It stands next to Epic poetry, among the productions of the human mind. If it requires less of invention than that, it is not behind it in dignity and importance. The province of the Epic is the poetical narrative of real or supposed events, and the representation of real, or at least natural, characters; and History, in its noblest examples, is an account of occurrences, in which great events are commemorated, and distinguished men appear as agents and actors. Epic poetry and the Drama are but narratives, the former partly, and the latter wholly, in the form of dialogue ; but their characters and personages are usually, in part at least, the creations of the imagination.

Severe history sometimes assumes the dialogue, or dramatic form, and, without departing from truth, is embellished by supposed colloquies or speeches, as in the productions of that great master, Titus Livius, or that greater master still, Thucydides.

The drawing of characters, consistent with general truth and fidelity, is no violation of historical accuracy; it is only an illustration or an ornament.

When Livy ascribes an appropriate speech to one of his historical personages, it is only as if he had portrayed the same character in language professedly his own. Lord Clarendon's presentation, in his own words, of the character of Lord Falkland, one of the highest and most successful efforts of personal description, is hardly different from what it would have been, if he had put into the mouth of Lord Falkland, a speech exhibiting the same qualities of the mind and the heart, the same opinions, and the same attachments. Homer describes the actions of personages, which, if not real, are so imagined as to be conformable to the general

characteristics of men in the heroic ages. If his relation be not historically true, it is such, nevertheless, as, making due allowance for poetical embellishment, might have been true. And in Milton's great Epic, which is almost entirely made up of narratives and speeches, there is nothing repugnant to the general conception which we form of the characters of those, whose sentiments and conduct he portrays.

But History, while it illustrates and adorns, confines itself to facts, and to the relation of actual events. It is not far from truth to say, that well written and classic History is the Epic of real life. It places the actions of men in an attractive and interesting light. Rejecting what is improper and superfluous, it fills its picture with real, just, and well drawn images.

The dignity of History consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions, in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in History, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form. Classical History is not a memoir. It is not a crude collection of acts, occurrences, and dates. It adopts nothing that is not true; but it does not embrace all minor truths and all minor transactions. It is a composition, a production, which has unity of design, like a work of statuary or of painting, and keeps constantly in view one great end or result. Its parts, therefore, are to be properly adjusted and well proportioned. The historian is an artist, as true to fact as other artists are to nature, and, though he may sometimes embellish, he never misrepresents; he may occasionally, perhaps, color too highly, but the truth is still visible through the lights and shades. This unity of design seems es

sential to all great productions. With all the variety of the Iliad, Homer had the wrath of Achilles, and its consequences, always before him; when he sang of the exploits of other heroes, they were silently subordinated to those of the son of Thetis. Still more remarkable is the unity in variety of the Odyssey, the character of which is much more complicated; but all the parts are artfully adapted to each other, and they have a common centre of interest and action, the great end being the restoration of Ulysses to his native Ithaca. Virgil, in the Æneid, sang of nothing but the man, and his deeds, who brought the Trojan gods to Italy, and laid the foundation of the walls of imperial Rome; and Milton of nothing, but

"Man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woes.'

And the best historical productions of ancient and of modern times, have been written with equal fidelity to one leading thought or purpose.

It has been said by Lord Bolingbroke, that " History is Philosophy teaching by example ;" and, before Bolingbroke, Shakspeare has said:

"There is a history in all men's lives,

Figuring the nature of the times deceased:
The which observed, a man may prophecy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things,
As yet not come to life; which in their

Seeds, and weak beginnings, lie entreasured.

Such things become the hatch and brood of time;

And, by the necessary form of this,

King Richard might create a perfect guess,

That great Northumberland then false to him,
Would, of that seed, grow to a greater falseness;
Which should not find a ground to rest upon,
Unless on you.

Are these things then necessities?

Then let us meet them like necessities."

And a wiser man than either Bolingbroke or Shakspeare, has declared:

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun."

These sayings are all just, and they proceed upon the idea that the essential characteristics of human nature are the same everywhere, and in all ages.

This, doubtless, is true; and so far as History presents the general qualities and propensities of human nature, it does teach by example. Bolingbroke adds, with remarkable power of expression, that "the school of example is the world: and the masters of this school are history and experience."

But the character of man varies so much, from age to age, both in his individual and collective capacity; there comes such a change of circumstances, so many new objects of desire and aversion, and so many new and powerful motives spring up in his mind, that the conduct of men, in one age, or under one state of circumstances, is no sure and precise indication of what will be their conduct, when times and circumstances alter; so that the example of the past, before it can become a useful instructor to the present, must be reduced to elementary principles in human nature, freed from the influence of conditions which were temporary

and have changed, and applied to the same principles, under new relations, with a different degree of knowledge, and the impulses arising from the altered state of things. A savage has the passions of ambition, revenge, love and glory; and ambition and love, revenge and the hope of renown, are also elements in the character of civilized life; but the development of these passions, in a state of barbarism, hardly instructs us as to the manner in which they will exhibit themselves in a cultivated period of society.

And so it is of religious sentiment and feeling. I believe man is everywhere, more or less, a religious being; that is to say, in all countries, and at all times, he feels a tie which connects him with an Invisible Power.

It is true, indeed, and it is a remarkable fact in the history of mankind, that in the very lowest stage of human existence, and in the opposite extreme of high civilization, surrounded with everything luxurious in life, and with all the means of human knowledge, the idea of an unseen and supreme Governor of the Universe is most likely to be equally doubted or disregarded.

The lowest stage of human culture, that of mere savage existence, and the intellectual and refined atheism, exhibited in our own day, seem to be strangely coincident in this respect; though it is from opposite causes and influences that men, in these so different conditions, are led to doubt or deny the existence of a Supreme Power. But both these are exceptions to the general current of human thought, and to the general conviction of our nature.

Man is naturally religious; but then his religion