sly and with little consciousness of their profound
diversity. Since historical criticism made its appearance, the romantic
interest in the past, far from abating, has fed eagerly on all the
material incidents and private gossip of remote times. This sort of
petty historical drama has reflected contemporary interests, which have
centred so largely in material possessions and personal careers; while
at the same time it has kept pace with the knowledge of minutiae attained
by archaeology. When historical investigation has reached its limits a
period of ideal reconstruction may very likely set in. Indeed were it
possible to collect in archives exhaustive accounts of everything that
has ever happened, so that the curious man might always be informed on
any point of fact that interested him, historical imagination might grow
free again in its movements. Not being suspected of wishing to distort
facts which could so easily be pointed to, it might become more
conscious of its own moral function, and it might turn unblushingly to
what was important and inspiring in order to put it with dramatic force
before the mind. Such a treatment of history would reinstate that epic
and tragic poetry which has become obsolete; it might well be written in
verse, and would at any rate be frankly imaginative; it might furnish a
sort of ritual, with scientific and political sanctions, for public
feasts. Tragedies and epics are such only in name if they do not deal
with the highest interests and destinies of a people; and they could
hardly deal with such ideals in an authoritative and definite way,
unless they found them illustrated in that people's traditions.

[Sidenote: Literal truth abandoned.]

Historic romance is a work of art, not of science, and its fidelity to
past fact is only an expedient, often an excellent and easy one, for
striking the key-note of present ideals. The insight attained, even when
it is true insight into what some one else felt in some other age, draws
its force and sublimity from current passions, passions potential in the
auditor's soul. Mary Queen of Scots, for instance, doubtless repeated,
in many a fancied dialogue with Queen Elizabeth, the very words that
Schiller puts into her mouth in the central scene of his play, "_Denn
ich bin Euer Koenig!_" Yet the dramatic force of that expression, its
audacious substitution of ideals for facts, depends entirely on the
scope which we lend it. Different actors and differen