292 HOW TO STUDY NATURAL HISTORY. [xir. 



books which suit their own prejudices and every one 

 has his prejudices and using them, not to correct their 

 own notions, but to corroborate and pamper them ; to 

 confirm themselves in their first narrow guesses, instead 

 of enlarging those guesses into certainty. The son of 

 a Tory turn will read Tory books, the son of a Radical 

 turn Radical books ; and the green spectacles of party 

 and prejudice will be deepened in hue as he reads on, 

 instead of being thrown away for the clear white glass 

 of truth, which will show him reason in all honest sides, 

 and good in all honest men. 



But, says the young man, I wish to be wide-minded 

 and wide-hearted I study for that very purpose. I 

 will be fair, I will be patient, I will hear all sides ere 

 I judge. And I doubt not that he speaks honestly. 

 But (I quote with all reverence) though the spirit be 

 willing, the flesh is weak. Studies which have to do 

 with man's history, man's thoughts, man's feelings, 

 are too exciting, too personal, often, alas, too tragical, 

 to allow us to read them calmly at first. The men and 

 women of whom we read are so like ourselves (for the 

 human heart is the same in every age), that we uncon- 

 sciously begin to love or hate them in the first five 

 minutes, and read history as we do a novel, hurrying 

 on to see when the supposed hero and heroine get 

 safely married, and the supposed villain safely hanged, 

 at the end of the chapter, having forgotten all the 

 while, in our haste, to ascertain which is the hero and 

 which is the villain. Mary Queen of Scots was "beau- 

 tiful and unfortunate " what heart would not bleed 

 for a beautiful woman in trouble ? Why stop to ask 

 whether she brought it on herself? She was seventeen 

 years in prison. Why stop to ascertain what sort of a 



