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and off. We make disquisitions which render and surely the assertion is not necesus only more and more dim-sighted, and ex- sarily paradoxical these studies ought cursions that only consume our stores. If not to be allowed to disfigure the free some among us who have acquired celebrity flowing outline of the historical muse, or by their compositions, calm, candid, contem- to thicken her clear utterance, which in plative men, were to undertake the history of Athens from the invasion of Xerxes, I should her higher moods chants an epic, and in expect a fair and full criticism on the orations her ordinary moods recites a narrative of Antiphon, and experience no disappoint- which need not be drowsy. ment at their forgetting the battle of Salamis. History, when she has lost her Muse, will lose her dignity, her occupation, her character, her name. She will wander about the Agora; she will start, she will stop, she will look wild, she will look stupid, she will take languidly to her bosom doubts, queries, essays, dissertations, some of which ought to go before her, some to follow, and all to stand apart. The Field of History should not merely be well tilled, but well peopled. None is delightful to me or interesting in which I find not as many illustrious names as have a right to enter it. We might as well in a drama place the actors behind the scenes and listen to the dialogue there, as in a history push valiant men back and protrude ourselves with husky disputations. Show me rather how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence; tell me their names, that I may repeat them to my children. Teach me whence laws were introduced, upon what foundation laid, by what custody guarded, in what inner keep preserved. Let the books of the treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's; leave weights and measures in the market-place, Commerce in the harbor, the Arts in the light they love, Philosophy in the shade: place History on her rightful throne, and at the sides of her, Eloquence and War."

This is, doubtless, a somewhat full-dress view of history. Landor was not one of our modern dressing-gown and slippers kind of author. He always took pains to be splendid, and preferred stately magnificence to chatty familiarity. But, after allowing for this, is not the passage I have quoted infused with a great deal of the true spirit which should animate the historian, and does it not seem to take us by the hand, and lead us very far away from Professor Seeley's maxims and morals, his theoretical studies, his political philosophy, his political economy, and his desire to break the drowsy spell of narrative, and to set us all problems? I ask this question in no spirit of enmity towards these theoretical studies, nor do I doubt for one moment that the student of history proper, who has a turn in their directions, will find his pursuit made only the more fascinating the more he studies them just as a little botany is said to add to the charm of a country walk; but

As for maxims, we all of us have our "little hoard of maxims" wherewith to preach down our hearts and justify any thing shabby we may have done, but the less we import their cheap wisdom into history the better. The author of "The Expansion of England" will probably agree with Burke in thinking that "a great empire and a small mind go ill together," and so, surely, a fortiori, must a mighty universe and any possible maxim. There have been plenty of brave historical maxims before Professor Seeley's, though only Lord Bolingbroke's has had the good luck to become itself historical.* And as for theories, Professor Flint, a very learned writer, has been at the pains to enumerate fourteen French and thirteen German philosophies of history current (though some, I expect, never ran either fast or far) since the revival of learning.

We are (are we not?) in these days in no little danger of being philosophy-ridden, and of losing our love for facts simply as facts. So long as Carlyle lived, the concrete had a representative, the strength of whose epithets sufficed, if not to keep the philosophers in awe, at least to supply their opponents with stones. But now it is different. Carlyle is no more a model historian than is Shakespeare a model dramatist. The merest tyro can count the faults of either on his clumsy fingers. That born critic, the late Sir George Lewis, had barely completed his tenth year before he was able, in a letter to his mother, to point out to her the essentially faulty structure of "Hamlet," and many a duller wit, a decade or two later in his existence, has come to the conclusion that "Frederick the Great" is far too long. But whatever were Carlyle's faults, his historical method was superbly naturalistic. Have we a historian left us so honestly possessed as he was with the genuine historical instinct, the true enthu siasm to know what happened; or one half so fond of a story for its own sake, or so in love with things, nor for what they were, but simply because they were? "What wonderful things are events!"

* History is philosophy teaching by examples.

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wrote Lord Beaconsfield in "Coningsby; "Professor Seeley. In his well-known
"the least are of greater importance than essay on history contributed to the Edin
the most sublime and comprehensive spec- burgh Review in 1828, we find him writing
ulations." To say this is to go perhaps as follows: "Facts are the mere dross of
too far; certainly it is to go farther than history. It is from the abstract truth
Carlyle, who none the less was in sym- which interpenetrates them, and lies latent
pathy with the remark - for he also wor- amongst them like gold in the ore, that
shipped events, believing as he did that the mass derives its whole value." And
but for the breath of God's mouth they again: "No past event has any intrinsic
never would have been events at all. We importance. The knowledge of it is val-
thus find him always treating even compar- uable only as it leads us to form just cal
atively insignificant facts with a measure culations with respect to the future."
of reverence and handling them lovingly, These are strong passages; but Lord
as does a book-hunter the shabbiest pam- Macaulay was a royal eclectic, and was
phlet in his collection. We have only to quite out of sympathy with the majority of
think of Carlyle's essay on the "Diamond that brotherhood who are content to tone
Necklace to fill our minds with his down their contradictories to the dull level
qualifications for the proud office of the of ineptitudes. Macaulay never toned
historian. Were that inimitable piece of down his contradictories, but, heightening
workmanship to be submitted to the criti- everything all round, went on his sublime
cisms of the new scientific school we doubt way rejoicing like a strong man to run a
whether it would be so much as classed, race, and well knowing that he could give
whilst the celebrated description of the anybody five yards in fifty and win easily.
night before the battle of Dunbar in It is therefore no surprise to find him, in
Cromwell," or any of the hundred scenes the very essay in which he speaks so con-
from the "French Revolution," would, we temptuously of facts, laying on with his
expect, be catalogued as good examples vigorous brush a celebrated purple patch
of that degrading process whereby history I would gladly transfer to my own dull
fades into mere literature.
page were it not too long and too well
known. A line or two taken at random
will give its purport:-

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This is not a question, be it observed,
of style. What is called a picturesque
style is generally a great trial. Who was
it who called Professor Masson's style
Carlyle on wooden legs? What can be
drearier than when a plain, matter-of-fact
writer attempts to be animated, and tries
to make his characters live by the easy
but futile expedient of writing about them
in the present tense? What is wanted is
a passion for facts; the style may be left
to take care of itself. Let me name a
historian who detested fine writing, and
who never said to himself, "Go to, I will
make a description," and who yet was
dominated by a love for facts, whose one
desire always was to know what happened,
to dispel illusion and establish the true
account Dr. S. R. Maitland, of the
Lambeth Library, whose volumes entitled
"The Dark Ages" and "The Reforma-
tion"
are to history what Milton's "Ly-
cidas" is said to be to poetry: if they do
not interest you, your tastes are not his-
torical.

The difference, we repeat, is not of style,
but of aim. Is history a pageant or a
philosophy? That eminent historian,
Lord Macaulay, whose passion for letters
and for " mere literature ennobled his
whole life, has expressed himself in some
places, I need scarcely add in a most
forcible manner, in the same sense as

A truly great historian would reclaim those should not then have to look for the wars and materials the novelist has appropriated. We

votes of the Puritans in Clarendon and for their phraseology in "Old Mortality," for one half of King James in Hume and for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel."... Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest, from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw, from the throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where the begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders, its refectory and the high mass in its chapel, the stately monastery with the good cheer in the manor-house with its hunting and hawking, the tournament with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold, would give truth and life to the representation.

It is difficult to see what abstract truth interpenetrates the cheer of the refectory, or what just calculations with respect to the future even an upholsterer could draw from a cloth, either of state or of gold; whilst most people will admit that when the brilliant essayist a few years later set himself to compose his own magnificent history, so far as he interpenetrated it with the abstract truths of Whiggism, and calculated that the future would be satisfied with the first Reform Bill, he did ill and guessed wrong.

My grief lies onward and my joy behind. Behind us are "Ivanhoe " and " Guy Mannering," ," "Pendennis" and "The Virginians," Pecksniff and Micawber. In front of us stretch a never-ending series, a dreary vista of "Foregone Conclusions," "Counterfeit Presentments," and "Undiscovered Countries." But the darkest watch of the night is the one before the dawn, and relief is often nearest us when we least expect it. All this gloomy nonsense was suddenly dispelled, and the fact that really and truly, and behind this philosophical arras, we were all inwardly ravening for stories was most satisfactorily established by the incontinent manner in which we flung ourselves into the arms of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, to whom we could almost have raised a statue in the market-place for having writ ten “Treasure Island."

To reconcile Macaulay's utterances on | Incident is over. In moods of dejection this subject is beyond my powers, but of these dark sayings seemed only too true. two things I am satisfied: the first is that, Shakespeare's saddest of sad lines rose to were he to come to life again, a good many one's lips, of us would be more careful than we are how we wrote about him, and the second is that, on the happening of the same event, he would be found protesting against the threatened domination of all things by scientific theory. A Western American, who was once compelled to spend some days in Boston, was accus. tomed in after life to describe that seat of polite learning to his horrified companions in California as a city in whose streets respectability stalked unchecked. This is just what philosophical theories are doing amongst us, and a decent person can hardly venture abroad without one, though it does not much matter which one. Everybody is expected to have "a system of philosophy with principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative," and to be able to account for everything, even for things it used not to be thought sensible to believe in, like ghosts and haunted houses. Keats But to return to history. The interremarks in one of his letters with great ad-ests of our poor human life, which seems miration upon what he christens Shake- to become duller every day, require that speare's "negative capability," meaning the fields of history should be kept for thereby Shakespeare's habit of complaisant observation from outside of theory, and his keen enjoyment of the unexplained facts of life. He did not pour himself out in every strife. We have but little of this negative capability. The ruddy qualities of delightfulness, of pleasantness, are all sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought. The varied elements of life

The joy of existence,
The stir of the world-

seem to be fading from literature. Pure literary enthusiasm sheds but few rays. To be lively is to be flippant, and epigram is dubbed paradox.

ever unenclosed, and be a free breathingplace for a pallid population well-nigh stifled with the fumes of philosophy.

Were we, imaginatively, to propel ourselves forward to the middle of the next century, and to fancy a well-equipped historian armed with the digested learning of Gibbon, endowed with the eye of Carlyle, and say one-fifteenth of his humor, even then a dangerous allotment in a dull world, the moral gravity of Dr. Arnold, the critical sympathy of Sainte-Beuve, and the style of Dr. Newman, approaching the period through which we have lived, should we desire this talented mortal to encumber himself with a theory into which That many people appear to like a drab- to thrust all our doings as we toss clothes colored world hung round with dusky into a portmanteau; to set himself to exshreds of philosophy is sufficiently obvi- tract the essence of some new political ous. These persons find any relaxation philosophy, capable of being applied to they may require from a too severe course the practical politics of his own day, or to of theories, religious, political, social, or busy himself with problems or economics ? now, alas! historical, in the novels of Mr. To us, personally, of course, it is a matter W. D. Howells, an American gentleman of indifference how the historians of the who has not been allowed to forget that twentieth century conduct themselves, but he once asserted of fiction what Professor ought not our altruism to bear the strain Seeley would be glad to be able to assert of a hope that at least one of the band of history, that the drowsy spell of narra- may avoid all these things, and, leaving tive has been broken. We are to look for political philosophy to the political philosno more Sir Walters, no more Thack-opher and political economy to the politi erays, no more Dickenses. The stories cal economist, remember that the first, if have all been told. Plots are exploded. not the last, duty of the historian is to

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narrate, to supply the text not the com- But all this time I hear Professor See-
ment, the subject not the sermon, and ley whispering in my ear, "What is this
proceed to tell our grandchildren and re- but the old literary groove leading to no
moter issue the story of our lives? The trustworthy knowledge ?." If by trust-
clash of arms will resound through his worthy knowledge is meant demonstrable
pages as musically as ever it does through conclusions, capable of being expressed
those of the elder historians as he tells of in terms at once exact and final, trust-
the encounter between the Northern and worthy knowledge is not to be gained
Southern States of America, in which from the witness of history, whose testi-
Right and Might, those great twin breth-mony none the less must be received,
ren, fought side by side; but romance, weighed, and taken into account. Truly
that ancient parasite, clung affectionately observes Carlyle: "If history is philos-
with her tendril hands to the mouldering ophy teaching by examples, the writer
walls of an ancient wrong, thus enabling fitted to compose history is hitherto an
the historian, whilst awarding the victor's unknown man. Better were it that mere
palm to General Grant, to write kindly of earthly historians should lower such pre-
the lost cause, dear to the heart of a no- tensions, and, aiming only at some picture
bler and more chivalrous man, General of the thing acted, which picture itself
Lee, of the Virginian Army. And again, will be but a poor approximation, leave
is it not almost possible to envy the his. the inscrutable purport of them an ac
torian to whom will belong the task of knowledged secret." "Some picture of
writing with full information, and all the the thing acted." Here we behold the
advantage of the true historic distance, task of the historian; nor is it an idle,
the history of that series of struggles and fruitless task. Science is not the only, or
heroisms, of plots and counter-plots, of the chief, source of knowledge. The
crimes and counter-crimes, resulting in Iliad, Shakespeare's plays, have taught
the freedom of Italy, and of telling to a the world more than the "Politics of
world, eager to listen, the life story of Aristotle or the "Novum Organum " of
Joseph Mazzini ?
Bacon.

Of God nor man was ever this thing said,
That he could give

Life back to her who gave him, whence his

dead

Mother might live.

But this man found his mother dead and slain,
With fast sealed eyes,

And bade the dead rise up and live again,
And she did rise.

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Facts are not the dross of history, but the true metal, and the historian is a worker in that metal. He has nothing to do with abstract truth, or with practical politics, or with forecasts of the future. A worker in metal he is, and has certainly plenty of what Lord Bacon used to call "stuff" to work upon; but if he is to be a great historian, and not a mere chroni Nor will our imaginary historian be un-cler, he must be an artist as well as an mindful of Cavour, or fail to thrill his readers by telling them how, when the great Italian statesman, with many sins upon his conscience, lay in the very grasp of death, he interrupted the priests, busy at their work of intercession, almost roughly, with the exclamation, "Pray not for me. Pray for Italy;" whilst if he be one who has a turn for that ironical pastime, the dissection of a king, the curious character, and muddle of motives, calling itself Carlo Alberto will afford him mate rial for at least two paragraphs of subtle interest. Lastly, if our historian is ambitious of a larger canvas and of deeper colors, what is there to prevent him, bracing himself to the task,

as when some mighty painter dips
His pencil in the hues of earthquake and
eclipse,

from writing the epitaph of the Napo-
leonic legend?

artisan, and have something of the spirit which animated such a man as Francesco Francia of Bologna, now only famous as a painter, but in his own day equally cele brated as a worker in gold, and whose practice it was to sign his pictures with the word goldsmith after his name, whilst he engraved painter on his golden crucifixes.

The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts, select facts, and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything exactly like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.

The stream of narrative flowing swiftly, as it does, over the jagged rocks of human

destiny must often be turbulent and tossed; it is therefore all the more the duty of every good citizen to keep it as undefiled as possible, and to do what in him lies to prevent peripatetic philoso phers on the banks from throwing their theories into it, either dead ones to decay, or living ones to drown. Let the philosophers ventilate their theories, construct their blow-holes, extract their essences, discuss their maxims, and point their morals as much as they will; but let them do so apart. History must not lose her muse, or "take to her bosom doubts, queries, essays, dissertations, some of which ought to go before her, some to follow, and all to stand apart." Let us at all events secure our narrative first mons and philosophy the day after. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

ser

From The Nineteenth Century.

after I came out here I was attacked with diarrhoea, which grew very bad, and I very weak. However, seeing the amount of work to be done, I didn't report myself sick until I found my inside getting sore, and I began to throw off blood, and then I knew I was only doing myself and my family justice by reporting myself sick, for I knew dysentery was on me.

The doctor gave me two or three astringent medicines to bind me, but he should have sent me straight to hospital. I went to my work again, but was little able to do it. Four days after, I fainted whilst at midday stables (our stables here is the open desert, with the full blaze of the sun upon you from eleven o'clock till one, and no shelter except that of your helmet), and the sergeant major sent me up to the hospital tent (because you know we are under canvas here), and the doctor was sent for, who took my temperature — 96°. He sent me into Cairo next morning, to the Citadel Hospital, where I was treated

LETTERS FROM A PRIVATE SOLDIER IN for enteric fever and dysentery, the only

EGYPT.

[The subjoined letters were written by a private in the 11th Hussars, and were offered to this review without the writer's knowledge -his assent being subsequently obtained. EDITOR.]

Cairo: March 1, 1883.

MY DEAR MOTHER, It is with a feeling of thankfulness that I write this to you from this horrible country, because I expected never to hold a pen in my hand again; indeed, only a week ago I thought so, and I also think you would have thought so too had you seen me in the Citadel Hospital, Cairo. I was one out of many who, not being of a strong constitution, suffered from those two prevalent diseases here, dysentery and enteric fever, each of which is sufficient to lay you under six feet of earth, only I suppose God in his mercy thought fit to inflict me with both, but thought fit to save me (after showing me his power) from an early death, and to (I hope) see you all again in the course of time. My dear mother, I knew well before I came out here that I could not stand the climate, which has killed many stronger than myself, but of course I enlisted for a soldier, and it is a soldier's duty to bear all these things without a murmur, because when you enlist it is the same as marriage, you have to take it "for better, for worse," so to speak. As soon as I got out here from England, of course (a great many being sick) the work was very hard for us, three or four horses to one man; and the day

cure for which is starvation. I ate nothing for eighteen days, and was unable to move a finger for eight or ten days after; all I was allowed to take was weak tea and water, and occasionally a little milk. At the end of eighteen days the doctor took pity on me, and ordered me chicken diet. Then I began to pull up a bit, and he gradually rose my diet till I got this much for a day's grub: two chickens, eight ounces of brandy, three-quarters of a pound of bread, two pints of milk, one pint of arrowroot, and six ounces of rice. Besides that, when the doctor would leave the ward I would ask Sister Annie, my nurse, to let me get up (for I was then allowed to sit up on my bed for half an hour daily, and on no occasion to stand), and then I would get one of the orderlies of the Army Hospital Corps to go and get me some bread, and I would eat, besides my allowance, three or four pounds of bread, and then ask him to go for more again at night. You may laugh; but think of those eighteen days on cold tea. I can assure you that as soon as I had eaten one meal I was ready for the next.

One day last week, General Sir Archibald Alison visited us, and it so happened that he chose my doctor to take him round the wards and show him some particular cases. I, being but a bag of bones, attracted his attention, and the two of them came and sat down on my bed, the doctor having assured him that all danger of infection was gone. The general took up my diet sheet and, looking at it, said to

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