h binds the
past to the future, and learns to rear the fabric of history from hope
and memory. Yet only he can succeed in discovering the simple laws of
history, to whom the whole past is present. We arrive only at
incomplete and cumbrous formulas, and are well content to find for
ourselves an available prescription, that may sufficiently expound the
riddle of our own short lives. But I can truly say that each rigorous
view of the events of life causes us deep and inexhaustible pleasure,
and raises us, of all speculations, the highest above earthly evils.
Youth reads history only from curiosity, as it cons a story; to
maturity it becomes a divinely consoling and edifying companion,
preparing it gently by its wise discourses for a higher and more
embracing sphere of action, and acquainting it through intelligible
images with the unknown world. The church is the dwelling-house of
history, the church-yard its symbolic flower-garden. History should
only be written by old and pious men, whose own is drawing to its
close, and who have nothing more to hope for, but transplantation to
the garden. Their descriptions will be neither obscure nor dull; on the
contrary a ray from the spire will exhibit everything in the most exact
and beautiful light, and the Holy Spirit will hover above these rarely
stirred waters."

"How true and obvious are your remarks," said the old man. "We ought
certainly to spend more labor in faithfully recording the occurrences
of our own times, and should leave our record as a devout bequest for
posterity. There are a thousand remoter matters to which care and labor
are devoted, while we trouble ourselves little with the nearer and
weightier, the occurrences of our lives, and those of our relatives and
generation, whose fleeting destiny we have comprehended in the idea of
a Providence. We heedlessly suffer all traces of these to escape from
our memories. Like consecrated relics, all facts of the past will be
sought for by a wiser future, not indifferent to the biography of the
most insignificant man, since in his life the lives of all his greater
contemporaries will be more or less reflected."

"It is also much to be regretted," said the count of Hohenzollern,
"that even the few, who have undertaken to report the deeds and events
of their times, have not carried out their designs, nor striven to give
order and completeness to their observations; but have proceeded almost
wholly at random in the choice a