on the waves behind
us!--_Coleridge._

History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes,
follies, and misfortunes of mankind.--_Gibbon._

We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real,
authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were
fought we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the
philosophy of history, is conjecture.--_Johnson._

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well
attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.--_Joubert._

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only
difficult,--it is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we
see but through a glass darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds
something of its own before an image, even of the clearest object, can
be painted upon it; and in historical inquiries the most instructed
thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those
who know the most approach least to agreement.--_Froude._

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror which merely
reflects objects, but of the judge who sees, listens, and
decides.--_Lamartine._

In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and
evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of
epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the
evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every
report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a
tyrant of Henry the Fourth.--_Macaulay._

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and
miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.--_Washington Irving._

History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in
the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another.
Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the
great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general
idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight
touches.--_Macaulay._

Violent natures make history. The instruments they use almost always
kill. Religion and philosophy have their vestments covered with innocent
blood.--_X. Doudan._

Each generation gathers together the imperishable children of the past,
and increases them by new sons of light, alike radiant with
immortality.--_Bancroft._

What history is not richer, does not contain far more, than the