences that form their
characters and prepare them for greatness or decay, yet when the
materials for our induction are sufficiently large this field of
history may be studied with great profit. Diplomatic history and the
more secret springs of political history can only be fully disclosed
when the archives relating to them have been explored and when the
confidential correspondence of the chief actors in them has been
published. The biographical element in history is always the most
uncertain. Even among contemporaries the judgment of character and
motives depends largely on indications so slight and subtle that they
rarely pass into books and are only fully felt by direct personal
contact, and the smallest knowledge of life shows how quickly
anecdotes and sayings are distorted, coloured, a