oded theory that the characters of modern
times are inferior to those of antiquity. 'Under the toga as under the
modern dress,' says Guizot, 'in the senate as in our councils, men were
what they still are;' and the old Jesuit takes a narrow view of the
progress of mankind, who asserts that the masculine and vigorous
treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by
the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau,
who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of
the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not,
in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human progress,
insinuate the existence of a principle urging the systematic and
inevitable decline of individual power from age to age. So far from
exacting less of the historian, the present age demands even a firmer
handling. Our era has its Alexanders and Caesars; its Hannibals and
Hectors; and if these men of antiquity rise before us with an
unapproachable air of grandeur, it is because the light shining from our
distant stand-point surrounds them with deeper shadows, and throws them
in bolder relief against the background of their vanished ages. It is a
simple triumph of _chiaro-scuro_, and by no means the proof of the truth
of an absurd theory.

It is mournful enough to see the dead nations that were once young and
glorious pacing onward through an inferno like so many headless Bertrand
de Borns, bearing by the hair

'The severed member, lantern-wise
Pendent in hand.'

For ourselves, we have no fear of lighting our own spirit thus through
any Malabolge of purification. And this bold faith animates Motley; it
invigorates all his work with a firmness that inspires full confidence
in his readers. Free as he is from every puerile superstition, his
mastery of his subject is complete. He exercises over it a sort of
magistracy which extends even to his own flashing impulses. Never
pausing to display his moral learning, he avoids the tedious diffuseness
of Rollin; steering adroitly around the quicksands of political
dissertation, he escapes the pragmatical essayism of Guiccardini. Not
easily fascinated by the trifles that swim like vapid foam upon the tide
of history,--petty domestic details, the Koenigsmark intrigues of
royalty, the wines and flowers of the banquet table, the laces and
jewels of the court,--he leaves far in the distance the entertaining
Davila, who, says