demanded than in the higher forms of history. The art of portraying
characters; of describing events; of compressing, arranging, and
selecting great masses of heterogeneous facts, of conducting many
different chains of narrative without confusion or obscurity; of
preserving in a vast and complicated subject the true proportion and
relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no one who does not
possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely
to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history. It is
a misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the
hands of the mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really
great writer will hesitate to appropriate and plagiarise the materials
his predecessor has collected. There are books of great research and
erudition which one would have wished to have been all re-written by
some writer of real genius who could have given order, meaning and
vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously sifted learning.
The great prominence which it is now the fashion to ascribe to the
study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true value
and perspective of history. It is always the temptation of those who
are dealing with manuscript materials to overrate the small personal
details which they bring to light, and to give them much more than
their due space in their narrative. This tendency the new school
powerfully encourages. It is quite right that the treasure-houses of
diplomatic correspondence which have of late years been thrown open
should be explored and sifted, but history written chiefly from these
materials, though it has its own importance, is not likely to be
distinguished either by artistic form or by philosophical value. Those
who are immersed in these studies are very apt to overrate their
importance and the part which diplomacy and statesmanship have borne
in the great movement of human affairs.

A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It
should describe it in its larger and more various aspects. It should
be a study of causes and effects, of distant as well as proximate
causes, and of the large, slow and permanent evolution of things. It
should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw, the social, the
industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere
political changes, and it should be pre-eminently marked by a true
perspective dealing with subjects at a length pro