irs, as if he viewed them from a loftier sphere than other men; as
if he were elevated above the usual struggles and contests of
humanity; and a superior power had withdrawn the veil which shrouds
their secret causes and course from the gaze of sublunary beings. He
cares not to dive into the secrets of cabinets; attaches little,
perhaps too little, importance to individual character; but fixes his
steady gaze on the great and lasting causes which, in a durable
manner, influence human affairs. He views them not from year to year
but from century to century; and, when considered in that view, it is
astonishing how much the importance of individual agency disappears.
Important in their generation--sometimes almost omnipotent for good or
for evil while they live--particular men, how great soever, rarely
leave any very important consequences behind them; or at least rarely
do what other men might not have done as effectually as them, and
which was not already determined by the tendency of the human mind,
and the tide, either of flow or ebb, by which human affairs were at
the time wafted to and fro. The desperate struggles of war or of
ambition in which they were engaged, and in which so much genius and
capacity were exerted, are swept over by the flood of time, and seldom
leave any lasting trace behind. It is the men who determine the
direction of this tide, who imprint their character on general
thought, who are the real directors of human affairs; it is the giants
of thought who, in the end, govern the world--kings and ministers,
princes and generals, warriors and legislators, are but the ministers
of their blessings or their curses to mankind. But their dominion
seldom begins till themselves are mouldering in their graves.

Guizot's largest work, in point of size, is his translation of
_Gibbon's Rome_; and the just and philosophic spirit in which he
viewed he course of human affairs, was admirably calculated to provide
an antidote to the sceptical sneers which, in a writer of such genius
and strength of understanding, are at once the marvel and the disgrace
of that immortal work. He has begun also a history of the English
Revolution, to which he was led by having been the editor of a
valuable collection of Memoirs relating to the great Rebellion,
translated into French, in twenty-five volumes. But this work only got
the length of two volumes, and came no further down than the death of
Charles I., an epoch no further on in