idst of the world they describe, we
should find gaps in their delineations, of which we have at present no
conception, and of which they were not always sensible themselves. That
multiplicity of facts which, grouped together and viewed from a
distance, appear to fill time and space, would present to us, if we
found ourselves placed on the ground they occupy, as voids which we
should find it impossible to fill up, and which the historians leave
there designedly, because he who relates or describes what he sees, to
others who see equally with himself, never feels called upon to
recapitulate all that he knows.

Let us therefore refrain from supposing that history can present to us,
in reality, an exact picture of the past; the world is too extensive,
the night of time too obscure, and man too weak for such a portrait to
be ever a complete reflection.

But can it be true that such important knowledge is entirely interdicted
to us?--that in what we can acquire, all is a subject of doubt and
error? Does the mind only enlighten itself to increase its wavering?
Does it develope all its strength, merely to end in a confession of
ignorance?--a painful and disheartening idea, which many men of superior
intellect have encountered in their course, but by which they ought
never to have been impeded!

Man seldom asks himself what he really requires to know, in his ardent
pursuit of knowledge; he need only cast a glance upon his studies, to
discover two divisions, the difference between which is striking,
although we may be unable to assign the boundaries that separate them.
Everywhere we perceive a certain innocent but futile labour, which
attaches itself to questions and inquiries equally inaccessible and
without results--which has no other object than to satisfy the restless
curiosity of minds, the first want of which is occupation; and
everywhere, also, we observe useful, productive, and interesting
inquiry, not only advantageous to those who indulge in it, but
beneficial to human nature at large. What time and talent have men
wasted in metaphysical lucubrations! They have sought to penetrate the
internal nature of things, of the mind, and of matter; they have taken
purely vague combinations of words for substantial realities; but these
very researches, or others which have arisen out of them, have
enlightened us upon the order of our faculties, the laws by which they
are governed, and the progress of their development; we have