[GANONG | HISTORY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 93 
success and failure. To love your enemy as yourself is enjoined to the 
modern historian, 
It should be causative, comparative, symmetrical. The threads of 
cause and effect should be disentangled and made straight, for in these lie 
the chief lessons of history. Then, by constant comparison, the progress 
of local events should be kept in touch with what goes on in the world 
outside, whether there be organic connection between the two, or whether 
they be simply parallel or merely synchronous. Local history cannot 
be clearly understood unless it teaches its own relation to the progress of 
mankind. And this requires also well-proportioned treatment, all topics 
receiving, as they do on a good topographical map of whatever scale, 
emphasis in the exact ratios of their importance. 
It should be readable, attractive as a story. For this it should be 
the work of a master of style, who is at the same time an impressionist 
in the best sense, one who with bold strokes and strong colouring can 
make his theme to flash as a living picture before the mental vision of 
his readers, recalling surroundings as they were, causes as they acted, 
results as they followed, heroes as they achieved or failed, people as they 
lived and worked and fought and died. To make the past as vivid as the 
remembered events of yesterday is the ideal of the picturesque side of 
the historian’s art. 
It should have local colour. Especially in local history where great 
events with their lessons are wanting and interest is chiefly personal, the 
locative or exact-spot idea should be kept prominent. Local peculiarities 
of customs, traditions, prejudices, superstitions should be recognized. 
The writer should feel the environment and reflect it, should himself 
know and love the hills or rivers or plains which give character to the 
country and its people. Ina word the true atmosphere cf the locality 
should be breathed around local affairs. 
It should be primarily topical and secondarily chronological. It 
should be arranged according to periods, each receiving complete treat- 
ment and showing its influence upon subsequent ones and even upon the 
present. Of these periods certain ones are common to most histories, 
others are peculiar to the special locality. First of all must be treated 
the physical environment, which powerfully affects the course of his- 
tory of a country, both by controlling settlement and industries and 
by moulding the character of the people. The geography, physiography, 
meteorology, plants and animals have far more influence upon making a 
people what they are than is generally recognized ; second, there are the 
native tribes, and their character, and their relations to the new-comers ; 
third, there are always the early explorers who were not settlers ; fourth, 
there are the early settlers followed by, fifth, successive waves of popula- 
tion down to the present, the nature of these varying with the locality ; 
sixth, in some form there always comes the struggle for home government. 
