live in the respect and remembrance of Patriotism and Piety, when their persecutors and villifiers have perished from the recollections of mankind.

rian, as Prescott tells us, never did and never will exist, yet there may be approximations to it, and while we place our standard high, we may remember that men are fallible, and make due allowance for human infirmiWe want, therefore, to know something of ties. A history will necessarily, to a certain the men who “paint,” in order that we may extent, be the counterpart of the historian. know what allowances to make for prejudiThe character of the man, his fitness or unces, prepossessions, antipathies, religious bias fitness for his vocation will characterize his and infidel bent of mind.

work. Who would expect to find an Eng lishman in the days of our own Revolution, writing a correct and reliable account of the rise, origin and struggles of the Colonies, or a Hughes a truthful narrative of the Reform ation, or of Protestantism?

In scarcely any department of knowledge are the same rare qualities required as in the Historiographer. He must present the past with all the vividness of a present reality. He must give us not only dates and events, but trace them to their causes and results. When we read Voltaire's histories, know- He must scan the motives of the actors in ing the previous character of the man, and the drama of life; and discriminate between the crying abuses of the church in his day, what is true and false-what is hypothetical we are prepared for a violent attack on re- and sure. It requires great flexibility of vealed religion-we expect to see him con- mind to be able to enter into the spirit of funding the abuses of religion with religion every age, and the situation of all classes of itself, and when he brings all his wit and individuals, and truthfully delineate them. It raillery to bear upon things sacred and di- implies a high degree of moral worth to be Tine, we are fortified against his sarcasms. free from the biassing influence of corrup So, too, when Gibbon's Decline and Fall of tion, and beyond the temptation of palliatthe Roman Empire is before us, though a ing what is sinful, and beautifying what is work characterized by great discernment, hideous. A man like Voltaire never could profound research, and evidences of untiring | be a good historian, for he would prefer be. industry, yet in our study of his life and character, having witnessed his dissipation and extravagance, and renunciation of Protestantism and pretended conversion to the Roman faith, his subsequent pretended re conversion to Protestantism, his avowed unbelief and infidelity in regard to all religion, we are not surprised at his disingenuous Dess and hostility to Christianity, nor at the grossness and indelicacy he manifests in Latin foot-notes, where is collected enough that is vile, to pollute Sodom itself. When Hime is before us we are delighted with his simplicity and refined attic elegance, but knowing him as the defender of the bouse of Stuart, we are not surprised to find phistry; and knowing his irreligion and avowed want of principle, we startle not at his statements, nor wonder at his mendacity and abuse of men who have filled a worthy place in the world's history, and who will

ing witty and satirical to being just and truthful. It is not every man of great knowledge and strong powers of mind and patient study, that will make a good historian-the qualifications needed are peculiar. Let us lotage of the historian, ascertain his qualifithen, when we put ourselves under the pi cations for his work, for it is not every one that knows the snags and sunken reefs, and general outline of the channel, that is capa ble of conducting a bark safely on its peril

ous voyage.

It is further very desirable and important that we make ourselves somewhat acquaint ed with the languages and literature of the most celebrated nations of the world, if we would get the full advantage of the study o the history of the past. By these we may often trace their origin and mark their gress. Of some nation's but very little is known of their political history-it is mainly

pro

through their literature that their civil pro-rative history' which is the lowest species of gress is to be traced. India is an example of this. Among her literary products we have no civil and political histories, but we find in the study of her sacred language, the Sanscrit, the most striking analogies with the Greek and Latin, the German and Slavic dialects, and thus the ties of kindred that connect it with the idioms of Europe, are incontestibly established.

(See an article in the Biblical Repository, vol. 3, page 709, for proof of this.)

It will not, therefore, be labor lost, to give attention to Philology, in its bearings on his torical research. This is a department of study, however, for the scholar, rather than the general student-this is the field to be explored by the learned who have taste and time for digging “roots"-thought, by Hudibras, to flourish best on "barren ground."

this kind of writing, and here we would mark the distinction between this and history which may be termed philosophical, or more properly that which alone is history in its true acceptation. Narrative gives us facts in their undress-merely correct and lively pictures of events, while true history is a combination of events, together with their rise and results. We might gaze upon the mere details of what has been, as children look at pictures, for amusement, and with no better result. We might see the passing pageant as we look upon a moving pano⚫ rama, but if we do not philosophize upon it, seeking to trace events to their origin and consequences, we might as well not know what has been, or might as well read fiction and fable, and the tales of Genii and Giants. Of late a new era has dawned upon the world, and as history is now being written, we have minute details traced as above, we have statistics, legislation, progress in the arts and sciences, civilization in its march, and the causes of the grandeur and decay of nations, and thus it becomes as Tyler styles it, "Philosophy teaching by example."

In the study of the past we must carry a spirit of discrimination with us, carefully distinguishing between facts and fancies, between the authors assertions and arguments. His inferences, or opinions and judgments, are one thing-his facts, detailed and proved, upon which these opinions and judg. ments are founded, are quite another thing, It is high praise to say of a historian as To read, therefore, properly, requires vigi- has been said of Sallust, by Hannah More→→ lance, freedom from bias, readiness in detect-"He unfolds the internal principles of ac ing sophistry, and a power of careful discrimination. The aim of the historian should be truth-he is to address our judgment, our reason, and not our feelings or our fancy. He must not trench on the poet's province.

There is much that is miscalled History -works lumbered up with details that might better be left and permitted to perish in oblivion, or given over to the Romaneer and the Novelist-they may be facts, but they are of little consequence, they have no bearing on the character of the nation or age in which they occurred.-they are neither causes nor effects, or illustrations of the spirit and development of the age and nation.The antiquarian might delight in them, but the philosopher or the practical man can make no use of them. They belong to nar

tion, dissects the hearts and minds of his personages, develops complicated circumstances, furnishes the clue to trace the labyrinth of causes and effects, and assigns to every incident its proper motive." And yet this is what every historian should do; this being done there is no better, no more fruitful field in which we can work, or school in which we can gain the most important earthly knowledge.

We propose now to consider some of the many motives that may influence us to give attention to the study of the past. And first, (for we are not opposed to seeking amusement under proper regulations,) it will afford matter to interest and amuse us · Here curiosity can be gratified and the love of the marvellous be fully met. Here we have not only the fabulous and false to be

scanned in order to arrive at truth-but in or perhaps we should say recurring phases

of fashion. Here we shall find in the sober details of voyagers and travelers, facts as funny as fiction ever fancied, and truths as strange as romances ever revealed. They only need to be winnowed from the wheat,

studying truth itself we shall find that there is much truth that is strange, stranger than fiction-as to the marvellous, Gulliver or Munchausen never saw stranger sights than have found a place in sober history, and been deliberately detailed as matters of the crop will be found to be abundant, but fact.

whether worth the winnowing is a question yet to be resolved. If men want amusement they can find it in the pasages of the

elists, and having been presented as truththey will lead to an exercise of the mental powers in canvas ing their claims to be 80 received, and hence we shall be led to another motive prompting to this study—which is this,

Wonderful stories of wild men and wild women found in the woods of France and Germany, have been written, and by Lin-historians as well as in the pages of the novnæus gravely introduced into his work as forming the connecting link between the human race and the monkey tribe. Sir Walter Raleigh tells us in his history of Guiana, “of men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," and whose single and only eye is placed, not where Virgil placed the eye of Polyphemus in the middle of the forehead-but where one among the ancients proposed to place in every man a window-in the middle of the breast. The Patagonians were described by those who first visited them as a race of giants, sustaining the relation to other men that the mas-with Voltaire exercise an "inveterate Pyr

todon does to lower animals.

Many authors have related that the famous Otho, Archbishop of Mayence was beseiged and devoured by an army of rats.

sius Halicarnassus lived in an enlightened age, the Augustan age, and yet he gravely tells us that by the command of the Augur Nevius a razor cut a whetstone, and that Castor and Pollux fought in person for the Romans against the Latins-that two rivers turned their course to favor the inhabitants of Cuma, and that a statue of Fortune spoke certain words twice over, (vide Priestleys Lectures,) Credat Judæus!

"It will call into play all our intellectual and moral powers."

In reading history we are to discriminate between the false and true, the precious and the vile our judgment, good sense, and pene

tration are all to be exercised. We are neither to be credulous and believe all-nor

rhonism" that believes nothing. Reflecting on what we read we shall avoid being car

ried away by the artful Rhetorician in his Dyoni-play upon our passions and imagination, or by his appeals to our prejudices. And as with minds awake we read and reflect, we shall find memory becoming more powerful, judgment more exact, the whole mind more penetrating and its comprehension enlarged. Among other things in its perusal, we are called upon to exercise the privileges and discharge the duties of jurymen and judges; or we are to be self-constituted courts of Equity, for doing justice to men and nations. But it is not only the marvellous that we We are to canvass the proof-question the can find—there is much which tho' not ap- witnesses and give a verdict, and when inpealing to our credulity is yet amusing-as terested partisans and truckling politicians we regard the manners and customs, and or self-seeking eulogists or starving literati singularites and contrarieties of different attempt to gloss over the vices and exalt as people in different ages, and in different virtuous the base, or falsify in regard to facts, quarters of the globe. Here we shall often we are to tear off the flimsy covering, unbe reminded that "de gustibus non disputan-ravel the sophistical web and leave men and dum." Here we shall have passing in re-events nakedly exposed to the eye of truth. view before us the constant and ever shifting There has been so much of this partial

writing of events and character. So much serting the natural and inalienable rights of

false coloring thrown over the doings and designs of men, that we do not much vonder that Lord Oxford should exclaim to his son, "Oh quote me not history-for that I know to be false;" or that Horace Walpole should be a sceptic in regard to the truth of history in general-tho' we have no sympathy with him in his "Historic doubts"-for it lays the axe at the root of all faith and trust. It is recorded of his father, Sir Robert Walpole, that in his last illness he was asked if he would have some book of history read to him—and he replied, "It is too late to be amused with works of fiction."There has been too much false history written, a venal pen has been too often employCicero employ ed unscrupulous pens to laud his consulship, and falsify in regard to it, and he has not lacked those who have gone and done like

ed at the dictation of men.

wise.

men. Who knows not that Calumny has always been heaped upon the Hampdens and Sydneys, the Cromwells and Washingtons, and Kossuths of our race.

But again in the past the most splendid models of literary excellence are to be found. We say this without disparagemont to the writers of the present day, of whom there are many, worthy of great praise—but it will be conceded that in the past we have world renowned specimens of what mind can do, and of which the world may well be proud. These products of the most gifted of the sons and daughters of science and of song may be used by us as models, not as copies. We are not to be like the Chinaman who in manufacturing a new garment for a foreigner with an old one as a guide made rents and sewed them up again, and put on patches and buttons half worn out, until it was difficult to distinguish between the old one and the new. We are to employ the literary gems to which we have referred as wells of thought,sources of inspiration and suggestive influence, and as means of mental discipline and culture.

Here the poet may plume his wings for a heavenward flight, the metaphysician shar

Besides these, there have been literary imWriters postures palmed upon the world. have detailed as matters of fact-things which have not happened. And described what they saw and heard when it was all imaginary. The pretended narratives of facts of Varillas, a French historian-a long while enjoyed a pen his powers of mental analysis—the oragood reputation-and the works of Gregorio tor fire his soul and fit himself to utter Reti, whose pen was quickened by hunger, burning words of thought that penetrate, the were often sought for, because containing historian polish his style and enlarge his anecdotes of English history not elsewhere powers of generalization and philosophical found, and for the very good reason, that he criticism andmanner of presenting truth. Let was indebted to his fancy for them. Let us it not be said that nature must do this for learn from their examples what we are to us— -that genius needs not such adventitious do in studying the past and see how it may help. That this aping of the literary giants minister to intellectual improvement, if it of other days, is death to originality and prompt us to examine testimony as jury-improvement, and independence of thought;" men or judges-scanning what is true and all men are not born geniuses-the mass of separating it from the false. Especially men need aid—they are all the better for does it become the American citizen-not to having models. There is a literary depenassume without examination what panderers dence of age on age, and we must not unto royality or despotism have said when justly withhold the meed of praise due to with terms of reproach they have spoken of the past, nor neglect to improve by it. We men whose crime in their eyes, has been have no sympathy with a ruthless onslaught their opposing with noble ardor and patri- against classical learning and literature. It otic zeal, the usurpations of tyrants and as-is a war which ignorance or affectation of

ing it sees in classical study something pernicious has sometimes waged.

Some of the very men who have been drawn into this contest are themselves illustrations of its beneficent uses, and others plainly show their need. But it is not only

superior wisdom or mistaken piety-fancy- as an example. How extravagant have been his eulogists-seven illustrious cities, we are told disputed the right of having given birth to this greatest of poets. He is declared to have been born of a prophetess, and drops of honey are fabled to have been distilled in his infant lips. The first sounds he uttered were musical as the song of birds. Apollo was his Sire, and a "wonderful genealogy was contrived industriously to raise our idea to the highest where Gods and Goddesses, Muses, Kings and Poets link in a descent, and Homer among them."

to the classics of Greece and Rome, that our subject points; not merely to the repositories of wit and wisdom that are found in languages now dead; there is also in the past of living languages, and in our own vernacular models of literary excellence demanding our homage.

Again-In the study of the past we see age acting on age—the preceding leaving its mark on that which follows and affecting it for weal or for woe. This is most emphatically true in literature. Homer versified by Pope tells us that

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,

There have been no bounds to his praises, and to this day they are chanted by many Professor of Grecian literature, and we deny not that he deserveth much. But who

a

does not know that it is and has been contended plausibly if not successfully that his greatest work which has given him his world wide fame is after all not his entirely-but the production of different authors, a com

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground,pilation and amalgamation of many minor

Another race the following spring supplies;

They fall successive, and successive rise.

So generations in their course decay;

So flourish these, when those are pass'd away."

poems, skillfully fused into one graphic whole. It may possibly be "the tyranny of criticism"-it may be "detraction pouring the waters of bitterness," and yet Naucrates points out the source in the library of Memphis, in a temple of Vulcan which he D'Israeli in his curiosities of literature says: says the blind bard completely pillaged and Undoubtedly there were good poets before Homer; how absurd to suppose that a finished and elaborate poem could be the first!Too We have indeed accounts of anterior poets, and apparently of Epics, before Homer; their

In one sense this is true, but not in every sense, there is a higher connection between age and age, from century to centurythan that which exists between the successive foliage of our forests. The bays and leafy crowns that have graced the temples of the sons of science and of song have not always been righteously distributed. much honor is accorded frequently to the honored few who have stood out boldly from the multitude, and too little to the many whose mingled contributions have helped to form and fashion the men of fame, and 1 given them their greatness. We may concede to the few, distinguished talents, genius

superiority to the mass about them; but we must not blind ourselves to the fact which will probably appear on investigation, that for a long time prior to their day the scintillations have been sparkling, and the rays of light streaking forth, which are finally concentrated and made to pour a bright and dazzling radiance thro' them. Take Homer

names have come down to us. Aelian noti

ces Syagrus who composed a poem on the seige of Troy and Suidas, the poem of Corrinnus from which it is charged that Homer

greatly borrowed. Now if this be so,and there

are such names as Perault and Hedelin and

Vico, and Bently, and Wolf among the critics and scholars to support it-then indeed some of his laurels should be distributed to those who perished unhonored and unsung. Take Virgil, the greatest of Roman poetsthe Mantuan bard-no one questions but at he drew largely from the Illiad and Odyssey.